Lowboy Part 4

"Tomatoes?" Lateef said, frowning. "The ones he'd won his prize for?"

She gave a stupid laugh. "Isn't that like the punchline to a joke?"

"What do you mean by 'broken,' exactly? Crushed in the hands?"

"With the feet, I think." She hesitated a moment, then nodded. "He put them on the floor and stepped on them."

Lateef tapped the pencil end against his teeth. "What did you do then?"

"I went out into the hall. Richard was already down in the living room. He was fighting with Will, shouting as loudly as he could, but I couldn't make out a word. I hung back on the landing, not knowing what to do, telling myself I'd go downstairs when the music stopped." She pressed her hands together. "I didn't want to go downstairs. It's Richard's house, I told myself: Richard's stereo, Richard's music. Go back to bed. And then I was in the living room with Richard screaming at the top of his lungs and Will rolling around between us on the floor."

"Was the music still playing?"

She nodded.

"Why hadn't your father-in-law turned it off?"

"I have no idea."

"That would have been the thing to do. Don't you agree?"

She shifted away from the desk, confused by the simplicity of his question. As usual his expression told her nothing: his face was flat and abstracted, almost sullen. She was used to telling Will's story a certain way, without any interruptions, but he seemed to be set on asking things at random. A trick of the trade, she decided. He was trying to force her story off its rails.

"I guess Richard had forgotten about the music," she said finally. "He was yelling at Will, using every kind of threat, but he couldn't seem to bring himself to touch him. There was an odd smell in the air, metallic and sweet, like almonds roasting in an oven. Some part of the stereo overheating, I guess. Richard hadn't even noticed me."

The reel was running faster still and she held back as long as she could, trying with all her might to slow it down. "The music was so loud that I could feel it in my teeth. Will was lying on the floor with his arms against his sides, giggling and singing. He looked like someone in a state of bliss. The louder Richard cursed the happier he got. It made me weak in the legs to look at him. His hands and lips were slathered in tomato juice and he was singing the same two words over and over." She stopped to catch her breath. "I got down on my knees to try to make it out. For some reason a line from a play came to me, one of the favorites of Will's father: Let's Let's reason with the worst that may befall reason with the worst that may befall. I heard that line clearly, heard it in my husband's voice, but it only made me feel more desperate." She sat up straight again. "What do you think about that, Detective? Could it be a sign of shock?"

Lateef blinked at her but said nothing. Apparently she was meant to go on talking.

"I took Will by the shoulders and held him close to me, partly to quiet him, but also to keep from having to look him in the face. It seemed ridiculous to me even as I did it, like boxers hugging one another to keep from getting hit: it's always bothered me when they do that." She closed her eyes. "Richard was still on his feet, but by now he was listening too. With Will's head next to mine I could finally make out what he was singing. It was 'Kill me.'"

"'Kill me'?" Lateef said. He said it very smoothly and politely.

She nodded. "Flatly, in a monotone, the way that people sing when they're in church."

Lateef made a small mark-an X, she thought-at the bottom of an index card and set it aside. She couldn't help but wonder what it meant.

"Was this phrase something that your son repeated later?"

She shook her head. "I got up to turn off the music but I could barely keep my balance. I couldn't seem to make my eyes stay open. I'd shut them, open them just enough to see, then take a step and let them shut again. I couldn't imagine what would happen when the music finally stopped. Richard scared me almost more than Will did, I remember: he seemed totally out of control. I had to remind myself that he was eighty-four."

She was surprised at how patient he was when she fell silent again: it obviously cost him effort not to press her. Finally he coughed into his fist. "Please go on, Miss h.e.l.ler."

"I will, Detective. If you could give me just a minute-"

"Of course I can. Would you like a drink of water? Would you like to have a smoke?"

She stood up from the stool as he said this, nodding reasonably, but sat down again right away. "What I'd like is to get this over with."

How eager I am to make the right impression, she thought, feeling her face settle into her most childish smile. He must be wondering what the h.e.l.l I'm smiling at. She took a handkerchief from her coat and held it up to her mouth, for no other reason than to hide her face behind it.

"We can take another break if you need to, Miss h.e.l.ler. Do you want to take another break?"

He talks like an anchorman, she found herself thinking. Not a trace of an accent. His parents must be educated people.

