The Bluest Blood

by Gillian Roberts

  “Push the dryer tube out the window,” I said.

  “I’m trying, but it’s—damn!” he said. “I wedged it into the car. I can’t move it at all now.”

  “Can you pull it the other way?” I asked. “Toward us?” At least then, the exhaust wouldn’t funnel as directly into the room.

  “It’s too big. The metalwork is too close.”

  The Roederers’ basement window grilles were in poor taste—too ornate, befitting a hacienda, not Welsh Glamorgan, if you asked me. And what did their curlicues deter besides squirrels and raccoons? Do forest animals or even thieves really require intricate patterns and spiky swirls? Damn and more damn.

  Jake pushed and pulled and neither gesture made a difference. The exhaust poured in, close to his face.

  “Get down,” I said, and he did.

  “Sorry,” he said between coughs.

  “Not your fault, son. You gave it a good try.”

  “That’s Griffin’s car out there,” Jake said. “I saw the accordion.”

  PLAY THE ACCORDION, GO TO JAIL, Griffin’s bumper sticker said. It had become his trademark.

  We heard thunks above us. The busy feet of Mrs. R.

  “She’s still here,” Loren said.

  That seemed odd only until we acknowledged that for her, there was no rush. She could gather her favorite possessions, pack at leisure—dead visitors don’t interfere much—and leave when she chose to. It wasn’t as if she were ever going to be seen again. We were hearing, if not watching, the disappearing Cheshire Cat, The Sequel. No more black wigs. On with something that would divert the eye, off with something else, and she’d be invisible again. A woman or a man, and either way rich, with the money probably safe in a Swiss bank. I hated her then, hated that she could calmly get on with her life while knowing that ours were ending one floor below. As if she were the Sun King—or Queen, depending on mood and wardrobe. As if she had all the rights and privileges of the world and we had none.

  Which is pretty much how it was.

  “Off with your head,” I muttered. “You’re nobody.” A pretender, an equal-opportunity con who saw a way to steal big and enjoy the take to the hilt. A woman with thinning hair, a talent for creative accounting, and a fondness for the arts, that was all.

  And we’d been blinded by it. An entire city. By counterfeit credentials, supposed connections, real money, and amazing largesse. Ah, that was clever of them, that sharing of their bounty. Just enough, and for the right causes, so that we’d need to believe. There was something extravagantly bold and splendid about stealing a vast fortune and being so open about spending it left and right. Still, I hated us for being gullible, for not questioning the wigs and vague background, and the way she said “liberary,” for being deafened by the cry of “Money!” The Roederers bought us with almost no effort.

  I sent killer rays of loathing through the floor and wished I knew a curse to put upon the soles of her feet, burning them as they calmly walked above my head.

  “Let me make sure I have this straight,” Loren said. “We’re doomed, right?”

  “Dad!”

  “Grow up, instead of giving up, would you?” I shouted. “God, but you’re a pain! Do something—anything!” This was hypocritical, given that I’d earlier condemned all men for doing just that, but so what? When facing death, I permit a dash of hypocrisy. The thing I regretted was making a loud noise. I didn’t want Tea Roederer to have the satisfaction of overhearing our misery.

  “We haven’t checked out the rest of the place.” I moved back to the makeshift corridor. “Look for anything,” I said, as we moved down the hallway. “Something that could batter a door, or get through those window bars. Or for another room or cubby or closet that might have a window she forgot, or a trap door—”

  “Why on earth would there be a trap door?” Loren asked. He was not going to be my new best friend, that was for sure.

  “Why not?” The man was useless, nothing more than deadweight. However, a clash of wills wasn’t going to get us out. “People in England used to build weird and useless parts of their homes called follies, didn’t they? And turn hedges into mazes. Rich people do peculiar things, Loren. And what about the places where they hid escaping slaves on the Underground Railroad?”

  “This doesn’t seem the kind of house on the escape route,” Jake said.

  We didn’t have time to check whether the grossly rich had done their bit. Instead, we had the dimming of the light. Worse. Its extinction.

