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I whirled around and nearly hit the guy who was standing there, even though he wasn’t being threatening at all. He was older and a little stooped; he looked tired and wet like everybody else.
“Yeah,” I told him.
“It’s a shelter, right? They’re letting people sleep there?” “Yeah. The Red Cross is there. ”
“Okay. There’s food?”
“Sure,” I said.
He wandered off, back the way I’d come. When I looked back towards the river, Pat was gone.
A street or two away I heard glass breaking, and people throwing instructions back and forth. I clung to the edge of a building and walked in the shadows. They didn’t see me; but I watched them while I passed. They were letting themselves into a super-nice restaurant on the corner across from the train tracks.
Tired of Little Debbies, I guess.
I didn’t get the impression they were a violent lot, just a nervously looting gang in search of some silverware or maybe a bit of pate. I made sure not to step on anything loud and kept my head down, because that’s what you do. It’s what we all were doing. We were all walking with shoulders pointed and heads aimed at the streets in front of us. So unsure. So confused. Just don’t touch us. Just don’t stop us. We’re desperate and hardened, even those of us wearing open-toed sandals.
I could see tiers beginning to form, and it was strange, and clannish. Some people hid and hunkered with children or in dry places where food could be stashed. Some people went walkabout because we had business to attend to, or maybe because we couldn’t just sit still and wait to drown or starve.
All around, in patches of gold, small fires lit up the night between the wet spots.
I went past all of them. I did not stop to warm my hands except by holding my own ribs harder. I stuck to the sidewalks and as close to the buildings as I could; I hid against the walls and scraped my shoulder against the bricks, ducking into doorways and sliding into recessed entryways, always trying to keep myself out of the flickering light.
After all, you never knew who was out there.
Nick knew. And Nick thought Caroline knew, too.
Above an intersection clogged with empty cars, the streetlights repeatedly flashed red above me. The dim, crimson light cast an intermittent sheen across the cars and the roads, and the wet patches blinked it back.
All around me, from everywhere and nowhere in particular, voices and crashes cut the quiet into pieces. I learned fast that it was best not to look too hard. It was best not to hang around and wonder. Best to keep moving, to keep hopscotching the blocks to the Read House, where I might find civilization.
The Read House is down the street from the big convention center, so it’s surrounded by less deluxe lodgings and a few restaurants, coffeeshops, and banks. Now necessity had forced it to give shelter to a greater capacity than it was ever meant to serve. The halls were strewn with blankets and bodies, arms and legs beneath every step.
I pushed open the big glass doors and past a man in a uniform. “Nick? Nick?” I said it loud but not in a yell. Not while people were trying to settle into something more peaceful than flight, even if it was only for a little while.
I went for my phone again and called him, because I didn’t know how else to track him down.
“I see you. ”
“What?”
“Look up at the mezzanine. ” I did, and there he was, waving.
I flipped the phone shut and stuffed it into my pocket, which was marginally drier than my purse. “There you are,” I said, even though he probably couldn’t hear me from where he was.
“This way,” he said, with a finger pointing at the stairwell door.
I nodded. “Hang on. ”
More careful stepping took me to the stairwell, which was propped open—possibly as a result of some fire code. A couple of people came and went, clomping up and down the cement stairs with unadorned iron rails.
When I emerged on the next floor, he was waiting for me. “I think the most telling thing about any of this is that no one will take Caroline’s room. ”
“What?”
“Look around. People are fighting for a square foot or two of space, any place to set a baby or a broken leg. But you can’t put anyone in Caroline’s room. They opened it at first, because, you know, they basically had to. But within an hour she’d chased them out. She chases everybody out. She’ll probably try to chase us out too. ”
He was fidgeting and frightened-sounding, and I wasn’t used to it. Not from him. I liked him better brazen, but what can you do? He’d learned something new and it changed him.
