“How? Did you storm the place single-handed?”
“Give me some credit. I’m more subtle than that. The guy who ran it then needed people. I persuaded him that I had experience in casinos.”
“By subtle, you mean dishonest. You lied.”
“No, I fudged. I’ve spent plenty of time in casinos. On the other side of the table. Anyway, it wasn’t hard to make a difference. He was an amateur. I professionalized the operation so he made more money and did deals with the other Trustees so we could all prosper. When he realized I was on the ball, he made me his right-hand man. He’d tried to rule by fear and force. It wasn’t working well. I gave the crew respect, kept them sweet by persuading him to pump some of the increased profits into raises. I knew one day his management style would get him the chop. I wanted to be sure I was the one the gang would turn to. Then one night, he disappeared during his Torment session. I took over.”
I knew where the old boss had gone but didn’t think now was the moment to tell Danny. It would shift the onus of conversation to me and cast a dark cloud over our reunion. I could have lain there and listened to his deep voice forever. “How come I didn’t see you while you were doing all this? You must have been out in the open then.”
“A couple of times, you almost ran into me, but I managed to dodge you. It wasn’t hard. You were blind drunk most of the time at first. Once, I thought you did see me, but I slipped into the crowd.”
I nodded. I’d seen Danny everywhere at first, in the face of every man who looked even the slightest bit like him, in the body of anybody with a protruding gut. I’d never pursued any of them, writing it off as my imagination conjuring up something I could never have. If I’d been sober, it might have been different, but there was no point crying over spilled whisky.
“When you started to dry out,” he continued, “I knew I couldn’t let you see me. So I locked myself away most of the time, only really going out to meet the other Trustees and the Administrators. Every now and then, I’d put on a disguise just to torture myself by getting closer to you. You have no idea how hard it was, watching you pass by on the street within arm’s length or sitting up here, watching you come out of Benny’s every night and knowing you were going to have to kill me all over again. Every time I saw you, I wanted to tell you the truth and make it easier on you. But I couldn’t face seeing the hurt in your eyes. I was a coward.”
I could guess how hard it was. From the way he lived in austere conditions despite squatting atop a mountain of wealth, he’d clearly been flagellating himself the whole time. I sensed his mood was perched at the top of a long slide back into unhappiness; I squeezed him so tight that he grunted. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“It mattered then. Everything I did was designed to make amends, to find a way for us to be together. I sucked up to the Administrators, behaving like the model Trustee. I did everything they asked, and more, to keep them sweet.”
“What did they ask?”
“They wanted more casinos, more fights, more money rolling through the tills. They never asked for a cut, though. They only wanted people to gamble. It’s the same with all the other Trustees. All that matters to the Administrators is to have every human vice on tap.”
“Don’t you find that strange? On one hand, they punish us; on the other, they let us indulge every sin that put us here in the first place without batting an eyelid.”
“I didn’t ask why. I didn’t care. I only wanted to know if there was a way out. At first I figured there had to be an access point. All the food, booze, and fuel has to come from somewhere, right? And I know the Administrators go off on trips. I usually dealt with Laureen, but sometimes she would go walkies for a few weeks.”
“You tried to drive out, I take it?”
“Of course. You know what happened. They can get in and out. We can’t. And I never saw them deliver any goods; they appear when we’re all under the influence. Sofia told me her warehouses fill up every night while she’s away. Same with Jean-Paul.”
“So they magic supplies in?”
“Could be.”
I thought of the nights I’d spent watching the Ammit feast. The clearing was right next to Sofia’s warehouses, but I hadn’t seen or heard any activity. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to imagine food could just appear, when nobody aged and every day thousands of people came back to life as easily as waking up after forty winks. Plus it wasn’t much different from the world I’d left behind. Nobody raised and killed livestock or grew their vegetables any longer. Food appeared on supermarket shelves, slabs of shrink-wrapped pink flesh that made it easy to ignore the blood, fear, and screams of the animals butchered to create them.
