Rabbits(40)

A quick search for Shirley Booth revealed she was an actress who’d passed away in the nineties. She’d played the title character in an American sitcom called Hazel that ran from 1961 to 1966. That series was based on the comic strip Hazel by Ted Key.

“Shirley Booth was Hazel,” I said. “Clever.”

“Are you ready?” Chloe had predialed the number, and her finger was poised over the call button on her phone.

“Let’s do it,” I said.

Chloe pressed the button.

We were calling Hazel.

The phone started ringing. It sounded kind of rough and distorted, like an old analog line from the eighties. After three rings there was a click and a woman’s voice relayed the following message:

    Hi, you’ve reached Golden Seal Carpet Cleaning. We’re currently out of the office. Please leave your name, contact information, and a brief message, and we’ll get back to you when time allows. If you’re applying for the advertised position, please visit the stationery room on the second floor. Thank you.



“My name is K. I’m here with my friend Chloe. We’d like to speak to you about…well, about a lot of things, but I suppose most pressing is the fact that Alan Scarpio told me something was wrong with the game, and that I needed to help him fix it before the next iteration began. Now Scarpio’s missing and we’re not sure where to turn. Please call me back.”

I left my number and hung up.

“What now?” I asked.

“I’m starving,” Chloe said. “Let’s grab something on our way.”

“On our way where?”

“Where do you think? Golden Seal Carpet Cleaning.”





14


    SECOND FLOOR STATIONERY


We grabbed pizza and salad at the market, then made our way over to the address Chloe had dug up for Golden Seal Carpet Cleaning.

It was a four-story building on a quiet street in Georgetown.

Georgetown is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Seattle, where industrial commercial–meets–contemporary boho art chic. You can walk past a busy steampunk brew pub set next to a clown school, and a block later you’re standing in the middle of a quiet street staring at a low red-brick building from another age.

Vertical Art Deco lines running up the elevated corners of the building reminded me of the power station on the cover of Pink Floyd’s Animals (minus the enormous white smokestacks). The front doors were locked and there were no company names listed on the directory. We took a quick look around. Every uncovered window we were able to peek through revealed an empty room. There were no people, no cars, and no sounds of life at all. I’ve seen a lot of empty buildings. This was definitely one of them.

“There’s nobody here,” Chloe said, using her hand to shield her eyes from the daylight as she stared up at the top floor.

“No For Lease sign either,” I said. “Are you sure this is the right place?”

“It’s the only address listed anywhere.”

I walked up the stairs and tried the door again.

Still locked.

I took another look at the directory. There were small white buttons next to two rows of empty name plates. “Should we maybe try to buzz?”

“Let’s do it,” Chloe said.

“Which one?” I asked.

Chloe mashed her way down all twenty of the buttons, each of them releasing a sharp buzzing sound as she made contact.

“Or we could just press them all,” I said.

Chloe shrugged.

We waited, but nothing happened. As we started walking down the stairs toward the sidewalk, however, we heard the familiar buzz and clack of a door being unlocked electronically.

We shared a look. Somebody was letting us in.

We sprinted back up the stairs, and I managed to catch the handle of the door a split second before the lock started to reengage. I yanked it open, and Chloe and I tumbled forward into the lobby.

We exhaled in unison as the door closed behind us with a heavy clunk—a sound that echoed through the empty space, underlining the unsettling silence.

We were in.



* * *



—

The floor of the lobby was checkered with well-worn beige and white linoleum tiles. An empty building directory hung on the wall directly in front of us. To the right was an old gray elevator and just left of that, a set of stairs leading up.

“What do you think?” Chloe stared up at the blank directory.

I walked over and pressed the call button next to the elevator. “The outgoing message said that if you wanted to apply for the job to visit the stationery room on the second floor.”

Chloe came over and pressed the call button again, three times in a row.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m excited,” she said, and punched my shoulder.

I was pretty excited myself, but I was doing my best to keep it together.



* * *



—

On our way here, I’d started noticing the number twenty-three. Twenty-three flowers on a billboard advertising a local florist, twenty-three steps to cross the street, a kid in a LeBron James jersey (23) stepping onto a number twenty-three bus. And now, we were going up to the second floor and Chloe had just pressed the elevator button three times. Twenty-three.