“I saw three go down just from my office window,” Arjun declared of the plane crashes.
Here we go again, thought Dan. Arjun had already spent twenty minutes recounting his walk home from Midtown in excruciating detail, despite the fact that nothing interesting had happened to him. In contrast, Dan had spent less than five minutes telling his own story, which was much more dramatically compelling and had even resulted in a head injury.
Yet underneath the resentment, Dan felt a prickle of anxiety spreading in his gut at the mention of the plane crashes. His sense of the situation’s gravity had ebbed and flowed all day. Now it was starting to flow again.
“What about the cars?” Carol Sweeney wanted to know. “That’s the thing that creeps me out.”
“Didn’t you tell me you saw one that worked?” Kayla asked.
“Yeah,” Carol replied. “Denny Burgholzer’s old pickup-car thing. Whatever you call it.”
“El Camino!” Eddie interjected from the shadows between the citronella torches, where he’d retreated to smoke. “Sweet ride.”
“What’s up with that? Why would it still run?”
“Probably ’cause it’s old,” Eddie suggested. “If he had a horse, that’d still work, too. Hey, speaking of horses—Judge, does your Mustang still run?”
As Dan turned to look at the judge, his eyes met Max’s. His son was standing across the table from him with a tortilla chip in his hand and an odd grimace on his face. Max quickly broke the eye contact, fixing his weird stare on the bowl full of bean dip that lay between them.
“Nah, I got rid of it,” the judge told Eddie. “Been downsizing ever since Natalie passed.”
Kayla reached out to pat the judge on the hand. “God rest her soul. She was such a beautiful person.”
“Thank you, sweetheart.”
“Whatever’s happening,” Arjun declared, steering the conversation back to the present, “it’s way beyond local government. The feds are going to have to step in.”
“The feds,” Eddie snorted. “Good luck with that. Those clowns can’t even clean up after a hurricane.”
“You okay, Max?” Dan asked. His son was glowering at the bean dip like it had stolen money from him while his right arm twitched in an odd motion.
“Whuh? Yeah.” He scooped up some dip with the chip he was holding, then paused with his hand still suspended over the bowl, like he wasn’t sure what the next step in the process was.
“They’ve still got a military,” Arjun told Eddie. “Who else is going to go after the monsters who did this? The state of New Jersey?”
Max continued to hold the loaded chip in midair.
“How’s that bean dip?” Dan asked him.
His son’s eyes widened. The question seemed somehow traumatizing. He looked from Dan to the bean-dip-smeared chip in his hand, then back again.
“It’s, uh, y’know—” Max’s oddly positioned right arm started to jiggle and twitch.
“Who we gonna go after?” Eddie asked Arjun. “We don’t even know what this is yet.”
Why is my kid such a weirdo? Dan wondered. And what’s he doing with his hand? It was obscured behind the bowl of chips.
“S’fuckin’ terrorists!” Jen suddenly roared, much too loudly.
Dan swiveled his head to stare at his wife with equal parts concern and embarrassment. She was drunker than he’d seen her in ages.
They were going to have to have a serious conversation about this in the morning.
“S’obvious!” Jen opined, her unfocused eyes squinting in the general direction of Eddie.
“I agree,” Anu declared. She pressed her hands over her daughter’s ears. As Zaira squirmed, Anu stage-whispered her suspicion to the group. “It’s the effing Muslims! It has to be.”
“I’m going home.” Max shoved the chip in his mouth and stepped away from the table. “Bye!”
“Thanks for comin’, sweetie!” Kayla purred. “Next time I’ll make sure Jordan sticks around to keep ya company.”
“It’s fine!” Max vanished into the darkness. Dan turned his full attention to the adults’ conversation, which had taken an awkward turn with Anu’s Muslim accusation.
“It’s definitely the effing Muslims,” Arjun declared.
Kayla looked from Arjun to his wife and back again, her mouth slightly open as she puzzled over the situation. “No judgments, you guys . . . but aren’t you Muslim?”
