Ivy sat beside Taneesha in the hall of the old psych ward while the doctor made his call.
Taneesha yawned, checked her watch. “Three more hours?” She shook her head as though trying to clear it. “Know what’s crazy about this job?”
“What?”
“When you’re on shift,” Taneesha said, “time slows right down to almost nothin’, just like you’re an inmate. Then when you’re off, it revs up to fast-forward, makes you jittery.”
“What about when the inmates get out?” Ivy said. “Do they end up jittery, too?”
“Who knows?” Taneesha said. “They’re never on the outside for long.” She reached down into the magazine pile, took one for herself, passed one to Ivy.
An entertainment magazine, all about Hollywood. Ivy leafed through, not reading, not even really looking, just letting the images pass before her eyes. She almost missed Joel. But there he was, bottom of page twenty-seven, standing by a plastic flamingo with Adam Sandler. The caption read: Birds of a Feather: Adam Sandler and hot new screenwriter Joel Cutler team up on the set of Ass Backwards.
Ass Backwards? That was the title of Joel’s screenplay?
Adam Sandler had a big smile, on his face. So did Joel. The flamingo’s yellow teeth were arranged in a big smile, too. In the background, a waitress with a drink tray leaned over a table. She had a tattoo on her shoulder, something red, maybe a flower.
Ivy turned to Taneesha. Her eyelids were heavy again.
“Taneesha?”
Taneesha’s eyelids slowly rose. “Yeah?”
“Have they moved Morales yet?”
“Back on the tiers, you mean?” Taneesha said. “He’s still in the infirmary, far as I know.”
“But Sergeant Tocco said Morales would be sent to another prison,” Ivy said.
“First I heard of it,” said Taneesha.
“Are you saying it might not happen?”
Taneesha shrugged. She opened a magazine, took out a pencil. “Thirteen down,” she said. “‘Rear Window director.’ Nine letters.”
“Hitchcock,” said Ivy.
“Oh, yeah.” Taneesha penciled it in. “I knew that.”
“Have they found who killed Felix yet?” Ivy said.
“Nope,” said Taneesha. “How about ‘Bergman and Boyer scarefest,’ eight letters.”
“Gaslight,” Ivy said.
“Don’t know that one,” Taneesha said. “Any good?”
“Yes,” Ivy said.
Taneesha wrote Gaslight. “You ever meet the warden?” she said.
“No.”
“He was pretty pissed about Felix.”
“Did it get him in trouble?”
“Huh?”
“The warden,” said Ivy. “For having a fairly prominent inmate killed on his watch.”
“Felix was prominent?” Taneesha said.
“In some circles.”
“Not up here,” said Taneesha. “Only way an inmate can hurt the warden is if he escapes. That was the thing with Felix.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Most of the inmates are pretty dumb, right?” Taneesha said. “Part of how come they are what they are. Felix wasn’t like that. Word was he’d put his mind to work on our security, come up with some sort of weakness.”
“Felix was planning an escape?” Ivy said.
“Uh-uh,” Taneesha said. “He wanted to make a deal.”
“What kind of deal?”
“Trade this weakness he’d figured out for probation,” Taneesha said.
“But the warden turned him down? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Never got the chance,” Taneesha said. “On account of Felix endin’ up how he did.”
“Does that mean the Latin Kings—” Ivy began.
The doctor came out, checking his watch.
Ivy rose and introduced herself. “I teach—taught—the writing program at Dannemora. Harrow was in the class. I—”
“Harrow?” the doctor said.
“The patient,” said Ivy, her tone hardening on its own. “I was wondering how he’s doing.”
“Amazingly well, considering,” said the doctor. “Some of these guys are like another species, physiologically speaking—might be a research paper in there somewhere. I’m recommending he goes back tomorrow.”
“Back?” Ivy said.
“To the prison infirmary,” the doctor said. “At this rate, he’ll be up and around in a day or two.”
“Thank God,” said Taneesha. “I’m goin’ stir-crazy, Doc.”
The doctor glanced around. “I hear you,” he said.
Taneesha took out her key, turned to Ivy. “Might as well let the both of you out together,” she said.
“But—” Ivy said.
Taneesha tapped her watch.
“Can I just say good-bye?” Ivy said.
“You already got extra.”
“Two minutes,” said Ivy.
Taneesha’s gaze lingered on her. Then she nodded and led the doctor to the steel door.
