The Geography of You and Me

As he stepped into the elevator, he was already imagining the vast, windblown quiet forty-two stories above, his music loud in his ears and his thoughts far away. He punched the button and stood waiting for the ground to lift beneath his feet, still lost in thought, and he hadn’t even bothered to look up when someone caught the doors just before they could close.

But now, less than an hour later, he felt suddenly too aware of her, a presence beside him as prickly as the heat. As they listened to the sounds on the other side of the door, he glanced down, noticing that her right foot was only inches away from his left one, and he curled his toes and rocked back on his heels and looked away again. He realized he was holding his breath, and he wondered if she was, too.

Just before the door was pried open, he narrowed his eyes, expecting to be greeted by a sudden brightness. But instead, the faces peering down at them from the eleventh floor—which started halfway up the length of the elevator, a thick slab of concrete that bisected the doors—were mostly lost in shadows, and the only light came from a couple of flashlights, which were being pointed directly in their faces, causing them both to blink.

“Hi,” Lucy said brightly, greeting them as if this was all very ordinary, as if they always met in this way: the doorman above them on his hands and knees, his face pale and moonlike in the dark, and beside him, a handyman sitting back on his heels and wiping at his forehead with a bandanna.

“You guys okay?” George asked, passing down a water bottle, which Owen grabbed from him and then handed to Lucy. She nodded as she untwisted the cap and took a long swig.

“It’s a little toasty,” she said, giving the bottle back to Owen. “But we’re fine. Is the whole building out?”

The handyman snorted. “The whole city.”

Owen and Lucy exchanged a look. “Seriously?” she asked, her eyes widening. “That can happen?”

“Apparently,” George said. “It’s chaos out there.”

“Traffic lights and everything?” Owen asked, and the older man nodded, then clapped his hands, all business.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s get you guys out of here.”

Lucy went first, and when Owen tried to help her, she waved him away, hoisting herself up over the lip of the floor, then rising to her feet and brushing off her white dress. Owen followed much less gracefully, flopping onto the ledge like a fish run aground before hopping up. There was an emergency light at the far end of the hallway that cast a reddish glow, and it was a little bit cooler up here but not much; his palms were still sweaty and his T-shirt was still glued to his back.

“So when do they think we’ll have power again?” he asked, trying to keep the nervous edge out of his voice. He couldn’t help thinking of his father. No electricity meant no subways. No subways meant there was no way he could get back anytime soon. And in a situation like this, his absence would not go unnoticed.

“No idea,” George said, stooping to help pack up the tools. The clanging metal rang out along the walls, interrupting the eerie silence. “The phone lines are all jammed and the Internet’s down, too.”

“No cell-phone reception, either,” the handyman added. “It’s impossible to get any kind of information.”

“I heard it’s the whole East Coast,” George said. “That a power plant in Canada got struck by lightning.”

The handyman rolled his eyes. “And I heard it was an alien invasion.”

“I’m just telling you what they were saying on the radio,” George muttered, standing up again. He put a hand on Lucy’s shoulder, then looked from her to Owen. “So you guys are okay?”

They both nodded.

“Good,” he said. “I’ve got to go door-to-door and make sure everyone’s all right. You both have flashlights?”

“Yup,” Lucy said. “Upstairs.”

“Have you heard from my dad at all?” Owen asked as casually as he could manage. “He’s—”

“Yeah, I know,” George said. “He picked one hell of a day to beg off. I haven’t heard from him, but I wouldn’t be worried. Nobody’s heard from anyone.”

“He had to go out to Brooklyn,” Owen said, trying to think of some kind of excuse, an explanation to follow this, but the handyman—who had been walking toward the stairwell—paused and turned back around.

“Subways are down,” he said. “It’s gonna be a long walk over the bridge.…”

Owen felt another pang of anxiety, though he was no longer sure if it was for the fact that his father wasn’t here to help or the idea that he might already be crossing the length of Brooklyn to get home. It seemed far more likely that he was sitting on the darkened boardwalk, lost in memories and oblivious to the whims of the electrical grid. Even so, there was something odd about being separated like this, on opposite ends of the same city, a whole network of roads and rivers, bridges and trains between them, but still unable to make it across the miles.

“You two be careful,” George called back to them, as he stepped into the stairwell behind the handyman. “I’ll be around if you need anything.”