“These doors aren’t what they seem, either.”

“Either?”

“Like you, Amy. You blow hot and cold. Has anybody ever told you that?”

“For a moment she’d thought he was going to ask if anybody had ever called her a bitch. He’d hesitated, and toned it down. If he felt stymied — exactly the right word for the circumstance, she thought — this was as close as he was going to come to actual begging. “I thought you were going to ask if my husband ever hit me.”

Chino reached the side of the door and pressed what she had thought was a light switch. The doors rumbled open like the doors of an oversized elevator — a freight elevator, which was what was beyond the doors, a stainless steel freight elevator with a second gate on the far side, and a second set of doors beyond the gate. A tiny aperture of a window allowed her to see a bright electric light, as if at a night baseball game. “Well, has he?”

He’d gotten her again, she was thinking. She didn’t want to answer the question now – she didn’t want to enter into even a charade of intimacy with him while he was mystifying her with an elevator. The pool! The light coming in from outside was the light above the swimming pool. “What the hell do you call this?”

He shook his head. “Hot and cold only begins to tell your story. Absolutely amazing.”

“Cut it out. What do you want to know, if he ever hit me? Absolutely not. Spanking’s a different story. When spanking is part of the game. Now come on, does this thing go anywhere or is it just a nonfunctioning trinket for the failed communist who has everything?”

He pulled open the gate. She could feel grit on the floor beneath her feet, and she asked herself why she was not surprised. She remembered: the pile of dirt at the back of the lot. Chino said, “The neighbors will tell you that the exterior walls of this house went up very quickly, but that work on the interior continued for more than two years. Actually it took a lot longer. Much longer. Until roughly six weeks ago.” He let the gate close and pushed the control arm down. With a loud electric whirr, the elevator car started to plunge. “This is why my art collection has been moved for safekeeping.”

“Where?”

“Mexico City.”

“You’re not afraid of earthquakes.”

“That is a very funny thing to say, Amy.”

“Why aren’t you laughing?”

He didn’t answer. She watched the concrete-lined elevator shaft slide upward. In just seconds they were below the foundation of the building. At least twenty feet down. Thirty? An open doorway suddenly rose up and Chino slowed the car.