Ivy went back into Harrow’s room, barely able to keep herself from running. He was sitting up now, propped against the pillows.
“Where’s Mandrell?” he said.
“We don’t have time for that,” Ivy said. “They’re moving you back tomorrow.”
“Montreal? Is that where you found him?”
“Are you listening?” Ivy said. “You’re going back inside tomorrow. And Morales is still there.”
“Good.”
“Good? What are you talking about? Don’t you see? You’ve got to tell me where Betty Ann is, and now.”
“Forget it,” he said.
“But she can prove you were innocent,” Ivy said. “You can be free.” And alive.
Harrow gazed at her. “You’re very pretty,” he said.
Ivy stepped forward, took his face in her hands, not gentle. “Where is she?”
“You’ll never find her.”
“Why not?”
“Did Frank end up owning those strip clubs?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Ivy said. “She’s not with him.” Keys jingled out in the hall. Why didn’t he get it? He was going back inside. The Latin Kings would finish him off. Would she ever see him again? “Why aren’t you telling me?” she said, shaking him a little. Then it hit her. “You don’t know where she is? Is that it?”
Harrow had a faraway look in his eyes. “I know,” he said.
“So if you tell me, why couldn’t I find her?” Ivy said. She heard Taneesha’s footsteps, on the way. “You’re the only one who can do it?”
Harrow nodded, a slight movement, almost imperceptible. Ivy let him go.
Her mind was racing, pulling her ahead so fast she could hardly keep up. Harrow was the only one who could find Betty Ann. Why? Ivy didn’t know, but finding Betty Ann was the only way to prove his innocence. At that moment, she understood what went on in the hearts of a human type that had always eluded her: the woman who drops everything to work with AIDS victims in Africa or the man who stands in front of a tank. “In that case,” she said, “I’m coming to get you.” And it would have to be tonight.
Ivy didn’t linger to see his reaction. She darted to the window. A double-hung: she unfastened the catch, raised the window half an inch, just enough room for sliding fingers underneath.
Behind her, Harrow, very quiet, spoke two words: “Bolt cutters.”
Ivy already knew that, although she’d never used bolt cutters, or even the term, couldn’t picture them. She turned, crossed her arms, looked innocent.
Taneesha entered, glanced at Harrow, then at her. “Time,” she said.
The coldest night of the year, so far. The wind had died down, but it must have been blowing high above because a solid line of cloud was sliding slowly across the starry sky, like the closing of a giant eyelid. Ivy had found a Home Depot over on the Vermont side of Lake Champlain, now drove back to Plattsburgh, credit card maxed out, with an extendable aluminum ladder tied to her roof and covered with a tarp. The bolt cutters, their two-foot-long steel handles coated in plastic, lay on the seat beside her. She felt nervous, but no more so than if she had to make a speech, say, or pass some entrance exam. Her mind, more logical and organized than it had ever been, was still racing along ahead of her. It had already divided the future into two possible paths.
Path one, and her instincts told her the more likely: Betty Ann was close by, and this would all be over by morning, almost before Harrow could even be missed, certainly before her role could be suspected.
Path two: Betty Ann was farther away, and they would need time. Ivy had a plan for that; it felt preordained. Her whole relationship to life had shifted, as though she were meeting it from a different angle, an angle that had to do with changing things—maybe just one thing—but for the better.
Ivy turned into the visitors’ lot at the hospital, drove all the way to the back, past the last light stand into a shadowy corner. The hospital, three stories high, was T-shaped, the psych ward on the third floor at the end of the right-hand arm. That wing stood beyond a grassy rectangle about twenty or thirty yards from the end of the parking lot. Lights shone from many windows, but only faintly from the psych ward, and not at all from the last window. Ivy reached for the door handle. Her cell phone rang.
Ivy almost didn’t answer. Then she remembered those late-night calls from inside Dannemora, and the cell phone better left unmentioned. Did he still have it?
“Hello?” she said.
“Ivy?” A man, vaguely familiar, not Harrow.
“Yes?”
“It’s Whit,” he said.
For a moment, the name didn’t click. “Whit?”
“From The New Yorker.”
“Sorry,” Ivy said. “I just wasn’t expecting—”
“Is this a bad time?” Whit said. “If you want, I could call ba—”
“No, no,” said Ivy. A whole bank of lights on the second floor dimmed. “It’s fine.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” said Whit. “First of all, I apologize for making you wait on this.”
