Nathaniel Rich - Odds Against Tomorrow

“Let’s get out of here,” whispered Jane. “He’s wrecked and probably violent.”

“Oh, I felt free, Zukor. Never felt freer, in fact. Took on the wine cellar first — the old French bottles. Now I’m working through the liquor, starting with the Benedictine. But please — be my guest. Would you like to avail yourself?”

“Thanks, Ned, but we have to be going. We’ll send help as soon as we find someone.”

“Hey, let me ask you something. Did you know how many different kinds of herbs and spices there are in a bottle of Benedictine?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t even know what Benedictine—”

“Twenty- seven ! But the identities of these herbs and spices are a secret. The only people who know the secret are the French monks who make the stuff.” Nybuster stared, transfixed, into his snifter of green liquid, holding it up to the sun. It cast green flickers across his face. “It’s a conspiracy.”

“Well,” said Mitchell. “Off we go.”

“You know something about conspiracies, don’t you?”

“No. Not really.”

“I think one of those spices must be salt, because I’m thirsty. Do you have any water? In the fridge there’s only green olives and Gruyère. I’ll trade you a case of Benedictine or even cognac for a bottle of water. There’s something here called Kelt Petra — is that OK? Or does the lady like champagne? I have regular and pink.”

Jane glared at Mitchell.

“It’s funny that in all our little catastrophe sessions, I never heard about a flood.” Nybuster’s eyes narrowed to coin slots, sharp and metallic. “ Never a flood. Robot invasions, sure. An earthquake and a fleet of terrorists arriving from the sea armed with vials of bird flu. And the drought, Jesus — I have a lifetime supply of bottled water at the office, if it still exists. But if you’re such a good prophet, why didn’t you mention a flood?”

“I did.”

“No!” he shouted, with surprising force. “Never a flood. I see it now, what you were after all along. You weren’t trying to protect me. You were trying to disguise the disaster that you knew was coming.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Mitchell,” said Jane. “Mitchell, stop. He’s baiting you.”

It didn’t matter. He would have his revenge. Nybuster was powerless over him now.

“It was during the natural disaster sequence,” Mitchell said. “I talked about a hurricane-flood scenario. The worst case was a Category Four or Five headed straight into the New York Bight. Tammy’s trajectory was dead-on, but it was only a high Category Three. It could have even been worse, especially given the rising sea levels—”

Nybuster waved him off, his drink splashing into the canoe. “Yeah, yeah, but why didn’t you emphasize? ”

“What do you mean? I did emphasize it.” His face was hot.

“Whatever. Listen — you got any water?”

He was reminded of their very first meeting, Nybuster’s lips closing around one grape and then the next, popping them off the vine, the juice splashing all over the white glass of the conference table. And those tiny water bottles, which he downed in a single gulp, then tossed to the floor.

“Mr. Nybuster,” said Jane. “We really have to go.”

“Why didn’t you emphasize , Zukor?” Nybuster’s voice started rising, herky-jerky, up the scale. “You thought you could keep this from me? I guess you figured you’d be the only one to know. And look at you now. You had a boat all ready. You knew this was coming—”

“And you said, if a flood came, you’d just get in your family helicopter and fly to your country house. Actually, the word you used was ‘hop.’ You’d hop over to Montauk.”

“My father and his wife and their kids took the fucking helicopter!” It seemed that the glass would shatter in his fist. Then the cloud passed. Nybuster cracked his neck from side to side like a prizefighter right before the bell. “By the way, have you heard anything about Long Island? Is it flooding?”

“I haven’t heard,” said Mitchell. But he had seen the flood charts. During the 1992 nor’easter the ocean breached Westhampton Beach, creating a new inlet a quarter of a mile wide; sixty houses were destroyed, including one that was carried several hundred yards into the bay. Barring some unusual quirk of the storm winds, it was likely that Tammy had overridden Long Island at all its narrow points, turning the island into an archipelago. Montauk, at the far eastern end, was at the highest risk. Sandy Sherman’s beachside house in Sagaponack might have washed away too, and for some reason this thought saddened Mitchell. He’d been given his start in that house, after all, speaking up at a meeting when he’d been too young and too stupid to know any better.

“Before you go,” said Nybuster, “let me show you one thing.” He tilted the remainder of his Benedictine over the edge of the balcony and dropped the glass into the water after it. Mitchell noticed streaks of black mud on Nybuster’s suit jacket and on his bare ankles. Nybuster grabbed the golf club and pointed it at Mitchell. “You a golfing man?”

Nybuster cued the golf ball on the balcony and launched it. It screamed through the air, a rising line drive, flying through an empty window frame on the fifth floor of the building across the street. It ricocheted loudly off the walls and bounced out of a different window, plopping into the water below.

“Birdie!” Nybuster cried madly.

Jane grabbed the gunwales so hard it looked like her knuckles would pop. “Mitchell! This is preposterous. Please .”

But he didn’t want to go. Everything had become strange and he didn’t want to miss what happened next. He was a spaceman encountering an alien landscape for the first time. Several hundred yards up Sutton Place a large segment of plaster wall drifted across the wide Fifty-seventh Street intersection. On this crumbling raft squatted three Siberian huskies. They hissed at their reflections in the water.

“You’ve always despised me,” said Nybuster. “I could tell. Bright midwestern Jew, star of your rinky-dink suburban high school, come east to be a big man. But you never learned how the game is played. Numbers alone would take you through, that’s what you hoped. But you’re weak .” He spat the word. “The ways of the world, of power — you don’t understand them. You thought you could scare me with your ridiculous ghost stories. But you’re the one who lives in constant fear, not me. I’ll be fine even if this entire fucking city falls into the sea.” His voice suddenly softened into a blandishment. But for Mitchell the spell was broken. He picked up the oar. “So why don’t you just come up here, give me some of that water? I won’t hurt you. Bring the girl. We’ll have some fun, the three of us. Come just a little bit closer. I can pull you the rest of the way.”

“Go!” said Mitchell, but Jane was already at it, spraying away. They plunged hard, plowing into the canal, a wake beginning to ripple behind them. Nybuster disappeared into the house, only to reemerge a few seconds later with his arm full of brown bottles. He threw a half-filled whiskey bottle first; it landed several feet from the boat, splashing them with water that was like cold grease. A wine bottle came next, hurtling directly at Jane’s head, and Mitchell blocked it with the blade of his oar. Then a series of thumps, and golf balls were launched into the sky. He could hear them slicing through the air, but the angle was off and the balls crashed against the buildings across the street. When they were more than a block away, Nybuster finally put down his golf club. He stood with middle fingers extended as the canoe faded out of view.