"There's not much more to tell, Detective. I'm okay."

"All right, then. Let's get this finished, shall we?"

She put the handkerchief away and nodded.

"What happened when you turned the music off?"

"The telephone started ringing in the kitchen: someone calling to complain about the noise." The stool groaned under her as she sat forward. "Richard looked at me for the first time since I'd come into the room, opened his mouth to say something, then went out to get the phone without a word. Will was still lying curled up on the floor. I whispered to him that I knew how he was feeling, that I knew he was in pain, though of course I knew no such thing. How could I have had a clue what he was feeling? 'We'll get help for you, Will,' I said. 'We'll get you a doctor.' He looked at me as though I was talking in a made-up language. After a while he said, 'What's different, Violet?'"

"What did you say to that?"

"I told him the truth: that I thought he was sick. 'Maybe, Violet,' he said. 'That might possibly be true.' He was still on the floor, still rocking himself backwards and forwards. I was overjoyed to hear him making sense. I thanked luck and chance and providence and everything else I could think of. I might even have given thanks for Richard. Then Will sat up and said, 'You're a piece of old bread, Violet. A piece of dead music.'"

She watched him scrawling dutifully in his notepad. She hadn't realized she'd stopped until he raised his eyes.

"What then?"

"That was too much somehow, that sudden disappointment. I took hold of him by the shirt and begged him to tell me what was happening. He bit his lip for a few seconds-I remember that clearly-and looked at me as if I was in his way. 'Nothing's happening, Violet,' he said. 'Now get the f.u.c.k out of here before I kill you.' Then he rolled over on his side and went to sleep."

She sat for a time with her head tipped to one side, not looking at anything. The noises from the hallway came and went. "That's it," she said at last. "That's all of it."

"All right." He sat back heavily in his chair. "Thank you, Miss h.e.l.ler."

She leaned toward him stiffly and laughed for no reason and watched him consider her story. It was a relief to watch him. Nothing she'd said had taken him aback or gratified him in secret, the way some of Will's doctors had been gratified, or disgusted him, the way everyone else she knew had been disgusted. Not anything Will had said or done, not his grandfather's senile vindictiveness, not even her own bad judgment or stupidity. It was a great thing to be listened to with such businesslike calm, to be listened to and allowed to tell things simply. It's his job to make me feel this way, she reminded herself, but the knowledge was a tiny thing compared to her relief. He's good at his work, she thought. So much the better.

"Ali Lateef," she heard herself murmur.

His head jerked up at once. "What did you say?"

"Ali Lateef," she repeated, talking quickly to cover her embarra.s.sment. "That's a beautiful name. Is it Moroccan?"

His face lost its abstracted look immediately and he laid both hands down flat against the desk, as if to brace himself for something. "Thank you, Miss h.e.l.ler," he said after a pause. "My given name was actually Rufus White."

I've offended him, she thought. How did I manage to offend him?

"You were right to change it," she said cautiously. "Ali is more dignified than Rufus."

He held up a hand-a conductor signaling for quiet in a crowded theater-and stared down at the file in front of him. There was an impatience to his movements now that she could not explain. She held her breath and waited for his next question. She expected it to be unpleasant and it was.

"There's something you haven't told me yet, Miss h.e.l.ler. Something you're keeping from me. Would you like to tell me now?"

She forced herself to look him in the eye. "I'm not sure I know what you mean."

"Are your son's episodes always violent?"

The breath she let out barely made a noise. I'll tell him soon, she said to herself. Soon but not yet. When she answered him her voice was clear and steady.

"Will's 'episodes,' as you call them, are never violent, Detective. Not in the way that you mean."

"I don't agree. Just now you described your son as threatening to do you harm." He smiled at her regretfully. "I'm committed to recovering him for you, Miss h.e.l.ler. Shouldn't that be reason enough to trust me?"

She was being manipulated now, led in circles like a child, but she managed to keep her outward manner civil. "It's a question of accuracy, Detective, not of trust. Will's said all sorts of things-terrible things, I admit-but he's never actually done me harm." She hesitated. "Or done anyone else harm, in any significant way-"

"In any significant significant way?" Lateef said, cutting her short. All at once he reminded her of Will's doctors. "We seem to have different definitions of that word." way?" Lateef said, cutting her short. All at once he reminded her of Will's doctors. "We seem to have different definitions of that word."

