The Last Romantics(75)

Part IV

After





Year 2079





Year 2079



The young Luna had moved up to the first section, a few rows back from the stage. Absently she played with a necklace, a simple silver chain that fell against her chest, heavy with some sort of charm. A circle, perhaps. Or a ring.

“So there was a real Luna,” the girl said. “My mother was right.”

“Yes, there was a real Luna.”

“What happened to her?”

The auditorium remained full. Hours it had been now, the power still gone, generator humming steadily along. We’d heard the sirens twice more, but without the evacuation signal. It seemed inevitable that it would come. This was why I stayed at my house in the mountains. Why I avoided crowds.

The flame-haired woman in the front row had shifted from her partner. She was leaning forward, her body pulled away from his, the two like magnetic opposites. Abruptly he stood and stretched his arms above his head. I heard the muffled crack of a joint, one vertebra colliding against its mate. Why had they fought? I wondered. They shouldn’t argue now. Now is when they should come together.

The sirens began again, that awful wail. It seemed louder, longer this time. I waited motionless for the noise to end. At last came a brief, delicious pause. Silence cool and smooth as silk. And then the evacuation signal sounded. At first no one moved. The series of short, sharp blasts was well known—there had been enough public education, the billboards, radio announcements—but we’d heard them only in the context of a test. This, apparently, was no test.

Henry took hold of my hand. “I’ll get the car,” he said into my ear. “Wait here.”

With Henry gone I was alone on the stage. I stayed where I was, the watched now the watcher. I don’t think I could have stood in any event. My knees have a mind of their own.

A large man in the second row audibly groaned and began the process of extricating himself from the clench of the auditorium seat. The flame-haired woman and the man came together again, holding hands, their faces tense, and moved toward the exit. It was satisfying to see them reunite, but then I felt an abrupt sorrow at their departure. We had all been through something here, I thought, a joint experience that bound us. But the dispersal had begun. Moment by moment, as the signal went on and on, the audience rose up like a wave gathering force. The room’s sense of calm order transformed into a fractured potency. Each part buzzed with a new energy, the latent potential for chaos.

And then the stage creaked with an added weight, and Luna was standing beside me. The young Luna, the girl who would not be put off. The mole was on her right cheek. The charm around her neck was a diamond ring.

“Ms. Skinner, are you okay?” she said. “Let me help you up. We need to evacuate.”

She took my left arm across her shoulders and braced her foot against the chair in a posture of strength and an odd intimacy. Our heads came together, her dark hair falling on my temple, my gray across her shoulder, her left hand holding my left. Intertwined, interwoven, knitted, linked. And then—heave—Luna pulled me to standing.

“The knees. Just you wait,” I said. “You should be thanking those young pliable knees of yours every goddamn day.”

Luna smiled. “There’s a shelter not that far from the auditorium,” she said. “I can help you.” She was yelling to make herself heard over the blare of the signal. The auditorium was largely empty now, the last stragglers making their way outside.

“Thank you, dear, but there’s no need,” I said. “Henry is bringing the car around. I won’t last long in one of those bunkers, I’m afraid.” An impulse to protect this girl flared again in me, just as it had when the lights first went out. Only this time the idea made its way into voice. “But why don’t you come with us?” I offered. “Our complex is entirely self-sustaining. You’ll be totally safe. There’s a guest cottage on the east side of the main house. And Mizu, our cook, makes the most delicious blackberry scones.”

Just then the evacuation signal stopped. The silence took possession of the hall in a way the people had not. It touched every corner, every inch. It was then a soldier appeared. His face covered with a protective shield, a weapon at his side.

“Everyone out,” he called to us.

“We’re coming,” Luna called. “I’m just helping Ms. Skinner.”

The soldier waited as we made our way off the stage, down the row toward the emergency exit. Luna pushed open the door, and the rush of cold, fresh air made me forget my knees, forget the soldier.

The exit opened onto a side alley in which stood a few large dumpsters, wooden crates piled high, and people, so many people, all of them moving incrementally out of the alley, toward the street. The sky was clear, a full moon, and the light illuminated the scene starkly but without color, as though we had all been washed clean.

How will Henry . . . ? I thought, but of course he would find me. He always did.

We reached the street. A few cars moved along with the push of the crowd, going no faster or slower than the bodies around them. I searched for Henry’s—an old Prius sedan, a dark blue—and saw it across the street, half a block south, Henry standing on the hood. He was searching for me. I reached up an arm to wave. “Henry!” I called, and his gaze was pulled by the sound. He came down off the hood and entered the crowd to reach me.