‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Herb boomed theatrically. ‘Over four hundred years ago, Saint Nicholas Owen was tortured to death in the Tower of London. It wasn’t his first visit, however. He’d been there before, helping Jesuit priests escape. Today he is known as the Patron Saint of Escapologists.’
They had tiptoed past Armand’s dressing-room, where the light was still on, to the storeroom near the end of the hallway, collecting a clinking green bag from their office on the way.
‘Sherlock Holmes investigates a murder involving a man, dead of a gunshot wound to the head, in a room locked from the inside. Is it a suicide? The gun in question is still clutched in the victim’s right hand. Except according to the layout of items on his desk, the man was left-handed. How did the murderer escape from a locked room? The art of escape is a craft, carefully honed. From the Davenport Brothers in the 1860s to Harry Houdini in the early twentieth century, to the flashy Vegas magic shows of today, highly trained escapologists can still baffle audiences with their death-defying acts.’
A banging sound, like a slamming door, sounded from somewhere else in the theatre. Sage started. Was it the ghost? Then she remembered that Armand had still been in his dressing-room. It was probably him finally going home.
A sly smile crept across Herb’s face. It wasn’t as wide as his usual smile, but it still lit up his eyes and made Sage smile in response.
‘I’ll need a volunteer from the audience.’
He looked pointedly at Sage, who, after a pause, raised her hand. ‘Excellent! You, young lady. Step into this room with me.’
Sage stepped into the storeroom, and Herb squeezed in after her, flicking on the light. The cupboard smelled of damp mop and disinfectant. Shelves of cleaning supplies ran across one wall, while another held a drape of filthy tarpaulin, hanging from a rack near the ceiling. The narrow back wall held another rack for mops and brooms, and above it there was a tiny grate that let in wisps of fresh air. Herb handed Sage the bag, and Sage nearly dropped it. She hadn’t been expecting it to be so heavy. Herb sat on the floor, drawing his legs up against his chest. ‘Tie me up.’
Sage snorted. ‘I bet you say that to all the girls.’
Herb grinned his ridiculous grin at her, and Sage pulled a length of chain out of the bag, and five padlocks with the keys in them. Following Herb’s instructions, she wrapped the chain around his torso, binding his knees and arms tightly to his body. Once finished, she snapped on all five padlocks, and put the green bag over his head.
‘Are you ready?’ asked Herb.
Sage nodded, then realised that he couldn’t see her. ‘Yes.’
‘Leave the keys outside, and close the door.’
Sage dropped the five padlock keys outside the door, and then pushed it closed. There was a click. The room was suddenly very small. Herb was very close. He smelled like cinnamon. She saw him start to fumble with the chains.
‘How are you doing?’ he asked, his voice soft and low, slightly muffled by the bag.
‘I haven’t done this since grade six, playing seven minutes in heaven with Otis Levin.’
Herb chuckled as chains clinked. ‘How was it?’
‘Not great. Otis burst into tears and told me he was gay.’
‘Sounds romantic.’
‘It was.’ Sage half-wished that Herb wouldn’t open the door quite yet. Even if he didn’t like her, it was kind of exciting being together in this quiet, cramped space. Anything could happen. She could hear him breathing, sense his warmth on her skin when he accidentally brushed against her.
‘Well,’ said Herb. ‘Here comes the magic.’
He stood up, the chains falling to the ground, and pulled the bag off his head. He grinned triumphantly at Sage.
‘Very good,’ she said.
He moved toward the door, and Sage heard the doorknob turn. The door didn’t open. Herb rattled at it a little, then took a deep breath. Suddenly the storeroom felt very small.
‘Herb? I’m ready to get out now,’ said Sage.
‘Just a minute.’
The minute turned into several minutes. Herb swore.
‘Are we … locked in?’ asked Sage.
‘No,’ said Herb. ‘Definitely not.’
He was still for a moment, and then made Sage jump by thumping loudly on the door. ‘Hello?’ he yelled. ‘Bianca? Are you out there? This isn’t funny.’
Sage held her breath, listening for movement outside. There was nothing. Herb rattled the handle again.
