It may not make sense, he decides, but at least it’s a course of action. He’s trying to think of himself as a Man of Action today.
He wonders if there’s still any chance that he’s going to get a book published at the end of all this.
He opens his eyes. Whiteness, check. He climbs to his feet. He takes a tentative step forward. And then another.
He turns around to see if the coins are still there. If the coins are still there he can at least feel confident that he can find his way back to where he started, if for some reason he needs to.
The coins are still there. There’s also a door there. It’s an ordinary-looking door, beige, free of adornment, set in a frame. It wasn’t there a minute ago.
Well, he thinks. He’s pretty sure that the implicit suggestion here is for him to go ahead and go through the door. He’s also pretty sure that doing that will mean that he is playing right into Lucifer’s, whatever, clutches.
This is what Lucifer does, he thinks, turning away from the door. He tempts people. And when you have nothing, what’s more tempting than something?
He chooses a random direction and marches off, into the void. He goes for less than a minute before being seized with a certainty that the door is no longer behind him, that by spurning it he’s lost his chance. He whirls to look, terror clawing at the base of his brain. The door, mercifully, is still there.
Fine, he thinks. Let’s get this over with. He advances to the door, puts his hand on the knob, and finds it cool to the touch—this goes a little way toward allaying his unvoiced suspicion that on the other side of the door he’ll find nothing but hellfire.
He turns the knob and the door opens onto a corridor, a corridor within what appears to be a moderately-priced chain hotel.
He steps through, scopes out the scene. The walls are some noncolor, some color positioned midway between peach and beige, a color chosen by a decorator for whom the choice of either peach or beige would have been just too bold. There are doors on both sides, with the usual numerical placards. Room 2001 on the left and 2002 on the right. So Billy’s either on the second floor or the twentieth floor or maybe the two hundredth, for all he knows.
Well, he thinks, it could be worse.
He closes the door behind him, leaving his loose change in the void. All he has to do is find an elevator or one of those fire plan signs and he can beat it out of here. He sees no reason not to go, so he goes, off down the hall. It comes to a T end and he looks to the left and the right. More corridor. No elevator, no helpful signage. He notes that to his left the corridor terminates in some sort of open nook—a lobby, maybe?—so he heads that way. As he gets closer he sees that it’s not a lobby but rather a little institutional lounge, with a few bistro-style tables and chairs, a few sad-looking plants, and a little kitchen station: a coffee service, a Plexiglas case containing an array of baked goods.
He also notices that there’s a woman sitting at one of the tables, her back to him. Maybe she knows the way out of here.
“Hey,” Billy says, hurrying toward her. “Excuse me!”
She turns, and Billy stops where he stands. It’s Elisa Mastic, author of Sanguinities, MIA since last night’s reading. She’s not wearing makeup, and she’s in yoga pants and a Duran Duran Rio T-shirt instead of the skirt and coat that Billy remembers her in, but it’s definitely her. He also takes the time to notice that she’s not wearing a bra.
She recognizes him, too: he watches the surprise flood into her face, matched, he’s certain, by the surprise that’s flooding into his own.
“What are you doing here?” Billy says.
“I could ask you the same thing,” Elisa says. A pissed-off look wipes away the surprised expression. “Are you friends with that guy?”
“What guy?”
“That guy from the reading last night.”
“Wait a second—you remember that guy?”
“Remember him? Are you kidding? He’s been stalking me for two weeks now. When you pointed him out in the audience last night I was like Oh shit, he’s here and then I went outside to figure out what the fuck I was going to do, like whether I was going to go through with the reading or just take off or—I don’t know what. And then I could hear shit just start to go crazy in there, like a brawl going down or something, and I was like Fuck this, I’m out of here. You said you knew him. That guy’s not your friend, is he?”
“No,” Billy says. “I don’t think so.”
“Good,” Elisa says, “because that guy fucking abducted me.”
His brain gives up on trying to make sense of Elisa’s appearance here, opts instead to crumple into a dull headache. He eyes the coffee station warily: he has his doubts about exactly how good this coffee will be, but he feels like his mind would benefit from some sharpening right now, so he pours himself a cup, sits down across from Elisa.