Brood (25 page)

“Oh, this is great,” Katie says, giving the spec sheet a cursory glance. She tugs at the sleeve of her jacket so that the hem is touching the heel of her hand. Leaning back, she adjusts her pants, pulling at the fabric.

“It's a great house,” Cynthia says, narrowing her eyes.

“Oh my God, it's spectacular,” Katie says. “Shall we do a walk-through?”

“But I'm curious,” Cynthia says. “Are things like this selling these days?”

“A house like this? It's like it's never quite the right time, and it's always the right time. Obviously, it awaits a very special buyer. Luckily, I am working right now with a number of international clients who would be thrilled to death to have a chance at a house like this, with this location and history. And most important, they have the means to move quickly, without winga…” She clears her throat. “Without…witta…”

Cynthia looks away, embarrassed by the real estate broker's momentary difficulties. She knows how these things can happen; sometimes when she is exhausted, her tongue feels as stiff and cumbersome as a Ping-Pong paddle. And God knows that on boozy afternoons she had to scale each sentence as if it were a glass mountain. And yet…this little verbal breakdown Katie is undergoing reminds Cynthia of something, something else, something she has pushed deep into her unconscious, filed away in a drawer she had hoped she would never have occasion to open.

But sometimes these drawers where we stuff our memories move of their own accord. And this one slowly creaks open, revealing a memory that has been not only stored but kept crisper-fresh: Cynthia's sister, Leslie, as the balance slowly but inexorably shifted within her, away from the strictly human and toward the creaturely, started having more and more trouble remembering words. Sometimes her sentences had blanks within them, and sometimes wholly inappropriate or even nonexistent words would crop up. It was like Tourette's syndrome in its explosive unexpectedness, and like early-onset Alzheimer's in its pitifulness.

Katie, however, finds her way through the verbal thicket and emerges relatively unscathed on the other side of her sentence.

“Without waiting for a mortgage or anything.” She laughs her bright, professional laugh. “My, oh my, this is what happens when I leave home without my third cup of coffee. Anyhow, many of my clients are capable of doing an all-cash deal.”

“But what kind of money are we talking about?” Cynthia asks.

“Did you have a figure in mind?” Katie asks.

“I was thinking of something in the neighborhood of thirty-five million,” Cynthia says. She feels her pulse quicken—she actually
loves
doing business.

“That's an excellent neighborhood,” Katie says.

“I should tell you,” Cynthia says. “Or perhaps you know. This house. It has a history.”

“What piece of really important real estate in this town doesn't have a history?” Katie says. “ ‘Behind every great fortune lies a…' ” Her face goes blank. “ ‘Lies a'…something.”

“ ‘A great crime,' ” Cynthia says.

“A French guy,” Katie says. “I used to know this stuff.”

“Balzac,” Cynthia says. Her heart is pounding. With every moment, she is more certain that this woman has undergone the same treatment that destroyed everything mild and sweet in Leslie, and she is also afraid that at any second this pantsuited stranger will come hurtling across the room and start ripping at her flesh.

“So,” Katie says, standing up. “Let me look around, take some…” She moves her finger up and down, as if pressing the button on a camera.

Did she forget the word
camera? “Well, we can start here,” Cynthia says, her voice breaking. “Do you want me to show you around?”

“Oh, that won't be necessary. I actually like to go on my self thing and you know. You know?”

“Uh…I guess.”

“I'll start in the cellar and work my way up.”

“Um…the cellar is the one problem in this house.” Cynthia tries to say this nonchalantly. “We have a bit of a mouse problem down there. I have a call in to a couple of exterminators, and I do believe the whole thing will be cleared up in a few days.”

“Mice?”

“I think so,” Cynthia says.

“Have you tried those whatchamacallits?”

Cynthia shakes her head.

“You
know,
” Katie says with good-natured insistence. “Those…” She wiggles her fingers in the air. “Glue traps! The mousie steps on the sticky part, and then his feet get stuck in the glue. And then all you have to do is…well, you can do whatever you want.”

“Why don't you check on the cellar at some other time? After I get a good exterminator in here.”

“Oh, that could take a week or two. Anyhow, not to worry. Nothing bothers me.”

“Well, I'll take you to it.”

