Terminal House

by Sean Costello

  * * *

  Hugging the wall, Quinn crept Ninja-style along the narrow corridor leading to the staff parking lot. At six-foot-six, Quinn was by far the tallest of the group, and when he got to the exit, it was a small matter for him to slip one of his size-fourteen gym socks over the lens of the security camera.

  A few seconds later, all four of them stood in a cluster at the glass door, gazing out at Hicks’s cherry-red Mercedes, parked ten feet away in its private spot.

  Breathing hard, Quinn whispered, “How’d you end up with his key?”

  “It’s a long story,” Ben said. “And you don’t have to whisper. There’s no audio on the cameras.” He chuckled then, looking at the fancy key. “I was just going to toss it in the garbage, screw up the bastard’s night even more. But this is so much better.”

  Wilder said, “When’s the last time you drove a car?”

  “When Adam was a boy scout.”

  Viktor said, “We’re all gonna die,” and the men shared a conspiratorial chuckle.

  Ben aimed the key through the glass and thumbed the little ‘unlock’ button, a dim interior light coming on in the car. Now he said, “Ready?” and pushed the door open, setting off a strident alarm.

  A few seconds later the men were in the car, Ben scrambling to find the ignition, Quinn saying, “Push the green button, push the green button.”

  Then they were away, Ben laying rubber in a wild half-donut backing out of Hicks’s spot, Wilder whooping in the back seat. Ben got the powerful vehicle aimed at the exit, praying the barricade would lift—then it did, and in a small, pained voice in the shotgun seat Viktor said, “Turn right. And step on it. I can’t feel my dink anymore.”

  * * *

  Leaning forward in the back seat, Quinn said, “Think Hicks’ll call the cops?”

  “I can almost guarantee he won’t,” Ben said, hanging a right off Bronson Avenue onto Sunnyside, then a quick left onto Bronson Place, the street Ray had grown up on. The house was still there, perched on the hill, looking pretty much as it had sixty years ago. Ben slowed to study it as they passed, then took the ramp back onto Bronson and the bridge over the Rideau Canal. He exited Bronson again at Fifth Avenue and followed it to Bank Street, then turned left toward the Byward Market, thirty blocks away now, dead ahead.

  Traffic was scant at this hour, just a lone pickup truck trailing them, and Ben was beginning to enjoy the quiet responsiveness of the German-engineered vehicle, his earlier fatigue melting away.

  Now Wilder said, “Hey, Vik, how’s it hanging?”

  “Hurts.”

  “I imagine,” Wilder said. “Listen, I’ve been meaning to ask you. What’s the attraction with these supersize gals?”

  “My first lover was a big girl,” Viktor said. “I was fifteen, she was twenty. Nadia. We did it in the loft of her father’s hay barn. She was very warm.” He gave a pained chuckle. “And she could handle the equipment. I tried skinny girls too, lots of them. But it was like I was impaling them, not pleasuring them. And big girls are very grateful.”

  Wilder said, “So what does a ride on one these uptown blimps cost?”

  Viktor flinched as if shot. “Oh, shit, we have to go back.”

  Ben said, “What for?”

  “I forgot my wallet.”

  Wilder laughed. “That’s perfect.” He looked at Quinn. “Hey, Ed, you gonna cover it for him?” And to Viktor. “How much for this little hayride, comrade?”

  Wincing, Viktor said, “Five hundred.”

  The other three in unison: “Dollars?”

  Viktor turned in his seat, the look on his face the most pathetic Ben had ever seen. Glancing at his wristwatch, Viktor said, “Come on, guys, there’s no time to go back. Can you lend me the money? Please? I’ll pay you back, you have my word.”

  Grumbling, all three men checked their pockets, coming up with a total of eight dollars and forty cents.

  Wilder said, “She won’t even let you say hi to the thing for that amount of money.”

  “Mean bastard,” Quinn said. “Anyone bring a Visa or ATM card?”

  Wilder shook his head. Ben said, “My wallet’s on the dresser at home,” and Viktor slumped in his seat, despondent.

