Timothy Zahn: The Green And The Gray

Of course, they could always walk over to Amsterdam and flag down something there. But Amsterdam turned one-way-north at 110th, which would force the cabby to head farther east to Columbus, which was currently handling much of the Broadway traffic in addition to its own. It probably wouldn't get them home any sooner than just walking the twenty blocks, not to mention the expense involved. There was always the subway, of course, but Caroline had an absolute phobia about riding it after dark.

But to walk would mean giving in.

"I suppose we could walk," Caroline offered timidly from beside him, her voice sounding like someone easing her way onto thin ice.

"I suppose we could," Roger echoed, hearing the hardness in his own voice. That had been their pretheater argument: a brief staking out of turf on Caroline's current favorite subject of exercise, and how both of them needed more of it.

And once she got an idea or crusade into her head, there was no getting it out of her. Three cheers for the underdog, four cheers for the noble cause, damn the torpedoes, and full speed ahead.

He frowned sideways at her in sudden suspicion. Could she have lost her ring back there on purpose, staging the whole thing to force them to walk home like she wanted?

For a long second he considered calling her bluff, either walking them over to Amsterdam or using his cell phone to summon a cab right here and insisting they wait until it arrived. But the wind was starting to pick up, and standing around freezing would definitely qualify as a Pyrrhic victory. Better to get home as quickly as possible, even if it meant giving in.

Besides, she was probably right. They probably could both use more exercise.

"Sure, why not?" he said, turning south along Broadway. "Unless you think you'll be too cold."

"No, I'm fine," she assured him. His sudden capitulation must have caught her by surprise, because she had to take a couple of quick steps to catch up. "It's a nice night for a walk."

"I suppose," he said.

Caroline fell silent, without even a passing mention of exercise. At least she was being a gracious winner.

Broadway's vehicular traffic, as he'd already noted, was running sparse tonight. What he hadn't anticipated was that pedestrian traffic would be similarly low-key. Once they'd made it out of the immediate Columbia area, they found themselves with the sidewalk virtually to themselves.

Construction blockages wouldn't explain that; there must be a football game or something on. Or maybe it was still baseball season. He was a little vague on such things.

Though it could also be the weather that was keeping everyone inside. The wind had picked up since their arrival at the theater, and had become a steady blast of Canadian air pressing against their backs and carrying the promise of an extra-cold winter ahead.

Caroline was evidently thinking along the same lines. "We're going to need to bring the trees in soon, before it gets too cold," she commented as they hurried across 104th Street in anticipation of an imminent red light. "We let it go too long last year, and they did poorly when spring came."

"What constitutes too cold?" Roger asked, glad to have something to talk about that didn't involve either exercise or the play.

"Certainly before we get a hard freeze," she said.

"Okay," Roger said, though he had only a vague memory of tree problems last spring. The two semidwarf orange trees, like the rest of their indoor jungle, were Caroline's responsibility. "You want to put them in the bedroom again?"

"I'd like to," Caroline said. "I know you don't like them blocking the balcony door there; but the alternative is to block the living room door, and we certainly look out that one more often—"

"Shh," Roger cut her off, looking around. "Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Caroline asked.

"It was like a cough," Roger told her, frowning. Aside from two more couples a block up the street, there wasn't a single human being in sight. "A very wet cough, like you get when you've got fluid in your lungs."

"I hate that sound," Caroline said, shivering.

"Yeah, but where did it come from?" Roger persisted, still looking around. All the shops in the immediate area were closed, there were no alleys, and the nearby doorways were too well illuminated by the streetlights for anyone to be hiding there. He couldn't see any open windows above them, either.

"I don't see anyone," Caroline said. "Maybe you imagined it."

I didn't imagine anything, Roger groused silently to himself. But he couldn't argue against the fact that there was no one in sight. "Maybe," he said, taking her arm and starting forward again, the back of his neck starting to creep in a way that had nothing to do with the wind. "Come on, let's go."

They continued south, past the torn-up pavement and flashing yellow lights at 103rd, heading for

102nd. Ahead on their left, he could see the theater he and Caroline sometimes went to, its marquee and windows dark. Had they started closing early on Wednesday nights?

"Roger, what's wrong with the lights?" Caroline asked quietly.

He frowned. Focusing on the theater, he hadn't even noticed that the light around them had gone curiously dim. The street lamps had turned into children's nightlights, putting out hardly any glow at all and looking like they were having to strain to manage even that much. The headlights of the passing cars seemed unnaturally bright, the doorways now resting in deep puddles of shadow.

Ahead, as far down Broadway as he could see, all the streetlights had gone equally dim.

He looked back over his shoulder. The lights had dimmed just behind them, too, but only for a single block. North of 103rd, they were blazing away normally.

It was probably something to do with the road construction, of course. Something to do with torn-up streets and damaged power lines.

But then why hadn't he noticed it as they approached? Why had the lights only now gone so oddly dim?

And why had they dimmed just as he and Caroline had entered this particular stretch of sidewalk?

Caroline had gone silent, gripping his arm a little tighter. Setting his teeth, Roger kept them moving, staying as far away from the shadowy doorways as he could. Just six blocks to go, he reminded himself firmly. It would be no worse than a nighttime walk in the woods, with the added bonus that there were no tree branches to trip over. "So what did you think of the play?" he asked.

It took Caroline a second to shift mental gears. "I liked it a lot," she replied, her mind clearly miles away from the safe and artificial world of university experimental theater. "How about you?"

"The acting was pretty decent," he said. "Though the Latin lover's accent was a little thick for my taste."

"You mean Cesar?" Caroline said, frowning. "He wasn't Latin, he was French."

"I know," Roger said. "I was using Latin lover in the generic sense."

"I didn't know there was a generic sense for Latin lover," Caroline said. "Are you meaning a 'when in Rome' sort of thing?"

"No, it's more a general melodramatic expression," he said. They were halfway down the block now, well into the darkened area. Five and a half blocks to go. "The smooth-talking romantic guy women swoon over. Usually he either seduces them or else entices them unknowingly to their doom."

"Ah," Caroline said. "Though in this case it was hardly unknowing. LuAnn knew exactly what was going on."

"Then why did she let Cesar manipulate her that way?" Roger countered, knowing full well that getting started on the play's logic would only get him into trouble. "Especially when good old solid Albert was standing there waiting for her to come to her senses?"

"I don't know," Caroline murmured. "I still don't think it was Cesar's fault."