Warp

by Lev Grossman

  “Maybe when I get some cash,” he said. “At this point I can barely keep my hair blond.”

  “How come you don’t have any cash?”

  “I don’t know,” said Hollis. “I get that one a lot.”

  They stood facing each other in the pinkish light of the loading dock.

  “So this is where you live?” said Hollis.

  “Sure is.”

  “I didn’t even know they even had apartments in here.”

  “Ours is the only one.”

  She stood with her hands on her hips, but she wasn’t looking at him; she was looking off into the darkness. It wasn’t quite as cold as it was before—they were out of the direct force of the wind. A pair of motorcycles went by on Mass Ave, and the noise from the pipes was so loud they had to wait a few seconds before either of them could say anything.

  Finally, Alix went over to the small door that was set in the larger one.

  “Watch.” She showed him her empty hand, palm open, both sides. Then she held it up in front of the door, where a doorbell would have been.

  “Nothing up my sleeves.”

  A little green LED on the doorjamb lit up, and the lock buzzed open.

  She held the door for him, and he stepped through.

  “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”

  Inside it was completely dark except for a glowing dot in the distance. As he came closer it turned out to be an elevator button down at the far end of a corridor. Alix pushed him down the hall ahead of her, with her hand between his shoulder blades.

  “It’s like that scene in Diva,” he said. “The elevator shaft is empty, and I plummet down it to my death.”

  “A little trust, please.”

  She hit the button, and far away above them in the building Hollis heard and felt old, heavy machinery engaging. The darkness in the hallway was total: he closed his eyes, and there was no change at all. It was both disorienting and comforting at the same time. He leaned back against the cinder-block wall behind him; the coolness felt good against the back of his head. He felt almost sober now: the drinks had left him with nothing except a slightly dissociated feeling.

  Alix stood somewhere nearby to his left. He guessed she was standing in front of the elevator doors, and he took a step forward, reaching out blindly, but there was nobody there. He stopped short and flailed his arms for a second to keep his balance. Taking another step away from the safety of the wall, he put his arms out on either side of him, and stretched, but he couldn’t find her.

  Quickly, Igor—the monster has escaped!

  Suddenly the elevator doors opened, and the whole scene was lit up with fluorescent light. Alix was standing a few yards away, picking intently at her black-painted nails.

  They stepped into the elevator together, and she took out a tube key on a leather thong that was hanging around her neck. She fitted it into a round keyhole on the control panel, turned it, and hit the button for the top floor.

  The elevator took them down, down, far below the devastation on the surface, down through endless strata of soil and rock. He felt his ears pop from the pressure change. The air smelled of cordite.

  A diagram on the monitor showed them approaching the lower limits of the terrestrial lithosphere, and a warning alarm began to sound. Suddenly she was in his arms, pressing her soft, slender form up against him.

  “Together, we will start the human race anew,” she whispered in his ear. “Tonight—”

  It was an old-fashioned freight elevator, with metal bars instead of walls. The floors they passed on their way up were marked with messily hand-painted numbers, as if someone had done them from the elevator while it was still moving.

  “Quite the gilded little cage you have here,” Hollis said.

  “Wait till you see the apartment,” she said wryly. “The buildup is better than the payoff.”

  When they reached the top, Alix hauled the heavy door to one side with a metallic crash. It was a short, dirty white hallway with a single door at the far end. The door had a whole column of locks and latches on it, extending above and below the door handle, and she went down them in order, undoing each one with a different key.

  “I wanted to put in some kind of a pass-card system,” she whispered. “The landlord wasn’t into it.”

  The door was like the door of a bank vault, and it swung open on big, reinforced metal hinges. On the other side was a long, narrow room, startlingly tall, like the nave of a miniature cathedral. A faint trace of muted, sepia-colored light came from a heavily shaded floor lamp in a corner. The floor and the walls were covered with layers of oriental rugs. Alix went ahead of him, moving quickly and silently through the room to a door in the far wall. She looked back at Hollis and put a finger up to her lips, pointing at an overstuffed couch with her other hand: a woman was sleeping there, curled up under a heap of blankets, her long brown hair falling over her face.