She found herself staring sullenly at the floor, the way Will himself did whenever he felt cornered. "I know he's cut himself from time to time, in small ways, and jumped-or fallen, possibly-from a second-story-"

"You know exactly what I'm referring to, Miss h.e.l.ler." His voice was even harsher than she'd expected. "It wasn't about violence to himself himself that I was speaking." He brushed the cards aside-as though they'd never been of the slightest consequence, as though they'd been a ruse to coax the story out of her, nothing more-and produced an enormous yellow folder from a drawer of his desk. The sight made her weak. He's been saving it, she thought. Keeping it in reserve. She knew exactly what the folder held. She watched him as if through a half-open door, as if from the hallway outside, suddenly as obsolete as all the others. The story she'd told was an appendix to that folder, possibly even less. The folder itself was the only thing he needed. that I was speaking." He brushed the cards aside-as though they'd never been of the slightest consequence, as though they'd been a ruse to coax the story out of her, nothing more-and produced an enormous yellow folder from a drawer of his desk. The sight made her weak. He's been saving it, she thought. Keeping it in reserve. She knew exactly what the folder held. She watched him as if through a half-open door, as if from the hallway outside, suddenly as obsolete as all the others. The story she'd told was an appendix to that folder, possibly even less. The folder itself was the only thing he needed.

Lateef put a finger to his temple-every gesture he made was a performance put on for her benefit, she saw that clearly now-and made a show of leafing casually through the file. It was ridiculously thick, overdone and amateurish, a hurriedly a.s.sembled prop. Who'd have thought Will was so important to them, she thought. Then another idea struck her, with such unexpected severity that she almost cried out loud: He's not important to them. They're not afraid for Will at all. It's everybody else that they're afraid for.

Lateef laid the folder down and cleared his throat. "There seems to be nothing I can do to convince you not to waste my time, Miss h.e.l.ler. So what I'm going to do is this: I'm going to read you the details of your son's original offense."

"Please don't," she said woodenly. "I know perfectly well-"

"On Monday, March fifth, 2008, at one forty-five p. m., William h.e.l.ler, age fourteen, and Emily Wallace, age fifteen, entered the Fourteenth Street subway station at the southwest corner of Union Square. They were seen by the station attendant, Lawrence Grayson, who notified the truancy officer on duty, Robert T. Sullivan. Officer Sullivan located both children on the downtown 6 platform. He approached with circ.u.mspection, as Emily Wallace was, in Officer Sullivan's opinion, 'in hazardous proximity to the tracks.' William h.e.l.ler appeared agitated. He was moving in what the officer described as a 'spiraltype pattern,' talking animatedly to Emily Wallace, who was standing still. After approximately one minute Emily Wallace took hold of William h.e.l.ler by the shoulders and embraced him. Officer Sullivan did not interpret this as a s.e.xual gesture."

He paused there-there, of all places-and coughed into his fist. For dramatic effect, Violet thought, and the knowledge made her mouth go dry with hate. When he spoke again she closed her eyes and shivered.

"William h.e.l.ler freed himself from Emily Wallace and pushed her onto the tracks."

Blood was rushing to Lowboy's head like steam from a boiler as he let himself be dragged into the dark. Heather Covington was a few steps ahead of him, whispering to herself affection ately, moving carefully along the tunnel's concrete seam. The last feeble light lapped against her. He could just make out her feet in their cellophane leggings, rustling with each step she took, as though she were picking her way through fallen leaves.

The tunnel was wide and straight and the lights of the A took a long time to fade. It got warmer and damper and soon it got too warm to breathe. The world is inside me, Lowboy said to himself, and I am inside the world. He opened his mouth but no air entered it. Every so often Heather Covington would reach back and pull on his shirt, hissing at him to hurry, but he refused to be rushed. What he was about to do was no small or trivial thing. He kept his eyes on the back of her head, cropped and burly as a man's, and let his shoulder brush against the bowed concrete. A song came to him as he watched her: "Toddlin' Blues" by Bix Beiderbecke. Richard used to play that song and he would dance to it. Also "Fidgety Feet." Heather Covington had feet like that. He wondered when the next A train was coming.

