“Are you ready?” he croaked.

I put my hand on his shoulder, shook him lightly. “Dad. Shhhh. The doctor wants you to stay quiet tonight.”

“The red door.”

“Please, Dad, don’t talk. Not tonight. How do you feel?”

“Like crap.”

“Okay. Let’s just be quiet then tonight. Just tonight.”

He reached out and grabbed my wrist, his big hand weaker than I ever remembered it. “I have to tell you. I have to.”

“Why, Dad? Why do you have to tell me?”

“You need to know. Before I die.”

“You’re not dying.”

“Who are you kidding?”

Who indeed?

“Listen,” he said. “Shut up and listen.”

He was shaking my wrist now, the tape holding the IV line in his vein was coming loose. I pried his fingers from my wrist, patted his gnarled, veiny hand, rested it again on his chest. For some reason he wanted me to have this story, to own it, to carry it with me, always, to be able to take it out and refer to it like a big golden watch in my vest pocket. For some reason.

“Okay, Dad,” I said. “Go ahead.”

He coughed, fought to regain his breath, calmed himself enough so he could speak. “The red door,” he said.

The red door.

It glows like a warning, across the street from where my father now stands in the shadows with his love. The sky is pitch, the moon has set, the city is quiet. They are in that soft, dead moment between night and morning when even insomniacs have drifted off to an uneasy sleep. No birds, no crickets, only the scritching claws of a city raccoon scrambling along a cement wall.

Do you have a key? says my father.

No.

Then how do we get inside?

There is an unlocked window, she says.

“And it was,” said my father. “She knew. Unlocked.”

Around the back, a window to a little-used mud room off the town house’s back alley. As he climbs after her through the window, my father doesn’t ask how she knows the window is unlocked, doesn’t ask how it became unlocked in the first place, doesn’t ask how the key to the locked mud room’s door became taped beneath a storage shelf holding sacks of salt, thick woolen gloves, cans of antifreeze.

This way, she says as she quietly clicks open the lock to the mud room’s door and he follows her inside.

They pass through a room, dark and warm, the kitchen – he can tell from the gleaming counters, the shining metal ovens. Then through another room, past a long dining table with chairs. Soft light is gathered up like a bouquet of color by a crystal chandelier, large enough for a hotel ballroom. She steps soundlessly across thick rugs and he follows, trying to step just as soundlessly but failing, banging into chairs, rubbing against a wall. They pass into a center hallway with a sconce lighted through the night. The hallway is papered with red velvet medallions, the floors are covered by a thick, deep blue rug. There is a wide stairway leading to the left and the great red door to the right.

He pulls her close. Where are your things? he whispers.

This way, she says.

Not up the stairs?

This way, she says, as she grabs his arm and tugs him forward, through the wide center hall, into a cavernous room. There is a light on in this room too, one dim lamp lit, and he can see the rich oriental rugs, the plush formal furniture, the piano gleaming, the great marble fireplace, its shiny brass andirons standing tall like sentries. Hanging from the walls are great classical paintings in thick golden frames, works like those hanging in the art museum sitting high on the hill above the bending river, each canvas huge, each painting covered with naked women, reclining or frolicking or, in the largest painting of all, fighting against the brutal intentions of their armed captors.

Where are your things? he asks again, this time more urgently.

In here, she says softly and then leads him, strangely, toward a wall. She places a hand on the wall, a panel slides.

“A hidden door,” said my father. “She pulled me through.”

She pulls him through the opening and closes the door behind them. Blackness, a darkness darker than night, darker than sleep, darker than death. He can hear a deep throbbing, like the beating heart of that very house, as if it were alive, as if it sensed their presence. Doubts assail him, he shouldn’t be here, they shouldn’t be here, in this house, this hidden room, this darkness. Something here will take her away from him, he feels it, knows it. All he wants is her, forever, and this house is a threat. He wants to grab her, to pull her away from the palpable evil pressing against his flesh. The vision remains of the naked women in that one painting succumbing to the force of men in armor. He wants to grab her and pull her away but she grabs him first, in the darkness, and places her hand at the back of his neck, and pulls his head down and kisses him with a passion that stuns, that leaves his knees weak and his certainty dulled.

Tell me you love me, she says.

I love you, he says.

I’ll never leave you, Jesse.

Promise me, he says.

I promise.

Whatever happens.

Whatever. I promise.

I love you.

Yes, she says.

And then she flicks on the light.

My father gasped as he remembered, coughed, fought to find again his breath. “Treasure,” he managed to get out. “A room filled with treasure.”

The room is small, windowless, paneled in wood, with two plush leather chairs, a golden throw folded on the arm of each. The chairs flank a narrow table with a magnifying glass and a lamp on its surface. Wooden shelves cover three of the room’s walls and every shelf is filled with treasure. Ancient books, small gold statues, gilt chests, intricately carved ivory, figurines of bright green jade. The wall without shelves has a perfectly lit single painting in a golden frame, a small highly detailed portrait of a monk in brown robes on his knees, praying with reverence in a rock-strewn landscape. My father is dazzled by the wealth in this small room, more wealth than he had ever before imagined could exist in one man’s house. Some of the intricate boxes are open. Strings of pearls, coiled each atop the other, spill out of one. Another is filled with silver broaches covered with gems. There are rows of leather albums, their bindings embossed with the names of countries. France. Germany. U.S. Pre-1840. He spins around helplessly at the sight, dazed, and then he moves his gaze from this obscenity of treasure to the girl who has brought him here, the girl in the pleated skirt, his girl, his love.

Her chin is raised, her hands are shaking.

Where is your stuff? he asks.

Here, she says.

Where? he asks.

Look around.

This isn’t yours.

She turns to stare at him, her eyes fierce, rapacious, the eyes of a canine protecting a bone.

He owes me, she says.

She steps toward one of the walls of shelves, takes down a large wooden box, its top precisely ingrained with stones and pearls in the shape of a kneeling Atlas, hoisting on his shoulder a great globe. She places the box on the table, turns on the lamp.

His coin collection, she says, her eyes widening with wonder.

She lifts the top. The interior of the box is divided into a series of equally sized squares and the squares are filled with small, flat velvet sacks, each with its own drawstring. Her hands shaking, she grabs one of the velvet sacks out of the box. She struggles in her haste to loosen its drawstring and pull out a coin. Her hands fumble the sack. It falls on the table with a muffled crack. She picks it up again, succeeds in loosening the drawstring, drops the naked coin into her hand, a golden coin with Lady Liberty holding a torch carved into its surface, the coin’s bright skin glinting under the harsh light of the lamp, the hard yellow light reflecting like a knife’s edge of gold in his lover’s eyes.

“And then the wall,” said my father, struggling now to get the words out. “A doorway of shelves. It swings. Swings open. And the old man. In the opening. The hidden doorway. The old man. Darkness behind him. Darkness streaming in behind him. And he’s smiling. The eyes of a fox. Smiling. The old bastard. At his little treasures. At the coins. At the gold. At her.”