The Geography of You and Me (7 page)

She wandered into her bedroom and stood in front of the open closet, where her plaid skirt and white blouse hung, pressed and ready to wear. But instead, with some amount of relief, she grabbed a pair of red shorts and a T-shirt, suddenly in desperate need of a walk.

The now familiar temperature of the stairwell stung her eyes, and she wound her way down the steps again, passing neighbors too tired and sweaty to do more than raise a hand in greeting. They all wore the heat like a kind of weight, and Lucy, too, couldn’t help feeling like something inside her was wilting.

With each flight, the red numbers flashed by on the gray doors, but it wasn’t until somewhere around the sixteenth floor that she realized she was no longer sure of her destination. Her intention had been to spend the rest of the morning wandering the neighborhood, but by the time she passed the tenth floor, she understood she wasn’t headed outside after all, and she was all the way down to the eighth floor before realizing she was actually on her way to the basement.

She was going to see Owen.

But when she stepped out into the lobby—which needed to be crossed to reach the door in the mailroom that led downstairs—she was greeted by Darrell, one of the newer doormen, who was sitting at the front desk, drenched in sweat.

“I feel like it’s only fair to warn you,” he said, mopping his forehead with a paper towel, “that it’s hotter than hell out there.”

Lucy paused halfway between the elevator and the front desk. “Can’t be worse than my apartment,” she said, stealing a glance at the mailroom.

“I don’t know,” Darrell was saying. “I walked in from the Bronx, and—”

Lucy turned back to him with wide eyes. “You did?”

“Well, halfway,” he admitted. “The subway’s still down, and the buses were all packed, but I hitched a ride on the back of a fruit truck for part of it.”

“So everything’s still a mess then,” she said, and something about the tone in her voice made Darrell’s expression soften.

“It’s not as bad as all that,” he said with an encouraging smile. “I heard they got power back upstate, and Boston, too.”

Through the mailroom, she could see the far door swing open, and she caught her breath, surprised by the sudden quickness of her heart. But it was only the handyman from last night, who waved as he turned the corner.

Lucy sighed. “Hopefully we’re next,” she said, and Darrell nodded.

“Where’re you off to now?”

“Nowhere,” she said, a bit too quickly, and he laughed.

“Sounds nice,” he told her. “Be sure to send me a postcard.”

Once again, something seized inside her chest, and she hesitated a moment, looking from the lobby doors back to the mailroom, hoping that Owen might come loping out. It would be so much better to run into him here. She was terrified of knocking on his door only to find that he didn’t want to see her. Even now, she could imagine the painful awkwardness of such an exchange, his face going red as he made some sort of excuse because he was too polite to tell her as much.

After all, he was the one who’d left this morning.

Lucy was normally a firm believer that things worked out for the best, and she usually had no problem being optimistic, but now she felt her legs go weak as she stood weighing her next move, her cheeks pink at the thought of showing up unannounced. Something about Owen had thrown her off, twisting her into uncertain knots, and so before she could do anything she might regret, she headed for the revolving doors that led to the street.

Outside, it was clear that last night’s celebration had officially ended, and all that was left was the hangover. The streets, which had seemed like one big party just hours before, were now full of sweaty and miserable-
looking people, everyone fanning themselves with day-old newspapers.

As she walked, Lucy saw a few kids chasing each other along the sidewalk, but otherwise, everyone seemed listless and beaten down by the weather. There were policemen stationed at the major intersections to direct traffic, but it was a haphazard affair, slow and grinding. All the energy seemed to have been sapped right out of the city.

She pressed her way up the street, heading in no particular direction, as she had a thousand times before. The ice-cream shop from last night was now closed, along with most of the other stores, which were all shuttered and silent. A few blocks farther uptown, she passed by her school, an imposing stone building, where a handwritten sign on the door announced that classes would begin tomorrow as long as the power was back, though there was no way to know if the note had been written yesterday or today.

Finally, having covered most of the neighborhood, and with nowhere else to go, she made her way back home again. As she climbed the stairs, she considered heading back up to the roof, in case Owen was there, and the thought propelled her up the next six flights before she reconsidered it for the same reason she’d walked away earlier.

