“I am nothing,” she said aloud.
Alan slept soundly. Good. She’d done some small amount of good. Now it was Ellen’s turn to leave the bed, only she knew the lay of the land and made a beeline for the front door, unlocking it. She stepped onto the landing. She could hear Eddie berating Dave behind their front door, but only his tone registered, the dull roar of an underdeveloped mind purging. In the unbroken darkness she plotted the course upward toward the roof without incident. It was only as she stepped onto the tar paper and felt a soft, wonderful breeze across her clammy skin that she remembered she was completely naked. Whatever. She closed her eyes and basked in the gentle caress of the faint airflow.
Though the sky was cloudy there was sufficient moonlight to see their roof, the tarnished reflective silver paint creating an eerie network of geometric outlines to follow. The other roofs, topped in traditional black tar paper, were invisible. It was like she was marooned on a trapezoidal island floating six stories above the ground.
Ellen padded across the rooftop and stood at the lip of the slight incline that led to the roof’s west-facing edge. The pitch of the acclivity was maybe thirty degrees or less, wheelchair accessible should someone confined to such a chair wish to roll themselves off the roof to their doom. She was sure that was not the intent of the slope. And besides, the only way up to the roof was the stairs. There was no wall on the York-side end of the roof, just a faint rise of decorative cornice, then a straight drop. A fall from here might do the trick.
No, she didn’t want to join Mike.
Ellen lay on her back, staring up at the moon’s pitted face, almost full, but not quite. The air movement felt both invigorating and soothing. It was the middle of July and she wondered if any of them would live to see the fall. And those things on the street, how long would they continue to shamble around? How many survivors were there in Manhattan, or the outer boroughs? Were there other naked women lying on rooftops in the vicinity, staring up at the moon? Or clothed ones? Or men? Or children? If so, was that a comforting thought? What was comforting? That Alan was sleeping in her bed? She wanted Alan there so she wouldn’t have to be alone, yet here she was on the roof. Dabney didn’t count.
She used to define herself, like zillions of other people, by what she did for a living. Her career. Now her career was living to see the next day, for no discernable reason other than just to do it. Now she was defined by her sex. She and ancient Ruth were the only two females in the building-maybe the world. Gerri, the floating wild card, didn’t count. She came and went by and large unnoticed.
“Gettin’ a moon tan?” came a deep voice from the dark. Dabney.
Whether modesty was démodé or not Ellen felt the flush of embarrassment. It wasn’t like Dabney could see much, but her nudity made her feel vulnerable. Ellen shook her head. Like she was anything to look at-a flimsy rack of bones held together by a pallid veneer of skin, her slack abdominal skin lightly puckered by a petite frowning cesarean scar. What a fox. She didn’t see much of John, not being a habitué of the roof, but he still seemed formidable. At least that was her mental picture.
“S’okay,” Dabney said, his voice a baritone purr. “Moon rays don’t do any harm. Sun’ll just give you cancer, not that it much matters. What’s cancer gonna do? Shave a few precious days, maybe hours, off your life?”
“I think I should be going,” Ellen said.
“Not on my account, I hope. Only visitors I get up here are the fellas. Nice to hear a sweet voice. One lacking testosterone.”
“Oh.” Ellen didn’t know what else to say.
“How’s your lesser half?” Dabney asked.
“Huh?”
“Your lesser half. I’m just joshing. Mike. How’s Mike? He hasn’t paid me a visit in a while.”
“Mike’s dead.”
A faint breeze filled the awkward silence. Dry leaves rustled in the corners of the roof.
“When did this happen?”
“This morning.”
“I didn’t know. I’m sorry. With everything on the avenue, nobody said anything. How did it… I’m sorry. I don’t mean to pry.”
“It’s okay. Mike fell out the window. I think he broke his neck. He just lay there as they ate him. He was still alive. But not anymore. Just like my baby.”
Dabney leaned against the stairwell housing, where he’d been all along, wondering if it was possible to suck all the air out of a room outdoors.
Answer: YES.
12
“You’re wasting candles,” Ruth scolded.
“I want to read.”
“In this light? You’ll ruin your eyes. Besides, since when are you a reader all of a sudden?”
“Since there’s nothing on television last I checked. Since I can’t sleep and I’m tired of inspecting the insides of my eyelids. It’s never too late to better yourself, right? So consider me bettering by the second.”
“Ucch. All right, but do you really need four candles burning?”
“You want I should get eyestrain? You’ve got me talking like a peasant.”
“That’s my fault?”
“You used to say I didn’t read enough, that reading would better me. So here I am, reading, and now it’s ‘don’t read, you’ll ruin your eyes.’ You’re talking out both sides of your mouth, and with your teeth out it’s particularly repulsive.”
“Why are you so cruel?”
“It’s all I have left. Feh. You need your beauty sleep, fine. I’ll adjourn to the sitting room, your majesty.”
A clap of rainless thunder taunted them as Abe grabbed the platter on which the candles were arranged and left the room. Tsuris he did not need. He’d borrowed a couple of books from the kid in 3A, some cockamamie science-fiction chozzerai, but it was diverting enough. The writer, a fellow named Philip K. Dick, seemed bent on doling out as much torture as possible to his characters. Abe enjoyed others suffering even worse than he. At least Abe knew where the hell he was-he was situated in his misery. The poor schmuck in Dick’s book didn’t know whether he was coming or going; his reality kept shifting on him. What a lousy predicament. It was a riot.
Another sequence of rolling thunder followed him down the hall. “So rain already,” he griped. “Enough with the foreplay.”
Mixed in with the thunder were other sounds. A crash followed by the peppering of ruptured safety glass on pavement. That accompanied by the plaint of countless zombies.
“The natives are restless,” Abe said with a smirk. “It’s a regular hootenanny out there.”
In the bedroom, Ruth stared into the void. Abe wasn’t always easy to deal with, but at least he wasn’t always such a bastard, either. She’d been spoiled, she realized, by all his years away at work. She’d kept a few jobs here and there in her younger days, but they were usually part-time and often for relatives. Sure it was nepotism, but for such lousy pay, who’d make a fuss? She worked a little at a travel agency (Uncle Judah); a printing plant (cousin Sol); a catering hall (cousin Moshe); a small-time talent agency (cousin Tobias). When Abe came along she became a full-time housewife, then an overtime mother. Three children she’d raised, almost single-handedly.
That wasn’t a job?
Abe made her feel like she was living the pampered life of a queen because she didn’t have to schlep to an official place of work. Sure, Abe brought home the bacon-all right, not bacon; they kept kosher, give or take-but Ruth slaved, too. And for the meager allowance Abe doled out? It was indentured servitude. Even when they got along she’d prayed for liberation. Where was her own personal Moses to lead her to the Promised Land? Three children, and God only knows where they were or what their fates were. Was it too much to ask of God to at least know? Were Miriam, Hannah, and David even among the living? In her head she thought it possible, but in her heart, and more persuasively in her gut, she doubted it. So that meant the grandchildren were gone, too.