The Privileges_ A Novel Part 13

"Dad," she said, "what-Dad, stop-what are you looking for?"

He looked up at her as if she were asking him to repeat something he'd already said ten times. "My shoes," he said. "Where the h.e.l.l have I put them? Do you know where they are?"

When her own panic and reluctance to restrain him physically reached the point where she started to cry, she caved in and buzzed for the night nurse, Kay, who was there in two seconds. Part of the reason she didn't like relying on Kay was that her father seemed, in his deluded way, to be in love with her, and flirted with her ridiculously. Despite the fact that Kay was about sixty and fat as a house, Cynthia didn't blame him. Her wry competence in even the scariest situation was f.u.c.king hot.

"Charlie, what are you worried about?" Kay said calmly. He stopped fidgeting and stared at her with his mouth open, like a baby. Cynthia felt herself starting to lose it again and went out into the corridor. Kay joined her out there about two minutes later.

"Is he all right?" Cynthia said, her voice shaking a little. "Did you give him anything?"

"He's fine," Kay said. "Just a little worked up. That happens. We try not to overdo it with the drugs."

"It's just, I don't know what I did to set him off. He was looking for his shoes. It sounds so stupid. But that's like the tenth time it happened. He was always kind of vain about his appearance. Maybe it's you he wants to look all dapper for."

Kay shook her head. "That's not it," she said, smoothing the front of her festive-looking uniform. "Believe it or not, that's kind of a common one, the shoes. Or the coat, or the purse if they're women. Had a lady in here just a few weeks ago who kept accusing me of stealing her hat."

Cynthia looked at her, confused.

"They know," Kay said. "On some level. They know they're about to go on a trip somewhere, and they need to get ready. Yeah," she said, nodding at Cynthia as she started to cry again, "I know, right? You think it's a metaphor or something until you've seen it a few times."

In Dongguan they stayed in a Western-style hotel where everyone spoke English and the food was badly cooked but still recognizable and you got a strange, xeroxed version of The New York Times The New York Times slipped under your door; but in the morning when they drove out to someplace called Changan, nothing outside the bubble of the car was the least bit familiar anymore. The foundation had built a new dormitory for the people who worked at some factory-it even had the Moreys' name on it, supposedly-and so they were all going out to have a look. One of the bodyguards had told April this part of China was called the Pearl River Delta, but that had to be some kind of marketing term because it was the b.u.t.t-ugliest place she'd ever seen in her life. Nothing but concrete and smoke and claustrophobia and a sky that had no hint of blue in it anywhere. The fact that every character on every sign she saw outside the hotel was completely incomprehensible to her made her feel like she was a baby. She kept trying to hold on to her contempt for all of it but in truth the sheer strangeness was so menacing that she sat with her arms folded the whole time just to keep from shaking. The driver offered three times to give her his coat. slipped under your door; but in the morning when they drove out to someplace called Changan, nothing outside the bubble of the car was the least bit familiar anymore. The foundation had built a new dormitory for the people who worked at some factory-it even had the Moreys' name on it, supposedly-and so they were all going out to have a look. One of the bodyguards had told April this part of China was called the Pearl River Delta, but that had to be some kind of marketing term because it was the b.u.t.t-ugliest place she'd ever seen in her life. Nothing but concrete and smoke and claustrophobia and a sky that had no hint of blue in it anywhere. The fact that every character on every sign she saw outside the hotel was completely incomprehensible to her made her feel like she was a baby. She kept trying to hold on to her contempt for all of it but in truth the sheer strangeness was so menacing that she sat with her arms folded the whole time just to keep from shaking. The driver offered three times to give her his coat.

Adam sat beside her in the back, reading that little photocopied Times Times from the hotel. Past his head she could see the bodyguard, whose motorcycle traveled with them everywhere. Why? Why did no one seem freaked out about that except her? Her father had had some kind of meeting that morning, he wouldn't say with whom. Business, he'd said. The fund, not the foundation. Whatever the h.e.l.l that meant. from the hotel. Past his head she could see the bodyguard, whose motorcycle traveled with them everywhere. Why? Why did no one seem freaked out about that except her? Her father had had some kind of meeting that morning, he wouldn't say with whom. Business, he'd said. The fund, not the foundation. Whatever the h.e.l.l that meant.

They hadn't spoken much. Fear made her clam up and she was still mad at him for making her come. She wondered when they were going to get out of this district they were crawling through, which was full of these gigantic, toxic-looking factories, and then, incredibly, the driver coasted to a stop in front of one of them and turned off the car.

