DIALLO: The mystery audience member who knew CPR. He’s in the New York Times obituary.
RAYMONDE: He was kind to me. Do you know his name?
DIALLO: I’m not sure anyone does.
32
ON DAY FORTY-SEVEN, Jeevan saw smoke rising in the distance. He didn’t imagine the fire would get very far, given all the snow, but the thought of fires in a city without firefighters hadn’t occurred to him.
Jeevan sometimes heard gunshots at night. Neither rolled-up towels nor plastic nor duct tape could keep the stench from the hallway from seeping in, so they kept the windows open at all times and wore layers of clothes. They slept close together on Frank’s bed, for warmth.
“Eventually we’re going to have to leave,” Jeevan said.
Frank put his pen down and looked past Jeevan at the window, at the lake and the cold blue sky. “I don’t know where I’d go,” he said. “I don’t know how I’d do it.”
Jeevan stretched out on the sofa and closed his eyes. Decisions would have to be made soon. There was enough food for only another two weeks.
When Jeevan looked out at the expressway, the thought that plagued him was that maneuvering Frank’s wheelchair through that crush of stopped cars would be impossible. They’d have to take alternate roads, but what if all of the roads were like this?
They hadn’t heard anyone in the corridor for over a week, so that night Jeevan decided to risk venturing out of the apartment. He pushed the dresser away from the door and took the stairs to the roof. After all these weeks indoors he felt exposed in the cold air. Moonlight glinted on glass but there was no other light. A stark and unexpected beauty, silent metropolis, no movement. Out over the lake the stars were vanishing, blinking out one by one behind a bank of cloud. He smelled snow in the air. They would leave, he decided, and use the storm as cover.
“But what would be out there?” Frank asked. “I’m not an idiot, Jeevan. I hear the gunshots. I saw the news reports before the stations went dark.”
“I don’t know. A town somewhere. A farm.”
“A farm? Are you a farmer? Even if it weren’t the middle of winter, Jeevan, do farms even work without electricity and irrigation systems? What do you think will grow in the spring? What will you eat there in the meantime?”
“I don’t know, Frank.”
“Do you know how to hunt?”
“Of course not. I’ve never fired a gun.”
“Can you fish?”
“Stop it,” Jeevan said.
“After I was shot, when they told me I wouldn’t walk again and I was lying in the hospital, I spent a lot of time thinking about civilization. What it means and what I value in it. I remember thinking that I never wanted to see a war zone again, as long as I live. I still don’t.”
“There’s still a world out there,” Jeevan said, “outside this apartment.”
“I think there’s just survival out there, Jeevan. I think you should go out there and try to survive.”
“I can’t just leave you.”
“I’ll leave first,” Frank said. “I’ve given this some thought.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, but he knew what Frank meant.
33
RAYMONDE: Do you still have that obituary of Arthur Leander? I remember you showed it to me, years ago, but I don’t remember if it had the name—
DIALLO: Do I still have the second-to-last edition of the New York Times? What a question. Of course I do. But no, it doesn’t have the name. That man from the audience who performed CPR on Leander, he’s unidentified. Under normal circumstances there would’ve been a follow-up story, presumably. Someone would have found him, tracked him down. But tell me what happened. Mr. Leander fell, and then …
RAYMONDE: Yes, he collapsed, and then a man came running across the stage and I realized he’d come from the audience. He was trying to save Arthur, he was performing CPR, and then the medics arrived and the man from the audience sat with me while they did their work. I remember the curtain fell and I was sitting there onstage, watching the medics, and the man from the audience spoke with me. He was so calm, that’s what I remember about him. We went and sat in the wings for a while until my minder found us. She was a babysitter, I guess. It was her job to look after me and the other two children in the show.
DIALLO: Do you remember her name?
RAYMONDE: No. I remember she was crying, really sobbing, and it made me cry too. She cleaned my makeup off, and then she gave me a present, that glass paperweight I showed you once.
