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I freeze.
With my heart suddenly hammering away, I push my chair back and stand up. Nobody seems to notice, not Sissy or the boys, who are too busy scarfing down food and drink.
It is the slowest walk, it is the longest walk. One foot in front of the other, my eyes fixed on a single portrait hidden in the shadows. The dining hall suddenly grows quiet; everyone is watching me as I make my way to the portrait, trancelike.
I cough, hacking up a lungful of phlegm. But I keep walking, and the portrait looms closer, the face seeming, in my feverish state, to float toward me. And as it does, the darkness around it dissipates like tendrils of mist unfurling off a mountain peak. A face emerges, staring at me with familiar eyes that are kind and authoritative, the sunken cheeks brooding and muscular. Large cheekbones on a chiseled face, the hair now gray, the crow’s-feet at the corners of each eye more pronounced.
My father.
Footsteps behind me, heavy, stopping a few meters away. “Do you know him?” Krugman asks.
I ignore the question with my own. “Who is he?”
“He is Elder Joseph. ”
Joseph. Joseph. I run the name in my mind as if the very incantation will conjure up memories. Nothing. My head spins, feverishly, throbbing.
“Where is he?” Sissy asks. She is standing behind me, her face ashen. Behind her, the boys are half standing, half sitting at the table, their eyes fixed on the painting.
“How do you know him?” Krugman asks.
And I ask the only question that matters, the question that I have asked and wondered for years in unbroken silence and unremitting darkness. “Where is he?”
Krugman’s voice is gravelly and sullen. “He’s no longer with us. ”
“Where is he?” And this time, it’s Sissy who’s asking, her voice urgent, fear tingeing her words.
Krugman turns slowly to her, his massive bulk shifting like a continent. “He died. In a tragic … incident,” Krugman says.
I take a step back. But I do not feel my feet moving. I do not feel them touching anything.
A pain shoots into my head, piercing, as if a section of my skull has been removed and a plank of splintery wood run against my exposed brain. The room suddenly brightens with a red light that blinks hypnotically. My collapse is a maddeningly slow spiral in which I see their faces, white smears and moons, swirling about in a world gone empty.
16
MY FATHER WOKE me with a shake on the shoulder.
“What is it?” I asked. I was not afraid; there was a look of excitement on his face.
“We’re going out,” he answered.
“We are? Why?”
“Come on,” he urged.
“Do we have to, Daddy? I don’t want to go out into the sun. ”
“Just come,” he said, and of course I did. Dutifully, I put on my shoes, applied lotion over my arms and face, pulled the hat low so that the brim broke hard off my eyebrows. We pocketed our fangs. Just in case. The daylight, as we opened the door, was like acid pouring into our eyes.
We walked the streets without our shades. These were the little tricks you learned, over the years. Don’t wear shades in the daytime; they might leave tan lines on your face. Don’t wear a watch for the same reason. All these rules, sacrosanct in every regard. But this day, for whatever reason, my father broke an important rule: if it can be helped, avoid going outside on a cloudless day when the sun shines down unobstructed. I stared at my father, wondering. But he said nothing.
We walked in the shadow of skyscrapers when we could, hugging the side of the towering buildings. The streets were empty, of course, silence seeped into the concrete sidewalks and chrome buildings and the unlocked entrances of cafés and shops and delicatessens. The fountain pool in front of the large Convention Center sat flat and unbroken, a perfect mirror of the blue sky.
My father walked through the revolving doors of the Domain Building, the tallest skyscraper in the city at sixty-four stories. The Ministry of Science and the Academy of Historical Conjecture were both housed in this skyscraper. It was here in this single building that my father worked for as long as I could remember. I followed him through the revolving doors, and into the fifty-nine-story atrium. Sunlight poured into the spacious, airy glass lobby, refracting in a blinding array of rainbow-tinted beams.
“Over here,” he said, standing by the glass elevator. A glass elevator shaft rose up the length of the atrium, all the way to the top. Although no one else was around, in the building or even in the city for that matter, we spoke in hushed tones.
“What are we doing here, Daddy?” I asked.
“It’s a surprise. Something I’ve been planning for a few weeks now. ”
The elevator door opened and my father punched in a combination for the top-floor button. The executive-level floor where access was restricted to the select few who had security clearance. I looked at him in surprise and he gazed back, scratching his wrist. The elevator pulled up quickly, and I had to swallow to pop the pressure in my ears.
