James Hynes - Next

Then he’s bouncing painfully on the hard, cold floor of the reception area. He hasn’t landed on his feet (the way Nixon did, presumably), but on his hip, bruisingly, his shoes over his head, the heel of his hand skidding across the floor. Everything around him is also bouncing — the two stylish black leather chairs, a large potted fern, the receptionist — and from behind the reception desk all sorts of things that were airborne a moment ago — pens, pencils, a legal pad, a stapler, a cell phone, a ring binder — are tumbling end over end. Marble from the desktop shatters against the floor, and atomized glass skitters like popcorn, surging across the floor like incoming surf. Kevin tumbles through all this chaos, just another bouncing thing, until he hits his shoulder blade against the floor, whacks his knee on something, and lands finally on his back with his arms curled over his head and his fists clenched. Directly above him the suspended ceiling is rippling, panels cracking, cables and wiring jigging like snakes. Grit streams toward the floor. Dust trembles in the air all around him.

Kevin is shaking all over, though whether that’s just him or the floor is still moving, it’s too early to tell. All around him he hears cracking and clattering and rumbling, and from a more specific direction, somewhere out of sight, the sharp, percussive spitting of something electrical. He lifts his head but he can’t see sparks anywhere. He does see that he’s lying with his feet splayed and the right leg of his new trousers pushed up past his knee, baring his bandage with its pink stain in the center. From his left foot he’s missing his shoe, and beyond the reinforced toe of his brand-new sock he sees that the conference room has been nearly emptied out. The long table is gone and only three chairs remain, two of them lying on their sides coated in dust and glass and shredded drywall. The third chair has landed on its wheels, its seat slowly turning on its axis as if somebody has just gotten up out of it. Harsh sunlight streams through the swirling dust where the outer window used to be, and Kevin can already feel the blush on his face as the heat from outside swells into the room.

Now his trembling has become rhythmic and rapid, synchronous with the thunder of his own pulse. The air is dusty and acrid, something chemical stinging the back of his nostrils. Oh God, does he smell smoke? He can’t tell, he can’t place the odor, and he tells himself desperately that it’s probably not smoke. His throat is dry, though, and he gags on the dust in the air and spits to the side to expel the grit from his mouth.

“What happened?” he says aloud. He loosens his tie and undoes the top button of his new shirt. The cracking and rumbling has diminished, though it hasn’t entirely stopped — something, somewhere, creaks menacingly like ship timbers — and he can still hear that electrical smacking sound like someone cracking a whip. His whole body still shakes. Warm air courses all around him now, cutting the dust a little, and he lifts his head. Through the gap to the outside he sees the bleached Texas sky and the skeletal top of the nearest unfinished condo tower, the Tinkertoy crane above it still slowly turning. Whatever’s happening over here, those guys over there are still working. Maybe what’s happening isn’t what he thinks it is. Maybe it isn’t happening at all.

Above him the ceiling has stopped rippling, but from broken ceiling panels and twisted framing hang loose wires and bent pipes and an AC duct split at a seam. A crack in a concrete beam slowly drips a stream of dust, and it occurs to Kevin that maybe he should get out from under it. But he can hardly move. His entire body beats like a drum, and when he unclenches his fists his fingers tremble so alarmingly that he clenches them white again. What do you do in a situation like this? What’s the first step? Should he pinch himself? Maybe this isn’t real, maybe he’s only nodded off in the cab listening to the radio, or maybe he’s still on the plane from Michigan, maybe he’s asleep high over Kansas with Joy Luck deep in her novel next to him, and he’s worried himself into a nightmare. Maybe he’s still in bed back in Ann Arbor, with more room to be restless than usual because Stella’s away in Chicago and not pressed against him with her hair scraping his cheek and her humid breath against his chest. Wake up, Kevin tells himself. Computer, freeze program.

