Potboiler

He rummaged around in the desk. Beneath a leather-bound copy of the East Zlabian edition of Vassily Nabochka, he found a small pad of paper with the casino insignia at the top. A golf pencil had rolled to the back of the drawer. He sat down and started to write.

It was a purely symbolic form of resistance—he did not expect anything he wrote to leave the room—but he felt compelled to give it his all. Sweetheart he began. He used metaphors, he used similes, he made allusions. He stopped and reread. Overall, the tone was self-conscious, as though he was trying too hard to ingratiate himself to an audience of strangers. He threw the page away and started over, beginning with a story from his own childhood. He wrote for an hour before going back to assess his progress. Again, it was all wrong. It wasn’t about her or how he felt about her. He tried again and again. Nothing worked. A significant pile of paper accumulated on the floor of the cell. Soon enough he ran out. He banged on the cell bars until the guard came. He asked for more paper. It was brought. He wrote through that whole pad, and when he still failed to express himself adequately, he called for and was brought a third pad. His pencil snapped. He still hadn’t written anything he could live with. He decided to stop. Then he changed his mind. Then he changed it back. It was four forty-eight in the morning. He could no longer think clearly. It was coming now, fear. He curled up on the floor and held himself. He wasn’t ready to give up on life. He still had so much to do. He wanted to see his daughter happy in her new house. He wanted to see her children. He wanted to hold Carlotta one more time. Would he ever feel ready to die? Could a man know that he had accomplished as much as he ever would? He believed he had more in him. He always would. He could be on death’s door and still he would be reaching. No matter what the world said, he would always believe that the best of him was yet to come.

The cell door slid open. A guard wheeled in a room-service cart. He paused briefly to stare at Pfefferkorn, lying fetal on the floor. Then he set the cart up and left.

Gradually the light in the room increased. The cell turned pink and purple and gold. The sun was a herald. The day was catching up with him. Nothing could not stop it. Pfefferkorn sat up. He was going to die today. Suddenly he felt ravenous. He attacked the food. There were croissants, half a grapefruit, Danish, coffee, a panoply of fancy jams and jellies, and an egg-white timbale in the shape of a Calabi-Yau manifold.

Everything was delicious.

The bathroom was stocked. Pfefferkorn took a shower. He shaved with an electric wet/dry shaver. He brushed his teeth and rinsed his mouth with mouthwash. He applied talcum powder and swabbed out his nose and ears. A card on the sink informed him that in order to protect the environment, a towel back on the rack would be reused, while a towel on the floor would be replaced. He dropped all the towels on the floor, including the clean ones.

His new clothes had arrived while he was showering. Everything had been laid out for him on the bed. In addition to the suit there were fresh socks and broadcloth boxers, a bright white shirt and a canary yellow necktie. Pfefferkorn pulled the pins from the shirt and put it on. The polished cotton felt good against his skin. He took the suit out of its garment bag and stepped into the pants. They fit perfectly, enough so that he didn’t need the crocodile-skin belt. He put it on anyway. The soles of the penny loafers were slippery, so he scuffed them up with a disposable emery board from the bathroom. He tied the tie, taking time to get the knot right. He held up the jacket. The lining was burgundy. The label read . He shrugged the jacket on and tugged it straight. It was snug but not overly so. He folded the white handkerchief and tucked it neatly in the lapel pocket. He went back to the bathroom and reordered his hair in the mirror. He put some petroleum jelly on his upper left lip. Except for the scab, he didn’t look too bad, and even that looked better than it had the day before. He examined himself in profile. He buttoned the suit and felt something poke him in the ribs. He patted himself down. He unbuttoned his suit. He reached into the left inside pocket and took out a piece of paper. He unfolded it. He read it. It was a list of instructions on how to escape.

88.

Pfefferkorn escaped.

89.

Stumbling from the freight elevator in the casino’s parking garage, his hair wild and his shirt torn, he saw the Town Car with the tinted windows. Two men were waiting by the rear of the car. One was blond and the other was bald. They were both dressed in black. Pfefferkorn sprinted toward them and got into the popped trunk.