The Keep (16 page)

Relax. That old lady who lives in the tower, the baroness. She’s translating.

Here? In this room? The idea made him frantic.

No, no, she won’t leave that tower—won’t even open the door. So Howard and the doctor stand outside, and the doctor yells stuff up at the window, and then the baroness yells the meaning back down to Howard.

Danny lay back and shut his eyes. It was too much to figure out. Suddenly Nora was hopping around, plucking at his blanket.

Nora: Nodon’tgotosleep! Don’tgotosleep! Are you going back to sleep? Don’tgotosleep!

Danny opened his eyes. What the hell is wrong with you?

Nora looked at her watch. Her hands were shaking again. She unhooked something from her belt and Danny heard a staticky noise.

Nora (into the machine): He’s awake. Over.

Crackly voice: How long? Over.

Nora: Ten minutes. Over.

Crackly voice:…on my way.

Nora smiled. It was the smile Danny had been waiting for, the smile that cut through her attitude and dreadlocks and bad eye contact and hating of facts and turned her straight back into the pretty suburban girl she’d started out as. But Danny didn’t see the smile. His eyes were—I want to say glued, but it was more than glued: his eyes were
laminated
onto that walkie-talkie in Nora’s hands. How can I explain what Danny felt, seeing it? Like a guy on a hunger strike who sees a roast beef go by on a tray. Like a con doing life without, watching a
Hustler
centerfold hump a pole. But those examples aren’t enough, so instead I’ll tell you what happened
inside
Danny: his mouth watered, his gut rumbled, his throat got a lump, his nose prickled, his eyes filled with tears, and he let out a long groan.

Nora: What? What? Her dreads shook as she fluttered over him.

Is that a…what is that? His head was starting to pound.

It’s a walkie-talkie. Should I—I think Howard’s already on his…

Inside Danny’s head a maniac had started clubbing at a door that wasn’t strong enough to hold him back.

Danny: How did you get it? He was having a memory or maybe a dream: holding that machine, talking into it, having a voice answer back. His whole gut went watery at the thought.

And then the force of how much Danny wanted the machine ground against the fact that he didn’t have it.

Nora: We’ve all got them. It’s the only way we can find each other in this…

The maniac pounded harder, drowning her out. Nora: I’m surprised Howard didn’t give you—
Wham, wham, wham.
The door popped, and Danny passed out.

Can you hear me? Danny. Danny?

Danny opened his eyes. First he saw the ceiling: very high, with black beams running across it. Then he saw Howard by the bed.

Howard: Great, fantastic, you’re awake. He checked his watch. Okay, nine forty-eight. And how long was the last one? He was talking to someone who turned out to be Nora. She was standing behind him.

Nora: Thirteen minutes.

You still with me, buddy?

Danny: I’m here.

Howard looked different, but whatever the difference was made him seem more familiar to Danny, more like he’d been before. Or maybe Danny was finally getting used to this new face.

Howard (to Nora): You tried to engage him?

Nora: Yes. I mean, we talked.

Howard: But you didn’t stress him.

Nora: I don’t think so. She gave these answers absolutely straight—no irony, no sarcasm, no doubletalk. It was like watching a color picture go to black-and-white.

Danny: What the fuck is going on?

Howard: Good question. Excellent question, Danny. You remember you fell out a window?

Danny nodded.

Howard: Well, a tree broke your fall. Thank God, buddy. No point in dwelling on it, but Jesus Christ, you know what I mean? Still, you hit the tree pretty hard, and you’ve got some cuts on top of your head that had to be stitched. As far as internal damage goes, meaning inside your head, the doc’s pretty sure it’s just a bad concussion.

Danny: This is the doctor who doesn’t speak English?

Howard grimaced. Yeah. He’s the best, supposedly, trained in Paris and all that, but the language thing is a nightmare, no question. Anyway, we’re getting through it. He’s given you some injections to keep your brain from swelling up, which I guess is important for the first twenty-four hours. And meanwhile we’ve been waking you up every thirty minutes to keep you from slipping into something called a “gripping sleep” or a “grabbing sleep”—there may be a translation issue there, but I’m ninety percent sure he’s not talking about a coma, just some kind of deep sleep that’s hard to get out of.

Nora: Remember the dreams.

