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“You will get work. Don’t think like that. Keep your ears open. And the tunnels will be running again in no time. Between us we’ll spot you and—”

“No,” Sean said.

Mac was thinking about how to turn this around, how to make Sean feel rich with the love of his daughters, when the lights went out. Not only the lights but the music, the AC, the fans, everything.

“Where’s the breaker?” someone called out in the dark. Hilda opened the door. “The streetlights are out too. It’s the whole block.” They all went outside, carrying their pints with them. The heavy rain had stopped. The air was steamy and smelled of hot concrete. The only lights as far as they could see came from cars. New Jersey, on the far side of the Hudson, was dark too. All of them looked up at the streetlights and then at the sky, as if the answer could be read there.

“It’ll only be a few minutes, I’m sure,” Mac said, so they waited in silence, taking in the strangeness.

“The hospitals all have generators, don’t they?” Sean asked. Oh yes, everyone assured him.

After a few more minutes, one of the men went to the pay phone, which was still working. He came back and told them power was out all over the city, every borough, parts of Westchester and New Jersey, too. There’d been a lightning strike, and it would more than likely take the whole night to restore.

“Subways won’t be running then?”

“I wouldn’t think so.”

“Well, shit.”

Hilda wanted to lock up and get home in case of trouble. She called Dunleavy and told him to get out of bed and pick her up in the car, the buses would be packed. They settled their tabs by the light of a single flashlight she kept in the broom closet. Mac hung back and said it would be no trouble for him and Sean to wait with her, but Sean said no, he was sorry but he couldn’t, he wanted to get to the hospital and make sure Marie and the baby were all right.

“You go on, Sean,” Mac said. “I’ll wait with you, Hilda.”

“Both of yas get outta here,” Hilda said and hustled them out too. As soon as they stepped outside she locked the door behind them.

Mac immediately saw that the crowds of people milling around would never fit into the few buses that had slowed to a crawl because the traffic lights were out. Without discussing, Sean and Mac walked directly to the hospital. They could see from a distance that the lights there were dim but on. A trio of armed security guards stopped them from going inside, and one said that everything was on lockdown. As he spoke, the wax paper from a pizza slice came floating along the humid air and wrapped around his thigh.

“My wife and baby are on the eighth floor,” Sean said.

“Look,” the guard said, the radio at his hip beeping and crackling. “Your wife and baby are fine but we’re not letting anyone in or the whole city will be sitting in the lobby.”

Mac put a hand on Sean’s shoulder to steer him away, in case he had a mind to argue. New Yorkers were like sheep. If they saw Sean enter the air-conditioned lobby, the thrum of massive generators loud against the city’s silence, there’d be a hundred people right behind him. He wondered if their brothers had made it to the apartment or if they were still on the subway, stuck.

“I should have gone up right on time like I told her I would,” Sean said, looking up at the eighth-floor windows.

“You’ll see them tomorrow,” Mac said.

“I better call her sister. See about Delia.”

“We’ll stop at a phone.”

“How far is the apartment? Ten miles?”

“Not sure,” Mac said.

“Will we walk a bit? Then maybe after a while the power will come back?”

Mac agreed the plan was as good as any. There was nothing to do but keep moving. He wondered if Lillie had gone out with her roommates once she understood their date was not happening. He wondered if they were saying bad things about him and how he’d make it up to her. It was odd not to hear the rumble of the subway beneath the sidewalk grates. It was eerie to see the lobbies of office buildings so dark. Some bars had stayed open, people calling out of the darkness to come get a beer before they got too warm, to come say hello, but they only walked faster. By the time they got north of Midtown they began noticing people walking with baseball bats, fires in garbage cans. In the West Sixties a pair of men followed them for a few blocks. On Seventy-Eighth a car going east and a car going south collided under the darkened traffic light.

The brothers didn’t pause and they didn’t break stride. They walked with their fists shoved deep into their pockets, their steps in perfect synchrony. As they passed a church a person jogged down the steps holding the donation box from the penny candles.

Mac calculated the neighborhoods north of them, the ones they’d have to pass through to get home, and weighed them against turning east and walking through Central Park to Barry’s.

“We’ll walk over to Barry’s, will we? It’s a lot closer than either of our apartments.”

“It’ll be very dark in the park.”

“What’s the difference?”