He had opened his eyes, and yet the dark remained. At first he wondered if he was somehow still in his home, but it was far too cold. He always kept the digital thermostat set at exactly 71.5 degrees. Always. Vanessa often teased him about his precision. During his lifetime, some people had considered Gerard’s need for order close to being anal or even OCD. Vanessa, however, understood. She both appreciated it and found it to be a bonus. “It is what makes you a great scientist and a caring man,” Vanessa had told him once. She explained to him her theory that people we now consider “on the spectrum” were, in the past, the geniuses in art, science, and literature, but now, with medications and diagnoses, we flatten them out, make them more uniform, dull their senses.
“Genius comes from the unusual,” Vanessa had explained to him.
“And I’m unusual?”
“In the very best way, my sweet.”
But as his heart swelled from the memory, Gerard couldn’t help but notice the strange smell. Something damp and old and musty and like . . .
Like dirt. Like fresh soil.
Panic suddenly seized him. Still in pitch-darkness, Gerard tried to lift his hands to his face. He couldn’t. There was something binding his wrists. It felt like a rope or, no, something thinner. Wire maybe. He tried to move his legs. They were bound together. He clenched his stomach muscles and tried to swing both legs into the air, but they hit something. Something wooden. Right above him. Like he was in. . . .
His body started bucking in fear.
Where was he? Where was Vanessa?
“Hello?” he shouted. “Hello?”
Gerard tried to sit up, but there was a belt around his chest too. He couldn’t move. He waited for his eyes to get used to the dark, but that wasn’t happening fast enough.
“Hello? Someone? Please help me!”
He heard a noise now. Right above him. It sounded like scraping or shuffling or . . .
Or footsteps?
Footsteps right above him.
Gerard thought about the dark. He thought about the smell of fresh soil. The answer was suddenly so obvious, yet it made no sense.
I’m underground, he thought. I’m underground.
And then he started to scream.
Chapter 3
Kat passed out more than slept.
As it did every weekday, her iPod alarm woke her with a favorite random song—this morning’s was “Bulletproof Weeks” by Matt Nathanson—at six A.M. It had not escaped her attention that she was sleeping in the very bed where she had slept with Jeff all those years ago. The room still had the dark wood paneling. The previous owner had been a violin player at the New York Philharmonic who’d decided to make the entire six-hundred-square-foot apartment look like the inside of an old boat. It was all dark wood and portholes for windows. She and Jeff had laughed about it, making dumb double entendres about making the boat rock or capsizing or calling for a life raft, whatever.
Love makes the cloying somehow poignant.
“This place,” Jeff would say. “It’s so not you.”
He, of course, had viewed his undergraduate fiancée as brighter and cheerier than her surroundings, but now, eighteen years later, anyone stepping into her abode thought the place fit Kat perfectly. In the same way you hear how spouses start looking like each other as the years piled on, she had started becoming this apartment.
Kat debated staying in bed and catching a few more Zs, but class would be starting in fifteen minutes. Her instructor, Aqua, a diminutive transvestite with a schizophrenic personality disorder, never accepted anything but life-threatening excuses for missing class. Besides, Stacy might be there, and Kat hoped to run this whole Jeff development past her. Kat threw on her yoga pants and tank top, grabbed a water bottle, and started for the door. Her gaze got caught up on the computer sitting on her desk.
Ah, what’s the harm in taking a quick look?
The YouAreJustMyType.com home page was still up, though it had signed her out after two hours of inactivity. They splashed an “exciting introductory offer” to “Newcomers” (who else would be eligible for an introductory offer?), a month of unlimited access (whatever that meant) for just $5.74 “discreetly billed” (huh?) to your credit card. Luckily for Kat, Stacy had already bought her a full year. Yippee.
Kat put her name and password back into the fields and hit RETURN. There were messages now from men. She ignored them. She found Jeff’s page—she had, of course, bookmarked it.
She clicked the REPLY button. Her fingers rested on the keypad.
What should she say?
Nothing. Not right now anyway. Think it through. Time was a-wasting. Class was about to begin. Kat shook her head, stood, and headed out the door. As she did every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, Kat jogged up to 72nd Street and entered Central Park. The mayor of Strawberry Fields, a performance artist who made his living on tourist tipping, was already laying out his flowers on the John Lennon Imagine memorial tiles. He did it nearly every day, but he was rarely out this early. “Hey, Kat,” he said, handing her a rose.
She took it. “Morning, Gary.”
She hurried past Bethesda’s upper terrace. The Lake was still quiet—no boats out yet—but the water spouting off the fountain glistened like a beaded curtain. Kat veered to the path on the left, coming up near the giant statue of Hans Christian Andersen. Tyrell and Billy, the same two homeless men (if they were homeless—for all she knew, they lived in the San Remo and just dressed this way) who sat here every morning, were, as always, playing gin rummy.
“Ass looking good, girl,” Tyrell said.
“Yours too,” Kat replied.
Tyrell loved that. He stood up, did a little twerking, and slapped Billy five—dropping his cards on the path in the process. Billy scolded him.
“Pick those up!” Billy shouted.
“Just calm down, will ya?” To Kat: “Class this morning?”
“Yep. How many people?”
“Eight.”
“Did Stacy walk by yet?”
At just the mention of her name, both men removed their hats and placed them over their hearts in respect. Billy muttered, “Lord have mercy.”
Kat frowned.
Tyrell said, “Not yet.”
She continued to the right and circled around Conservatory Water. There were model boats racing early this morning. Behind the Kerbs Boathouse, she found Aqua sitting cross-legged. His eyes were closed. Aqua, the product of an African American father and a Jewish mother, liked to describe his skin as mocha latte with a splash of whipped cream. He was petite and lithe and, right now, sat with a complete stillness so at odds with the manic boy she had befriended many years ago.