He made it about a hundred yards when he saw red and blue flashing lights-a police car blocked Bartlett Road, the road that led to everywhere else. A policeman in a fluorescent orange raincoat waved his arms at Jem. Jem rolled down the window.
“All the roads are closed,” the policeman shouted. “You’ll have to go back to wherever you came from.”
“I can’t,” Jem said.
The officer shrugged. “I can’t let you on the roads. You’ll have to.”
“I can’t go back,” Jem said. “I live on Liberty Street.”
All Jem could see of the officer was his light blue eyes and his nose and his lips, which were scrunched together by his tightly drawn hood. “You can’t go on the roads.”
“Will you put me in jail if I try?” Jem asked. Jail was far preferable to returning to Maribel’s.
“No, I won’t put you in jail!” the officer said. “What I’m saying is, you can’t pass. I’m sorry. Now turn around!”
Jem managed to turn the Jeep around and head back down Pheasant Road. He considered pulling into a random driveway and spending the night there. Spending the night in his wet clothes in a chilly, wet car without food or water when the woman he loved was a hundred yards away? Jem pictured Neil Rosenblum shouting at him. Get her!
Jem drove back to Maribel’s and sat in the Jeep, thinking of what he might say. Then he raced to the house and knocked once again on the door.
Maribel had put her clothes back on, although her cardigan hung open.
“I love you,” he said.
“Will you hold me?” she asked.
He nodded, and stepped inside.
Mack stayed at the desk by himself. At seven o’clock, when the power went out, he ran along the back of the hotel, knocking on the rooms’ back doors to make sure everyone was all right. Spirits were high. The guests lit candles, drank wine, ate sandwiches, read novels. When Mack was certain everyone was surviving, he returned to the desk. He sat by the light of three votive candles and listened. The wind was an opera-a baritone rumble and soprano whistle singing simultaneously. Mack heard sand hit the wall of the lobby, but not water. Not yet.
Mack wondered what was happening with Jem and Maribel. He wanted to race home and stop whatever was going on, but after the scene the night before, he knew he had no choice but to let Maribel go. Let her go? He gently removed the bandage from his arm and inspected his wound. He couldn’t believe she’d scratched him like that, he couldn’t believe he’d made her that unhappy. This whole thing is wrong. A six-year mistake.
By ten o’clock, Mack was tired of thinking. He stepped out the side door, and ran through a gust of sandy wind to Lacey’s.
She was sitting in her armchair with ivory beeswax candles burning and a Dewar’s on the table next to her. She wore her nightgown, a pink silk bathrobe, pink terry cloth slippers. The pictures of Maximilian had been collected into a neat pile.
“Max?” she said when he walked in. “Maximilian?”
Mack shook off water like a dog. “It’s me, Lacey, Mack.”
Lacey jumped. He wondered if he’d woken her. “Mack, dear, hello. How goes it?”
“Nothing’s flooding. That’s what’s important. There’s ankle-deep sand in the parking lot, but sand can be shoveled. Do you feel like talking?”
“Heavens, yes,” Lacey said. “You know me, I always feel like talking.”
Mack collapsed on the sofa. “What should we talk about?”
“Let’s talk about your wedding,” she said. “I want to buy a new dress. A bright red dress. I want people to call me a harlot!” She kicked her feet in their pink slippers. “You know, Maximilian and I actually got married twice. Have I told you that? We married the first time in November of ’41, just before Max went off to the war. Judge Alcott performed the ceremony on Madaket Beach and Isabel and Ed Tolliver witnessed. After the ceremony, the four of us went to the Skipper for lunch. Max left for Maryland ten days later for basic training. Then, a few months later, Max was shipped to the Philippines. Those were gruesome times, because the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, and there was Maximilian, practically in Japan himself. While Max was in the Philippines, our friend Sam Archibald died over in Europe, and I had to write to Max and tell him that.” Lacey sipped her drink and stared into the candles. “Where was I headed with this story? Oh, yes, our two weddings. We had a church wedding when Maximilian returned. That was a waste of my father’s money. We were already married!” Lacey finished her drink. “Let’s talk about your wedding,” she said. “I only want to talk about things that are in our future. I spend far too much time talking about the past. And I’m stopping, right here, right now. Here’s to the future!” She raised her empty glass to him.
“I’m not going to marry Maribel,” he said.
“You’re not?” she said.
“No.”
“Have you told Maribel this?” Lacey asked.
“Not in so many words,” Mack said. Just thinking about Jem touching Maribel made him queasy. “But I think she has an idea. I don’t know how to explain it. I just can’t marry her.”
“You don’t have to explain it to me,” Lacey said. “I have long lived by the expression, ‘Nobody knows where it comes from, and nobody knows where it goes.’ Love doesn’t make sense most of the time and that’s what’s so wonderful about it.”
They were both quiet. Freida calmed down, too, but only for a second.
Lacey pushed herself up from the chair and took a few steps toward Mack. “Some days I think I’m old and wise, and other days just old. I’m going to bed. You’ll be in and out tonight, I suppose?”
“I’ll try to be quiet.”
“Don’t worry about it. Just make sure you blow the candles out. We wouldn’t want to burn down the cottage Big Bill left me.”
Mack hugged Lacey around the shoulders. “So you don’t think I’m crazy? Breaking my engagement?”
Lacey put her cool hands on his face. “What you must realize, Mack, dear, is that I will love you whatever you decide. That’s the definition of love.” She picked up a candle and teetered off down the dark hall. Mack stayed to make sure she reached her bedroom door safely. Before she opened it, she turned to him. The candle lit up her smile.
“You’re my boy,” she said.
When Mack returned to the lobby, it was nearly eleven. Freida shook the hotel like a gambler shaking a cup of dice, as if she were trying to lift the hotel off its foundation. Mack pulled an extra pillow and blanket out of the utility closet and drifted to sleep lying on the floor behind the front desk. A loud crash woke him. He shined his flashlight around the walls of the lobby. Then he heard another crash. He walked out to the middle of the room and listened. Another crash, rhythmic crashing. Waves.
There was a knock on the back door of the lobby. Norris Williams, room 3.
“There’s water on the decks,” he said. He was wearing his white hotel robe; his hair was soaking wet, as though he’d just stepped out of the shower. “I can hear the waves crashing.”
“Is there water coming into your room?” Mack asked. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do. Where could the guests go? To Bill and Therese’s? To Lacey’s?
“Not yet,” Mr. Williams said. He was the bookish type, with soft hands, an estate-planning lawyer. The type that wasn’t good with emergencies of the physical kind. “My wife and I would like to come into the lobby, if you don’t mind. We’d feel safer.”
“That’s fine,” Mack said. No sooner had Mr. Williams left than there was another knock at the back door. Mrs. Frammer, from Denmark, room 6.
“The water’s coming in. The carpet by the front door is wet,” she said. “Are we supposed to stay on this ship until it goes down? I saw Titanic. We all did.”