He wrapped numb fingers around the handle. He pulled, and the door came toward him. Slipping inside, he closed it after, shutting the violence out.
First was the silence: no howling storm, no ripping-cloth sound of pelting snow. Then the calm: no wind ramming him, the ground motionless. Slowly, with nothing to fight against, his muscles relaxed. He pulled off his soaked gloves, his crusted hat, felt pain as his ears and fingers came back to life. His eyes watered; he scrambled in his pocket for an aged napkin and blew his nose. Looking down, he watched a puddle spread as melting snow dripped from his clothes.
The smell hit him out of nowhere. Oh God, the smell. Sweet and spicy, damp and rich and full of life. Warm, wet earth. Complicated fragrance thrown into the air by sunsetcolored blossoms hoping to attract help to make more like them. I swear, I’d help if I could. There should be more, Kelly thought. They should be everywhere, covering everything, they should race north and smother this dead frigid pallor with color, with scent, with lavishness.
Amazed, gulping moist vanilla air, he stood amid long rows of orchids, gardenias, who knew what else. He was no gardener. Back home you didn’t need to be. Back home these plants didn’t need you. Here, they had to have pots, drips, lights, towering glass walls to save them from vindictive cold, from early dark, from wind that would turn their liquid hearts to solid, choking crystals. Here, soft generosity had to be guarded.
He started to walk, farther in. He wanted to walk to the tropical core of the place. He wanted to walk home.
Each step was warmer, lovelier, more dreamlike. But when he got to the giant central room, something was wrong.
Plants with man-sized, fan-shaped leaves roosted on swelling hillsides at the feet of colossal palms. They were colored infinite greens, as they should be, and moving gently, as they would be, under the humid breezes of home. But this was not that breeze. A waterfall of icy air rolled into the glasshouse, vagrant snow flying with it but melting, spotting the high fronds the same way rain would have, but not the same. Outraged, Kelly bent his neck, leaned back, trying to find the offense, the breach. Near the top of the dome, he saw greenery bowing under the cold blast. Trying to shrink away.
And some other kind of movement. The woman with the wild hair. High up, near the gaping hole, pacing a catwalk. He watched her stretch, then jump back as jagged glass she’d loosened tumbled past, crashed and shattered on the stone floor not far from him. The echo took time to die.
She hurried along the catwalk, climbed over something. Machinery whined and a mechanical hoist lowered. A squarecornered spaceship, it drifted straight down past curves, bends, wavering leaves. Kelly flattened into the shadows of a palm’s rough trunk.
The woman jumped from the basket. She swept her wild hair from her face, whipped off her gloves, pulled out a cell phone. She spoke into it like a two-way radio. “Leo?”
“I’m here,” it crackled. “How bad?”
“Two panes gone. Some others cracked, four at least. A branch from the oak.”
“All the way there? Jesus, that’s some wind.”
“This weren’t a blizzard, it’d be a hurricane.” She had a breathless way of speaking, as though caught in the storm herself.
“If it were a hurricane,” the distant voice came, “we wouldn’t have a problem.”
“Agreed. Leo, the cracked panes could go. Weight of the snow.”
“It’s not melting?”
“Too cold, falling too fast.”
“Shit. You have to get something up there. You called security?”
On icy air, snow tumbled in, unreasonable, antagonistic. The temperature had dropped already, Kelly felt it.
“Only one guy made it in,” the woman was saying. “Wilson.”
“Oh, mother of God, that Nazi?”
“On his way. But he won’t climb. He already said. Union contract, I can’t make him.”
An unintelligble, crackling curse.
“I called Susan,” the woman said. “She’s phoning around, in case any of the volunteers live close.”
“And you can’t do it alone?”
“No.” She didn’t justify, explain, excuse. She was gazing up as she spoke, so Kelly looked that way too, watched the palms huddle away from the cold. Stuck here, up north where they didn’t belong, rooted and unable to flee. They should never have come. If that hole stayed open they’d die.
“I’m going to make more calls, Leo. See if I can find someone. I’ll keep you updated.”
“Do. Jesus, good luck. If they clear the roads—”
“Right, talk soon,” she cut him off, started punching buttons. A massive wind-shift shook the walls, shoveled snow through the hole. She looked up at the palms. Kelly read fear in her eyes. Fear and love.
He stepped forward. “John Kelly.”
She whirled around.
“Volunteer,” he said. “Got a call.”
Suspicion furrowed her face. “How did you get here so fast?”
“I live on Webster.”
“How—”
“Door was unlocked.” His thumb jerked over his shoulder, toward the wing. Silent, she eyed his inadequate jacket, his bad boots. His five-day growth. “You’ve got trouble,” he said, pointing up. “We’d better seal that.” And added, “That’s what Susan told me. On the phone.”
It was the best he could do. She’d believe him or not. Or decide she didn’t care, needing his help.
She looked him up and down, then: “You good with heights?”
From a supply room they gathered tarps, ropes, the one-by-fours they used here for crowd-control barriers. They dumped them into the hoist, climbed in.
“We’ll have to improvise.” She flicked a switch and the lift rose, quivering. “The crossbars have bolts and hooks. For emergency repairs. A hundred years, never anything like this.” Snow whipped and pounded on the roof, cascaded through the approaching void. “We’ll string the tarps where we can. Brace them with boards. I turned the heat up. If this doesn’t go on too long, we’ll be okay.” She turned worried eyes to the trees they were rising through, then swung to him, suddenly smiling. “Jan Morse. Horticulturalist.” She offered her hand.
“John Kelly,” he said, because what the hell, he’d said it already. Should have lied, he supposed, but he’d been disarmed by the heat. The softness. Her eyes. “You must live close too.”
“The opposite. Too far to go home, once the storm started. Stayed in my office.”
“And you were worried,” he said, knowing it.
“And I was worried. And I was right.”
“You couldn’t have heard it. The break.” He had to raise his voice now, close as they were to the hole, the storm.
“No. Temperature alarm. Rings in my office.” She turned her face to the intruding snow, blinking flakes off her lashes. Hands on the controls, she edged the hoist higher. It shuddered, crept up, stopped. “Wait,” she told him. She climbed from the basket, prowled the catwalk, inspecting the hole, the glass, the steel. The wind, rushing in, lashed her hair. She shouted back to him, “If we start here…”
He’d never worked harder. She was strong as he was, his muscles prison-cut, hers maybe from weights, or determination. Snow melted down his neck, ice stung his eyes. Wind gusted, shifting speed and bearing, trembling the dome. The catwalk slicked up with melted snow. With her pocketknife they slashed expedient holes in the tarps, ran rope through them, raised them like sails in a nor’easter. He wrenched, she tied, he tugged, she held. He wrestled boards between tarp and rope. Like seamen in a gale they communicated with shouts, pointed fingers. Straining to hold a board for her, his feet lost purchase. He skidded, slammed the rail, felt her clutch his jacket and refuse to let go. He’d have gone over, but for that. “Thanks,” he said. The wind stole his voice away, but she understood. They worked on, lunging for rope ends, taming flapping tarps, tying knots with bruised fingers. She bled from a forehead cut, seemed not to notice.