  A bulb was out, maybe two, and the irregular shapes of the walls with their jutting storage closets became hazards. We found a small bathroom at one point, not much bigger than an airline facility, but with a stall shower, a mildewed shower curtain, a commode, and a tiny sink. No window. Good enough, I could imagine some grande dame declaring, for the likes of them.

  Jake groped his way, touching padlocks we passed, peering up and over whatever he could.

  We reached a peculiar wide structure, a sort of snout coming out of a bricked-up square on the wall. “Coal chute,” Loren said. “In olden days, a truck backed up to where the window was and dumped a ton or so down it. We’re standing in the former coal bin. Then it’d get shoveled into the furnace behind you. Early central heating. Very posh.”

  There was no heat operating of the central or local variety, and the subterranean basement was chilly, more and more so as we moved away from the large room under the kitchen. I was glad of my windbreaker and the sweater beneath it.

  Jake reached into a door he’d unlatched. “Christ!” He nearly knocked me down as he leaped backward. “What is it?”

  I took a deep breath and looked. “What was it,” I said. “An entire village of minks, and I think a beaver and, oh shame on her, that looks like sealskin. If it gets too cold—here’s our heating system, folks.”

  “Fur storage. What next?” Loren said.

  Next was a lowering ceiling. And, as one by one we tumbled on them, three steps down. A smaller space and a still lower temperature.

  Loren’s eyes adjusted first. “Wine,” he said. “A wine cellar. Hundreds of bottles. Thousands, maybe.”

  “We could go out drunk.” Jake sounded interested. Nothing like a party, no matter the circumstances. I considered the idea of seeking oblivion here before it hit me in the bigger room. I had always heard the Roederers had, among their countless assets, a good cellar. I looked at the bottles, all on their sides on racks. Good wine, maybe, but this wasn’t a good cellar. This was a good dungeon.

  “No windows,” Jake said. “Let’s move on.”

  “She’s going to blame our deaths on Griffin, too,” I said as we walked. “His car again.”

  “But he wasn’t—it wasn’t—”

  “And we are the only ones who know that,” I said. “Except for her and I don’t think she’ll tell.”

  “If only she hadn’t bricked up the coal chute,” Loren said. “That’d be perfect.”

  Would have been, should have been. Of course it would have been perfect. That’s why it had been boarded up long before the idea of the dungeon was formulated. What can go out can come in, and that chute would have been large enough for a deer to slide home on. What was the point of “if only”?

  On the other hand, it was the first sign that Loren was activating his brain. He was trying.

  “Too bad about the chute,” I agreed, to encourage him. “Chute!”

  “We don’t have guns!” Loren snapped.

  “The hamper—above the hamper. A thing—what was it?” I’d been so focused on getting to that window, trying to stop the fumes, that I’d brushed off the boxlike structure that the hamper half hid. It had blended into all the exposed household arteries down here, the pipes and conduits pumping the house into life. But this one was square, made of wood that looked aged and used. It ran ceiling-ward at a slant, just the way the coal chute had.

  “Thank you, Loren,” I said.

  His smile was puzzled, but he followed me.

&n
bsp; It’s amazing how much smaller the basement felt now that we had a mental map of it. In an instant, we were back at the laundry, now redolent of exhaust fumes. Not the place you’d choose to be.

  “A laundry chute?” Loren asked.

  “Yes! Your idea!”

  He looked baffled, he looked…Lorenish. “It goes up into the house,” I said.

  “It might be boarded up,” Loren said. “It’s probably left over from a hundred years ago. It—”

  “There’s a dishcloth in the hamper below it,” I said. “That suggests the thing is still in use. It’s surely worth a try.”

  Jake looked at me, then at the chute.

  “Granted,” I said, “it’s not a great idea, but it’s our only idea. What are our options?”

  “We could have a little dignity about this,” Loren said.

  “Being gassed by Griffin Roederer’s car in his basement is not what’s meant by death with dignity,” I said.

