The Takedown(29)

Or so I thought.

As Audra turned to me with wide, happy eyes, I couldn’t help asking, “Did we take a wrong turn?”

For on the other side of the door was a plain, gray, institutional stairwell. And we weren’t climbing it to get someplace cool. Audra planted herself on the steps, halfway up.

“We are exactly where we’re supposed to be.”

We were risking the Parents’ ire for this? I didn’t get it. I checked my Doc, but there was no signal.

“That won’t work in here,” Audra said, then patted the space next to her. “The first time I came in here was because my Doc told me it was the quickest way to the bathrooms. It only goes up and down. It hits all the most boring exhibits. I’ve never encountered another soul in here, no matter how long I’ve sat. I thought you could use a little shh.”

Leaning back on her elbows, she closed her eyes.

“Isn’t it wonderful?”

“You have a membership to the Met so you can skip the line to sit in an empty stairwell?”

“Mm-hmm,” she said without opening her eyes. “Try it.”

I dropped my bag and sat next to her.

“Audy, I didn’t sleep with Mr. E.”

“Shh,” she said. “Listen. Isn’t it amazing? Nothing. No sound, no ambient noise, no buzzing or dinging. And look around. No cameras or holoscreens. No motion sensors or triggered ads. No one can see us right now, Kyle. No one can hear us. Or find us. These walls are so thick even the best PHD can’t access Wi-Fi. This stairwell might be the last place of untraceable freedom in all of New York.”

“Audy, is everything okay with you?”

I thought about her excessive mood swings. How her Doc was always on private. How she hadn’t slept over at my house in weeks. She leaned her head on my shoulder.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Kyle, but you wouldn’t understand. Just know whatever happens, everything I’ve done—”

“What have you done?”

“Everything I’ve done,” she pushed on, “has been because I’m trying to make life better for us. Now close your eyes and just feel it.”

Thoroughly freaked-out, I shut my eyes. And, weird as it was, Audra was right. Even two days ago, when I was invisible, I wasn’t. I’d been seen daily in a hundred different ways even when I was alone. I’d just never minded because all the images of me were good and praiseworthy.

Except I wasn’t invisible in here, either. When I opened my eyes Audra was studying me.

“Nice, isn’t it?”

I nodded, and she clapped her hands, pleased.

“I can get you your own membership. Skipping the line equals the best.”

“I’ll be okay,” I said.

She patted my knee. “I know you will, sweetie. Now, let’s hurry the FCK up. The Parents will kill us if we’re any later.”





Bridge traffic, an hour later, and thirty minutes late, Audra and I were sitting at her teak dining room table. Everyone had their Doc out. The Father and I were both browsing the news on ours. The Mother had hers on holoscreen and was flicking through a patient’s case history. Audra had her larger Home Doc up on a stand, so none of us could see what she was looking at. Our late arrival made the oppressive silence of the meal even more punishing than usual. It was the eve of Christmas Eve, but in the Rhodes brownstone, not a single holiday bauble was in sight.

I wasn’t surprised. The Parents’ religion wasn’t faith-based. It was purely clinical. Audra’s parents were both psychiatrists. Even the most banal comment was so ruthlessly dissected that I hesitated to thank them for dinner lest they diagnose me with a flattery complex. They were parents in name only—the Mother, the Father—who must have had their daughter completely by accident, because not an ounce of affection or interest went into raising her. Yet, strangely, they insisted on these nightly dinners. Most likely so they could hold them up to their patients as parenting done right.

If I’d grown up in Audra’s house, I’d hide in empty stairwells, too.

On the wall behind Audra, life-sized American soldiers shot at some desert culture’s rebels. These wallpaper screens had come out a year ago. I’d always thought it was strange that the Rhodeses had installed theirs in here instead of in the family room.

“Why would they put it in the family room?” Audra said. “It’s the least-used room of the house.”

I looked down at my plate as the position of the screen made it look like the soldier was taking aim at Audra’s head. I’d had more than enough screens for one day.

As if she weren’t breaking into utter silence, the Mother asked, “And school, girls?”

The Mother was a carbon copy of Audra—tiny, with delicate features, slim wrists, and impeccably coiffed hair. For the most part she was a cold, aloof woman, but on the occasions she had a bad day or drank too heavily, she could put Audra’s nasty streak to shame. At one of the worst dinners I’d attended, she’d derided Audra to the point that my friend was whimpering. Audra had stayed at my house for a whole week after that evening.

Still studying her holoscreen, the Mother nibbled on a small green bean, chewed it thoroughly, and washed it down with an equally tiny sip of pinot blanc. If people in Audra’s family took normal-sized bites, dinners could be finished forty minutes earlier.