Fiona Maazel - Woke Up Lonely

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?”

“I’m afraid,” she said, and she seemed to shrink just for having said it.

“Don’t be silly,” he said, and he put out his hand.

“I’m afraid of you, ” she said, and she whacked it with the flashlight before retreating into the gut of the pot. Whacked it so hard, he was sure she’d fractured a bone.

He leapt out of the cistern and wedged between his thighs what had instantly come to feel like the omnibus of every pain he had ever had.

So now he, too, was afraid. But also hurt. What had he ever done to Marie? He’d been putting her through school. What sort of thanks was this? His intentions were good. They had always been good! His knuckles looked like popcorn. He had to find ice.

It had been more than two days since the Helix had taken the hostages. Thurlow had not provided a ransom tape or issued any demands, so when he found Norman on the phone, hashing it out with the FBI negotiator, he could well imagine the impatience with which Norman’s parries were met. The pain in his hand was blunt but durable. He could not move his fingers. Still, there was nothing like pain to make appreciable the rapport between crime and punishment. Suffering always feels punitive, even when it’s not. Why should his hand be any different? And when ATF ignited the house and his skin took on the hue and texture of boiled toffee, why should that be any different, either?

Norman put the negotiator on speakerphone. Thurlow listened for a carrot-stick routine and got a version thereof, something like: Come out and get shot; stay in and be gassed. He looked at the fireplace. There was a Duraflame in the grate and a bellows on the hearth. A fire might be nice. The candent logs, crackle of wood. He was about to light up when Norman flipped closed his phone and swatted the matches out of his hand. Fire at a time like this? Need Norman mention the FBI wanted to gas them? That this gas was pyrotechnic?

Thurlow’s phone rang, and for a second, his heart was conned — It’s her! It’s her! — only it wasn’t Esme, just his father telling him to look outside.

He crawled over to the window on his stomach. He parted the blinds. He saw police cars and tanks, the Mount Carmel brigade, a few ambulances, a festival of lights, and several men in BDUs aiming firearms at the front of the property, likely the rear and sides also. And there, in the middle of this half-moon formation, was his father, sided with the enemy.

Thurlow’s mouth fell open. He was not quick to anger, and when he did anger, he did it poorly. So, fine, he could not break things. What he could do was hurt people, so he left off from the window and ran to his father’s quarters. His phone started ringing again, again and again, and he could hear Wayne yelling for help.

He punched for the elevator, and when it did not come fast enough, he headed for the stairs. At last, the house alarm went off in its minor key. And it was so sad, it wrung his heart of just enough rage that instead of taking the stairs three at a time, he took them by twos and allowed his father to beat him to his bird, Tyrone.

Wayne was barring access to the bathroom, though by now Thurlow didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything.

He could hear his father breathing hard; he was doing the same. He sat at the table. Flicked at the ashtray so that it skidded overboard. A cigarette butt rimmed with lipstick fell into his lap.

“So,” he said, “father mine. Father dearest. How long? A month? A year?”

“Just today.” His father unwrapped his turban bandage to disclose the smallest camera Thurlow had ever seen at the tip of a snake wire. “I’m sorry, son.”

“Impressive,” he said.

“Wireless broadcast. Good quality, too. Technology is a marvel.”

Thurlow shook his head. “Jesus, Dad. How did they get to you? And what about the seizure?”

Wayne grinned. “Fake. You’d think for how many I’ve had, I’d have a clue what they looked like. But I had to study. Ask Deborah. She had to watch me flailing on the floor all morning.”