Mercy 6

The hollow sound of her locker door and the still air only bared her thoughts. She scrubbed to her elbows, as though for surgery. She put on a fresh tracksuit and running shoes. It felt good to change her socks.

She sent one thing to her aunt: Say my name and scritch behind his ears.

An immediate reply sounded, but she let it go, a first thing for Silva.

She left her cell and key card in the locker. After removing the cash and zipping the bills into a pocket, she left her wallet. She remembered to leave the latch unlocked.

She met Mullich in the cafeteria. He bought her food and juice and made her eat. She passed on the sandwich but enjoyed a melon salad with mint.

“How did you get this?” She motioned toward the honeydew and mint tucked in her cheek.

“The cook’s actually a real chef. If you bring him things, he’ll prepare them for you. Gives him something fun to do.”

“You know this place better than any of us.” She tapped the table with her finger.

He took the opportunity to take hold of her hand. This startled her, but she enjoyed the gentle length of his fingers. He looked at her eyes. He released a tight roll of money, the size of a cigarette, into her palm. He continued to lace his fingers in hers, continued to look.

“Listen,” he said, “you’re being watched. We’re being watched.

What you’re trying to uncover out there they don’t want known.”

He cautioned her with his eyes, kept her from looking away, from scanning. The cafeteria was still noisy and messy, smelling of bleach. With taste and touch, Mullich had separated her from that, found her respite in the crowd.

“Then how can I possibly do it?” she asked.

“I brought you here — to the cafeteria — because this is where you start.”

She gave him a puzzled look.

He told her what to do. He reminded her of the emptiness she would sense down there, down there in the very bottom, in that dead air between earth and building.

46

Mendenhall left the table. Mullich remained, feigning interest in his salad. She walked toward the swinging doors of the kitchen, veered left at the fire extinguisher, found herself in the dead end of the little hallway that Mullich had described for her. She checked for followers, saw none. The outline of the dumbwaiter was thin as a pencil line where Mullich had cut the paint seal covering the relic. Hands and weight pressed to the panel, Mendenhall pushed in and up. Nothing gave, but there was a cracking noise. She wondered if it came from within her.

A woman — a nurse, of course — appeared at the open end of the hall, looked dumbly at her. Mendenhall pretended to be stretching for a run. She glared sideways at the woman, scared her off.

With another shove, the panel lifted, pulling Mendenhall forward, a drop in her stomach. She hadn’t really believed Mullich until this moment, this little fall of surprise. A musty coolness drifted from the dark cube. Whoever had sealed the relic had left a mason jar, an impromptu time capsule holding a dried rose, a Betty Boop figurine, a Vegas shot glass from the Golden Nugget, and a handful of marbles. When was the last time anyone had shot marbles?

She scooted the jar to a back corner and tried to imagine herself folded inside there. A caf worker slammed through the kitchen doors but could not see her, or made no effort to see her. Mendenhall took a breath, as if readying for a dive, and hurried herself into the cube. She was able to lift her head slightly, to wrap her arms around her knees. The panel fell, and the dark was overwhelming. The flash of phosphenes glided across her vision. She couldn’t tell if her eyes were opened or closed.

A man’s voice — not Mullich’s — sounded from the open end of the hall, the wall muffling the voice. She heard him say the color of her hair. She heard declaration and failure. She held still and breathed through her nose as softly as she could.

And she waited. Time distended with the darkness. She took her pulse. Mullich. Who was he? When she thought about it, who was he, really? What was he? Who would want to know this building the way he knew it, at the level he knew it? All of its bones and ghosts and reasons for existing, reasons for dying. What was she to him? Someone who should be a relic, could be another relic, a piece of time now sealed in this wall. It was easy to imagine her mummy found, sitting just like this, folded away from the place that had become her life, still inside but away, lost, undiagnosed, untreated, unreleased.

She whispered his name, felt it disappear in the utter darkness.

Lack of vision was beginning to disorient her, making it feel as though the cube were yawing.