“No!” Anu looked appalled.
So did Arjun. “We’re Hindu! It’s a completely different religion!”
“Oh! Okay.”
“That’s cool,” said Eddie.
An uncomfortable silence followed. Dan tried to think of some way to fill it, but came up empty.
“This whole situation is just completely unbelievable,” Carol finally declared.
“It’s a heck of a thing,” the judge agreed. He pushed his chair back from the table. “And on that note—it’s past my bedtime.”
“It’s, like, seven o’clock!” Eddie snorted.
“I’m not a young man,” the judge pointed out. “But this was great. Thanks for the steak—it was fantastic.”
The rest of the group chimed in with their appreciation of the Stankovics’ largesse.
“We’re so glad you all came!” Kayla gushed. “Times like this, ya gotta come together.”
“Mi casa, su casa,” Eddie added. “Or us casa, you casa. Whatever the plural is. My Spanish sucks.”
“Mind if I fetch a bucket and take home some of your pool water?” the judge asked. “Wouldn’t mind being able to flush my toilet in the morning.”
“Of course!” Kayla waved a hand at him. “Ohmygosh! Don’t even ask!”
“Mi pool, su pool!”
Dan stood up. “Let me help you carry that, Judge.”
“It’s fine, Danny. Don’t put yourself out.”
“It’s no problem,” Dan assured him. “I need the exercise.”
That wasn’t true. In fact, after taxing his legs far beyond their usual limits that day, Dan wasn’t sure if he could carry a full bucket of water across the cul-de-sac without crumpling in a heap. But it seemed like the minimally heroic thing to do. And Dan wanted to solicit his one levelheaded neighbor’s candid opinion of the situation out of earshot of the others.
Three minutes later, Dan was trying not to slop water out of the bucket he was hauling across Brantley Circle on his gimpy leg while the judge lit their way with a flashlight.
“Can I, ahh, ask a question?”
“Fire away, Danny.”
“What’s your best guess as to what’s going on here?”
“That’s a tough one. Short answer is, I dunno. But something tells me things are gonna get worse before they get better. Especially depending on how far this goes. It’s lights out in New York. Is it lights out in Philly, too? DC? Boston? Chicago? Could be a real hell of a mess.”
“I’m wondering if I shouldn’t try to get out. Take the family somewhere.”
“What’s your gut tell you?”
“My gut says leave. But my brain can’t figure out how.”
They reached the judge’s front porch. He held open the screen door and gestured with the flashlight beam as Dan heard the jingle of Ruby’s dog tags from somewhere in the darkness.
“Just leave it right inside the door. I’ll take it the rest of the way when the sun comes up. And thanks again.”
“My pleasure.” Dan carefully set the bucket down, then stepped back onto the porch. “Are you thinking of leaving?”
The judge shrugged. “Where would I go? Maria and Tommy are both on the West Coast. That’s a long way to drive even if my Prius would start. And at my age? Yugghh.” His dachshund materialized at his feet. “Nah, Ruby and I are gonna make our stand here. If I were you, though . . .”
Dan waited for him to finish the thought. “You’d what?”
“Well, if I could figure out where to go . . . I’d maybe take the wife and kids someplace this isn’t happening.”
In the silence that followed, the anxiety in the pit of Dan’s stomach multiplied.
“Course that’s easier said than done,” the judge added.
“It sure is,” Dan agreed.
“Night, Danny. Thanks again.”
“Night, Judge.”
The judge closed the door softly. Dan limped down the darkened porch steps, clutching the rail. His head felt detached from his body, like it was levitating in a fog of dread.
When he reached the street, he saw the irregular light of a flashlight beam zigzagging in the second-story center window of his house.
He assumed it was Max, heading upstairs. But he was forced to revise the theory when a spasm of ragged coughs broke the silence, coming from somewhere behind the garage. For reasons Dan couldn’t fathom, his son sounded like he was hacking up a lung.