Magic Time

Chapter Fifteen

NEW YORK

The trash cans along Fifth were all burning, not for warmth but for light. Cal was thankful; it was easier to spot the line of weary, rumpled people that stretched from Fifty-seventh down past Fifty-fifth and terminated at the familiar cart. Wrapped in a localized fog of steam, it looked dreamy, unreal. The cotton candy and chocolate bars and salted pretzels were all gone, but the propane tank was still firing, and the rich smell of cooking juices wafted out.

“Here we are, matuskha. Sorry, we’re out of mustard.” Doc handed a frank to a birdlike old woman, who nodded thanks and withdrew. He must have been feeding people for hours; where had he gotten the supplies?

“Making a killing, Doc,” Cal said, stepping up to him.

The Russian’s eyes brightened at the sight of him. “They’re killing me,” he grinned ruefully, continuing to assemble and dispense hot dogs as he spoke. “It’s free, everything free. To each their need. That was written above the blackboard in every classroom in my school. Sounds good, neh?”

Cal’s face darkened. “To their need. .” Tina.

Doc’s quick-moving hands slowed, paused. “What, my friend? What is it?”

Cal told him, at least the relevant part. The older man hesitated only the slightest bit, then selected someone standing nearby, a carrot-topped teen with an earnest, open face. Quickly, he showed the boy how to keep the tank going, cook the meat, dole it out. He turned back to Cal.

“Show her to me.” By his tone Doc might have been at a clinic somewhere with a hundred thousand dollars worth of hospital backing him up: confident and gentle. All will be well. The two of them hurried from the cart, past the burning cylinders of trash, their smoke spiraling into the empty black sky.

The faded, cracked tile before the entrance read N.B.C. “National Biscuit Company,” Doc explained, his voice so casual he might have been giving them a tour. “Or so they tell me.”

Cal knew it was an old doctor’s trick to keep him and Colleen calm, and he appreciated the effort. Since they had reached the Guard encampment, Cal had let Doc take the lead, had been relieved, in fact, not to have to make decisions for a time. Tina, wandering in her fever dreams, had been only dimly aware of Doc’s probing. “Best you come with me,” he’d said afterward. “Now, at once.” Neither Cal nor Colleen had asked questions. They had merely trusted.

This deserted block of square brick buildings would normally have been choked with trucks and workmen at this time, with dawn drawing near. Doc led them around the side of the building to a padlocked metal door, withdrew a key from about his neck. Colleen held aloft the Coleman lantern she had scored (“Don’t ask”).

“In here.” Doc swung the door wide. Cal lifted Tina from the shopping cart and carried her in. Doc followed, Colleen bringing up the rear, throwing a last, keen glance at the walkway behind them.

Tina lolled in Cal’s arms, a bundle of sticks, and he felt hollow, lifeless. Images collided in on him: Tina beaming in a pirouette, vibrant in a grand jete, rushing to pointe class early to steal a glance at the New York City Ballet rehearsing, brimming with life and surety and purpose.

She was his world, his whole world.

The windowless cubicle had been a storeroom once. Now it housed a mattress, a microwave, a radio. “You live here?” Colleen asked incredulously.

“As little as possible.” Doc slid the bolt. “Put her there, please,” he instructed Cal, nodding toward the bed.

Cal placed Tina gently on the mattress. She mumbled a soft protest, then was still. Doc produced a medical bag from under the microwave, bent over her. Colleen stood behind with the lantern.

“Is she allergic to any medication?” Doc asked Cal, not taking his eyes off the girl, examining her with gentle, deft hands.

“Not that I know of.”

Doc nodded. He withdrew a syringe from his bag, filled it from a small bottle and administered an injection.

“Penicillin. Don’t tell anyone I have it.” He handed Colleen the used syringe. “Rinse the needle in alcohol. We may need it again.” She hesitated, revulsion plain on her face. “There’s some in the bathroom,” he prompted firmly, brooking no argument. She withdrew, taking the lantern with her, casting them into shadow.

“In Ukraine,” Doc told Cal, “we don’t count on supplies.” At the bathroom doorway Colleen set the lantern down, so as not to leave them entirely in the dark, then went into the other room. Doc closed his bag, gazed into the face of the unconscious child.

“Do you know what it is?” asked Cal.

“It’s like a lot of things. But there are some symptoms I don’t know. The skin. Translucent. . strange.” He drew Cal from the bed, lifted a beaker off the floor. Brown liquid sloshed in it. “You want some Chock Full o’Nuts?”

Cal shook his head, which made it throb. Now that he was letting down, all the bruised and abused parts of him were screaming their outrage.

“Come, Calvin,” Doc coaxed. “In former Soviet, when there is only waiting, men drink. I never acquired taste for vodka, so. .” Cal shrugged, relenting. “Good.” Doc lit a can of Sterno, set the beaker on a rack atop it.

He looked back toward the bed. “At the cart, I heard people talking. There seem to be lots like this.”

The horrific corridors at Roosevelt reared up, all the listless, frail ones and the others with their strange agitation and gray skin. “Radiation, you think?”

Doc looked thoughtful. “Not like any I’ve seen.”

Cal’s eyes met his. There was something unsettling about the weighted manner in which the man had said the words.

“I was in Kiev,” said Doc, after so long a silence Cal thought he wasn’t going to continue, “when Chernobyl came. They summoned me to treat the”-he struggled for the word-“bystanders.”

