“Best way to clear the air is to have it all out in the open!” A man’s voice. Outside. In the courtyard.
Cal’s fingers closed into a fist, and the puppet lost all animation. The mouth shut, and the eyes curled over—it was like watching a soul slip out of a body. Cal dropped the hand, and Apollo watched the guards move quickly to the two windows and look down.
One of them said, “Another man.”
Cal looked back at Apollo with such fury, he thought she’d order the guards to tear his skull open right there.
“You didn’t come alone,” she hissed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Apollo wanted to explain. He’d completely forgotten about William from the moment he’d stepped into this room.
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view,” William Wheeler shouted in the courtyard. He sounded giddy. Or insane. “Until you climb into his skin and walk around in it!”
“Seclusion rooms,” Cal ordered. “Both of them.”
THE SECLUSION ROOMS were located in the Tuberculosis Pavilion. It was the largest, best-equipped building in the complex, four stories of red brick with enough bed space, in its prime, for three hundred patients. It was the one structure Cal declared out of bounds for the members of her community. The women had even designed makeshift barriers to keep the kids out, stacks of tattered furniture and rubble that would be tough for most young children to scale. The only area of the building ever put to use were these seclusion rooms, a makeshift prison.
Cal and her guards walked Apollo and William to the pavilion. While one twin pried away the boards tacked over the doorway, the other stood behind the prisoners, mace at the ready. This one held up William’s phone.
“What was he doing when they found him?” Cal asked.
The pop of wooden boards sounded like gunshots.
“He was on the shoreline with the phone’s light on. Just standing there waving it over his head, side to side.”
“Did he have a signal?” Cal asked, taking the phone. “Could he make a call?”
“No,” the guard said. “He was just waving the thing.”
Apollo tried to catch William’s eye, but it wasn’t working. William looked at the night sky as if he was out strolling. He smiled faintly. If not for the location, you’d have thought he was a middle-aged man stargazing in his backyard.
Cal growled her next question. “Why the fuck haven’t you destroyed this yet?”
“Thought you should see what else he has on the phone.”
The last of the boards were freed from the entry door, and the other guard opened it. Apollo couldn’t get any sense of the depth of the hallway or its width, the height of the ceiling. So dark inside, there might’ve been no floor beyond the threshold, just a bottomless pit.
“Oh God,” Cal said quietly as she scrolled through the phone. “This is Gretta’s husband?”
The guard behind Apollo pushed him forward, toward the shadowed hallway. Before he took a step, Cal smashed the phone into the back of William’s head. He stumbled forward but didn’t fall, so she hit him again. He barked, a real animal noise, but still he didn’t go down. One of the twins kicked the backs of William’s legs. He yelped and went to his hands and knees. His glasses flew off, and he scurried after them instantly, automatically. Cal brought the phone down five more times on William’s back. William lay in the dirt, huffing. She dropped the phone on the ground right near William’s head, and the guard who kicked him brought the mace down four times. It crunched and cracked. It died.
“We should tell her he’s here,” Cal said. “She’d want to be here when we kill him.”
“You have her phone number?” William asked. “Can you share it with me?”
The guards kicked at him until he went flat in the dirt.
Now Apollo was pushed forward. He entered the dark doorway cautiously. Apollo heard William groaning. He must’ve been trying to rise. He spat and coughed. Eventually the twins had to drag him in.
—
The seclusion rooms were essentially mesh cages. There was a dead bolt to lock patients in. All this had been put in place back when it was an infectious disease hospital, and it was kept that way for the years when this place serviced juvenile addicts. Now Apollo and William were in them. Two cages, side by side. They could see each other, talk with each other, though the mesh was too tightly woven for them to reach through.
“At least I got my glasses back,” William said as he sat with his back to the cage door.
There were window frames in each room, the windows smashed out long ago. Mesh wiring lay across the frames, so escape was impossible, but moonlight entered and gave each cage a blue tint.
“They knew who you were,” Apollo said. “Cal said your wife’s name. You kept a few things from me.” He stood at the window, looking outside.
“Well obviously,” William said. He turned his glasses around as if he could catch his reflection in them. He smiled as if he was checking his teeth for stains. Then he slipped them on and looked at Apollo.
“They beat the shit out of me!” Apollo shouted. His thighs still hurt, his lower back, too.
“I’m sorry for that,” William said. “Really. If I’m honest, I didn’t think we’d make it this far. I’ve been going up and down the East River for months. Been on every island looking for Cal, but somehow I kept missing this place. Then you spotted it the first time through.”
You don’t see, but you will.
Apollo heard Emma’s voice—the last words she ever spoke to him—and he shivered. He tugged at the red string on his middle finger. The knot held. Apollo looked up, slightly confused, overwhelmed, trying to make sense of so many things.
“If you’ve been going up and down this river for months, then you didn’t learn how to drive a boat today,” Apollo said.
“My father had me out on boats since I was a baby. We’re Norwegians originally. Sailing is in our blood.”
“But what’s the point of all this?” Apollo said. “Why keep it from me?”
“Trust takes time. But I didn’t pick your name out of a hat. I confess, I knew who you were.”
“From the news,” Apollo said, feeling so na?ve for having ever believed otherwise.
“Not the news about what Emma did. I knew who you were long before that. I read about your wife giving birth on the A train.”
“We never spoke to the press about that,” Apollo said.
“You didn’t,” William agreed. “But the press covered it. Emma was brought to Harlem Hospital. They issued a birth certificate. You remember what I told you before I gave you that video of Emma? A person who has a computer connection and who really cares can dig up nearly anything.”