Warp by Lev Grossman

respect, she apparently detonated a bomb made of plastique mixed with steel ball bearings which she wore strapped to her body beneath her clothing. All that remained after the explosion was her head, which was found nearby almost perfectly intact.
    The street in front of Hollis’s building was divided by the trolley tracks, and someone had gotten stuck in one of the lanes going the wrong way. Now the driver gingerly tried to back up to where he’d made the mistake, in the glare of the headlights of the oncoming cars. A group of partygoers watched from the sidewalk.
    â€œNow I’ve seen everything,” said a woman’s voice.
    The trolley had stopped running hours earlier. He could hear the wind blowing in the trees, and there was a crisp smell of snow in the air. A plastic upright fan stood leaned up against a tree in front of his building; for some reason the trash people wouldn’t collect it.
    In the elevator, Hollis leaned back against the wall and took a deep breath. The door opened. He walked mechanically to his apartment and unlocked it—it took him a few tries to get both locks undone. His futon was still folded up into a couch. There were no messages on the machine.
    As he unlocked his bicycle outside her apartment, he noticed he was having trouble breathing.
    â€œI’m dead,” he thought. “I’ll never survive.”
    The square dial of the clock on his desk read 3:55. Hollis went into the bathroom and sat down on the cold tile floor, still wearing his green corduroy overcoat. The radiator hissed crazily.
    One night Hollis came back to his building late. He was surprised to see a man standing in the hallway outside his apartment—it was unusual for anyone else in the building to be up at this hour. The man was dressed in a gray suit, somber but expensively cut. For some reason he struck Hollis as strangely familiar.
    â€œHollis Kessler,” said the stranger. “Do you know who I am?”
    Hollis stopped.
    â€œI don’t think so.”
    â€œI’m here to ask for your help. There isn’t much time. I’ve come a long way to find you.”
    They faced each other.
    â€œOur world is dying. Only you can save us.”
    For some reason the bathroom light was incredibly bright. Hollis ran some cold tap water into a glass and drank it. It tasted like old toothpaste.
    My hands were unsteady, and a drop splashed onto the white linen of the tablecloth.
    Same old Caulfield. When are you going to grow up?
    Hollis closed his eyes.
    It was very late. Lying on the bed, Hollis watched Eileen take off her jewelry. Her back was to him, but he caught glimpses of her face in the mirror.
    â€œNadia’s mother looked like hell tonight,” she said.
    â€œShe had that huge pin on her dress,” said Hollis. “What was that thing, the Hope Rhinestone?”
    When she was done Eileen came over and lay down on top of him, still in her evening gown, with the back unzipped down to the small of her back. They kissed.
    After a while she pulled back and wrinkled her nose at him, smiling.
    â€œYou sweat like a pig,” said Eileen. “Whenever you wear a suit.”
    â€œBut I smell like a man.”
    â€œYou smell like several men.”
    The sun is going down on a salt marsh. The tops of the reeds are all but drowned in seawater. A post marks the channel out to the ocean.
    The flow of the tide carries a flat-bottomed skiff on the current, faster and faster, out towards the bay, faster and faster and faster and faster.
    Eileen smoothed his forehead with her hand.
    â€œThere, then,” she said. “There, then.”

 
    CHAPTER 6
    FRIDAY, 4:15 A.M.
    Twenty minutes later, Hollis was downstairs in the vestibule of his apartment building. Even inside it was cold, and he could see his breath in the air. The floor was decorated with tiny colored mosaic tiles, and littered with red-and-white Chinese menus and thick bundles of newsprint