Vinod backed away. He turned around. Ahead of him, the great green lawn littered by fallen white tree branches and flanked by the familiar gravel driveway and beyond that the streets of the new rural city. From his position on the modest hill, he now saw windmills, the old Dutch kind, astride the few remaining apartment buildings. He was welcome to leave. But if he went out into this world, whom would he meet? Whom did he know, really, but the inhabitants of this house, the House on the Hill?
Vinod opened the front door and stepped inside. He was in the vestibule of his old apartment building on Washington Street. STAIRS OUT, USE ELEVATOR. Who awaited him on the fifth floor? Him? Her? Both of them in tandem, stuck in the summer sweat, with their love for him and their perfidy? The elevator doors opened. He stepped inside, smelled the cigarettes and the floral residue of women. The door began to close. “Hold the door!” he heard. “Please, sir!”
Only what if he didn’t? Only what if he rode the elevator alone? Without the fat man? Without the air squeezed out of his lungs.
He would do it. He would let the door close.
“Entity responsible for this,” Vinod whispered. “I hope and pray that you will allow me to reach the end point and exit from whatever you have created.”
The door continued to close, but slowly, tempting him with his own kindness. “Please, sir, hold the door! Please! I have to—”
He kept his hand at his side. “Entity responsible for this,” he began to chant like a sadhu, but in an entirely unholy language. “I hope and pray—”
“Sir, please. She’s waiting for me. My wife is waiting for me. My family.”
Entity responsible. His hand came up to stop the door. The door hit his hand against the rough steel frame of the elevator. There was a tremor of pain, unexpected. The door reared back and then smashed into his hand once more. Vinod cried out in pain. Oh, please, oh, please, oh, please. A final sloka rang in his ear now, all of the sadhus praying with him, their saffron voices gathering in pitch. Why? Why were there so many snakes in the world when they had been marked for annihilation? The elevator door cut into his hand, through the skin, down to the bone, past the bone, into nothingness. And he could not move away, and he could not save himself.
10
Karen and Senderovsky walked out of the hospital. Its portico resembled a busy provincial Hyatt, and the half circle of the driveway was lined with black Suburbans. People in purple scrubs moved around them with enviable purpose, lanyards clapping in the September breeze.
They passed by an ugly orange building labeled CITY MEDICAL EXAMINER’S OFFICE. Karen stopped by a garbage can to throw up. He moved aside the lapels of the blazer she wore over her gingham dress, the most formal outfit he had ever seen her wear, and did the same for her hair.
It had been a month since the metallic firefly roughly settled on the front lawn, beams blazing, rotors stirring up whirlpools of gravel, and the men with the stretcher approached Karen’s bungalow where Vinod had been sedated, his MOLST ignored by his friends. And now it was over. They had not been allowed to see him in his final moments, but were instead given a sealed plastic bag containing his last effects: a T-shirt from the city college he and Sasha had attended, a checkered lungi, a cellphone brimming with desperate messages from relations across the globe, and a gold-plated Japanese watch. They were advised not to open the bag for seven days. Karen realized she had dressed up to collect a bag.
They continued to walk past the glassed-in medical pavilions, silently, their feet instructing them: downtown. They passed a cityscape of tall redbrick apartment buildings that resembled the ones they had grown up in across the river, then crossed a broad ugly street that switched the scenery from projects and hospitals to an avenue of restaurants and bars. The outdoor tables of the Greek tavernas and taquerias were packed with college students and recent graduates whooping it up among rows of ferns and plastic bunting. They found a Filipino gastropub by a busy bike lane, charmed by a sign that addressed the riders zipping by: CAUTION FILIPINOS CROSSING.
It had been a week since the Levin-Senderovskys had returned to the city so that Nat could prepare for the resumption of the Kindness Academy. Senderovsky had been shocked by the row of Valentine’s Day cards lining the bookshelf in their small dark living room, the last vestige of normalcy from February. “Do you want to be my Valentine?” one card addressed to Nat from her teacher asked. “You otter.”
“Are you hungry, honey?” Karen asked. “We haven’t eaten since last night.”