Rushing Waters (6 page)

She walked into the living room then and began putting fragile objects on the coffee table, to carry upstairs. The paintings were hung high enough to avoid water damage, and all she had to worry about were books and objects, and there were some valuable chairs she wanted to move too. She couldn't do anything to protect the couches and heavy furniture, but there were plenty of small things she could move to her bedroom on the upper floor.

As Ellen watched her, all thought of evacuating vanished, and she knew what she had to do. As crazy as it seemed, and she didn't agree with her, if her mother was determined to stay, she had to stay too. She was sure George wouldn't like it, but she knew her mother. Grace wasn't going anywhere. She was refusing to evacuate, and whatever happened next, in the coming hours and days, the die had been cast, and foolish or not, they would face Hurricane Ophelia together, come what may.

Ellen was carefully removing the kind of things that had been damaged last time, among them her mother's collection of coffee table books and leather-bound volumes, some of them first editions, and carrying them upstairs to her mother's bedroom, and to the guest room she was sleeping in. She had found some plastic sheeting from when Grace had had the apartment repainted after Sandy, and she tried to protect the couches and furniture as best she could, while Blanche ran around barking and getting underfoot. She could sense that something major was going on. And as Ellen wrestled with the plastic sheeting and blue tape, the doorbell rang. It was Grace's neighbor from across the hall. He had a similar apartment, was a pleasant man, and checked on Grace from time to time. He was very fond of her, and Grace liked him. He was a well-known mystery writer and had moved to New York from L.A. Ellen had met him once during one of her visits to New York. Grace talked about him often, and Ellen knew from her that he was quiet and retiring, and somewhere in his late forties. His books were on the best-seller lists for months when they came out. Ellen had read one or two of them, and liked them. Grace had read them all and was a devoted fan, mostly because she liked him so much. Robert Wells was a household name all over the world. But despite his fame, he was an unassuming person, and Ellen had been shocked the first time she realized who he was. There had been many movies based on his work as well. Ellen knew from Grace that he was divorced and had two grown kids.

When Ellen opened the door to him, she was startled to be reminded of how tall he was, and he looked surprised to see her. He seemed younger than she remembered too.

“Is your mother home?” he asked, feeling foolish as soon as he said it, and Ellen smiled.

“She's upstairs putting things away,” Ellen explained.

“I didn't realize you were here,” he said, feeling awkward for a minute. He had seemed shy when she met him before too. And something about him suggested that he was a solitary, introverted man, but his attention to her mother indicated that he was a caring person too. “I came to see if she needed help. Can I give you a hand?” She opened the door wider so he could come in, just as her mother came down the stairs with Blanche at her heels. The dog wagged her tail when she saw him, and ran over to him, and obviously recognized him, as Grace smiled and invited him in, and was happy to see him.

“Hello, Bob. Ellen and I have decided to stay. I was just taking a few things upstairs, in case we get flooded again.” Bob Wells looked startled and disturbed by what she said.

“I don't think that's wise, Grace,” he said respectfully. “The building took a heavy hit last time. I don't think you should be here if that happens again. Why don't you protect what you can and go to a hotel uptown, or stay with friends?” He exchanged a glance with Ellen, who clearly agreed with him, but Grace had made up her mind.

“It won't happen again, Bob. Lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place, and all that.” But Bob thought that Grace staying in the building was a very bad idea, especially at her age, which he didn't say. He liked her as a friend and neighbor and never thought of her as older, but in an emergency like this one, it had to be taken into account. If the building flooded, she would have to be agile and strong enough to escape.

“If what they say is true, we could have fifteen- or twenty-foot waves on the river, across the street, at high tide. Let's not risk that,” he said seriously. It had been enough to convince him to go uptown.

“It'll rush down the street, not through my front door,” she said firmly. “Are you leaving?” She was surprised, although the news channels had been urging people to evacuate the designated areas.