Every half-dozen steps the wall fell back into a mansized socket. Lowboy had seen them often enough from the train, even once seen a person inside: a frightened-looking woman in a wrinkled orange jumpsuit, holding a wrench across her body like a soldier at a drill. Richard had told him that the woman lived in the tunnel, that she'd never once seen daylight, and he'd still been too young to know better. He'd lain awake that night shivering with envy, picturing catacombs and petrified forests and houses built on phosph.o.r.escent lakes. And Richard had sat at his bedside, more patient than he ever was by day, and had run his fingers through his hair to calm him.

A river cut across Manhattan once, Richard had said. Split the city in half, about where Broadway is now. You still awake, Will?

Yes, Richard, he'd answered. I'm awake.

The Quiet River, the Indians used to call it. Musaquontas. You can't get rid of a river, you know. You can only dig it under. They've had to close whole stations down because of it. The truth of the matter is, that's why there's no Second Avenue line. The old Musaquontas is still in the way.

From that night on he'd thought of the sad little streams that trickled between the subway tracks as the sidearms and tributaries of the Musaquontas. Headwaters of the Quiet River. He'd imagined himself following them out to the sea.

"Almost there," said Heather Covington. Her fist closed around his bloodless hand. His hand seemed miniature compared to hers, tiny and white, a bird's egg cradled in a wooden spoon. Her palm was rougher than the wall behind her. She was moving quickly now, taking impatient strides, not stopping to look where she put her feet. She didn't seem frightened or angry anymore. She didn't seem sick. He could tell by the way she moved that she was happy. I've made her that way, he thought suddenly. Just by saying what I wanted. I helped her remember something that she likes.

Soon they came to a place where there was no light left. She stopped him there and went on alone, not saying a word, as though talk was out of keeping with the quiet. Somewhere a pipe or a weep-hole was dripping. Lowboy stood with his arms held out like a sleepwalker, keeping perfectly still, listening to the fallen-leaf sound getting fainter and fainter. He wondered how far underground he was. The heat he was feeling was the heat of the earth's molten core: what else could it have been. He kept his eyes wide open, expecting the blackness to yield, but it only pushed itself farther into his ears and his nose and his mouth. Water was running close by, and the rumble of traffic carried up through his feet, as though the city had somehow gotten underneath him. That's not Manhattan, he thought. It's New Delhi or Perth or Beijing. He listened for wind or a train or the chittering of rats but there seemed to be nothing to hear. Nothing was moving anywhere but water.

It's too dark for rats down here, Lowboy said to himself. Too dark for everything. Or maybe there just isn't enough air.

Then Heather Covington was next to him with her heavy square palm covering his mouth. She lowered it to his back and pushed him forward. Why didn't I hear her coming? Lowboy wondered. Did I fall asleep?

After less than a minute she steered him sharply to the left and the hum of the city got louder. He was in a low, close-walled pa.s.sage, ten or fifteen feet long, with a flickering wash of light at its far turning. The light got sharper as she shepherded him forward until he had to shade his eyes to take a step. She was behind him now, breathing in tight hurried sucks. He remembered a joke about what cavemen did when they got lonely. Except that she's the caveman, he reminded himself. I'm the knocked-out monkey. He smiled and let her usher him into the brightness and the airiness and the sudden cold, covering his eyes with all ten of his fingers.

When he took his hands away he saw an L-shaped room with rust-streaked walls lit by four high quadrangles of daylight. Heather Covington had let him go and was using her feet to clear a path across the littercluttered floor. Her shoes were set neatly side by side in the room's farthest corner and the bags were just behind them, laid out on a checkered sweatstained quilt. Her suitcase stood open against the lefthand wall. He stepped dazedly forward, dabbing at his watering eyes, careful not to stray off the path. When he came to the quilt he stopped and turned and looked up. Set into the ceiling were four metal grates, perfectly square and black, and on the far side of the grates was the city. People pa.s.sed over the grates in clumsy arabesques, waddling like flightless birds, and pigeons and clouds and helicopters pa.s.sed over the people. He sat down Indian-style on the quilt and kept looking. How funny people look from underneath, he thought. Especially the girls. The strangeness of it all made him swallow his breath.

"Where are we?"

"Eighty-fourth and Columbus," said Heather Covington. She sat down close beside him.

"Can they see us?"

"They could if they looked down." She made a sound that could have been a laugh. "Mostly they don't."