“So you didn’t find an escape route.”
“No. I looked for another way to get at the Administrators. I looked at how they lived, what they did, and realized they’re not too different from us. They have desires, feelings, needs, attachments. When somebody has those, they have weaknesses. I figured the best bet was through a bit of old-fashioned leverage. I put the word out that I’d pay big money for valuables stolen from Avici Rise, on the off chance I could get my hands on something they’d be prepared to strike a bargain over to get back. I waited years, and nothing. Most people seemed to forget the place even existed.”
He paused to lick his dry lips. I knew where he was going. The reason for my visit had slipped to the back of my mind amid the revelations, but I hadn’t forgotten. Danny was about to tell me he had the box, which explained why my name was on the list of people to be forgiven. This was his way to make things right. I knew we had to deal with the issue that had brought me here, but part of me didn’t want him to get to the crunch. Once we began talking about it, the conversation would turn to what would come next and end the all-too-brief moments of peace we’d enjoyed.
“Then Sebastian popped up. One of my guys heard him boasting in a bar one night about how he’d been hired to do some big job up at Avici,” he said. “I had no idea what he was supposed to be stealing. It could have been worthless. But nobody had ever managed to get a thing out of the damn place. So I put on one of my disguises, met him to be sure he was legit, and threw money at him.”
“Ah,” I said, “you were the mysterious middleman. That explains why I couldn’t find him.”
He grinned. “An unsolved puzzle. That must have driven you crazy.”
“You should have gone in drag. Then I’d have figured it out.”
His eyes glittered. “Now that brings back some nice memories. Got any dresses I can squeeze into?”
“Focus, pervert,” I said, slapping away his now-wandering hands. “There’s plenty of time for that later.”
He pouted but went on with the story. “When I saw the box, I thought he’d fobbed me off with some piece of crap. Then I touched it.” He shivered, and his eyes lost focus. “I knew it had to be important to them. So I sent the ransom note. When they hired you, I knew they were desperate.”
“Desperate? Am I that bad?”
“You know what I mean. They wanted it back bad enough to risk involving a human and exposing themselves. It means you’re that good.”
“How did you know they’d hired me?”
“I had Sebastian followed in case somebody started poking around. It turned out to be you. I didn’t think you’d get this far, to be honest. I knew what you were up to but didn’t see how you could get to me, even with your psycho play with the auction—which is going to bite you on the ass, by the way. I should have known better. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. You’re not going to turn me in.”
And so arrived the point where I would have to burst his bubble. “It wouldn’t matter if I did or not. Laureen won’t give you what you want. She can’t.”
“How can you be sure?”
“She says she doesn’t have the power to forgive sins. I believe her. She’s scared. This box isn’t hers. It belongs to the regime, and her boss—you know, Satan—is coming to town. When he discovers the box has gone mis
sing, he isn’t going to be jumping for joy. She wants it back quietly, and the best way to do that would have been to give in to your demands. If she could have, she would have.” As I told the story, it again struck me that Laureen’s approach wasn’t consistent with somebody about to end the world. Franklin had told a compelling tale, but I’d misjudged him before. I couldn’t shake the suspicion that he was trying to get the box from me for some other, possibly sinister, reason. “Instead, she hired me to get it back without a fuss. If I don’t, she’s going to have to give way to her boss. Apparently he won’t take such a soft approach.”
Danny had never been prone to histrionics, but on this occasion, I would have forgiven him a few minutes of wailing and gnashing of teeth. I’d told him his last shot at freeing us from Lost Angeles was doomed to failure. Maybe it was because he’d enjoyed a roll in the hay and so was in a more relaxed frame of mind, but his reaction was muted. He sucked his teeth and turned his gaze to the ceiling.