With some reluctance, Cynthia escorts Katie to the cellar door. Just looking at it brings back the horrible experiences Cynthia had down those steep wooden steps. And she knows that if the floor below is covered with what is in effect a turbulent lake of rodents, Oberman and Lewis will definitely not be representing this house on the market. Oh, well, she's not certain she'd like to do business with Katie Henderson anyhow…

“I'll get you a flashlight,” Cynthia says. She herself will not venture down even one step.

“You know what?” Katie says. “I think I'll leave the cellar for… you know…for last!”

“Okay.” Cynthia stretches out the word.

“I'll be fast,” Katie says. “I may not look it, but I am known for my foot speed!”

I'll bet you are,
thinks Cynthia.

As Katie scampers up the stairs, Cynthia goes back to the sofa and makes calls. First, she calls Arthur, wanting to let him know that she has decided to put the house on the market. But he doesn't pick up, and she leaves a peevish message on his voice mail. After that, she re-calls the exterminators; she is so infuriated with them that she hints darkly—to an answering service, and to someone who sounds as if she has just been awakened by the call—that if someone doesn't come to the house right away, she may have to begin a lawsuit. It doesn't make much sense, but someone once told her—she can't remember who it was—that threatening to sue is the one surefire way to get the attention of your average New Yorker. While she is ranting away, she sees out of the corner of her eye that Katie has opened the cellar door and is on her way to inspect downstairs. She leaves the door open behind her. Cynthia doesn't dare close it, but the sight of it wide open paralyzes her with fear.

She turns off the phone, lets it fall from her hand.

A few minutes later, Katie emerges from the cellar, and she considerately closes the door behind her. She drops her little silver camera into her impressive Louis Vuitton bag.

“I love your house,” she declares. “It's going to sell in two seconds.”

“There are some legal issues, unfortunately,” Cynthia says.

“I just love it.” Katie is weaving; her head lolls lazily, and she is running her tongue along her bottom lip. She is, in fact, acting as if she'd just pounded down a pint of vodka.

Suddenly, her eyes open wide. Her hand goes up and her fingers tap nervously on the side of her throat. She coughs, while pursing her lips.

“Are…are you okay?” Cynthia asks.

Katie nervously nods yes.

“Can I get you something? Maybe a glass of water?”

“I'm all right. I'm diabetic. I have to watch my blood-sugar levels.”

Cynthia nods. “So…do you have children?” she asks.

“Do I have children?” Katie says this as if the question were fantastically inappropriate.

“Yes, I'm wondering.”

“I have a daughter,” the real estate agent says with sudden primness.

“A daughter. Oh. How old is she?”

“She's almost twelve. She's my precious angel. I just love her to death.”

I'm sure you do,
thinks Cynthia.

“She's such a good kid. Really, it took me forever to get preggers, maybe that's why I'm so crazy about her. I could just…I don't know.” Katie smiles, shows her exceedingly prominent teeth. “I could just eat her up.”

“Well, I'm glad you like the house,” Cynthia says. “I have a few…other appointments.”

“With other real estate firms?” Katie inquires. “I'm sure you'll find our commission rates very competitive. And in terms of access to qualified buyers, no one can compare with us.”

“Yes. Of course,” Cynthia says. She can feel the drip of her own perspiration trickling down her spine. Her armpits are humid; her mouth completely dry.

“I'm going to need you to sign a couple of agreements. You'll be giving us an exclusive on this property.”

“You can just leave the papers here. I'll look them over.”

“There's nothing to look over. It's standard stuff, okay?”

“I need to look them over, Katie. Okay?”

“I see,” Katie says.

Cynthia can feel the rage in the real estate agent's body, and she wonders, Will she strike now? She looks around the room for something with which to defend herself. All that seems feasible is a heavy, clear glass vase filled with pale yellow irises. She picks the vase up by the rim.

“I think you'd better leave. Now.”

“Excuse me?” The real estate agent's eyes register profound shock—or is it fury?

“I know what you are,” Cynthia says. “My sister was just like you. You went to the doctor, didn't you? That's where your ‘precious angel' comes from.”

“My daughter?” Katie asks. “What doctor? I don't know what you're talking about.” Thinking Cynthia is making a move toward her, Katie flinches, brings her hand up as if to protect her face.