"Do I have to go in?" April said. "Can I just wait out here?"

Her father and their driver, who was also their interpreter whenever they got out of the car anywhere, traded amused looks, like it was all just hilarious. "Absolutely not," her father said.

The first thing that happened was that they were given these huge headphones to wear, and she didn't get more than ten feet through the door before she understood why. Even with the headphones on it was deafening. But at least this way your ears wouldn't actually bleed. All the workers wore them too, and helmets and goggles and jumpsuit-like uniforms. It had to be more than a hundred degrees in there. The workers all stared at her as if she couldn't see them too. They were girls-not all of them, but most of them-April's own age or younger.

Some very nervous guy in a suit was giving them the tour, shouting at Adam and pointing to a clipboard, even though he must have known that there was no way to hear anything anybody said. Then a strange thing started to happen. Word began to get around the factory floor who the visitors were. April could see the workers talking to one another. One girl's mouth fell open, as Adam stood nearby still leaning into their guide and nodding as if they were actually conversing, and then she boldly left her place on the line and skipped over to him. April froze. The Chinese girl was speaking rapidly and smiling and lowering her head. She took both of Adam's hands in hers, and when he gave her a small smile in return and said You're welcome You're welcome, that was like a signal to the others, many of whom broke from their place on the line and came to gather around him. It was all happening in front of April not silently, exactly, but like a movie whose soundtrack has been replaced by roaring industrial static. Adam took the women's hands and nodded courteously as if this were all the most natural thing in the world. When the wait to touch him got too long-at least one red-faced supervisor was screaming at them-another group broke away from the first and rapidly surrounded April herself. She was terrified. The girls lowered their heads and jabbered and took April's hands in theirs, and when she looked down at one pair of hands that seemed unusually fair, almost pink, she saw that those were burn scars, and that was the last thing she remembered.

Her father was sitting in the front seat this time, twisted around to face her, and she was lying across the back. "Good morning, Suns.h.i.+ne," he said. "I believe you fainted."

Her neck hurt. Two minutes later they were back at the hotel, unless she'd fallen asleep again and it was longer than that. He decided they would just have dinner in the room that night; as she lay on the bed he called room service and ordered her a Reuben, but when it came and he lifted the silver cover off the dish, she started crying.

Adam pulled a chair closer to the foot of the bed and sat with his feet up next to hers.

"I want to go home," April said. "I'm afraid of this place. I know I shouldn't be, but I am. I'm scared of poor people, basically. What kind of a hideous person does that make me?"

"Poverty is scary," Adam said. "The thought of not having what you need is terrifying. That's why people try so hard to avoid it."

"Okay, so, good, we avoided it. Why do you have to come here at all, then? Why isn't it enough just to be us?"

"Your mother and I are trying to make the world a better place," Adam said.

"Okay," April said. "But why?"

"Well, you can't just do nothing. Otherwise it's like you were never here."

He picked up half the Reuben and took a bite. "Wow," he said. "Pretty terrible." April took the pillow from behind her head and put it over her eyes. "But what if you do do do nothing?" she said. "What if nothing is all there is for you to do? I try not to look forward but sometimes I do and it's all these days and I have no f.u.c.king idea what to fill them with. That's why sometimes I wonder if maybe what I'm really trying to do is, you know, shorten it." do nothing?" she said. "What if nothing is all there is for you to do? I try not to look forward but sometimes I do and it's all these days and I have no f.u.c.king idea what to fill them with. That's why sometimes I wonder if maybe what I'm really trying to do is, you know, shorten it."

He stopped chewing. "Do not say that," he said darkly. "I don't want to hear that kind of talk from you ever again. Understand me?"

She reached under the pillow to wipe her eyes. "I'm sorry I fainted," she said. "I'm sorry I embarra.s.sed you. It's just that I couldn't handle it when they all started thanking me. Thanking me? For what? All I wanted was to be as far away from them as possible. I so don't deserve to be thanked."

"You are loved," Adam said. "Okay? And if you know you're loved then you might make a mistake once in a while but you are never in the wrong. I know this isn't a great time for you but I have total faith that things will get better, because that's what things do. They get better. This is something I know something about. It is, as they used to say, the American way. You may feel a little lost right now but you will know what to do. For now maybe just focus on what not to do. Like hang out with Eurotrash dealers with names like Dmitri."