Howard: Yes. Thanks. The doctor wanted me to ask if you’ve been having a lot of dreams.

Danny: I don’t think so.

Howard: See, that’s really good. Because apparently this gripping sleep or grabbing sleep has a lot of very weird dreams associated with it, lifelike dreams where you can’t tell if you’re asleep or awake. So I’m—I’m just incredibly glad to hear you haven’t been dreaming.

He leaned close again, his eyes scooping at Danny’s face. His breath had a strong mint smell, like he’d just brushed his teeth. Danny noticed sweat beading up on Howard’s hairline and realized that the new thing he saw in his cousin’s face was fear. Howard was scared.

Howard: Anyway, when you’ve stayed awake continuously for two hours, we can stop the thirty-minute checks. And as long as you get there within fifteen hours of the injury, which was—he checked his watch—about nine hours ago, we don’t have to go any further.

Danny: Further with what?

Howard: Well, the next step would be to airlift you to a hospital for a brain scan.

He said this casually, like it was basically nothing, and that gave him away. Howard was scared Danny was seriously fucked up—fucked up enough to die. But Danny didn’t feel scared, seeing this. The opposite, almost. Like Howard’s fear would protect him—like the job of being scared was all taken care of. Or maybe he was just too high.

Howard: But I’m not expecting that, and neither is the doctor. I mean, you’ve already been awake—another watch check—almost ten minutes. And you look pretty alert.

Danny: I feel pretty alert.

Howard: Good, good.

There was a pause. Danny felt exhaustion moving back in around him like a tide. He tried not to close his eyes.

Howard: So, ah—look. There’s something I want to ask you, Danny. It’s kind of delicate. He glanced at Nora and she moved away, over to the window. Howard leaned close, elbows right on Danny’s mattress, minty breath filling Danny’s nostrils to the point where they tingled on the inside.

Howard: I—I wouldn’t even bring this up yet, but the doctor says we’re supposed to keep you engaged as long as we don’t stress you. So you’ve got to speak up if you start to feel stressed. Will you do that, Danny?

Sure.

You don’t feel stressed right now?

Danny thought about it. He felt like someone had hacked open his skull with a hatchet, but that wasn’t exactly the same as being stressed. No.

Howard: So here’s my question. As far as your fall goes, it was…I’m assuming it was an accident?

The tube in Danny’s brain seemed especially long on that one. He looked at Nora leaning out the window and wondered if she was smoking. He noticed she had a decent ass. When Howard’s question finally hit his brain, Danny laughed.

Danny: If I wanted to off myself, don’t you think I would’ve walked up a couple more flights? Or better yet, jumped off a roof in New York and saved myself the jet lag?

Good. Good. Glad to hear it. Although…that’s not exactly what I meant.

Danny shook his head.

Well, I guess you’ve basically answered it. But you weren’t—no one helped you out that window at any point along the way?

You mean
pushed me
?

Or even, you know, nudged you.

Danny: The baroness?

It sounds farfetched, I know, but—you’ve met her, right?

The question caught Danny off-guard. He looked at the shape of his knees through the bedspread, purple velvet, similar to the baroness’s green bedspread except new. He felt like something hot had been tossed in his face. Howard seemed to take this as a yes.

So you know. She’s berserk. I have no sense of what her limits are.

Danny started to laugh, a jittery laugh that fluttered up from his chest like it might not stop. Then it did. It stopped when he asked himself if the baroness
had
pushed him out. Could she have done it so gently he’d hardly felt anything—tipped him just enough with those spidery hands to turn gravity against him? Had he even maybe felt it, a soft, soft pressure on his feet?

It was goofy. The drugs were messing him up.

Danny: She’d do this…because you’re trying to get her out of the keep?

Howard: Trying, yeah. She won’t leave it, we’re talking not for five minutes. Says she’s afraid I’ll lock her out and slit her throat—tells me this straight to my face. But I don’t get the feeling she’s really scared. It’s all part of a strategy: she wants me to do something so she can do something. But I don’t know what those things are.

Danny: She’s got weapons in there.

Howard had been looking at the fire. Now his head snapped around to Danny. Weapons?