  They slipped past her and through a kitchen, into another bedroom. Its brick walls were covered with hundreds of wooden cubbyholes, mostly full of books—the rest of the brick was plastered with photographs and posters. A giant-sized portrait of Tintin and Snowy in bright primary colors hung suspended over the bed, like a banner at a political rally. The ceiling gave way to a skylight, and someone had managed to hang a couple of strings of white Christmas lights from it like stars.

  There were two small square windows that looked like they didn’t open. Hollis started walking over to the nearer one, but an artsy black-and-white photograph caught his attention: it was a contact print of a woman sitting very straight and upright on what looked like a leather psychoanalyst’s couch. She was naked from the waist up, and she was cupping one of her smallish breasts in one hand. The other breast was bare. Hollis bent down to look at it. The woman’s hair fell over her face; he couldn’t decide whether or not it was Alix.

  The door closed behind him. She came in from the kitchen.

  “Do you want something to drink?” she said. “Or should I say, something more to drink? I think I have some Scotch.”

  “Thanks. That would be nice.”

  She took a bottle and two shot glasses down from one of the cubbyholes.

  “This place used to be a factory. They made bomb casings here in World War One. That’s what these little compartments are for. They stored the bombs in them.”

  “Handy.”

  She passed Hollis a glass with a generous double shot in it, and they drank together. Then she sank down into an overstuffed armchair, which rocked backwards on springs under her weight.

  “In a way, I can’t believe you let me in here,” Hollis said, watching her.

  She shrugged. “If one of us is a criminal mastermind here, it’s probably me. You don’t much strike me as the evildoer type. I see evildoers as more the self-starter type of person. Anyway, where’s your spandex costume?”

  “Maybe you caught me on dress-down day.”

  Don’t quit your day job.

  She took another sip of the Scotch.

  “Do you go to Harvard?” she said.

  Hollis nodded. “I used to.”

  “What did you major in?”

  “Urban Studies.”

  She grimaced. “What the hell is that?”

  “I forget exactly,” he said. “I think there was a large filmic component.”

  Hollis glanced out one of the windows. Through the thick plastic he could see down into a lot behind the warehouse, partitioned off by a chain-link fence. A massive explosion of green weeds had survived the chill of fall. Then he turned away and sat down on the edge of the bed, and a ginger-and-white cat zipped out from under it, its legs twinkling.

  A witch and her familiar.

  “That’s a mighty big rig you’re driving,” Hollis said, and he nodded at her computer, which was set up on its own on a long table against one wall. It had a massive megapixel monitor the size of an air conditioner. A standard rainbow-colored screen saver was running. Cables from half a dozen p
eripherals ran out from behind it onto the floor, all twining together down into one overgrown power strip.

  “If you’re going to steal something, steal that,” she said. “It’s worth all the rest of this stuff combined.”

  “Is that what you do for a living? You write code?”

  “Not exactly. But it pays for some extras.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like trips and stuff. And this place. Drugs.”

  Hollis laughed. “Drugs? Do you have some?”

  Her eyes narrowed a little.

  “Maybe when we know each other a little better,” she said.

  “So I don’t strike you as a criminal?” He took another slug of his whiskey. “What do I strike you as?”

  Instead of answering right away, Alix got up, closed the door, and went over to the bed. She lay back on the pillows, at the other end from him.

  “You strike me,” she said, “as a hick who stayed out too late.”

  “Ouch.” He made a face.

  “The truth hurts.”

  He finished the Scotch and set the empty glass on the floor.

  “Tell me something.” He slid up the bed and lay down next to her. “Is that you, in that picture over there?”

  “Which one?”

  “That black-and-white one,” he said. “Next to the window.”