  At Lisgar Street, halfway to the Byward Market, a bearded wino stumbled into the street, looking like Death itself in the glare of the headlights. Ben stomped on the brakes—and felt a jarring impact from behind, all three of his passengers shouting in alarm now, beer from Wilder’s king can spraying the back of Ben’s neck.

  Bugging his eyes at the Mercedes, the wino kept going, and Ben looked in the rearview to see the pickup buried in their ass, hood crumpled, rad hissing steam.

  Quinn said, “Oh, this is just great. We are well and truly screwed now. We’re all going to jail.”

  In a dead-sober voice, Wilder said, “Let me handle this,” and got out of the car.

  * * *

  Ben watched Wilder approach the driver’s side of the pickup. He had little doubt the man could handle himself in a scrap, even at seventy-seven years of age. He’d never met a stronger guy. Wilder’s perpetually baggy clothing concealed a hundred and seventy-five pounds of wiry Anglo Saxon muscle. But still, he was worried, tempted to dial 911 on the car phone, get the cops down here pronto and deal with the consequences later.

  Then he saw the driver’s door open back there and a scrawny guy in his forties stumble out onto the street. The guy was clearly inebriated, gesturing angrily at Wilder now, and Ben was afraid it would come to blows.

  Quinn said, “You think we should go help him?”

  Now Wilder had the guy by the throat, backing him up against the quarter panel of the truck, pointing at the Royal Bank across the street.

  Ben said, “What the hell?” and watched Wilder lead the guy to a row of ATM machines in the outer lobby of the bank.

  A few minutes later, Wilder was back in the car, saying, “How much did you say you needed?” The grimacing Russian showed him five fingers and Wilder peeled ten crisp fifties off the pile. Handing over the cash, he said, “Now drive,” to Ben and pocketed the rest.

  Ben punched the accelerator. The vehicle balked at first, as if restrained by a giant hand. Then it peeled away with a hellish screech of metal against metal. As they fishtailed down the street, Ben glanced in the rearview and saw the pickup driver looking after them, scratching his booze-addled head.

  Laughing, Quinn said, “How did you pull that off?”

  “I reminded the asshole that in the eyes of the law, rear-ending us would be considered his fault. Then I asked him how he thought he’d make out on a breathalyzer test. Guy smelled like a brewery. I told him my friend was in our very expensive vehicle right now dialing 911 and the poor bastard said, ‘How much damage you think we’re talking about here?’ So I asked him what his withdrawal limit was.”

  “Sneaky prick,” Quinn said, gazing at Wilder with open admiration. “How much did you get?”

  “None of your business.”

  Clutching the fifties, Viktor said, “Hang a left on Bruyère Street. And please hurry.”

  * * *

  The car phone rang as Ben braked in front of a nondescript building, Rubens in pink neon flashing above the unlit entrance. He could see on call display it was the CEO, and he thumbed the receiver button, raising a finger to silence the others. Before he could say hello, Hicks’s voice blared through the speakers, loud enough to make Ben flinch: “Hunter, you demented old weasel, you get my fucking Mercedes back here right now, and maybe, just maybe, I won’t have you killed.”

  Ben hung up.

  Wilder said, “He sounds upset,” and Ben had to laugh.

  Turning in his seat, Ben said, “Why don’t you guys take Viktor inside.” He was getting into the sheer delinquency of the evening now, knowing in his heart if Ray were here he’d be cheering them on. Sure, Hicks was pissed, but Ben had him by the short hairs now, and no amount of red-faced fury was going to change that. Not ever. He was halfway inclined to dr
ive the car into the alley over there and set it on fire. But they needed a ride home.

  The boys were out on the sidewalk now, propping up the hobbled Russian.

  Ben said, “I’ll park this thing and meet you inside. And Viktor, try not to cripple the poor girl.”

  Viktor managed a pained grin.

  * * *

  As he entered Rubens, which was really just a thinly-disguised cathouse, Ben was assaulted by blaring pop music and rank humidity. He spotted his friends huddled next to a huge plastic knockoff of a sculpture by Fernando Botero called Reclining Woman. Quinn was fondling the thing’s globular breasts, pretending to be transported with passion.

  Ben thought, Dummy’s going to get us thrown out. He said, “Where’s Viktor?”

  Quinn pointed at the ceiling, saying, “Loosing the Georgian giant on poor Lisa,” and all of them laughed.

