“Ten years ago,” the conductor said.
“Like I said, nothing. But look, if we keep going south we’ll eventually have to turn inland anyway, unless you’re especially eager to see what became of Chicago.”
“Did you hear that story about snipers in the Sears Tower?” the first cello asked.
“I lived that story,” Gil said. “Wasn’t there supposed to be a population to the south of here, down by Severn City? A settlement in the former airport, if I’m remembering correctly.”
“I’ve heard that rumor too.” It wasn’t like the conductor to hesitate, but she studied the map for some time before she spoke again. “We’ve talked about expanding our territory for years, haven’t we?”
“It’s a risk,” Dieter said.
“Being alive is a risk.” She folded the map. “I’m missing two Symphony members, and I still think they went south. If there’s a population in Severn City, perhaps they’ll know the best route back to our usual territory. We continue south along the lakeshore.”
Kirsten climbed up to the driver’s seat on the second caravan, to drink some water and to rest. She shrugged her backpack from her shoulders. Her backpack was child-size, red canvas with a cracked and faded image of Spider-Man, and in it she carried as little as possible: two glass bottles of water that in a previous civilization had held Lipton Iced Tea, a sweater, a rag she tied over her face in dusty houses, a twist of wire for picking locks, the ziplock bag that held her tabloid collection and the Dr. Eleven comics, and a paperweight.
The paperweight was a smooth lump of glass with storm clouds in it, about the size of a plum. It was of no practical use whatsoever, nothing but dead weight in the bag but she found it beautiful. A woman had given it to her just before the collapse, but she couldn’t remember the woman’s name. Kirsten held it in the palm of her hand for a moment before she turned to her collection.
She liked to look through the clippings sometimes, a steadying habit. These images from the shadow world, the time before the Georgia Flu, indistinct in the moonlight but she’d memorized the details of every one: Arthur Leander and his second wife, Elizabeth, on a restaurant patio with Tyler, their infant son; Arthur with his third wife, Lydia, a few months later; Arthur with Tyler at LAX. An older picture that she’d found in an attic stuffed with three decades’ worth of gossip magazines, taken before she was born: Arthur with his arm around the pale girl with dark curls who would soon become his first wife, caught by a photographer as they stepped out of a restaurant, the girl inscrutable behind sunglasses and Arthur blinded by the flash.
13
THE PHOTO FROM THE TABLOID:
Ten minutes before the photograph, Arthur Leander and the girl are waiting by the coat check in a restaurant in Toronto. This is well before the Georgia Flu. Civilization won’t collapse for another fourteen years. Arthur has been filming a period drama all week, partly on a soundstage and partly in a park on the edge of the city. Earlier in the day he was wearing a crown, but now he’s wearing a Toronto Blue Jays cap that makes him look very ordinary. He is thirty-six years old.
“What are you going to do?” he asks.
“I’m going to leave him.” The girl, Miranda, has a recent bruise on her face. They’re speaking in whispers to avoid being overheard by the restaurant staff.
He nods. “Good.” He’s looking at the bruise, which Miranda hasn’t been entirely successful in concealing with makeup. “I was hoping you’d say that. What do you need?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I’m sorry about all this. I just can’t go home.”
“I have a suggestion—” He stops because the coat-check girl has returned with their coats. Arthur’s is magnificent, smooth and expensive-looking, Miranda’s a battered peacoat that she found in a thrift store for ten dollars. She turns her back on the restaurant as she puts it on in an effort to hide the torn lining—when she turns back, something in the hostess’s smile suggests that this effort was in vain—while Arthur, who by this point in his life is extravagantly famous, flashes his best smile and palms a twenty to the coat-check girl. The hostess is surreptitiously hitting Send on a text to a photographer who gave her fifty dollars earlier. Outside on the sidewalk, the photographer reads the message on his phone: Leaving now.
“As I was saying,” Arthur murmurs, close to Miranda’s ear, “I think you should come stay with me.”
“At the hotel? I can’t—” Miranda whispers.