Read Warp for Free Online

million fucking rooms in it.”
    Hollis got up off the futon and went out into the anteroom by the door, which had a tiny closet. Out of sight of the others he picked out a pair of clean boxers and stepped into them, pulling them up underneath the robe.
    â€œThat’s all I was thinking,” Peters called from the other room, raising his voice. “We can’t really have people over there. They’ll be gone till next Friday.”
    â€œAre you house-sitting for them?” Hollis called back.
    â€œNot exactly.”
    â€œOh.” He paused. “What are you doing, exactly?”
    â€œJust using their stuff, I guess.”
    â€œAre they going to know?”
    â€œNot really.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œWell, I don’t think they’d like it.”
    Hollis came out and stood in the door frame, in his socks and boxers. They were green, with little white whales on them.
    â€œSo we’re supposed to break into their house?”
    â€œRelax. I have a key. If we’re careful they’ll never find out—they’re overseas.” He yawned. “Well, they’re in the Caribbean.”
    Hollis watched him, feeling with one foot for the opening of a pair of jeans. Peters stood up and went back over to the bookcase. He took out a book and looked at it in the half-darkness.
    â€œDid you know that J. D. Salinger has two whole novels, brand-new, locked up in a bank vault somewhere in Vermont? He won’t publish them.”
    â€œWhy not?” Blake said, from the couch.
    â€œI don’t know. Some hippy-dippy Zen-type reason.”
    â€œWhat’s their name?” said Hollis. “The family friends, I mean.”
    â€œDonnelly.”
    Hollis thought for a second.
    â€œDidn’t we use their Cape house once? Why don’t we go there?”
    â€œNo.” Peters made a face. “I’d never go there now. There’s something about beaches in the fall—I can’t stand it. Dead horseshoe crabs. Old people with metal detectors. Heaps of fucking … I don’t know. Whatever it is. Kelp. Makes you want to kill yourself.”
    He looked up. His glasses flashed in the light from the desk lamp. He put his hands in his pockets and took out a pack of Marlboros and a book of matches. With a tricky little sleight-of-hand gesture, he opened the matchbook and lit a match with one hand.
    â€œBesides, I hate that stupid prefabricated cottage. It looks like a displaced motel room. You start feeling like fucking Alfred J. Prufrock out there. Life’s passing you by, I’m so insignificant, etc., etc. There was a movie I saw once, about these guys who were desperately trying to kill this alien who was morphing weirdly all over the place in this research station somewhere up above the Arctic Circle. Some really revolting special effects. It was a trip. Anyway, at the way end there’s just these two guys sitting in the middle of nowhere, in this Arctic wasteland, with their whole camp destroyed, and you basically know they’re going to die, even though they’ve just saved the world from this alien. It’s Kurt Russell, actually. Kind of like a metaphor for his whole career, in a way.”
    â€œNot since Stargate ,” Blake said. “Now he’s B-list again.”
    â€œYou don’t mind if I smoke, do you?”
    â€œNo,” said Hollis.
    â€œKnock yourself out,” said Blake.
    Peters watched the match flame meditatively, as it dwindled down to a little blue pearl and finally vanished in a puff of smoke.
    â€œI need something to ash in,” he said.
    â€œThere’s a can next to your foot.”
    â€œAnyway, it’s probably all closed up,” he went on. “The cottage. Besides, I doubt if I could get the key, except if it’s in the Dover house.”
    â€œI don’t know,” Hollis said. “The whole thing sounds a little weird.”
    â€œWell, look, go or don’t