“I don’t think I ever really believed the plan would work. But I was at my wits’ end. Part of me wanted her to find out I’d stolen it. I thought she’d destroy me completely. Disappear me like the old boss.” He put his hand on my stomach and began another journey south. “Suddenly, I don’t feel so frantic. Guess we’re going to have to stay here and screw our way out of the midnight funk.”
“Maybe not,” I said, again stopping his hand despite less-sentient parts of my body welcoming its progress. “She can’t forgive sins, but she can do other things.”
“Like what?”
“Didn’t you wonder how I broke in?”
“You blew my door off, drama queen. I’m going to bill you for that.”
“I mean how I managed to be here waiting when you woke up.”
He frowned. “It didn’t occur to me. I was too surprised to see you.”
“I didn’t tell you what Laureen was paying me for the job. She’s called off my Torment. If I get the box back, it stays called off.”
Danny sat up abruptly, hair mussed and eyes wide. “She can do that?”
“Yes. Which means you could still get something out of this. I could tell her your price has dropped: one extra Torment-free existence, to go with mine for getting her box back. I think she’ll pay up.”
“We could stay here together,” Danny said. “Run the casino and wrestle in our spare time.”
“I’d like nothing better. There is a wrinkle, though.”
“Ah. There’s always a wrinkle.”
“I’m not sure we can give the box back.”
I told him everything. I didn’t want to snatch the hope away, but I couldn’t conceal the truth. We’d both tried that with our respective Bruno problems, and look where it had brought us. At least I’d learned one valuable lesson. From here on in, I would tell him everything. Plus I needed his brains to figure out the next play. I knew I’d been right to be honest when he spoke after a few seconds of consideration. He didn’t ask about the Ammit or if I thought that’s where we would end up. He got his professional head on. “Do you think it really is what Franklin says it is? If so, we have a problem. If not, we can give it back guilt-free.”
“I don’t know for sure. I haven’t seen it. What do you think?”
“It has power, that’s for sure. I brushed my finger against it, and . . . well, you’d best find out for yourself. Follow me.”
He disengaged himself. I felt a pang as he slid away from me but didn’t try to hold him down on the bed. I followed him to the closet, where he reached behind the racks of clothes. Something clunked, and he delved in amongst the suits. I hadn’t had time to search the wardrobe, as his smell had knocked me sideways, but there was clearly a hidey-hole back there. I followed and, sure enough, saw a door had opened in the wall.
“Are we going to Narnia?” I said.
“Not that impressive, I’m afraid.”
We entered a small, windowless room. A telephone sat on the desk, from where Danny no doubt gave the orders. Filing cabinets lined the walls. He dialed a code into a wall safe and pulled out a purple bag, struggling with the weight as he set it on the table. “It’s all yours.”
I approached the bag and undid the string. The cloth fell away, and there, finally, was the box. It looked nearly identical to the replica: an old, carved hunk of wood that wouldn’t look out of place amidst Enitan’s junk. Looking at the innocuous object made Franklin’s story seem like a bad joke. You could more easily imagine the shabby thing being full of paper clips than Armageddon.
“If I start trying to open it, hit me over the head with something,” I said. “Just in case.”
I placed my moist palms on the box and found out again how deceptive appearances could be. The moment the wood came into contact with my skin, the globe began to thrum. Cold raced up my arms and numbed my heart. The room faded as though reality were on a dimmer switch, until it was just me and the box floating in the void. I was vaguely aware of the real world beyond the veil, that my feet were still planted on a solid floor in Lost Angeles. I felt no fear. The absolute blackness was like a warm bath into which I could step and dissipate painlessly, molecule by molecule, thought by thought, until not a scrap of consciousness remained. A seductive voice began to speak in my head—my own, but somehow not.
