“It’s the least we can do!” The man gave a mirthless laugh.
There was a temporary silence, as though they’d planned it to memorialize someone now gone.
“I might need to excuse myself,” Ruth said.
“Of course.” Clay didn’t know what was required of him. She wasn’t asking his permission, and it wasn’t his to grant.
Amanda watched the woman leave the room. She poured herself a glass of the wine she’d opened earlier because she wasn’t sure what else to do. Her wine, the wine she’d paid for. She sat beside her husband. “It is a beautiful house.” What a thing, to make small talk now.
G. H. nodded. “We love it. I’m happy to hear you do too.”
“Have you been here long?” Amanda was trying to interrogate, hoping to catch him.
“Bought it five years ago now. We spent quite a while on the renovations, almost two years. But at this point it’s home. Or home away from home.”
“Whereabouts do you live in the city?” Clay knew how to make small talk too.
“We’re on Park, between Eighty-First and Eighty-Second. What about you?”
Clay was cowed. The Upper East Side was uncool, but still holy. Or maybe so uncool that it was in fact cool. They’d held on to their place so long he could no longer comprehend real estate, the local sport. Still, he’d been in apartments on Park, upper Fifth, Madison. It always felt unreal, like a Woody Allen film. “We live in Brooklyn. Carroll Gardens.”
“It’s really Cobble Hill,” Amanda said. She thought that more respectable. A better riposte to his uptown address.
“That’s where everyone wants to live now, I guess. Younger people. I imagine you have more space than we do.”
“Well, you have all this space here, in the country,” Amanda said, reminding him of what she thought was his cover story.
“A big part of the reason we bought out here. Weekends, holidays. Get out of the city and into the fresh air. It’s so different out here, the air.”
“I like what you all did.” Amanda stroked the countertop like it was a pet.
“We had a great contractor. So many of the little things were his idea.”
Returning from the bathroom, Ruth paused in the living room to switch on the television. The screen was that vintage shade of blue from some simpler technological era, white letters important: emergency broadcast system. There was a beep, then a quiet hiss, the sound of something that was not much of a sound, then another beep. They kept coming, the beeps. There was nothing but the beeps, steady but not reassuring. The three others walked into the living room to see it for themselves.
“So, no news there,” Ruth said, mostly to herself.
“It’s probably just a test of the emergency broadcast system.” Amanda was skeptical.
“It would say so if it was,” Ruth said. It was common sense. “You see this.”
They all saw it.
“Change the channel.” Clay had faith. “We were just watching a show!”
Ruth scrolled through every available channel: 101, 102, 103, 104. Then more quickly: 114, 116, 122, 145, 201. All blues, those meaningless words. “This is some emergency broadcast system we’ve got.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing.” Clay looked at the built-in shelves with remaindered art books and old board games. “It would tell us more if there were more to tell.” Ipso facto.
“The satellite television is so unreliable. But it’s impossible to get them to run the cable out this far, so it’s the only option.” Ruth had wanted the house to be far from everything. She’d been the one who wrote that Airbnb listing, and she meant it. That the house was a place apart from the rest of the world was the best thing about it.
“The wind is enough to knock it out.” G. H. sat in one of the armchairs. “Rain. It’s not very reassuring, that rain can affect a satellite. But it’s true.”
Clay shrugged his shoulders. “So there’s an emergency. The emergency is that New York City is without power. But we still have it, even if we don’t have TV or the internet. So that’s got to make you feel better, I’d imagine? You were right to get out of the city—it must be a mess.”
Amanda didn’t believe this, but she also wondered. Should they fill the bathtub with water? Should they find batteries, candles, supplies?
“I think you should stay here tonight.” Clay had seen enough evidence. “Tomorrow we’ll sort out what’s happening.”
Amanda had nothing to say about the emergency broadcast system.
“A blackout could be something. It could be a symptom of something bigger.” Ruth had ninety minutes to work it out and wanted to say it. “It could be fallout. It could be terrorism. It could be a bomb.”
“Let’s not let our imaginations run away.” Clay’s mouth was sugary from the drink.
“A bomb?” Amanda was incredulous.
G. H. didn’t like to ask, but he had to. “You know, I’m sorry to trouble you, but we didn’t have dinner. Some cheese and crackers before the concert.”
The party—was it a party now?—retreated to the kitchen. Clay took the leftover pasta, still in its pot, out of the refrigerator. He was suddenly aware how messy the room was, how thoroughly they’d made themselves sloppily at home. “Let’s eat something.” He said it like it was his idea. Professors learned that, taking the occasional insightful classroom comment and transforming it into fact.
Ruth noticed that the sink was full of dirty dishes. She pretended not to be disgusted. “A dirty bomb in Times Square? Or some coordinated effort at the power plants?” She had never thought of herself as imaginative, but now she was discovering a flair for it. It only sounded like paranoia if you were wrong. Think of what had been done and forgotten in their lifetimes—in the past decade alone.
“We shouldn’t speculate.” G. H. was reasonable.
Someone had left the tongs inside the pot. The metal was cold to the touch. Clay filled four bowls, microwaved them in turn. “Where are the power plants in New York City?” There was so much you never knew in life, even someone smart like he was. Clay found this marvelous or meaningful. “They must be in Queens, I guess. Or by the river?”
“Some guy blows up a suitcase in Times Square. His pals do the same thing at the power plants. Synchronized chaos. The ambulances couldn’t even get through the streets, if all the lights were out. Do the hospitals even have generators?” Ruth accepted a bowl of pasta. She didn’t know what else to do, so she ate. Also, she was hungry. The pasta was too warm, but good, and she was unsure why this was something she begrudged. “This is very kind of you.”
Amanda slurped accidentally. She was suddenly ravenous. Sensual pleasures reminded you that you were alive. Also, drinking too much made her hungry. “It’s nothing.”
G. H. could feel the food working on his chemistry. “It is delicious, thank you.”
“It’s the salted butter.” Amanda felt the need to explain because it was unclear whether she was guest or host. She liked clarity about the role she was meant to discharge. “That European kind, shaped like a cylinder. It’s a very simple recipe.” She thought chat might salve the discomfort. She was embarrassed to have served this to strangers. The meal was just an improvisation that had ended up part of her repertoire. She liked to imagine some future summer, at some other rental house, the children back from Harvard and Yale, requesting this special dish that reminded them of their sun-filled childhood. “On vacation, I like to keep it simple. Burgers. Pancakes. That kind of thing.”