Chapter 5 - The Council of the Corridor
The collapse of an expeditionary force occurs not when the supplies run out, but when the second-in-command realizes that the commanding officer has no map.
Jason Van Der Bilte had reached that moment.
He had abandoned the blue canvas garment bags on the floor. He stood with his back pressed against the opposite wall, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his tailored trousers, his jaw set in a hard, white line that I had never seen on his face during five years of Thanksgiving dinners.
"Jason," Megan said, taking two steps toward him, her hands extended, palms up, the camel-hair coat swinging loose around her hips. "Jason, listen to me. We’ll call Mom. Mom has Caleb’s landlord’s number. She has the emergency contact for the building management in her address book in Spokane. We can have the superintendent come up with the master key—"
"No," Jason said.
The word was very small. It was not louder than the hum of the fluorescent tubes.
Megan stopped. Her hands stayed suspended in the air between them, her fingers curling slightly. "What do you mean, no?"
"I mean no," Jason said. He looked at his mother, who had not moved from the center of the hallway, her arms still folded across her plum-colored boiled wool jacket like an iron gate. "My father is seventy years old, Megan. He has a lumbar fusion that cost forty thousand dollars in Spokane last February. He has been standing on this concrete floor for twenty-seven minutes because you told us you had a private residence with a garage code."
"We do have a residence!" she cried. "It’s right here! It’s behind this door!"
"It isn't our residence, Megan," Jason said, his voice rising just enough to reach the optical sensor above the handle. "It’s Caleb’s apartment. And Caleb said no."
"Caleb always says no!" she yelled, her eyes flashing with that wild, frantic rage that comes to people who have spent their lives treating other people’s boundaries as minor terrain features to be bypassed with enough momentum. "He said no to the Easter brunch! He said no to the cabin in Coeur d'Alene! He said no to the family cruise because he said he didn't want Liam on an eight-thousand-person vessel with norovirus! If we listened to Caleb, the family would never see each other!"
"Maybe that was the point, Meg," Jason said softly.
The hallway went completely, terrifyingly flat.
Even the two boys seemed to understand that the ground had shifted beneath their sneakers. Leo had stopped tracing circles around the doorbell; he had walked over to his father and was holding onto the hem of Jason’s wool trousers, his small, orange-stained fingers twisting into the fabric.
Arthur Van Der Bilte took his hands out of his Barbour pockets.
He reached into his leather billfold, pulled out a gold American Express card, and held it out toward his younger son.
"Trevor," the old banker said.
Trevor looked up from his phone. "Yeah, Dad?"
"Take your fiancée," Arthur said, his voice level, flat, carrying the cold, procedural finality of a bank officer closing an unsecured credit line. "Take the Audi. Go down to the Olympic on 4th Avenue. Secure three suites. If they have no suites, secure four deluxe doubles. And tell the valet that we will require the vehicle brought around at eight tomorrow morning for the first session of the pairs championship."
Trevor took the card. "What about Jason and Meg?"
Arthur looked at Megan.
He did not look at her with anger. He looked at her with the cold, scientific curiosity of an agricultural inspector who had found an invasive thistle in a field of certified seed wheat.
"Your brother has a very capable security installation," Arthur said to her. "I have rarely seen a residential lock with such a responsive two-way audio array. You should ask him for the manufacturer's name. It would be very useful for the pump house in Liberty Lake."
He turned on his heel.
His clean leather walking shoes made a slow, rhythmic squeak-squeak-squeak against the industrial carpet as he walked toward the red exit sign at the end of the hall, followed by Eleanor, whose plum-colored jacket did not brush against a single door frame as she passed.
Trevor and Chloe followed three paces back, Chloe’s sixteen zippers jingling like cheap harness brass in the dead air.
The heavy steel fire door at the end of the corridor clicked shut behind them with a muffled, pneumatic whump.
Only four people remained.
Megan. Jason. And the two boys.
Jason looked down at the two blue canvas garment bags lying across my doormat with the faded mountain scene.
He did not pick them up.
He reached down, took Leo by the hand, and looked directly into the wide-angle camera lens of the Yale Access smart lock.
"Caleb," Jason said.
I tapped the red microphone icon on my phone. "I’m here, Jason."
"The ginger beer you like," Jason said, his voice tired, flat, stripped of thirty-five years of suburban salesmanship. "The one in the four-packs with the green label from the place in Fremont."
"Rachel’s," I said.
"Yeah. Rachel’s." He took a slow breath through his nose. "I left two four-packs on the floor behind your trash cans in the alley last month. When we came through for the boat show. Megan told me to take them back because she said you didn't appreciate local craft sodas."
"I found them," I said. "They were very good."
Jason nodded once. A small, dry, completely defeated jerk of his chin.
"Have a good weekend, Caleb," he said.
He turned toward his wife.
Megan was still standing against the wall, her phone clutched in both hands, her screen illuminated with seventy-four unread messages from the Carter Family Executive Committee. Her camel-hair coat was open, dragging against the dirty baseboard, her blonde hair coming loose from its lathe-turned ponytail in thin, damp strands that stuck to her cheeks.
"Get your tote bag, Megan," Jason said.
"Jason—"
"Get the bag," he repeated. "The boys are hungry. And I am not spending another twenty seconds in this hallway."
She didn't move for four seconds.
Then, with an agonizing slowness that looked like an internal joint had run out of fluid, she reached down, took the gold-hardware handle of her black leather tote, and followed her husband toward the elevator.
Oliver walked behind them, his heels silent now, his small hand dragging along the painted linen wall until he reached the corner.
The elevator cage groaned.
The steel cables rattled against their sheaves in the penthouse above the fifth floor.
The heavy, brass-grilled doors slid open, stayed open for eight seconds, and then closed with a deep, iron chunk that echoed down the empty corridor.
May you like
Silence returned to the fourth floor of the St. James Court.
On my phone screen, the video feed showed only the beige carpet, the scuffed baseboards, the closed door of Unit 4A, and the two blue canvas garment bags lying across my doormat like two dead sheep that had been dropped from a wagon.