A moment later, the real estate agent darts around Cynthia, grabs her things from the sofa, and heads out the front door—though not before leaving an agreement giving Oberman and Lewis a six-month exclusive on the house on Sixty-Ninth Street.

C
al Rogers strolls through the corridor at Borman and Davis, slapping a clipboard against the side of his leg and whistling what he believes to be “Anchors Aweigh,” though others might not be so sure. He is approaching the double doors separating the executive portion of the facility from the labs. The doors are locked and usually manned on either side by a uniformed guard. Cal does not quite register the fact that on his side of the doors, the chair where the guard normally sits is empty.

As he nears the doors, they swing open. It's one of the ferals, the least altered of the crop—the one named Polly. She is wearing the clothes she was in when Keswick snatched her, but they have been laundered, and she looks freshly showered—she looks like a fifteen-year-old girl on her way to a music lesson.

When she sees Rogers, she smiles. “Hi there,” she calls.

He snaps out of his semi-reverie.

“What are you doing?” he asks, reaching for his phone.

“Nothing,” Polly says.

“You're not supposed to be just walking around.”

“It's okay.” She continues walking, and now she is practically flush against him, ignoring the most basic rules of personal space.

“You're supposed to be in your quarters, young lady,” Rogers says. He has already dialed security. He holds the phone away from his ear, listens to the
ring-ring-ring.

“Yeah, I guess.” She puts her hand on his shoulder. “But here's the thing. You want to hear the thing?”

Fucking security! Where is everyone? Rogers realizes he must take matters into his own hands. He removes this horrible girl's hand from his shoulder but holds on to her wrist. He rarely has direct contact with the subjects of his investigations—it's strictly a blood-and-tissue-sample relationship. But now he grasps her tightly, so she will know who is in power here.

He knows it's crazy thinking, but he can't help noticing how attractive this young girl is.

“Your hands are cold,” she says, tugging away from him, but without much force or purpose.

“I'm taking you back,” Rogers says.

“Okay, but before you do?” She stops. She has strong legs and it's hard to budge her when she digs in.

“What?”

“You guys are supposed to be—what? Doctors? Scientists?”

“Yeah? What's your point?”

“Well, you're hurting us. These are our
bodies,
you know? Doing all kinds of personal shit too. It's not right. We didn't do anything.”

“Think of it like this: You're making a contribution.”

“We didn't ask to be born. And we didn't ask to be different.”

“You're out of the rain. Right? You're fed. Place to sleep. Three hots and a cot. You've got nothing to complain about.”

“The stuff hurts. The needles. The scraping.”

“We do our best, honey. No one wants to hurt anyone. Hurting is the furthest thing from our minds.”

“Two of us have died here.”

“No one feels worse about that than I do.”

“Really?”

“Come on, it's back to quarters for you, young lady.”

She shrugs. “It's up to you.” She relaxes her legs and allows Rogers to lead her through the double doors.

“Do you have children yourself?” she asks.

Cal Rogers is swiping his ID card through the door's reader, but the reader seems not to be working—or necessary. The doors swing open to his touch.

Separated as he has been from the grim business of imprisonment and the forced extraction of genetic data, Rogers is slow to recognize just how insanely out of control the situation is—he actually thinks that those bodies slumped against the wall are part of some kind of game. Or exercise? A drill?

Those two seconds of fantasy will be the last time he is not in agony. But the agony will not be without its end point. He is slammed against the wall. He feels the impossible pain of teeth in flesh. His final thought:
It's going for my liver.

All of the surviving wild children are out—instinctively obeying the call to quit the city. The doors to their enclosures are open wide. The stench of their imprisonment comes off them in waves. Their excited, raucous voices fill the air like a rain of coins.
Hurry, hurry.

 There is no time for further retribution. Some of the bodies against the wall are dead, others…maybe not. But time is what matters now. Time. Revenge does not matter, nor does justice. All that matters is freedom, and freedom is theirs. Some upright and some on all fours, evolution's errors streak down the hall toward the loading dock.

