kept smiling, even bigger.
“Yes,” she said, taking a piece of paper from her jacket pocket. All crumpled up, and she had trouble uncrumpling it, like she was nervous or something. Probably aware all of a sudden of the vibe between them, of how big and buff he was: that would explain it. “Plessey Hall is the name of the building,” she said, reading what was on the paper.
“I just know the numbers,” he said.
“I’m sorry?”
The numbers. Not what he’d meant to say at all. Plessey-which one was that? Forty-six? Eighteen? “Tell you what,” he said, “since you’re a stranger and this is a real friendly town, how about you just hop in and I’ll run you right up there.”
“Well…”
“Lickety-split, you know? And you’ll be out of this fu-this wicked cold.”
“That’s very…” Her gaze shifted past him toward the passenger seat. Lying on the seat was a skin magazine that Ronnie had brought along, which was really unfortunate. She backed up two steps. “Very nice of you, but… I just remembered I was supposed to call. When I got in. If they’re already on the way, you see…” And she retreated a few more steps, said, “Thanks so much anyway,” turned, and went inside the station. On the back of her sweatshirt it said Arapaho State College.
Really unfortunate. He could have taken her somewhere, not home because of his goddamned mother, but somewhere-like down in the tunnels! — and then. And then. Lickety-split, down in the tunnels. Instead; instead he picked up the skin mag and flung it out the window. He was going to have to do something about Ronnie Medeiros.
Freedy had calmed down a little by the time he went to work that night. For one thing, Ronnie called to say he had some crystal meth, and he’d gone over to Ronnie’s and scored it for a cheap price, then pumped some iron. For another, he’d done some thinking. CEOs, like Bill Gates, say-oh yes, he’d done his homework, think Bill Gates’s name didn’t come up on infomercials? — CEOs like Bill Gates, who started companies in their garage, did they hang around bus stations, sniffing for cunt? No-first came the money, and then cunt came sniffing for you. That was what Bill Gates and the rest of them had found out. Idea, plan, stick, stick, stick. Clipping a flashlight to his belt, Freedy raised a grate in the parking lot behind the football field and entered tunnel F.
He felt good right away, optimistic, psyched. He was investing in his future. Besides, he just liked being in the tunnels, especially appreciated the current of warm air stirring in this one. Down F he went, down because F was the deepest tunnel, passing under the football field and the rink, intersecting Z, then crossing right under another tunnel-N, as he recalled-somewhere beneath building 68, the one with the dome, going on all the way to building 17, the science building, had some Jewish name. But that wasn’t the point. The point was: science building. Why? Because science meant computers, and computers meant laptops! Inspiration had struck again. Freedy had a vision of himself in his headquarters office down in Florida in the not very distant future, and voices out in the hall whispering, The guy’s fucking brilliant.
It was really going to happen. He was going to do it, and do it by stripping the college bare. His stake sat waiting up above, the stake to get him started in the pool business. It was-what was the word? A perfect word existed, he could feel it coming, coming, comingjustice! The word was justice. The college would get him started: justice. What were colleges for, anyway? Cobwebs brushed by his face; he hardly noticed, just sneezed a good big one and kept going.
How much did he need to get started in Florida? Thousands, right? Saul paid three C’s per laptop. That meant ten laptops was three grand, right there. And what was ten laptops? Cake. There had to be thousands of laptops on College Hill. Say he only got a hundred, for Christ sake. He giggled aloud as he worked out the math. Three zero zero times one zero zero-so many zeros! — that made Freedy stopped dead. Someone was singing, real clear and real close by. A woman, no doubt about it, with a high voice. Sometimes sounds drifted down pipes from above, but never this clear-like it was coming from the other side of the goddamn wall-and never down in F, F being so deep. But she was singing, singing in some foreign language, and what was more, there were instruments playing too. What the fuck? Instruments too, and way down here. That scared him, like something was happening to his mind. Where was he? Freedy flicked on the flash-hadn’t even been using it, hadn’t felt the need-and shone it around. It was just F-steam pipe, cable pipe, phone-line pipe-dipping down a little ahead and bending left, where it passed under N. Just F: but his heart was beating, too fast, too light, not the heavy boom boom it usually did. How much of Ronnie’s meth had he tweaked? Couldn’t recall. He took a few deep breaths, felt better.