We flew past the many floors filled with lecture halls and scientific laboratories and conference rooms and ubiquitous government cubicles. Past the mysterious forty-fifth floor that had been closed for decades. Finally, the elevator dinged and we came to a stop. The doors opened. Immediately, an even brighter gush of sunlight rushed in, flooding our eyes. My father’s hands touched my shoulders, prodding me forward, into the scathing light. I inched forward.
The light was not unexpected. I’d been up to the top floor at least a dozen times over the years, my father proud to show off his workplace. That is where I take my lunch break, he’d say (on the stairs, alone, Daddy?), that is where the brooms and mop and vacuum cleaner are stored, that is where I wash the towels, that is where I store the cleaning supplies, that is the trash chute. He knew every square inch; stepping out of the elevator into blinding light, he moved without hesitation, taking my arm gently and heading left.
Our shoes squeaked on the translucent floors. Glistening gleams of sunlight reflected off metal beams, refracted through the windows surrounding us. Proof positive of my father’s janitorial diligence and professionalism. He wore an expression of pride as we walked down the hallway, sunlight splashing everywhere like wading in a pool of diamonds. This floor, housing the most secretive archives and documents, was the most secure location in the city: the highest elevation point soaring above all others, surrounded around and below and above by a moat of acidic sunlight during the daytime. It was impenetrable to everyone. But us.
The only darkened area on the whole floor was a small closet-like shaft tucked away in the northeast corner. Called the Panic Room, it was sectioned off with walls that were a translucent gray, made of a special glass that neutralized the toxicity of sunlight. The Panic Room was designed as a safety precaution in the extremely unlikely event that someone might be inadvertently locked in the top floor at dawn. At the press of an interior button, the floor of the Panic Room would open into a chute that dropped ten floors. It was sometimes referred to as the most private, solitary, and safe space in the whole metropolis during the day, not that anyone had ever had need to test it.
There were only eight office suites on this floor, each separated by glass partitions and furnished with desks and chairs made of Plexiglas. It was like being in a fishbowl; you could stand at the end of the floor and see clear through to the other end. At night, the occupants of each office—and what they were doing—were visible to all. A transparent government, people quipped. Top level and very senior governmental officials worked on this floor, their nights spent gazing at the city spread below them as they stared at their desk monitors, taking in the spinning numbers ticker-taping before them, their heads swiveling from right to left, sometimes in synchrony. They spoke with cool detachment to one another as they made one important decision after another. Their only break from this dreary monotony was lunchtime, whe
n my father would serve them slabs of raw meat that sat in puddles of blood.
Something quick I have to do, my father would say whenever we were here in the daytime. And I’d watch him move quickly from one office suite to the next, turning on the deskscreens, riffling through files, occasionally scribbling a few hurried notes into his notebook. Watching his stooped back, his nervousness as he turned on the deskscreens, I knew he was up to something illegal. The kind of illegal that, if he were caught, would lead directly and swiftly to the execution squad.
But on this day, my father did not sneak into any of the office suites or ask me to wait by the reception desk. We walked across the elevator lobby and up a stairwell. The walls hovered in on us, darkness again draping around me, and I was not prepared for the sudden wide open space that greeted me after my father opened the top door. I felt flung into the skies.
My father’s body moved with an excited charge now, an uncharacteristic eagerness about his walk as he led me toward the edge. I could see the office suites directly below us, through the glass ceiling upon which I trod.
“Daddy?”
“Okay, stop here. ” We were only ten feet from the edge, close enough for me to view the street far below. “Close your eyes. ”
“Daddy?”
“Just close your eyes. ” His footsteps led away from me.
I closed my eyes. It was my father, and there was no fear in me. A minute later, I heard his approaching footsteps.
“Okay, open your eyes now. ”
I did. In his arms was a large, winged contraption, covered in sleek, metallic panels. My father’s eyes were shining bright, watching my reaction. “What is it?” I asked.
“A plane. Remember I told you what a plane was?”
I stared at it, puzzled.
“The thing that flies in the sky? Remember?” He was disappointed.
“But it’s not flying right now. Is it dead?” I asked.
“No, silly. It’s remote controlled,” he said, showing the control he held in his hand, a square panel with long antennae. “Here, hold the plane high above your head. No, put your hands here, on the wings. That’s right, now hoist it up high. No matter what, don’t let go. Ready?”