Cell

him look to Clay like Little Orphan Annie's mentor, Daddy Warbucks. 'That might have been the new Shell superstation they put in over on Kneeland. The one all the taxis and the Duck Boats use. It was the right direction.'

Clay had no idea if Ricardi was right, he couldn't smell burning gasoline (at least not yet), but his visually trained mind's eye could see a triangle of city concrete now burning like a propane torch in the latening day.

'Can a modern city burn?' he asked Tom. 'One made mostly of concrete and metal and glass? Could it burn the way Chicago did after Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicked over the lantern?'

'That lantern-kicking business was nothing but an urban legend,' Alice said. She was rubbing the back of her neck as if she were getting a bad headache. 'Mrs. Myers said so, in American History.'

'Sure it could,' Tom said. 'Look what happened to the World Trade Center, after those airplanes hit it.'

'Airplanes full of jet fuel,' Mr. Ricardi said pointedly.

As if the bald desk clerk had conjured it, the smell of burning gasoline began to come to them, wafting through the shattered lobby windows and sliding beneath the door to the inner office like bad mojo.

'I guess you were on the nose about that Shell station,' Tom remarked.

Mr. Ricardi went to the door between his office and the lobby. He unlocked it and opened it. What Clay could see of the lobby beyond already looked deserted and gloomy and somehow irrelevant. Mr. Ricardi sniffed audibly, then closed the door and locked it again. 'Fainter already,' he said.

'Wishful thinking,' Clay said. 'Either that or your nose is getting used to the aroma.'

'I think he might be right,' Tom said. 'That's a good west wind out there—by which I mean the air's moving toward the ocean—and if what we just heard was that new station they put in on the corner of Kneeland and Washington, by the New England Medical Center—'

'That's the one, all right,' Mr. Ricardi said. His face registered glum satisfaction. 'Oh, the protests! The smart money fixed that, believe you m—'

Tom overrode him. '—then the hospital will be on fire by now . . . along with anybody left inside, of course . . .'

'No,' Alice said, then put a hand over her mouth.

'I think yes. And the Wang Center's next in line. The breeze may drop by full dark, but if it doesn't, everything east of the Mass Pike is apt to be so much toasted cheese by ten p.m.'

'We're west of there,' Mr. Ricardi pointed out.

'Then we're safe enough,' Clay said. 'At least from that one.' He went to Mr. Ricardi's little window, stood on his toes, and peered out onto Essex Street.

'What do you see?' Alice asked. 'Do you see people?'

'No . . . yes. One man. Other side of the street.'

'Is he one of the crazy ones?' she asked.

'I can't tell.' But Clay thought he was. It was the way he ran, and the jerky way he kept looking back over his shoulder. Once, just before he went around the corner and onto Lincoln Street, the guy almost ran into a fruit display in front of a grocery store. And although Clay couldn't hear him, he could see the man's lips moving. 'Now he's gone.'

'No one else?' Tom asked.

'Not at the moment, but there's smoke.' Clay paused. 'Soot and ash, too. I can't tell how much. The wind's whipping it around.'

'Okay, I'm convinced,' Tom said. 'I've always been a slow learner but never a no-learner. The city's going to burn and nobody's going to stand pat but the crazy people.'

'I think that's right,' Clay said. And he didn't think this was true of just Boston, but for the time being, Boston was all he could bear to consider. In time he might be able to widen his view, but not until he knew Johnny was safe. Or maybe the big picture was always going to be beyond him. He drew small pictures for a living, after all. But in spite of everything, the selfish fellow who lived like a limpet on the underside of his mind had time to send up a clear thought. It came in colors of blue and dark sparkling gold. Why did it have to happen today, of all days? Just after I finally made a solid strike?

'Can I come with you guys, if you go?' Alice asked.

'Sure,' Clay said. He looked at the desk clerk. 'You can, too, Mr. Ricardi.'

'I shall stay at my post,' Mr. Ricardi said. He spoke loftily, but before they shifted away from Clay's, his eyes looked sick.

'I don't think you'll get in Dutch with the management for locking up and leaving under these circumstances,' Tom said. He spoke in the gentle fashion Clay was so much coming to like.

'I shall stay at my post,' he said again. 'Mr. Donnelly, the day manager, went out to make the afternoon deposit at the bank and left me in charge. If he comes back, perhaps then . . .'

'Please, Mr. Ricardi,' Alice said. 'Staying here is no good.'

But Mr. Ricardi, who had once more crossed his arms over his thin chest, only shook his head.

15

They moved one of the queen anne chairs aside, and mr. ricardi unlocked the front doors for them. Clay looked out. He could see no people moving in either direction, but it was hard to tell for sure because the air was now full of fine dark ash. It danced in the breeze like black snow.

'Come on,' he said. They were only going next door to start with, to the Metropolitan Cafe.

'I'm going to relock the door and put the chair back in place,' Mr. Ricardi said, 'but I'll be listening. If you run into trouble—if there are more of those . . .people . . . hiding in the Metropolitan, for instance—and you have to retreat, just remember to shout, 'Mr. Ricardi, Mr. Ricardi, we need you!' That way I'll know it's safe to open the door. Is that understood?'

'Yes,' Clay said. He squeezed Mr. Ricardi's thin shoulder. The desk clerk flinched, then stood firm (although he showed no particular sign of pleasure at being so saluted). 'You're all right. I didn't think you were, but I was wrong.'

'I hope I do my best,' the bald man said stiffly. 'Just remember—'

'We'll remember,' Tom said. 'And we'll be over there maybe ten minutes. If anything goes wrong over here, you give a shout.'

'All right.' But Clay didn't think he would. He didn't know why he thought that, it made no sense to think a man wouldn't give a shout to save himself if he was in trouble, but Clay did think it.

Alice said, 'Please change your mind, Mr. Ricardi. It's not safe in Boston, you must know that by now.'

Mr. Ricardi only looked away. And Clay thought, not without wonder, This is how a man looks when he's deciding that the risk of death is better than the risk of change.

'Come on,' Clay said. 'Let's make some sandwiches while we've still got electricity to see by.'

'Some bottled water wouldn't hurt, either,' Tom said.

16

The electricity failed just as they were wrapping the last of their sandwiches in the Metropolitan Cafe's tidy, white-tiled little kitchen. By then Clay had tried three more times to get through to Maine: once to his old house, once to Kent Pond Elementary, where Sharon taught, and once to Joshua Chamberlain Middle School, which Johnny now attended. In no case did he get further than Maine's 207 area code.

When the lights in the Metropolitan went out, Alice screamed in what at first seemed to Clay like total darkness. Then the emergency lights came on. Alice was not much comforted. She was clinging to Tom with one arm. In the other she was brandishing the bread-knife she'd used to cut the sandwiches with. Her eyes were wide and somehow flat.

'Alice, put that knife down,' Clay said, a little more harshly than he'd intended. 'Before you cut one of us with it.'

'Or yourself,' Tom said in that mild and soothing voice of his. His spectacles glinted in the glare of the emergency lights.