Girl in the Arena - Lise Haines [83]
—She married a Glad just last year. They’re expecting their first child in the fall. The thing is, Lyn, you would be a rich woman if you married Uber. You could hire a full-time caregiver to help with your brother. Have you considered making it easy on yourself?
I just have to laugh.
—My mother illustrated that there’s nothing easy about widowhood. It only seemed to lead to more widowhood.
—I don’t have full authority to make this happen, but I’ll start the meetings on it right away. I’ll hope to have an answer for you by the end of the day. Are you staying in New York tonight? Can my wife and I take you to dinner?
—I’m going to see the superheroes exhibit at the Metropolitan.
—See if you can get some ideas for a fighting outfit?
—Something like that. Then I’m taking the train back.
He goes over to his desk again, picks up a piece of paper and a pen and says, —Could I get your phone number?
As I recite it, he seems to write this out, then he hands me the pad.
—Is this right? he asks.
I read: I think you should see something.
—Yes, that’s right, I say.
As I gather my things to leave, my eyes wander around the office. Maybe I’ll find a mic popping out of a flowerpot, a hidden camera. When he opens his office door, staff members are lined up in the hallway, waiting for a look at me.
—Everyone get back to work, he says with a broad smile.
Though they shift a little, they remain essentially in place, whispering among themselves, until we go through the large doors back to the lobby. Here he summons the elevator and then asks the receptionist to go on some errand that I sense might be bogus. Once we’re inside, he puts a key into the control panel to get us up to the fifteenth floor, which is one more floor than I understood Caesar’s to own, given that there is no thirteenth floor. I start to open my mouth to say something but he shakes his head just enough to make me wait. Before we get out of the elevator, he punches a button to send the car back down to the lobby. We step out into a large space with a wet bar along one wall, chairs stacked in high towers. It appears to be a kind of banquet room, with a small stage and a wooden floor, perhaps for dancing. Again the windows onto the city. The sun has just crested the high-rises.
He leans in toward me and I flinch.
I can barely hear him when he says, —If I turn on the lights, someone might find us.
—Okay, I whisper back.
There are two doors leading to another room, maybe a closet. He unlocks these and pulls the doors open into another dark space, this one windowless, I can’t tell how deep. I’m not sure what I’m looking at at first. It seems to be some kind of tank. There’s a strong chemical smell. Even when my eyes adjust, it’s just too dark. He turns on a tiny penlight and hands it to me, standing just behind me.
There he is. There’s Tommy.
tommy.
He’s floating in a sealed glass tank, a vitrine full of formaldehyde. All of his parts have been sewn back together. His eyes shut, he’s still wearing his gladiator costume. They have made Tommy into something like Damien Hirst’s Tiger Shark once displayed in an art exhibit titled The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living.
I gasp and LeRoy gently covers my mouth. Then he whispers, close to my ear.
—They’re trying to sell him to a foreign collector.
I shake my head back and forth, tears run from my eyes and over his hand that he gently removes now. I turn around and face him. We both whisper now.
—They? Not you?
—If you learn that Tommy’s body has disappeared into an unmarked plot, long before it’s sold off, you’ll know there are more than partyliners around here. But it might not be safe for you to come here again.
I nod in agreement.
—I’ll do what I can to get your contract through, though