Is it just New Yorkers, or do the residents of all the great and complicated cities of the world—London, Singapore, Istanbul, Rio—learn to live without entirely seeing what is happening right before their eyes? In the multitudes, all manner of human variation exists, unseen. And when something odd
is
noted, there is rarely time or space to take it in and evaluate its meaning. Hoodlums, mystics, the terminally ill pass city dwellers by like little bursts of light, apprehended and then gone, leaving no trace. Here comes a man dragging his useless leg, making his way forward on the pavement on one hardworking leg, like a gondolier poling up a concrete river. Here comes a nun with a shiner. Here is a couple in their forties on their way to see a charlatan who runs a so-called fertility clinic. Here is a cop who has just learned that a man whom he crookedly sent to prison is being released. Here comes a father and his two young daughters whom he shepherds quickly, as they are on their way to the hospital where the girls' mother, dying of cancer, wanly awaits them. It's summer, and more than any other season, there are children among the urbanites. Children of all stations, children bearing destinies as light as spun sugar or burdens too massive to be borne. Boys afraid to go home. Girls in terror of their mothers' new boyfriends. Children who have not had breakfast today. Children who have not had breakfast since school let out. Children with bruises under their shirts. Children on meds administered by those in charge of their well-being. Children on speed. Children dizzy, sleepy, and growing fat from their drugs, dragged through the psychoactive alphabet from Abilify to Zoloft. Children with weapons in their pockets.

Are they invisible? They might as well be. They are flesh, but they come and go in a flash. How can anyone be expected to notice, much less care? Too many, too fast. And who doesn't have plenty of problems of his or her own?

And so the feral boys and girls of the parks make their way through the city in twos and threes, safely unnoticed. Some glow; a few will spawn more winged babies. We are at only the beginning of the breathtaking dance between science and nature. What has been done with the atom will be done with the gene.

To Pelham Bay Park! Those with money—and who can stand the confinement and the noise—take the subway. Others, with Zoom dollars in their pockets, share taxis. Still others go on foot, some straight up Broadway, some on the bike paths along the Hudson.

Mayor Morris and his wife are having the windows of Gracie Mansion soundproofed. Once the work is complete, it is their fondest hope that passersby will no longer stop and cock their heads curiously toward the windows, wondering if what they are hearing is the howl of a dog or the wild cries of a caged child.

Alice, Adam, and Rodolfo wait for the number 6. They are the last ones from the Upper West Side pack to make their way north. The air in the subway is filthy and hot. The other people waiting for the train look as if they are hovering in some imperiled state between life and death. A strong wind could blow them in either direction—but no wind can enter this tunnel several feet beneath the stinking sidewalk. The electronic message board promises that the next uptown 6 will arrive in four minutes. But it has been saying that for a while…

“You's okay?” Rodolfo asks Alice.

She shrugs, then poses the same question to Adam.

“I miss Mom,” says Adam.

“Our mother's dead. We watched it happen.”

“I mean Aunt Cynthia. She
is
our mother. Now.”

“We don't have a mother, Adam. We never did and we never will. When you have a mother, you're
like
her. Do you actually think we're like Aunt Cynthia?”

“In some ways,” Adam says, looking away. He's afraid he is going to cry, and he doesn't want his sister to see his eyes.

Alice glances over at Rodolfo. He is staring at her. She can't discern if he is furious or if it's just his usual over-the-top intensity. She moves closer to him, her fingers wiggling in the air. She plucks at the shoulder of his T-shirt.

“Hi,” she whispers.

“Don't leave,” Rodolfo says. “Please.”

Alice doesn't say anything.

The arrival board is suddenly functioning again. The northbound 6, it says, is approaching the station. Alice cranes her neck, looks down the long sooty tunnel. The distant light of the oncoming train shines in the darkness.

The Hotel Hedley on East Twenty-Sixth Street is not luxurious, to say the least. There are a few hipsters who have a special affection for the place because it reminds them of what New York was like in the 1970s and early 1980s, when the city teetered on the brink of collapse and the stink of empty municipal coffers was everywhere, like the smell of mildew on a scarf. Now it seems as if the addicts and scammers and unshaven German documentary filmmakers from that era have found a permanent home at the Hedley. The rooms are tiny, the beds are penitential, and any windows that don't look directly at a brick wall have views of an air shaft. But at the Hedley, it is not only the ambience that recalls the 1970s; the prices are old-fashioned too, and it is here that Dennis has been staying since leaving his apartment and the mess therein on Ocean Parkway.

