Due Preparations for the Plague

“He himself always felt watched.”

“He was a control freak,” Lowell says. “A spook. A puppeteer. I don’t know why I thought the grave would stop him.”

“He was a tormented man,” Dr. Reuben says. “I think the key will tell you everything you need to know.”

Lowell sighs. “The key is to lock me in for life. I’m shackled to him.”

“You have a lot of anger locked inside you.”

Lowell laughs. “Oh shit. Wow. That’s clever. People pay you for that?”

“The key is under my hand on the bench now.”

“What if I throw the key away?”

“That, of course, would be up to you. But I would advise against it.”

“Sacred last will and testament. Honor thy father.”

“No. I would advise against it for much more pragmatic reasons. Because a message sent from beyond the grave, but thrown away unread, is going to haunt you. If you’re in an unstable state already, and I sense that you are … well, I know that you are. I know a great deal about you, naturally, because your father … Anyway, that sort of reactive impulsivity could be the coup de grâce, it could drive you over the edge. I’m going to put my hand back in my pocket now and I’m leaving. Please put your own hand over the key. There should be no need for further contact between us, but can I recommend strongly that you seek professional help?” He takes six steps and returns. “I would also request, however, that if you seek professional help, as you certainly should, you never mention my name.”

He walks away and does not look back.

Lowell places his hand over the key and sits watching the swan boats until the light fades.

6. (#ulink_e6169973-ffa4-5118-9c0a-45af2f4dc2c9)

Locker B–64 has taken up ghostly residence in Lowell’s bedroom. Sometimes, in dreams, he is inside it, banging on the door for the key holder to let him out. Sometimes, mathematically and malevolently, the walls of his room shift subtly, they pleat and grid themselves, and a steep honeycombed arrangement of locked boxes forms a canyon around his bed. Steel cubes, serried ranks of them, skyscraper upward, each with its own keyhole and small system of vents, while he, Lowell, falls downward, faster and faster, down and down, clutching at handles that come away in his fingers and never getting below or beyond the endless doors. He falls down through basements, through underground library stacks, through caves that are ten storeys deep and hold camouflaged tanks and burning planes, he falls, he continues to fall, but he can never get to the bottom of the riddle of Locker B.

In sleep, many times, he has parked his car near Union Square Station in Somerville, taken the Red Line, and then the Blue, and finally the free shuttle bus. When the driver asks, “Terminal?”—usually speaking without moving his lips—Lowell always says, “Yes. It would seem so. That’s the crux of the Locker B riddle, isn’t it?” and the driver always laughs: “That was terminal, all right, yes sir, and where would you like to be blown up?”

Lowell has also made the trip awake, and by day. He sits facing the bank of steel lockers in the international terminal and stares at Number B–64. Inside the pocket of jacket or of jeans, his fingers play with the key, dextrous games, sinister games, increasingly complicated games. He passes the key over and under his fingers and back again, a woven password. At first he goes once a week, on Sundays, then on Saturdays too, except on those weekends when the children are with him. In the Amy-and-Jason weeks, he goes on Wednesdays instead, then on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and finally every day.

“Where are we going, Daddy?” Amy asks.

“To the airport,” he says. He has not taken the children before, but Monday is too far away. “You can watch the planes taking off and landing.”

On the flight observation deck, he leaves Amy with strict instructions. “You stay here with Jason, okay, till I come back? I have to go do something. I won’t be long.”

“We want to come with you.”

“No, you can’t. I have to see a man about a painting job. I won’t be very long, and I’ll come back here for you, okay?”

“How long will you be gone?”

“Ten minutes,” he says. “Fifteen at the most. You stay right here with Jason and watch the planes.”

But when he rises from his vigil before Locker B–64, he sees them watching him, half hiding behind a water fountain. He knows himself to be the guilty party.

“Amy,” he says reproachfully, “what did I tell you?”

“Jason was crying,” she says. “Didn’t the man come?”

“What man?”

“The man you had to see about the painting job.”

“Oh,” he says. “No. He didn’t show up.”

“Why were you staring at the lockers, Daddy?”

He says slowly, “I left something in one of them, but I’ve lost the key.”

Amy watches his hand, hidden under denim, clenching and unclenching itself. “Maybe it’s in your pocket,” she suggests.

“What do you know?” he laughs. “Little Miss Magic. You’re right. Here it is after all, down in the lining. There’s a little hole and it’s almost … You want to open the locker for me?”

“Okay.”

He has to lift her. Her lips are parted; the tip of her tongue draws tiny arcs of concentration as she inserts the key into the lock and turns. She tips herself back to open the door. “It’s a bag,” she says. “Is it yours, Daddy?”

“Yes,” he says. “Well, no. But I’m looking after it for someone.”

“For the man who didn’t come?”

“Right.” He pulls out a blue sports tote with a Nike logo on the side. The bag is surprisingly heavy. “Amy,” he says. “Wait here with Jason. I have to go to the bathroom.”

“Jason wants to go with you,” Amy tells him.

“Daddy, I come with you,” Jason echoes in his two-year-old lisp.

Lowell kisses the top of Jason’s head. “Daddy’s in a big hurry,” he says. “You stay with Amy, okay? I’ll be back in a minute.”

Jason wails loudly. “Come with you,” he insists.

“No,” Lowell calls over his shoulder, running. “Daddy’s in a big, big hurry. Wait there.”

He intends to lock himself into a stall, but there are too many people present and this makes him nervous, though he does not wish to draw attention to himself by leaving without taking a leak. He is afraid to set the bag down. Indecisive, he moves into a space between a businessman and some drifter who reeks of gin. He stands with the bag between his legs, feet close together, and unzips.

No one pays him the slightest attention and he picks up the blue tote and leaves.

“Daddy, Daddy!” he hears Amy call, and he turns. The children are running after him, breathless. Jason is crying. Dear God, Lowell thinks. What is happening to me? He sweeps Jason up with his right arm. He holds the blue tote in his left. “You didn’t think I’d forgotten you, did you?” he asks, smothering Jason with kisses. “Silly Jason. Okay, let’s go home now. First the shuttle bus, then the subway, then home. Who remembers where the shuttle stop is?”

“I do,” Amy says.

“Okay, Captain. I’ll follow you.”

Why the international terminal? a voice buzzes inside his head. He tries to picture his father on the shuttle up from New York, the elegantly dressed professional man. He cannot visualize his father with a blue sports tote. Had it been inside something else? Did his father disappear into a men’s bathroom at the domestic terminal, change into jeans and baseball cap, and carry the blue tote to the lockers at international? Is there some suggestion that Lowell will be required to embark on a journey after he sees the contents of the bag? Or is this purely memento mori for the flight that never reached its intended destination, the flight from which Lowell’s mother never disembarked? Unless she was one of the hostages. Unless there were hostages, ten hostages, as the hijackers claimed.