Doc turned away, stared into the darkness. His voice was a whisper, barren. “They died by thousands, melting like ice in fire. We placed them in soldered zinc coffins, buried them in concrete.” His eyes returned to Tina. “You know, I thought, No more doctoring. Good. No more playing Santa Claus with my big empty bag.”

“I’m sorry.” Sorry. The word sounded to Cal like he was offering a Band-Aid to a gut-shot man.

Doc brushed away the apology. “How could you know? Real doctors don’t bury themselves with their patients.”

Cal reached out, grasped the Russian’s shoulder. Doc flinched-when was the last time anyone touched him? — then relaxed, his melancholy gray eyes full of gratitude.

They stood a moment in the silence, then a soft sound of sliding metal drew Cal’s attention. He turned just in time to see the front door ease shut.

Cal caught up with Colleen as she reached the street. “Late for a train?” he asked gently.

Colleen looked away. She had left the lantern behind, but the sky was growing lighter, and he could see the tentativeness in her eyes, the remnants of old wounds.

“I’ve always known when to exit stage left,” she said. “You got yourself pretty well set. Russkie there seems a good guy. Me, I’d just be in the way.”

He stepped closer, caught the strawberry shampoo scent lingering in her hair, the tang of sweat and grease. Through the long night he knew he’d have fallen to despair if she hadn’t kept him going, pushed him to action. In the way? Jesus Christ. Struggling to say what he really meant, all he could come up with was, “I think you’d get an argument there.”

He gazed at her clear, watchful eyes, set in that strong face with its high cheekbones and broad forehead, and was aware of the lean, efficient body under her T-shirt and overalls, the tool belt low on her hips. Standing near her, emotion flared in him, powerful and primal, so sudden it surprised him.

She sensed it; he saw the slight shift in her stance, heard the quickening of breath. This was a turning point, he thought, a moment where what he said would either send her away or draw her near, and he very much wanted her near. They had spoken little since he arrived with Doc, and that had all been to the task at hand. He had said nothing of his run-in with Misfits or of the gun, of his dawning suspicion as to what was happening.

And as he reflected on it, he knew that all he had to bind her to him was the truth.

“There’s some things I need to tell you,” he began.

“Yes?” She tilted her head, and there was challenge in it, and shyness.

He opened his mouth to speak, but there was a clattering from another block that sounded like a tin can, bouncing off a car door. He tensed and saw his own wariness mirrored in her eyes.

“We’re exposed here,” he said and drew her into shadows.

WEST VIRGINIA

“I don’t understand what happened.” Hank sank onto the bed Wilma had prepared for him in her downstairs guest room. It was the first time, she realized, that he’d been in any room of the house but the kitchen and, occasionally, the living room. Since her return from college she’d kept him at a distance, sensing his resentment, not able to explain her longings and her fears.

Neither had attempted to kindle a light, though Wilma had candles. “What happened to me, what happened to Sonny, and Andy, and the other guys that left. . what happened to you.”

He touched her hand. The cats, who had padded soundlessly into the front room when Wilma had come through the door, lay across the foot of the bed and over the threshold, blinking their golden eyes. They’d always been fond of Hank, who had in times past muttered ill of them as their numbers multiplied and he himself had played less and less a part in Wilma’s life.

Now he stroked Imp’s head and chuckled a little as he said, “I never seen anybody move so fast in my life.”

“I was scared for you,” said Wilma. “And Carl Souza never had a lick of sense with that gun of his.”

“No,” said Hank. “That wasn’t just. . ‘scared.’ What happened? To you, I mean?” He regarded her with round opal eyes. “Are you okay?”

Wilma nodded. “I think so,” she said, interested that Hank alone could see the change in her. Perhaps it was because Hank had changed so terribly himself. “I’m not. . I don’t hurt anywhere. And I don’t know what happened. Something.” She ran her hand along Dinah’s back as the elderly calico climbed into her lap.

“You always were different,” Hank said softly. “I mean, it never showed. I’m glad it’s had a chance to finally come out, whatever it is.”

Around them, the town was falling silent at last, exhausted men and women returning to their homes, locking the doors, blowing out candles and lamps. Now and then Wilma would hear disjointed exclamations as people came home to find that the grunters had raided their kitchens, their back-porch freezers and cupboards-exclamations of anger and alarm, for who knew when trucks would be coming into the grocery stores again? But mostly there was silence, in which the singing of the crickets was undisturbed by even the whisper of cars on the road or the far-off roar of airplanes in the sky.

“Thank you.” Hank touched her hand again and took his as quickly away. “I roughed up Sonny and Andy and the others in the mine pretty bad. They may get over it, and they may not, but right now I think that’s not a good place for me to be.”

“Do you want to go back?” she asked.

He stared into the darkness, stroking the cat, his face in repose once again, curiously still Hank’s face. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “In a lot of ways. . it’s quiet. There’s too much noise up here. Too many people. I always was a hermit, you know.” And she laughed, because that was one of the things he’d grown angry at her about: she had too many friends, too much family. Too many things that took her from him. She was always out, always doing. “Too much going on. Under the ground it’s. . it’s simple. But just because I don’t like everybody don’t mean I want to spend the rest of my life with Sonny Grimes. There’s people up here I love.”

“I know,” said Wilma.

Their eyes met. “What does it mean?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what any of it means,” she said. “But whatever happens. .”

Her hand closed around his, and for a moment they sat in the darkness, looking at one another with changed and seeing eyes. She saw Hank’s nostrils flare and knew that he, like she, sniffed the coming of dawn.

The first new day, she thought, of the rest of. . what?

“Whatever happens,” she finished, “things are not going to be the same.”