He cannot stop dosing himself with his ever-dwindling stash of Zoom, even now as he walks through the Hedley lobby with his phone to his ear. The Borman and Davis line rings and rings—no answer, no voice mail, nothing. Screw it.

It's gotten to the point where he actually
knows
people lurking in this lobby, this dank repository of dozens of fake ficus trees. The furniture looks as if it's been dragged out of the world's most melancholy Hopper painting; the bellman looks as if he has done freelance work as a hit man; and the desk clerk stands rigidly tall with an oxygen cannula clipped to his nose and a large No Smoking sign in front of him—the clerk is legitimately worried about exploding.

Oh yes, yes, yes. Dennis has to upgrade his situation, and today he aims to pick up those twins, get his bonus money, and start looking in earnest for a decent place to live. Getting them should be, he thinks, relatively easy. He knows where they live. It'll just be a matter of needling them, putting them in the van.

How many times has the phone at Borman and Davis rung? Thirty?

Dennis's face is gray and moist, like wet clay. He walks with a bowlegged gait, maneuvering one of those fabled eight-hour erections the hawkers of ED medicine brag/warn about. Dennis very much doubts there is anything on the market that can turn a noodle into a battering ram, but yesterday's gulp of Zoom is still working its mysterious way through him. He is half mad with desire. As determined as he is to capture those twins and get his reward, he is nearly as focused on putting his stiff prick inside a woman—in his imagination, it will be like a blacksmith cooling his red-hot tongs by plunging them into a bucket of water: the sizzle, the steam, the relief.

His Watertight van is parked on the street, a block from the hotel. As he gets in, he sees, to his surprise, that a parking ticket has been placed under the windshield wiper—usually the cops are good sports about his van, figuring he's on a job somewhere and cutting him some slack. Oh, well. The van is not registered in his name and he couldn't care less about parking fines. It's Borman and Davis's baby to rock.

He is dressed in loose-fitting clothes. The weather is beastly. Even in the raspy, slightly rancid air-conditioning of the van, he is pouring perspiration. Sweat drips from his armpits, from the tip of his nose. His underwear feels like a slur of wet cardboard. His ankles are wet. He knows this profusion of perspiration is in all likelihood a side effect of the Zoom—but hey, you've got to pay to play, right?

Traffic is not too bad. At least, not by Manhattan standards. (If cars were moving in such a molasses ooze in any other city, you'd think there'd been an explosion somewhere or that a sci-fi monster was loose on the streets, hurling buses and breathing sulfur.) He travels north on Madison. The sidewalks are filled with shockingly good-looking people. The shops display their legendary brands.

There is a vial of Zoom in his breast pocket. He pulls it out, looks at it, tilts it back and forth; the blood leaves a smudgy trace of itself along the glass. Then, feeling kind of “what the heck,” he pops the cork out of it (using his thumbnail) and downs his second Zoom hit of the day.

Soon enough, he arrives at the house. There is a parking space (saved especially for him by a fire hydrant) close to the front door. The twins are not very big; he can fling one over each shoulder, toss them in the back, and have them in Flushing by one o'clock, where for all he cares the researchers can scoop out their DNA like the gooey web of seeds in a cantaloupe.

He kills the engine and sits there for a moment.
Think,
he orders himself. But he's not completely certain what he is supposed to be thinking about. He opens the glove compartment. A few used needles fall out. He doesn't bother to retrieve them. They sink into the litter on the van's floor, the PayDay wrappers, the Red Bull cans, the sucked-pale Stim-U-Dents. He closes the glove compartment and thinks:
The English call it a glove box. That is so stupid.

What he has not thought about is how to gain entrance to the twins' house. He wants those freaking twins so badly, he would even consider just hurtling himself through the window of their fancy house and grabbing them. That obviously is not a good plan, not smart, not even viable. He is aware that he is not thinking clearly. Desire, sheer carnality—which he is used to experiencing as a kind of distant thunder, a warning of sexual weather that seems to be rolling in but that never quite lives up to its rumbling fanfare—desire is now, as Van Morrison would have it, a full-force gale. He is pelted by it, drenched. He is caught on the vast open prairie of his aloneness and there is nothing to shelter him from this storm of desire. All he can do to protect himself is remember that he is not thinking very clearly…