“I’ll get out of here!”
Melissa shouted the words, though she knew no one was listening. It was too late. Too dead. The city that never sleeps had finally found its bedtime. COVID o’clock. Everyone was indoors, waiting for the cold weather and coronavirus to pass, venturing out only to take in packages. She’d been one of them. Cautious. Careful. Relegating friendships to phone calls, shrinking her social sphere to shared genes. Some good it had done. She’d never get sick in here. She’d die first.
“I’ll get out of here.” She repeated her intention, quieter this time. Saving her voice could be important. Still, she needed to hear the echo, to prove to herself that she was alive in this darkness. What surrounded her was an indescribable black, not so much color as void. There was nothing for her eyes to adjust to, no shades of gray with which to orient herself. She was trapped in a starless universe. Only the hard floor beneath her palms and feet assured her that there was an up and down, that she was still gravity-tethered to Earth, subject to the laws of space and time. And biology.
She wasn’t hungry or thirsty yet, but she would be. The last thing she’d consumed was a green juice intended to “cleanse” away the quarantine fifteen. Silly, the things she’d once considered crucial. Waist size. Boob size. Butt shape. Who the hell really cared?
Hollywood, she conceded. Her husband.
She pictured Nate as she’d last seen him, roguish face shredded by the bullet’s impact, brilliant brain splattered on the wall. He’d deserved it. She wondered whether the world would ever know that. Violent deaths had a tendency to turn men into martyrs. Even if the news ultimately leaked, the media might refrain from publishing it, afraid of slandering a sacred cow whose work had suddenly become “important” now that its auteur was incapable of producing more of it.
Nate didn’t deserve more accolades. But, as he was too dead to enjoy them, Melissa preferred praise to the alternative. Better for their daughter to think Nate a talent taken too soon than to live under his real legacy.
She imagined Ava asleep in her bed, dreaming to the sound of soft rain. The memory morphed into others. Instead of her own life flashing before her eyes, Melissa saw her daughter as a swaddled baby, lips stretched into a smile from passed gas. She pictured her as a grinning toddler, feet racing to keep up with the forward momentum of an oversized blond head, and, later, as a hammy elementary schooler sing-shouting her heart out in the school production.
Melissa recalled her kid more recently, Ava’s face melding into some version of her own, though with a fierceness and confidence that Melissa had never possessed. She pictured that beautiful visage morphing into openmouthed terror when she saw her father’s body.
Melissa considered herself an atheist, but the adage was true. Nonbelievers didn’t exist in foxholes—or in the dark. She prayed to the God of her childhood, unsure whether her eyes were closed or open. “Please don’t let Ava go downstairs,” she whispered. “Please let someone else find him. Please let her go to school without seeing.”
Beyond that, Melissa didn’t know what to ask for. A doorway? Light? It didn’t seem possible that God could grant such requests. If he could, then why was she in here? What punishment was she serving, and for which crime?
Would those sins be visited upon her child?
Imani would pick Ava up, Melissa realized. In her mind, she could see her friend striding into St. Catherine’s, gathering Ava in her arms, pretending to have it all together. Imani had been getting better at that. Pretending.
She’d taught Imani to play a part too well. What role would she take with her daughter?