  “Well,” he said, “I don’t have any choice, do I? I certainly can’t fit in there, so what’s the point?”

  How had an hysteric and a dodo produced Jake? “Only one of us has to go up there,” I said. “Then he can let the others out.”

  Of course, I meant Jake, with his long legs and arms, his strong muscles. And he knew it, too, because while Loren and I were sparring, he’d pulled the washing machine over so that it was below the chute, and had gotten himself on top of it and was easing his head inside.

  I heard huffs, puffs, and a soft thunk. And then Jake scrunched down and emerged again, red-faced. “I’m real sorry,” he said softly. “My shoulders won’t fit. I don’t know how to get around that.”

  I thought of friends’ stories of giving birth to the ever-feared big-shouldered baby. The laundry chute wasn’t all that different, except that it had zero flexibility and nobody could do an episiotomy on it to ease the way.

  “So it’s me.” It’s I. Who cares? The point was, I was the only candidate left. I could barely believe myself. I was going up a wooden chute? My sports were reading, dancing, a bike ride now and then. This was akin to rappelling without a rope. I was too old, too weak, too frightened.

  Besides, what if I didn’t fit? I climbed up onto the washing machine, then positioned myself in a crouch and slowly stood up. My head went in. So did my shoulders.

  I thought about my boobs, about all those years of worrying over their size, or lack of it. I was still worrying about the same issue, but with more urgency now. Would I fit? Would they? If not, would I be trapped through eternity, found someday by a mourning Mackenzie, stuck by the boobs in a laundry chute?

  I fit. They fit.

  Time to obsess about hips. It helped stave off a newfound case of claustrophobia. The chute was dark, with the smell of age and maybe of all the unwashed laundry dropped through it. The sides were smooth wood running at a sharp angle. I supposed I should be grateful it wasn’t completely vertical. I could feel the edges of planks. Hell on stockings and fine lingerie. Snags galore. Probably the laundress did them by hand.

  Well, too bad for the laundress and her delicate garments. I was the one in trouble now. My upper torso was in the tube and I could maneuver my arms enough to push against the sides—but coming up was potential mortification. I could stand up, in fact, but my hips—what if they were too big? Squashed in a tube by the hips or butt was far more humiliating than being trapped by boobs.

  Please, Lord, I begged. I’ve been meaning to take off a few pounds, be more rigid about wine and chocolate, although they are so much fun. But please? I imagined myself swelling, the Michelin Man in a laundry chute, a laughingstock even in death.

  But I fit.

  That was supposed to be the good news. I got a sneaker firmly planted on each side and tried not to think about how impossible this was and how relieved I was that my body parts were in proportion. If I lived, I’d try out for Miss America.

  But I wouldn’t live because now, totally encased in the wood, hearing only the murmurs of the men waiting for me, I was paralyzed, every sinew terrified into rigidity. I knew what I looked like in a cross section. Those mountain climbers you saw in pictures, in a vertical tunnel, a whatever-it’s-called running down the mountain. And they had ropes. Besides, even looking at those photos turned my stomach.

  I couldn’t do this. I wasn’t meant to. I was weak and cowardly.

  I was also out of options. I could stay in the basement and die, or give the chute a chance.

  I grabbed for purchase higher up, then quickly moved each foot farther up inside the chute. If I could do this, I could probably qualify for the Olympics.

  The men—my men, even terrified Loren—gave a small whoop.

  Then one for the Gipper. One for me. I would do this. Sometimes all you can hope for is to die trying.

  Twenty

  I climbed as arduously and gracelessly as an inchworm. With each crawl, each grab, each press against the sides, each silent attempt to make my lumpy-bumpy human shape become a hard-sided wedge that couldn’t be dislodged, I oozed upward, heart beating triple-time.

  I was grateful this was an old chute, made of natural material. I had to assume that nowadays, it’d be plastic or metal, and I’d never be able to scale manufactured smoothness. On the other hand, if the house had been newer, perhaps its ceilings would have been lower. I had never realized how high one story could be. Half a story, actually, because where on the first floor would the opening be? Waist-high, I’d hope. Just right for chucking tablecloths and dish towels.