But the woman was still singing, still close by. He put his ear to the tunnel wall. Fucked if she really wasn’t singing just on the other side.
What did he have on him? Pliers, couple screwdrivers, pocket knife. He opened the knife, took it to the drywall, cut out a fist-sized hole. The singing grew even louder, even clearer. And what was that? A woman’s laugh? He stuck his hand in, felt not cement or brick, what the tunnels were usually lined with, but nothing. Taking the knife, he cut a neat door in the drywall, stepped through.
He shone the flash. He was in a little square room with a dirt floor, nothing in it but a stool, a heavy old wooden stool-he’d seen a few like it over in storage-placed by the opposite wall. If you sat on it, he saw, you’d have access to a hinged flap in the wall. Freedy blew the dust off the stool, sat down. He opened the flap.
A tiny round hole: he put his eye to it. A spyhole! Amazing. He snapped off the flash.
What Freedy saw he couldn’t take in, not all at once. Candles burning, dozens of them, in a room-no, more than one room, there was at least another through a door at the back-a room straight out of a palace or castle. Music came from somewhere, horrible old scratchy music, not live. But there were live people in the room, live people from the present day, a guy and two girls.
Two girls. One sat on a couch near the guy, the other was standing in front of them. She, the blond one, said, “How do I look?”
She looked fucking incredible. So did the other one, the brown-haired one. Also fucking incredible. The girl at the bus station was pretty, but these two. Fox wasn’t the word. Freedy shifted his peering eye from one to the other, trying to decide which was better-looking, unable to make up his mind. Then the guy said something Freedy missed, and the two girls laughed. That kind of pissed Freedy off. He took a look at the guy-some kid, college kid, that he could break in two. Bust through the wall, break the college kid in two, take the girls back into that other room, where he could see some sort of weird bed, and fuck their brains out. Get them to do a few things together, and then- whoa, Freedy. Getting ahead of yourself, boy. He reached for his stash, took one little sniff, just to stay grounded.
When he peeked back through the hole in the wall, things had changed. They were all up, finishing their drinks, drinks a little lighter in color than Saul’s V.O., and blowing out the candles. The room went dark candle by candle. They went through the doorway to the other room, started blowing out candles there too. Freedy thought he could make out a rope ladder hanging down from above. One of the girls climbed it, then the other, finally the college kid, carrying a candle with him. They all went up the ladder easily, the college kid easiest of all, like he was an athlete or something, but that didn’t fool Freedy. He could snap him in half. Like Thanksgiving. Crack.
The college kid disappeared from view, and everything went dark. Completely black. That didn’t bother Freedy. What bothered him was the fact that the music was still playing, the woman with the strange, high voice singing on and on.
When Freedy got back home that night, his mood was mixed. The bad part was he hadn’t gotten into the science building. He’d found it all right, building 17 at the end of F, but from the other side of the door leading to the utilities room had come voices, maintenance guys working on some electrical problem. So no laptops, just a fax machine and a cordless phone with speed dial he’d grabbed from the lounge in 51. The good part, though, the very good part, was the strange place he’d found where F passed under N somewhere beneath building 68; and those girls. He’d worked in maintenance with guys who were lifers, sorry assholes, and no one had ever said anything about rooms, fancy rooms, under 68. But it existed, and those girls knew about it. That was so promising. Freedy didn’t know how exactly, or at all, just knew that it was.
He went in the house real quiet, what with the phone and the fax, past her bedroom, toward his bedroom at the end of the hall. The door was open and blue light leaked out. Freedy looked in, saw his mother, in that Arab getup, standing before the open laptop. He walked in behind her, but real quiet, stuck the phone and the fax under
