Then Leda reached farther until her hand was rubbing his bottom, and he let his hand do the same; she gasped slightly as he passed the dip in the small of her back to mimic her, and she pulled her knee out from under his, pulling him even closer, shifting her legs. She wrapped her leg over the top of his, used her foot against the back of his legs to pull him against her. He panicked, and all his muscles locked up.
“No,” he choked out, his breathing as ragged as if he’d just finished a hundred yard dash. She kept him close. “It’s all right, Eric,” she said between her own gasps. “It’s all right.” And after a moment, he relaxed and let her guide him.
It was the first time he could truly remember being happy.
And it was after the Gone Time was done.
Teach said, “Do you remember?”
Eric looked around. He had lost track of time and the tunnel surprised him. “Have we gone by any other passages?” he said.
Sounding puzzled, Teach said, “Of course not.”
“Good. We have to find the library.”
“I know. You said that.” They splashed on. Teach said, “Are you all right?”
“Just keep your eyes open is all,” Eric snapped. He bit the skin inside his mouth until he tasted a little blood. Getting lost in a memory like that, even a wonderful memory, disturbed him. Concentrate, he thought. Stay in the present.
A few paces later they came to another junction. The sign read, “B-61.”
“Hah,” said Eric. “This is the way.”
The tunnel jogged left, then right. They made the second turn, and a line of lights in the ceiling flicked on, revealing the end of the tunnel and a ladder up.
“Someone knows we’re here,” said Teach.
Eric blew out the candle. “Maybe, maybe not. That’s a motion detector I think.” He pointed to a pair of boxes mounted on the sides of the tunnel. “I tripped it when I crossed between them.”
“Motion detector?”
“It’s an electronic thing. The lights may have gone on automatically. Of course, if the lights go on here, an alarm may have gone off somewhere else.” Looking up the ladder, Eric continued, “You’re right that one door wouldn’t be locked on the inside.” Taking a deep breath, he said, “ This is it,” and started up. Teach followed.
At the top, Eric pushed the trap-door open an inch and peered out. From what he could see, he was in a basement like the one they’d started in. Broken boiler equipment, moldy-looking boxes bursting at the seams, and a flight of stairs leading to a shut door. The difference was that this basement was lit by electric light. Eric wondered where the power came from as he opened the trap door the rest of the way. Teach was just climbing out when the door at the top of the stairs opened revealing an older woman in a white smock, who was saying as she stepped through, “It’s about time you got back….” She looked at them a second, mouth open, screeched, and slammed the door in Teach’s face as he bounded up the stairs.
Teach grabbed the handle and twisted it to no avail. He threw his shoulder into the panel, but it didn’t even rattle. He sat on the top stair. “Now what?” he said.
“I guess we wait,” said Eric. “It’s their library.”
He heard a voice on a bullhorn coming from outside the building, the voice he couldn’t understand earlier. It chanted the same phrase over and over without intonation, almost without intelligence. “Give up your books for the good of the people. Give up your books for the good of the people. Give up your books for the good of the people….”
Chapter Eighteen
GOING HOME
It’ll be good for you, Eric. You’ve got to eat.” Leda sat cross-legged on the bed, her shirt untucked, the sun a hazy circle in the dark curtain behind her.
“We’ve got to hit the road,” he answered. Then, embarrassed, he opened his mouth again and let her spoon in another helping of cold tomato soup. “It’s gross,” he mumbled. The unthinned soup felt like a clot in his mouth, like a wad of chicken fat.
“Hypothermia’s no joke.” With business like efficiency, she leaned forward with a spoonful, and he swallowed it without tasting. “If you don’t fuel the engine, you won’t have any get up and go.” Eric tried to read her expression, but her concentration on not spilling the soup revealed nothing. He hadn’t awakened when she got out of bed. The first thing he remembered was her pulling the covers off his face, and she was already dressed.
Has she forgot last night? he thought. Trying to keep the irony out of his voice, he said, “I’ve got get up and go.” It came out sounding whiny to him.
She grunted noncommittally and scraped the can for the last bit of soup. “Well then, get up,” she said finally.
Keenly aware of his nakedness, he waited until she left the room, then he pushed the blankets off and searched the floor for his clothes. He thought, I don’t feel any different. Today’s like yesterday. His jeans lay in a puddle behind the door and felt as if they weighed ten pounds. They splashed when he dropped them.
I don’t know why everyone makes such a big deal about it, he thought, but he could still feel her cheek against his, the breath on his neck, her hands on his lower back pulling against him. He shook his head and opened a dresser drawer where he found a pale green long-sleeve shirt two sizes too small that smelled faintly of mint. An old man’s clothes, he thought—a dead man. He couldn’t bring himself to wear the boxer shorts folded neatly in another drawer. In the closet, next to a half-dozen flower print dresses, hung five identical pairs of pressed, gray rayon pants. The cuffs didn’t reach his ankles, and the waist left a six-inch gap when he stretched it away from his stomach. He cinched them tight with a narrow black belt. Since water still soaked his sneakers, he decided against a pair of argyles and slipped his bare feet into the cold shoes instead. Pausing at the door, he took a deep breath, then walked out of the bedroom, through a short hall and into the kitchen.
Leda knelt on a counter top, reaching deep into a cupboard. “All canned soup. Nothing else. Stuff in the fridge is spoiled too. That’s all there is to eat.” Her muffled voice sounded cool, competent, as if she were addressing a stranger.
She didn’t pull her head out of the cupboard as she spoke.
Tentatively, Eric said, “My dad’s probably got plenty of good food. We’re only ten or fifteen blocks from there now.”
“Right.” She slid off the counter. “Don’t we make a pair?” she said, as if she were kidding, but she didn’t laugh, didn’t smile, didn’t even meet his eyes. She wore a maroon man’s shirt with the sleeves rolled above her elbows and a baggy pair of gray pants that matched Eric’s, although the cuffs piled up on her shoes. “Let’s go then.”
“Okay. Fine,” said Eric, and he decided to forget about last night. It was a freak thing, he thought. Maybe it didn’t happen at all. Like a dream. But as he followed her out the door and into the bright sunlight of the morning, he felt heavy and bleak, and he wanted to hug her, to feel her reality in his arms—to be hugged back. She strode purposefully to the street, down the sidewalk, away from the blue-trimmed white bungalow with the blue goose and its warm, hand-painted “Welcome.” On the lawns, the reminders of yesterday’s snow existed only in the shadows as thin sheets of slushy ice, retreating as the sun advanced. Steam tendrils wavered from wet spots on the asphalt, and already half the street was dry. Eric guessed it might be seventy degrees. For the first time in days, he couldn’t smell smoke, just wet grass and spring air.