This was the part of the story where he applied his ingenuity to escape from a life-threatening situation. Now that he was in such a situation, he appreciated how asinine a trope it was. In real life, evil captors did not forget to lock the door. They didn’t accidentally leave out an assortment of parts that cleverly combined to form a working crossbow. Lying on his comfy sheets, he ruminated on the phrase “action hero.” It didn’t mean merely that the hero underwent a series of exciting events. It meant that the hero was active—that is, he did something. But what could an action hero do when there was nothing doable? Did the fact that he wasn’t attempting to escape mean that he wasn’t a hero, or that the concept of action heroism was inherently far-fetched? He decided it was both. He might not be able to escape, but he doubted that anyone else could, either. Still, his passivity did make him feel guilty, as though it was morally incumbent upon him to fight back. He could kill himself. That would show Thithyich. His first thought was to hang himself with his bedsheet, but the walls of the cell were made of a smooth plaster inhospitable to nooses. He examined the bedframe, hoping to take it apart and use a piece to slit his wrists. The screws were tight, meant to resist just that sort of mayhem. The television was set into the wall and covered with a thick layer of Plexiglas. The minibar held pretzels, Baked! Lay’s, SunChips, golden raisins, two ingots of Toblerone, six-ounce cartons of orange and cranberry juice, cans of Coke and Diet Coke, and plastic mini-bottles of scotch and vodka. With luck he might be able to snack himself to death, but more probably he would go to his fate with heartburn. Suicide was out.
He rummaged around in the desk. Beneath a leather-bound copy of the East Zlabian edition of Vassily Nabochka, he found a small pad of paper with the casino insignia at the top. A golf pencil had rolled to the back of the drawer. He sat down and started to write.
It was a purely symbolic form of resistance—he did not expect anything he wrote to leave the room—but he felt compelled to give it his all. Sweetheart he began. He used metaphors, he used similes, he made allusions. He stopped and reread. Overall, the tone was self-conscious, as though he was trying too hard to ingratiate himself to an audience of strangers. He threw the page away and started over, beginning with a story from his own childhood. He wrote for an hour before going back to assess his progress. Again, it was all wrong. It wasn’t about her or how he felt about her. He tried again and again. Nothing worked. A significant pile of paper accumulated on the floor of the cell. Soon enough he ran out. He banged on the cell bars until the guard came. He asked for more paper. It was brought. He wrote through that whole pad, and when he still failed to express himself adequately, he called for and was brought a third pad. His pencil snapped. He still hadn’t written anything he could live with. He decided to stop. Then he changed his mind. Then he changed it back. It was four forty-eight in the morning. He could no longer think clearly. It was coming now, fear. He curled up on the floor and held himself. He wasn’t ready to give up on life. He still had so much to do. He wanted to see his daughter happy in her new house. He wanted to see her children. He wanted to hold Carlotta one more time. Would he ever feel ready to die? Could a man know that he had accomplished as much as he ever would? He believed he had more in him. He always would. He could be on death’s door and still he would be reaching. No matter what the world said, he would always believe that the best of him was yet to come.
The cell door slid open. A guard wheeled in a room-service cart. He paused briefly to stare at Pfefferkorn, lying fetal on the floor. Then he set the cart up and left.
Gradually the light in the room increased. The cell turned pink and purple and gold. The sun was a herald. The day was catching up with him. Nothing could not stop it. Pfefferkorn sat up. He was going to die today. Suddenly he felt ravenous. He attacked the food. There were croissants, half a grapefruit, Danish, coffee, a panoply of fancy jams and jellies, and an egg-white timbale in the shape of a Calabi-Yau manifold.
Everything was delicious.
The bathroom was stocked. Pfefferkorn took a shower. He shaved with an electric wet/dry shaver. He brushed his teeth and rinsed his mouth with mouthwash. He applied talcum powder and swabbed out his nose and ears. A card on the sink informed him that in order to protect the environment, a towel back on the rack would be reused, while a towel on the floor would be replaced. He dropped all the towels on the floor, including the clean ones.
His new clothes had arrived while he was showering. Everything had been laid out for him on the bed. In addition to the suit there were fresh socks and broadcloth boxers, a bright white shirt and a canary yellow necktie. Pfefferkorn pulled the pins from the shirt and put it on. The polished cotton felt good against his skin. He took the suit out of its garment bag and stepped into the pants. They fit perfectly, enough so that he didn’t need the crocodile-skin belt. He put it on anyway. The soles of the penny loafers were slippery, so he scuffed them up with a disposable emery board from the bathroom. He tied the tie, taking time to get the knot right. He held up the jacket. The lining was burgundy. The label read
88.
Pfefferkorn escaped.
89.
Stumbling from the freight elevator in the casino’s parking garage, his hair wild and his shirt torn, he saw the Town Car with the tinted windows. Two men were waiting by the rear of the car. One was blond and the other was bald. They were both dressed in black. Pfefferkorn sprinted toward them and got into the popped trunk.
The ride this time was more comfortable than it had been coming into East Zlabia. For one thing, the Lincoln’s trunk was roomier. Also, he wasn’t tied up or gagged. All the same, he had no idea who his rescuers were or where he was going. He decided to be positive and assume that the Americans had come to exfiltrate him. He bumped along. He felt the road deteriorating, as if they were headed into the countryside. He counted turns. He waited patiently. The ride went on and on. The stuffiness was like a scarf being drawn tight around his neck. He felt his brand-new suit becoming soaked with sweat. He felt the old familiar hysteria. He flailed and pounded the roof of the trunk.
The car slowed.
It stopped.
Doors opened.
The trunk swung open. Pfefferkorn blinked up at the two men in black. The blond man was holding a wad of cloth. There was also a third person. He must have been waiting in the backseat of the car when Pfefferkorn got in.