"Fine," she said. "He's an a.s.shole anyway. I'll never find someone like you and Mom did, though. You two are ridiculous."

"Sure you will. I know it will happen. It has to. Put it this way: there's always someone out there who can save you."

"So then you believe in fate or whatever?" April said.

He licked his fingers. "Maybe not for everybody," he said.

He tried to get her to eat but he couldn't really blame her for refusing; the Reuben, like most of the American-style food they'd seen in Dongguan, was like an approximation based on photographs. Even the ingredients seemed like a best guess guided mostly by color. Instead she closed her eyes, and he sat there at the foot of the bed and watched her, and when she was asleep he got up quietly and went back to his room, leaving ajar the connecting door of their suite.

He'd had to cancel one of his two meetings today in order to stay with her, but the other one had gone well, and everything else he could think of was as it should be; still, something made him uneasy as he stood there staring out the window, which could not be opened, at the gray sky fading unpicturesquely to black. It was the hotel room itself, he decided, the sense of restless distaste these rooms always engendered in him. They made him a little crazy; sometimes he'd wake up in one and it would seriously take him a minute to remember where he was and how he'd gotten there. Having come halfway around the world, you'd think it might feel different. But this room was the same everywhere: blank and haughtily self-sufficient as if it knew it would outlive you by a thousand years. It made you reflective, which was not a state he welcomed or thought highly of, in himself or others. The best thing would have been just to go to bed, but Adam knew his body well enough to know that there was no way he would fall asleep for another hour at least. Just lying there awake in the dark would be worse.

Cyn had told him to call her anytime, but when he tried her now he got bounced straight to voice mail. She might have left her charger back in New York. He left a message at her hotel saying that he hoped her dad was still comfortable and that he loved her.

End of an era, he thought: somehow the fact that his father-in-law had been such a ghost while he was alive made it harder to imagine he'd soon be gone for real. Here was a guy about to pa.s.s from the earth having left no trace of himself at all-having lived, in fact, in such a way as to take care that he wouldn't. It made no sense. Adam had never told Cynthia this but if that child Charlie Sikes had abandoned thirty-odd years ago had been him, the guy could have died alone in a ditch for all he cared. He would never have given him a nickel, he wouldn't have contacted him or spoken to him or even thought about him. But Cynthia had a bigger heart than he did, in all things. "Better half" was one of those expressions people used without thinking, but she was absolutely the better half of him, and without her he felt like he knew exactly the sort of abyss he would fall into. He'd probably see Charlie there. But family civilized a man. See, this is the kind of s.h.i.+t I hate thinking about, Adam said to himself, and he got up and turned on the TV; but the only thing he could find in English was Larry King and he wound up muting it anyway for fear of waking April.

Outside the window the whole panorama of squared-off roof-tops was swallowed into the grimy dark. That morning he'd gone downstairs to the lobby in shorts and a t-s.h.i.+rt for a run but the concierge had literally sprinted to the door to block his path and said the air quality was too bad for such an activity. Which was plausible. Or maybe the concierge just didn't want Adam to get kidnapped or shot on his watch, or to see something an American wasn't supposed to see. This was a ruthlessly ugly city. It was the future, though. Everybody nodded when you said that but only a few people got off their a.s.ses and acted on it.

Even inside the fund there were a few people who felt that someone in Adam's position shouldn't be doing business in China at all. Most of his employees thought of him, for better or worse, as apolitical, but that wasn't really true. He was perfectly aware that what he was doing here affected many more fortunes than just his own. Money was its own system, its own language, its own governing principle. You introduced money into a situation and it released the potential in everybody. Maybe you got rich, maybe others around you got rich while you didn't, but either way it had to be better to learn the truth about your own nature.

The room was as silent as if he'd had earplugs in and so he jumped a little bit when he heard a noise at the door: someone from the front desk was trying to slide a thick stack of what looked like fax paper into his room. He didn't really feel up to going through it just now. He could feel himself starting to tire. Tomorrow first thing he would get out there and run through those toxic streets even if he had to lay out that concierge to do it. The more he thought about it, the more p.i.s.sed he was that he'd let himself be turned back this morning. That was five days in a row now-ever since they'd left New York-with no exercise. He was in better shape than most men half his age but what people didn't appreciate was how fragile a state it was. You had to work so hard just to maintain it: let up even for a moment and that was where time took over. He pulled up his s.h.i.+rt as he sat there on the bed and was able to pinch a small roll of fat between his thumb and forefinger. That was no good. He made himself a solemn promise to double his workouts the moment he got back home.

