Margaret watched them watching her, waiting for the rain to stop.
The opening in the ark’s upper deck, facing away from the station, was completely covered by the triple-sewn tarp. Carl, Al and a few volunteers had rigged it last night after Margaret went home. As long as the ground water didn't rise, the interior wouldn't take on any more water.
At six fourteen in the evening, the world became dark. The clouds looked black in their thickness. The rain fell, and fell, then dropped suddenly to a drizzle.
The blackness of the clouds faded to a swirling gray.
The rain stopped.
The change was sudden, happening within a couple of minutes. At first Margaret wasn't sure what was different. The window was rain-spattered, but there was no sound on the flat roof. Everything had stopped. The constant rush of water down the drain pipes flowed with less urgency. Draining, but no longer filling.
She disbelieved what she was sensing. The world outside lightened. No shadows. No bright sunbeam tearing through the clouds, but there was a discernable glow filling the world.
Margaret walked across the room, considered waking Carl asleep half-on and half-off the couch, the black book open against his chest like a sleeping child. She left him and walked downstairs to the garage bay. The doors were closed. She pressed a red button and the town square slowly opened before her.
She took two steps outside.
The rain had stopped. Water dripped from the garage doors, from the sapling Juniper tree on the small, grassy front yard of the station. Dripped from the twin spotlights, which had not yet been turned on for the night.
Margaret went no further towards the common. She waited. Slowly, car doors opened. Sides of mini-vans slid aside. A hundred people emerged from their sanctuaries. Many looked her way, but none approached. Ben, one of the firemen who'd originally helped her begin work on the ark, walked up to stand beside her. Since the day he and the others had stopped helping out of fear for their jobs, he hadn't spoken to her. Margaret understood. Can't make it seem you're one of them.
He stood a while, watching the twilight sky lighten above the thinning clouds, then said, “Is it done?”
“Sure seems that way,” she said with a sigh.
Ben turned to face her. Margaret returned the gaze. Unlike most of the firemen in the station who sported either a moustache or beard, he was clean-shaven. His face was pockmarked with the scars of childhood chicken pox. According to Vince, Ben had almost died from it when he was three years old.
“I mean,” he said, “is it done? All of it?”
Somehow the question, the quietly desperate tone with which it was asked, filled Margaret with a sorrow so deep that she wanted to cry. For Ben, for the late-comers and vultures emerging from their cars like butterflies from chrysalises. They would all be asking this question and she would have an answer, just not one they wanted to hear.
“No,” she said. “It's not over.” She straightened, deciding that if she was to save anyone at all, she needed to be honest. “In thirty-nine days,” she added quietly, “the true flood will come. I don't know how. I don't know if the rain will come back in a few days or next week. Save for those on the arks, the world as we know it will be gone.”
Ben chewed on something, tight-lipped, working it around and around. He looked up to the sky, where a few patches of early evening blue were beginning to show, pouring late sunlight down on the earth like the rain that had preceded it.
“June eighth,” he muttered. His face hardened and the childhood scars faded. He looked at her again, and said quietly, “Fuck you and your stupid boat.”
Margaret laughed, a tired and uncaring sound. She said in a false southern drawl, “Why, Mister Fireman, you say the sweetest things.” She flashed her eyelashes at him. Ben's expression softened, and if Margaret stayed, she might have seen him smile. But she turned and walked back inside. If they were to get the ship righted before nightfall, everyone would have to get back here. Estelle and the others were still at home. The thought of going out among the milling masses did not appeal to her while she was alone. Upstairs, she playfully kicked Carl in the leg and picked up the telephone.
* * *
Neha had worked an abbreviated shift, her light two-day schedule courtesy of Bernard Meyers as an additional incentive for his dinner guests to arrive on time and stay late. The rain stopped at nine-fifteen that night. The clouds thinned, then broke to reveal a sky so clear the stars nearly outshone the barrage of streetlights and lanterns dotting the neighborhood.
She was curled up on the couch, leaning heavily against Suresh. Knowing his wife was coming home at a decent hour, he’d stopped at the Market of India both for food and their extensive Hindi movie collection at the back of the store. Neha was far from the film addict her husband was, but her rounds – shortened as they had been – had been wearing. Forest Grove was more insulated from the flooding casualties because of their location in Boston's Back Bay. Hospitals such as Choate and Winchester, with their suburban clientele, were inundated with drowning victims when the Charles River, already running high with melting snowfall, flooded into streets and basements.
Neha treated three people for electrocution - two from standing in their flooded townhouse basements replacing fuses in their outdated electrical boxes, one from a live wire fallen across Commonwealth Avenue. This, on top of the usual crowded emergency cases that invariably arrived when the weather turned sour.
Neha and Suresh both looked up when the rain stopped. Suresh pressed “mute” on the remote. “Listen,” he said.
Neha did not reply. She slowly sat upright. A steady drip of water on the back porch. She sighed nervously, expectantly. Together they walked to the front door.
The street glistened in the light of the overhead lamps. In bare feet, Neha stepped onto the front porch. Water dripped from the roof into her hair. She laughed, softly, and when she turned to face Suresh, he felt heartened at her obvious joy, and wary. For in such joy, in that wild gleam in her beautiful brown eyes, something was emerging. More than a simple “I told you so” expression. Perhaps a hint of rage, anger at having felt, even subconsciously, that she was in danger.
He wrote off the feeling as paranoia when Neha, beautiful, god-like Neha, kissed him hard on the lips, pulled him with one hand down the steps to the lawn. She released him, laughed, twirled barefoot on the wet grass.
“You see?” she said under the emerging starlight. “No more rain! It's over! Over!” She twirled again, almost stumbled. Suresh ran to catch her. He held her in his arms, kissed her again. This time, the kiss lingered, lips pressed so perfectly that he felt his soul melting into hers.
“I love you,” he whispered, “with everything that I am.”
She touched his face, smiled and said again, “It's over.” Neha twirled away like a school girl across the lawn. Suresh watched her, tried to smile as full and boldly as his wife, and fought to suppress his growing apprehension.
38
Father Nick Mayhew read Sunday's Gospel passage and finishing with a pronounced, “The Word of the Lord,” as he raised the book above his head.
The congregation answered automatically, “Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ,” and sat. Nick moved out from behind the pulpit to address the crowd, pacing in a tight circle before the altar. Hovering behind the pulpit too long bred wandering minds in the listeners. At least that had always been his theory.