Ted wants desperately to bathe, but using water to wash is an inexcusable luxury. There’s hardly enough to go around. In the morning, military water tankers slosh into Bhuj completely full and, by midafternoon, drive back out cavernously empty. From one end of Hamirsar Tank, people skim off brown, opaque liquid and in the other end, shit and piss into the same waters.
But a bucket and sponge — that’s not wasteful. Ted’s lichenous toes scrunch against his socks.
“I mean what I say about the hotel room,” Dev says. “You can take a nap, stretch out on a real bed.”
A real bed. Would his body even remember comfort? Only when he stops moving does he feel achy. “I might,” Ted says. “How’s — your wife?”
“She’s in good health. Good spirits. I have a daughter now too. Arusha. She grows like a vine. She is the stars and the sky to us.”
“Congratulations,” Ted says. “I remember—”
Ted stops. What does he remember? Why must reunions involve reminiscing? For a time, he dreamed of changing Dev’s mind. He relived his errors and tried variations of what should have happened. He should have apologized, early and profusely, even before he had something to apologize for. He should have made certain that Dev had forgiven him. He should have fallen asleep with his arm encircling Dev so that no escape was possible. Each scenario played out with the same end: he and Dev, living together, happy in a way that seemed hazy, effortless happiness, everlasting happiness, happiness as seen from a distance. It was happiness only because it was illusory, and knowing this, Ted reached for it anyway, as if it might come true. But — like the body aches — the things that troubled him at night disappeared when the time to work came.
Maybe this is what Lorraine means by “running away.” You don’t have time to relive your failures when you’re expected to feed the desperate, the destitute.
“What is it?” asks Dev. “What do you remember?”
“Honestly?” he says. “I’ve forgotten what I was trying to remember.”
So — that’s it, then. The end. He still wants Dev; he will always want Dev; and this want will fade — over days, over years — as long as it takes. Irina had asked him this morning if he’d ever gone hungry. Oh — he knows hunger like it’s an internal organ. Sitting next to Dev now, the tub balanced across their knees, he hungers. He knows that Dev loves him, and that this brief contact — his thigh touching Dev’s — will be the extent of their love.
Their spoons scrape against the Styrofoam. They chew in silence. They don’t make a dent in the contents of the tub. It is, after all, meant to feed a family. There’s more food here than they could possibly eat at once.
SIGNS OF LIFE
Four full days of corpses. It’s been six since the earthquake, and three since they pulled out a survivor. Andy’s prepared for this. Each UKFSSART team member undergoes counseling and psychological evaluations before and after every mission. “You will see,” Dr. Cameron says, “many more dead bodies than living ones. But you have to focus on the living.”
Right, then. Miracles. The 1985 Mexico City earthquake. Two weeks after the initial tremor, one woman was found alive in her collapsed apartment building. She had been at her refrigerator, and the refrigerator and kitchen wall collapsed toward each other, forming an inverted V. With the refrigerator door open, she had food, and rain brought a slow trickle of water. She lay there, in darkness, for two weeks.
But this isn’t Mexico, and this isn’t 1985.
The sun lashes Andy’s skin. At first, he was glad to have it after a night in an acrylic blanket no thicker than a flannel shirt. But by afternoon, the heat becomes ghastly, a tongue on his back. In his full kit, he’s a sweat factory. It collects in his boots, mixes with the dust and debris. When he takes off his boots at night, he pours out sludge.
For the past two days, they’ve used video probes to search buildings, snaking the camera as deep as the cable can reach. The team works silently, except when calling orders. They are hypersensitive to sound. A slight scratching or tapping could be a sign of life. On-screen, he sees the obvious dead, heads flattened, bodies pinioned and pulverized, and on physical probes, he shimmies by them, sometimes coming close enough to see a face — dry, cracked lips, a final, frozen word there. He keeps a smear of VapoRub on his upper lip to block the smell. It doesn’t always work.
He fears being too late. Through the grace of God, maybe someone’s trapped in a survivable void, someplace with an air passageway and a steady drop of water from a broken overhead pipe. The rescues from previous days melt underneath the overwhelming possibility of what if?
“Positive thoughts,” Dr. Cameron tells him. “Push other thoughts away. It’s natural for you to have doubts, but don’t let them distract you from your duty.”
“We’re going back to the Ashpura apartments,” says Mike. “With the heavy-lifting equipment, maybe we can find some voids deeper in. We’ve got search dogs too.” His voice sounds thick with dust, the skin beneath his eyes sunken. Around them are the newer arriving teams: the Russians, the French.
The dog handler is a Japanese woman, Emiko. “This is Momo,” she says, roughing the scruff of one of the golden retrievers, “and this is Kami.” She scratches Kami’s muzzle, and he lifts his head to say, Yes, yes.
“Can we pet them?” Les asks.
“Yes, quickly,” she says. “Before they start work.”
Les reaches out tentatively and murmurs, “Hey, girl. How are you, girl?” Others pet the dogs as well, except for Colin, who crosses his arms, face turned down in a grimace, six days of beard speckling his cheeks and chin.
The men barrage Emiko with questions, which she answers with the patience of a schoolteacher: Yes. Four and six years old. In high-stress situations, humans emit a unique chemical odor. Five rescues total. The day holds its promise, thin and transient as the tongue hanging out of Momo’s mouth.
The Ashpura apartments haven’t changed since five days earlier. But Andy can’t tell the difference: all ruined architecture is the same. The building is a sloppy layer cake, the top sheets askew, the ground floor and first floor collapsed under the weight of the upper floors. Cranes peel back layers of concrete. Orange jumpsuits and blue jumpsuits pick through the bricks.
Les helps Emiko out of the truck, and Momo and Kami bound after her. The lads are smitten: Such a pretty lady. And she loves dogs!
Andy prepares for his day with the living and the dead.
The cranes expose new spaces where people possibly could have survived, but the possible soon gives way to the real. Momo and Kami clamber over the debris, noses close to the ground. When they finish, Emiko pulls rawhides out of her pockets, and the dogs chew them desultorily, as if disappointed in themselves. The sun beats on their pelts, tarnishing their golden sheen. Emiko cleans Kami’s nose with a cotton swab, holding his head as steady as possible. Kami twitches, but doesn’t fight. Back on the truck, Les scratches Momo’s ears. He massages her forehead, her jaws, her neck.
“You look like you’re going to kidnap her,” Reg says. “I reckon Emiko would beat you senseless if you tried.”
“I haven’t had a dog since I was fifteen,” Les replies.
“Missus won’t let you have one?” asks Stewart.
“Says they’re bad for the house. But not a day goes by that I don’t find one of her cats mangling the carpet. She’s afraid that a dog would be too rough on Maggie.”
“You could get a little dog,” Stewart says.