Back to the hospice at dawn, but her father was already awake. He was staring at the slowly turning ceiling fan, in something like alarm. "What?" Cynthia said. "You want it off? Are you cold?" She switched it off, but the expression on his face stayed the same. She saw his lips moving and went to lean over him at the head of the bed.

"What is that?" he said. "That is, how far away is it?"

You'd answer a question like that, and he'd nod, as if you'd made perfect sense, but then half a minute later you'd see the same look in his eye and you'd know that the question was just more substantial than any answer you could provide. The detailed aspects of himself that would resurface from time to time-the wink that used to mean he was putting you on but couldn't possibly mean that now, or the particular clicking noise he made with his tongue when he understood something he hadn't previously been able to figure out-were, Cynthia realized, just vestiges, tics that no longer signified what they used to but that had somehow outlived the more essential parts of him, as if he were fading away from the inside out.

"Who are those idiots?" he said. He lifted his hand to s.h.i.+eld his eyes from the sun even though the room was darkened almost completely. "Clear the green!" he said. "For Christ's sake!"

"Oh my G.o.d," Irene said nervously. "There's nothing there. You're seeing things." She took his hand; he jerked it away and started swinging his legs toward the side of the bed. The rails weren't up, and Cynthia didn't know how to operate them. The two women began trying to force him back into a p.r.o.ne position.

"Are you crazy?" he said to them. "It's a shotgun start. We have to get out there! Where are my shoes?"

"Ring for the nurse," Cynthia said to Irene, but Kay was already behind them. One look into his eyes was apparently enough to satisfy her that he was beyond the reach of her usual charms; she touched a b.u.t.ton beside his bed, and another nurse came in holding aloft a needle.

"Oh s.h.i.+t," Cynthia said. She and Irene backed out into the corridor and tried not to listen. "s.h.i.+t s.h.i.+t s.h.i.+t. It's not supposed to go like this. I mean, is it?"

"It's just a bad moment," Irene said, though she was shaken too. "It's not his last. He won't go out struggling like that. He'll be ready."

G.o.d, it hadn't even occurred to her, until Irene mentioned it, that her father might be in the process of dying right now. One of the nurses came over and gently closed the door. Cynthia stared at it. "How do you know?" she said.

"The Lord won't allow it," Irene said. She smiled and laid her hand on Cynthia's arm. Her expression suggested that she was trying to convey something important and soothing. Cynthia wasn't sure whether Irene was choosing this moment to out herself as some kind of Jesus freak or whether she was just saying whatever came to mind to calm Cynthia as if they were mother and child, but either way, that hand on her arm sent a bolt through her that made her whole body stiff with revelation. Oh my G.o.d, Cynthia thought. There's no more time. She drew her arm away as cautiously as if she were pulling an arrow out of it.

"The Lord won't allow it?" she said. "The Lord won't allow it. Okay."

A few minutes later, Kay came out of her father's room and left the door open behind her. "He'll be sleeping for a while," she said, her eyes moving back and forth between the two women. "We really don't like to do that unless we have to, but as I guess you saw, he was getting very agitated. The only other option was restraining him. I'm sorry."

Cynthia turned to Irene. "Well," she said brightly, "it looks as if we have a few hours anyway. I'm hungry. Are you hungry?"

One of the orderlies directed them to a Cracker Barrel just across I-75. Cynthia rode shotgun in Irene's car. She didn't know what time of day it was anymore but she ordered a huge breakfast. "Breakfast served twenty-four hours is one of the things that makes America great," she said to Irene, who wasn't really sure what that meant but smiled delightedly. It was the opening Irene had been waiting for, and after they ordered she began by asking Cynthia some perfectly reasonable questions about her children: how old they were, whether she carried any pictures of them, the degree to which they looked like their mother and grandfather.

"I have three grandchildren," Irene offered. "The oldest is in the navy, living on a submarine, if you can believe that. I don't know how he does it. My two daughters are homemakers, one in Charlotte and one all the way out in California, in Silicon Valley. Jackie has a son who would be just about your son's age. Wouldn't it be something if they could meet?"

Cynthia waved to the waitress and mimed drinking a cup of coffee.

