Marc Zicree - Magic Time

Soon as they get everything going.

Cal didn’t say what nagging intuition, or dream logic, kept hammering at him. Instead, he glanced at his sister, saw her paleness in the lowering sun, felt weariness radiating off her. It surprised him to see her stripped of her usual vibrancy. Normally, the walk they had just endured wouldn’t have taken a notch off her stamina. But then, it had been a day of surprises, and the emotional toll had undoubtedly worn on her.

Cal excused them, and together they headed toward the sturdy, weathered welcome of their fourth-floor walkup. An Amoco tanker truck lay diagonally across the street where it had quit, its cab door open, the driver apparently long gone. Not like anyone’s gonna steal it. The two of them had to step up onto the opposite curb to ease around it.

“You there!” The voice sliced through the humid air.

Tina groaned. Cal turned to Sam Lungo as the smaller man bulled up, still in his long-sleeved white shirt buttoned tight at the wrist. Cal saw that Lungo’s woolen suit pants were dirt-stained at the knees, a fine patina of dust on his face and body. He seemed unaware of the dustpan he held, with its shards of what looked to Cal like something that once been a Hummel.

“I need you to get my bookcases back against the wall. I’ve asked everyone, and no one will help me. My house is a shambles.”

And the rest of New York, incidentally. Cal thought fleetingly of Mr. Stern, that similar, unnerving tunnel vision.

Cal looked to his sister. Her eyes beseeched, beckoned toward home, and he felt his own exhaustion like a shroud.

“We’ve been walking for hours. Maybe later. .” Cal nodded to Tina, and they turned to move off.

“Problem with you is you’re selfish!”

Cal turned back.

“I’m giving you a chance to make amends!” Lungo’s voice was that of a pleading, petulant child.

Cal struggled for calm. “Did it ever occur, did it ever dawn on you there might be something in this world-” Exasperation overcame him, and he fell to silence.

Lungo’s gaze faltered, slid off Cal to sweep over the street. Piles of wreckage. Empty cars. Neighbors helping neighbors, some bloodied, some in shock.

“Is that yes. . or no?”

Ingrates, petty little ingrates, so self-involved, so important .

It was every bit what he had expected, Sam thought, watching Griffin vanish into the brownstone with that pasty girl. Why, he looked like he’d just swallowed vinegar. And no word of parting, whatever had happened to manners? Holier Than Thou just yanked that Bound for Juvie sister of his and hustled off to his no-doubt crack-den hovel. It was pathetic, really, the sorts one was forced to live with, the insults one had to bear.

Sam waited a moment, with the strange hope-one he didn’t even admit to himself, really-that the young man might come back, might help him, after all. But nothing happened, of course, nothing at all. Slowly, eyes still on the building, Sam withdrew pad and pen from his shirt pocket and began to write.

At last, they found their way to their apartment, by the light of a donated candle. Cal unlocked the deadbolt, swung the door wide.

Muted light filtered through the blinds. Several framed prints were askew, and three Perma-plaqued certificates had tumbled to the floor. All else seemed pretty much intact.

Cal looked at his sister. She sagged on the doorframe. The consummate performer, she had retained her composure until out of her audience’s sight.

“Let’s get you to bed.”

“No,” she said grumpily. “I’m okay.” Then, cutting off his protest, offered a compromise. “Couch.”

Cal ushered her into the room. They moved past the bulky old Grundig phonograph, an icon from their childhood still resting solidly atop the scarred oak end table by the sofa. He was relieved to see it unharmed. Mom had disdained television, refused to have one in the house, but had played endless LPs of Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, the magic rhythms that had first set Tina to movement, making a world to shut out the cold.

But for now, like the lights, like every mechanism across the city, it was only an icon of the past.

Cal moved to open the blinds. From the couch, Tina cautioned, “I’ve got this monster headache.”

He glanced back. In the dimness, he could see the clammy sheen on her forehead and cheeks, the pain crease between her brows. And the air in here won’t help any. It was leaden and still. Keeping the blinds closed, Cal reached around and opened a window. “You eat lunch?” he asked.

Tina hesitated. “I lost it somewhere.”

He headed for the kitchen. “I’ll make you a sandwich.”

She nodded absently, seized the remote. She aimed it at the TV, pressed useless buttons, then let her arm fall, a dead weight.

In the kitchen, light sifted through the gauzy curtains, making it easier to see. Cal turned the taps on the faucet, switched on the range. No water, no gas.

“This is so weird.” Tina’s pained voice was barely audible from the living room. “Everyone in the world with a direct line to everyone else. . Now it’s just the street where you live. We can’t even see if Luz is okay or anything.”

Cal nodded, said nothing. He opened the ancient, defrost-it-yourself fridge and saw that it had done a pretty good job of defrosting itself, water dripping from the freezer and inundating most of the food. There was some veggie baloney, though, sealed up tight. He tore it open, sought out bread and lettuce.

Reaching for a dull bread knife from the drainer, he recalled the sword from his dream. Whatever that was, you ain’t it. As he laid slices of rye on the breadboard, tore hunks of lettuce, the tumult of the unseen dream crowd again pressed into his consciousness. Certainly it had been a day of tumult. And earlier, leading all those people safely through the darkness, there was that strange sense of being exactly where he belonged, becoming who he-

“Cal?” Tina stood in the doorway behind him, a paler shadow in the gloom. “You think it’s just here, or bigger?”

“I don’t know.” He smelled the mayo; it was still okay, so he started slathering it on the sandwiches.

“Think it’ll last long?”

“I don’t know, Tina.” He managed a reassuring tone. “Let’s hope not.”

She nodded, hugging herself. He laid aside the knife and went to put an arm around those delicate shoulders. “It’s okay to be scared. You’d have to be crazy not to be.” Then he added, “And you’d need your bookcases put back against the wall.”

She smiled. He gestured at the two identical sandwiches. “Any preference?”

Her smile faded. “Sorry. Guess I’m not hungry.”

Cal almost said, But you always are. Instead, he offered, “Probably the heat.”

“Yeah.” As she averted her eyes from the kitchen window, Cal felt her shudder. “The heat. .”

WEST VIRGINIA

It was Ryan Hanson who said it first. “What if they don’t come?”

“What if you just shut the fuck up, asshole?”

“ You shut the fuck up for a change.” Ryan’s voice was sharp in the darkness. “Look, I mean, let’s face it. Somethin’ weird’s goin’ on.”

“No shit, Sherlock, when’d you get the first clue?”

“Sonny,” Hank said wearily, “cool it, okay? I think you’re thinking what I’m thinking, Ryan. Anybody else thinking that?”

There was silence, as if their thoughts were in danger of bringing their fears to pass.

Every one of them guessed that no ordinary power outage, no Arab terrorist or Chinese bomb, could account for the failure of the radio, the headlamps, the electric power of the tram. After three hours of waiting in darkness at the foot of the downcast, every one of them guessed, too, that whatever was wrong was wrong up top as well.