Ben Winters - Countdown City

“No! Not San Francisco!” says another, a girl with an awkward pixie haircut, snorting laughter. “That’s my old apartment!”

At last I let Nico lead me away, follow her back through the paths of what used to be UNH. Again I find myself imagining O. Cavatone, if he really was here, picturing him navigating these tortuous paths. What did he make of it, the tents, the kids, the antipodal volcanism working group? The tough and righteous state trooper in the land of the permanent asteroid party? Then I stop myself, shake my head. What do you think, Henry? You think that if you imagine him hard enough, you can make him appear?

All the food in the grub tent is free and hot and delicious. There is a no-nonsense woman in a stained yellow apron, serving tea and miso soup and gooey chocolate desserts from a long table. Dinner rolls and cups of tea are help-yourself. I look down the buffet line, daring to hope—it’s a different world, a different infrastructure, you never know—but there is no coffee. People drift in and out of the tent, pushing back the flap and saying “hey” to the cook and grabbing food and trays; most of the citizens of the Free Republic are of college age or even younger, although there are a handful of grown-ups. In fact, there’s a middle-aged man with a long gray beard and a potbelly seated next to Nico and me at our picnic table, wearing a loud-print bowling shirt and shooting what I presume to be heroin into the veins of his forearm, having tied off above the elbow with an extension cord.

I try to ignore him. I break my roll and open a small foil packet of margarine.

“So,” I say to Nico. “Jordan. Is he your boyfriend?”

She grins. “Yes, Dad. He’s my boyfriend. And I’m thinking about going all the way. Don’t tell Jesus, okay?”

“That’s hilarious.”

“I know.”

“Well, just for the record…” I dab on the margarine with a plastic knife. “I don’t like him.”

“For the record, I do not care.” Nico laughs again. “But, to tell you the truth, I don’t like him much, either. Okay? He’s part of my thing, that’s all. He’s a teammate.”

I lean back and bite into the roll. This whole time Nico has been lugging around her mysterious duffel bag, large and ungainly, and now it is slung on the bench beside her. The potbellied heroin addict at the end of the table makes a low grunt and depresses his plunger, grits his teeth, and throws back his head. There is something horrifying and mesmerizing about him doing this in front of us, almost as if he were performing a sexual act or a murder. I look away, back to Nico.

We chat. We catch up. We tell each other stories from the old days: stories about Grandfather, about our mom and dad, about Nico and her screw-up friends from high school, stealing cars, drinking beer in homeroom, shoplifting. I remind her of our mother’s zealous and misplaced encouragement of Nico’s early-life interest in gymnastics. My comically uncoordinated little sister would do some poorly executed somersault, land painfully on her tiny butt, and my mother would clap wildly, cup her hands into a megaphone: “Nico Palace, ladies and gentlemen! Nico Palace!”

We finish our soup. I check my watch. Jordan said an hour and a half. It’s been fifty-five minutes. The heroin addict babbles to himself, murmuring his way through his private ecstasies.

“So, Henry,” says Nico, in that same tone of voice that Culverson always used, fake casual, innocent, to ask if I’d been in touch with her. “How are you?”

“In what sense?”

“The girl,” she says. I look up. The roof of the grub tent is not properly joined; there’s a diagonal slash of open air, blue sky. “The one who died.”

“Naomi,” I say. “I’m fine.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Nico sighs and pats me on the back of the hand, a sweet simple gesture glowing faintly with the ghost light of our dead mother. I can imagine my sister and me in some future that never will exist, some alternate dimension, Nico appearing on my doorstep on Thanksgiving Day or Christmas Eve, whatever dipshit husband she ended up with still parking the car, my beautiful sarcastic nieces and nephews tearing through the house, demanding their presents.

“Random question,” I say. “Do you know the name Canliss?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“It’s not someone we went to school with?”

“I don’t think so. Why?”

“No reason,” I say. “Forget it.”

She shrugs. The chef in her apron is singing, opera, something from Marriage of Figaro , I think. A new group wanders in, three boys and two girls, all of them in matching bright orange shirts and sneakers, like they’re some sort of athletic team, and they’re arguing, loudly but not angrily, about the future of humanity: “Okay, let’s say that everybody’s dead but ten people,” says one of the men. “And let’s say one of them opens a store…”

“Capitalist pig!” interrupts one of the women, and they all crack up. The heroin addict’s forehead hits the table with an audible thunk .

“Hey. You should come back to Concord with me,” I say suddenly to my sister. “After I settle this case. We’ll hole up in Grandfather’s house. On Little Pond Road. We’ll share resources. Wait it out together.”

“Wish I could, big brother,” says Nico, amused, eyes dancing. “But I gotta save the world.”

Jordan slips through the flap of the grub tent right on time, as good as his word, Ray-Bans and shit-eating grin firmly in place. He’s written Julia Stone’s information on a tiny slip of cigarette paper, which he slides into my palm like a bellhop’s tip.

“She’s on R&R,” he says cheerfully to Nico, who says, “No kidding?”

“What’s R&R?” I say.

“One of the—whatever they call them. One of the grand committees,” Nico says.

“Okay,” I say, looking at the paper. All it says is what he just told me: Julia Stone. R&R . “So where is she?”

Jordan looks me over. “Do you have some kind of philosophical or moral objection to thanking people for things?”

“Thank you,” I say. “Where is she?”

“Well, it’s tricky. R&R meets in a series of rotating locations.” He lifts his sunglasses and winks. “Kinda top secret.”

“Oh, come on,” says Nico, lighting a fresh cigarette.

“Why are you looking for her?” asks Jordan.

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Really?” he says. “You can’t? You came this far for this tiny piece of information, and you’re not prepared to barter for it? How are you gonna do when it’s cannibal time, and you’ve gotta negotiate with Caveman Stan for a bite of the baby?”

“You’re such a dick, Jordan,” says Nico, exhaling.

“No, no,” he says, “I’m not,” and he turns on her, suddenly serious. “You come to me for information, because you know I can get it. Well, how do you think that happens? Information is a resource , the same as food, same as oxygen. Geez Louise!” He throws his hands in the air, turns back to me. “Everybody just wants, wants, wants. Nobody wants to give .” He drops his cigarette in the dirt, jabs me in the chest. “So. You. Give . You’re looking for Julia Stone. Why is that?”

I stay silent. I keep my arms crossed. I’m thinking, no way . I’ve got most of what I want, and I can figure out the rest on my own. I stare back at him. Sorry, clown .

“There’s a man looking for her.” Nico, mumbling, looking at the dirt. “A former state trooper.”

“Nico,” I say, astonished. She doesn’t look at me.

“The trooper is in love with the girl. My brother is trying to find him. For the guy’s wife.”