Aren’t you tired? You’ve endured so much pain, and there is so much more to come. There is always more pain, no matter what brief mercies the fates grant you. You know this to be true. You can end it all now. You need never suffer again. No one need suffer again. The abyss will erase all sin. It will save you from the Ammit, from an eternity floating as fragments of what you once were, lost and alone, torn apart and never to be whole again. You are beyond redemption. Humankind is beyond redemption. The abyss is the one true perfection, the one true release from the guilt and agony of your life.
And then it showed me its vision of the world: a Technicolor reel of violence and hatred and woe that opened up in the darkness like a cinema screen. Some scenes I recognized; others I did not. A mushroom cloud blossomed over Nagasaki; skeletal Jews stumbled to the gas chambers; a burned child ran down a long, dusty road; a row of dark-skinned bodies lay butchered in a forest clearing; a massive plane plunged into the side of a tower of glass and steel; a father undid his belt buckle and loomed over his daughter’s bed; a silent crowd stood by as three men set about another with a machete; on and on and on until, in some other reality, I felt my knees buckle.
This is humanity, the voice said. This is what you have always been and always will be. Open the box, Kat. Embrace the void and free the world.
I was aware of the ghost of my left hand clutching the box, my right probing and prodding for a catch. I longed for the promised release. Somehow I clung to the thought of Danny: the memory of his skin against mine, his heady odor in my nostrils, his voice whispering in my ear. The images of violence grew faster and more intense, but I barely noticed them. My love for Danny swelled and pushed back against the void, which grew granulated, lighter. My disembodied hands loosened their hold on the box.
“I lo—” I said, but my profession of love was rudely interrupted when something crunched into the side of my head. The room snapped back into place around me as I dropped the box and sprawled on the floor. Danny stood over me, holding the heavy telephone he’d thumped me with.
“Ow!” I shouted.
“You said to hit you if you tried to open it.”
“Not that hard. You could have killed me.”
“And?”
My legs were trembling—whether from the horrors the box had shown me or the vicious blow, I didn’t know. Danny hauled me to my feet and steadied me with a hand on the shoulder. I pulled him close, reveling in his solidity. Eternal blackness was all well and good if you had nothing to live for, and maybe even a few hours before, I wouldn’t have been able to fight its spell. But now I had Danny, a buoy to cling to in an ocean of misery. I wasn’t about to give him up.
“Jesus,” I said, “I wanted to ope
n it.”
“I don’t think you can, to be honest. But I thought it best to be safe. What do you think’s in it?”
“The end of the world.”
Silence shrouded the room. I thought of the hundreds of people on the floors beneath me, damned for sins such as those the box was so keen to show me. I wondered how many of them would choose nothing over this existence. Plenty, perhaps, but that wasn’t the point. The box had been selective in its screening. There was a whole world upstairs full of love, sunshine, friendship, music, books, and laughter. Surely the good outweighed the savagery of which we were capable? And it was that world under threat—not our corrupted city where nobody was innocent.
“Then we have to destroy it somehow,” Danny said.
I didn’t think it could be destroyed, at least not by us. If Laureen really did plan to open it, we would have to hide it—drop it in the Styx or bury it deep in the desert. But I wasn’t ready to give up on our chance of release.
“Just because Franklin told the truth about what’s in the box, it doesn’t mean the rest of his tale is true,” I said, thinking out loud. “The best lies are weaved around a nugget of truth.”
“We need to know for sure.”
“My thoughts exactly. You hang onto the box for the moment.”
“Any idea how you’re going to confirm Franklin’s story?”
“That, I don’t know. But you know what would help me think?”
“Coffee? Cigarettes? A brain transplant?”
“Hot sex,” I said and hauled him through to the bedroom in search of a sweeter, more temporary oblivion.
24
I left before dawn, feeling an ache build in certain areas I hadn’t used for a very long time. In between our episodes of lovemaking, Danny and I had discussed our options. We concluded that there was no way to know for sure if Franklin’s angelic credentials were legit—it wasn’t as if I could call God and ask for a reference. I needed solid evidence of evil intent. There was one place I would find it: Avici Rise.
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