James Siegel - Detour

It didn’t matter. Going back wasn’t an option.

It was a tight fit. The window was about the size of the window in the Bogotá house, the one he’d put his arms through in an effort to make that bewildered schoolgirl understand they were crying out for help. He was still crying help, but if the smoker saw him, he wouldn’t get it.

Keep worming.

The window frame seemed to be scraping off layers of skin; he thought he might be bleeding. He remembered a startling scene from Animal Planet, an enormous python actually coming out of its skin. If only he could do that—leave his burned and battered self behind for something fresh and new.

The smoker threw his cigarette to the ground and watched it for a moment, seemingly hypnotized by the little wisp of smoke undulating in front of him.

Paul was down to his lower half, but there was nothing to hold on to. His upper thighs were taking the entire weight of his body. It felt as if he were literally going to break in half.

He felt a tickle on the small of his back. He twisted his head back.

The spider.

Black, hairy, and back. It was taking a constitutional across his naked skin where his shirt had ridden up.

He pushed and strained with renewed vigor, keeping one jittery eye on the spider.

He should’ve been looking the other way.

When he finally turned around to check on the man with the CCCP tattoo, he was staring right at him.

He’d straightened up off the car; he’d begun to amble over as if he were trying to get a better look. What an odd sight— a grown man crawling out of a window.

Or not crawling. Paul was pretty much stuck. He could feel the individual prickly hairs on each of the spider’s eight legs.

“The fuck you doing?” The man had stopped about ten feet from him. A Russian bear. He had serpentine stretch marks on his arm where his muscles bulged enough to give the tattooed letters an odd lilt. He looked like a poster child for steroid use.

“There’s a spider on me,” Paul said. It was the first thing that flashed into his mind, probably because other than the giant standing in front of him, it was the first thing on his mind.

“Spider?”

“Yes. I panicked,” Paul said.

“Huh?”

“I jumped through the window.”

“Spider?” He began laughing. Real, gut-wrenching, roll-in-the-aisle laughter, like a laugh track on the WB. Any minute, tears were going to start copiously flowing down his cheeks.

“Scared of spider ?” he said. “Ha, ha, ha.”

Okay, at least he believed him.

“Can you get me out of here?” Paul asked.

The Russian sluggishly stepped forward and grabbed Paul by his arms.

Paul could feel the enormous strength in the man’s muscles—like something inhuman, even mechanical. When he pulled, Paul thought either he was going to come flying through the window or his arms were going to come flying out of their sockets. Fifty-fifty.

Suddenly, he was on the ground, arms intact.

That might not have been a good thing.

The man had walked over to his left, where he made a show of picking up a large chunk of cement, which had broken off the base of a parking meter that for some reason was lying there in the yard. He weighed it in his hands, then looked at Paul with an odd smile.

Paul stepped back.

The man lifted the ragged chunk up over his head and began advancing toward Paul.

“Wait . . .”

But he didn’t wait.

The Russian brought the cement block down with full force. About six inches from Paul’s right shoe.

He smiled, lifted it up, admired the ugly starburst of brown blood. Some of the spider’s legs were detached but still twitching.

“No more,” he said.

Before Paul could move, there was a sudden sound from inside the bathroom. Moshe’s face was staring at them from the open window.

No one said anything.

Moshe looked confused. Paul had evidently just crawled out his bathroom window—how else could he have gotten outside the warehouse?—but he must’ve been wondering whether Paul actually knew . He had to be undecided as to which Moshe he should be playing here. The concerned friend of a friend, out to help Paul save his wife and daughter?

Or the man who’d been asked to murder him?

“He was scared of spider,” Paul’s benefactor said, still looking amused by the whole thing.

Moshe didn’t share his amusement. He looked at Paul and said, “ What spider?”

“On my back,” Paul said. “I was standing at the sink and the spider landed on me. I have a kind of phobia. I panicked.”

“Phobia?” He evidently wasn’t familiar with the term. He was probably very familiar with lying. He was staring straight into Paul’s eyes—the way the gamblers on Celebrity Poker lock onto their competitors’ faces in order to know whether they’re bluffing. It felt physical, like an actual pat-down.

Moshe said something in Russian, out of the corner of his mouth.

What?

Paul decided not to wait to weigh its nuances.

The man with the tattoo on his arm could’ve easily moved, flattened Paul with one lazy punch, or simply knocked the cement block out of his hands. The one he’d discarded in the dirt but Paul had picked up. It must’ve been a complete and utter shock that someone scared of spiders was capable of committing a physical assault. The man didn’t actually move until the cement block made contact with the top of his head. He went down with a sickening thud.

Paul ran.

“Paul!” Moshe shouted behind him.

He’d never make it out of the yard. He’d gotten rid of the steroid user, sure, but in a minute there’d be others. Lots and lots of others.

He heard shouting, the sound of the loading door sliding open.

He didn’t have enough of a lead. It was hopeless.

Sometimes you get lucky.

As any good actuary could tell you, sometimes the odds are just that. Odds. Numbers. They don’t matter. You can be absolutely certain that if you live long enough, one day they’ll rise up and bite you in the ass.

Or kiss you on the mouth.

His path to the open gate took him right past the parked Buick. Even in a full-out sprint—okay, not much by Carl Lewis standards, but okay by your average weekend warrior’s—he was able to glance inside.

The keys were dangling from the ignition.

He stopped short, pulled the front door open, and slid in. He turned the key and put the pedal to the metal.

He whooshed out of the gate. Just as three men came running after him.

But their cars weren’t in the lot.

They were parked on Ocean or Rostow so they wouldn’t block the loading door.

TWENTY-EIGHT

In the early-morning light Miles’ Brooklyn brownstone looked darker, even forbidding.

The black tower of fairy tales.

Paul had spent the night in his car, parked in a deserted lot underneath the Verrazano Bridge. He’d ruled out going back to his apartment—he was afraid someone might be there waiting for him. He’d woken to a street bum rapping on his window, staring at what must’ve been a mirror image of himself.

Paul peeked in the rearview mirror to check. Yes—a worthy candidate for bumhood. His skin was pasty. His eyes were rheumy and bloodshot. His head hurt.

He kept asking himself why?

It felt like he’d entered the bizarro world of the Superman comics he used to read as a kid. Where everything was upside down, inside out. Where people who looked like your friends, weren’t. Where you didn’t have a clue.

A piece of his rational brain kept asking if he could’ve been mistaken. About everything. If he might’ve misunderstood what María said on the phone. If he’d put two and two together and come up with five.