Exit (7 page)

She stopped her car in front of his building. "Alex, listen carefully. I need a favor. It's simple, but critical. You can't be late. Not even a few minutes."

Alex sat up straight in the front seat, a defendant seeing the jury return from deliberation.

"Tonight, you go back to the Gateway for the final screening. At exactly eleven-thirty, while the movie is ending or the trailer is playing before the lights go on, go to the left side of the screen and open the exit door."

"What?"

"Open the door, but
do not
go outside. Just…open the door. Got it?
Open
the door"—then she dropped the bomb—"and wait for me."

"Rayne, what's…"

"Not now. No time. There's somewhere I have to go."

"Does this have something to do with the guitar player across the street?"

She nodded. "Really, I have to go. Please, promise me you will open the door at eleven-thirty."

Confusion clouded his eyes, but he shook his head.

"One more thing. It's a backup plan, and I don't want to upset you."

"Upset me? You're freaking me out." There was no dark humor in his voice.

"If you open the door and I'm not there, return the following night at eleven-thirty and do it again. Open the door. No matter what."

"Rayne, this is not…this is…"

"Be careful in there. Get in, get out. Got it?"

He stared at her in silence for a moment. "Promise."

Rayne leaned over and kissed him lightly. "Thank you."

Alex looked startled by the kiss. He got out of the car. "Be careful, Rayne."

She just said, "I'm getting him back," and then hit the gas.

She shot over to a used clothing store up by MIT, called the Garment District, which always catered to the Halloween crowd. She hustled inside and bought a cheap blond wig, makeup, and a pink jacket that had gone out of fashion fifty years ago with the bullet bra. Perfect. She checked the time, jumped back inside her Buick, and returned to the Square.

Shay smiled nervously when Rayne approached and identified herself.

"Love your outfit," she told Rayne.

"Traveling clothes."

Upon hearing that, Shay's smile vanished.

Rayne put a hand up and adjusted her blond wig over her dark chestnut hair. She normally used very little or no makeup. Tonight she had put on bright red lipstick, eye liner, mascara. Her blazing pink jacket needed to be subdued with a fire extinguisher.

"You’re going back inside," Shay said. It was not a question.

Rayne nodded. She told Shay what she had seen on the screen, and her plan.

Shay listened as her eyes clouded over.

Finally, Rayne said, "Let's exchange numbers." She dug into her purse for paper and a pen, wrote them down, tore the paper in half.

Shay took the slip of paper.

"The guy I was with tonight, Alex, you met him. He's coming back. He's opening the door at eleven thirty." Rayne ran a hand through her wig, which could scour a burned skillet. "I'll see you then."

Shay kept a steady gaze but said nothing.

"It's late. I have to get in there." Rayne leaned forward and hugged her. "Thanks for the information. You have no idea how much you helped me. You saved me so much time."

"You don’t seem like someone who changes her mind very easily, so I won't try to talk you out of it."

Rayne responded with a nod.

"I'll stay out here tonight and wait," Shay said, and hugged her. "Get back and see me."

"Promise." Then she put on a pair of sunglasses, turned and went across the street.

The crazy blond with the vibrant lipstick got a ticket from the silent cashier. The crazy blond hoped the cashier didn't recognize her and become suspicious. Then the sounds of traffic were canceled when the lobby door closed behind her.

She moved quickly through the musty foyer, into the dark theater, seeing a skyline of heads and shoulders between empty seats. Black shadows against a lit screen.

She headed straight for the left exit door. She looked up at the dark EXIT sign, touched the crash bar. The red sign lit up as if awoken.

The time was about 8:30 PM. Alex Portland would be at this exact spot in three hours. For an instant, she thought of the security camera clock on her wall, and the Neighborhood Watch sign next to it with the words:

We Look Out for Each Other

Tim
.

The crazy blond pushed the crash bar, and stepped through the door.

CHAPTER 7

At 7:30 PM Tim Crowe, disguised as a pirate with a long gray headscarf and a black patch over his bad eye, headed toward his secret meeting with the Phantom of the Opera. From Harvard Square, he could arrive at the Boathouse within fifteen minutes or so. He felt protected by the disguise. Emboldened. Maybe it was rash, but he couldn't resist. He cut over toward the Gateway, and slowed down by the mouth of the alley. He scanned the area, and then entered the alley at a normal pace. He kept his head tipped down, which put the blue bubble against his retina. If his healing process went according to plan, today marked the seventh and last day to remain face-down. His face-down posture had been a bust over the last twenty-four hours. The blue bubble had been a Ping-Pong ball ricocheting inside his eye.

The rear exit was the sole link to his former life. His former life?
Ha!
He couldn't glimpse
Timothy Crowe's Life 1.0
with the freaking Hubble Space Telescope. Perhaps he could view it with the Rubble Telescope, a device designed to penetrate parallel worlds and show the viewer that their previous life had imploded, collapsed into smoky ruins.