“Yes, I am. I'm going to stay with my agent on the Upper West Side. They're turning off the power downtown at midnight tonight. There's no point sitting here in the dark, with no electricity and no heat or air-conditioning. I think you should reconsider. And let me help you in the meantime.” He took a quick look at what Ellen had been doing, wrapping furniture in plastic and sealing it with tape, while Grace stripped the surfaces and shelves. The apartment already looked as though she were emptying it. Ellen had been moving fast, and so had Grace. He had done the same in his own apartment, although most of his furniture was old and battered and was comfortable more than attractive or valuable, unlike the beautiful things in Grace's apartment. He was planning to take only his current manuscript and his favorite typewriter with him. His older manuscripts were in a watertight safe in his den upstairs, with copies in a vault at the bank, in case of fire, flood, or theft. He didn't fully trust the safe and never wrote his books on the computer, which he used only for email.

Bob grabbed the large plastic sheets one by one, and helped Ellen wrap the rest of the furniture, while Grace continued removing smaller objects and memorabilia. Ellen tied up the curtains and lifted them off the floor. They rolled up one of the rugs—the other was too large. And they put Grace's coats from the hall closet on her bed. In less than an hour, they had done as much as they could, and Grace offered him a glass of wine, which he accepted gratefully. They had done good work in a short time, but he still urged her to leave.

“It will be frightening down here if things get out of hand,” he told her, but she remained unconvinced. “You don't want to have to wade out of the building, or swim,” he said pointedly. “And what about Blanche?” he asked, hoping to sway her, but he could see that he hadn't, and he left them to pack his go bag, and put his ancient typewriter in its traveling case with his current manuscript wrapped in plastic, although he had a backup copy in his safe upstairs.

He rang the doorbell again before he left, and gave them his cell phone number in case they needed it, and they wished each other good luck as he left. He was sorry to see them staying, and reminded the doorman on the way out to check on them. The doorman promised that he would—he was fond of Grace too. And the superintendent was staying in the building to deal with flooding as it happened. No one really believed it would be as bad as Sandy, but nature was unpredictable, and even if it was less extreme, there could still be some serious flooding at high tide. According to the reports on TV, the full force of the storm wasn't due for another twenty-two hours, unless the winds picked up, in which case, Ophelia would be in New York sooner. The police were going through the neighborhood from door to door, to make sure that everyone evacuated that night. They couldn't force Grace to, but they were urging everyone strongly to heed the warnings. Bob noticed as he left that there were police boats parked in the street for use the following night, if the river overflowed its banks at high tide as it had before. It unnerved him seeing it, and he was worried about his neighbor who had decided to stay. But at least she had Ellen with her, he thought to himself. He would have insisted even more, if she had been alone, and offered to take her with him or drop her off somewhere in a neighborhood out of the potential flood zone. But Grace was adamant and had her daughter to assist her, so he left. He hoped that Ellen would make her listen to reason in the coming hours and convince her to evacuate.

They were sitting in Grace's bedroom, talking quietly that night, when the power went off. It was a precautionary measure by the city, and it seemed strange when the apartment suddenly went dark. The emergency generator in the building was operating only in the halls and for the elevator. Ellen lit candles, and Grace turned on a large battery-operated light that she had bought at a camping store for an occurrence such as this, or for one of the power outages that sometimes happened in New York, mostly in the summer.

“Are you okay, Mom?” Ellen asked her with concern, and Grace smiled. The bedroom was piled high with her fragile belongings and the coats from the closet downstairs.

“I'm fine.” Ellen was hoping to convince her to leave in the morning but didn't press the point that night. It was too late to leave now, after midnight. And Blanche was perfectly content, sound asleep in Grace's lap. As long as everyone was there, she didn't care what else was going on, and the dog was exhausted by all the activity with both of them going up and down the stairs all night, moving things. Blanche had followed Grace every step of the way.

They went to bed shortly after the electricity went out, and Ellen took care to fill the bathtubs with water in case they needed it. They had bottled water too, though not a lot of it, and had thrown away any food that might spoil. They were as ready as they were going to be, and as she lay in bed, Ellen thought about George in England. He hadn't called, and she didn't want to exhaust her cell phone battery since she wouldn't be able to charge it now, and they might need it in an emergency. She wondered if George was having fun at the house party. He seemed a million miles from what was happening in New York, and she was glad to be there with her mother. She wouldn't have wanted her to be alone, although Grace didn't seem in the least frightened or concerned. She had been totally matter-of-fact about their preparations for the hurricane and remained convinced that it would be far less dangerous than the warnings claimed. Ellen hoped she was right.