"You know," Irene said in a different tone, "I know that your father may not have been the most stable figure in your life. But some men just aren't made that way. For what it's worth, I know he had a lot of regrets along those lines. There are a lot of things he would have done differently."

"Irene?" Cynthia said.

Irene gave her the look of a patient receptionist as the waitress set before them two plates so laden that food tilted over the sides.

"I do not want to talk about these things with you," Cynthia said.

"Why not?"

"It's past. There's no point."

"But it helps to talk about it. Right? I know it helps me to be able to talk about him with you."

"It does not help. You weren't there. You cannot insert yourself into it and honestly the thought of you talking about it at all seems kind of obscene to me."

Irene looked stricken.

"I'll tell you my thoughts about the past," Cynthia said, leaning back against the plush booth. "It's like a safe-deposit box: getting all dressed up and going downtown and having a look in there isn't going to change what's in it. I have very little time left with my father. The closer the end gets the more suspenseful it all is and to be honest I don't have the time to learn anything new about you or about anybody else he might have shacked up with. I don't have any interest in any kind of half-a.s.sed bonding experience with you, like you're going to be my stepmother or something. And if he'd wanted things to be like that between you and me, he would have mentioned you to me back when he still could have. You know, I've changed my mind. It actually does help to talk about it."

The corners of Irene's mouth were weakening. "May I ask, then," she said, straining to be dignified, "why we're here?"

"Because there's something I want to ask you, Irene, and I haven't really known how to ask it. But as I'm sitting here, I realize that it doesn't matter what you think of me. It doesn't matter. So what I've been wanting to ask you is this: what is your endgame here? Because I'll tell you something. I don't know you very well, obviously, but I know him well enough to guess what kind of relations.h.i.+p the two of you had. He was a man who got off on being admired, and when that feeling wore off he would move on, but since you had the good fortune to be there at the end you probably think it was a love that would have lasted forever. He didn't really live much of a life but if he had a woman in the room with him who thought he was just the s.h.i.+t, well, that's all he needed to feel good about himself. He could be a little cutting sometimes, right? Pumped himself up by teaching you things and making you tell him how smart he was? And I'll bet he had lots of good reasons not to get married whenever you brought that up. But the bottom line is you have no real legal connection to him, no obligation, and to be brutal not even an emotional relations.h.i.+p with him anymore, considering that he doesn't know who you are." She put some half-and-half in her coffee, because that was the only option on the table down here in fat country. "Do you see where I'm going with all this, Irene?"

Irene's lips were pursed, and her face moved irregularly like a bobblehead.

"I think our interests here actually coincide," Cynthia said. "I would imagine that you, an older woman with no visible means of support, as they used to say, are thinking that your years of devotion to this fun guy with the rich daughter, if you can hang in there until the end, deserve some recompense."

"I beg your-"

"And I," Cynthia went on, "I would like you to go away and let me have this little bit of time alone with him. I would like that very much. I feel like I can see a way for these desires to dovetail nicely. Can you?"

Irene's face had gone bright red.

"It's not about you," Cynthia said. "You seem like a nice enough person."

"I don't understand."

"What don't you understand?"

"I mean, I don't want to be rude."

"If not now, when?" Cynthia said.

"He abandoned you," Irene said, and then put her hand over her mouth. "I know that he was a terrible, terrible father to you. He knows it too. And he took your money. All those years. He never asked for it, but he could have refused it. He should have."

"Au contraire. He could have had anything he asked me for."

"I wasn't even sure you'd come down here," Irene said. "I really wasn't. He said you would, but I thought that was just the way he wanted to see things. And yet you seem so in denial about it all-"

"You had fun with him, didn't you? I can tell. It's sad when the fun comes to an end. Somewhere in the world a woman learns that lesson every day."

Irene closed her eyes. "I'm just trying," she said, "to honor his wishes. I'm just trying to do what's right. Money has never even occurred to me."

"Well, I'm sure that's true. Let it occur to you now. You honored his wishes. That part is done. I'm asking you to honor my wishes now."

She began eating. It seemed as if even Irene's hair had started to come undone as they sat there at the table, as if she were riding in a convertible or sitting uncomfortably on a boat. Into her eyes came the glaze of the rest of her life. Cynthia knew her father well enough to know exactly what he had meant to this poor woman, all the high spirits, all the promise, all the purpose implicit in taking care of someone who expected to be taken care of. But now he was on his deathbed and there were no more high spirits for Irene. Abruptly her mouth fell open, and she emitted a laugh that was more like a bark; she shrugged, with her hands in the air, and shook her head as though denying that she was even the person saying what she was about to say.