‘Holy carp,’ he said.
6. Permeation: a solid object passes through another.
Sage felt panic rise up inside her. She took a few deep breaths, trying to calm her hammering heart. It was fine. They weren’t locked in. Herb had said they weren’t locked in.
‘We’re locked in,’ said Herb, and banged on the door again. ‘Armand?’ he shouted. ‘Armand, are you still around?’
‘Wait,’ said Sage. ‘Wait. This is stupid. This isn’t a Sherlock Holmes story. We have phones. Call Armand and see if he’s still here. Or call Bianca.’
Herb relaxed visibly. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I’m an idiot. Give me your phone.’
Dread clanged into the pit of Sage’s belly like a lump of iron. ‘Why can’t you use your phone?’
‘I put it down when we picked up the bag with the chains. It’s on my desk.’ Herb held out his hand.
Sage swallowed a panicked sob. ‘So is mine. I left my bag in the office. I thought we’d only be five minutes.’
She slid down the wall until she was sitting on the floor. Herb banged on the door a few times, then looked wildly around.
‘What about the window?’ he asked, pointing.
‘It’s not really a window,’ Sage replied. ‘More of a grate. Even if we could get it off, there’s no way we could fit through there.’
Bianca probably could, she thought ruefully. Skinny, lithe, contortionist Bianca could fit through a plughole if she needed to.
Herb craned his neck to look at the vent. ‘Maybe we could take it off, and post a note outside for a passer-by to find.’
Sage nodded. ‘Yes!’ she said, starting to feel a bit excited and Famous Fivey about the whole thing. ‘What’s outside the grate? Is it the main road?’
Herb frowned, thinking about it. Then his face fell. ‘No, it’s the alley. There’s nobody out there. Not until tomorrow at the earliest.’
He slid down the wall to sit next to Sage. His shoulder brushed against hers. It was warm and comforting. And he smelled good.
‘Well, Sage Kealley,’ he said. ‘I guess it’s lucky we just ate an enormous dinner. We could be in here for a while.’
His breath tickled the side of her face, and Sage felt something inside her tingle. Suddenly, being locked in a tiny room all night with Herb didn’t seem so bad after all.
Except he liked Bianca.
‘So, where did Bianca go last night?’ asked Sage, trying to keep her voice light. ‘When she said she was meeting friends?’
She felt Herb shrug next to her. ‘Dunno. Probably hooking up with some guy.’
Sage was surprised. ‘Really? How do you feel about that?’
‘How do I feel about it?’ Herb sounded puzzled. ‘I’m not sure. Vaguely nauseated? I hope she uses protection?’
‘You’re not upset?’
‘Why would I be upset?’
Sage attempted a worldly eye-roll. ‘Come on,’ she said, full of bravado. ‘You guys do nothing but bicker. It’s clear you’re in love with each other.’
Herb was silent for a moment. He looked genuinely baffled. ‘Why would us bickering mean that we’re in love? I thought the bickering wasn’t supposed to show up until at least the fifth year of marriage.’
‘Teasing is a sure-fire sign of affection,’ said Sage. ‘Like when Gilbert Blythe calls Anne of Green Gables “Carrots” and she breaks her slate over his head.’
‘Huh,’ said Herb. ‘Well, there are two possibilities here. One is that I am in love
with Bianca, but haven’t realised it. The other, and I don’t want to pick favourites here, but I suspect this one is more likely, is that I bicker with Bianca because I find her genuinely irritating, and it’s difficult working in close quarters with someone who’s all ooh, astrology is a pathway into the soul, crystals, unicorns, Tarot-whatever.’
Sage felt a strange combination of hope (maybe he wasn’t in love with Bianca!) and embarrassment (he clearly thought she was an idiot).
‘So tell me about the escapology trick,’ she said. ‘How do you escape from the chains?’
‘Hmm?’ said Herb vaguely. ‘Oh, the chains. That’s the easiest part, really.’
‘Oh.’ He definitely thought she was an idiot.
‘It’s to do with the way you sit. You set your knees apart slightly. Even though the chains look tight, when you bring your knees together there’s enough slack that you can wriggle out of them. You don’t need to undo the locks at all. It never ceases to amaze me how few people figure that out.’