Then he remembers the receptionist, and he starts violently, as if he’s been stung by that electric whip he keeps hearing. Oh God, where is she? He jackknifes to a sitting position without touching his hands to the floor, which is graveled with broken glass and shards of black marble. Before he can imagine the worst he sees the girl curled in a fetal ball on the floor a few feet away, just this side of a heap of crumpled wall where a corridor used to run deeper into Hemphill Associates. She’s clenched like a fist, her knees drawn up, her fingers dug into her upper arms, her hair spilled over her face and jeweled with broken glass. Kevin tries to speak, but his mouth is dry and his tongue seizes up, and he hacks and clears his throat and spits again. Careful of the glass all around him, he sets his heels against the floor, one shoe and one sock, and drags himself on his backside a quarter-inch toward the girl.

“Hey,” he rasps, then pauses to spit more dust. He can’t tell if she’s conscious, but at least her rib cage is rising and falling. She’s just a couple feet beyond his stocking foot, and if he could only bring himself to unclench the muscles in his leg and extend his knee, he could nudge her with his toe. But he can still hear that nautical creaking, and he’s wondering if he should move at all. What if the slightest gesture from him brings the ceiling down? What if he slides forward and the whole goddamn peak of the building comes down on top on them? He’s not doing either of them any good if he does that. What if all it takes is the thunder of his pulse? Or a sharp intake of breath?

Another startling, electrical whip crack freezes him. It sounds like it’s getting closer, as if the wire is snaking through the rubble, seeking him out, and he says aloud, “That’s really getting on my nerves.” At which the girl shudders all over, to Kevin’s vast relief. “Hey,” he rasps, “can you hear me?”

She stiffens, catches her breath, gingerly lifts her head. Fragments of glass tumble from the hair spread over her face.

“Careful.” Kevin scoots another quarter-inch. “You’ve got glass in your hair.”

Someone is shouting in his head that he should go to the young woman and brush the glass off her, but someone else is shouting equally loud, don’t you fucking move. He’s afraid of the glittering glass all around, afraid he’ll embed it in his hands and his stocking foot. He’s afraid the room will start lurching again, that the electrical snake will bite him finally and fry him to a blackened crisp like a cartoon cat, that the cracked beam overhead will split and pulp his head like a melon. Through the windowless gap a hot, steady wind is clearing the room of its haze of dust. He can breathe a little easier. Meanwhile the girl has propped herself on her elbow. With trembling fingers she parts the hair over her face, gingerly combing kernels of glass to the floor. Now Kevin’s like the guy at the toga party in Animal House , alone with a passed-out sorority girl, a tiny angel on one shoulder and a diminutive devil on the other, but this time their roles are reversed. Go to her, says the angel. Stay where you are, says the devil.

“That’s good,” he says, trying to keep his voice steady. He manages to extend his feet toward her. “You’re getting it.”

Through her hair he can begin to see her more clearly; her face is bloodlessly white and her eyes are squeezed shut. She licks her lips, she blinks, she opens her eyes and looks up at him, and then the floor abruptly splits under Kevin’s thighs with an almighty crack, expelling a puff of dust all along the seam, leaving Kevin’s feet dangling in the air as the floor beyond it tilts violently away. On the other side of the crack everything — broken glass, office chairs, girl — slides toward the gap to the outside. Instinctively Kevin lurches back, heedlessly pressing his palms into glass, hauling himself frantically away from the split. Downhill from the sliding girl, the upright conference room chair rolls over the edge and out into the air, its seat still turning. One of the upended chairs slides after it. The girl meanwhile has erupted into frantic action, scrambling uphill on her hands and knees through the cascading glass and drywall and debris, her wild eyes fixed on Kevin from behind her jeweled veil of hair. Before angels or devils tell him otherwise, he twists on his bruised hip and thrusts his hand over the edge for her, his palm stinging with glass and already oozing blood, but before she can even reach for it she puts her foot on something sliding past her — it’s Kevin’s missing shoe — and loses her purchase, landing flat on her belly, sliding backward.