"A hundred thousand dollars," she said.

"Done," Cynthia said. She reached for a napkin and pulled a pen out of her bag. "I'm going to give you a number to call. Call it tomorrow. There'll be something for you to sign as well."

"That won't be necessary."

Cynthia was about to insist, as she knew she should have, but something in Irene's face advocated for mercy. Instead she looked down at the table and spun the syrups meditatively. "G.o.d, this is decadent," she said. "Do people down here really eat like this? Boysenberry syrup? Well, okay, what the h.e.l.l. When in Podunk."

"Do you," Irene said, and then closed her eyes and put her head in her hand. "Do you need a ride back to the hospice?"

"That is very kind of you," Cynthia said, reaching for her cell phone. "But no."

When Jonas's cell phone began ringing more insistently, Novak, who could not figure out how to turn it off, came up with a novel solution: he walked briskly into the bathroom and dropped it into the toilet. Jonas saw it when he went in there. He was allowed, it seemed, to get up from the couch-nothing but fear restrained him-though whenever he did, Novak would stop drawing and stare at him, inscrutably, like a cat, until he was back in his seat again. Jonas was left unsure whether his status was that of a prisoner or hostage of some kind or whether he was simply free to leave. Novak had already demonstrated how far he was willing to go to enforce his own sense of it, though, whatever that was, and Jonas didn't really feel up to the risk of testing him again. At least not yet.

One of the things that enervated him was the fact that he hadn't eaten in-well, he didn't know anymore how long he had been here. Along with the phone he had been relieved of his watch, though for some reason not his wallet or his car keys. The paper had been torn down from the windows but the shades were drawn. Novak had pulled a two-step ladder out of his bedroom, presumably for covering the parts of the wall too high for him to reach, and Jonas thought maybe that would be the time to break for the door, but he hadn't seen him use it yet. The food from Arby's had been sitting in the kitchen long enough to contribute to the rank, maddening airlessness, which was almost enough by itself to put you back to sleep.

Novak worked without stopping but he didn't work particularly fast. Jonas decided, maybe too dramatically, that whatever was going to happen to him would happen once the wall drawing was finished. Of course there were other walls to fill, though filling them would require moving the furniture again. There was no look of rapture or emotion on Novak's face as he drew; just concentration, that was all. As for what he was drawing, it was just another reconfiguration of the same s.h.i.+t he always drew; it was obsessive and incomprehensible and conveyed nothing, which would once have presented itself as a virtue but was frustrating now that there was something Jonas actually wanted to know. Novak's mural was no sort of key or portal to anything. And drawing pictures didn't seem to liberate him from his inner misery at all. If anything he looked grayer and more haggard than he had when Jonas first arrived. It was all one burden, a huge burden, but one for which Jonas had lost all capacity for empathy or even interest. It would not admit him. For the life of him he couldn't remember why he had been so excited about coming here.

Out of nowhere there were footsteps on the stairs outside Novak's door, and then a knock, not a friendly one. Jonas's head lifted up like a dog's, but Novak did not even react. His fingertips were completely browned by Sharpie ink of all colors. "Joseph?" a woman's voice called. He went about his business, not responding but not making any effort to be silent either. "Joseph?" More knocking. "Joseph, if you are in there, I have warned you about taking garbage out. I know you don't like to do it but you have to. I can smell it from all the way down on the sidewalk. Do you hear me?"

Novak may or may not have needed gla.s.ses but he worked with his nose almost touching the surface on which he drew. He was working now, in green, on one of the square, blank-screened, rabbit-eared TVs he favored. This particular one sat on the roof of a gas station.

"By tonight," the woman said. "By tonight or I am calling your brother." The footsteps receded.

Use your key, Jonas yelled in his head, use your f.u.c.king key, you idiot use your f.u.c.king key, you idiot, and then, cursing himself for his cowardice, he jumped up and ran for the door. Just as quickly, Novak dropped his pens on the floor and cut Jonas off, just by standing between him and the exit. Jonas stopped and put his hands up in front of him, his head pounding. Novak's leg started to shake. Tears came into his eyes. "Just please be still," he said. "Just be still. Unless you have to pee or something, and then just use the bathroom. This isn't my fault, you know. You think you're so smart but you're stupid. Do you have any idea how much trouble I'm in now?"