  She looked at it for a second, then at him, and then instead of answering she leaned down and kissed him on the lips, with her broad, dark mouth.

  “What does it matter?” she said, after another second.

  “It matters to me,” Hollis said.

  “Why?” She drew back a millimeter. “Do you think she’s pretty?”

  “I just like to know,” he said.

  Her nose was still cold from their walk home. She kissed him hard, without opening her mouth, and Hollis brought his hand up to her waist. He was surprised when he felt how thin her blouse was: it was just a silk slip.

  When they broke apart again he whispered: “You must have been cold in just this.”

  She rolled over on top of him, and they kissed again, longer this time, and this time her lips were open. He put his hand up and covered her breast with his hand, and she caught her breath softly. She was very flat-chested, and she wasn’t wearing a bra. He could feel her nipple against his palm.

  It was surprisingly warm and quiet in the apartment. Alix’s bed was a real bed, and the mattress seemed unbelievably soft and giving after his hard futon at home. He put his other hand up under her slip and let it wander up her back. She was very slender. She pushed his coat down off his shoulders, and he let go of her to wriggle his arms out of it. He could already feel lipstick getting all over his face.

  The cat mewed at the door, trying to get back inside.

  * * *

  A long time went by. He noticed a clock ticking somewhere not far away. It took him a minute before he found it.

  “Oh, God,” he said suddenly. “It’s after three.”

  “So what?” she whispered.

  “I have to be somewhere.” He sighed and sank back. “Soon. At four.”

  The clock was over the bed. It was made in the shape of a black-and-white cat, with eyes that moved back and forth to mark the seconds. The pendulum was its tail.

  He sighed again and closed his eyes. The soft pillows under his head made him want to fall asleep, and he grayed out for a few seconds.

  “What, you have a date?” she said.

  “It’s a long story.”

  That’s my favorite kind.

  “What kind of a story?”

  “What kind?” He sat up and swung his legs down off the bed. He put his head down onto his hands. “I don’t know. I guess you could say it’s a dramedy.”

  She propped herself up on her elbows behind him. She was disheveled, halfway out of her slip, and looking at her Hollis felt a pulse of renewed desire.

  He explained what he and Peters were doing.

  “Dover?” She seemed a little unnerved. “What’s in Dover? Whose house is it?”

  “Just these people’s. Their name is Donnelly—Peters knows them.”

  “Oh.”

  Hollis found his boots and tied the laces with big, loopy bows. When he stood up, his weight came down on the shot glass he’d been drinking out of, and it squirted out from under his boot across the hardwood floor.

  “Forget about it,” she said. “You can’t break those things. Come on, I’ll walk you out.”

  She pushed the strap of her slip back up and heaved herself up off the bed, giving Hollis a momentary flash of dark hair as it rode up over her white thighs. He found his coat in the bedclothes and picked it up. She led the way as they walked back along the length of the long room and through the kitchen, she pulling him along by one hand, he tagging along behind.

  Her roommate was still asleep, an old T-shirt folded across her eyes. They made their way through her bedroom to the outer door.

  Hollis went ahead of her out into the hall, carrying his coat. Alix stayed behind in the doorway. Her lipstick was mostly gone, and her face looked unfamiliar in the harsh light. He noticed for the first time that she had a small tattoo on her neck, a simple blue-green circle.

  She kissed him on the cheek.

  “Good night, Alix,” he said.

  She shook her head slowly.

  “I was lying,” she said. “You were right the first time. I am Xanthe.”

  Then she closed the door, and Hollis stood there for a few seconds, blinking, before he turned and walked slowly back down the hall toward the elevator. It was cold on the way down, after the warmth of her apartment: the rest of the building didn’t seem to be heated. He shrugged into his coat. The air smelled like wet paint.

