Owen thought about asking whether he might like some company, but he already knew the answer. He’d seen the flowers resting on the kitchen counter last night, still wrapped in cellophane and already wilting. It was their anniversary; the day didn’t belong to Owen. He ran a hand over the pack of cigarettes and nodded.
“We’ll have dinner when I get back,” Dad said, then picked up the ash-filled mug and padded out into the kitchen. “Anything you want.”
“Great,” Owen called, and then before he could think better of it, he slid one of the last two cigarettes from the pack, twirled it once between his fingers, and tucked it into his pocket without quite knowing why.
In the doorway to his bedroom, he paused. They’d been here nearly a month now, but the room was still lined with boxes, most of them half-open, the cardboard flaps spread out like wings. This sort of thing would have driven his mother crazy, and he couldn’t help smiling as he imagined what her reaction would be, a mix of exasperation and bemusement. She’d always kept things so tidy at home, the counters sparkling and the floors dust-free, and Owen was suddenly glad she couldn’t see this place, with its dim lighting and peeling paint, the mold that caked the spaces between bathroom tiles and the dingy appliances in the kitchen.
Whenever Owen used to complain about cleaning his room or having to do the dishes the moment they were finished with dinner, Mom would cuff him playfully on the head. “Our home is a reflection of who we are,” she’d say in a singsong voice.
“Right,” Owen would shoot back. “And I’m a mess.”
“You are not,” she’d say, laughing. “You’re perfect.”
“Perfectly messy,” Dad would say.
She used to make them take off their shoes in the laundry room, only ever smoked on the back porch, and kept the pillows on the couches from getting too squashed. Dad said it had always been this way, from the moment they bought the house, the two of them thrilled to finally own something so permanent after so much time on the road.
They’d spent the previous two years traveling around in a rickety van with all their worldly belongings stashed in the back. They’d crisscrossed the country, camping out under the stars or sleeping curled in the backseat, whittling away their meager savings as they made their across every state but Hawaii and Alaska. They’d seen Mount Rushmore and Grand Teton, driven up the California coast and gone fishing in the Florida Keys. They’d been to New Orleans and Bar Harbor and Mackinac Island, Charleston and Austin and Lake Tahoe, traveling until they ran out of land, and money, too. It was only then that they returned to Pennsylvania, where they’d both grown up—and where it was time to grow up for a second time—and settled down for good.
But in spite of all the stories he’d heard of their years on the road, Owen had never been much of anywhere. His parents seemed to have gotten it out of their system by the time he came along, and they were content to be in one place. They had a house with a porch and a yard with an apple tree; there was a swingset around the side and a neighboring field of grazing horses. They had a round kitchen table just big enough for three, a door the perfect size for a wreath at Christmastime, and enough nooks and crannies for long and drawn-out games of hide-and-seek. There was nowhere else they ever wanted to be.
Until now.
Alone in his bedroom, Owen heard the front door fall shut, then waited a few minutes before grabbing his phone and wallet and heading out, too, jogging up the stairs from the basement to the lobby, which he passed through quickly, his head bent. It wasn’t that he had anything against the residents of the building, but he didn’t belong here, and neither did his father. Owen was just waiting for him to realize that, too.
All morning, he walked. This was his last day of freedom, the last day he wouldn’t be bound to show up for classes in a school that wasn’t his, and he found himself pacing like a restless animal along the edge of the Hudson River. He left his earbuds on, drowning out the sounds of the city, and he kept moving in spite of the heat. For lunch, he bought a hot dog from a street vendor, then cut over to Central Park, where he sat watching the tourists with their cameras and their maps and their round, shiny eyes. He followed their gazes, trying to see what they saw, but all he could see were more people.
It wasn’t until late afternoon that he made his way back to the corner of Seventy-Second and Broadway, to the ornate stone building that was now his home. He paused just inside the lobby, reluctant to go back downstairs, where there was nothing to do but sit alone for the next few hours and wait for his dad to return. Instead, he felt for the key in the pocket of his shorts.
He’d taken the master set from his dad’s dresser during their first week here, a wildly uncharacteristic move for him. Owen had always been overly cautious, not prone to breaking rules, but after only a few days here, the claustrophobic feel of the place had become too much to take, and he found a locksmith to make a copy of the key that unlocked the door to the roof—the only peaceful place, it seemed, in this entire city.
As he stepped into the elevator, he was already imagining the vast, windblown quiet forty-two stories above, his music loud in his ears and his thoughts far away. He punched the button and stood waiting for the ground to lift beneath his feet, still lost in thought, and he hadn’t even bothered to look up when someone caught the doors just before they could close.
But now, less than an hour later, he felt suddenly too aware of her, a presence beside him as prickly as the heat. As they listened to the sounds on the other side of the door, he glanced down, noticing that her right foot was only inches away from his left one, and he curled his toes and rocked back on his heels and looked away again. He realized he was holding his breath, and he wondered if she was, too.
Just before the door was pried open, he narrowed his eyes, expecting to be greeted by a sudden brightness. But instead, the faces peering down at them from the eleventh floor—which started halfway up the length of the elevator, a thick slab of concrete that bisected the doors—were mostly lost in shadows, and the only light came from a couple of flashlights, which were being pointed directly in their faces, causing them both to blink.
“Hi,” Lucy said brightly, greeting them as if this was all very ordinary, as if they always met in this way: the doorman above them on his hands and knees, his face pale and moonlike in the dark, and beside him, a handyman sitting back on his heels and wiping at his forehead with a bandanna.
“You guys okay?” George asked, passing down a water bottle, which Owen grabbed from him and then handed to Lucy. She nodded as she untwisted the cap and took a long swig.
“It’s a little toasty,” she said, giving the bottle back to Owen. “But we’re fine. Is the whole building out?”
The handyman snorted. “The whole city.”
Owen and Lucy exchanged a look. “Seriously?” she asked, her eyes widening. “That can happen?”
“Apparently,” George said. “It’s chaos out there.”
“Traffic lights and everything?” Owen asked, and the older man nodded, then clapped his hands, all business.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s get you guys out of here.”
Lucy went first, and when Owen tried to help her, she waved him away, hoisting herself up over the lip of the floor, then rising to her feet and brushing off her white dress. Owen followed much less gracefully, flopping onto the ledge like a fish run aground before hopping up. There was an emergency light at the far end of the hallway that cast a reddish glow, and it was a little bit cooler up here but not much; his palms were still sweaty and his T-shirt was still glued to his back.