He thought about Freeborn, his new-found friend. The man had even called him ‘Henderson’. As he had suspected, Gage’s paintings had been mortgaged to provide his son with funds and favours. And Sereno and Gint were the brokers finally coming to collect, pick up the markers. Duane’s obedient act of destruction was likely to have further fatal side-effects. He wondered what Freeborn would do. Stall them? Go back to Luxora, ‘check out’ the garage, find it empty and return to New York to extract the truth from an anipplate Henderson…? The more he thought, the more perilous his position seemed, the more temporary his release. The time bought by his complicity allowed Freeborn the chance to extricate himself in some way or other — and he wouldn’t be overconcerned about Henderson’s fate.
He prowled round the room. Its sole window was a small casement, with four lights, about three feet by two. There was no catch. It appeared to be nailed shut. From it he could look down into a sodden litter-strewn alleyway that ran between his building and the blank brick rear of the one opposite. Craning his neck he could see grey matt clouds above but nothing else. The rain came down remorselessly. He still had his watch on, he realized. It was four o’clock, and prematurely dark. He felt hungry, thirsty and his bladder was achingly distended. He had to escape, that was all there was to it.
♦
Five hours later one of his problems had been steamily resolved in a dark corner, and he had narrowed down his escape options to one: the casement window. The door, the walls, the interior window had not yielded to the battering he had visited on them. He had grazed his knuckles vainly plucking at the wire grille over the window and had bruised his shoulder and hip hurling himself at the door. In films these things gave way with laughable ease, but he felt he had been charging at a concrete wall. This necessary reduction in escape routes was further disheartening: not only did safety lie beyond the door but so did his clothes. If he were somehow going to effect an exit via the casement window he was going to have to do it buck naked…Maybe he should just wait it out — tell Sereno and Gint the truth. But he had a suspicion that might not save his life, let alone his nipples. No, he concluded, it had to be escape, naked or not.
By now it was completely dark in his cell. His captors had left no lights on and he was reliant on the window for such faint illumination it provided. Peering out he could see nothing but darkness.
He picked up the chair and used its legs to smash through the glass panes in the window. The shards tinkled faintly in the alley below. A gust of cool air blew in, bringing with it the din of rainfall and overflowing gutters. He looked out. Nothing had changed, no-one had heard. The night was cool but not unbearably so.
For two or three minutes he bellowed “HELP!” out of the window but there was no response. He smashed the chair against the wall and with a fragment of wood knocked out the remaining slivers of glass from the window surround. That achieved, it was an easy matter to batter away the cruciform muntin. As he did this the rain dampened the dried blood on his chest and it began to run again.
He thrust his head and shoulders out of the window. He was about twenty feet up from the ground, he calculated. Some way to his left was a fire escape. To his right was a thick drainpipe, just within reach.
Diligently, he searched the frame edges for any stray glass fragments that might prove an unpleasant snag during his exit. Then he took off his shoes and tied the laces together, slinging them round his neck, before easing himself backwards out of the window, face towards the sky.
With great caution and some ricked muscles he managed to buttock-shuffle, haul and claw himself into a shaky position whereby he was standing outside on the window ledge, his upper body pressed flat against the uneven wall, his fingers jammed in the courses between the bricks. Slowly he edged in the direction of the drainpipe, an old, strong-looking cast iron thing, as thick as a thigh. He reached out and grasped it with his left hand, and, searching blindly with his left foot found a collar or moulding that gave him a toe-hold. There he stood: one foot on the window ledge the other on the drainpipe; one hand circling the pipe, the other wedged in a corner of the window embrasure. The rain pattered heavily on his bare shoulders, a breeze gusted between his spread legs cooling his dangling genitals.
He gripped and swung, hugging the drainpipe passionately to him and gasping a little at the shock of the cold cast iron on his chest and the inside of his clinging thighs. Tentatively, limpet-like, he began to inch his way down, helped by the numerous bifurcations, knobs and bead-ings on the pipe. Then his probing foot touched the ground and he sank with a sob of relief.
He put on his shoes and cautiously explored the alley. He felt wholly odd and alien in his nakedness, a soft vulnerable creature entirely unsuited for this world of hard objects. The alley, he found, was no more than five feet wide and no kind of thoroughfare, judging from the amount of rubbish and litter it contained. He discovered an up-ended wooden crate which provided some sort of shelter and slipped inside, out of the rain. He sat down cautiously, feeling for nails, the coarse wood prickling his buttocks. It was all very well being free, but freedom was drastically confined if you were naked. He looked at his watch. Eleven o’clock. He could wait a’while before he went in search of help.
He sat in his box and watched the rivulets of water on the alley floor turn into gushing rills as the rain lanced down. As he sat there he felt at once incredulous and full of self-pity. Here he was, Ph. D., author, ‘Impressionist man’, reduced to the status of latter-day troglodyte, sheltering in abandoned boxes, nude, smeared with his own blood, in the middle of New York City…He looked at his bare knees, his bald shins and damp black shoes. He held out his hands, as if offering his nails for inspection, and watched the raindrops bounce off them. It was true; it was real.
He got up and ventured palely out into the alleyway again to search for some sort of garb. There were plenty of scraps of paper, tins and plastic containers, polystyrene packing and cardboard boxes but nearly everything was soaked and useless from the rain. Eventually he found a cardboard box beneath a pile of damp wood shavings. On the side it said in large black letters:
2000 MARY MOUNTS STA-TITE MAXI-PAD SANITARY NAPKINS
Complete protection and comfort Super Thin! Super Absorbent!
He nodded. Yes, this was what he was coming to expect. But in his present state he couldn’t afford to be choosy. A little further down the alley he found great tangles of discarded plastic belting of the sort used to secure parcels. He tore his Maxi-Pad box into a long thin rectangle and wrapped it around his middle. He then wound yards of plastic belting around the box, knotting it as tightly and as best he could. He ended up with a very short cardboard mini-skirt that preserved his modesty — just — but had an annoying tendency to slip down when he walked. With more plastic belting he constructed crude braces that held the box in approximate place, even though they chafed somewhat on his shoulders.
It was amazing the difference it made to his confidence to be clothed at last, even if only in a Mary Mount Maxi-Pad box. He felt profound understanding of Adam and Eve’s urge to make themselves aprons of fig leaves after the Fall. Postlapsarian man lived on in him too.