Get a grip. Concentrate.

Ultimately, he had to figure out a way to re-enter the building. Crack the cosmic code. He remained on alert, recalling the Phantom's warning that the alley was probably monitored. The door came into view. He moved closer in the dim moonlight. He hesitated, almost stopped as he went by, his eyes nailed to the door.

The door. A Berlin Wall of a whacked-out world, a steel barrier between two universes. The Gateway Door enabled unwitting emigration and defection.
Nice to see you, step right through.
The East German guard towers were replaced by drones. The alley was the infamous death strip. The no-man's land.

He concentrated on meeting up with the Phantom. He walked face-down, the blue bubble moving behind his eye patch. And then he spotted a lone scrap of paper, a small, rectangular shape on the pavement outside the door. Barely discernible in the lunar light, a pale smudge in the shadows. He stepped over, his shoe crunching a crispy leaf in the quiet alley, and picked it up.

He experienced the sensation of being hit with a sledgehammer. He saw a picture of a couple facing a camera. An intriguing, dark-eyed woman with long dark hair, long bangs, and a face shaped like a diamond. Rayne Moore and…

Tim's knees nearly buckled. He couldn't puzzle through this discovery and its implications. Not yet. Nor could he linger in the alley. Somewhere in his skull, he heard the soundtrack of his current life:
weeeooo…weeeooo…weeeooo
. It was unsafe here. The drones could swoop down the alley at anytime. He took a last glance at the door, slipped the picture into his pocket, and began to turn away. An idea stopped him. He unpeeled the taped picture of the
mirror
on his army field jacket's pocket, the
medicine cabinet mirror
, and set it on the exact spot on the ground. He quickly headed for the other end of the alley.

Rayne? Are you here, Rayne?

He walked a mile at a brisk pace, through the streets of Cambridge to the bank of the Charles River on Memorial Drive, and then slowed down as he approached the Harvard Boathouse. Along the way he kept thinking about the photo, pondered its tortuous flight from Rayne's possession to here, landing on the ground. Contemplation only deepened its inscrutability, and darkened its mystery. Still, he saw it as a sign of hope, a straw to grasp in this netherworld.

Tim moved along a path for pedestrians and bicycles bordering the riverbank on his left, past the deserted Boathouse with its dark windows and vacant parking lot. He passed a dead drinking fountain, an empty bicycle rack. Just ahead, the asphalt path curved toward the river and snaked under an overpass. There was a short tunnel inside, a shortcut for cyclists and joggers to avoid traffic, which went under a busy street. On the other side of the tunnel, the narrow path continued for a few miles alongside the river. The tunnel itself ran the length of a semi-trailer truck. Tim assumed the Phantom had picked this dark spot because it was an enclosed space, hidden from view except for the opening on each end. Drones overhead could not see it.

He saw no one walking or cycling in the vicinity. Light traffic rolled by on the bridge over the tunnel, and also along the river on Memorial Drive. He kept his eyes on the mouth of the tunnel, seeing no sign of the Phantom.

At the edge of the tunnel he stopped and peered inside. Nothing. When he stepped forward, a voice said, "Avast ye matey! Would that be Blackbeard the Pirate?"

"Shiver me timbers, 'tis I."

The Phantom emerged from the murky underpass, a white mask floating in the darkness. He stepped toward the tunnel's opening. "Don't be a wayward minnow, now—come walk the plank!"

"I've been walking the goddamn plank since last night."

"Ye are not yet gone to Davy Jones's locker. Many pirates met their demise on the high seas. With luck, you shall return safely home to Cambridge."

"Provided I get off the plank."

"Step inside my hideout, Timothy, and away from the outside and that streetlamp yonder. Make yourself at home. I'm afraid my electricity, heat and water have been shut off, so I shan't offer you a snack or a cocktail. No need to wipe your feet, my floor is made of dirt."

"This is very comfy. Good air circulation. How's the rent here?"

"Very reasonable. The only downside is that you may get run over by a bicyclist while napping. When it rains, the living room floods. And the thermostat is broken."

"Reasonable rent comes with restrictions."

"Aye, matey. Now, not to be rude, let's get down to business before we're interrupted by a jogger running through my living room." He paused for a moment, and when he spoke again, all levity vanished from his voice. "I have something to tell you that I think you should be aware of."

Tim said in a flat tone, "More bad news?"

"Yes. But it's better you hear it than not. And again, everything I know is based on limited information. I'm just peeking through a keyhole, and not seeing the big picture. And by the way, your pirate costume is a vast improvement over the landscaper's ensemble."

"I went to the store you suggested. When I saw the pirate box with the eye patch, well, it was perfect." Tim told him about his recent eye surgery.

"Detached retina? Well, your pirate costume is a perfect match with your bad eye. To my genuine surprise, I've come to see that my Phantom of the Opera outfit was a rather prescient pick. Are you familiar with the novel?"

"A little, yes."

