Bob turned and looked out the windows toward the street. There was light, but it was fainter than it should be. “I think the whole area has a power outage. The street lights are gone, too.”
The waiters were moving from table to table, lighting candles. One particularly lanky fellow made it over to where Bob and Carlotta were seated to furnish the couple with their meager source of light.
“Any idea what’s going on?” Bob asked.
“No,” the waiter replied, shaking his head, “and wouldn’t you know the manager would be off today. Like he didn’t know it was the 13th. Someone’s on the phone though, checking into it. We’ll pass on any word we get.” He hurried off to another table.
“A man after your own heart,” Bob said, smiling. Carlotta’s face, lit by the flickering candle, had an almost sinister cast. Her round features, lit from beneath, reminded him of the face in the mirror from Disney’s Snow White.
“If you want to make jokes, you should get up on stage and try it sometime.” She took another bite of steak. Bob’s hope of leftovers was quickly disappearing. “You don’t have any superstitions?”
“No. Only fact-based fears.” One of them, that Carlotta would completely finish her steak, had already been realized. He raised his arm and waved it in an exaggerated fashion, trying to flag the waiter, who noticed after a few moments and wove his way expertly through the mostly empty tables toward them.
“No word yet, sir, but I believe it’s city-wide.”
“Thanks. Could we have the check?”
“Certainly, sir,” he said, and quickly disappeared in the direction of the register.
Bob fingered his shirt’s topmost button uncomfortably. “It’s getting pretty warm in here without the a/c. Want to stop by the park and see if we can get some ice-cream?”
“Sure. My relatives in Wisconsin would tar-and-feather me if they found out I passed up a dairy product. I wonder what it’s going to be like on the streets?” Carlotta pulled a compact out of her purse and checked her face briefly. “Like anyone will be able to see me.”
Their waiter returned and set the tray with their bill in front of Bob. “Our credit card machine is down, sir. I hope cash won’t be inconvenient.”
“Not a problem,” Bob said, pulling out his wallet. “Thank you.” He carefully stacked several twenties onto the tab and helped Carlotta out of her seat. “Let’s have a look outside.”
The street was unreal in the dim moonlight. People stood in small groups talking quietly, and a family, probably out-of-towners, waved in vain for an available cab. The traffic was crawling at best, but drivers were still jockeying from lane to lane, trying to find an opening. Bob looked up and saw the stars. Normally, the city lights washed them out completely, but now they were clear and distinct. In contrast, Central Park loomed darkly across the crowded, hot asphalt.
“It’s going to be murderous getting you home,” Bob said. “Even the subways are going to be useless. Maybe we should reconsider our plan.”
“We’re not going anywhere until the power comes back on.” She headed across Central Park West, moving around the cars that were momentarily at a standstill. “Might as well kill the time as best we can.”
“Alright,” Bob said, “wait for me.”
After half an hour wandering along the edge of Central Park looking for an ice-cream vendor, Bob was ready to give up. He’d also noticed a group of kids following them at a distance. Even if they were just wandering in the same direction, it made him uneasy. He was glad to still be carrying the revolver.
A sharp snapping noise, followed quickly by another, stopped them in their tracks. Screams began to drift through the still, hot air from nearby.
“What the hell is going on?” Carlotta asked, looking quickly from side to side. “It’s just a blackout.”
A dark shape appeared at the tree line and grew in size. More snapping. Bob realized it was the sound of branches being split. Several people were sprinting directly at them. One of them screamed “The ape! It’s loose.”
Bob knew in an instant how much trouble they were in. The giant ape had been a mainstay at the Central Park Zoo for over a decade. Every now and then it broke loose and started looking for a young, blonde woman to clutch to its massive chest. After abducting its Fay Wray stand-in, the beast invariably headed in scripted fashion for the top of the Empire State Building. His mind registered that the monster ape had first appeared during the blackout in 1965, but there was no time to dwell on coincidence. He grabbed Carlotta by the wrist and bolted for the street. She had no trouble keeping up, matching him stride for stride in the race to reach the hoped-for safety of a building interior.
A kid running full-tilt crashed into a garbage container and sent it rolling in a tight semi-circle right into their path. Bob felt a pain in his knee and sprawled headlong, Carlotta’s hand wrenched from his grasp. There was an animal roar that rattled his fillings and he scrambled to his feet.
The ape knuckle-walked toward them, its eyes fixed on Carlotta and her blonde hair. She struggled to stand and backed slowly away from the monster. Then stopped. “Knock-knock,” she yelled. The ape bared its teeth and snorted. “Who’s there?” Carlotta answered to her own question, at the top of her voice.
Bob pulled the revolver and pointed it between the ape’s luminous, yellow eyes. She’d panicked and was trying to use her power on it. “You can’t make a gorilla laugh,” he yelled. “Run.”
The giant ape regarded him for a second, then returned his attention to Carlotta, taking another giant step in her direction. “Banana, banana, banana, banana,” she continued, ignoring Bob’s advice.
He tightened his finger on the trigger, and the ape lunged for Carlotta, scooping her up with a giant, hairy paw. She screamed and then went limp. The ape gingerly propped up her head with a single finger and made what might have been soothing vocalizations in ape language. The monster turned suddenly and saw Bob. It snarled and bared its teeth.
Bob suddenly felt very alone, the useless gun heavy in his hand. He’d be a dead man in a few seconds and the punch line to a bad joke for years to come if he didn’t do something. So he got flat.
He didn’t lie flat; that would have been no help at all. As a particularly shy teen-ager, Bob had been forced by a zealous drama teacher to take a role in a Moliere comedy. During a dress rehearsal, he felt sick with stage fright and, right before his entrance, literally flowed puddle-like to the floor. The sensation of giving up his physical form was even more frightening than performing on stage. His vision and hearing became almost non-existent. Worse, he couldn’t move any more than a beached jellyfish. After a few long moments, he’d reconstituted, naked, as he’d puddled right out of his clothes. A few of his fellow students saw what happened, or thought they did, but the school kept it quiet. He was dismissed from the play and told his parents it was because he called Moliere an over-praised, humorless Frog. Over the years he’d worked with his ability in secret, and had even mastered a sort of pseudopodal movement. Bob assumed part of his attraction to Carlotta was the fact that they’d both been touched by the wild card, albeit a glancing blow.