soon as he was old enough to have his name changed legally, he had done so.
“Lancelot, like from King Arthur’s court?” the young woman asked. She laughed in delight. In the dark, the sound was like a bell or a bird. He wondered that anyone could laugh under conditions like theirs. He surely was incapable of such-what would one call it? Strength? Levity?
“My mother was fond of the Camelot stories,” he offered sheepishly, and this surprised him most of all because he never spoke of his mother.
“I am, too,” the girl said. “I love the old tales-I have one with me right now.” She patted her backpack. “Lancelot was my favorite among the knights, anyway.”
“I’m not like him,” Mr. Pritchett said. He considered romantic excesses undignified. He didn’t like adventures.
“Sometimes we grow into a name,” the girl said. “You might surprise yourself, Sir Knight.”
Maybe she was right. Now that he thought of it, didn’t he love the thrill of manipulating numbers, of balancing on the razor-edge of the law?
“It was embarrassing,” he found himself saying. He wanted to say more. How boys had made fun of his name, how once they had put his head in a toilet. Where did that ancient memory spring from? He couldn’t believe the things he wanted to pour out into this forgiving, pillowy dark!
His fingers twitched without a cigarette to hold. He marveled at the human mind, its tendency to crave what it could not have. Under normal circumstances, he smoked only two cigarettes a day, one after lunch and one while driving home from work. Mrs. Pritchett didn’t like the smell, so on weekends he went out into the yard to smoke.
And she-what had she done in return? Betrayed him by trying to kill herself, that’s what.
“I know about embarrassing,” the young woman said. “My parents named me after a goddess. I’m going to India to see them. Why are you going?”
He could not bring himself to speak in the optimistic present tense. “Mrs. Pritchett wanted to visit India,” he said, though this was not exactly true. “We were going to stay in a palace.”
“Why, that’s wonderful!” she said. “I’m planning to visit the Taj Mahal myself. I’m sure you’ll love it.”
Mr. Pritchett was not sure of any such thing. He wondered what the woman would say if he told her how the idea for this trip came to him.
AFTER MR. PRITCHETT HAD BROUGHT HER HOME FROM THE hospital, Mrs. Pritchett sat on the couch all day, looking at the window. She had always loved the view of the bridge and the sun setting beyond it, the entire vista framed by the camellias she had planted. But now she stared as though there was nothing outside but fog. The pills the psychiatrist had given her put a vacant smile on her face that was worse than out-and-out sadness. Mr. Pritchett was afraid to go to work and leave her, but when he was at home with her all day, that unasked question-
Mrs. Pritchett had been a meticulous housekeeper, priding herself on taking care of the big house by herself. But now there were dirty dishes stacked on the sideboards, unread newspapers spilling across the floor, dust bunnies in corners that smelled of despair. The maid who came in once a week didn’t make more than a dent in the disorder.
Tidying up one evening, he had come across an old travel magazine Mrs. Pritchett must have picked up somewhere. There had been an article on old palaces in India being converted to hotels. A photograph of a spacious, marble-floored bedroom: a four-poster piled with red bolsters, a peacock perched on a windowsill, a curtain lifted in a foreign wind. On another day he would have found the room outlandish. This time, on an impulse, he had asked if she would like to go.
Something had stirred in her eyes for the first time since the hospital. “ India?” she had asked. She had stretched out her hand and taken the magazine from him. Now they were trapped beneath several stories of rubble.
It was not Mrs. Pritchett’s fault, but Mr. Pritchett couldn’t stop himself from blaming her. But for her, he could have been in his office right now, its cool, white walls, its spare furnishings, its view of the Bay Bridge, those perfectly proportioned metal girders that he liked to contemplate while mulling over a tricky account.
He said none of this, but it seemed that the young woman sensed something. She fumbled in a pocket and handed him a stick of gum. How could she bear to perform this simple act? Didn’t she realize they might not be rescued in time? He held the gum in his hand. In the dark, someone was sobbing quietly. It sounded like the Chinese teenager. Her grandmother spoke in a soft, cotton-wool voice until she grew quiet.
A lump formed in Mr. Pritchett’s throat-no doubt an aftereffect of shock. He wanted to tell the woman that he was afraid of dying in a slow, drawn-out way, from starvation or maybe lack of oxygen. He didn’t feel too good about the possibility of a fast death, either. An image of himself being crushed under the rubble from an aftershock had flashed in his brain several times already. Instead of speaking, he got off his chair to sit cross-legged beside her, though he could not remember the last time he’d sat on the floor. He was embarrassed at how stiff his leg muscles were, his knees sticking up like little hills. And he so proud of being in good shape, of running on the treadmill for an hour at the gym, keeping up with younger men. Then he realized it did not matter. He opened the wrapper and bit down on the gum. The flavor of Juicy Fruit filled his mouth until his salivary glands ached.
“Feel,” the young woman said. She took his hand in her good one. He mistook her intentions and his heart hammered with shock and contraband excitement. But she merely guided his hand all the way back to the edge of the carpet. His fingers came away wet. Water was seeping in from somewhere.
“Oh God!” he said. “We’re going to drown.” He scrambled to his feet to warn the others, but her hand closed around his ankle.
“Hush,” she said. “The water isn’t coming in that fast. I wasn’t even going to tell you, but it was too frightening, knowing it all by myself.”
In angry panic, he kicked at her hand. Stupid girl. She was going to get them all killed.
“Stop that!” she admonished him. “Let them rest. It’s not like we can do anything about it.”
The truth in her words pulled him down like gravity. When his heartbeat slowed, he could hear the sounds of sleep around him, breath moving in and out like waves in a cove. He felt a curious satisfaction, as though he were watching over fellow knights exhausted by a quest. As though he were responsible for their brief, trustful peace.
5
They awoke to dampness, the carpet smelling like a dog caught in rain. Everyone could see that the water was rising. And although it was happening very slowly, there was something about the slurping sound the carpet made as they stepped on it that caused panic to swirl in their stomachs. The phones were still dead. No one had tried to rescue them yet, which probably meant that the earthquake had done a huge amount of damage and the authorities were overwhelmed. The time had come to open the door. Cameron felt as though his lungs were filling with ice. He was not a praying man, but he closed his eyes and took a shallow breath (that’s all he could manage) and tried to feel his center, as the holy man had taught him. Then he told them.
When he heard the African American’s announcement, which was an admission that he had been right all this time, Tariq’s heart leaped in vindication. But he conducted himself with admirable restraint, giving only a small, righteous sniff before he pushed past the others and laid a proprietary hand on the doorknob. He had scoured the entire area and found no other avenue of escape, but now they would get out, he was sure of it. He beckoned to Mr. Pritchett and Mangalam to hurry up and join him. They took turns pulling at the door, then tried it together. But the door was stuck fast. Tariq kicked at it-which, Mr. Pritchett pointed out, did not improve matters. The two men glowered at each other.
Cameron walked to the back with Mangalam to see if he could unearth any tools. He knew he should hurry, but a strange lethargy had taken him over. The squelch of his shoes on the wet carpet reminded him of a summer he’d spent with cousins out on a farm in East Texas, where his aunt had sent him to get him away from bad influences. That part hadn’t worked. He’d found trouble there, too. He was a trouble magnet, as his aunt liked to
