His sources said that sudden onset agoraphobia was not unusual. A little over three million (red followed by six beats of black) people in the US suffered from agoraphobia, and no one knew why it sometimes appeared out of the clear blue sky. There were theories, but none stood up to careful scrutiny. His psychiatrists, and he’d been through a few, seemed to agree that he needed to work on controlling his panic attacks, that the first attack was probably triggered by the stress of taking Pellucid public and perhaps a genetic predisposition passed down the Tesla line. Joe’s father, too, had agoraphobia, and a few had speculated that their most-famous ancestor, Nikola Tesla, had had it, too.
Joe had asked them if his condition could have been triggered by a chemical, if a person might have slipped a drug into his drink at the party he’d attended the night before his agoraphobia struck. This suggestion had been met with a universal “no.” Long-term tranquilizer and alcohol abuse might cause agoraphobia, but nothing they knew of could do it in one shot. He’d demanded, and gotten, blood tests that had revealed nothing and caused the psychiatrists to brand him as paranoid.
His hands trembled as he opened the newspaper. The shakes came from the last dregs of the antidepressants. He’d been through a couple of regimens designed to calm him down enough to get his feet onto the sidewalk outside. None had worked, and each one had made him stupider than the last. He had to think clearly, so he’d stopped the drugs.
He’d stay inside forever before he’d poison his brain.
Besides, he was managing just fine. He had plenty of room to roam. An internal walkway linked Grand Central Terminal to the Hyatt, so he could get there without going through the front door and outside. The giant complex contained restaurants and all the shops he needed. It was big enough to give him exercise, and he’d joined the Vanderbilt Tennis and Fitness Club on the third floor of the station. He didn’t play tennis, but it had a decent gym and a window looking out onto the street below, under the giant statue of Mercury he’d admired on the last day he had been able to go outside. Plus, he had his new house and the tunnels underneath New York — train tunnels, subway tunnels, steam tunnels, coal chutes. He had a bigger range than most people chose to exercise.
But he lived in fear that it would get worse. That his brain would betray him again, make him terrified of more things, shrink his world into smaller and smaller circles. Moving down into the tunnels was his attempt to fight back. It would have been too easy just to stay at the Hyatt forever, waited on hand and foot, but down here he had miles and miles to explore.
Whole afternoons were spent wandering the platforms underneath Grand Central Terminal, breathing in the smell of soot and engine oil, and watching people board trains and head off into the wider world. It cheered him up. He had things under control. He was fine.
Right now, though, he had nothing to do but wait for the dog walker, and he was bored. And a bored Joe was trouble. A little bit of hacking would make him feel better. Nothing big. Or maybe something big was what he needed.
He clicked on the picture of a seagull nestled behind several of his on-screen windows. He’d downloaded it the night before, thinking to do something with the image to make Celeste smile — maybe an animation of it flying.
Now he had a better idea. He grinned as he opened his laptop. He’d already cloaked its IP address so that it was difficult to trace, but he bounced through a few computers before he got to an illegal iPhone-monitoring site he’d heard about. With a few clicks, he checked Times Square for iPhones. Plenty to choose from.
He brought up a live camera view of Times Square to see the precise location of those phones. Some were right where he needed them. By the billboards.
As he’d expected, most of the billboards used Wi-Fi feeds with simple encryption. Not a problem. He hummed as he took control of one billboard after another, beaming the image of a seagull through his network of borrowed phones and onto the electronic billboards.
He smiled as the seagull in flight appeared next to one person and then another when he shifted the image from phone to phone. It looked as if a flock of giant seagulls flew in and out between the billboards. Slowly, people noticed. Then, they stopped and stared. Even the ones whose phones he’d hijacked had no idea of their role in the drama unfolding around them.
A stir in the lobby drew his attention from his laptop. A few quick keystrokes disconnected him from the phones and computers until his laptop looked ordinary and honest. He bet the seagulls would make the news. He’d have to tell Celeste to watch for it. Seagulls were her favorite birds.
Edison stood and wagged his tail, and Joe followed his gaze. Andres Peterson, a half-Estonian artist, was walking across the lobby toward them. A long woolen coat that looked as if it had been through a mysterious Eastern European war or two flared out behind him. He had light blue eyes and artfully disheveled brown hair. Celeste had recommended him as both an artist and a dog walker. Joe liked the photos he’d seen of his melancholy giant metal sculptures, and Edison adored him.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Tesla.” Andres took Edison’s head in his hands. “And Edison the Dog.”
Edison’s eyes shone and his tail wagged furiously. Edison was usually a somber dog, but Andres turned him into a puppy.
“Today we go to Central Park, bury some bones?” He lifted an eyebrow to ask. A scar bisected the eyebrow, perhaps from a fight or a long-ago piercing. The scar worked as a distinctive identifying mark. With his air of mystery and sexy accent, Andres was more Celeste’s type than Joe had ever been, and Joe wondered again if the two had dated.
“Central Park sounds good,” Joe said. No point in being jealous of the past. He liked Andres — the man was good-natured, smart, and great at his dog-walking job.
“One day, you come with us,” Andres said. “Not always working.”
Joe suspected that Celeste hadn’t told Andres about his condition. If she had, Andres never let on. “Maybe.”
He handed Andres the leash and watched the pair walk across the lobby on their way outside. For them, it was as simple as that.
Once they were out of sight, he dialed the number he’d dialed every day since he’d become trapped in New York. He held his breath waiting for an answer. One ring, cyan; two rings, blue; three rings, red.
“Hey, Joe,” said a weak and breathless voice.
“Celeste.” Relief flooded through him. She was well enough to talk on the phone.
“Think me a number,” she said.
“Seven,” he said. “Slate blue, like your eyes.”
Only Celeste understood about the numbers. A talented abstract painter, she loved blocks of color. She danced them around in her head as he did numbers.
“A cheap line,” she whispered. “I’ll take it.”
“Your eyes are cerulean,” he said. “Blue with a wash of gray, like slate or the sea before a storm — and the number seven.”
A tiny laugh came down the line, and he laughed with her.
When they’d been together, she’d painted him a giant canvas using shades of blue and gray, and called it Joe’s #7. It hung on the wall of his house in California. By the time he’d thought to buy it, it had cost a fortune. He made a mental note to get the painting shipped to New York.
“Is it a strong day?” he asked.
“Minus one,” she answered.
Celeste had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. It was slowly paralyzing her. Eventually, it would reach her respiratory system, and she would die. Most people who contracted it died within three to five years. He reminded himself every day that Stephen Hawking lived with it for more than fifty years (brown followed by black — a big, reassuring number).