Waking the Moon

She lifted her head to gaze outside. Overhead, the storm clouds hung so low that she could see threads of lightning racing across their undersides, like flames seeking purchase on damp wood. She could feel a faint throbbing at her temples; but Angelica felt no pain. She herself had eaten a cake similar to Dylan’s, with mentha pulegium added to it. But for several weeks now she had been readying herself for this: each night swallowing a tiny spoonful of the aromatic paste, until now, while she could feel it flowing through her, the opium did not cloud her thoughts so much as color them, an antique palette of blues and soft golds and reds, like a crumbling skyphos…

The car made a quick turn. Angelica steadied herself, her fingers clutching at a brass handrail.

“Not many people here this time of year,” the driver called back to her as the car shot onto North Capitol Street. Behind them the Capitol grew smaller and smaller, until it disappeared into the haze.

“We’re almost there.” Angelica rested one hand protectively upon Dylan’s breast. “Dylan—”

And then in front of them, rising from the city’s smoke and filth, the domes and minarets of the Shrine of the Archangels and Saint John the Divine came into view. Slowly, like varicolored dyes bleeding into a piece of linen, cobalt blue and saffron yellow, ruddy ocher and that pale silvery gold that she had only ever seen here, where the gilded stars marked out their own strange constellations on the lapis dome: slowly as in a dream, as though called from the thick haze by the sound of Angelica’s voice, it all came back to her. Drooping oaks and elms, dun-colored grass that even the Divine’s corps of gardeners had not been able to save from the terrible heat; the cornices and towers of all the gaunt Gothic buildings faded to bluish grey and bluish green in the suffering late afternoon light.

And above them all the Shrine, with its stained glass windows like sheets of hot copper, its triad of defiant angels with hands raised above the great oaken doors. Upon every turret and spire and building, angels; angels everywhere.

“Hah!” Angelica said triumphantly, her son forgotten. Her face grew taut as she stared out at the monstrous building, the few small figures walking slowly down the steps to the waiting tour buses. “At last.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am?” the driver called.

Angelica started, looked at him and smiled. “Nothing, Bryant. I think if you pull up over there—”

She cocked her head to where a door stood open at the side of the Shrine.

“—right there, and if you don’t mind waiting here a few minutes.”

The driver brought the car up to where she had directed. “Man, I never knew a place for the kind of trouble we’ve had this summer. Guns and weather and everything else,” he sighed, running his hand across his forehead. “And the thing is, it just keeps getting worse and worse, and nobody ever does anything about it.”

Angelica nodded. “Quis iniqu? tam patiens urbis, ut teneat se?”

Bryant shook his head. “What’s that?”

Angelica smiled. “Just something someone said a long time ago—

“Who can have the patience, in this wicked city, to restrain his indignation?”

“You can say that again,” the driver agreed, and he reached to turn up the air-conditioning.

I thought I would go mad. Afraid to leave my office, because I might miss Dylan if he returned. Afraid to stay, because every minute that passed meant he was going farther and farther away, he was almost gone now, I was losing him, he was gone…

“Oh, god,” I cried, and laid my head on my desk. I stared at my watch, the numbers blurring: 3:45, 3:54, 3:57…

Four o’clock.

No Dylan.

Four-fourteen; four-thirty; four thirty-five. I called Annie.

“He’s not here,” she said. She sounded as though she had been crying. “Sweeney. I think you better come home.”

I have never felt anything like the air that afternoon: so moist and suffocating it was like being covered with hot wet plaster. The sky was the baleful color of lichen or tamarack. But dark as it was, the light stung my eyes, as though there was some subtle toxin in the haze, something that sapped the spirit and gave everything the livid bruised glow of a corpse. My nostrils burned; the air smelled of harsh smoke and something more organic, algae or decaying wood. I thought of the legendary swamp the city was said to have been built on—the buried River Tiber, somewhere below us the bones of people whose cemeteries had been covered over by cement and limestone and marble.

There were hardly any cars on the street. I paced nervously back and forth, looking for a cab, and had already started walking when one finally appeared.

“I’m going to Ninth Street, up by Eastern Market,” I said, and flung myself into the seat.

“You live in Northeast?” the driver asked. She was a small grey-haired woman with a ring in her nose. “You know there’s no power there, right?”

I shook my head. “No, I hadn’t heard—”

She nodded. “No power. They had to shut down the Library of Congress and the Post Office. Some people got stuck in an elevator there, a guy had a heart attack. I guess the heat. Yeah, power’s out all across Northeast. Metro’s down, everything’s off in Brookland, parts of Southeast, over in Maryland…”

The cab had no a/c, but I rolled up my window anyway. I couldn’t stand to breathe that soupy air. I couldn’t stand to think about what the driver was telling me; I couldn’t stand anything.

“Yeah,” the driver went on, wiping her face with a bandanna. “Me, I’m going home now, you’re my last fare. They’re talking about riots, you know? Power goes down, everybody takes to the street, you’re looking at some trouble, sister. This whole place up in flames before you know it. You got a boyfriend?”

I tried to say something, but all that came out was a groan.

‘“Cause you know, us ladies probably shouldn’t be out alone if something like that comes down. All this heat, makes people crazy. That’s why I’m going home now. You’re my last fare…”

There were no people on the sidewalks. No one sitting on the stoops, no one hanging out on street corners. From far away I heard a siren, but I didn’t see any police cars. I didn’t see anyone. My chest felt heavy, crushed between my fear for Dylan and this new horror: was it really as simple as this? A few weeks of terrible weather, a gathering storm; then pull the plug on the air-conditioning and subway, and the city goes up in flames?

“Yeah, I was listening to WMAL, they got an emergency generator or something I guess. They said everybody should just stay indoors. Like if you got no air-conditioning and it’s a hundred degrees out, you want to stay indoors…”

The woman gave a last harsh laugh and fell silent.

When we reached Dr. Dvorkin’s house I shoved a handful of dollar bills into the driver’s hand and stumbled from the cab. I shoved open the ramshackle door that led through the breezeway, my heart beating so hard it was as if it didn’t belong to me anymore, it was like something trying to get in. Then I was running across the patio, and then I was at the carriage house.

Annie met me at the door. Her face was beet red and wet, from crying or from the heat I couldn’t tell. “Sweeney. I tried to call but you’d already left your office…”

“Dylan?” I shouted, pushing her aside. “Dylan—”

Sitting on the couch, atop Annie’s crumpled sheets and pillows, were two men. They wore faded khakis and their shirtsleeves were rolled, their heads bowed so at first I didn’t recognize them.

Then the taller of the two looked up and saw me.

“Katherine,” he said, starting to his feet. The man beside him looked up hesitantly; then he stood as well.

“This guy said he was your landlord,” Annie said, cocking her thumb at Robert Dvorkin.

“He is,” I said numbly, but I hardly glanced at him. My eyes were fixed on Balthazar Warnick.

“Sweeney,” he said. “The time has come that we must ask for your help.”

“Help?” I shook my head, dumfounded. “You want my help? Where’s Dylan? What are you doing here?” My voice rose as my confusion boiled into anger. “What the hell is