But he can’t do anything like that. He has to reel in his panicking imagination and act normal. He has to approach the package, hold it in his hands, read the address off the front. He has to do this or admit to being well on his way to lost, out of touch, inconsistent with the majority’s view of reality.
He steps up to the counter, puts a hand flat against either side of the package, turns it around. The smell starts to hit him. It’s not the same as the stink from the first package, but it’s just as bad in its own way, if not worse. He brings his head forward slightly until it’s hovering above the top of the package. He knows before he even reads:
Box 9
Sapir Street Station
Quinsigamond
He can’t well up any fluid in his mouth. It’s as if all saliva has evaporated in an instant. There’s an odd burning ache that flashes through his groin and then disappears. His ears start to throb as if he’s been out in a winter cold for hours without a hat. He can taste a disgusting, acidic bile in the back of his throat. His breath becomes so labored, he thinks his lungs are in the process of a slow-motion collapse.
He bites on his bottom lip, hard enough to break skin and draw a run of blood to the surface. And then he moves past all these horrible symptoms, these oppressions from his own body. He freezes them, steps out of them, wills them past perception, and reaches beneath the counter for the cool handle of the grey X-acto knife.
He knows he should call for Eva and turn the box over to her, but something makes him push the edge of the blade into the package and before he can stop himself, he’s cutting. He goes to work on the twine like a surgeon at his peak, one slice and the string is limp on the counter. He runs the blade through the skin of the wrapping paper, finds a lip at the edge of the box, and slices Scotch tape. Then he sets the knife to the side and cautiously begins to lift the top off.
Inside is stuffed with crumpled newspaper — some edition of The Spy. He removes all the newsprint and drops it to the floor near his feet. He comes to a single sheet of white typing paper. In calligraphied lettering, like some enlarged strip from a fortune cookie, it reads:
You are a man in need of a warning
Something moist is blotting the typing paper from underneath. Ike reaches in and lifts it by a corner, has to seemingly peel it away from the box’s contents. He lets the paper loose and it floats downward toward the small pool of crumpled newspaper.
He looks in.
In the first second, it’s hard to tell. It looks like a platter of those small cocktail hot dogs that are served as hors d’oeuvres, basted with a thick tomato sauce.
And then the realization grabs him and there’s no mistaking the truth: they’re fingers. Human fingers. Dozens of severed human fingers bathed in the residue of their own shed blood. The nails, still attached, are black on maybe half of them. There are all sizes, adult and child, and types, pinky to index. There are no thumbs.
Ike knows what should follow is a scream, a siege of vomiting, a faint. Instead, he’s hit with a violent trembling, instant Parkinson’s. It starts with his hands but shoots out to all extremities almost instantly. His head becomes a bobbing, brainless clown head.
He steps back from the counter and lets his body do a slow fall backward until he finds himself in an awkward, still-vibrating, sitting position. An image takes over. A picture of his deceased parents, wrapped in the rags of their best clothes, looking like decaying movie zombies, pale blue mailbags draped over both their withered, bone-visible shoulders, pounding on his front door at the green duplex, driven to deliver something unknown.
And then, thankfully, he blacks out.
Chapter Twenty-One
The new office park next to the old abandoned airport is a small ghost town. Rows of cookie-cutter office condos reveal white-washed windows as the headlights of Peirce’s Honda move across them. She expects to see plasticized sagebrush blow across the parking lot as she pulls up to the boxy guard shack where the rent-a-cop is watching the Celtics on a portable black-and-white TV.
She shows her badge, and rather than leave the shack, the guard grabs the keys to the Synaboost office and tosses them to her.
In five minutes she’s inside the lab and talking into the recorder.
It’s quarter to nine at night, Victor. You’re saying, “Doesn’t this girl ever go home?” No, you’re not. You’re not thinking of me. You’re in the middle of a City Council meeting, hoping the cable TV cameras pick up your good side. Which side is that, boss? [Pause] Sorry, I’m just feeling a little tired. And I am about to head home. Once again I’ve pretty much come up with zero. Sorry, again. I’m sitting in a brand-new teal-blue leather swivel chair in the ridiculous offices of Synaboost Inc. up at the about-to-go-bust airport industrial park and ghost town. Flashed the badge and had one of the security guys let me in. Whatever happened to those old donut-eating, heavy-eyelid guys with beer bellies and walkie-talkies? Or was that just how they always showed security guards — night watchmen, right? — in the movies? I judge everything by the movies. Have you noticed that, Victor? This guy, this guard, he could have been a surfer out in Malibu. Probably about twenty-two with these magazine biceps just about ripping in two the gold insignia on his shirt sleeve. Am I making you jealous, Victor? I didn’t think so. The truth is, the guy had ordinary arms and I think he was stoned. [Pause] I guess I’m officially off duty, Mr. Mayor. I hope so, ’cause I’m sipping the Swarms’ B&B out of the Swanns’ Waterford crystal, listening to the Swanns’ Bang & Olufsen stereo. That new local talk-show guy is on, the one who thinks there’s someone hiding under everyone’s bed. Maybe he’s right, huh? Let me tell you, Victor, he has not had kind words for you. Words like puppet, tool, and pawn. He won’t come clean on who supposedly holds your strings, though. [Pause] Thought I’d take a swing by here before calling it a day. You should see this place, boss. Synaboost Inc. What kind of a name is that? Did they try to picture what it would look like in tiny print in the back of The Wall Street Journal? I don’t like it. I don’t know why. Did you take a look at the report on this place, Victor? Or better, did you see any photos? Good old Leo and Inez. Not exactly misers, you know what I’m saying? The office is sandwiched between two larger businesses. Steinmetz Neon Sign & Sculpture and Martinez Operations Research Inc. I think they’ve got the smallest square footage in the place. But they made up for it. There’s a reception area outfitted like they made the Fortune 500 last year. Then, behind that, a huge shared office for the loving couple. Get this, they used a partners desk — like one desk with both sides equipped for use. I’m guessing the teal chair, the one I’m swiveling in this very moment, belonged to Leo. Inez’s looks antique with this cream brocade back to it. Weird. They’ve each got a personal computer and they look brand-new. Oh, and I found a little private bar. Looks like the Swanns had a weakness for champagne and brandy. There are these little weird touches, like they made this attempt to put their own stamp on the place and it went all wrong. If you ask me anyway. There are these weird microscopes all over the place. All different sizes. They look like they’re antiques. Where the hell does someone buy antique microscopes? But they’re using them for decoration, I guess. Like sculpture, maybe. Okay, behind the office and running to the back of the building is the lab and it’s just what you’d think. Bright overhead fluorescent lights, long white worktables. Tons of beakers and test tubes and all this mad-scientist crap that I couldn’t put a name to in a million years. Plus a back wall full of technical books. The killer is that the place had been opened less than a month. What a waste. [