Sage felt her cheeks burn. She hadn’t been able to figure it out. But she was smart! She knew she was smart. Just maybe not at the same things that Herb was clever at. After all, Herb barely knew how to turn a computer on.
‘What if we used the light to signal?’ she said suddenly. ‘We could flash it on and off. Maybe someone will see.’
Herb sprang to his feet. ‘It’s worth a shot. Do you know Morse code?’
‘I know SOS,’ said Sage. ‘And SMS, but I’m not sure that’s particularly pertinent.’
Herb started to flick the light switch, turning the light on and off in a regular, blinking rhythm. It was like being at a really small, quiet nightclub. Then, with a plink, the light went out and didn’t come back on again.
‘Turn it back on,’ said Sage.
‘I did.’ Herb’s voice was bleak. ‘I think I blew the globe.’
‘Oh.’ Sage felt mortification creeping over her once more. It was her fault. Maybe it was Herb’s fault that they were locked in the storeroom, but it was definitely Sage’s fault that there was no light. At least Herb couldn’t see her burning cheeks now. She held out a hand in front of her and wiggled her fingers.
Herb sat down again next to her, but didn’t say anything. Sage bit her lip as the minutes passed with excruciating slowness. She considered speaking, making conversation to pass the time, but didn’t trust herself not to say anything that would make Herb think she was even more of an idiot than he already clearly did.
Herb shifted awkwardly, like he couldn’t bear to stay still in the tiny, cramped room for another moment. His breathing sounded erratic.
‘Um,’ said Sage. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine,’ said Herb between gritted teeth.
‘Are you claustrophobic?’
‘No.’ She felt him jiggling his legs up and down.
‘Suffer from anxiety of any type? Because you seem like you’re freaking out a little bit.’
Maybe he thought she smelled.
‘Really,’ he said. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Okay.’ Sage looked down at the dim outline of her shoes. She wondered what time it was. Would Zacky be in bed by now? Would her parents be worried? They might not notice she was gone – they’d been going to bed early since they moved to Melbourne, exhausted from unpacking and transition. They’d already been asleep when she’d arrived home from the last few late shows.
Herb let out a sigh that was almost a groan. He sounded like he was in pain. But he clearly didn’t want to talk about it, so Sage held her tongue. Again she held up her hand in front of her, and tried to force her eyes to adjust to the gloom. She thought about light, and image, and photography. She thought about the manual film camera that Dad had promised her, and felt a twinge of sadness.
‘Fine, I’m not okay,’ said Herb suddenly, his voice strangled. ‘This is possibly the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever had to say, and you can’t imagine how mortified I am to have to say it to you. But here we are, locked in the storeroom in the middle of the night with no hope of escape, so here I go. I really, really, really need to pee.’
As soon as he’d said it, Sage realised that she did too.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘We’ll just have to figure something out. This is a storeroom. There’ll be a bucket in here somewhere.’ She peered at the dark blocks of the shelves, but couldn’t make anything out. She saw the shadowy outline of Herb stand up and heard clinks and scratches as he groped around on the shelves. She followed suit, hoping she wouldn’t put her hand on a mousetrap or, worse, one of the escaped white mice. Her fingers closed around the hard, metal rim of something curved.
‘Bucket!’ she said triumphantly.
Herb was silent for a moment. ‘Now what happens?’ he said at last.
‘Now you … do whatever you need to do.’
There was another pause. ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I just can’t pee into a bucket with you two feet away from me.’
‘I’m not sure you have a choice.’
‘It’s fine, I’ll just hold it. I can hold it. Totally fine.’
Sage nodded, even though he couldn’t really see her in the dark. There was another, longer pause, then a sigh.
‘Give me the bucket.’
Sage handed it to him.
‘I bet this is the most romantic date you’ve ever been on.’
Sage heard him set the bucket down in a corner of the room, and the unmistakable sound of a zipper being undone. She held her breath. Date?
‘Okay,’ said Herb. ‘Operation Most Humiliating Moment of My Life is go. You have to block your ears.’
