Nathaniel Rich - Odds Against Tomorrow

Who was this woman? Had they met?

“Anyway. I’m not scared of him.” She indicated the porcupine, who watched from behind a bush. “But why isn’t he scared of us? Aren’t animals supposed to run away when they see people? It’s like he owns the place.”

“By rights he does. You can tell from the way he’s marked the turf.”

His hand on her shoulder, Mitchell guided Jane around a sturdy stack of porcupine feces.

“That’s why I moved to New York,” she said.

“To avoid porcupines.”

“I like my nature domesticated, housebroken, manicured, neutered, fearful. I take that back. I don’t like nature at all. I like buildings and cement and electrical wires. Love them. I’d kill for a nice flat stretch of pavement right now. A stoplight. Those little green gates they put around every single tree on the sidewalk.” Jane sniffled one more time and wiped away the last of her tears.

So this was Maine. The air actually did smell like taxicab pine fresheners. Only it was fuller, deeper, rich with wet dirt.

“Listen, Mitchell.” She gave him a sharp look. “I wasn’t very sensitive back in Fort Lee. I’m sorry. I know this matters.”

“I was going to drag you along with me one way or another. I just didn’t realize I’d have to go so far as create a new business.”

“No, that’s not enough. Your sense of loyalty to this girl is impressive. Crazy, definitely. But I respect it. And I’m not just saying that as your new deputy at Future Days. Or because you saved my behind in the storm. I’m saying it as a friend.”

“That isn’t necessary.”

“I mean it.”

The road became muddier, sucking at their sneakers. The forest on both sides became thicker. It was choked with gigantic floppy ferns the size of elephant ears, black spruce, and tall firs, their needles shivering with insects.

“I’m not sure what exactly you’re after here,” said Jane, and Mitchell could sense in her voice a coy sexual insinuation that made him uneasy. Because hadn’t he considered it himself — that there was a scenario, not necessarily a best-case scenario but not a worst-case scenario either, in which Mitchell might just stay there with Elsa, at Ticonderoga? That Elsa would come out of her trance and cure him of Fear once and for all, and that she might find comfort in his presence too, and then she might, perhaps, offer herself to him? Right there in the middle of the softball field, surrounded by heirloom tomatoes and zucchini and whatever the hell else they planted there, and she’d want it quickly, quickly , before Brugada could strike again—

“I’m not sure what you’re after,” Jane was saying, “but if it all goes bad, I want you to know that you’ve still got me. I may not know how to hunt a moose or grow carrots, but I know how to listen. And I know what you’re worth.”

“What am I worth? The profits of Future Days?”

He was sorry as soon as he said it.

“I deserve that. Sure I do. But I mean what I said.”

There was nothing casual about her. Fiercely opportunistic one moment, fiercely devoted the next. She did everything with an intensity that charmed and unnerved him equally. From her spastic canoe stroke to her chatty telephone manner with business clients, she was always committing her full energy, exhausting herself — total engagement all the time. And then his thoughts returned to Elsa, or rather all the Elsas — Elsa the Cripple, Elsa the Hippie, Elsa the Black Star, and Elsa, Nymph of the Fields — and he tried to figure out whether any of them existed in the place that she called the Actual World.

After half a mile the road bent again, now to the right. They turned the corner, and Mitchell understood why Judy wouldn’t drive them any farther.

4.

Were the circumstances different, were this the same world as the one into which he’d awoken on the day before Tammy hit, he might have assumed that the people were assembling for a county fair. Fried Dough, Tilt-A-Whirl, Milk Bottle Toss. Only their eyes were all wrong: fluttery, blinking, bloodshot. The mood was not carefree, not at all. This was high panic.

Families dragged luggage on wheels, college kids lumbered under hiking backpacks, and children sullenly kicked their sneakers on the ground as they walked. No one acknowledged anyone else. Several cars with New York license plates began to pass at speeds too high for a twisting dirt road. He wondered if any were the same cars he’d seen from his window before the storm, sitting in the traffic on the ramp to the Queens Midtown Tunnel.

“Is there some kind of refugee center around here?” asked Jane.

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

By the time they reached the lake they could hear the mumbling noise of a crowd. Mitchell was out of breath. Not because of anxiety, he realized, but because he and Jane were rushing to keep pace with the others.

They found themselves in a traffic jam of dozens of abandoned vehicles. Past the cars were tents, set up in haphazard rows, facing the rock wall that marked the boundary of the Ticonderoga property. Personal belongings were scattered everywhere, as if at an auction. Two boys urinated beneath the broad wooden sign that welcomed visitors to Ticonderoga. The camp’s slogan had been rewritten in a graffiti scrawl.

CAMP TICONDEROGA

A PLACE FOR KIDDIES!

WHERE THE NEW LIFE BEGINS

There were more than a hundred people, perhaps twice that, sitting and standing and lying in sleeping bags. And lighting fires — campfires, bonfires, pyromaniac fires. But still there was too much smoke. Ash was falling like snow. Then he noticed a darker plume rising above the trees of the property itself.

“What the hell is going on?” said Mitchell.

“Hell,” said Jane. “Hell is going on.”

Mitchell felt a sharp prodding behind his knee. A skinny woman sat beside them in a lawn chair, a tattered issue of Glamour on her lap. She looked exhausted, lines cutting sharp diagonals from her nostrils. Her gray eyes were soft and watery in the smoke. Thick, straight black hair hung from her skull like overcooked spaghetti.

“Who’s that?” said the woman, pointing at Mitchell’s stomach. “On your shirt. Leonardo Fibo, Fibo—?”

“Fibonacci,” said Jane. “Hall of Fame field-goal kicker. Green Bay Packers. What, you never heard of him?”

The woman frowned. “Sounds like a dago.”

“Can I ask,” said Mitchell, “what exactly you are doing here?”

“Reading. Got a better idea?”

“I mean here.” He gestured at the road, the people camping out, the smoke, the chaos. “What is this?”

“Ticonderoga.” Seeing Mitchell’s confusion, she sat up straight and flipped her magazine over on her lap. “What, you just stumbled on this?”

“In a matter of speaking,” said Jane.

“It was a real good thing,” said the woman. “For the first couple days at least. If you could make yourself useful on the farm, you could stay. Indefinitely. They didn’t pay nothing, but they served food and the cabins have cots. Vegetables in the fields, water from a natural well. The water was clean and fresh. Cold . Bottom-of-the-ocean cold.”

Jane regarded this woman suspiciously, uncertain of her sanity.

“Ma’am,” she said, in a patient, anthropological tone, “if you don’t mind my asking — if things are so good in there, why are you out here?”

“It’s not safe now ,” said the woman. “And law enforcement won’t come for days. They’re overwhelmed in the capital. It’s sad. This place was a little treasure, but they’ve ruined it now. Like they always do.”

“Who ruined it?”

“People. Human beings. Well, to be specific, men. It’s the men that did it. They’re doing it still.”