"The Phantom lives in the cellars of the Opera, and creates mischief such as dropping a chandelier into the audience, which is bad for ticket sales. At one point he kidnaps a beautiful singer, who unmasks him. He has the face of a rotting corpse. And so on."

Tim looked at the masked man, and sensed that things were about to go downhill fast.

"I read the novel years ago. I don't recall how the Phantom was disfigured. Nor do I know how it happened to me. But it did."

Then the Phantom of the Opera, also known as James Carney, pulled off his mask. In the pale light from a distant streetlamp, Tim saw Carney's face for the first time, which was mottled with small skin lesions. A large red legion hung below one eyelid like a pus-filled pimple. When Carney opened the collar of his shirt, more red lesions appeared.

Tim tried to conceal his repulsion with a blank expression. The shared silence was unsettling. He finally said, "What is it? What does it mean?"

"It means, I suppose, that things are not going swimmingly for me. It means, I suspect, that as the Phantom of the Opera, I may soon be hearing the fat lady sing. Please forgive my black humor, but at the moment it's the only arrow in my quiver."

Tim managed to stay on his feet in the dirty tunnel, but really needed to sit down. Or collapse. How could things get so bad, so fast?

"Here's my guess," the unmasked James Carney said. "I've been here for three days, and now, after about seventy-two hours, I'm showing symptoms of a disease, a virus, who knows what? Is this caused by a virus, bacteria, germs from a parallel world? I don't know. But I keep returning to the same thought. I'm in a parallel world of a sort. A whole new environment. I'm an outsider who crashes into this strange, foreign land. So maybe, Tim, at the heart of it, I'm a bad fit. A fish out of water. Maybe my body is breaking down."

Tim was speechless.

"So you're probably thinking, 'Am I next?'"

Tim just nodded in the dark.

"I don’t know. Perhaps it's just me, my own bad luck." His black cape rose and fell when he shrugged. "Now, James Carney must return as the Phantom of the Opera." He pulled the mask back on. "Ouila!"

Tim took a deep breath and massaged the corners of his eyes. Fortunately he hadn't eaten all day; if he had, he'd be leaning over and puking. "Well," he finally said, "what's your next step?"

"There's only one. I need to exit out of here. I need to get back through the theater door. What's changed today is that now I know I'm running out of time. Faster than I feared. I've got DR1 and EyeSoar coming after me; I'm under constant surveillance; and now my body is breaking down. Either I get through the door, fast, or it's all over for me. Good night, America."

"I'm so sorry, James, really."

"When I think about it, my deteriorating health is my second biggest problem. The thing that's really keeping me alive,
both of us
, is Halloween. When we put on costumes, we buy time. We stay concealed. How utterly strange is that? Two adult men saved by Halloween. But tomorrow is November First. Tomorrow you and I may be the only two people in the entire state, or country, that's still wearing a costume. Imagine a pirate and the Phantom of the Opera sashaying down a crowded street. Not very subtle, Tim. Our clock is ticking. If we keep the costumes on, we're noticed. If we take the costumes off, we're noticed. So…" he said, and clapped his hands together with feigned optimism.

In the dark, James stepped back inside the tunnel and picked up something leaning against the concrete wall. Tim squinted, moved toward him and heard a metallic clang, and saw two crowbars.

"I broke into a tool shed at the park across the river. An outdoor public theater is there that has plays and musicals in the summertime. So they do a lot of carpentry, tearing down and building up stage sets."

"You gonna crowbar the door?"

"Unless you have a better idea."

"Only if I had a stick of dynamite."

"
'Only if'
won't cut it."

"I know."

"I've got to try something," the Phantom said. "I don’t think knocking on the door will work. As you know, I already tried that. And in the meantime, the clock is ticking."

"Okay, what can I do?"

"I always think it's best to travel alone, less visibility, less attention. Besides, if anything happens to one, the other won't get caught because of proximity."

"Makes sense."

"Take this crowbar, so we'll each have one. We'll separate and meet back at the alley. If you hustle, you should be there in fifteen minutes or so. Just to be safe, how about I meet you in twenty minutes. Twenty-five tops."

"Sure."

"We'll hit the door together."

"Bang the fuck out of it," Tim said.

"In layman's terms, yes. Now, you return the same way you came. I'll exit back here," he said, and cocked his thumb over his shoulder, "then go up top, and make my way over through side streets."

"Okay," Tim said. He started to turn when a red dot caught his eye. He tapped the Phantom's arm, pressed a vertical finger to his lips to indicate silence, and pointed his crowbar at the middle of the cavern. Something small hovered by the ceiling. A tiny red light blinked, barely noticeable in the dark. Soon it blinked again. Tim imagined it an electronic bat hanging in a cave.

The Phantom squeezed Tim's bicep and pointed at the opening where Tim had first entered. Then the Phantom turned the other way. He ran past the object, swung his crowbar at it and missed when the small insect flew off the ceiling.

Tim saw him exit the tunnel at the opposite end.