Cult Classic(27)

Vadis instructed me to watch my step as we swiped the flashlights on our phones. I followed her, stepping where she stepped. One of the beams above us was illuminated by the missing sections in the window, by the afternoon light coming through. On it was carved a string of Hebrew letters and their English translation: “This is the gate of the Lord, the righteous will enter through it.”

“Only the penitent man shall pass,” I mumbled.

We reached the back of the room, where there was a second door with yet another corroded knob. But instead of grabbing for it, Vadis smacked a bright green button in the door frame and slid the entire thing to the left, moving on its tracks like an album in a jukebox.

We were standing in what looked like an antigravity chamber, a hallway no wider than a closet, face-to-face with a steel wall. Vertical seams were stitched together by gleaming silver bolts. The hallway seemed to go on forever in each direction—a function of the mirrors affixed to either end. It was freshly cleaned with something that smelled like citrus.

“You’re a spy,” I said, trying to muster up a list of skills Vadis might have to offer the CIA.

“Is that what you think?”

She entered a five-digit code into a keypad, which blinked for a heartbeat before emitting a harsh beep and turning red. She pushed the buttons more deliberately this time. They made a tune, which Vadis narrated as she pressed: “Is. This. What. You. Want.”

“Ah-ha,” she said, as the keypad chirped in recognition.

“Really, are you a spy?”

“No,” she said, a familiar slyness crossing her face. “But you kind of are.”

She pushed the walls in opposite directions. My eyes squinted as my brain raced to catch up. We were standing in a marble atrium. Light came from a brass-framed skylight above. More light beamed in from the three open floors. It looked as if someone had squared off the interior of the Guggenheim. Above our heads hung two chandeliers that spread out like stalactites, haphazardly dotted with light. Filing cabinets had replaced the pews on what used to be the women’s balcony. In the corner, there was a garden sustained by a honeycomb of solar panels. The panels were frozen waves, as if someone had lifted a sheet and it had never collapsed. Beneath them were ferns and mosses, bamboo, cacti, birds of paradise, a couple cannabis plants. A water fountain gurgled away in the center.

“Garden,” I said, as if having just learned the word.

“I know, right?” she said, laughing.

But the real star of the show was neither the garden nor the chandeliers. It was directly across from us: an elegant lit tle elevator where a dais must have once stood. You could see through to the mechanics of it, to the cables and wheels, as if we were in the interior of a watch. It was hard to tell which gears were essential and which were decorative. The cage inside was brass but the exterior was glass, like a ship in a bottle. A long silk cord extended up from the middle. Then I heard a noise, something behind me that sounded like an industrial espresso machine, that broke the spell.

It was, in fact, an industrial espresso machine.

A gangly splotched-faced kid, maybe twenty, stood, tucked behind a counter near the entrance, wearing a wedge cap and a bowtie. Behind him were stacks of cups and saucers, a jar of straws. He smiled at me, drilling his lips into his cheeks, a little placid, a little psychotic.

“Coffee?” Vadis asked.

For some logic-devoid reason, I assumed the espresso kid reduced the likelihood of this being an organ-harvesting facility.

“I’m good, thanks.”

The elevator began to move, its wheels spinning in an industrial ballet. Vadis and I stood shoulder to shoulder, watching a pair of human feet sink down on a glass platform. The feet belonged to an impeccably dressed Black man in a navy suit with perfect creases running down each limb. He was tall with a fold of neck skin pushing at his collar. When the elevator doors opened, he bent down to pluck some fibers from his pants before walking swiftly across the atrium, extending his hand too straight and too early for such a greeting. This gave him the disorienting gait of Hitler Youth.

“Hello!” he called, as if he’d been screaming it for hours.

When he reached us, he clasped both my hands in one of his, patting the pile of fingers, moving me in haphazard direc tions like he was shaking a cocktail. His skin was surprisingly cool. This whole place was surprisingly cool. It probably cost the GDP of a small country to keep it air-conditioned.

“This is Errol,” Vadis introduced the man.

“Lola!” Errol exclaimed. “Light of my life, fire of my loins. Well, not my loins. Hashtag MeAsWell. Has Vadis given you the tour? Espresso?”

The splotchy-faced coffee kid renewed his smile. I shook my head no.

“She was a showgirl!” he sang from his diaphragm. “That’s it. With yellow feathers in her hair and a dress cut down to there!”

“Is this an event space?” I asked, my voice sounding not my own.

Errol laughed until he was doubled over and finished with an “Oh, Lola” and the wipe of an invisible tear.

“I haven’t told or shown her anything yet,” explained Vadis, an apology for my ignorance. “I thought it would be easier to download in person.”

“You know my name.”

“And you know my name,” Errol replied, smiling. “And I know Vadis’s name. We all know each other’s names. Please, follow me.”