“Mr. Pritchett,” the young woman with the broken arm whispered. She sat on the floor two feet away from him, leaning against the bottom of the customer-service counter. Her arm hung stiffly in a makeshift sling the color of Lake Tahoe on a sunny day. He had visited that lake as a child, the only vacation his mother and he had ever taken.
“Are you all right?” the young woman whispered.
He felt a frisson of irritation. Of course he wasn’t all right.
“Mr. Pritchett?”
He felt at a disadvantage because she remembered his name while he had let hers slip away. But he had to admit that it was kind of her to be concerned for him when she must be in significant pain herself. Hurting made most people selfish. Hadn’t that been the case with Mrs. Pritchett?
“I’m fine,” he said. To indicate appreciation, he added, “Call me Lance.”
If Mrs. Pritchett had been nearby, she would have raised an eyebrow; he was not a man for rapid verbal intimacies. He liked formality. That is why he loved being an accountant. Early in their marriage, Mrs. Pritchett had protested that he wanted even the plants in their garden in neat rows, like entries in a ledger.
“Lance? Like a spear?”
“My full name is Lancelot,” he found himself saying, to his surprise. Throughout his youth, he had insisted-in vain-that people call him Lance. When he moved away to college, he introduced himself only as Lance, and as soon as he was old enough to have his name changed legally, he had done so.
“Lancelot, like from King Arthur’s court?” the young woman asked. She laughed in delight. In the dark, the sound was like a bell or a bird. He wondered that anyone could laugh under conditions like theirs. He surely was incapable of such-what would one call it? Strength? Levity?
“My mother was fond of the Camelot stories,” he offered sheepishly, and this surprised him most of all because he never spoke of his mother.
“I am, too,” the girl said. “I love the old tales-I have one with me right now.” She patted her backpack. “Lancelot was my favorite among the knights, anyway.”
“I’m not like him,” Mr. Pritchett said. He considered romantic excesses undignified. He didn’t like adventures.
“Sometimes we grow into a name,” the girl said. “You might surprise yourself, Sir Knight.”
Maybe she was right. Now that he thought of it, didn’t he love the thrill of manipulating numbers, of balancing on the razor-edge of the law?
“It was embarrassing,” he found himself saying. He wanted to say more. How boys had made fun of his name, how once they had put his head in a toilet. Where did that ancient memory spring from? He couldn’t believe the things he wanted to pour out into this forgiving, pillowy dark!
His fingers twitched without a cigarette to hold. He marveled at the human mind, its tendency to crave what it could not have. Under normal circumstances, he smoked only two cigarettes a day, one after lunch and one while driving home from work. Mrs. Pritchett didn’t like the smell, so on weekends he went out into the yard to smoke.
And she-what had she done in return? Betrayed him by trying to kill herself, that’s what.
“I know about embarrassing,” the young woman said. “My parents named me after a goddess. I’m going to India to see them. Why are you going?”
He could not bring himself to speak in the optimistic present tense. “Mrs. Pritchett wanted to visit India,” he said, though this was not exactly true. “We were going to stay in a palace.”
“Why, that’s wonderful!” she said. “I’m planning to visit the Taj Mahal myself. I’m sure you’ll love it.”
Mr. Pritchett was not sure of any such thing. He wondered what the woman would say if he told her how the idea for this trip came to him.
AFTER MR. PRITCHETT HAD BROUGHT HER HOME FROM THE hospital, Mrs. Pritchett sat on the couch all day, looking at the window. She had always loved the view of the bridge and the sun setting beyond it, the entire vista framed by the camellias she had planted. But now she stared as though there was nothing outside but fog. The pills the psychiatrist had given her put a vacant smile on her face that was worse than out-and-out sadness. Mr. Pritchett was afraid to go to work and leave her, but when he was at home with her all day, that unasked question- why?-hung between them like a sword. He missed the efficient, antiseptic smell of his office, the obedient numbers adding up the way they were supposed to.
Mrs. Pritchett had been a meticulous housekeeper, priding herself on taking care of the big house by herself. But now there were dirty dishes stacked on the sideboards, unread newspapers spilling across the floor, dust bunnies in corners that smelled of despair. The maid who came in once a week didn’t make more than a dent in the disorder.
Tidying up one evening, he had come across an old travel magazine Mrs. Pritchett must have picked up somewhere. There had been an article on old palaces in India being converted to hotels. A photograph of a spacious, marble-floored bedroom: a four-poster piled with red bolsters, a peacock perched on a windowsill, a curtain lifted in a foreign wind. On another day he would have found the room outlandish. This time, on an impulse, he had asked if she would like to go.
Something had stirred in her eyes for the first time since the hospital. “ India?” she had asked. She had stretched out her hand and taken the magazine from him. Now they were trapped beneath several stories of rubble.
It was not Mrs. Pritchett’s fault, but Mr. Pritchett couldn’t stop himself from blaming her. But for her, he could have been in his office right now, its cool, white walls, its spare furnishings, its view of the Bay Bridge, those perfectly proportioned metal girders that he liked to contemplate while mulling over a tricky account.
He said none of this, but it seemed that the young woman sensed something. She fumbled in a pocket and handed him a stick of gum. How could she bear to perform this simple act? Didn’t she realize they might not be rescued in time? He held the gum in his hand. In the dark, someone was sobbing quietly. It sounded like the Chinese teenager. Her grandmother spoke in a soft, cotton-wool voice until she grew quiet.
A lump formed in Mr. Pritchett’s throat-no doubt an aftereffect of shock. He wanted to tell the woman that he was afraid of dying in a slow, drawn-out way, from starvation or maybe lack of oxygen. He didn’t feel too good about the possibility of a fast death, either. An image of himself being crushed under the rubble from an aftershock had flashed in his brain several times already. Instead of speaking, he got off his chair to sit cross-legged beside her, though he could not remember the last time he’d sat on the floor. He was embarrassed at how stiff his leg muscles were, his knees sticking up like little hills. And he so proud of being in good shape, of running on the treadmill for an hour at the gym, keeping up with younger men. Then he realized it did not matter. He opened the wrapper and bit down on the gum. The flavor of Juicy Fruit filled his mouth until his salivary glands ached.
“Feel,” the young woman said. She took his hand in her good one. He mistook her intentions and his heart hammered with shock and contraband excitement. But she merely guided his hand all the way back to the edge of the carpet. His fingers came away wet. Water was seeping in from somewhere.
“Oh God!” he said. “We’re going to drown.” He scrambled to his feet to warn the others, but her hand closed around his ankle.
“Hush,” she said. “The water isn’t coming in that fast. I wasn’t even going to tell you, but it was too frightening, knowing it all by myself.”
In angry panic, he kicked at her hand. Stupid girl. She was going to get them all killed.