“Oh, that’s all right.” A side door in the main wing of the hospital opened, framing a uniformed man in an oblong of light: security guard. He stepped out, closed the door, took the shape of a shadow in the darkness, hard to spot.
“I’m calling about ‘Caveman,’ of course,” Whit said. “What happened is just extraordinary.”
“Did something happen?” Ivy said.
“To ‘Caveman,’” Whit said. “Sure this is an okay time to talk? You sound a little—”
“Yes,” said Ivy. “Talk. I mean—it’s fine.”
Whit cleared his throat, the way people do when they’re starting over. “In my experience,” he said, “after a story gels in a given configuration, no amount of revision ever takes it to another level. But that change you made—I’m referring to the possible cannibalism sequence—is just magical. And then, when he tries call his mother—chilling.”
“Oh,” said Ivy. “Um.” The security guard stepped suddenly out of the darkness, just a few feet away. Ivy froze. The guard didn’t look inside the car, didn’t appear to even see it. He lit a cigarette, rested his back against the driver-side door—rocking the Saab on its springs—and tossed away the match.
“Mind if I ask you a question?” Whit said. Maybe he took her silence for a yes. “How did it come about?”
The guard sang under his breath: “Dooby dooby doo.”
Ivy didn’t breathe. She pressed the phone tight to her ear to keep sound from leaking out.
“I’m referring to the revision,” Whit said. “Was it just one of those out-of-the-blue things, or did you start with a feeling that the story needed an element like that?”
Ivy said nothing.
“You don’t have to answer, of course,” Whit said. “I’m curious, that’s all. I seem to remember you referring to a suggestion someone made.”
Ivy didn’t answer.
“I don’t mean to be intrusive,” Whit said. “The fact is I’m doing a short piece for the Atlantic on the writing process from a historical perspective. Melville’s journals are really surprising.”
The guard pushed himself off the car, ambled back toward the hospital.
Whit cleared his throat again. “Anyway,” he said. “All this is beside the point, which is that we’re accepting ‘Caveman.’”
The guard flicked his cigarette away, a red pinwheel in the night, and opened the side door.
“You are?” Ivy said, very quiet.
“It’ll be in our debut edition,” Whit said, “featuring two other young writers you’ll meet at a little party we’re giving. Don’t have the exact pub date yet, but the check is in the mail. Literally, as it were.”
“Thanks,” Ivy said. The guard disappeared inside.
“You’re welcome,” said Whit. “I love making calls like this.”
“Thanks,” she said again, this time adding, “very much.”
They said good-bye.
This was great news, maybe the best news Ivy had ever received in her life, even a triumph. She recognized that intellectually. As for her feelings, she felt good about it, but more like the way she’d feel if it had happened to someone else, someone she was pulling for, not her in the here and now. She knew that would change; and Harrow would be with her at the little party, and get the credit he deserved.
Ivy stepped out of the car, hooked the bolt cutters on her belt, stripped off the tarp, and unfastened the ladder.
A trisectional ladder, heavy but not unmanageable. Ivy carried it under her arm, across the grassy rectangle to the end of the right-hand wing. The ladder rattled but there was nothing she could do. This would only work by pressing on as though it were daylight and she was just doing her job; any other approach would paralyze her. Ivy calmed down inside, felt bigger and stronger than normal.
Almost all the windows in the right-hand wing were dark now, and those that weren’t had drawn shades. Starlight gleamed on the ladder, but weakly; above, that line of clouds was moving faster.
Ivy laid the ladder down, the base about ten feet from the wall, directly under that last window on the third floor, and extended it the way the Home Depot clerk had demonstrated. Next step: lifting from the other end, walking the ladder upright rung by rung. It must have been heavy, especially approaching the vertical, but Ivy hardly felt the weight. The ladder swung toward the hospital wall, Ivy tugging on a chest-level rung to slow it down. Way up there, two or three feet from the base of the window, the rubberized tips struck the bricks with a thump—not loud, she thought, although there was more rattling, and maybe even an echo. She took a last look around. Nothing moved.
Ivy climbed the ladder, her sneakers soundless on the rungs. She passed the first-floor window—dark—and the second, where a blue light glowed through the shade. She heard TV voices, kept going.