She’d lived in this city her whole life, had gotten lost countless times at night, survived two muggings, and once broken her arm while climbing the rocks in Central Park.
But it was finally Owen—who wasn’t scary in the least; who had, in fact, been nothing but nice to her—who had somehow managed to turn her into a coward.

Back in the apartment, she closed all the blinds and tried to nap on the couch, but the heat was oppressive and stifling. Wide-awake and miserable, she paged through her well-worn copy of
The Catcher in the Rye
—the ultimate guide to losing yourself in New York City—but the words swam in front of her, blurry as everything else from the heat. Finally, she gave up and returned to the kitchen floor, which was only marginally cooler. As the afternoon sank deeper into darkness, the kitchen grew dimmer and she pressed her bare arms and legs on the tiles and tried not to think about the fact that this was where they’d been lying just last night.

She wondered if there was a word for loneliness that wasn’t quite so general. Because that wasn’t it, exactly; it wasn’t that she was feeling lonesome or empty or forlorn. It was more particular than that, like the blanket on the roof this morning: Here in the kitchen, there was an Owen-shaped indent.

She drifted to sleep there, her cheek pressed against the tiles, and when she woke, it was once again to a blur of light. Only this time, it was coming from the bulb in the ceiling fixture, which was blaring down on her, harsh and unnatural and much too bright.

She sat up so fast she felt dizzy, spinning around to see
that it was back now, all of it, the blinking green lights on the microwave clock, the red numbers on the answering machine, the churning of the overhead fan, and beyond the doorway, the lamps that had flickered on across of the rest of the apartment.

All of the clocks were wrong, so she had no idea what time it was, but she shot to her feet and hurried from room to room, greeting each appliance like an old friend. Even the air-conditioning had powered back up, and the stagnant air felt cooler already, all of it conspiring to make the apartment seem recognizable again.

In her room, Lucy plugged in her computer and her phone, and while she waited for them to charge, she dashed over to the bathroom to test the water, which trickled out slowly but enough for her to splash her face. She looked around, feeling giddy, wondering what to do first: take a shower or try to contact her parents or just simply sit in front of the fan, now suddenly a luxury.

But on her way out of the bathroom, she paused in front of the living room windows, where the blinds were still drawn. She walked over and tugged on the cord, pulling hand over hand as the skyline revealed itself inches at a time, all lit up in a brilliant patchwork of glowing windows, a checkered ode to the power of electricity.

Lucy stood there for a long moment, taking it in, the city once again warm and bright as it was in her memory of it. But when she glanced up, she was surprised to feel
an ache in her chest. High above the buildings, the sky had shifted, and there was now only a deep, unsettling darkness, as if last night’s version of the skyline had been turned upside down. And the stars, every last one of them, had disappeared.

Owen was standing in the middle of Broadway
when the lights came back.

The plastic bag he was carrying had just split open as he crossed the street, and the three lukewarm water bottles he’d finally found at a hot dog cart near the park had gone rolling toward the curb. As he scrambled to collect them, he glanced sideways down the darkened alley of the avenue, and it was just as he straightened up again that it happened.

It was as if someone had flipped a switch. Just like that, the city was plugged in again. Owen stood there, blinking, as the street lamps came to life, the windows and signs along Broadway all switching on just after them, once again bathing the street in an artificial glow.

There was an almost reverential pause as everyone stared, slack-jawed, and then the heat-weary crowd stirred into action again and a great cheer went up. People whooped and clapped as if discovering rain after a long
drought, and even the policemen who stood stern-faced at the corner couldn’t help grinning, their eyes sweeping over the restored reds and greens of the traffic lights.

A few people ran past Owen, eager to get home, and a man with a dog tucked under his arm did a little jig on the corner. Everyone wore the same expression, halfway between relief and amazement, and all of them were squinting; in just over twenty-four hours, they’d become unaccustomed to the brightness of their own city, and, faced with it now in all its intensity, they cupped their hands over their eyes as if staring into the sun.