  I climbed—one hand, the other, one foot, the other—over and over, trying not to be daunted, and nearly failing when there was no sign of an end or opening. I almost released my hold and let myself drop. Why exercise if you were going to die before you showed the results?

  I heard something from below, an almost-word or two—a pooter? A net? It sounded as if they’d trapped something. Or were singing some arcane nursery rhyme. The low hollow sound repeated, annoying the hell out of me. I had to concentrate or I’d fall. Loren’s voice didn’t do well in a wooden tube, especially when he tried to speak softly so Mrs. R. couldn’t hear. His words dissolved in the wood grain. I ignored his rumbles. It was all I could do to climb and listen to my own gasping breath.

  “Mandy year?” was easier, unraveling into “Mandy, you hear?” on Loren’s third try. I didn’t know how to answer. Yes, I heard, but no, I didn’t comprehend and would not shout and alert Tea Roederer. “Cuter!” it sounded like this time. That I was cuter? Was that Loren’s stupid way of cheering me on? Hand, hand, foot, foot. That was all I had room to think about, what with big blocks of brain reserved for fear and panic. I was not up to the task. If I’d had time, I would have prepared, worked out with weights. I would be buff, strong, the new woman.

  But I hadn’t and I wasn’t. I was a large package of insufficient muscles with which to defy the laws of gravity.

  How had I gotten myself in this unnatural position, hanging in a tube like a giant insect whose wings had been pulled? And with three lives depending on it.

  Hand, hand, foot, foot.

  The other two gave up on sending messages, probably by reason of being asphyxiated because I couldn’t move fast enough. I forgave Loren his sexist cuter remark, his failings.

  Hand, hand, foot, foot.

  And then—one hand was on something new. Slightly recessed. With a metal band running horizontally.

  A door—what else could it be? The door. I braced myself more firmly and pushed with my right hand.

  And pushed.

  Nothing happened except that my wrist sent strong signals that if I insisted on pitting it against a solid surface, it would be the contender that broke.

  The door was locked. Maybe always, maybe not even having a single thing to do with me, maybe having nothing whatsoever to do with this particular instance. Locked to prevent accidents from the other side.

  In a rage, I pounded, then panicked anew. What if she were still there, and heard? What i
f she flung open the door? I’d plummet a story down in a wooden tube and if that didn’t kill me—she would.

  Don’t have heard me, I begged of her—as if her main drive in life was granting my wishes.

  What would she do next?

  For that matter—what would I?

  I looked upward. The chute continued skyward, dark and high above. I wanted to cry, felt my eyes sting and water, but with not a free finger to dry them, I couldn’t afford tears.

  I was too tired to go on, and what if I did? Why wouldn’t all the other exits be locked, too, as further safety measures?

  Damn Tea’s sudden caution! She had courage to defy the entire world, violate most of the commandments—then she obsessed about laundry chute accidents? What was wrong with her?

  Loren shouted up the tube again. Then he was still alive, and hearty-enough sounding that I was sure Jake was still with us as well. The bad news, of course, was that between the deafening tom-tom of my own heartbeat, and the wooden absorbency factor, I still couldn’t understand him.

  It wasn’t the cute business anymore. Now it was baths. Or grass. Fins and baths. Sounds like…

  “I don’t care!” I screamed, then re-remembered the resident murderess and froze even more stiffly against the walls of the chute.

  And became aware that, with the worst possible timing in the world, I urgently felt a call of nature.

  The horrific possibilities were endless.

  That was not how I was going out. Now, with every single muscle tensed, I moved forward, or rather, up. Hand, hand, foot, foot. I pictured the soaring ceilings, the bas-reliefs at the top of the walls, the spot from which the chandelier had hung. I pictured myself as a creature with adhesive palms and magic sneakers that stuck to all surfaces.

  I focused my attention on the top of my head, the most up spot I had the power to imagine, and thought only of upness, the state of uphood. Be as uppity as all get out! And get out!