She had met Dan at one of those dreadfully dreary Partnership ‘socials’ in the summer. The Senior Partner, Theodore Adolphus Hyde, threw two or three ‘at homes’ at his mansion in the hills behind Quincy every summer and attendance was de rigor for partners and associates alike. Walter and Joanne Brenckmann, Dan’s parents, were old friends of Theo’s — Theo’s son had served with Brenckmann senior’s ship in the Korean War — and on the last ‘at home’ of the summer Dan and his older brother, a lady killer in a crisp Navy uniform, the gleaming dolphin badge on his left breast denoting that he was in the Submarine Service, had tagged along with their parents. Gretchen had been tempted to hit on the older of the two brothers, Walter junior, and made the normal subtle exploratory moves only to be politely, firmly, charmingly rebuffed. Notwithstanding, Dan had followed her around all afternoon like a lost puppy, the way guys do despite knowing, deep down, that they are totally wasting their time.
“The all clear will sound soon,” Dan Brenckmann offered.
Gretchen resented the way in which he was calm and unruffled and could be so utterly non-confrontational in exactly the way she was not and never, ever would be.
“That’s a great help!” She hissed.
The man did not rise to the bait.
“There ain’t no call to get panicky, girly,” an older man complained gruffly from the safety of the gloom across the basement.
Girly!
Gretchen was on her feet before she had had time to consciously register her own motor functions switching into overdrive. She had stumbled several steps towards the exit door before knowing it. By the time she was standing on the empty street staring at the lights of the deserted New Haven waterfront and out across the bay to Sandy Point protruding from the eastern end of West Haven, her panic had peaked and her mind was slowly, slowly, belatedly rationalising what had just happened.
“Are you okay, Gretchen?” Dan Brenckmann asked his quiet concern anything but cosmetic.
She turned on him, eyes blazing.
The man was her height unless she was wearing high heels. Tonight, she was wearing sensible, stylish flat heels, so her angry glare bored directly into his face.
“Of course I’m okay!”
This bounced off Dan Brenckmann. He was silent, wisely and patiently giving her a moment to exhaust her angst.
“I hate enclosed spaces, that’s all!”
“Me, too,” the man sympathised. “I don’t know how Walt can stand being locked up in a tin can for weeks at a time. It would drive me loco!” He added this last thought with a wan smile. He looked around unhurriedly. “Maybe it was just another false alarm. Everybody’s a bit twitchy after what’s been going on down in Cuba lately. The TV and radio networks haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory by the way they’ve been ‘talking up’ the crisis.”
Gretchen was starting to feel bad about losing her composure in front of so many people in the cellar.
“I parked my car a couple of blocks away. We can catch the news.”
“Okay,” the man agreed, falling into step with Gretchen.
“No funny stuff,” she said churlishly, as a barbed afterthought.
“Of course not,” Dan chuckled. He knew Gretchen Betancourt was way out of his league. Her father, Claude, had been one of old Joe Kennedy’s hot shot attorneys in the twenties and a respected and feared scion of the New England Democrats for over thirty years, having been one of the wealthiest and most feared litigators in Massachusetts most of his adult life. They said when Claude Betancourt rang the White House the President always took the call. Dan’s father had worked for Claude Betancourt when he came back from World War II but he never talked about it; Pa was the most discreet man on the planet. His Ma had once let slip that it was only old man Betancourt’s help that had kept Pa’s practice ‘turning over’ when he joined the Navy in 1940, and was called up again in 1950. In recent years his Ma had been an occasional member of Claude Betancourt’s third wife’s — Gretchen’s step-mother’s — circle but Dan got the impression that she had never been comfortable in that company. Either way, the Betancourt’s were twentieth century American aristocrats and Dan’s family, was not. He understood that a woman like Gretchen was far too busy looking for her prince to entertain the advances of frogs like him. Such was life. He had been delighted to be her chaperone at Yale three times since the summer, each time he had felt incredibly good about himself and oddly, vaguely inadequate, and a little empty afterwards. The reality was that Gretchen needed somebody around to keep the other frogs at bay so that she could relax while giving every appearance of enjoying campus life, and playing the game the way she was supposed to play it. “Perish the thought.”
Gretchen gave him a sharp look, otherwise they walked in silence.
Dan had seen her driving the pale blue 1960 Dodge Lancer around New Haven several times in the last couple of months; on their previous assignations she had told him where she would meet him and he had — like a dumb schmuck — obediently been waiting at the appointed place when she arrived, invariably ten to twenty minutes late.
He had expected her to be driving something flashier.
Sexier.
Perhaps, daddy’s money still came with strings attached?
Gretchen might have been reading his thoughts.
“I drive a car to get from one place to another,” she sniffed, unlocking the driver’s door. “It’s only men who regard cars as symbols of virility.”
“Not me,” Dan retorted mildly. “I’m broke all the time. I get to drive Ma’s station wagon when I’m back in Boston. Pa won’t have anybody driving his Chrysler.”
Gretchen dropped gracefully behind the wheel and leaned across to flick the lock on the passenger side door. She was twirling the dial of the radio before the man got into the car.
Static came in thrumming bursts.
“Check the aerial,” Gretchen commanded.
Dan got out again. Presently, he reported back: “it looks fine.”
He settled anew, trying to avoid involuntary physical contact with his companion’s elbow as she searched the frequencies.
“…South Boston…Quincy…initial reports only…”
Gretchen turned up the volume to painful levels. The speaker squawked and spat static, and from far, far away words filtered from the background mush.
“…Reports from Canada…Vancouver area…and Seattle…”
The man and the woman looked at each other.
The announcer on the radio was not rattled, he was shocked and very, very afraid, his voice was dry and choking as if he was swallowing mouthfuls of water between each syllable to keep going.
“No word yet from the White House…”
“NBC is reporting Galveston, Texas City and southern Houston devastated by a big bomb earlier today…”
“In Florida, residents of Tampa and Orlando report a large explosion in the swamps between the cities…There are no reports of casualties in the Sunshine State at this time...”
Gretchen fired up the engine.
“Where are we going?” Dan asked.
“Out of town. Anywhere!”
Dan doubted the Soviets would waste an A-bomb on a sleepy little port like New Haven, or that they would attach prioritisation to universities and colleges on their target lists in time of war. However, he did not judge that Gretchen was in any mood to be amenable to this line of argument.
Gretchen drove north out of town following the signs for Wallingford and Meriden.
Dan wondered where they were going, not believing for a moment that Gretchen Betancourt would just go ‘anywhere’ on the night the World came to an end.