Ivy stopped two rungs from the top. From there she could reach the sill of the third-floor window. The window: open just enough for her fingers to slide through. This was working. Ivy climbed one more step, got her hands under the window, palms up, and pushed. The window rose about a foot, maybe a little more, then got stuck. Enough.
Ivy peered inside. Dark, except for weak yellow light coming through the doorway to the hall. It gleamed on the bed rails, the shackles, Harrow’s eyes, his gold incisor. Those eyes, like gold now, too, were turned toward her. Ivy climbed through.
She twisted around, got her feet on the floor. The sole of her right sneaker squeaked on a sticky spot. She went still, her gaze on the doorway. Nothing moved out there. From where she stood, she could see a blue-uniformed leg from the knee down, the heel of a big black shoe—a man’s shoe—on the floor, toe raised, the pose relaxed, maybe even a sleeping pose. Stepping with the lightness of a little girl, Ivy approached the bed.
Harrow lay there, completely still, his eyes reflecting that yellow light. No time to talk and nothing to say in any case. Ivy took the bolt cutters off her belt. Would it have been smart to have practiced with them a little first? Probably. She lowered the bolt cutters.
“Hey!” A man’s voice from the hall. Ivy jumped. Heart-stopping, thrill of fear, blood running cold: all those clichés, all true. She came close to diving for the window. Then the man said, “Didn’t wake you, did I?” Pause. “Not much. Pulling the overnight.” Pause. “Yeah? Not with coaching like that they won’t.”
No time, no time at all. Ivy leaned forward, got the edge of the nearest handcuff inside the blades of the cutter, and pressed the handles together hard. The blades made a snicking sound, sliced right through.
“You seen that kid in goal? Stoned Massena Monday night.”
Ivy stepped around the bed, cut through the other cuff.
“Must of faced fifty shots.”
Harrow slid his hands free and sat up. His bare shoulder brushed against her breast. Her temperature warmed up in an instant. Surely not possible.
“Way too much politics.”
Harrow took hold of the end of the IV tube and drew the needle out of his arm. Blood leaked out, like a line of india ink on ivory.
“Been the trouble with this league since day one, politics.” Pause. “That asshole. When was this?”
Harrow got his legs free of the sheet; he wore pajama bottoms, nothing else. He swung his legs over the side and rose, standing beside Ivy. She mouthed the word okay? Harrow nodded. Then, as though all his bones had dissolved inside him, he started to sag toward the floor. Ivy caught hold of him, barely, redirected the fall onto the bed. They landed together, tangled up. A loose chain clanked against the bed rail.
“Hold on a sec.”
Ivy grabbed the sheet, yanked it over them, leaving nothing but Harrow’s face exposed. A footstep: it advanced; paused; withdrew. The card-table chair creaked.
“Nothin’. These fuckin’ nights never end.” Pause. “Overtime? Who are you kiddin’?”
Ivy put her mouth to Harrow’s ear. “Okay?”
He squeezed her arm.
“Yeah? The one with the tits?”
They got off the bed. Ivy heard Harrow take a deep breath. She reached for his arm. They crossed the room to the window, Harrow a little unsteady. She tapped him on the shoulder, pointed outside. He got his bare foot on the ledge—a strong, well-shaped foot, even at that moment she couldn’t help noticing—twisted around with a grunt, soft but full of pain, and climbed out backward.
Ivy stuck her head out, watched him make his slow way down the ladder, a pause on every rung except for the last few. Tendons and veins stood out like wires in his neck and shoulders.
“Wouldn’t mind getting laid myself, comes to that.”
She tucked the bolt cutters back in her belt, climbed out and went down fast, her hands and feet hardly touching the ladder. Up above the window was dark, nothing moving on the other side.
Harrow touched her back. “The grass feels good,” he said.
“Let’s go,” said Ivy.
“The ladder,” Harrow said.
“We’re taking the ladder?”
“Everyone likes a little mystery.”
They walked the ladder onto the ground, slid the extensions back down. Ivy carried it back to the car, Harrow at her side, gazing up at the sky. The line of clouds closed over what was left of the stars.
In the visitors’ lot: no cars left but the Saab. They tied the ladder to the roof, covered it with the tarp, got inside. Ivy stuck the key in the ignition, turned to Harrow. He was smiling, looked like a happy kid on field-trip day.
“Where to?” she said.