twenty and growing. If it doesn’t lose steam, the phones will be ringing when you get here tomorrow.”
The call came even earlier. It was three A.M. when Walker’s telephone rang, and he was awake instantly. Joyce Hazelton’s voice was quiet and clam. “John, it’s what we talked about this afternoon. I just got the call myself. We’ve all got to get into the office right away. It’s already morning in Florida.” She hung up before he could ask any questions. As he dressed, he decided she had probably been wise. The questions that he could have asked were things he would find out when he got there.
Walker drove through the nearly empty streets, making good time. He listened to the radio, tapping the button from station to station, hearing the drone of voices on call-in talk shows, snatches of sports reports, blares of music. When he finally heard the word “hurricane,” it was on some sort of listing that had to do with travel, and the next words were “and in Minneapolis, partly cloudy turning to fair.”
He parked in the garage at three-forty, started toward his trunk to bring his suitcase with him, then thought better of it. The parking spaces around him were filling up quickly. If he arrived with a suitcase, some of those people would be amused. If there turned out to be a need for it later, they would be much less so. He entered the lobby and saw that night security was still in effect, so there was a short delay while he signed in at the desk, and then another delay while a security guard used his key to operate the elevators to the upper floors.
When Walker reached the seventh floor, he saw that the transformation was already complete. Twenty of the forty desks in the open bay were occupied. There were typists and receptionists beside actuaries and underwriters. There were even a few of the investment people in the spaces at the corner nearest their corridor. But his most vivid sensation was the sound of telephones ringing all over the room.
People were snatching up receivers, uttering a few acknowledgments as they took notes on message pads. Then they would tap in policy numbers on their computer terminals and stare at the screens while they tried to answer questions. Walker could see already that many of them were out of their depth. A few would look puzzled, then raise their hands in the air like schoolchildren.
Joyce Hazelton would stride up the aisle to answer the question or take over the call, but it was a Joyce Hazelton he had never seen. She had always been made up and combed like a minor official of the State Department, always wearing a ring, a pin, and small ear studs of some semiprecious stone that matched her suit. Today she was wearing faded blue jeans, a pair of bright white running shoes, and a gray sweatshirt that said PRINCETON 70 in blue letters. He moved closer to her as she took a telephone out of the hand of a man he recognized as a vice president who issued performance bonds on construction projects.
“Yes, sir,” she said into the phone. “I’m a supervisor. My name is Joyce Hazelton.” She was leaning down to read the computer screen. “Your premium was received on the twenty-third, which is plenty of time.” She pointed to a line on the screen so the vice president could see where it was. “Your coverage is in full force.” She listened. “What I would do in your place is make a videotape of the house. Just walk through every room with your belongings still in place, and then the outside too. That part I would do while I was getting into the car to drive away from the beach area.” She paused and listened again. “No, sir. If there really are hundred-and-fifty-mile-an- hour winds, we’d rather pay off on your home owner’s policy than your life insurance.”
While she was talking, Walker saw that there were some other managers walking the aisles, some of them getting novices set up at desks with hurried instructions, and others handling questions. He moved toward one of the empty desks, but Joyce handed the telephone back to the vice president and caught up with him. She guided him away from the desks and up the aisle, talking rapidly.
“John, did you bring your suitcase?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Thanks for the warning. Where do you want me to sit?”
“We don’t know yet if the hurricane will make it to the mainland, but it just brushed the edge of the Dominican Republic. It tore roofs off brand-new buildings and caused floods that took roads with them. The Miami office doesn’t have enough people, so we’re trying to rush reinforcements in ahead of the storm.”
“Me?” said Walker. He stared at the activity around them. There were already people with their hands up.
Joyce saw them too. “You were on the list from upstairs. Obviously you don’t have to—”
“I’ll go,” he said. “What do I do?”
“Meet the others at the airport as soon as you can. Delta Air Lines.” She took a step toward a confused- looking twenty-year-old typist. She stopped and looked back at Walker. “Keep your receipts.”
Walker watched her turn her attention to the new problem, then hurried toward the elevators. When he arrived at the airport, Bill Kennedy came across the polished floor to meet him. Walker could see that Kennedy already had a ticket in his coat pocket.
“We can’t fly to Miami,” Kennedy said cheerfully. “They’re afraid their planes will get stuck on the runway when the storm hits.”
“What are your tickets for?”
“Atlanta.”
“Atlanta? That’s got to be five hundred miles away.”
“Six hundred sixty-three,” said Kennedy. “That’s what they said, and they’re an airline, so they must know.”
“Can’t we do better than that?”
Kennedy shrugged. “Better? From a rational perspective, Anchorage would be a lot better.” He put his arm around Walker’s shoulders and turned him toward the ticket counter. “Look who’s here.”
Walker recognized Marcy Wang, Maureen Cardarelli, and a few of the new people who had just completed training to be agents. “So?”
“We’re all young and unmarried. It’s a squadron of the unloved, the unwanted, and the cheaply dispensable. It’s an insurance company, for Christ’s sake—they’re weighing risk against reward. They know they’re liable to lose somebody. Atlanta is only an hour from Miami if planes are flying when we get there. If they’re not . . . ”
“What about Orlando?”
“Orlando? Don’t know him. Let him die.”
“Florida. That’s only a couple of hundred miles from Miami, and there are huge numbers of flights. Has anybody checked to see if they’re still on?”
“Beats me,” he said. “The flight leaves for Atlanta in a few minutes, so if you want to go . . . ”
Walker stepped to the counter, where a middle-aged man was waiting. “Are the flights to Orlando still scheduled?”
The man looked at him judiciously. “At this time, there haven’t been any cancellations.”
“Are there any leaving soon that I can still get on?”
The man clicked his computer keys, stared, then clicked some more. “There’s one in twenty minutes.” He turned his attention to Walker. “There are lots of passengers who haven’t checked in yet. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but they’re expecting a hurricane in Florida. I could sell you a ticket. You’ll probably get on, if it goes. I have to say that I think the no-shows are probably right. If the plane takes off, it may be diverted. If it lands in Orlando, you may regret it.”
“I know,” said Walker. “I have to try. It’s an emergency.”
The man seemed to be making an effort to say no more. His eyebrows slowly rose as he clicked in the reservation and started to print the ticket. At last he said quietly, “I happened to be working there when Andrew came in. You haven’t seen an emergency until you’re stuck in one of those things.”
Walker took his ticket and returned to the waiting area to tell the others, but they were gone. He looked up at the schedule on the television screen, and saw the flight for Atlanta blinking. In a moment, the notation changed to DEPARTED.
Walker hurried through the airport to his gate, and got in line to board the flight for Orlando.
At one o’clock in the afternoon, Walker was making his way through the Orlando airport toward the baggage claim. As he reached the escalator to take him down to the lower level, he heard a sweet female voice announce, “All incoming flights have been canceled.”
A few minutes later, Walker was in a rental car driving out of Orlando on the turnpike toward the southeast, staring across the flat country at a small, distant bank of puffy white clouds just above the horizon.
