Max didn’t want her to cry. He said, “Maybe he’s playing a trombone,” as though the subject were absurd.
Carla was surprised. She leaned back on the sofa and her deep brown, almost black eyes looked up at the ceiling. Her face smoothed while she looked. Finally, she said calmly, “You’re right. If he’s playing something it would make a lot of noise.”
“But it’s all pretty ridiculous,” Max said. He had no desire to be sympathetic. Anyway, it was obvious that pity only made her mad. “It’s just that everyone is scared by the idea that life and death happen without any reason. They think you’re born because your mother wanted you so much or because God wanted another great home-run hitter to play for the Yankees. And they think you die because you’ve been bad or careless — you smoked or you committed adultery or you forgot to put on your seat belt. That way, even though you can never be good enough or careful enough to live forever, at least you can try. But if it’s out of our control, if it makes no sense and just happens, then there’s no reason to do anything.”
“There’s no reason to love,” Carla said to the ceiling.
“People don’t so much believe in God as that they choose not to believe in nothing.” Max didn’t think this was much of a philosophy, but it was the best he could do.
Carla lowered the ancient and lovely form of her face to his level and looked straight at him. Her dark eyes were wide under her thick circular eyebrows. Max watched her pouting and tempting mouth. Being with her in the perfect little living room he felt serene. After a moment of consideration, Carla shook her head no. She said in the relaxed voice of honesty, “I’m sorry. I can’t do it. I believe in him. He may be a fucking bastard — He was a fucking bastard to me—” Max’s worst fear came true; her eyes filled with tears and she was crying.
“No.” Max took her hand. He stood up, pulling her hand at the same time. It was cold to the touch. That shocked him. The apartment was hot and she looked hot — in her dark hair and dark eyes and white T-shirt — but her hand was cold and unloved.
His touch stopped her tears. “What are you doing?”
“Let’s get out of here.”
“No!” She pulled to free her hand; it was not only as cold as ice but just as slippery. It slid out. She hid it under her leg. “I don’t go outside! Didn’t they tell you?”
“Yes. But you’re safe with me. Nothing bad can happen to you with me. Didn’t you read about me in the papers? Everyone with me lived. With me you’re safe.”
Carla frowned; then she smiled her crooked smile. “You must think I’m very stupid,” she said in good humor.
“No!” Max was appalled. He slid off the love seat, dropped to his knees and pleaded. “I’m not lying. You are safe with me. I can’t explain why. But I’m not lying.”
“You’re serious,” she said, more as an observation than a question. “What are you telling me? There’s no God but there’s you?”
Max leaned toward her on his knees and extended his hands in a plea. “Come with me, Carla. I promise you’ll be safe.”
Carla beamed at him, as if he had done something delightful. From behind he heard her mother make a noise.
“What are you doing!” the old woman said. He felt her hand on his shoulder, pulling at his sweater. “Get up. Get off your knees.” She abruptly let go of Max and added softly, “Carla…?”
Carla was laughing. She had opened her mouth — it turned out to open very wide — and was letting go of volleys of laughter, aimed at Max by her bright eyes.
Max took them with a smile. His hands were still out, offered to her. He whispered, “Come with me?”
Her mother didn’t make another move to interfere. She stared in dumb admiration at her merry daughter.
“Sure, I’ll go,” Carla said to Max and gave him her hand.
His car was comfortable. It was foreign, a name she didn’t recognize or know how to pronounce. Max told her it was pronounced sob.
“I don’t like that name,” she said and was nervous. The troubles she’d had since the crash whenever she went out had begun. Her hands were moist and her stomach hurt. Each breath stuck in her throat; there seemed to be only a little space left to fill up with air. “Is this a good car?” she said. Her voice was weak and her ears were stopped up with the noise of her own frightened blood. She could hardly hear herself ask the question.
“It’s a very safe car,” he said as he pulled away from the curb. “Very safe and I’m an excellent driver. Never been in an accident — not while I was behind the wheel anyway. And you know what? It doesn’t mean we’re going to survive this ride. Because even if I do everything right, even with us strapped in, and with the marvelous technology of the Saab’s collapsing cage and its reinforced doors and roof, we could still be crushed to death or hurled to death. We’re not safe because of the car or because I drive defensively.”
“What?” she asked. She forgot about trying to absorb air from the small sac of it in her throat. She looked at Max. He smiled at her, at ease and friendly. How old was he? His graying kinky hairs didn’t tell her much, because it was the kind of white hair that can come early. His face was lined at the eyes and mouth, but only a little and he had the kind of fair skin that wrinkled easily. He could be as young as thirty or as old as fifty. “What did you say?” she asked, not really believing she had understood.
“We’re not safe. No matter how good this car is, no matter how carefully I drive. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. You know we’re not safe — that’s why you’re scared.”
Carla laughed. “Everybody else keeps telling me things are safe. You’re just saying the opposite to fool me.”
“No. I’m not playing a mind game. It’s the truth. It’s not safe. In fact, you’re not safe sitting in your apartment. On Mulberry Street you’re hardly more than a mile away from one of the biggest faults in the United States. Someday, maybe in a few minutes, there’ll be seven plus, maybe even an eight earthquake. This city isn’t built for it. You’d be dead. My guess is more than a million people would die right away. And even if you survived you might eventually die. Since this is an island, with all the gas lines and the density — people could be trapped on Manhattan with an inferno around them and no way to escape or to fight it.”
Carla shifted a bit and took a good look at this man, a stranger really, with whom she was now stuck. He looked Jewish to her: very pale skin, a relatively short man with nervous hair who seemed never to have done any physical labor. His hands were smoother than hers; she’d bet they were softer too. But he had good features, a broad smart forehead, beautiful pale blue eyes, a reasonable nose and a wonderful mouth that seemed to curve twice at the ends, subtly down and subtly up so that he could look sad or happy with only a small change in their undulations. “You told me I was safe with you,” she said, feeling betrayed.
“You are. But not because the car is safe or New York is safe. We’re safe because we died already.”
That scared her. Sunlight glared on the cold streets. A beam flashed off a car’s fender, blinding her. She was terrified. Maybe she was actually dead; maybe this was purgatory, believing you were alive, but having no feelings except sad ones and hating the people you love. “I’m not dead!” she yelled.
“No, you’re not,” he said. He steered the car crosstown, heading west. He was calm. “I didn’t say that. I said you’ve died already. You’ve passed through death. You’re alive now. Both of us are. All of the survivors are. Don’t you see? Everybody else”—he gestured at the streets, at the people hurrying to their destinations, hunched against the cold, scurrying with the fear of hunted mice—“they don’t know what it is to die in their minds like we did.”