Christopher Sorrentino - The Fugitives

He found the service elevator after making two false turns and rode it up to the basement, where it let him out near the pantry and the ramp that led to the loading dock at the rear of the building. Two Indians in uniform stood smoking, side by side, not looking at each other. They paid no attention to him as he passed. The Morello pickup was parked near a dumpster, and Argenziano climbed in and started the engine. He drove rapidly to Cherry City and the grounds of the old state hospital, where he parked at the entrance to the main structure, Building 50. Standing beside the truck, he scanned the grounds. It was a raw and nasty Sunday, and no one was around. He listened to a crow calling, then heard the sudden explosive flurry of wings as two of them burst out of one of the broken windows of the vacant building, flew a short distance, and landed on the lawn, where one stood and watched as the other hopped.

Argenziano swung open an unlocked gate to a chain-link enclosure and climbed aboard the small backhoe, one of several pieces of equipment parked within it. He started the machine, raised the stabilizers and the bucket, and then shifted into reverse, backing awkwardly out of the enclosure and onto the asphalt of the driveway. Soon he’d arrived at the fence surrounding the old orchard that stood behind the hospital. He found the gate and opened it, then returned to the backhoe and bumped over the broken earth and snow, glancing in the rearview from time to time to watch the buildings recede against the ashen sky as he moved deeper into the groves. At last he came to a break between the rows of bare trees. He got down from the backhoe and walked in a small circle, studying the ground. Then he climbed back into the seat, positioned the machine the way he wanted it, and began to dig.

TODAY

Becky’s truck was in the driveway. A pair of mud-encrusted boots was placed neatly beside the mat that said “OH SHIT NOT YOU AGAIN.” The curtains were pulled on the windows flanking the door on either side. Kat tried the knob. It turned.

“Becky always locks her door,” Kat said. “She gets afraid.”

“You know her well,” Mulligan said.

“We were like sisters.” Kat was still holding the doorknob. She looked straight ahead at the door’s scuffed and faded panels. “We grew up here together.”

If Mulligan had a reaction to this disclosure, it didn’t show. Kat pushed the door open and they entered the house. The door opened directly onto the main room, an open floor plan with a breakfast bar dividing the kitchen from the living area. Two stools were pulled up to the bar, and catalogs and bills were piled on the Formica countertop. A pot sat on the cold stove. Stacked in a corner, either for future use or to be discarded, were odd objects that looked as if they’d been picked out of the trash: a compact stereo system, a broken dining chair, a torn lampshade, an old inkjet printer. The entire room, in fact, looked as if it had been reclaimed as salvage; Mulligan thought of his fanciful scheme to furnish his house from the Salvation Army. And: a boxy older television set, resting like a monument adjacent to a couch and easy chair. There was no sign of a new TV.

“Her keys are here,” said Kat, jingling a ring.

They shuffled around aimlessly for another few minutes, picking things up, putting them down. Mulligan was conscious of their delaying their progress into the rest of the house, the bedrooms and bath located off the short corridor that led from the main space. The doors to all three rooms were closed. Finally, he went into the first of the bedrooms. It was the boy’s. He flipped on the light to unveil a rumpled twin bed, an unfinished pine dresser, and a small desk that looked as if no one had ever sat at it. Posters on the wall and clothes on the floor. A laptop computer was open on the bed. Mulligan turned it toward him and tapped the space bar: the kid had been watching a YouTube video of a chimpanzee peeling an orange. Kat stood in the doorway.

“The closet,” she said. “Check it.” But she came all the way into the room to yank open the folding louvered door herself. There were only clothes and shoes in there, with cardboard boxes stacked on the shelf. They were women’s clothes and women’s shoes, mostly. The boy’s things took up about a quarter of the space. They moved to the bathroom next, another unoccupied space. The sill of the tiny frosted glass window over the tub was crammed with shampoos and conditioners. Kat took one of the containers and examined it: For Graying Hair. Her mouth curled into a frown and she glanced at herself in the mirror.

“Is she older than you?”

Kat shook her head. “Her mother was gray when we were growing up. I never thought about it. I guess I just figured she was old.” She laughed, looked at herself again, and pushed her hair out of her face. She asked herself softly, “How old could she have been?”

Mulligan thought reflexively of his own mother at home five hundred miles away, weathering there in as unremarked-upon a way as the very shingles of the roof, the sides of the chicken coop from when the place had been part of a working farm, the posts his father had driven into the ground in the 1970s to fence in what he’d seriously referred to as “the barnyard” during Mulligan’s brief 4-H experiment with keeping livestock. Crone of the plains. He couldn’t remember, didn’t know, if she’d dyed her hair. All he knew was that she had grown old suddenly, once his father was gone; as a couple they’d seemed vigorous, hale, steaming toward the end in keeping with the most optimistic of American schemes, but his unanticipated destruction had sheared off some great jagged chunk of her, too. Mulligan hadn’t talked to her in over a year.

Kat moved on to the other bedroom while he lingered. Then he heard her yell.

ONE DAY AGO

Dylan Fecker hung up on an editor who was trying to lowball him on a novel. He felt like he’d been having a conversation with someone hanging by his fingertips from a slippery ledge. With ten years at his house and rapidly waning authority, the editor was old at thirty-six. It depressed Dylan when he saw them bleeding out all their self-confidence like that, getting hesitant, second-guessing their own taste, coming back with offers that were designed to be noncommittal. That’s what had happened to him; why he’d jumped the fence and become an agent. He was leaning back gazing abstractedly at the shelves, lined with the glossy spines of all his authors’ books, when the phone rang. It was Gayatri, his assistant.

“I’ve got Monte Arlecchino.”

“Lucky you.”

“Please, Dylan. He’s not being charming today.” Gaya had a nice, round Oxbridge accent that usually made Dylan feel prosperous and civilized.

“Oh, does he have his military voice on? Big phony.”

“It’s about Sandy Mulligan.”

Fecker sighed. His problem child. Typical Monday morning news. He took the call.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Time’s up,” said Arlecchino.

“Seriously?” Dimly, he heard a commotion outside. He got up and went to the window that looked out on to Mercer. A bum wearing a black plastic garbage bag was in the middle of the street, bumping a shopping cart filled with empty cans and bottles over the cobblestones. “Where Ben?” he yelled. “Ben! Where he at? We going to the Coinstar!” Southbound traffic was backing up behind him and beginning to sound its horns.

“It’s a breach, Dylan,” said Monte. “I’d like to say my hands are tied, that it’s Stuttgart. But it’s me. You know, you put your faith in these children . You say to them, ‘let me support your creative efforts.’ But you know what I’ve figured out, finally? It doesn’t actually cost all that much to write a book. You can do it on a shoestring, damn it. I don’t know what we’re thinking, paying people for it.” He actually sounded indignant.