  They got a table near the exit, Wilder saying he didn’t want to get too close to the waitresses in case one of them fell on him. The smallest in the room ran maybe two-ninety, all of them attired in stiletto heels, pink-leather thongs, and pasties the size of dinner plates.

  Shaking his head, Ben said, “Must be an acquired taste.”

  But the place was packed, mostly with skinny dudes in their forties, working men hooting at mammoth dancers turning slow revolutions around reinforced stripper poles, dust sifting down from the ceiling when the moves got too ambitious. It was hard to look at and even harder to look away.

  A waitress plodded up to the table now and Wilder shrank back in mock alarm. The girl said, “Cute. My name’s Mindy, what can I get youse?”

  The guys ordered beers and Mindy lumbered away, Ed pointing at her dimpled can as she squeezed between tables, heading for the bar. “Hail damage,” he said, and got a laugh out of Wilder.

  Ben sighed, feeling the fatigue again now, dully awed by the freak show around him. He wondered how Viktor was making out upstairs.

  * * *

  It was the same room from their video chats. The same vast bed, same wicker nightstand, same picture on the wall above the headboard, a faded print of Peter Paul Rubens’ The Hermit and the Sleeping Angelica, the painting a perfect accessory to what lay ahead of him on this magical night: the ancient hermit kneeling at the bedside, the amply proportioned Angelica reclining in naked slumber.

  Except his angel was flesh and blood and wide awake, smiling now, stretching a bright slash of crimson into a stack of chins.

  As he stepped through the doorway, she propped up her massive head, crooning, “What are you waiting for, sweet Viktor? Your hour begins now.”

  Fingers betraying him, Viktor wrestled with the knot on his sweat pants, turning his back on the girl to get the job done. Then he had it and he let the pants drop, baring his skinny ass to her, almost falling when he caught his heel on one of the cuffs bending over to yank the damn things off.

  Breathing hard, he faced her now, hearing her gasp at the sight of him. Smile widening, Lisa raised those stately arms, saying, “Come here, my sweet Soviet sex machine. Let me help you with that thing.”

  Repeating the words, “Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy,” like some arcane fertility chant, Viktor climbed aboard, Lisa’s pillowy thighs parting to receive him. With a sigh of relief, he sank into a buttery mass of musk and heat and unspeakable delights.

  * * *

  The Russian didn’t say much on the drive home, only smiled and nodded, discouraging the rude comments from the back seat. Before long, he fell fast asleep, head lolling against the window, the fearsome bulge in his sweatpants at last subsided.

  They found Hicks sitting on the curb by his executive parking spot, dark eyes flashing red in the sweep of the headlights as Ben guided the Mercedes into its slot. The men bailed out as Ben killed the engine, Ben the only one with stones enough to look the man in the eye. Giving Hicks the key, he said, “Thanks for the loan of the vehicle, Cliff. Handles like a dream.” Without a word, Hicks snatched the key and opened the car door.

  Entering the building now, Ben said, “Sorry about the scratch on the trunk,” and pulled the door shut. Through the soundproof glass, the men watched Hicks stride to the back of the vehicle to gape in horror at the damage: the rear end staved in, his expensive golf clubs bristling from the sprung trunk like bent quills. Laughing, they watched the red-faced CEO yank out one of the clubs and fling it as far as he could into the parking lot, laughing even harder when the twirling nine iron arrowed through the windshield of a maintenance van.

  Sparing them a final, venomous glare, Hicks scrambled into the Mercedes and got the hell out of there.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Wednesday, July 12

  BEYOND EXHAUSTED NOW, BEN settled into the La-Z-Boy with the TV on, mauve dawnlight tinting the windows behind him. The Cecile B. DeMille classic The Ten Commandments was playing, and as the fatigue had its way with him, Ben remembered seeing the film with Melanie in the seventies. They’d seen a lot of movies together in those days, sitting high in the balcony of the Capitol Theater, munching popcorn and necking during the slow parts. Sometimes even the good parts, Ben thought, and licked his lips, tasting the peach-flavored lip balm she always wore.

