“I thought you said you ran it out?”
“You can’t run it all out. Besides, from what they say on che radio, one drop’d be enough to kill you.”
“How come they don’t know how to fix it quicker?” complained Lenore. “Last time some idiot poisoned the water, they—”
“Because, last time was just peanuts,” snapped Johnny, his metaphors going to hell with his temper. “Car radio says this time it’s much bigger. Poured it over the spillways, apparently. So I don’t want any of you going anywhere near taps. And Danny — stop your goddamn blubbering!”
“Why can’t we use the toilet, Daddy?” asked Linda.
“Because you can’t flush it, that’s why,” Johnny told her gruffly, pouring himself another scotch — putting in a dash of the bottled mineral water.
“I don’t like using that poopy seat,” said Linda, referring to the portable camper toilet in the basement. “It’s scary down there.”
“And how come Con Ed’s on the fritz again?” said Lenore.
Johnny ignored her, turning to Linda. “Tell Mummy when you want to go down,” he said. “You can use the big flashlight — that’s what it’s there for.” His tone continued to be gruff, angry at his own bad temper but unable to rein it in. “It won’t be for long,” he said. “You all right, Danny?”
“No. I’m thirsty.”
“Come over here,” Johnny told him, and gave him a glass of the bottled water. “There y’are.” Danny gulped the water. “Taste good?” inquired Johnny in a conciliatory tone.
Danny shook his head vigorously from side to side.
“For Chrissakes, Danny! You’re spilling it. Can’t you—”
Lenore interceded, quickly yet gently ushering the children into their bedroom off the hallway. Danny was still grumping. “It’s not time for bed.”
“You don’t have to go to bed,” Lenore assured them. “Just sit and play or do—”
“Why can’t we watch TV, Mommy?” asked Linda.
“ ‘Cause,” answered Danny, “there isn’t any power, stupid.”
“Don’t you call me stupid—”
“Knock it off!” yelled Johnny from the dark recesses of the kitchen. “Or I’ll tan both of you.”
There was silence, Lenore aware for the first time she could remember that she could no longer hear even the faint hum of their refrigerator as she hustled and cajoled the children to get into their pajamas. If they were quick, she’d read them a story—”by candlelight!”
“Haven’t cleaned my teeth,” said Danny.
“All right,” said Lenore, “Then go — no, wait a minute. I’ll bring the brush in here with some bottled water.”
“Yuk!”
Out in the kitchen, the shadow of her arm stretching like a huge derrick in the candlelight, Lenore poured the mineral water sparingly into a Big Bird cup. “This is getting to be a real pain,” she said. “How long do you think we’ll be without power and water?”
Johnny shrugged. “Probably won’t get full power back for weeks, from what the radio says. It’ll be staggered, I guess. Brownouts — a bit here, a bit there. As for water?” He turned his scotch and Canada Dry club soda nearer the candle. “No idea.”
“What kind of people could do that?” she asked, screwing the cap back on. “Blowing up power stations is one thing, but poisoning the water — that’s — that’s sick.”
“So was Agent Orange,” said Johnny, sipping his scotch.
“That’s different,” Lenore said, reaching to put the bottle into the refrigerator from habit.
“Sure,” said Johnny. “You weren’t in Vietnam.”
“Neither were you,” she said, an edge to her voice. She really didn’t know how long she could put up with the inconvenience. They’d most likely close the schools, and then, God help her, the kids would be home all day. “Anyway, that was war.”
“Christ! What do you think this is?” he shot back. “No worse than what we did to the Vietnamese.”
She peered in the flickering candlelight at an unrecognizable shape deep in the refrigerator’s vegetable bin. “My God — what’s this?”
“What?”
“This—” She made a noise as if she was picking up a snake, the lump in the plastic bag half solid, half liquid, squishy. She held it out toward him, outstretched fingers like laboratory tongs, face grimacing with repulsion. “It’s a cucumber — I think. Or was.” She was heading toward the bathroom, holding it at arm’s length.
“You can’t flush it,” Johnny reminded her.
She stood motionless in the hallway. “Well, where can I put it?”
“Put it in the goddamn garbage.” They heard the wailings of more sirens — gunshots.
“Looters,” Johnny said. “Now we’ll see how our fellow Americans behave when the lights go out.”
“Well, they’re not all like that,” she said. “Would you go looting?”
“ ‘Course not. What a dumb question.”
“See?” she said good-naturedly.
“Johnny — no! No!” she yelled.
“What the hell—”
“Look, the Jameses’—oh my God, she’s got her kitchen tap running. I’m sure of it — look, she’s leaning over with the kettle to — she mustn’t have heard that radio announcement you — oh my God, Johnny—”
She dropped the bag in the kitchen garbage pail, then grabbed the phone. It was dead. Slamming it down, she ran out the kitchen door, clattering down the darkened steps onto the crazy-stone backyard, yelling as she called out to her neighbor across the lane, an elderly woman — from where Lenore was, a small figure bending in a soft square of a camp light. “No — no, Mrs. James—”
“Daddy? Daddy? What’s the matter?” called out Linda.
“Nothing,” Ferrago replied. “Go to sleep.” It was 8:04 P.M.
At 8:05 p.m., when Lenore Ferrago had pounded on her neighbor’s back door she so terrified the elderly Mrs. James that the woman dropped the cat’s filled water dish, the plastic bowl creating an enormous shadow in the candlelight as it bounced high against the dishwasher before banging to the floor and rolling, toplike, already empty of water and reverberating as it spun to a stop on the pale green linoleum floor.
“Martha!” bellowed Mrs. James’s husband. “You okay?”
When he came in from the living room, the cat meowing safely behind him, his wife had one hand on her heart, the other on the doorknob, using it as a rest as she opened the back door. “It’s — It’s all right,” she assured her husband, weakly waving for Lenore to come in. “It’s Lenore Ferrago.”
“Sorry,” began Lenore, “but you mustn’t use the water!” She paused for breath. “… Radio’s warning everyone in the Bronx, Westchester, not to—” She had to stop.
Mr. James picked up the newspaper he’d been reading, peered through his bifocals then quickly pulled one of the kitchen chairs out from the table toward Lenore. “Here, sit down. You’ll have a heart attack.”
Lenore took the chair but hurried on. “Someone’s apparently put poison in the water supply.”
“Good gracious!” said Mrs. James. “Not again.” She turned to her husband. “Les, put the radio on—”
“Can’t put it on, Martha. No power.”
“No, no, Betty’s — the battery radio. I think it’s in her third drawer down. You know, the Walkman.”
Les James doubled up the paper and, taking a flashlight from the top of the fridge, moved off to get the radio.
“Les!”
His wife’s shout struck James with the force of a physical blow. By the time he had returned to the kitchen, she was crumpled on the floor, the cat, having licked up some of the spilled water, already in convulsions, writhing in an agony the likes of which he had never seen, nor wanted to ever again.
In that tiny kitchen the threat to the eleven million people in New York had become real, and meanwhile, all over the state and indeed the nation, the threat was becoming a palpable nightmare of sudden yet agonized death, its full extent withheld from the American public not by any government decision, but by increasing power failures
