Specimen Days

Still. She had a feeling, and she was someone who relied on feelings.

"Pete?"

"Yeah?"

She wanted to tell him that there might be somewhere. There might be grass and mountains, a little house. It wasn't heroic it was in fact more than a little bit cowardly to want to slip away, to think of saving yourself and maybe another person or two, to try to live out your life in some hamlet while other people worked the front lines.

And besides, Pete couldn't go. He had obligations. Even without obligations, he wasn't the house-in-the-country type. He wouldn't know what to do with himself.

Shade and water
The murmur of the world
Your cup and garden

"Don't start smoking again," she said.

"It's just for now."

"Right. See you."

"See you."

She left him there, standing in the quickening air, under the rumble of the Williamsburg Bridge.

* * *

The boy woke up a little after seven. Cat was sitting on the edge of the mattress.

"Hi," he said. "Hi."

"Are we going now?"

"Yes. Let's get your clothes back on."

He jumped out of bed, got into his jeans and jacket. Cat took up a pad of yellow legal paper and a pen.

"I'm ready," the boy said. "Just a minute," she answered.

She wrote: Pete -

I have to go away. Tm not in my right mind. I wonder if I've been crazy for years without realizing it. I seem to have caught something from all the nuts I've talked to. I seem to not want this life or anything else thats readily available. I can't work for the company anymore. I need to find something else to do.

What I want to say[1].Try to keep your self safe. I want to thank you for all the love you've given me. If that isn't unbearably corny.

Cat

She put the note on the kitchen counter. She still had the bomb in her bag. Not a good idea to leave it. She'd figure out a way to get rid of it so nobody would pick it up.

"Okay," she said to the boy. "I'm ready now, too."

There was nothing to give him for breakfast. She'd get him something en route to the train station.

The train was the best way. She didn't have a car, and if she rented one it'd be traceable. Plane tickets would leave a record, too. You could pay cash for train tickets, and no one needed to know your name or anything about you at all.

She took him downstairs, paused with him on the stoop, looking up and down the block. It was the regular early-morning scenario. The achievers on their way to work, the shoe-repair guy rolling up his grate. The old man raved in front of the flower shop across the street. It was another day on East Fifth.

She hesitated. This was her last chance to do the right and rational thing. She could take the kid in. She'd lose her job, of course not policy to drug a dangerous suspect and keep him in your apartment overnight. But she could get another job. She could get another boyfriend. She could hand over the kid and go on as a respectable citizen. What she was doing what she had not yet done but was about to do would be irreversible.

The little boy took her hand. "Is something wrong?" he asked.

"No," she said. "Nothing's wrong."

With a sense of vertiginous recklessness, a queasy and light-headed plunging, she led the child down into the street.

She stopped at an ATM and withdrew five hundred from her checking, five hundred from her savings. That was the maximum. Money would be a problem, of course. If she used her credit cards or withdrew more money from another ATM tomorrow, they'd be able to trace her. She'd figure something out. She'd have to.

She took the kid to a Korean market, bought two big bags full of food, and paid with her Visa card it wouldn't make any difference, charging this last purchase in New York. The food would last them for a couple of days. She got the kid an egg on a bagel and got one for herself. He ate his bagel cautiously, in tiny bites, in the cab on the way to Penn Station.

"How long does it take to get to the beach?" he asked.

Right. The beach. They should head south, shouldn't they? Better to be scraping by in a warm climate.

She said, "It'll take a while. The beach is pretty far away."

He nodded, chewing. "This is good," he said.

They got to Penn Station. She bought them two tickets on a train leaving for Washington, D.C., in twenty-five minutes. They'd change trains in Washington. They'd change trains a couple of times.