Part 35 (1/2)
”You know what I mean.”
He said this surprisingly gently.
”You don't know that,” I told him.
”Think about it.”
”You can't be sure.”
”Remember Chance? Remember Sammy Klein?”
”Shut up.”
”We didn't listen. We went back on our deal.”
”Shut up.”
”They even gave us a last chance. She didn't--”
”Shut the f.u.c.k up.”
”She didn't see it.”
I went for him. All I felt was rage. I wanted to tear him to pieces--stupid f.u.c.king know-it-all. He grabbed my arms and twisted me around. He overpowered me and forced me down.
”Jeremy, stop. Stop. This isn't going to help anything.”
”We have to go get her.”
”We can't.”
”We have to. We have to save her.”
”How? How, Jeremy? How could we save her?”
”We go after her.”
We both looked at the hole in the middle of that flickering room. The hole was impossibly dark. Inestimably deep. I tried to imagine what was at the bottom. Given the deviousness, the ghoulishness of what we'd seen so far, the possibilities seemed limitless. Would we fall at breakneck speed into a pit of random spikes, where a dozen skeletons were already impaled? Or maybe we'd land in a pit of half-starved dogs, creeping toward us, snarling, mangy fur glowing faintly with moonlight. Would they throw in a sword and s.h.i.+eld to reflect the stars and add some excitement?
We looked at that hole for a long time. It occurred to me that if we wanted to save Sarah's life--if we wanted to even have a chance--we had to go now.
Miles spoke softly behind me.
”Jeremy, if you were going to jump, you would've done it already.”
He walked back across the blade room to the door we'd entered a hundred years ago. He tried the k.n.o.b, and it opened. He waited for me at the door.
I turned back to the hole.
If this were a movie, I would've jumped. I would've said something heroic, or at least clever: I'll be back! Hasta la vista, baby! All in a day's work!
But it wasn't a movie.
And I didn't jump.
G.o.d help us, we left her there.
I felt a strange buzzing in my head. It was a giddy feeling. My body was pumping me full of joy, excuses, illusions, distractions. We sat in Miles's apartment on the red futon, flipping channels and trying not to look at each other. We ordered Chinese food and waited for it to come. There was nothing on TV. We pa.s.sed Hogan's Heroes, an infomercial for a gym machine, a Steven Seagal movie dubbed in Spanish, reruns of cla.s.sic game shows. The badness made it almost impossible to pretend we were actually watching. Miles lit a joint and took a long drag. He offered it to me. I'd never smoked pot before. Never even wanted to. But right now, all I wanted was to stop the feeling of pointlessness that was creeping around the edges of my awareness, looking for a way in. I took the joint. It was wet on the tip. I sucked in and let the raw smoke go into my mouth. I held it there for a second. I knew what to do next. I'd tried cigarettes once in high school and mastered the art of letting the smoke go down my trachea and bloom into my lungs. I wanted that peaceful look I'd seen on potheads' faces. I wanted to find truth in Pink Floyd. I wanted to find my own hand hilarious. But I didn't inhale. I just held the smoke long enough to fake it and let it out a moment later. I pa.s.sed the joint back to Miles.
I couldn't stand the silence. I asked Miles a question I'd been saving for a late-night chat. I asked it now, just to break the tension.
”Hey Miles.”
”Yeah?”
He didn't look at me.
”Why'd you quit law?”
He took another hit. He didn't say anything.
”You had an offer from the best firm in the country,” I said. ”People would kill for that. And you turned it down. Why?”
Miles closed his eyes.
”I don't know,” he said. ”Maybe it was a mistake, in retrospect.”
”You must've had a reason. Do you remember?”
Finally he sighed.
”It's gonna sound stupid now.” He shook his head. ”Something I heard on the first day of cla.s.s, in Torts. It always bothered me. A man sees a baby on some train tracks. He's just walking by. No one else is around. There's a train coming. It's way off in the distance. All he has to do is move the baby, right? Just pick it up and move it off the tracks. But he doesn't. For whatever reason, he keeps walking. And Professor Long told us: the law has nothing to say about that. Remember? Because there's no duty between him and the baby. Not in the legal sense.”
”That's it? That's why you quit?”
”No. I started thinking. Say we all get mad. We pa.s.s a law that says you have to move the baby or you go to jail. Next time, the guy moves the baby.”
”That's good. The law worked.”
”Sure it worked. But the guy hasn't changed. See? He didn't want to move the baby. He just didn't want to go to jail.”
”So?”