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“I don’t know. But I’m starting to get a few ideas. ”
“If you get to the Read House,” I started. “I mean, when you get to the Read House, give me a call. I’ll come and help. ”
The burned-up man.
The thought flicked through my head and it almost hurt. I squeezed my temples between my thumb and ring finger. And my phone began to beep. “Nick, I’ve got another call coming. I’ll catch you later. Call me when you get here. ”
“Will do,” he said, and hung up.
I hit the button to transfer the next call over. “Harry? Is that you?”
“It’s me. We’re at the Choo-Choo. ”
I groaned. “That is not where I told you to go. ”
“No, but it’s where we were taken. It’s being set up as a shelter and it’s a nightmare. But we’re here, and we’re safe, more or less. You don’t think it’ll flood up this far inland do you?”
“I’ve got no idea. Surely not? But you’re at the Choo-Choo?”
“Yes. We’re here. We’re in the main terminal building, the front one, you know. We’re back in the area that’s a bar. Lots of brass and glass, and red. There’s a piano, too. Do you know where I’m talking about?”
“I do, yeah. And I’m coming—I’ll be there in a few minutes. Give me maybe twenty. I’m not real far away. ”
“All right. We’ll be here waiting. ”
I folded my phone and wrapped it carefully in its foil protective pouch before putting it back into my purse. And then, before I left—as if it would do any good—I pushed all those wooden shipping pallets back on top of the grate. I threw on a couple of crates and a whole lot of trash too, just for good measure. My phone rang again while I was doing this, but it was someone calling from home so I didn’t answer it. And then I exited the way I’d come in, out through the window.
Back outside the sky was low and sulking, but it wasn’t raining—or it was, but only in dribbles. I blinked hard, rubbed my eyes, and tried to orient myself. I was less than a block from the Read House, but it would probably take Nick the better part of an hour to make his way there from the bridge. First came Harry and Malachi.
Harry and Mal were a few blocks south. I was too tired to sprint the distance, and suddenly a little hungry, too. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and breakfast felt like ancient history.
Onward and upward I walked. Out of the central district and away towards the south side, where there were fewer people than down by the river. But as I got closer to the Choo-Choo, the crowds began to thicken; and by the time I reached it I was surrounded again by crying babies, worried women, old people in wheelchairs, and a handful of men in lettered jackets trying to direct the human flow of traffic. I staggered up to the nearest such official and tried to get his attention.
“Sir?”
“Ma’am, if you could step aside unless there’s a medical emergency?”
I let it go, because I think I only wanted to be told that someone knew what was going on—that somebody was in control, even if I knew better. I gathered
in five minutes of crowd surfing that at least this was a shelter and that the Red Cross was there. And under the great painted dome in the old train station, hundreds of people crushed together on the gleaming marble floors and waited for word, waited for food, or waited for the water to go down.
I sidestepped as many of them as possible and made it to the piano bar with its wall of mirrors and shelves loaded with brightly colored bottles of liquor. And there, in the back corner, behind the piano and under a gilt-framed mirror the size of a patio door, waited Harry and my brother, who leaped to his feet and started waving as soon as he saw me.
I stumbled towards them, over a few people and around a few others. I pushed my way past the edge of the bar and joined them.
“You made it!” Malachi wheezed, flushed with excitement and sticky with sweat and water.
“Was there ever any doubt?”
Harry stood up too, and I’d forgotten how tall he was until he wrapped an arm around me and I was chin-forward into his shoulder. He looked the same as always, thin in a strong way that’s often called wiry, and with a face full of sharp angles that made him look smart. He was wearing a longsleeved gray sweater and jeans, while Malachi’s sweater was white.
Malachi the Ageless still looked twenty, though I knew good and well he was in his late thirties. His hair was growing out again, into that straggly blond haystack he wore when I first met him on that playground in the rain. When he had a gun. When he wanted to kill me.
I hugged him—and for perhaps the first time, I meant it. I was genuinely happy to see him. I grabbed Harry again too, because I was happy to see him as well. Their timing was terrible and the circumstances of their arrival could’ve been better, but they were here and they were alive. And, in the back of my head, I knew they’d gone to an awful lot of trouble to be here. It’s hard not to be flattered by that. It’s also hard not to feel some sense of obligation to someone who has climbed through hell and high water to see you.
So I sat down there with them in their little corner. We exchanged gossip that didn’t amount to much more than, “Holy shit, look at all this water. ”
My phone rang again while we were playing catch-up, and it was Lu. It was loud and crowded there in the corner of the bar, but I finally felt calm enough to answer her, so I did . . . and immediately wished I hadn’t. I’d expected to find myself on the receiving end of a nasty verbal beating and she didn’t disappoint. At some point, Dave picked up the other receiver and they tag-teamed me until my ears rang.
