Survivor (14 page)

I
had a million questions but no time. Caleb was, as always, restless, ready to move on.

“Now you're awake,” he said, “let's go outside for a while.” He led the way up to the fourth-floor terrace, the roof of the store. I thought back to how those Chasers had come here and Caleb had pulled out his beanbag shotgun and gone:
blam blam blam
. That was cool. He was cool.

“Check this out.” He passed me the binoculars. “That corner there, about five blocks down?”

I looked through the binoculars to where he pointed to the south. I was expecting another look-alike but there was not a soul to be seen. Everything looked pretty much the same: abandoned, crashed, smashed, lonely.

“After dropping you back at the zoo the other day, I was checking out a building on that corner,” he said. “And do you know what? It had a
missile
in the front room.”

“A missile?”

“Big one.”

“Just laying there?”

“Like it had come in the window, smashed against the far wall, and didn't explode.”

“Did it have any markings?”

“Like a ‘Made in China' sticker or a DHARMA logo? No. Nothing at all.”

We went back down the stairwell and onto the street, where I watched as he opened up the back of a van. He kicked out a ramp, rolled down on a motorbike, loud as hell. “How about it?” he said. “BMW 650 GS. Look at the tires. Chunky as hell, it'll get around these streets no problemo.” He revved the engine. “Where's your spirit of adventure?”

“Skipped town,” I replied. “Had to pack it away to make room for my spirit of survival.”

“Just a quick ride?”

“They'll hear us.”

“We can outrun them,” he said. “Look, on my own, yeah, this is a bit dangerous, in case I have to stop, some Chaser creeps out of a nearby building from behind me . . .”

“See, my thoughts exactly.”

“But you can keep an eye out.”

“Or . . .” I steadied myself against the outside wall of the bookstore. My mind was still a mess, but I remembered Caleb and how he acted and how he was so full of denial. “How about you go check in on your old roommates?”

“Maybe,” he said, then killed the engine. “Hey, where were you headed that day, on the subway?”

“The 9/11 Memorial,” I said. “Have you been?”

“I didn't want to see it.”

“You need to feel it,” I told him. “Some things you need to feel.” It seemed like the right time to say it.

“Why?”

“Because you've been marooned in that bookstore like I was up in 30 Rock.”

He looked at me and even though I still felt spaced out, I could hold his gaze and I saw him soften. Finally, he said, “I can take you there.”

“Can we go past your old place?”

“Okay . . . We can go via Little Italy. See if—if my friends are there.”

I smiled at his change. I saw the truth, not a baby step but a leap. This wasn't about adventure, a reckless good time. He was starting to let the reality of this world in. He needed to see proof.

“How long will it take?” I asked, suddenly aware that time was important to me but I couldn't place why. I felt I had to see this moment through with Caleb, for his sake—maybe for both our sakes.

“Couple of hours,” he replied, “tops.”

I looked up the street towards the north. I still had a niggling thought that I couldn't place. He kicked out the bike's stand and got off. He saw my hesitation, and walked over to me.

“We can check it out another time,” he said.

He put out a hand for me to shake and say good-bye. I looked at it, puzzled, wondering where else I'd go if not with him.

“Let's go,” I said.

He broke into a huge grin.

The first few blocks were quiet. We took everything in, moving at a pace neither of us had experienced since the attack. The bike was sure-footed, the tires biting into the snow and ash, and we easily mounted curbs, rounded obstructions, zoomed down gaps between piled-up and abandoned cars. And we moved
fast
.

“I went for a ride just before, while you were still sleeping,” he said over his shoulder. “Down along the Hudson. I met some other survivors. A group of them, down by Chelsea Piers . . .”

A pause, waiting for my reaction. I tried to focus, but it was as if there were a light hitting the inside of my skull and bouncing around. I knew the name of the place from the maps but I couldn't place it in my mind's eye.

“Survivors?”

“Yeah,” he said. “But listen, this group—there are like forty of them there, in the big sports center. A few of them left when I got there, they were starting trouble, wanted a different existence to everyone else. They said it didn't matter what we did anymore.”

I suddenly felt wide awake. “How so?” I asked.

“That—That choices aren't important because what's the point of life now? They were acting like this is now a world without morality, without consequences, so what's it matter what we do?” He glanced back at me quickly. “You know? Got me thinking: what if it matters even more now, what we do. More than we'll ever know.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I get that.” But all I could think about was why he'd waited this long to tell me about these survivors. “Did any of this group know what's happened? Why the attack happened?”

“They all had an opinion,” Caleb replied, “but apparently, on like the second day, a cop came.”

“And he explained everything?” I asked.

“Well, he'd heard on his radio at the time of the attack that missiles were seen coming in, from the east.”

“The east?”

“That's all this cop had told them, that there were sightings of missiles and it lasted a couple of minutes.

Everyone had their own opinions on where they came from—Long Island, a boat, a submarine, Iraq, you name it.”

“What about the cop?”

“He didn't say, apparently. He was there for a couple of hours and then left.”

“Left?”

“They said he had family in the Bronx or something. Never saw or heard from him again.”

“So what is this group of survivors going to do?” I asked.

“I heard a few talking about leaving, heading to someplace out of the city. But I guess most of them will stay. They say that more come every day, sometimes a few leave, but they're always getting bigger in number.”

“Why didn't you stay with them?”

