Jules messages me asking if I’ll meet him in lower Manhattan in a couple of days to help him with “a project.” It’s urgent, but nothing is wrong. He’s been working on his new book and in good health （down 15 lbs!）， so I agree, no questions asked.
Two mornings later, he meets me outside an apartment building in Tribeca in a cold sweat: gray face, collar soaked. I say Jules, do we need to go to the hospital? He says no, everything is fine, he’s just anxious. Tells me the next couple of hours will seem strange, but there’s nothing wrong. Oh, and my job is going to be minding a pair of 8-month-old twins!
We go inside the building and ride up in an elevator. Jules opens the apartment door and I find a beautiful boy and girl buckled into a double stroller, just starting to whimper. There are some toys around, so I drop to the floor and start shaking a rattle and they quiet down. Meanwhile Jules goes into another room and comes back leading by the hand （out of sight of the babies） a woman with a black hood covering her entire head and one arm in a sling! She seems calm and even waves to me with her good arm, which is the only reason I don’t call 911.
Jules motions for me to lead the way out of the apartment with the stroller. He’s ordered a car with two infant seats. The hooded woman stays out of sight until I’ve buckled in the babies. Then she slips into the front seat wearing a wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses, so the hood just looks like a face mask. No one says a word. The twins fuss a little at first, but some rattling from me distracts them.
We pull up outside a seedy bar near Penn Station. I can hear Jules wheezing like he’s having a panic attack. I buckle the twins back into their stroller and Jules motions for me to lead the way into this crappy bar. I’m thinking this can’t be right, but the bartender catches my eye and jerks his chin toward the back. I roll the stroller toward a grimy, crusty door that I’m assuming will lead into a biohazardous restroom, I can almost smell it, but I brace myself against the door and push it open.
Then it’s like we’ve gone through a portal in one of Chris’s old video games: We’re inside a medical clinic and a buff military-looking guy in a surgical mask greets us in friendly silence. We follow him into a room that’s totally dark except for a glowing purple ring in the middle of the floor. I’m trying to interpret this scene: Is it a game? A performance? A test? But Jules is morbidly serious and no one says a word, so I keep quiet and roll with it.
Jules and I sit on a bench against the wall with the stroller. The twins are mesmerized by the purple ring. The military guy leads the hooded woman into the center of this ring and takes off her sunglasses and hat, but leaves on the hood. Then he disappears. I hear a humming sound and a mechanical arm begins to raise the ring slowly up from the floor. It moves from the woman’s feet over her shins, her thighs, her hips, her torso, and finally her head. The purple light has a stupefying effect; the twins fall asleep instantly and I feel Jules slump against me and I’m sort of entranced, I guess, just staring at that purple light.
When the ring has moved up over the woman’s entire body, the purple light goes out and the military guy reappears and leads her to a chair. Then he sits down behind a screen and spends a long time studying it. The only light in the room is a blue-green glow on the guy’s face, and all I can see above his mask are his eyes.
Finally the lights gently rise, and the guy stands up. He looks around and sees that I’m awake. When our eyes meet, he says, “You don’t get motion sickness,” and I realize it’s the first voice I’ve heard since I met Jules that morning.
“Never,” I say.
He goes to the woman in the chair and gently pulls off her hood. She’s asleep too. The guy crouches beside her chair, close to her face, and says, “You’re clean, Lulu. There’s nothing.”
She starts upright, and that’s when I recognize her: it’s Lulu. As in OUR Lulu, Dolly’s daughter. IT’S LULU!!
Then it’s like a spell breaks: the twins start to wail and Lulu leans over the stroller kissing them both and she’s crying, too. She looks haggard, and one arm kind of hangs at her side like she can’t use it properly. Jules introduces the military guy as “A,” a “cleaner,” meaning one of those people who scan for weevils. He’s promised Jules a scan （not his first, apparently）， which of course turns up nothing.