  Eyelids drooping, he remembered something else about that long-ago matinee. Holding his lover’s hand as Moses parted the Red Sea, he’d begun to weep for reasons he still couldn’t fathom. Perhaps it had stemmed from his conflicted Catholic upbringing, or from his cold certainty by this point that his relationship with Melanie was on the skids. Whatever it was, the upset had been profound and uncontrollable. Afterward, Melanie had told him she understood, but he’d never pressed her to explain her take on the experience. She’d broken it off with him a few months later, telling him she’d met someone else. That someone had sired her only child, and abandoned her on the day she went into labor. She’d met her second husband a few years later.

  Losing Melanie had undone him. He’d been halfway through second-year med school when it happened, just days before a classmate took his own life with an ampoule of potassium chloride, leaving a scrawled note that read, It’s too much. And in that first dark stretch without the girl he’d hoped to marry, that simple phrase had reverberated with seductive regularity in his mind, a clarion call from an inner abyss along the crumbling margin of which he would wander for the next two years. It was only the increasing demands of academic life—and the faint hope Melanie might one day take him back—that kept him from toppling over the edge. He’d filled the hole as best he could: pot, alcohol, and the kind of reckless promiscuity good looks, a leather med-school jacket and playing in a rock band made possible. But it wasn’t until his first year of residency that the wounds began to heal, and a livable future began to take shape.

  Ben slept now, tumbling into the dream that had cost him his supper the night before. Only this time when the girl beneath him swept the hair off her face, it was Melanie.

  * * *

  Voices.

  Familiar voices…

  “Is he gone again?”

  “Again? He was out of it when we got here.”

  “What was that shit he was going on about? Moses? The Red Sea?”

  “Hell if I know.”

  Ben thought, Wilder? and opened his eyes on a strange room, thinking, What a bizarre dream. There were two old men standing over him now, leaning in to view him as if he were laid out in an open coffin. One of them, the wiry one, had Vince Wilder’s voice—

  “His eyes are open now.”

  And the other one sounded like Quinn.

  “Ben?”

  Now Wilder’s voice again.

  “Lights are on but nobody’s home.”

  “Should we call an ambulance?”

  “What’s the point? He’s breathing. Maybe he’ll be back, maybe he won’t.”

  “I don’t know, Vince. I think we should call somebody. Have him seen.”

  “Do what you want, but it’s half-past suppertime and I’m hungry.”

  “Come on, man, let�
��s just hang here a while. See what he does.”

  Ben closed his eyes and looked at Melanie, sound asleep on the bunk bed beside him. He hoped those two old farts would go away before they woke her up.

  Eventually, they did.

  * * *

  Knocking.

  Go away.

  Knocking again…and now ringing. Insistent in his ear.

  The phone.

  Ben opened his eyes and grabbed the receiver off the end table next to the La-Z-Boy.

  “Yes?”

  “Hi, Ben, it’s me.”

  “Melanie?”

  “No, it’s Roxanne. Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I guess I was sleeping.” He peered around the apartment. Shadows everywhere, the only light from the muted TV. He said, “I thought I heard knocking.”

  “That was me.”

  “What?”

  She said, “I’m outside your door,” and laughed, the sound strained, no real humor in it. “I just finished my shift. Quinn told me you’d probably still be up. Can I come in?”

  He said, “Of course, gimme a sec,” and began worming his way out of the La-Z-Boy. When he’d made it into a sitting position, he brought the phone back to his ear. “Roxanne? Still there?”

  She giggled, the sound more genuine now. “Yes.”

  “Okay, almost there.”

  He lowered his feet to the floor and stood, wondering how long he’d been angled into that chair. A glance at his watch told him it was 9:18 PM, so at least fifteen hours. His last recollection was of Moses parting the Rea Sea.

  Shit.

  Had he been dreaming?

  In the foyer, he switched on the lights and glanced in the mirror, saying into the phone, “Brace yourself, sweetie. I look like Herman Munster.”

  He heard her say, “Herman who?” and let her in.

  Eyes widening, Roxanne said, “Yikes,” and tucked her phone away, telling him he smelled like a gym sock.

  Ben said, “Keeps the flies off the ice cream,” and latched the door behind her. He said, “You’ll have to excuse me a minute. Gotta see a man about a dog.”