The Geography of You and Me (3 page)

“I didn’t really sleep,” Owen admitted, collapsing into the rocking chair across from him. He closed his eyes and took a long, slow breath. He couldn’t help himself; they’d been his mother’s cigarettes, and the scent clenched at something inside him. There’d been eight left when she died, the crumpled pack recovered from the accident site and returned to them along with her wallet and keys and a few other odds and ends, and though his father didn’t usually smoke, there were now only two. Owen could chart the bad days in this way, by the tang of smoke in the mornings, the best and worst reminder of her; one of the only ones left.

“You always hated these,” Owen said, picking up the nearly empty box and spinning it in his hands. His father smiled faintly.

“Terrible habit—it drove me crazy,” he agreed, then shook his head. “I always said it would kill her.”

Owen lowered his eyes but couldn’t help picturing the police report, the theory that she’d been distracted while trying to light a cigarette. They’d found the car upside down in a ditch. The box was ten yards away.

“I thought I’d head out to Brooklyn today,” Dad said, a forced casualness to his voice, though Owen knew what that really meant, knew exactly where he was going and why. “You’ll be okay on your own?”

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.

“So when do they think we’ll have power again?” he asked, trying to keep the nervous edge out of his voice. He couldn’t help thinking of his father. No electricity meant no subways. No subways meant there was no way he could get back anytime soon. And in a situation like this, his absence would not go unnoticed.

“No idea,” George said, stooping to help pack up the tools. The clanging metal rang out along the walls,
interrupting the eerie silence. “The phone lines are all jammed and the Internet’s down, too.”

“No cell-phone reception, either,” the handyman added. “It’s impossible to get any kind of information.”

“I heard it’s the whole East Coast,” George said. “That a power plant in Canada got struck by lightning.”

The handyman rolled his eyes. “And I heard it was an alien invasion.”

“I’m just telling you what they were saying on the radio,” George muttered, standing up again. He put a hand on Lucy’s shoulder, then looked from her to Owen. “So you guys are okay?”

They both nodded.

“Good,” he said. “I’ve got to go door-to-door and make sure everyone’s all right. You both have flashlights?”

“Yup,” Lucy said. “Upstairs.”

“Have you heard from my dad at all?” Owen asked as casually as he could manage. “He’s—”

“Yeah, I know,” George said. “He picked one hell of a day to beg off. I haven’t heard from him, but I wouldn’t be worried. Nobody’s heard from anyone.”

“He had to go out to Brooklyn,” Owen said, trying to think of some kind of excuse, an explanation to follow this, but the handyman—who had been walking toward the stairwell—paused and turned back around.

“Subways are down,” he said. “It’s gonna be a long walk over the bridge.…”

Owen felt another pang of anxiety, though he was no
longer sure if it was for the fact that his father wasn’t here to help or the idea that he might already be crossing the length of Brooklyn to get home. It seemed far more likely that he was sitting on the darkened boardwalk, lost in memories and oblivious to the whims of the electrical grid. Even so, there was something odd about being separated like this, on opposite ends of the same city, a whole network of roads and rivers, bridges and trains between them, but still unable to make it across the miles.

“You two be careful,” George called back to them, as he stepped into the stairwell behind the handyman. “I’ll be around if you need anything.”

The heavy door slammed shut behind them, and Lucy and Owen were left alone in the quiet hallway. Their gazes both landed on the gaping black hole of the empty elevator, and Lucy gave a little shrug.

“I kind of thought it’d be cooler on the outside,” she said, reaching back to twist her long brown hair into a loose ponytail, which quickly unraveled again.

Owen nodded. “And maybe a little brighter.”

“Well, at least we have our freedom,” she joked, and this made him smile.

“Right,” he said. “You know what they say about the inside of a cell.”

“What?”

He shrugged. “That it can drive a person mad.”

“I think that’s solitary confinement.”

“Oh,” he said. “I guess ours wasn’t solitary.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It definitely wasn’t.”

He leaned against the wall near the open elevator. “So what now?”

“I don’t know,” she said, glancing at her watch. “My parents are in Europe, and it’s already late there. I’m sure they’re out to dinner or at a party or something. They probably have no idea this is even happening.…”

“I’m sure they do,” Owen said. “If it’s the whole city, this has got to be pretty big news. They let you stay home by yourself?”

“They travel way too much to worry about always finding someone,” she explained. “It was usually me and my brothers, anyway.”

“And now?”

“Just me,” she said. “But it’s not like I’m not old enough to be left alone.”

“How old is that?”

“Almost seventeen.”

“So sixteen,” he said with a grin, and she rolled her eyes.

“Quite the math whiz. Why, how old are you?”

“Actually seventeen.”

“So you’re gonna be a senior?”

“If we have school tomorrow,” he said, glancing around. “Which I sort of doubt.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fixed by then. How hard is it to flip a power switch?”

He laughed. “Quite the science whiz.”

“Funny,” she said, but the word was hollow. Her smile
fell as she regarded him, and Owen found himself straightening under her gaze.

“What?”

“You’ll be okay on your own?”

“You think
I
need a babysitter?” he asked, but the joke landed heavily between them. He lifted his chin. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “And I’m sure my dad’ll find a way to get back here soon. He’s probably worried about the building.”

“He’s probably worried about
you
,” Lucy said, and something tightened in Owen’s chest, though he wasn’t sure why. “Just be careful, okay?”

He nodded. “I will.”

“If you need a flashlight, I think we might have extras.”

“I’m fine,” he said as they started walking down the hall. “But thanks.”

“It’s only gonna get darker,” she warned him, waving a hand around. “You’ll need—”