“I had to get back to you,” he said. And then for no reason, he started laughing, kind of like my friend Mini used to laugh. Her quiet, deep laugh always seemed odd coming from such a small person. But it was always contagious. Mini and Caleb were nothing alike and for a moment I was confused. I didn't know what to make of it, but started laughing too. Lately, I'd laughed mostly from relief that something worse hadn't happened. So it was nice to get caught up in the pleasure of it. We didn't stop until he started coughing.

“Besides,” he continued once he'd recovered, “being around them reminded me how this is a weird city sometimes.”

From Fifth Avenue onto West 14th and then down Bowery, which was clear, we moved like lightning. Caleb stopped the bike in the middle of the empty street and turned the engine off.

Up and down, the street looked virginal, hardly a vehicle to be seen, a blanket of white snow over most of everything. For a moment, I thought we could have been anywhere, anytime. Was I becoming used to life in New York after all? Would it eventually start to seem like home?

Caleb started the BMW up again and we rode south. At Hester Street he turned right and pulled up at the corner of Mulberry.

Fire had ripped through here, maybe on the first day. Charred buildings all around. We stood and I passed him the shotgun, which I'd had slung across my back during the ride.

“Wait here,” he said, and before I could protest, he headed down Mulberry on foot, disappearing into a building a few doors down on the left.

I walked away from the bike. Looked in some windows, most of which were broken. I saw rats, dogs, and not much else. In a parked car I found a briefcase that had a laptop, an iPad and a mobile phone, all with flat batteries.

This person had been to McDonald's—the massive drink container in the cup holder had slowly disintegrated out the bottom, leaving a sticky dark mess everywhere. A bag of food on the passenger seat stunk, but the burgers looked like they'd been made yesterday.

“Come on,” Caleb called. He walked fast. From what I read on his face, I couldn't ask him what he'd found in his old apartment.

 

After a silent journey, we pulled up under the awning of a large brick building. Caleb kicked out the bike's stand and we got off.

“What are we doing?” I asked. We were still several blocks from the 9/11 site.

“I just want to see in here,” he said. He entered the lobby of the Tribeca Grand Hotel.

Without stopping to see who might be watching I followed him through the doors. Inside the building was light, illuminated by a glass-roofed area.

Caleb walked behind the bar. Looked around. Then he rattled through some bottles and poured himself a drink. He sipped, drank, then poured another. He stared at it a while, I wasn't sure whether to look away or walk away, and then he looked straight at me. I walked over and took a seat on a stool, just the high bar separating us. Close up I could see that he'd been crying.

“I'll take a Coke,” I said, giving him a chance to recover. “What are you drinking?”

“Nothing special. Not my favorite drink,” he said. “That would be the Goombay Smash. Amber rum, coconut rum, apricot brandy, orange juice, and pineapple juice. And then the way they do it is with a little Meyer's floater on top.”

“Why that drink?”

He smiled. “Memories.”

My head did still hurt a bit, and I felt sweaty and my heart was racing, but that wasn't why I felt so weird. It was more that I didn't know how to feel about Caleb. I didn't entirely get him anymore. Was he always just messing around, or was it something else? Maybe there was more than the Peter Pan, fun and games side to him. Maybe I hadn't taken him seriously enough. I'd definitely seen a different side to Caleb today. Sure, he was still the carefree, good-time Charlie, but maybe all that was changing.

“Memories?”

“Yeah,” he said, looking out at the big empty lounge over my shoulder. “Staying with friends on summer holiday of our final year of high school, up in Massachusetts. We went to this bar—The Beachcomber at Cape Cod. Everybody's happy there.”

He smiled, lost for a while in thoughts that were so happy it was contagious. I felt the summer warmth of that day.

“It's in a desolate place, at the end of a long road on these giant dunes, but once you get down there, it's buzzing. A live band. A sea breeze blowing through the screen doors to the terraced balcony on a sweltering day. An afternoon of laughing with friends. Mates, you'd call them, yeah?”

“Yeah.” I thought again of my mates back home. “Your friend, back in Little Italy—he was there with you, at this bar, on that holiday?”

It was painful for him to remember, that much was clear. Maybe he couldn't muster the courage needed to venture into the apartment and see it—to
feel
it—to get answers. Was his friend in there, dead? Did Caleb assume his friend was now a Chaser, living the kind of life—if it could be called living—that he himself said he could not bear?

Finally, he nodded.

“He loved it, he even worked there one summer. It's the kind of place where you're not going to run into door guys who are dicks. So much laughing, everybody's so laid-back. Didn't much care that we were underage. We'd watch the sunset. Bonfires on the beach every night. It was beautiful.”

“There was a girl?” I asked.

“Yep. My first love, my first . . . you know. She was beautiful.”

“What was her name?”

He shook his head. Something else lost or that he didn't want to share. I got that. I wasn't ready to tell him about Anna, maybe never would be: he wasn't that guy. I could be protective too.

“Caleb,” I said, looking around the room. “Why are we here?”
Why was I here?

“I miss all this. Look around. I used to come here. My friend's girlfriend worked at this bar, so it was easy, we'd kick things off here. The ambience, the life of the bar—that's the buzz. The chance that something unpredictable might happen, which wouldn't happen in your own home. That's why you go, right? Just because something may happen. The ‘what-if.' Meeting someone. Being with someone. That's what I'll miss. No more names to learn, anymore, you know that? Do us no good to remember them much either.”