“If you can even get a hotel room uptown,” Ellen commented when he told her. “Lots of people are trapped in the city. The hotels uptown must be full.” They were talking as they got trays of food for the others in the makeshift cafeteria. He said his kids were living on potato chips and popcorn and he was letting them. The Red Cross and restaurants and hotels uptown were donating food to the shelters. And Ellen said she had drunk enough coffee to keep her awake for a year. They exchanged a smile. Ellen would have liked to get her mother to a hotel soon, but the word on TV and around the shelter was that there wasn’t a hotel room to be had anywhere in the city. Those who could organize it quickly enough had gone uptown the day before, some even before the evacuation was announced, fearing what would come. And now it was unlikely they could find a hotel room anywhere. All the hotels were full with people who couldn’t leave the city, tourists who couldn’t go home when the airports closed, and anyone who had fled the trendy neighborhoods downtown. For many of them, money was not an issue, and they had filled the hotels the day before.
“So I guess we’re stuck, at least until Nigel shows up in our case,” Charles said, as they juggled the food trays back to their cots where the others were waiting for them. Ellen was impressed by how calm he was. The basket case he had been on the plane, clutching her arm, bore no relation to the man he was now. He had his wits about him, was wonderful to his children, and kept them entertained, playing games with them and telling them stories for hours. For lack of anything better to do when they were bored, he walked them around the shelter so they could count how many dogs they saw, or how many cats, or black or white dogs, anything to keep them distracted and amused. And he was patient and respectful of his ex-wife, despite her obvious concern over the man she had left him for. Ellen admired Charles for how protective he was of her and said as much to him.
“I loved her for a long time, and I guess my heart has taken a while to catch up,” he said ruefully. “And she’s the mother of my children after all.” The way he said it made Ellen wonder, as she often had in the past four years, if she would have that noble role one day. Being a mother seemed like the highest honor of all. It made her sad thinking about it, as it always did, but for now they had other things to worry about. And her mother was already asking when she could go home, at least to take a look. There were police lines threaded throughout all of downtown, which no one was allowed to cross, with electric lines down, in some sad cases drowning victims in the streets, trees still liable to fall with weakened roots, and buildings at risk of collapsing. By Monday morning, the floodwaters had begun receding, but not enough, and some buildings were reported to be flooded with ten or fifteen feet of water, filling the basements and part of the ground floor in many cases. And there was no telling when Grace would be allowed to check out her home. Ellen was nervous about the shock Grace would experience when she did. She had been through it once before, after Sandy, but this seemed like a lot for her to go through a second time. She was, after all, seventy-four years old.
“How’s your mother holding up?” Charles asked her as they wended their way through the crowd and passed the boy with the iguana. It had remained on his head most of the time since he’d arrived, and Ellen made a face as they passed him, and the lizard stuck out its tongue as Charles laughed. They felt like old friends now. “She seems remarkably plucky, after all she’s just been through.” And Grace had been very sweet with his children and let them play with her dog. Blanche was shaken up and nervous too, but still sweet with the children.
“She was convinced it wouldn’t be as bad this time, and the apartment was already underwater when we left. The lower floor at least.” Wading out of the building in water to their waists and chests had been an unforgettable experience for Ellen and her mother. “I think it’s going to be pretty bad when we go back. Possibly a total loss, and she loves her home.” It was a bit like living through a war. Natural disasters took everything with them, with no regard for what one loved, or what one did or didn’t have, or how well one had prepared. Ellen had a strong sense that all her mother’s neighbor’s help with the preparations had been in vain, despite his good intentions and theirs.
When they got back to the others, Gina was worried, and talking about Nigel again. They had just shown scenes of Brooklyn on the screen that was powered by a generator, and all of Red Hook looked as though it had been destroyed. Fourteen people had drowned there, and Gina was terrified that Nigel might be one of them. Charles put an arm around her and comforted her, like a brother or a friend, without taking advantage of the situation, or whatever lingering feelings he had for her. Ellen admired him more than ever. She talked to her mother quietly when she insisted that she wanted to at least try to get back to her building and see if the police would let her in for a look.
“I think it’s too soon, Mom,” Ellen said gently, feeling bad that she hadn’t been able to call George. He must have been worried sick about them, and would be in his office by then. But there was no way she could call him, until they got to an area where her cell phone would work again. Their cell phones had worked sporadically in the beginning but less well now, with lines vastly overloaded by people calling in and out.
“It just said on CNN that the floodwaters are receding,” Grace insisted. “Last time they let me in to look ten hours after the storm. It’s been sixteen now. We can always come back here if they won’t let us in.” She was determined to try and was stressed all day, waiting to go home, while Ellen worried about contacting George, and Gina cried every time she thought of Nigel. It was an unnerving day for them all.
