50

Jody woke up to the sound of muffled moans. She blinked. It was coming from next door. She shut her eyes and went back to sleep. Only she didn't go back to sleep. She was no longer tired. There was a dining room table leg just above her pillow.

I have no idea where I am, she thought. She envisioned spirals forming around her eyes as she realized she wasn't going to get any more sleep.

Chris must have gone out.

Chris must have gone, somewhere.

Chris must have gone back to the portrait gallery to take another look at Marcia Brundtland.

Chris got hungry again and went on, and found the exit.

Chris isn't here, and Puck is in the next room having sex with his girlfriend.

Or his wife.

Jody felt unhappy.

She studied the walls of the chamber. They were dirt. Really, of all things, tunnels under Sloan, a plumber's showroom that tunnels and tunnels. And at the tiniest red dot in the bullseye, what do you find but Wolfgang Puck's secret kitchen.

She tried to sleep. She tried to think of songs she knew well enough to play them back in her head in real time.

Apparently Chris and Puck had finished, because there was no more noise. Even a dripping faucet would, oh no.

This time, she had to go very badly. She got up right away, cutting through an hour and a half's worth of procrastinatory fog. The kitchen was open, you got there through an arch. There was a closed onyx door, but that was the bedroom. She wandered in a wider circumference. She passed the little chem-lab gas spigots.

Several yards back the way they came in, she found an additional door. This one was not onyx. She opened it and it was the bathroom.

The sink was made of gold.