But then, of course, he realized, bafflement was not his favorite state-of-being.
"I'm a detective," he told her. "I like to know where I am, see where I'm going."
"Life isn't like that," she responded. "Life's more like this, confused."
Perhaps she was right. But that didn't make him like the maze better.
If her father's labyrinth was a metaphor for life, he preferred to stand up on the catwalks, where the pattern could be seen and understood.
"A person could go crazy down here."
"A person did!" she said.
He supposed she thought she was that person. But why had her father taken her here to abuse her" One would think that a man, performing an act as forbidden as father daughter incest, would commit it in a private place-an attic or a cellar. But her father had chosen to commit it in this brilliantly lit multimirrored space, a space where the taboo nature of his deed would be replicated by reflections to infinity.
Standing in the center of the Great Hall, he thought: Now I understand what it feels like to go mad.
"How can you stand this?"
"I had no choice," she said. "Now I'm used to it. When you're brought up living above a crazy house, it doesn't seem all that crazy.
It just seems like… home." He asked her how her parents had died.
"Accident."
"The roller coaster-?"
She shook her head. "Car crash. Dad was on the road and Mom was with him. I was in art school in Providence at the time. It was night.
They'd been out to dinner. Dad was driving his rig without the trailer.
They collided headon with an eighteen-wheeler on the truck route between Hagerstown and Baltimore." She paused. "Sometimes I wonder if he did it on purpose, decided the time had come to pack it in." She said that with such nonchalance, he could barely believe she was serious. But when he glanced at the mirrors and saw her expression reflected everywhere, he understood she had been masking her feelings.
He also understood that it was important to her that he stand with her now at this scene of the crime. Was she merely trying to evoke his sympathy, or was there some other reason?
"Oh, sure, you're right, a person could go crazy here," she said. "Mom used to send me down here when I was bad."
"That seems pretty cruel."
She nodded. "I'd cry and beat on the mirrors, trying to break them. Of course I couldn't. They're three quarters of an inch thick."
"Why'd she do such a thing?"
"They were carny folk-big, slick smiles on their faces, hard and bitter beneath. Think about it. The amusement park game is a hoax. All those rides-the point of them is to make you scream. A fun house isn't fun at all, it's more like torture. A tunnel of love isn't about love or romance, it's just a dark wet place where kids can feel each other up.
The whole thing's a snake-oil show. Even the stuff they sell to eat is bad for you. It's ' their money and smile,', them think they're having fun." But have you noticed how sad such places are?
That's why they close up when it rains. In the rain you can see them for what they really are-empty, flat and mean."
It felt strange to stand with her in the center of the Great Hall, looking straight at her but aware that their encounter was reproduced on every surface, repeated down endless illusory corridors. They were alone, except for their clones. How many were there? At least a million, he thought.
Gelsey understood that he was about to tell her something important. She waited for him to speak.
"You have to face the fact you've hurt a lot of people."
Yeah, well, I already know that.
"The victimizer can be as damaged as the victim. In some cases more."
Interesting. She felt at once that that was true.
"When you commit a crime you have to pay for it, and not just as an example to others, to repay society, for re habilitation. You've heard all that too many times." She nodded. "Is there another reason?"
"Yes. To make you feel better-because you've paid a price. " "Ah, punishment," she said.
"Yes, punishment."
"Do you believe in it?" "Do you?" he asked.
She thought a moment before she answered. "I think I crave it," she finally said.
"You may have to do some time," he told her as they climbed the embedded ladder back up to the catwalks. "Or you might get off with community service, teaching art to inner-city kids, something like that. It'll be up to a judge. You never know who you'll draw. Carlson will testify. He was pretty bitter when I spoke to him. Maybe you can make a private settlement with him, but I think it would take more than money. You'd have to acknowledge what you did and apologize."
"I'd like to do that anyway."
She's sounding good. But is she for real?
"I don't know what harm the publicity will do you. I suppose it could possibly help-'mirror-obsessed artist criminal." You might get a book contract, a segment on Hard Copy. Ride the hype straight into the Whitney Museum."
She laughed.
"What're you looking for down there?" he asked.
They were back in her loft, sitting in the living area. She was studying him curiously, waiting for him to explain.
"You know the maze cold, right?" She nodded. "And you don't particularly like to look at yourself in mirrors, right?" She nodded again. "So, why do you go down there all the time? What're you looking for?" She shook her head. "I don't see-"
"It's that Minotaur, isn't it?"
What the hell do you know about it? She felt defensive again.
But he went on: "Here we are, in your studio, surrounded by all these studies of your Leering Man." Janek gestured at the sketches and paintings. "Is he your father? Did your dad look like that?"
She shook her head.
"Who is he, then?"