“Upper left,” Ruth Freeman said.
A moment later the old woman added, “Just push it in.”
they care more about fish and turtles than they do about their country. More taxes, more regulations. I say, fine. Next time they need a job, let them ask the fishes
“Maybe we should listen to something else,” the old woman said. And then after a brief silence, “Lower right.”
McGee pressed a button, and on came the moans of a cello.
Mrs. Freeman’s chest rose and fell, and a slim, relieved smile came into her face. “Do you like classical?”
It was Elgar. The concerto in E minor. McGee remembered a kid at camp, fourteen years old, who’d played it. Not well, but still. More than she could ever do. The music seemed fitting, here among the ruins of an abandoned parking lot, as if old man Elgar had had precisely this place in mind, a lament for this particular lost city.
“Not really.” In the rearview mirror, McGee could see Mrs. Freeman squinting into the darkness, trying to make out where they were.
“We’ve never met before, have we?” the old woman said.
“We’ve never met,” McGee said. “But I know you very well.”
“Do you?” Mrs. Freeman took another slow, deep breath, and a fog spread across the window. “I suppose you do.”
There was a pause, and McGee wondered if the old woman was busy contemplating the loss of all her secrets.
“In that case,” Mrs. Freeman finally said, “I wonder if you might tell me something about yourself?”
“I don’t think so.”
The old woman sighed. “It would make this easier.”
“What makes you think I want this to be easy?”
The old woman pursed her lips. “My husband will be annoyed,” she said. “I was supposed to meet him for dinner after the symphony.”
“Tragic.”
“What you kids today call a ‘first-world problem,’ ” Mrs. Freeman said. “Maybe a little disappointment will be good for him.”
“Maybe it’ll be good for you, too.”
It was so overcast, there were barely even shadows outside. McGee couldn’t remember ever seeing a darkness so thick and impenetrable.
“Are you married?” Mrs. Freeman said.
McGee didn’t even bother glancing in the mirror.
“What about the others who were with you before?” Mrs. Freeman said. “Your friends?”
McGee turned to look out her side window.
“Where are they now?”
“Maybe they’re out there,” McGee said, waving her hand toward the darkness.
The old woman seemed to think about that for a moment. “I don’t think so.”
“What makes you think you have any idea?”
Mrs. Freeman leaned back. “You just seem like someone who’s very much alone.”
“I couldn’t do this alone,” McGee said, allowing herself a satisfied smirk at the car and her captive.
“There are different ways of being alone,” Mrs. Freeman said.
“You want to analyze someone,” McGee said, “analyze yourself. Maybe you should be thinking about what’s wrong with you.”
“If you were to ask my husband—”
“I’m not asking him,” McGee said. “I’m asking you. What’s your excuse for the things you do?”
“I suppose it’s the same as yours. As everyone’s.”
“And what might that be?”
“Fear, first,” Mrs. Freeman said. “And then, much later, regret.”
“I’m not afraid,” McGee said. The old woman was simply trying to weaken her, to make it seem like they were the same — two people sharing a sinking ship lost at sea. But really Mrs. Freeman was the captain, commandeering the only dinghy in order to save herself.
It was three minutes to ten. McGee searched among the posts sticking out of the steering column until she found the right one. With a twist, she turned on the headlights. And then the high beams. And for good measure, the fog lamps, too, illuminating the ugly hulk of a building in front of them. The lot was ringed with sodium lights, but they’d all been turned off. Every last loss had been cut. All except for the blinking red light, which marked the place like a hazardous shoal.
McGee pointed to the factory across the immense parking lot, the compressors and all the equipment now on its way to China. “Do you know where we are?”
“Of course,” Ruth Freeman said. “It’s ours.”
“It was.” McGee reached for her duffel bag. Inside were a few changes of clothes, her keepsakes, the little money she’d saved. She took out the cell phone Michael Boni had given her. Now she handed it to Mrs. Freeman.
“It’s already dialed.”
Mrs. Freeman looked at the phone and then at the building. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “You know that, right? It’s a write-off. An insurance claim.”
“To you, maybe.”
Mrs. Freeman set the phone down in her lap. “What if I refuse?”
McGee tucked her hair up under her hat. “You won’t.”
“And what about you?” Mrs. Freeman said. “Your life in exchange for a building?”
McGee shrugged.
Mrs. Freeman settled back into her seat. “I think it’s a poor trade.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“If it were up to me—”
“It’s not.”
“I’d leave it as it is,” Mrs. Freeman said.
McGee offered a nod of exaggerated surprise. “I’m sure you would.”
Mrs. Freeman gazed into the darkness still outside her window, at whatever else was out there. “This is what the world will look like after we’re gone.”
McGee shook her head. “That’s one theory.”
Mrs. Freeman had the look on her face of someone not accustomed to being contradicted. “Do you have another?”
“I don’t believe in theories,” McGee said. “Maybe I don’t have your imagination.”
“You’re a doer,” Mrs. Freeman said, “not a thinker?”
“When I was twelve,” McGee said, “I destroyed the tree house my parents built.”
Mrs. Freeman blinked at her uncertainly.
“I’ve never felt as much clarity as I did then.”
The old woman raised her eyes, staring at the factory. “I tried to save it,” she said. “I really did.”
For the first time all evening, she looked as though she’d made a move without first plotting her defense.
“But I was too late,” Mrs. Freeman said. “Years and years too late.”
McGee realized a new piece had come on the radio, something she didn’t recognize. “I told you something about myself,” she said. “What about you?”
The old woman raised her hands, and for a long moment she studied them, the wrinkles and spots and burgundy old-lady nail polish. And then she lowered them again, folding her hands on top of the phone in her lap.
“I’ve never had a cigar.”
McGee reached into her duffel bag and took out her cigarettes. She handed one into the backseat. “It’s the best I can do.”
Mrs. Freeman took the cigarette between her fingers. They were shaking more than they had before. “This must be important to you,” she said. “I don’t believe I’d have your courage.”
McGee stretched out her arm and picked up the phone and placed it back in the old woman’s palm. “Here’s your chance.”
Mrs. Freeman lifted her eyes, once again looking off across the parking lot. She put the cigarette between her lips. “How about a light?”
At first there was only one small explosion, a cloud of smoke and dust that enveloped the factory almost all the way up to the top of the smokestack.
McGee feared something had gone wrong.
But then the second explosion followed the first, and almost in slow motion, an enormous brick wall folded in on itself. Then came the third and the fourth and the fifth explosions, and even the red light on top of the chimney flickered out in the thick black haze. On the roof and on the hood and on the windshield of the car, bits of debris rained down like hail. Within moments, they could no longer see through the glass. In the backseat of the car, phone cradled in her hand, the old woman sat openmouthed, awestruck. The cigarette dangled between her lips, continuing to burn.