Owen tucked the water bottles into the crook of his arm, letting the crowd surge around him, and he thought about what Lucy had said the night before, about how you can be surrounded by so many people here but still entirely on your own.

He saw the truth in it now, but it felt lonelier than what he’d imagined, and he lifted his gaze to the building on the corner of Broadway and Seventy-Second, wishing he was someone different, the kind of guy who would run up twenty-four flights of stairs just to see her again, even for a minute.

He hadn’t meant to abandon her this morning. But when he’d woken up with the sun on his face and Lucy curled beside him, her eyelids fluttering in sleep, he was gripped by a sudden worry about his dad, who might well have returned by then to an empty apartment with no idea where his son could have disappeared to on such a muddled and hectic night.

His plan was to run downstairs, check the apartment, leave a note if Dad wasn’t there yet, and then climb the forty-two stories back up to the roof before Lucy woke up. Even as he clamored down the long flight of steps, he was already thinking of that space on the blanket, where he’d lie down again and wait for her eyes to open so they could start the day together.

But when he made it down to the basement, it was to find his dad slumped in the front hallway of the apartment, clammy and shivering in spite of the heat. There was a fine sheen of sweat across his forehead, and his eyes were bright and feverish.

Owen’s heart was already thumping hard as he slid to the floor. “Dad?” he said, his voice full of panic, shaking him a little. “Are you okay?”

His father had nodded and attempted a feeble smile. “Just a little tired,” he said, his tongue too thick in his mouth. “I walked.…”

“You walked? All that way?”

He swallowed, as though steeling himself to speak, then changed his mind and simply nodded instead.

“It’s okay,” Owen said, repeating the words dumbly as he tried to figure out what to do. “It’s okay. I’m here.”

Dad muttered something else, but his words were slurred, and his face had a grayish tinge to it. He must have walked all night, all the way from the very end of Brooklyn; he was clearly dehydrated, and he probably had heat exhaustion, too, if not worse. Owen’s thoughts were slow
and hazy. There was no water pressure, no way to cool him off. He felt frantic as he looked around the apartment without knowing what exactly he was looking for; something to help, something to make this better.

“Look, Dad,” Owen said, stooping so that they were at eye level. “I’m going to get you to bed, then go out for some water, okay?”

“Okay,” he whispered through cracked lips.

“I’ll be right back,” Owen assured him. “You’re okay now.” He sat back on his heels, shaking his head. “I can’t believe you walked all that way.”

“To get back home.”

Owen tilted his head toward the ceiling, trying to swallow the lump in his throat. But all he could think was:
This isn’t home.

“Okay,” he said after a moment, snaking a hand under Dad’s arm and around his back. “On the count of three.”

Once he managed to get his father up and into his bedroom, bearing most of his weight as they shuffled along, he helped lower him down on top of the sheets, and then promised he’d be back, grabbing the keys and heading for the lobby. He thought of asking one of the doormen for help, but after his dad had disappeared yesterday in the middle of one of the biggest crises the city had seen in years, he decided it would be better not to draw any more attention to themselves.

He slipped through the lobby, then went sprinting around the corner to the same bodega from last night, but
they were out of water, and so were the next two shops he tried. His heart was hammering in his chest as he thought of his father. He didn’t know much about heat exhaustion other than the importance of water, and as he moved from store to store with no luck, he could feel a widening panic inside him. Finally, he found a pretzel cart with only two bottles left, and he practically threw a five-dollar bill at the man before taking off down the street at a jog.

All day, he watched over his father. He sat in a chair beside the bed, keeping a damp washcloth pressed to his forehead and fanning the stuffy air with an old issue of
Sports Illustrated
. Dad only woke once, and when he did, Owen helped him take a few sips of water. But he fell asleep again almost immediately, and there was nothing to do but sit there, looking on helplessly. It wasn’t until mid afternoon that the color slowly began to return to his cheeks, and Owen finally allowed himself to sit back with a sigh, realizing for the first time how tense he’d been all day.