Ray sprung from his seat. “Are you kidding me? Is that really what you think?”
Helen stared, glassy-eyed, into the bottle.
“I can’t take my eyes off you because you are Batgirl. The way you move, your expressions. Since I was fifteen I’ve been mesmerized by you, and now you’re right here, moving around this house. I can’t help watching you.”
She gave him a flat cynical, very un-Batgirl look. “I’m an aging has-been who had very little talent to begin with.”
Ray clicked his tongue. “What a shame that you think that. So many people would give anything to be you. You should savor it.”
Helen sighed heavily; she looked like she was about to cry.
The TV, the lights, flicked off. Outside, the hum of the air conditioner died.
“Damn it,” Ray hissed. They’d been expecting the power to go out for days, but it was still a blow. Things were about to get harder.
Helen went to the kitchen counter and twisted open one of the prescription bottles lined up there. “Shit.” She dumped the contents into her palm. “I only have three Xanax left.” She looked around, as if searching the bookshelves for a stray bottle she might have left lying around. Her gaze settled on Ray. “I can’t make it without my Xanax, Ray. I’ll die.”
Ray grabbed his keys off the counter, where they’d been sitting, untouched, for four days. “I’ll get it.”
She intercepted him as he headed for the front door, wrapped him in a warm hug. “My guardian angel. Do you want me to go with you?”
“No. Stay here.”
On West Pico, Ray passed a red-haired woman wearing a surgical mask who reminded him of Eileen. Ray wondered where the real Eileen was. Home, with Justin? Lying frozen on some street corner, waiting to die? Would Justin care for her if she got the nodding virus, or just leave her? Ray had no idea, because he didn’t know Justin. Eileen had cheated on him, but that didn’t mean he didn’t care what happened to her. He wondered if he should check on her.
The thought made him chuckle dryly. What if he showed up with Helen? Imagining it gave him a childish glee that quickly morphed into sadness. He missed her; his life felt so strange without her in it.
The parking lot of the Wal-Mart on Crenshaw Boulevard was half full, the glass doors smashed so he could step right through. Ray pulled the silicone rubber skirt of his scuba mask tighter around his ears.
Even through the mask, the stink of rot and urine hit him almost immediately. The aisles were crowded with people laying frozen—their chests rising and falling—mixed with corpses. Ray wound a path through the bodies, down the main aisle perpendicular to the registers, toward the pharmacy. Everyone who was still alive followed Ray with their eyes as soon as he stepped into view, silently pleading for help. It made his skin crawl, all of those eyes staring at him.
The store was silent, save for voices over in the supermarket section.
“Excuse me,” he whispered as he stepped over a teenaged girl who stared up at him, terrified. “I’m so sorry.”
A young Indian woman in a pharmacy vest lay in front of the swinging half-door that led into the pharmacy area, so Ray climbed over the counter. The shelves were almost empty, boxes scattered on the floor. The young Indian pharmacist was dead, her skin a horrible, waxy gray. Ray tried to hurry, moving up and down the shelves, a finger extended as he read the labels.
The shelf above Xanax was empty. The same for Klonopin, Valium, Atavan, and the rest of the row. Cleaned out.
“Damn it,” Ray hissed.
All of the pharmacies in the area were cleaned out. In hindsight it seemed obvious that would be the case. The first person who went inside for sedatives would take them all, because who knew when there would be more? Maybe there would never be more.
The thought rattled Ray. When the Internet was still up, some had been predicting ninety percent of the world’s population would die off. Some estimates were even higher. What sort of world would be left?
Helen opened the door, eyebrows raised, as Ray climbed the front steps.
He shook his head. “Cleaned out. I went to every drug store in the area.”
He wasn’t prepared for her reaction. She sank to the floor, covered her face with her hands, and wept. Ray squatted beside her, rubbed her shoulder.
“We’ll find some. Maybe we can find a drug dealer, or a black market.”
Helen shoved him away, hard. “Where? Where would we find a black market in the middle of this?” She wiped under her eyes. “I’ll just have to drink more.” She nodded. “I’ll just have to drink more.” She looked at her watch. “In fact, it’s almost noon and I haven’t started yet. Time to get going.”
In her autobiography, Helen had described the alcoholic years after Batgirl was cancelled in great detail. It hadn’t been pretty. “Don’t do that.” He thought for minute. Where could he get sedatives?
Then it hit him. He stood. “This is Beverly Hills. Every other house on this street probably has Xanax in the medicine cabinet. I’ll go door to door. I’ll break into the houses where no one answers.”
Helen nodded, still wiping her eyes. She struggled to her feet, weaving as if they were on the deck of a ship. “God, I’m so sorry. I was such a sweet girl, before I moved to LA. Before Batgirl.” Her gray eyes were bright with tears. “The fame does something to you. Even the little bit I had; it burned a hole right through me. All the actors I know who made it are fucked up beyond belief. None of them made it through whole.”
She stepped close to Ray; he instinctively wrapped his arms around her. She pressed close, resting her cheek on his shoulder, her hands against his chest. Her breath was sour with last night’s tequila, but to Ray it was the sweetest perfume. He closed his eyes, reveled in her warmth.
When her lips touched his, he was so startled he flinched.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t—” Helen said.
Ray leaned in and kissed her back.
Helen turned her head aside, whispered, “Make love to me. I want to be touched. I want to feel normal for a little while.”
Back in high school, when Batgirl was a popular prime time TV show, Ray had read A Tale of Two Cities in English class. Mr. Patel made a big deal out of the opening line of the novel, and that line was the only thing Ray remembered about the book. The line was: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Laying in Helen Anderson’s bed, with her sleeping beside him, that line was a perfect description of how Ray felt.
He couldn’t shake a tinge of guilt, as if he were cheating on Eileen. That guilt was pillowed by a soaring sense of joy; sparks of awe, magic, and wonder as he studied Helen’s sleeping profile in the early morning light. That joy was wrapped in a ball of terror and dread, as the reality of what lay outside Helen’s front door crept along in the back of Ray’s mind. They hadn’t been outside in five days, but the radio reports were enough. His terror looped right back to concern for Eileen. She’d cheated on him, she’d left him, but part of him still loved her, still worried.
Helen opened one eye. “Stop staring,” she sang sleepily.
“Sorry.” He lay back and stared up at the ceiling, thinking about Eileen. Odds were she had it by now. The thought rattled Ray, but in the last radio report, between seventy and eighty percent of Los Angeles residents had the disease, so yes, there was a good chance his wife was frozen, was dying. Maybe she and Justin both had it.