Oh yeah? Doing what?
Having lunch with Ryan Gosling. He may be the lead in my new film.
I’m sure it sounds like he was trying to impress me, and I soaked it up like he knew I would. I might have slept with Thomas had he made any sort of move. Eventually, Michele Cobb got curious (or jealous) and walked over. She threw her arms around both of us, drunkenly, and I guess my hormones must have been on high alert, because I nearly jumped out of my skin when her hand brushed my boob. Thomas laughed, and I laughed, and Michele didn’t seem to care for that. She pranced away in a huff and left the two of us together.
As I stood there, looking at Thomas, I wondered if I really would be willing to cheat. Until the past couple of years, Seth has been an amazing husband and father. It was me who caused the problems, who couldn’t get her mind right after the boys were born. Maybe it was post-partum depression. Maybe I still missed my father. But I couldn’t stop thinking how something was very wrong with my life, that I had inadvertently picked the wrong path and was doomed to be unhappy forever. It never occurred to me that
FOURTEEN
“What are you writing?” Seth asked Natalie.
He had awoken just minutes before in a state of disorientation so profound that he wondered if he had died after all, if the day’s bizarre events had been a last-gasp death dream. But eventually his mind cleared and he discovered, by flickering candlelight, his two sons sleeping in the bed beside him. They were facing away from each other, probably because Brandon was a snorer and Ben hated it.
Once he felt stable enough to stand, Seth wandered back to the room he’d be sharing with Natalie. Only instead of sleeping, she was bent over a stack of paper, writing something. Naturally he was curious what had captured her attention, but when his wife looked up, she immediately turned the paper over.
“Nothing. Just some notes about…”
Seth watched, amused, as she struggled to invent a lie.
“All this is so huge, Seth. Life-changing. World-changing. Someone needs to write down what’s happening.”
“But I can’t read it?”
“Maybe later. This is also how I feel inside, about us and what you did. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel comfortable sharing it. The whole point of keeping a journal is to work through your feelings.”
“That’s all behind us now, Nat. I’m sorry for what I did, but we have a chance for a fresh start because of all this.”
A little while later they crawled into bed, and when Seth put his arm around Natalie, he tried not to notice her body stiffening beneath him.
“Do you hear that?” she asked.
“Hear what?”
“The static. Or maybe it’s like a ringing. Or both.”
“I don’t hear anything.”
“I heard something like it this morning when I was in the golf cart,” Natalie said. “I thought maybe it was stress.”
“You’re hearing it again?”
“I’m not sure it ever stopped. Maybe it got quieter or I didn’t notice it for a while.”
“Probably it’s stress,” he said. “What could be more traumatic than this?”
“I’m scared, Seth. I know we made it here, and I know Thomas has lots of food and supplies. But if this is how it is now, like if the power doesn’t come back on, what are we going to do?”
“We’ll survive. We’ll do the best we can for our boys and ourselves.”
“But I want to go shopping. I want to travel to Europe. I want the boys to go to college and become doctors or engineers.”
Seth understood what she meant. The idea of never being able to set foot inside a working casino again was horrifying.
“Maybe it won’t be like this forever,” he said.
But honestly, Seth hoped he was wrong. He hoped things never went back to the way they were.
After all, he wasn’t cut out for the real world.
FIFTEEN
Thomas was standing in front of the safe room, having just closed its door, when Skylar approached.
“Still hungry?” she asked.
“No. I wasn’t sure if…”
He trailed off. Skylar Stover, the actress, was looking at him plaintively, and for a moment he thought he could see through her, as if she weren’t standing there at all. As if he were imagining her.
“I wasn’t sure if I should lock this door,” he finished.
“Who are you trying to keep out of there? Us?”
“Not you. Anyone desperate enough to break in and steal.”
“And you think that might happen tonight.”
“Probably not, but at some point the threat will be real. Starvation will change people. It will turn them into monsters.”
“Then don’t let them starve. When your neighbors run out of food, help them.”
“We can’t help them all.”
“You keep saying that. Like you don’t care who dies.”
Driving all day had left him shattered, and he was worried sick over whatever Hell loomed ahead. But somehow Thomas still noticed Skylar’s profile in the flickering candlelight, like the jutting curve of her chin that was somehow both strong and feminine, or the faint presence of her upper lip, a feature that strengthened the character of her mouth in the opposite way of collagen injections and plastic surgery. Skylar was surely exhausted and emotionally spent, but when she smiled, he could see she was a person who smiled easily, and when she spoke, her words always carried meaning. After dinner, when she volunteered to clean the dishes, the candle beside the sink threw her into such flattering light that she finally caught him staring.
“If we try to save everyone,” he explained, “we’ll all die. There’s no way to sustain the current population without technology.”
“You sound like a documentary.”
“I’m being realistic.”
“What are you hoping for?” she asked. “What if the six of us outlast everyone else? What then?”
“I don’t know.”
“In your film, the whole country is gone except angry little towns that guard their farms with machine guns.”
“Maybe it won’t be like that,” he said. “Maybe the damage isn’t as widespread as it seems. Or there’s an easier way to fix the broken things.” “I thought you were being realistic.”
“I don’t have answers, Skylar. But I don’t want to die, either. I don’t want you to die or Natalie and her family to die. Isn’t that enough? Why not focus on us instead of whatever is going on out there?”
“Because selfishness is why this even happened. Enough people knew the risk. We could have prepared. Instead we fought with each other over stupid things and now everything we ever cared about is gone.”
Skylar’s bottom lip quivered. Her eyes glistened through tears.
“I did it, too. I made more money than I could ever spend, and what did I do with it? Invested it. Put it in the bank. Gave some to charity but compared to how much I made? I could have done more. You could have done more. The fucking capital class could have done more. And you know why we didn’t?”
Thomas didn’t think he wanted her to answer.
“Because we are selfish. Greedy little animals.”
She stepped forward and pressed her index finger into his chest. “But I won’t be an animal anymore.”
STATIC (IN AIDEN’S MIND)
SIXTEEN
I stood there staring at the dark form of a man, my lips puckered from the bitter taste of lemonade. My chest felt tight, like I couldn’t breathe. Static roared in my ears.
“Is this death?” I croaked.
“You wish, loser. It’s time to go.”