Thurlow sat on the lip of the tub and asked after Wayne’s health. His head was wrapped in gauze.
“False alarm,” he said. “Just a cut in the back. I had some stitches. The wrap is to prevent swelling.”
It was tight and layers deep, and more like a turban than cladding swath. But since Thurlow had not sought medical care since the infarction, perhaps the new science preferred a turban.
“You got out of the hospital pretty quick,” he said, because if there was a new science, he hardly thought there was a new efficiency as well. “Did anyone talk to you?”
“Like who? I got in an ambulance. I went to the ER. They checked me out and sent me back. I figured you paid for the ride home.”
“So you only spoke to the doctors? No one else was out there?”
He stopped with the Evian. “Like who, son? My paramedic had a hoop in her nose; she was leaning over me the whole time. Now, can I get on with this?”
He checked to see that Tyrone was wet throughout, then lathered his hands with baby shampoo.
Thurlow had the urge to cry. Sense was in exile from his life. His father was in the dusk of his power as a decently healthy and self-sufficient man, and here he was, lavishing what energies were left him on a bird. Not on his son, but a bird.
Wayne finished rinsing and said, “Hold this open,” meaning a towel monogrammed with the Helix. “Don’t just stand there,” he said. “Wrap him up.”
Thurlow enwombed Tyrone so that only his head was free, and thrust him at his father.
“Easy, son. You don’t have to destroy everything at once.”
“What are you talking about? I thought you said you didn’t talk to anyone out there.”
Wayne patted Tyrone down and inspected his breast and under-wings. “Son, I asked you for a marriage counselor, and you have not produced one. So if my marriage falls apart, I blame you.”
“You asked me not three hours ago. I’m not a magician.”
“Then let us talk to the arbiter. The Indian.”
“Are you kidding? He’s busy.”
“He is not. But if you won’t help, I’ll find him myself.”
Thurlow got between his dad and the door. “You will do no such thing. Just — just stop interfering.”
He made for the door, only in the time he’d been here, Dean had carried out his order to disable the exit. Wonderful. There was no way out except a hatch in the walk-in closet, which his father and Deborah were not supposed to know about, but what choice did he have?
He closed himself in the closet and pulled back the carpet. Located the door in the floor, secured with a padlock and hasp. So far, the only blessing in this day was that he’d had the foresight to wear his key chain of universals.
He gripped the handle and tried to lift from the knees. He had passed on the compression-spring install, but finally the door opened. It had a holding arm that locked in place at ninety degrees. This was a welcome precaution against losing a finger but not ideal for closing the hatch after yourself. He left the hatch open and descended the ladder. The rungs were slippery with condensation from a heating pipe, but he managed just the same. For good measure, when he hit bottom, he turned the ladder on its side. Just in case his father decided to come after him.
The architect’s best contribution to the house was actually the house inside the house. A warren: reticulate, waterproof, and climate controlled. Most of the tunnels were passable upright. Some of them led to underground and illicit facilities open to anyone privileged enough to get access, but this was not Thurlow’s doing. Cincinnati was a strange town.
For his purposes, he’d had electrical lights arrayed throughout the network. Those failing, he’d had flashlights mounted on the wall every few feet. Those failing, he’d had secured to the floor photoluminescent strips. No foresight had been lacking in the preparation of this route to the basement, so why in God’s name was it pitch-black? He was afraid of the dark. He had dermal crises in the dark. As a boy, he’d once woken up in the middle of a blackout and within five minutes was weeping fluid from sores erupted down his spine.
He threw out his arm and prayed to graze a flashlight along the way. He did, but the light had no batteries. He felt about the floor for the photoluminescent strips and found they had been painted over. He knew this because he could feel the impasto. He was going to kill Vicki. And Dean, because he had obviously been in on this. Who else had a universal? He wondered what the feds had promised him.
Thurlow had taken one yoga class in his life, so he knew what to call the position he was in, child’s pose, which was part supplicant come to pray for his child’s life and part child taking a nap. He had watched his daughter sleep this way, many years ago when she was not even a year old, on her belly, with upraised posterior and arms out like Superman. Most beautiful thing he had ever seen, before or since.
The tunnel floors were linoleum. Slick if there was moisture pearling on the walls and pipes, which there was. It smelled of boiler room. And wet fur. He told himself there was plenty of air in circulation and that, while he was afraid of the dark, he was not afraid of restricted space and, what was more, to manufacture anxieties post hoc did not suit a man of his stature. Never mind that a man of his stature should not be lumped on a tunnel floor, weeping in a pitch of love for his family that would not come.
He made it to the basement and felt along the wall for a light switch. With luck, his dietician would still be waiting for him by the cistern. They did this once a week, hydrostatic testing, which had him get inside the cistern, dispatch all the air from his lungs, and something about the water level and Brozek formula would tell him how fat he was inside. Today, though, the floor was wet — a couple of inches wet — and the cistern was overturned.
He was just about to investigate what toll spillage from the cistern had taken, when he got a bad idea about the how of its capsizing. It’d take at least two men to knock it over. Men with training, men with guns.
He heard a puling by the cistern, which turned out to be issuing from the cistern. It was the dietician, hiding. He said, “Marie, it’s only me, you can come out.”
She did not seem heartened.
“Marie, come on. It’s not as bad as all that. Listen”—but as he said this he realized there was actually something to listen to, a voice in a bullhorn or speaker demanding they come out in pairs, unarmed and docile. No one had to get hurt. “You heard them — those people are not going to hurt you. Just come on, give me your hand.”
But still she wouldn’t budge.
“Do you have a flashlight in there?”
She did.
He told her to turn it on, and when he was satisfied with the conditions, he crawled through the mouth of the cistern and joined her. She was sitting upright with her back in the curve of the pot; there was plenty of room for two. Her lab coat was wet, and she was shivering. Poor Marie. She was a French exchange student who hobbied in nutrition and anti-American sentiment, cowering in a pot with a man whose days were numbered.
They faced each other. Their legs rafted atop the water pooled in the basin.
The helicopters circled overhead, closer than before, which had the welcome effect of drowning out the bullhorn.
He said, “Just tell me, did you see who tipped this thing over? Men in some kind of military uniform?”
She nodded.
So SWAT had already been in the basement. Good thing you needed pass codes to get into the house.
She had the flashlight in her lap, aimed up at their chins, so that they might have been telling ghost stories.
“Come on, we need to get you some dry clothes,” and he made to leave the pot with her in tow. But she didn’t come. He said, “What’s wrong? Okay, let me rephrase. I understand there’s a bit of a ruckus outside, but barring that, is there anything else I should know?”