Lowboy wiped his eyes. "Why don't they?"

"Shhh," said Heather Covington. She ran two knuckles up the back of his skull until he looked at her. Her other hand was moving down the front of her shirt, pulling it open in unhurried twists. His own hands were dead but she seemed not to care. The look in her eyes wasn't urgent at all, only quiet and sure. Her breath smelled like b.u.t.ter and clove cigarettes and beer. She leaned forward and breathed into his ear, saying two small words no one had ever said to him before. Her chapped lips rasped like twigs against his skin. The light began to dance across her face, keeping him from seeing what she wanted. Her hands were at the buckle of his belt. The light made them look oversized and thick, like gloved hands in a black-and-white cartoon. I'm being raped by Minnie Mouse, he thought.

"Does that tickle?" she asked him. Her hands never slowed.

"No," said Lowboy. "It's all right." He looked up at the grates. "Say those two words again."

"Sure," she said. "Look here at me." But instead of saying anything she took his hand by the wrist and put it inside her shirt. There were more underneath, two or possibly three, but she bunched them up and pressed his hand against her. She let out a breath when his knuckles met her ribs and he saw it billowing above him in the air. It's cold in here, he thought. Close to freezing. But it was just a thought and had no weight at all.

"Now, then," said Heather Covington. "Let's see how our boy's feeling."

To distract her Lowboy slid her shirt up higher and took one of her nipples in his fingers. "Ouch!" she said softly. But that didn't stop her.

"I guess he's all right," she said after a while, looking him over. She seemed taller than before. She was growing toward the sunlight like a clambering vine. "He's doing good," she said. "But let's make him do better." She caught the tip of her tongue between her teeth. "Let's give him some of the knowledge of the world."

"No," Lowboy said thickly. "You lie back." The room was getting colder and he knew it had to happen soon or never. He brought his face close to hers, then closer still, until she had to take her hands away. "Get down on the quilt," he told her. He'd intended his voice to sound patient and deep, like the voice of a soldier, but instead it rattled like a broken hinge. He put his hands on her shoulders and began to push. He'd expected her to be surprised at the change in him, suspicious of it, but he saw no trace of surprise in her at all.

Her face slid sleepily back out of the light. Her lacquered black eyes ticked from one side to the other. Try as he might he found no recognition there. Her hands were still at his hips but they were pulling her own jeans open now, not his. The rush of the street was still booming behind him but it was less important than the booming in his body. Her jeans came open and she pushed them down in three impatient jerks. "Help me with this," she said girlishly, digging a fingernail into his hip.

He took hold of her damp greasy cuffs and pulled them toward him. He'd helped Richard the same way, he remembered, on days when he'd come in tired from the yard. The thought of those white meatless legs compared to Heather Covington's almost made him laugh out loud. She was lying with her elbows tucked behind her and her shirts bunched up above her belly and her trunklike legs on either side of him. She seemed even bigger than she'd seemed before. She didn't sigh or blink or make a sound. His corduroys were around his ankles too, like the pants of a toddler waiting for a change of clothes, and he stared down at his indecisive body. There wasn't much of him compared to her.

"Now?" he said, inching himself forward. "Is it now?"

She closed her eyes and opened her legs wider. He looked away for the length of a breath, then leaned forward until he could feel the warmth of her bare skin against his face. The smell forced his mouth and eyes shut. He thought about the inside of his body: how cold and shutaway it was, like a doll forgotten in an empty house. He thought about the end of the world, about the people above the grates, about the tunnel, about MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY. The sparkling tiles, the unforgiving benches. The dinosaurs set like urns into the wall. He pictured his own skeleton there, then Heather Covington's, then Violet's. What he needed to do was as clear as if it had been burned into him with electric wire. He needed to break the membrane that had held him all his life, to slip out into the putrefying world. He had to put himself into another body. He had to bite down on his tongue and push.

Above the grates someone was laughing softly.

"I can't do it," he gasped, gagging on his own breath. "It's gone to sleep, Miss Covington. Take a look."

She pushed herself up. She didn't seem suprised or angry. "Too young," she said, brushing the hair back from his face. "Too childish."

"It's my meds," he said. "They take away your juices."

"Never took mine," she said. "Just the opposite." She looked down at him. "You almost there there, little boss. You don't think if I-"