Danny: A longbow, a crossbow. A battering ram. Oil to pour on people’s heads. He’d meant to keep this stuff to himself, save it for a time when he could use it somehow, but the bump of surprise on Howard’s face was tough to resist. And the fact that his cousin hadn’t already guessed about the baroness and Danny made him realize that he wouldn’t guess; it would never cross his mind. And being one foot away from someone who couldn’t imagine such a thing as Danny fucking the baroness made Danny feel like maybe he hadn’t really done it.

Howard: You’ve seen these weapons?

Danny: No. But I drank some very weird wine from her cellar.

Howard leaned back in his chair and looked at Danny in a new way, a way Danny had a feeling came from his business life. I’m amazed, Danny. Seriously, you’ve been here less than forty-eight hours, and you’re telling me stuff I didn’t know. It’s…impressive. Nora, how are we on time?

Nora was still at the window. She looked at her watch. Almost forty-five minutes.

Howard pounded out of his chair: That’s fantastic! This is huge, Danny, the best you’ve done yet. Let’s try to keep it going, okay? Let’s stay with this as long as we can.

Now wait a minute, someone’s got to be saying. Three pages ago Danny had been awake almost ten minutes, and now you’re telling us it’s forty-five? Are you kidding me? I could repeat everything they said on those three pages in five minutes tops, which means Danny should be awake seventeen minutes maximum. But hold on, bud, you’re forgetting two things: (1) Everything anyone said had to travel down a long tube to Danny’s brain, and so did his answers before they got to his mouth and (2) there were other things going on in the room that I didn’t write down because I would’ve needed pages and pages, which I don’t have, not to mention it would be boring as hell. Such as: Howard got up and poked at the fire. Nora shut the window. Howard scratched his head and blew his nose in a white handkerchief. Nora went into the hall to talk to someone and then came back. Howard’s walkie-talkie made a staticky noise so he had to fiddle with it to shut it up. Every one of those things adds time, to the point where if I’d told you an hour instead of forty-five minutes, even
that
would be realistic.

Howard: Danny? Are you with me?

Danny shut his eyes. The tiredness was pouring in around him, warm and sweet and sick, a thing you know is bad for you and that just makes you want it more.

A blast of mint—Howard was hovering over him. Don’t. Don’t close your eyes, Danny. For your sake—Nora, could you throw another log on that fire? Danny, open up.

Danny heard static on Howard’s walkie-talkie. He wanted to hold it. He tried to open his eyes. Can I hold the…

Howard: Danny? Fuck! He’s out again.

Danny: Can I…

The next time Danny woke up, his eyes stayed shut. But he heard voices and other sounds, too, like when someone speed-dials you accidentally and you get a crunchy sound of them walking and hear gurgly voices you might even recognize, and you yell out their name a few times before you get bored and hang up. But Danny couldn’t hang up. So he lay there hearing stuff like
herballoo
and
shudding
and
scramshie,
and then he felt a stab in his neck, right below his ear. His eyes popped open. Everything was blurry, but Danny caught a gray-bearded guy with a syringe moving away.

Then it got quiet. Danny thought he was alone, but when he turned his head there was Howard’s kid, Benjy, in the chair where Howard had been sitting. The kid wore long-sleeved pajamas covered with red fish. His dark hair was messed up, like he’d been sleeping.

Benjy: Did it hurt?

Danny looked at him, letting his eyes adjust. The kid’s pajamas confused him—was it big red fish eating little red fish, or were all the fish the same?

Danny: Did what hurt? Falling out a window?

Benjy: No. The shot.

Nah. That felt good.

Benjy frowned, like he couldn’t tell if Danny was kidding. Finally he said: Actually, I’m not allowed to climb on windowsills because it’s dangerous.

I’ll keep that in mind.

Benjy: Did your mommy ever tell you that?

Probably.

Do you have to go home now?

Why would I go home? I just got here.

Benjy: Is your home in an apartment?

Yeah. I mean normally it is, but right now I don’t have one. I’m in between places.

Why the hell was he explaining all this? Danny squirmed on the bed, looking for someone to rescue him from this kid. But as far as he could tell, they were alone in the room. Wind blew in through the window and shook the tapestries on the stone walls.

Benjy: Do you have a wife?

No.

My mommy is my daddy’s wife.

Yeah, I picked up on that.