Is this a big deal?
Or not?
The further Dan walked toward home, the more confused he became about just what he and the thousands of people he passed, from the outskirts of Harrison through downtown Newark and into the suburbs, were experiencing.
Was it some kind of slow-motion 9/11? The first stage of an alien invasion? Or just a very comprehensive power outage?
For the first couple of miles, he sensed they were on the more dire end of the spectrum. The mood of the crowd trudging west on the turnpike was somber and fearful. Unsettled by Pete Blackwell’s unexplained departure, Dan’s thoughts during that first stretch were mostly devoted to Jen and the kids.
Are they okay?
Is this . . . whatever it is . . . happening in Lincolnwood, too?
Is Jen freaking out? Is she having 9/11 flashbacks?
Dan stopped at a gas station to try to call home. Its land line was out, which only left him more unsettled.
But once he entered Newark, the atmosphere changed. The urban center was too far removed from the plane crash for most of its residents to have experienced it as anything but a rumor. And while the city’s entire technological infrastructure had failed, it had done so without any immediate misfortune greater than a few minor car accidents and stalled elevators. The blackout had sent most of Newark into the streets, yet there was no buzz of panic or distress. People just seemed confused.
That made them chatty, especially with Dan. His busted-up face gave him an aura of Guy Who Just Went Through Some Shit, and as he made his way across the city, strangers kept pressing him for information.
“What happened to your face, yo?”
“I was on a train outside Harrison when a plane crashed right next to us.”
“Holy shit! You was in a plane crash?”
“Not in it. But, y’know—next to it.”
“Was it bad?”
“Yeah. It was a passenger jet. Couple hundred people.”
“Damn! Is that got to do with all this? Power going out and such?”
“I don’t know. Hey, can you tell me where Lincoln Avenue is?”
“Three blocks that way. Turn left at the Dollar Store.”
“Thanks.”
“Take care of yourself, brother!”
The widespread respect that accrued to Dan by virtue of his injury—on a couple of occasions, people seemed to stop just short of saying thank you for your service—both flattered him and made him feel like a fraud. Even so, he saw no point in explaining the full context. Oh no, see, what actually happened was that I got popped in the face because the woman next to me wanted to jump out the window, but I was too busy trying to find my AirPod to pull the emergency handle for her was just too big a mouthful. And anyway, he didn’t want to ruin a well-meaning stranger’s vicarious experience of the calamity.
So when passersby stopped to quiz him, he tried to maintain a posture of quiet stoicism. And with the memory of Mousy Librarian’s contempt still clinging to him like an itchy sweater, he kept an eye out for opportunities to be heroic amid the crisis.
But it wasn’t that kind of crisis. Other than a constant supply of flummoxed drivers who didn’t know what to do with vehicles that had failed down to their power locks in the middle of the street, the closest Dan came to encountering a stranger in need was an elderly Latina muttering in despair over a cart full of groceries at the front door of a five-story apartment building.
He deduced that she needed help carrying the bags upstairs, but she didn’t speak English, and his Dora the Explorer–level proficiency in Spanish didn’t give him the verbal tools to erase her look of wary hostility. After a few fruitless attempts to persuade her of his good intentions, Dan gave up, regretting his decision to take French in high school. The odds of his finding an elderly Frenchwoman in distress anywhere near East Newark were vanishingly long.
In the end, the only act of heroism he managed to perform was carrying home Pete Blackwell’s iPad. And it didn’t even weigh very much.
By the time Dan reached Lincoln Avenue, which cut a straight line from a working-class Latino neighborhood of downtown Newark through six miles of steadily rising incomes before reaching its geographic-socioeconomic peak atop the ridge half a mile from Dan’s house in Upper Lincolnwood, his concern for his family had mostly receded in favor of worrying about his job.
Is the power out in Manhattan? Is the writers’ room still happening?
An image of the room popped into Dan’s head. Marty holding court at the head of the table, slouched in his Aeron chair, whiteboard on the wall behind his head . . . Sumaya, the writer’s assistant, perched at Marty’s elbow with her fingers poised on the keyboard of a MacBook . . . Adam Fineman in his usual spot by the door, doing that weird thing with his pen . . . Sara Gutierrez, twirling her hair in silence . . . Bobby O, cracking open a Red Bull . . . and the chair next to Bobby—Dan’s usual spot—conspicuously empty.
Bobby and Adam lived in Brooklyn. Had they made it in to the office? Were the subways running? The show was in production on one of Sara’s episodes, shooting on the soundstage in Queens. Had the power gone out over there, too?
If production shut down for even a day, it’d be a real headache. Marty would be preoccupied with putting out fires. The last thing he’d want to do would be to sit in the room all day trying to beat Bobby’s and Adam’s mediocre pitches.
