‘But what?’
‘You need an umbrella, because a wig always looks like a wig in the rain. Water beads up on it. Real hair just gets wet and kind of tamps down.’
‘I don’t have an umbrella.’
‘There’s one in the Jensens’ closet. By the door as you go in.’
‘When did you look in their closet?’
‘While you were making the popcorn. Women like to see what other people have.’ She looks at him across the kitchen table, her with her Cheerios, him with his egg. ‘Did you really not know that?’
5
The umbrella does more than keep the rain off his blond wig; it shields his face and makes him feel a little bit less like a bug on a microscope slide as he leaves the house and starts walking toward the nearest bus stop. He can completely relate to how Alice feels, because he feels the same. Going to the drugstore was nerve-racking, but this is worse because he’s going farther. He could walk to Pine Plaza, it’s fairly close and the rain has slacked off again, but he can’t walk all the way across town. And something else – the closer he gets to leaving this city, the more he dreads being captured before he can do it.
Never mind the cops and Nick’s men, what if he meets someone from his David Lockridge life? He imagines rounding a corner in Harps with his little shopping basket over his arm and coming face to face with Paul Ragland or Pete Fazio. They might not recognize him, but a woman would. Never mind what Alice said about him looking different with his wig and fake belly, Phil would. Corinne Ackerman would. Even tipsy Jane Kellogg would, even if she was drunk. He’s sure of it. He understands such a meeting is statistically unlikely, but such things happen all the time. Journeys end in lovers meeting, every wise man’s son doth know.
He examined the online bus schedule before leaving, and waits for the Number 3 at Rampart Street, standing under the bus shelter with three others, collapsing the umbrella because leaving it open would look weird. None of the others look at him. They are all looking at their phones.
He has a bad moment in the parking garage when the Fusion won’t start, then remembers he has to have his foot on the brake pedal. Duh, he thinks.
He drives to Pine Plaza, both enjoying the feeling of being behind the wheel again and paranoid about getting in a fender-bender or attracting the attention of the police (two cruisers pass him on the three-mile trip) in some other way. At Harps he buys meat, milk, eggs, bread, crackers, bag salad, dressing, and some canned goods. He doesn’t meet anyone he knows, and really, why would he? Evergreen Street is in Midwood, and people who live in Midwood shop at Save Mart.
He pays for his groceries with his Dalton Smith Mastercard and drives back to Pearson Street. He parks in the crumbling driveway beside the house and goes downstairs with his groceries. The apartment is empty. Alice is gone.
6
He purchased a couple of cloth shopping bags to put his groceries in – HARPS and HOMETOWN FRESH printed on them – and they sag almost to the floor as he looks at the empty living room and kitchen. The bedroom door is open and he can see that’s empty too, but he calls her name anyway, thinking she might be in the bathroom. Except that door is also open and if she was in there she’d close it, even with him gone. He knows this.
He isn’t scared, exactly. It’s more like … what? Is he hurt? Disappointed?
I guess I am, he thinks. Stupid, but there it is. She reconsidered her options, that’s all. You knew it could happen. Or you should have.
He goes into the kitchen, puts the bags on the counter, sees their breakfast dishes in the drainer. He sits down to think about what he should do next and sees a paper towel anchored by the sugar bowl. On it she’s written two words: OUT BACK.
Okay, he thinks, and lets out a long breath. Just out back.
Billy puts away the stuff that needs to go in the fridge, then goes out the front door and around the house, once more using the umbrella. Alice has moved the barbecue out of the puddle. She’s scrubbing away at the grill, her back to him. She must have raided the Jensens’ front closet again, because the green raincoat she’s wearing has to belong to Don. It goes all the way down to her calves.
‘Alice?’
She yells and jumps and almost knocks the grill over. He reaches out to steady her.
‘Scare a person, why don’t you?’ she says, then whoops in a big breath.
‘I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to creep up on you.’
‘Well …’ Whoop! ‘… you did.’
‘Give me the first line of “Teddy Bears’ Picnic.”’ Only half-joking.
‘I don’t …’ Whoop! ‘… remember it.’
‘If you go down to the woods today …’ He raises his hands and wiggles his fingers in a come-on gesture.
‘If you go down to the woods today, you’re in for a big surprise. Did you get some stuff?’
‘I did.’
‘Pork chops?’
‘Yes. At first I thought you were gone.’
‘Well I’m not. I don’t suppose you got any Scrubbies, did you? Because this is the last one from upstairs, and it’s pretty well done-in.’
‘Scrubbies weren’t on the list. I didn’t know you were going on a cleaning binge in the rain.’
She closes the lid on the barbecue and looks at him with a hopeful expression. ‘Want to watch some more Blacklist?’
‘Yes,’ he says, so that’s what they do. Three more episodes. Between the second and third, she goes to the window and says, ‘It’s stopping. The sun’s almost out. I think we can barbecue tonight. Did you remember the salad?’
This is going to work, Billy thinks. It shouldn’t, it’s crazy, but it’s going to work for as long as it has to.
7
The sun comes out that afternoon, but slowly, as if it doesn’t really want to. Alice grills the chops, and although they’re a little burned outside and a little pink in the middle (‘I’m not much of a cook, sorry,’ she says), Billy eats all of his and then gnaws the bone. It’s good, but the salad is better. He doesn’t realize how starved he’s been for greens until he starts in on them.
They go upstairs and watch some more Blacklist, but she’s restless, moving from the couch to the seat-sprung easy chair that must be Don Jensen’s roost when he’s home, then back to the couch again. Billy reminds himself that she’s seen all these episodes before, probably with her mother and sister. He’s getting a little bored with it himself now that he’s figured out Red Reddington’s schtick.
‘You ought to leave some money,’ she says when they turn the TV off and get ready to go back downstairs. ‘For the Netflix.’
Billy says he will, although he guesses that thanks to their windfall, Don and Bev don’t exactly need financial help.
She tells him it’s his turn for the bed, and after a night on the couch he doesn’t argue the point. He’s asleep almost at once, but some deep part of his brain must have already trained itself to listen for her panic attacks, because he comes wide awake at quarter past two, hearing her whoop for breath.
He’s left the door ajar in case of this. He reaches it, then stops with his hand on the knob. She’s singing, very softly.
‘If you go down to the woods today …’
She goes through the first verse twice. Her gasps for breath come further apart, then stop. Billy goes back to bed.
8
Neither of them knows – no one does – that a rogue virus is going to shut down America and most of the world in half a year, but by their fourth day in the basement apartment, Billy and Alice are getting a preview of what sheltering in place will be like. On that fourth morning, a day before Billy has decided to set sail into the golden west, he is doing his sprints up to the third floor and back. Alice has neatened up the apartment, which hardly needed it since neither of them is particularly messy. With that done she subsided to the couch. When Billy comes in, out of breath from half a dozen stair-sprints, she’s watching a cooking show on TV.