“My part of town doesn’t flood, however bad it is.”
“That’s not it. Anyway the barriers should save most of the city from the floodwaters.”
“Then?”
“It might be worse in a new way, where the problem’s not its size or speed.”
“I haven’t heard anything about this.”
“You aren’t going to. And I’m not going to go through meteorological stuff that won’t mean anything to you anyway. Ionic charges, isotopes, and such. I’m just telling you what we know now, or anyway a few of us do, here in Princeton. It could create a kind of… imbalance… in the atmosphere, one we haven’t quite seen before. It could last for days, even weeks after the storm’s officially dead.”
“Which means?”
“Which means it’s the perfect moment for a trip.”
“No, I—”
“You could go out to Vegas. That’s what it means. See exactly who this man—Lewis Eldern—we’ve been looking for all this time is. Extraordinary that it took some anonymous tip to bag him. We weren’t even close, were we? What a waste of money we’ve been.”
“But why would I care that much, to go out there?”
“Don’t say that,” Ravan said with a laugh. “After all, he did hurt that girl you’ve been looking for. The last one, Jen.”
“I’m not looking for her.”
“Really? I’d heard you’d been calling. He might know where she is.”
“It’s not important.”
“You’re sure?” he asked. “Well then, aside from that, Lewis is the one who’s mucked up your plans. That must be important to you at least.”
“We’ll have to see what happens.”
“Oh, come now. That Kames hasn’t seen Lewis or his father in years, it makes no difference. There’s too much history between them, too many common motives, not to investigate the Institute, given all the other evidence. Penerin’s been wanting to anyway, for lots of reasons. You know that most of all. And it’ll be closed until they’re done. It could take months. They’ll drag it out. And who knows what it’ll turn up. I think we both know they’re going to find something. At some point, there has got to be something.”
“Still. Seeing Lewis, interviewing him, isn’t going to change any of that.”
“For the gambling then, Carl. The whores. Nothing’s keeping you here. No lectures. No fellowship. Penerin will probably send you out there anyway eventually, unless you quit first,” Ravan said. “But now you can’t afford to quit, can you?”
“And where’ll you go? Jersey’s not escaping, they say.”
“India. I don’t recommend it.”
“Your family.”
“Take Renna somewhere.”
“Right.”
“You have to. You’d be a fool not to, Carl. More than that.”
Stagg switched off the phone. Renna stretched her leg across his and he wrapped up her head in his hands.
“Hm?”
“Hm?”
“I still feel sick,” she said.
He tapped out two Advil from the bottle on the windowsill and swallowed them. He tapped out two more and slipped them into her mouth. “Water?”
She swallowed without any.
“I can’t hear anything.”
He smiled. “So, Dakar.”
“Dakar what.”
“This weekend.”
“Oh, stop.”
“Really. We could go.”
She sat up. “Why?”
“What do you mean?” he asked. “It’ll be fun.”
“But all of a sudden.”
“That’s the thing. It has to be.”
“What?”
“We could stay a few weeks even, depending. We could make it up to England too. We could both get what we want.”
“You mean the hurricane?” she asked, incredulous.
He sat up.
“But that’s why they built the barriers,” she said. “It’s not that big a deal anymore.”
“They might not help, in this case.”
“And how would you know?”
“Ravan just called.”
“Of course he did. There’s nothing about him that’s not fucking weird.”
“Well, he would know, wouldn’t he? Of anyone we know?”
“And what about everyone else in the city? What are they going to do about it? I haven’t heard of anyone else evacuating.”
“They should probably go too. You can invite them.”
“I can’t, not just like that.”
“What happened to the whimsy, little girl?”
“I’m interviewing someone Monday. And anyway I can’t get vacation right now, even if I asked.” She touched his whiskered face.
“Let’s just go.”
“Carl! Just because there isn’t any fellowship now, I’m supposed to drop everything? I’m sorry about what happened but—”
“No, you know—it’s fine.” She could keep Larent company. Really, the guy would like that. Maybe she would too.
“No it’s not. It’s terrible. And I’m really sorry.”
“Later then. We’ll go, sometime.”
“Really, really soon. In a few weeks even.” She kissed him on the lobe of his ear. “We have to stop fighting, though. Clean the slate. I don’t even think this was about a storm.”
“No?”
“More like a test.”
“Of what?”
“I don’t know.”
34
Stagg was on his way up now, tight against the window, listening to his ears pop over the ringing that persisted. The clouds ahead were heavy and swirling, but nothing like what they were farther out, he assumed, with the storm coming in over the Atlantic. He could see the Coast Guard on the horizon, six ships bound for a fury they’d try to calm, just days now before the elections.
This was the last flight out. The seat beside him was empty but there was a young woman in the aisle. Tall, pale, and elegant, she didn’t seem to want to talk and he hoped she wouldn’t change her mind. She was someone the English would call the right sort, he knew that almost immediately. She’d said nothing more than, “No, that’s fine,” when he’d stooped over and slid his briefcase beneath the seat between them with a deferential glance. But she’d done it in the pure cadences of received pronunciation, the ones he knew mostly from his grandmother, who’d agreed, to his surprise, to let him stay at the country house in Kent indefinitely, whether he was researching or not, or coming with company.
Something indefinite appealed to him now. If he wanted, he could scrap everything he’d written and just live in that library, reading. And if the elections were thrown into chaos by the storm, or if they weren’t, and the results were adverse or simply meaningless once more, what would it be to him, at home, abroad, and free, finally, of Penerin’s heavy thumb?
For all he knew, this woman could be headed to Canterbury too, going by her accent. Or if not her, by sheer force of intuition—he’d not told her he was going anyway, without her, he’d just packed and left—Renna might be. (It wouldn’t have shocked him.) Or else, by the vaster powers of chance, which were really just the sublimities of miracle, maybe even Jen.
A tone sounded twice as they found themselves within a turbulence they’d been briefed on. The shades were wide open but they might as well have been closed now for all he could see through the windows whited out with cloud. The plane started to shake, first in a fine, even tremor, then less regularly but more viciously, sinking and rising and sinking again in a wind that seemed made of strands, tiny streams with their own natures, traveling at their own speeds, braided together like rope.
The plane steadied. The windows became windows again.
“Sorry about that,” said the captain. “At least you won’t be in Halsley for it.”
The woman took out a sterling pen and opened up a notebook, four by six, already much used. She began to write slowly, thoughtfully, in a cursive hand too small for Stagg to read; tho
ugh if he looked closer, somehow he felt he might find only a wavy line. He wasn’t tempted to test the feeling, not now. Looking did have limits.
A different tone sounded and a flight attendant spoke over the speakers: “Feel free to use your wireless devices now.” A rose glow began suffusing the plane, a peculiar rose he’d never known, though he must have seen night fall, the sun set, dozens of times from above like this, shuttling back and forth between continents. Perhaps, though, there was never an hour, an atmosphere, quite like this.
He ran his fingers over the cold screen of his phone and thought of the two women he’d left in the dark, to find their own way. He watched the dark ink of this woman’s pen run onto paper, watched her illegible, undulating line deepen as the pulped wood pulled it in. She paused, held the broad nib against the book, wondering, he supposed, how to continue, just as the finest point bloomed before them both.
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