Especially when Dan was carrying the good shit right there in his Moleskine.
He started to game out how he could get himself into the city. Lincoln Avenue would take him to within a few blocks of the train station where he’d parked his Lexus. By then, maybe New Jersey Transit would be running again. If not, the Lexus was highly reliable. Only six thousand miles on it, and he’d just had it serviced. Surely—if nothing truly bad had happened—he could get his car to start. Then he’d drive to the city, parachute into the room, and save Marty’s bacon with “Death at Comic Con” and “Mousy Librarian Gets What’s Coming to Her.”
That wouldn’t be the actual episode title. But Dan would get his emotional revenge, and it would be sweet.
He figured he should minister to his injury before he tried to get in to the office, so a few blocks after he turned onto Lincoln Avenue, he went into Luisa Farmacia for first aid supplies. But their Polysporin was overpriced, their Band-Aids were off brand, and they were only taking cash. So Dan decided to save the seventeen dollars he had on him for future contingencies.
A mile up the road, he tried Eldridge Urgent Care, but left empty-handed when they asked for seven pages of paperwork and a twenty-dollar copay.
After he passed two more drugstores that had locked their doors due to the power outage, he began to despair of procuring first aid before he reached his car.
Then he decided it might be better this way. If Dan showed up in front of Marty still bleeding from an undressed facial wound, it’d be tough to argue that he was insufficiently committed to his job.
Dan had just started mulling this over when he encountered the cop, headed the other way down Lincoln Avenue. It was an Essex County sheriff’s deputy, and both his uniform and his height conveyed such authority that Dan stopped him in the hope of learning something useful.
“Excuse me, sir? Do you know what’s going on?”
The cop gave Dan a blank look. “The power’s out.”
“Yeah, but—do you know why?”
“I, uh . . .” The cop lowered his chin and furrowed his eyebrows in a thoughtful look. “I don’t have any information on that at the moment. What happened to your face?”
“It’s kind of a long—Did you hear about the plane crash?”
The cop’s eyebrows reversed direction. “You were in it? The one on the golf course?”
“I don’t—What?”
“The plane? That landed on the golf course?” The cop jerked his thumb to the southwest, beyond the avenue.
“A plane landed on a golf course?”
“Yeah. At the country club in Short Hills. Seven thirty-seven. Heard the pilot put it down right on a fairway.”
“Oh, wow. I didn’t know anything about that.”
“It’s pretty wild. Apparently, everybody got out okay.”
“Did you see it?”
“No.” The cop shook his head, lightly but rapidly. “I just heard about it. From a guy. So, you were on another plane?”
“No, I was on a train. Into the city. A plane went down next to the tracks.”
“Where was that?”
“Outside Harrison. Almost to Jersey City. Have you heard anything else?”
“About what?”
Dan shrugged. “Anything?”
The cop shook his head again, slower this time. He took a long breath, then puffed out his cheeks as he exhaled. “I’m just headed back to headquarters to see if there’s any, y’know . . .”
Dan waited for him to finish the sentence. He didn’t. Instead, the sheriff’s deputy turned the question back on Dan.
“Have you heard anything?”
“Not really. No.”
“Okay. Well, take care. Maybe get that cut looked at.” The cop started to walk away.
“Wait—”
“Yeah?”
“Do you know where I could do that? Get this looked at?”
“You try urgent care? Back that way?”
“I did, yeah,” said Dan. “It was a little . . . bureaucratic. I was thinking maybe if there’s a hospital that—”
“I wouldn’t.” The cop shook his head firmly. “I’d stay away from the hospitals right now. I just came from Memorial—they got their hands full. All their equipment’s down. ICU and everything.”
“Don’t they have backup generators?”
“Yeah. But those are down, too.”
“Oh, geez.”
“It’s a real mess. I’d steer clear.”
“I will. Okay. Have a good day.”
“You too.”
Dan resumed his walk. As he turned the conversation over in his head, his sense of the situation’s gravity began to shift again.
A world in which planes landed on golf courses . . . hospitals had no functioning equipment . . . and cops were wandering around clueless . . . was not normal.
It was very not normal.
As Dan kept walking, he began to feel light-headed, then nauseous.
Am I in shock?
No. I’m just hungry.
He felt this way before lunch all the time. It was a blood sugar thing.
Is it lunchtime yet?
He instinctively moved his hand to his hip pocket to check the time on his phone. Then he remembered his phone was dead. He didn’t know what time it was.
He didn’t know a lot of things. Like where Jen and the kids were. And whether they were okay.
Dan’s feet, unused to walking such a long distance, were starting to hurt. Despite the discomfort, he quickened his pace.