  Back outside in the street the night was quieter than before. The moon was finally visible, with a thick, cream-colored ring of refracted light around it. Hollis looked around the edge of the door for a nameplate or a mailbox, but there was absolutely nothing to show that anybody lived there. He jumped down off the loading dock and backed away from it, looking up, trying to find even a lighted window, but there was only darkness.

  Quite a three-pipe problem, Watson.

  It was all a dream.

  A miniature maelstrom of leaves formed nearby. It wandered over to Hollis, whirling around him for a few seconds, before it dispersed into nothingness again.

  CHAPTER 5

  FRIDAY, 3:30 A.M.

  The bus stop was opposite the one he’d gotten off at before. The street was quieter and darker now, and the marquee over the movie theater where he’d met Peters had been turned off. A few leaves lay scattered across the brick sidewalk. There was no traffic, and the little park was deserted now. A young Hispanic-looking man ran past Hollis going the other way, his hands jammed into the pockets of a satin varsity jacket.

  The stop was on a corner in front of an office building, and the company that owned the building had turned the sidewalk into a little brick plaza with a greenish bronze sundial in the middle, lit up by an orange-pink streetlight. A couple sat waiting on one of the benches, both wearing black leather coats, and Hollis recognized one of them: she worked behind the counter at a used-clothing store near his apartment in Allston. She was a tiny woman, barely five feet tall, with an almost shockingly thin waist. Her complexion was deathly pale. She wore stockings with fat horizontal Dr. Seuss stripes on them. The two talked quietly, and the man kept snapping his fingers excitedly whenever he made a point.

  Nay, my brothers. She is not the one we seek.

  Hollis sat down on the other bench. He didn’t have to wait long: in a couple of minutes the bus appeared at the corner, its tires squeaking and grinding against the curb. The pavement sparkled in the headlights. The lights were on inside—it was almost empty. He paid and walked back to an empty row of blue plastic seats towards the middle, and the bus whined and heaved itself forward.

  There were hot-air blowers in the ceiling, and Hollis shivered and opened his coat. He f
elt exhausted. He could see his reflection in the opposite window, looking slightly bleary-eyed. His face was getting stubbly, and his coat collar was standing up on one side. Outside, behind his reflection, shadowy buildings slid by, followed by the headlights of a car waiting at an intersection, and then the bus reached the bridge and there was a view of the Charles River: a wide expanse of dark water and white reflected light broken up into tiny wavelets. On one side was a huge Victorian boathouse that belonged to Harvard. The other side was overgrown with a dark mass of shrubbery.

  Upstream Hollis could see the lights of Mt. Auburn Hospital, buried among the trees.

  In 1873 the body of an unidentified young woman was recovered from the Seine River in Paris. A plaster death mask was taken of her face, and under the name L’Inconnue de la Seine it became one of the most striking and popular icons of nineteenth-century French Romanticism.

  The woman from the clothing store got up unsteadily from where she’d been sitting next to her boyfriend. She staggered to another seat, dropped into it, and looked back at him coyly.

  “I can’t sit going sideways,” she said, primly crossing her legs.

  There were only five or six other passengers. The change-sorting machine at the front of the bus was clacking and jingling loudly. The digits of a giant LED clock flew by outside, in front of a bank. It was a quarter of four.

  The bomb is set to go off in fifteen minutes. You must stop this insanity before it goes any further.

  Past the bridge Hollis saw the huge Harvard sports complex. A giant inflated tennis Quonset loomed in the distance, across a dark plain of playing fields. The bus stopped at a traffic light.

  Hollis closed his eyes.

  The tide had come in while they were sitting talking, and the only path back to the beach was six feet underwater. The rest of the rocky point was fenced off by a private estate. Hollis wanted to swim back across the cove, but Eileen thought it was too choppy—they’d never make it out through the surf. Neither of them could remember how long it took for the tide to go out again.

  “Well, Skipper,” she said, getting up from where she was sitting and dusting sand off her thighs, “I say we climb that fence and get the hell out of here.”