TWENTY

Before the pulse, Skylar had endured her fair share of personal disaster, and the way she preferred to suffer was in the familiar topography of her own mind. When Roark moved out, she inverted her days, popping Ambien to sleep the light away and sitting all night in front of the TV watching childhood favorites like Pretty Woman and Big. Not to cheer herself up, but to remember that life was not art, that life was wonderful and messy and, most of all, unpredictable.

But now she wished the opposite. She wished yesterday had comprised the first two acts of a film. She hoped today was a newly-written third act, that a studio executive had ordered Thomas to replace his original dark ending with a sappy one where the effects of the pulse were erased.

She couldn’t stop thinking about her parents and specifically her father. Over the past several years his health had deteriorated, starting with the quadruple bypass that robbed him of vitality that never fully returned. A year later his right knee was replaced, then a hip, and now he made jokes about Terminators and Bionic Men. But Skylar wasn’t amused. Every time she drove past a cemetery, every time she saw a funeral procession, she found herself fighting back tears. Because one of these days it would be her turn to sit in a dark limousine, staring down the barrel of a life in which her warm-hearted father was no longer a part.

Now, for all she knew, her parents were already dead. A plane could have gone down in Manhattan or her father could have collapsed trying to make it home or anything. Anything could have happened and there was nothing she could do about it. Nothing but sit here at the kitchen table and watch Thomas and Seth argue about the boys playing outside. It was Saturday afternoon, the day after the pulse.

“I already explained why we shouldn’t go out there yet,” Thomas said, closing the back door. This confrontation was taking place not ten feet from where Skylar was flipping through a recent issue of Entertainment Weekly, which so far had contained four mentions of her.

“I’m sorry I don’t share your anxiety,” Seth said. “We didn’t see any neighbors.”

“But I told you Larry is nosy. I hardly ever see him without those stupid binoculars around his neck.”

“And I’m telling you we didn’t see any Larry. We didn’t see anyone.”

“But what if he saw you? Maybe he comes over here with a gun, or maybe he tells someone else and we end up with twenty people outside.”

“If that happens,” Seth said, “we deal with it. We have weapons, too.”

Natalie was in the adjacent living room, holding a book in her lap Skylar had never seen her open. She was staring out the window and didn’t seem to care that guns and potential violence were being discussed in front of her young sons.

“Look,” Thomas said. “I don’t enjoy telling anyone what to do—”

“Then please don’t. When you asked us to come here, you didn’t say we’d be on lockdown.”

“I don’t mean for it to seem that way. But our choices over the coming days and weeks will mean the difference between life and death.” “It’s not like my boys can sit inside and play Xbox all day. They need something to do.”

“I have a pool table upstairs,” said Thomas. “And board games.”

“I hate board games,” said Brandon. “Especially backgammon.”

“Me too,” said Ben. “If we can’t play Xbox do you at least have Nintendo Switch? That runs on batteries.”

Seth laughed. “Let’s go upstairs, boys. We can play Monopoly.”

“What’s Monopoly?” asked Ben.

“It’s a game where you buy streets and houses and charge people money when they stay there.”

“What kind of game is that?”

“The way to win is to own all the property so you can drive up the cost of living and tell everyone what to do.”

Skylar caught Seth’s eyes and smiled at him. She liked that analogy, comparing their absurd living conditions to a board game. Maybe Seth wasn’t as provincial as he seemed. Maybe he would prove to be an ally here.

After Seth and the boys disappeared up the stairs, Thomas collapsed into a chair across the table from her.

“I’m not an asshole,” he said in a low voice. “I’m just trying to keep everyone safe.”

“You’re living in fantasy world,” Skylar said. “You can’t lock a bunch of strangers in your house and expect everyone outside to fend for themselves. Let’s go talk to your neighbors. Get everyone together and come up with a plan to get through this. Like long term.”

“I don’t know my neighbors. There isn’t enough food. We already talked about this.”

In the living room, Natalie stood and looked briefly in their direction. Skylar wondered if she was upset with someone here or missing family she had left behind or in shock. Natalie walked toward the kitchen but then veered into the hall and out of sight.

“I thought you were a nicer person,” Skylar said. “I thought you were more empathetic.”

“No matter what I do it will be the wrong thing.”

“As if it’s up to you who lives and dies. As if you’re God.”

“I’m not the only person who prepared. There’s a whole culture of people who expected something like this to happen, and the prevailing opinion has always been to get the hell away from everyone else so they don’t take you down with them.”

“But even wild animals cooperate, and we humans are self-aware, for heaven’s sake. We can make complex decisions. And all you care about is your own stomach.”

“You can’t focus on the philosophical if you don’t satisfy the biological.”

“Maybe so,” Skylar said. “But would you really let the light go out forever because you’re too selfish to share?”

“The lights are already out.”

“That’s not the kind of light I mean,” Skylar said, and got up to leave.