And almost like the vision of a romantic hero, a handsome, fiercely disheveled man with long hair and an unkempt beard, but a taut athletic body, in rough boots and jeans, cut through the crowd and strode toward them. The moment she saw him, Gina screamed and threw herself into his arms, as Charles turned away discreetly and looked at Ellen. She raised a questioning eyebrow, and he nodded. It was Nigel. He held Gina in his arms for an instant, then peeled her away from him, and paid no attention to the two little girls or anyone else around them.
“Thank God…I was so afraid something happened to you…,” Gina said breathlessly, and together the two of them were a striking image of youth and beauty, however bedraggled they both were. “It said on the news that fourteen people drowned in Red Hook.” She had been terrified for him.
“I lost all my equipment. The studio is ten feet underwater,” he said, looking devastated, without asking how she and the girls had fared, or expressing relief that they had survived too. It struck both Ellen and Charles simultaneously, though neither of them commented. “Do you realize what that means to me?” Nigel went on. “And of course I have no flood insurance. I spent the entire night helping all the artists out there load their canvases into vans. We managed to save a lot of their work, but none of mine. My negatives are gone too. It’s a tragedy.” He was nearly in tears as he said it, and Gina expressed her heartfelt sympathy with her arms around his waist.
“I’m just grateful you’re alive,” she said in a deeply moved voice.
“It will take me years to replace that equipment, and the negatives are irreplaceable. Thank God I left my old negatives in England,” he said as he looked around, noticing their surroundings for the first time. “My God, what a dreadful place this is. So many children and old people.” He made a face as Grace and Ellen watched him with interest, almost like a character in a movie, which was what he seemed like. There was an unreal quality about him, and his blatant narcissism came right through his pores. “Why didn’t you go to a hotel?” he asked Gina in surprise.
“We didn’t have time. The police evacuated us, I had to leave everything at the apartment, except some clothes for the girls. All the hotels downtown are flooded. And I didn’t want to leave here until you came—I didn’t want you to worry if we just disappeared and went uptown.” She didn’t tell him that Charles had been begging to find them a hotel room uptown, whatever it too
k to get one.
“You should have. I’ve got a ride back to Brooklyn in a few minutes. I came over to drop some artwork off at a friend’s.” He hadn’t even come especially to see her, which wasn’t lost on Charles. “I’ve got friends in Red Hook I still want to help.” And a woman and two children at a shelter in Manhattan, whom he supposedly loved. There was no evidence of it in his eyes or his words. “You really ought to try and get out of here as soon as you can. The noise alone would drive me insane.” They weren’t enjoying it either, but Gina had insisted on staying for him, so he could find them. And then it was as though he remembered her children as an afterthought and looked down at both of them. “Having fun, girls? It’s an adventure, isn’t it?” He didn’t wait for their answer but turned back to Gina with a distracted look. “I’ve got to go. They’re waiting for me. I’ll see you back at the apartment whenever I can get back in. It won’t be for a few days.”
“Take care of yourself out there—it’s still dangerous. Where will you be staying?”
“God knows, most of Red Hook was destroyed last night. I’ll find a bed somewhere. I’ll call you when I have cell service again.” And with that, he gave her a peck on the lips, forgot to say goodbye to the girls, ignored the others, and pushed his way through the crowd to the exit, with a look of irritation and disdain as people blocked his path by virtue of sheer numbers, and without a glance back at Gina, he was gone. It was all about him, and he hadn’t even bothered to tell her to take care, when he went back to his friends waiting for him outside. And he hadn’t offered to take her with him, which Charles would have objected to anyway, for the safety of their children. But Nigel apparently had no interest in them at all, and no concern for Gina.
Seeing him there had been a somewhat shocking experience that illustrated who he was, and Gina wasn’t oblivious to it either. There were tears in her eyes when he left, and she turned away from Charles so he wouldn’t see her cry. He made no comment and chatted with the girls, but he had gotten a full on view of who and what Gina had left him for, and so had she. She went to get a cup of tea then, or so she said, and when she came back, she said to Charles quietly that maybe they should try to go to a hotel, if they could find one anywhere. She didn’t say it, but there was obviously no point waiting for Nigel here. And Charles no longer had business to conduct in the city, since all the Wall Street firms were closed, and Wall Street itself and the stock exchange were underwater. All he had to do in New York now was help Gina and their girls. It was his only mission there.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said quietly, and went to stand on line for one of the landlines they had just set up for people at the shelters. Ellen had tried that to call George, only to discover, after she’d stood on line for two hours, that the phone lines were set up only for local calls, not international, so she couldn’t call him. In one fell swoop, they had lost all the conveniences of modern technology and civilization. It was like camping out in the dark ages, as someone said while she’d waited on line. But for the most part, they were relieved to have a place to go, however noisy, uncomfortable, and limited it might be. It was better than being in danger in their homes, and all the children seemed to enjoy it, far more than the adults, who were uncomfortable, stressed, and exhausted.
