Cell

She put it down, then promptly picked it up again. 'I want it,' she said. 'I want to take it with me. You have one, Clay. I want one.'

'All right,' he said, 'but you don't have a belt. We'll make you one from a tablecloth. For now, just be careful.'

Half the sandwiches were roast beef and cheese, half ham and cheese. Alice had wrapped them in Saran Wrap. Under the cash register Clay found a stack of sacks with DOGGY BAG written on one side and people bag written on the other. He and Tom tumbled the sandwiches into a pair of these. Into a third bag they put three bottles of water.

The tables had been made up for a dinner-service that was never going to happen. Two or three had been tumbled over but most stood perfect, with their glasses and silver shining in the hard light of the emergency boxes on the walls. Something about their calm orderliness hurt Clay's heart. The cleanliness of the folded napkins, and the little electric lamps on each table. Those were now dark, and he had an idea it might be a long time before the bulbs inside lit up again.

He saw Alice and Tom gazing about with faces as unhappy as his felt, and a desire to cheer them up— almost manic in its urgency—came over him. He remembered a trick he used to do for his son. He wondered again about Johnny's cell phone and the panic-rat took another nip out of him. Clay hoped with all his heart the damned phone was lying forgotten under Johnny-Gee's bed among the dust-kitties, with its battery flat-flat-flat.

'Watch this carefully,' he said, setting his bag of sandwiches aside, 'and please note that at no time do my hands leave my wrists.' He grasped the hanging skirt of a tablecloth.

'This is hardly the time for parlor tricks,' Tom said.

'I want to see,' Alice said. For the first time since they'd met her, there was a smile on her face. It was small but it was there.

'We need the tablecloth,' Clay said, 'it won't take a second, and besides, the lady wants to see.' He turned to Alice. 'But you have to say a magic word. Shazam will do.'

'Shazam!' she said, and Clay pulled briskly with both hands.

He hadn't done the trick in two, maybe even three years, and it almost didn't work. And yet at the same time, his mistake—some small hesitation in the pull, no doubt—actually added to the charm of the thing. Instead of staying where they were while the tablecloth magically disappeared from beneath them, all the place-settings on the table moved about four inches to the right. The glass nearest to where Clay was standing actually wound up with its circular base half on and half off the table.

Alice applauded, now laughing. Clay took a bow with his hands held out.

'Can we go now, O great Vermicelli?' Tom asked, but even Tom was smiling. Clay could see his small teeth in the emergency lights.

'Soon's I rig this,' Clay said. 'She can carry the knife on one side and a bag of sandwiches on the other. You can tote the water.' He folded the tablecloth over into a triangle shape, then rolled it quickly into a belt. He slipped a bag of sandwiches onto this by the bag's carrier handles, then put the tablecloth around the girl's slim waist, having to take a turn and a half and tie the knot in back to make the thing secure. He finished by sliding the serrated bread-knife home on the right side.

'Say, you're pretty handy,' Tom said.

'Handy is dandy,' Clay said, and then something else blew up outside, close enough to shake the cafe. The glass that had been standing half on and half off the table lost its balance, tumbled to the floor, and shattered. The three of them looked at it. Clay thought to tell them he didn't believe in omens, but that would only make things worse. Besides, he did.

17

Clay had his reasons for wanting to go back to the atlantic avenue Inn before they set off. One was to retrieve his portfolio, which he'd left sitting in the lobby. Another was to see if they couldn't find some sort of makeshift scabbard for Alice's knife—he reckoned even a shaving kit would do, if it was long enough. A third was to give Mr. Ricardi another chance to join them. He was surprised to find he wanted this even more than he wanted the forgotten portfolio of drawings. He had taken an odd, reluctant liking to the man.

When he confessed this to Tom, Tom surprised him by nodding. 'It's the way I feel about anchovies on pizza,' he said. 'I tell myself there's something disgusting about a combination of cheese, tomato sauce, and dead fish . . . but sometimes that shameful urge comes over me and I can't stand against it.'

A blizzard of black ash and soot was blowing up the street and between the buildings. Car alarms warbled, burglar alarms brayed, and fire alarms clanged. There seemed to be no heat in the air, but Clay could hear the crackle of fire to the south and east of them. The smell of burning was stronger, too. They heard voices shouting, but these were back toward the Common, where Boylston Street widened.

When they got next door to the Atlantic Avenue Inn, Tom helped Clay push one of the Queen Anne chairs away from one of the broken glass door-panels. The lobby beyond was now a pool of gloom in which Mr. Ricardi's desk and the sofa were only darker shadows; if Clay hadn't already been in there, he would have had no idea what those shadows represented. Above the elevators a single emergency light guttered, the boxed battery beneath it buzzing like a horsefly.

'Mr. Ricardi?' Tom called. 'Mr. Ricardi, we came back to see if you changed your mind.'

There was no reply. After a moment, Alice began carefully to knock out the glass teeth that still jutted from the windowframe.

'Mr. Ricardi!' Tom called again, and when there was still no answer, he turned to Clay. 'You're going in there, are you?'

'Yes. To get my portfolio. It's got my drawings in it.'

'You don't have copies?'

'Those are the originals,' Clay said, as if this explained everything. To him it did. And besides, there was Mr. Ricardi. He'd said, I'll be listening.

'What if Thumper from upstairs got him?' Tom asked.

'If that had happened, I think we'd have heard him thumping around down here,' Clay said. 'For that matter, he would have come running at the sound of our voices, babbling like the guy who tried to carve us up back by the Common.'

'You don't know that,' Alice said. She was gnawing at her lower lip. 'It's way too early for you to think you know all the rules.'

Of course she was right, but they couldn't stand around out here discussing it, that was no good, either.

'I'll be careful,' he said, and put a leg over the bottom of the window. It was narrow, but plenty wide enough for him to climb through. 'I'll just poke my head into his office. If he's not there, I won't go hunting around for him like a chick in a horror movie. I'll just grab my portfolio and we'll boogie.'

'Keep yelling,' Alice said. 'Just say 'Okay, I'm okay,' something like that. The whole time.'

'All right, but if I stop yelling, just go. Don't come in after me.'

'Don't worry,' she said, unsmiling. 'I saw all those movies, too. We've got Cinemax.'

18

' I'm okay,' Clay shouted, picking up his portfolio and then putting it down on the reception desk. Good to go, he thought. But not quite yet.

He looked over his shoulder as he went around the desk and saw the one unblocked window glimmering, seeming to float in the thickening gloom, with two silhouettes cut into the day's last light. 'I'm okay, still okay, just going in to check his office now, still okay, still o—'

'Clay?' Tom's voice was alarmed, but for a moment Clay couldn't respond and set Tom's mind at rest. There was an overhead light fixture in the middle of the inner office's high ceiling. Mr. Ricardi was hanging from it by what looked like a drape-cord. There was a white bag pulled down over his head. Clay thought it was the kind of plastic bag the hotel gave you to put your dirty laundry and dry cleaning in. 'Clay, are you all right?'