I ponder making a run for it before they show. I could still make it back to my dad’s. I could make up a story about why I left. Anything is better than the truth: I thought I discovered the location of the White Room, a conjecture based solely on the name I gave a small Eskimo boy while in an LSD-induced nightmare. Oh, and I also figured my mother would be there waiting for me, sitting on a table in the White Room — the same table she strapped me to before injecting me with Compound-23 — and I would force her to divulge all her secrets before giving me a pill which would erase my Henry Bins forever.

I laugh at the absurdity of it all.

I head back downstairs.

I’m halfway down when the car alarm stops. From my experience, most car alarms last five minutes. I look at my watch and see exactly five minutes have elapsed since I broke the window.

I edge to the window I busted and crane my head, listening for police sirens. I don’t hear any, though I’m not sure they would turn their sirens on at night, not wanting to alert the intruders.

“Dammit, Henry,” I say.

Then I take a deep breath.

“Okay, you still have forty-three minutes. If the cops were coming, they would be here by now.”

“You’re right,” a voice says. “They would be.”

I turn.

Standing in the middle of the room is a man.

I shine the flashlight on him.

Sidney Ewen.

::::

I walk toward him.

His stoop is gone. He is without a cane. He looks twenty years younger than the last time I saw him.

“You,” I say.

He shrugs, then says, “Who were you expecting?”

“I don’t know. Certainly not you.”

“Your mother?”

“Maybe,” I say coldly.

“Elena was here recently. Well, you know that all too well. Sadly, she was forced to flee the country in the wake of your release.”

“Where is she?”

“Bermuda, last I heard, but she likes to move around.”

I nod, then say, “Show me.”

He stares at me. Doesn’t answer.

“Show me the White Room.”

He laughs. “Ah, the White Room. Alas, we don’t call it that.”

“What do you call it?”

“It doesn’t have a name. Just a room.”

“But it’s here?”

He nods.

“Show me.”

“Very well.”

I follow him to one of the offices. He lowers the drapes. He flicks a switch and an overhead fan turns on. Finally, he picks up a paperweight and moves it to the opposite side of the desk. There is a soft click and the desk moves forward three feet, leaving a circular metal grate.

A sewer grate.

He leans down and lifts it, then slides it away. A remarkable feat for a man who acted as though he had mere days left to live the last time I saw him.