Gina was quiet and looked distressed, thinking of Nigel’s visit, after Charles left them to use the phones, and Ellen said nothing to her. She sat quietly talking to her mother, as she held Blanche and fretted about seeing the damage to her home.
Charles was back an hour later, and announced that he had found a hotel room in the East Fifties. “It sounds pretty awful,” he said honestly. “It appears to be a second-rate hotel, but someone told me to try it. All the decent ones uptown are booked. I tried those too, and this one as a last resort. It’s called the Lincoln East, and they only had one room. They’ll give us rollaways for the girls, and I can sleep on the floor, if it’s all right with you. I don’t mind. Or you can just take the room, and I’ll stay here, although I’d rather be close to you and the girls. I don’t want you wandering around the city alone right now, even uptown. What do you think? I reserved it and paid with a credit card, so we’ve got it if we want it.” Gina looked immensely thankful and relieved. The shelter was wearing on all of them after nearly forty-eight hours. Two days of noise, discomfort, and chaos among a thousand people was rough on anyone at any age.
“Let’s all go,” Gina said gratefully. Charles had taken the situation in hand, and was taking care of them, and made her feel protected, instead of Nigel making her feel abandoned. There would be a lot to say about it, after the hurricane was over. She didn’t like the way he had left her to her own devices, and seemed not to be worried about her or the girls. They weren’t his children, but she had expected more of him, and he was disappointing her severely. This was the first time she had seen such extreme evidence of his selfishness. He had always been sweet to her before. But Nigel had never taken care of anyone in his life, or been responsible for anyone. And he clearly cared more about his artist friends than about Gina and her girls. She was suddenly deeply grateful for Charles, and remembered how he had always been there for her, and he still was. And he seemed stronger and more in control than ever now, and she knew that she and their girls were in good hands. Charles had risen to the occasion like the gentleman and kind human being he was. She had forgotten just how reliable he was till now, and how reassuring that could be. “Let’s get out of here.” She smiled at Charles. “And I don’t mind your sleeping on the floor in the same room, or I will. I can share a cot with one of the girls, and you can have the bed.”
“We’ll figure that out when we get there. Gather up your things. We’ll need to find a cab outside, which may take a while.” There was no public transportation, and many of the garages that housed New York taxis had been flooded, but there were a few on the streets. And traffic heading uptown, with many of the streets flooded downtown, was said to be ferocious. The news had said that getting from the devastation of lower Manhattan to the unaffected areas uptown could take as much as four hours, with streets blocked and flooded, no traffic lights, and power lines down.
Charles said a quiet goodbye to Ellen. He had given her his cell phone number for when their phones worked again. He told her to call him if he could do anything to help her, even after the storm. He had asked her if she wanted him to find a hotel room uptown for them too. Ellen asked her mother, but Grace was adamant that she wanted to stay downtown, even in the shelter, and move back into her apartment as soon as possible, whatever the damage. She was very firm about it, so Ellen thanked him and said no.
They kissed the children goodbye, and both little girls kissed Blanche before they left. Ellen wished Gina luck, she would need it with Nigel, although she didn’t say that. And she and Charles hugged.
“Take care of yourself, Ellen,” he said, looking moved, and sorry to leave her and her mother at the shelter.
“You too,” she said, thinking how strange it was that they had become friends on a turbulent flight from London and now in the hurricane in New York. Crises of this magnitude brought people together as nothing else could.
It seemed lonely at the shelter to Ellen once Charles and his family had left, and her mother commented on Nigel’s appalling behavior.
“It’s amazing the foolish choices we make in life, some of us anyway. Her ex-husband seems like such a good man. The boyfriend is sexy, but he doesn’t give a damn about her,” Grace said wisely, and Ellen concurred.
“I think she saw that too. But I think Charles is a little too square for her. She’s a beautiful girl, she’s ten years younger than he is, and he seems like kind of a traditional businessman. The poor guy was terrified on the flight from London. Nigel is gutsier and more masculine in a sexy way, but he clearly never gave a thought to her or the girls.” Ellen had been shocked and could say it now.
“The more traditional choices last a lot longer, but they’re always less exciting,” Grace sai
d philosophically. It was what Ellen had figured when she married George. There was no one more conservative or classically British. She had had her share of racy, irresponsible boyfriends, but George was the kind of man one married, even if she had had to adapt to his ways. It had been an adjustment for her at first, and he wanted everything done his way, but she had accepted that as part of being married to him, and she loved how solid and dependable he was.
It was still surprising to her how different the British and Americans were. The differences between them were vast, but she had come to like their ways. And they were always loyal to their own, and now she was one of them. She wanted to introduce Charles to George when they went back to London—she was sure they would like each other, and were very much alike in some ways. Solid, traditional men with conservative values, who believed in the right things.
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