Then they went inside to the ground-floor hallway and measured off the same number of paces. The ground floor of Stringfellow Hall consisted mainly of two hallways that met at a T intersection in the middle of the building. Off the hallways were doors to offices and storage rooms and the bookstore and the game rooms and the laundry room. You had to go up one flight to get to the main floor of Stringfellow, with the carpeted lobby and the portraits on the walls and the big triple-sashed windows.
Despite his doubts, Greg was becoming excited. The blueprint might, after all, turn out to be legitimate. It was possible that they may have found a tunnel forgotten for decades. Richard counted out loud, and Greg paced, making sure that he kept his stride at exactly the same length as outside. It was bright down here in the tiled hallway, but there were few people around. Up ahead they could hear the click of billiard balls hitting one another, and to their left they noticed the quiet rumble of a washing machine. Nearly everybody on campus was at the mixer.
“Thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six. Stop,” said Richard.
Greg was already stopped. They were in front of a smooth wooden door with a bright steel knob. There was no sign on the door.
“This is it,” said Richard. “Now watch the door be locked.”
The door was not locked.
They opened it and saw a flight of wooden stairs descending into the dark basement. Greg found a light switch on the wall and flicked it. A bare bulb at the bottom of the stairs shone on a splotched concrete floor. They descended the stairs and paused at the bottom to get their bearings.
“We need to go straight ahead,” said Greg.
“I know, I know,” said Richard. “I’ve just never been down here before.”
There was not much to see. The room they were in did not undergird the entire building. It was perhaps twenty-five feet wide and thirty feet long, with walls of white brick and an open ceiling exposing beams of 2" × 10" lumber. Some old furniture, stuff that you might have seen in a common room years ago, was stacked over to the left side of the room. Beside it was a pile of thin mattresses, the kind they used on the dorms. A metal door to their right was labeled FURNACE. And in the wall directly in front of them, they saw a planked wooden door.
Greg suddenly felt as though he had to go to the bathroom. He couldn’t see Richard’s eyes behind the glint of those round little John Lennon glasses, but he could tell that they were focused on the door ahead. The two boys didn’t even speak; they simply ran over to the door in front of them and then paused, instinctively drawing the occasion out for the most dramatic moment.
“This has got to be it,” said Richard. The damp plastic bag in his left hand quivered in his clutch. “You do the honors.”
“What if it’s locked?”
“If it’s locked, we break it down,” said Richard. “We are not stopping now.”
“We should have brought flashlights for the tunnel,” said Greg.
“Just open the damn thing.”
The door was not locked. Greg put his hand on the old-fashioned metal latch and pressed down. The door swung open toward them.
They heard the breathing before they saw who it was inside.
SCENE 30
Heilman is so stupid, Thomas thought, as he and Hesta walked quietly down the aisle of the darkened chapel. He leaves the door to the building open any-old-time so that any-old-body can wander in. And here we are.
He held her hand in his, and he thought she had to be able to hear his heartbeat. He was afraid to talk because he knew his voice would sound strangled. They were walking down the aisle, just like a couple about to be married, only they were skipping the marriage part and going straight to the honeymoon. Tonight’s the night, Thomas thought. Tonight I’m going to find out what it’s really like.
They could hear the creak of wood from somewhere off in the left transept. Another couple, maybe more than one, was undoubtedly here with the same idea, seeking a quiet sanctuary from the noise and the rain and the cold. Thomas could see only dimly in the darkness of the chapel, but he knew its geography well. At the end of the nave they climbed three stairs, and then they were in the choir. A small door, shorter than his waist, swung open to give them access to the cushioned pews.
Hesta was hardly breathing. “It’s so weird to be in a church,” she whispered.
They sat next to each other. Thomas had his right arm around her shoulders. She was right. He had never sat in the choir before, and in the dark and from the new angle, the entire building looked different, like a haunted barn. The creak of wood told him that somebody else was moving toward them. Hell, they should have gotten a reservation. The shape of whoever it was moved off to the right transept.
“Do you want to go?” he asked.
She snuggled up against him. “We just got here,” she said. “It’s nice.”
There was a part of Thomas that was delighted simply to sit here with Hesta and enjoy her company. To have her pressed up against him, to feel her hand gently caressing his fingers, to hear her whispering an occasional question, to which he could whisper a reply—that was good, that was terrific, that was so damn much better than the boyish pranks of people like Richard.
And yet there was another part of him that kept hearing Robert Staines in the locker room. Thomas and Hesta murmured small talk while all the time he listened to the whisper of desire, the urgent suggestive voice that insisted he now succumb to the delicious instinctive possibilities. He knew what he wanted. Only he didn’t