‘What?’
‘I can’t have you listening to me pee into a bucket. I realise that this is going to be a horrific experience for both of us, but there’s no need to make it worse. Block your ears.’
‘How will I know when you’ve finished?’
‘I’ll tap you on the shoulder.’
Sage made a face. ‘Without washing your hands?’
Herb sighed. ‘Fine, I’ll nudge your foot with my foot.’
Sage complied, but even with her ears blocked she could hear the sound of liquid hitting plastic bucket. She tried not to think about how Herb was just a little bit more naked than he had been a moment ago. She also tried not to breathe in through her nose.
After what felt like an hour, she finally felt Herb’s shoe nudge hers, and she took her fingers out of her ears.
‘Do you need to go too?’ he asked.
‘Yep,’ Sage replied. ‘But … it’s more complicated for a girl.’
A pause. ‘I hadn’t considered that. It must make things tricky when you’re on a bushwalk or something.’
‘You have no idea.’
They stood up and awkwardly exchanged places. Sage felt for the rim of the bucket, screwing up her nose as she did so. There was no way around it. She was about to squat over a bucket of someone else’s urine. The fact that it was a cute boy’s urine didn’t seem to help. What if there was splashback?
‘Block your ears,’ she told him, and did the best she could.
When it was all over, they found a rubber mat to drape over the top of the bucket, to keep its pungent odour to a minimum. Then they sat side by side as far away from the bucket as they could.
‘Well,’ said Herb at last.
‘Well,’ replied Sage.
‘I feel like we’ve certainly got to know each other on a new level.’
‘Quite.’
There was another awkward pause.
‘At least we didn’t have curry for dinner,’ offered Herb, and Sage laughed.
‘You have a nice laugh,’ he said. ‘Warm and low. You don’t laugh very often, but when you do, I can tell you really mean it.’
Sage felt herself smile. Maybe he didn’t think she was an idiot after all. ‘Thank you.’
‘Thank you,’ said Herb. ‘There’s nothing more annoying than a girl who won’t accept a compliment. Bianca does it all the time. You tell her
that her hair looks nice or something, and she won’t accept it. This? Really? No. I look terrible. You’re lying.
’ Sage nodded. ‘I hate that too.’
‘It’s totally a self-fulfilling prophecy, too,’ said Herb. ‘You tell someone they’re attractive, and they say no, no, I’m hideous, and lo and behold – suddenly they are hideous.’
Sage chuckled. ‘So you think Bianca is hideous?’
There was a pause. ‘No,’ said Herb thoughtfully. ‘Of course she’s attractive. But she’s so … You know how sometimes you go to an art gallery and see a painting that is totally amazing – you stare at it and stare at it because it is literally the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen?’
Sage nodded. That was how she’d felt the first time she’d been to a Yoshi Lear exhibition.
‘But at the back of your mind, you’re kind of thinking I love this, but I wouldn’t want it in my house, because it would overpower everything else. You wouldn’t be able to watch TV, or make pasta, or sit on the couch in your boxer shorts eating ice-cream straight from the tub. Because somehow it would be disrespectful to the painting?’
Sage had a sour taste in her mouth. ‘So you don’t want to be with Bianca because you don’t think you deserve her?’
Herb rubbed a hand through his hair. ‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s not it. I’m explaining it all wrong. What I mean is – some things are beautiful, but you don’t want to be around them all the time. Because falling in love isn’t just about finding something beautiful, it’s about being happy and comfortable.’
Falling in love. Sage’s arms broke out in goosebumps. ‘So what kind of painting do you want in your house?’
‘One that makes me happy,’ he said. ‘The kind of painting that, when you look at it, makes you feel warm and content and strong. Like you can do anything, or nothing. A painting that belongs with you. That you can’t imagine not being in your house, because if it wasn’t in your house, then your house wouldn’t feel like home.’
Sage felt her heart thumping and her cheeks growing red. She wanted to be Herb’s painting. She felt him lean in towards her. His hand reached for her face, brushing her hair away from her forehead and cupping her chin. Sage held her breath.
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