The building on Clinton Street on the Lower East Side looked old and ramshackle, and was in poor condition, but the rents were low, and students had been renting apartments there for years. There were one or two artists, but mostly students from NYU. It was one of those buildings that people heard about by word of mouth, and vacancies never lasted for more than a day or two before someone snapped them up. Peter Holbrook and Ben Weiss had been living there for two years. They were twenty-one years old, and juniors at NYU. The apartment was dingy and desperately needed a coat of paint, and they had furnished it from rejects off the sidewalk and at Goodwill. Their parents weren't thrilled about it, and Ben's mother worried about electrical fires in the dilapidated building, but both boys loved their apartment, their independence, and the fact that it was so cheap. It was a sixth-floor walkup, with no elevator, which only tenants as young as they could endure.

They woke up early on Sunday morning, and met in the living room. Ben was sitting on the beaten-up couch with his dog, a black Lab named Mike, sprawled next to him, as Peter walked into the room and glanced out the window at the rain. The sky looked heavy and dark, and the wind was blowing harder than the day before. They had admitted to each other that they found the hurricane exciting, and wondered what it would be like when it hit New York. They were safe from floods in their aerie on the sixth floor, and Ben had gone to the supermarket and stocked up on food and water. They had everything they needed, and it seemed foolish to evacuate, to both of them. What was there to be afraid of? They could always go to Ben's parents' apartment if they wanted to, but neither of them did. It would be more fun to stay here, and they were perfectly content to remain in the cozy apartment until the hurricane passed. There were public schools in the neighborhood designated to be used as shelters if they had to leave in a hurry and couldn't get uptown, and announcements on TV and in the newspapers had said that people could bring their pets, so they knew they could take the dog. But neither Peter nor Ben wanted to go to a shelter with hundreds of people, maybe even thousands. They were better off at home.

Peter was from Chicago, and was an econ major at NYU. Ben was studying drama at Tisch at NYU, and had grown up in New York. They had met when Peter started dating Anna, a drama student at Tisch, two years before. Ben and Anna had been childhood friends since kindergarten, and Anna had introduced Peter to Ben. The two boys had become best friends and roommates three months after that, and they had been an inseparable threesome ever since. The Three Musketeers, and Mike, Ben's black Lab.

Peter opened a box of doughnuts and peeled a banana as his cell phone rang. He saw that it was Anna. She lived in an apartment in the West Village, with two roommates, and the girls had decided to stay at their apartment after the curfew the night before. Her mother was picking them up that morning and taking them uptown to their apartment, and Anna had wanted the boys to come with them, but they hadn't made up their minds the previous night.

“So are you coming with us?” Anna asked him. “My mom will be here in half an hour. We can swing by and pick you up.” Her mother had an Escalade big enough to hold all of them and whatever they were taking with them. The girls had packed go bags to last them for a few days at Anna's parents'.

“What do you think?” Peter asked Ben as he played with the dog. “Do you want to go with them?”

“We can stay at my parents' if we want to go uptown,” Ben said practically. He had a younger brother who was fourteen and still lived at home, and his parents had an apartment on Central Park West. “What do you think? Why don't we stay here?” The wind was strong and it was raining, but there was nothing ominous happening. And as long as they stayed indoors, they'd be fine. Ben didn't feel like dealing with his family and all the hullabaloo about the hurricane. It seemed simpler to just remain where they were. “Tell her we'll call her later, if we want to come up.” Anna was like his sister after knowing her all his life.

“We're not leaving for now,” Peter informed her as he took another bite of the doughnut, and the dog looked at him with pleading eyes. The supplies they'd bought were mostly junk food, water, sodas, and beer.

“That's really dumb,” Anna told Peter. “What if it floods down here again? You could be stuck in the building for days with nothing to eat. And nothing will be open.”

“We stocked up yesterday,” Peter said proudly, and Ben grinned.

“With what? Doughnuts and beer?” She knew them well. “You won't even have electricity. You'll be sitting in the dark every night.”