The Thousand - Kevin Guilfoile [163]
“After you left your mother’s apartment, you had another attack. We plucked you off the street and brought you back here. To help you. Protect you. We’re not the bad guys, Canada.”
Sadly, that might even be true, Canada thought.
She pushed the remote at him, shaking it at his face in lieu of instructions.
The doctor shifted, like he had been sitting on his wallet. “You don’t want that.”
Words were coming to her slowly, but not quite the right ones. She tried to explain that some other self had taken over since the spider had been turned off—some angry, uncontrollable self—and she wanted the spider back on and the real her to come forward, to take charge, but it all came out of her mouth this way: “Kill this bitch.”
“It’s going to hurt.”
“It hurts.” Now, she meant. It hurts now.
“Canada, let us help you. You think the neurostimulator helped you see the truth, but it only showed you a high-definition illusion. We can show you reality, which only a very few people in history have ever been witness to. We can complete your father’s dream. But we need to free you from that device in your head. We need to give it to somebody who can put it to good use. He’s from China. A composer like your dad. He’s had ADHD his entire life, like your dad. Like you. Marlena identified him as a candidate. He’s going to use it the way Solomon did, to peer into corners of the universe that none of us has ever seen, and he’ll produce a glorious work of art, and we will show you how to appreciate it, and your new life will make your old life seem like a foolish waste. We will take care of Steve Rhodes and this Wayne Jennings and this mess outside, and your new life, reunited with your mother, can start right now if you just trust us. If you just trust me.”
She thought, Nada isn’t here right now, which is too bad for you. You might have been able to reason with her. But she doubted it.
She didn’t say that or anything else. Instead, she shook the remote at him with one hand and with the other she flipped the top off a gallon bottle of bleach and took one step toward the bloody cartilage dangling from the side of his head.
66
ACHING, cramping, having made the long, painful climb to the top of the dumbwaiter shaft, Wayne followed Hugh’s directions down the third-floor hallway. It smelled of alcohol and must. He looked up and down the empty hall and then a door started to open next to him. He panicked and pulled the knob and held it shut.
A long pause and then a loud “What the hell?” A man’s voice.
Wayne put his hand on the knob and lowered his voice into a half-understandable mumble. “She in there?”
Another pause and then a slow and skeptical, “No. Who is this?”
Holding the door shut tight with his left hand, he fished in his pockets with his right and found the three pennies Ginny had returned to him in the desert, the change James and Hale and the Rain Man didn’t want. On the other side, someone pulled hard on the door, and Wayne squeezed the knob tight to make sure it wouldn’t turn. With the thick fingers of his right hand, he arranged the three pennies into a stack and pressed them at lock height between door and frame. Now the knob couldn’t be turned from the inside.
“Hey! Who are you? Get me the hell out of here!”
Wayne didn’t reply, but he sidestepped the door and tapped the point of the knife on his chin. Even now, under extraordinary circumstances, he was feeling jealousy and confusion—all the emotions that always accompanied the thought of Nada Gold.
“Where’s the girl?” Wayne said, muffling his voice against his shirt.
The man on the other side of the door paused. “Who is that?”
Wayne said nothing.
After a few frustrated beats, the voice said, “Come on! Get me the hell out!”
Footsteps around the corner.
Wayne took two long, quick, quiet steps to a door he hoped was unlocked and opened it to a room he prayed was empty. It was dark. A closet. He shut himself inside.
He could hear someone pulling and pushing on the knob to Nada’s room, trying to shake the pennies loose. The first voice, unmuffled: “Son of