“What kind of dog is that?” she asks me.
“A bichon frisé,” I say. “He’s tougher than he looks.”
“Really?” says Kelli. “He actually looks pretty tough.”
McConnell takes the Chevy down Clinton Street, away from downtown, toward the highway, and while Houdini consents for Robbie to tickle his neck scruff, I lean forward into the mesh grate and ask McConnell where we’re going.
“The mansion.”
“What mansion?
“I told you, Palace.” She laughs. “Me and some of the others, the old-timers—Michelson, Capshaw, Rodriguez—we blocked this all out months ago.
“Oh, yeah,” I say. “Oh right.”
“It’s in Western Mass., a little town called Furman, near the New York border. We got the place all set up. Plenty of water, plenty of food. Cooking oil. Necessary precautions.” She raises her voice, glances in the rearview mirror. “And there are even some kids there, other kids. Officer Rogers has twin boys.”
“Those guys are assholes,” says Kelli, and McConnell says, “Language, honey,” and leans on the gas, hits ninety miles an hour, sure and straight, barreling over back roads on the way out of town.
“I thought you were kidding about all that. The mansion in the country. The whole thing.”
“I never kid.”
McConnell smiles, sly, elusive, proud, the Impala whooshing along Highway 1, the Merrimack a brown ribbon to our left. Holy moly, I think, holy cow, easing back into my seat. Western Mass. Kelli asks for a bottle of water so Houdini can have a drink, and McConnell pushes two bottles through the seat-grate opening, not without a small wince of anxiety—nothing as precious as a bottle of water. I say thanks on the dog’s behalf, and McConnell says, “Sure,” says “Drink one yourself, you damn scarecrow.”
McConnell, I like—I always have.
The moon glimmers through the tinted backseat windows of the Impala as we rattle over untended roads, out across the bridge, toward the junction with 89 South, the city in flames all around us. Robbie falls asleep. We roar past a long line of people, a block and a half long, lugging backpacks and duffel bags and pulling rolling suitcases, a residents’ association heading together into exile by some prearrangement, headed out of town but God knows to where.
Despite everything, I lean back and let the exhaustion overtake me, let my eyelids drift and flutter, Houdini safe in Kelli’s lap beside me, and I start to feel that kind of dreamy magic that comes with car rides late at night.
There’s a word my mind is looking for.
I said, McConnell, what are you doing here? and she said, Saving your life, Skinny.
What’s the word I’m looking for?
I lay in the dirt patch that had been my house, and the Impala came and what did she offer me?
Tell him he has to come home, Martha said, urgent and imploring. Tell him his salvation depends on it.
My eyes shoot open.
Kelli and Houdini are both snoring gently; we’re way on the outskirts of the city by now, coming up on its limits and the westward highway.
Salvation.
All these people braving the terrible seas, getting shot or dragged out of the water in nets, casting themselves upon unfamiliar shores in search of what—the same thing my sister is chasing across the country in a stolen helicopter.
Salvation. And not in some glorious tomorrow, not in the majestic heights of heaven. Salvation here.
I’ve got no notebook. No pencil. I squeeze my eyes shut, try to do the timeline work, put it together, see if this makes sense.
Sergeant Thunder got that stupid brochure last week and bartered away his worldly goods last week, but evacuation day was today—Culverson saw him today, out on his porch, waiting and waiting, miserable and forlorn. That was today.
“McConnell?”
“Yeah, buddy.”
Cortez saw her waiting on her porch at let’s call it 8:30 this morning, waiting for someone. Jeremy got there at nine or ten, desperate and excited, ready to make his lovesick plea, but Martha was gone. Long gone.
“McConnell, I need to make just one quick stop.”
“What?”
“Or—it’s okay—you can drop me off.”
“Palace.”
“I’ll catch up with you. Leave me the address. I need to get to this pizza place.”
“A pizza place?”
“It’s called Rocky’s. Up by Steeplegate Mall.”
Officer McConnell is not slowing down.
“One quick stop, Trish.” I lean forward and plead into the mesh, like a criminal, desperate, like a sinner to his confessor. “Please. One stop.”
7.
McConnell growls and goes full code, kicks on the lights and screamers and throws the Impala into a fishtailing U-turn, takes us a thousand miles an hour toward Rocky’s Rock ’n’ Bowl up by the mall. She veers onto the sidewalk to get around a thick mob milling about at the intersection of Loudon Road and Herndon Street. Half of them have big flashlights, most of them have handguns, and they’re circled around a cluttered herd of shopping carts. One man in a leather jacket and motorcycle helmet is hanging from the top of a lamppost, shouting at them, instructions or warnings. I squint at the man as we race past—when I was a kid, he was our dentist.
As we slam to a stop outside Rocky’s, I can see two distinct pyres radiating up from the different wings of the Steeplegate Mall.
“Minutes,” says McConnell angrily. “This block will be on fire within five minutes.”
“I know.”
Kelli is waking, looking around, as I jump out of the car.
“I’m serious, McConnell,” I call. “Go if you have to.”
“I will,” she says, shouting after me as I run toward the pizza place. “I’m going to.”
The doors are closed and looped with chains. I’m wondering if it’s too late, but I don’t think it is. I think they’re still in there, Martha and her father, Rocky. The city is on fire and they’re huddled and waiting like Sergeant Thunder for salvation that is not coming. Huddled together in the center of that giant room, the vast space emptied of its valuables, everything turned over to the con: the wood-burning oven, the paintball guns and targets, the heavy appliances with their yards of copper and coolant and gas tanks.
I bang again, kick at the glass. Rocky and Martha in there, sitting, going crazy. They’ve been in there since this morning, since Rocky showed up to get her, today’s the day, no more waiting around for your stupid runaway husband. Bad luck for Cortez that he happened to be there when Rocky arrived, time ticking away, in no mood to discuss a damn thing with anyone. He just needed his daughter, and he needed her now. Today was the big day—not a moment to waste.
I move to the left, along the wall of the building, occasionally pounding on one of the windows with the heel of my good hand. No chance of kicking open this door; it’s thick Plexiglas. If Jeremy stopped by here after Martha’s house, and I bet he did, he would have found another dead end, another place his true love had disappeared from. No wonder he went home and ate poison.
But they’re in there. Waiting. I know they are. The world collapsing all around them and still waiting for the men who promised they would come.
“Hey?” I shout, slamming against the window. “Hey!”
I shield my eyes and try to peer through the tinted glass, but I can’t see anything, and maybe they’re not in here, maybe I’ve got it wrong. Martha’s not here to be rescued and I’m risking my life and McConnell’s and the kids’, too, for nothing. I glance back over my shoulder and I can see Trish glaring from the driver’s seat. I hope she does, I hope she goes, takes her children and my dog and abandons me for safety.