Potboiler

“These aren’t what you think they are,” he said.

She took the tin and dropped it in her apron pocket. “I know what they are,” she said.

He looked at her.

“Hurry,” she said. “We don’t have much time.”

The adjacent room was a galley kitchen. On the counter was a wicker basket filled with root vegetables, a crusty box grater, and a stack of unwashed trays. She made him drink two cups of tea. Then she sat him on a stool while she opened up the spare moustache kit and read through the instructions.

“Don’t forget the Q-tip,” he said.

“I can read,” she said.

She used up most of the tube of adhesive and all of the swatches. She polished a spatula on her apron and held it up so he could see his reflection.

He had a moustache to rival Blueblood’s.

They returned to the storage room. She handed him the white jumpsuit, which he now saw wasn’t a jumpsuit but a hazmat suit. He started to unzip it. She stopped him.

“Do you need to pee?”

He thought. “Probably not a bad idea.”

The room across the antechamber mirrored his almost exactly, with a mattress, a toilet, and a floor drain. Instead of books, the desk held a sorry assortment of cosmetics and a plastic comb tangled with hair the same color as Zhulk’s wife’s. The pillow was dented and shiny, the blanket rumpled.

She had been living next door to him the entire time.

He used the toilet and went back out to the antechamber. She held the hazmat suit open. He stepped into it. It was a roomy one-size-fits-all. He pulled his arms through the sleeves.

“Where’s your husband?” he asked.

She smiled sourly. “The penthouse at the Metropole.” She zipped him up and sealed him in with Velcro. “He’s busy with festival planning. He won’t be back until tomorrow morning.” She zipped the hood on. The interior of the suit smelled like her. “That’s your deadline,” she said, pressing the Velcro around his neck. “From this point on, you’re on your own.”

“I understand,” he said. His voice boomed inside the suit. “Thank you.”

She nodded. “Good luck.”

He started for the stairs. He paused and turned back.

“What’s going to happen to you?” he asked.

The same sour smile came across her face. She reached into the apron for the breath mints. She rattled the tin. If she swallowed one, she would be dead in three minutes.

“I’ll be minty fresh,” she said.

100.

He must have been a mile underground. As he rose, so did the ambient temperature. Breathability, he discovered, was not one of a hazmat suit’s selling points. Soon his peasant shirt was sticking to his chest and the viewing panel had fogged up. His thighs quivered with every step. His pockets felt like they were loaded with birdshot. The shaft was claustrophobic and dim. He imagined Zhulk’s wife doing the same climb carrying stacks of books, crates of root vegetables, re-ups of towels. He gritted his teeth and pressed onward.

The stairwell ended unceremoniously at a metal ladder bolted to the wall. Pfefferkorn climbed up and heaved against a trapdoor. It fell open with a clang. He poked his head up into a circular concrete chamber lit by bare yellow bulbs. At the center of the room stood a ten-foot tank that had burst open to resemble an enormous, rust-colored orchid. Oily puddles disclosed an uneven floor. Everything bore the universal three-petaled symbol for radiation. A series of pictorial placards ran along the wall. The first showed a smiling stick figure touching the tank. The next showed the stick figure down on one stick knee, proposing to a female stick figure. The third showed the stick-figure man standing by nervously as his stick-figure wife (her legs in stick-figure stirrups) bayed, a stick-figure midwife urging her on. The fourth placard completed the cautionary tale: the stick-figure couple’s faces contorted in stick-figure horror as they received a stick-figure baby with three eyes and both sets of genitals.

He found the exit. It was unlocked, as he knew it would be. He stepped onto a small concrete apron. The sun was going down. There were no dogs, no razor wire, no watchtowers, no arc lights, no cameras. Instead, extending in every direction for half a mile, was a vast lake of toxic goo. It was thick, sticky, and antifreeze green. It glowed faintly. Anyone wanting to come in or out of the building would have to cross it. He couldn’t smell it but he reckoned that the background smell from the forest multiplied by a billion was a decent approximation. He felt his prostate curling up and trying to hide. The hazmat suit didn’t much reassure him. It was one thing to know and another to do. He sighted the perimeter fence and stepped off the apron, sinking in up to his knees. He was glad he’d ditched the heels.