Architecture? No. Geography? No. Then what about being a writer? Hmm. But what kind of a writer? Books are hard and take too much time; poetry is fast enough, and easy, but not exactly an income stream. He thinks more. How about a screenplay, maybe for some blockbuster movie? Good, but movies tend to be a one-time thing; there’s a big payoff, and then nothing; you’re back taking lunches and pitching projects along with every amateur in the neighborhood. How about a long-term project, say, like a television dramatic series — or better, a sitcom. Now, that’s a thought, he thinks. That way he can sell the first season, make a little money, and then keep writing, churning them out for the next five or six years, and even while he is writing the next season’s shows, can dream up new projects and pitch them, because, hey, nothing lasts forever. Except for the deep pockets of reruns.
But a sitcom about what? Crime? Too crowded. Lawyers? Ditto. Doctors, spies? Ditto. A doctor who is a spy and steals secrets while his patients are babbling under anesthesia? Is that against medical ethics? Maybe not, but where would he start? Wait a minute. Something is coming to him, an obscure sitcom he used to watch when he was a kid, called something like Pleasant Valley, or Happy Valley—something — about a bunch of hippies living on a farm somewhere in bumfuck nowhere. You could do that, he thinks. But wait! What if any of that show’s creators are alive? Could they sue him for plagiarism? Does plagiarism even exist on television? It can’t possibly, but what if it does?
So how about this? How about a bunch of people, Jeffery thinks, like Viktor, who are all in the Federal Witness Protection Program, and who, unknown to each other, all wind up living in a sort of an underground commune they call the Burrow. Why not? Write what you know. And if it works, it will make him enough money to get him out of here once and for all. Maybe enough to buy a house with a big front lawn and a gardener. He’s always liked the idea of having a gardener. Clip this. Trim that. Once a month he’ll get a bill and then, when he does, he’ll be able to pay it, too. He can sense the Future Jeffery just on the other side of the door, waiting to be let in.
Time passes, with Ballerina Mouse appearing only in recitals in the most minor roles: in Swan Lake, she plays a duckling, in The Nutcracker, a slice of fruitcake. “But you are so talented,” her fellow students tell her. “We have no idea why Mme. Suzanne isn’t casting you in better parts.” When they think she’s not watching, she catches them laughing at her.
Then, one day she wins a public radio subscriber giveaway. She’s not a subscriber, but the rules say you don’t have to subscribe to be entered into the sweepstakes, and so she wins a free trip to. . Poland! And once she’s there, having been asked by someone she meets at the ballet if she has any hobbies, she obliges with a few shy dance steps, and in no time finds herself the toast of Warsaw, where its residents, having been forced for years to watch so much ordinary, everyday dancing, beg her to stay so she will teach them how to emulate her unique and exquisite technique.
Fat chance.
The kitchen of the Burrow is not large. In fact, it’s smaller than the kitchens of many ordinary houses, especially considering that at times (though not at this time, because the room where Louis lived is vacant) there are potentially six people occupying the apartments in the Burrow and thus using the kitchen. As kitchens go, it’s fairly clean, though the kitchens used by several different people are seldom as clean as those where there is one person and one person only designated to use it. In the Burrow, Madeline is mostly in charge; however when other people drop in to cook something, or maybe warm up leftovers, usually late at night, they frequently — no, usually — leave behind a mess.
There is just one entrance to this kitchen, and on the wall a person faces when he or she steps through the entrance, arranged from left to right, are a stove and a stainless-steel sink. Above the stove and the sink are cabinets. The stove, as mentioned earlier, has a mirror behind it, tilted slightly downward, so sometimes when a person is cooking, it seems as if she is cooking as a team with someone else, whose face she can’t see, only her hands. There are cabinets on the other three walls as well, and counters beneath them on which rest a microwave, a toaster oven, and a blender, in case anyone wants to make him or herself a smoothie or a milk shake. Beneath the counters are more cabinets and drawers.
The kitchen table has a gray Formica top and chrome legs, and is technically designed to seat four, because there are four matching chairs that are usually around it, but someone has added two extra chairs, one red and one blue, with the paint on the red one chipped. They usually are kept in the corner of the kitchen opposite the refrigerator unless they’re needed, which mostly they are not because, as Jeffery pointed out earlier when he discussed his scheme for regular meetings, it’s rare for everyone to be together in the kitchen, or anywhere in the Burrow, at the same time. The table has a drawer on one side with a chrome knob. The drawer holds a pair of pliers and a screwdriver, plus a few screws. Almost certainly if anyone needed a pair of pliers or a screwdriver in an emergency they would be out of luck because most people have forgotten it’s even there, let alone what’s inside. It would be the last place they’d think of looking.
The floor of the kitchen is covered with gray vinyl tile embossed in a wavy pattern to look like stone, but it fools no one. Floors like this were popular back in the days the Burrow was built. The cabinets are pine, though they have darkened with age, and they have white porcelain knobs, some of which are chipped. The walls are the brownish yellow of old vellum.
In other words, this kitchen is not the kind of kitchen you sometimes see in designer kitchen stores or on cooking shows but, as Madeline says, “I’m the only one who ever really uses it, so everyone else should shut up and stop complaining.” Not that they do complain, because they don’t, but in case they are thinking of it, they had better think again.
ANOTHER SCENE FROM THE TECHNICAL SECTOR
Tech #1:
Shit, shit, shit. It looks like there’s another cave-in on Seven.
Tech #2:
What? I thought they took care of that just last week.
Tech #1:
Well now there’s another.
Tech #2:
Is it my imagination, or are things worse now that they’ve stopped using the old machines?
Tech #1:
I don’t know, but I think it has more to do with their planning than with the machines.
Tech #2:
Maybe, but Seven is an old tunnel. It was planned a long time ago, before I came, anyway.
Tech #1:
Well, something is wrong. Have you seen the bit in the TV news?
Tech #2: