“Why so pessimistic?” Alan asked.
“I just don’t want to overwhelm the girl by being too greedy,” Ellen said. “We have a potentially very good thing with Mona and I don’t want us to turn into a bunch of jackals who drive her off with our yard-long shopping list.”
“Girlies love to shop,” Eddie said.
Ellen ignored him and reviewed the list. “Okay, in terms of needs versus wants, this is a pretty reasonable list. But how’s she supposed to carry all this?”
“She could take my shopping cart,” Ruth suggested.
“Old ladies and their shopping carts,” Eddie scoffed.
“I don’t see you making any useful contributions to this discussion,” Ruth sniped.
“Maybe she could boost a car,” Eddie said. “I could tell her how.” No one was surprised that Eddie possessed this know-how.
“You think if she knew how to drive she’d be hoofing it?” Karl said. “How’s she supposed to get through all the forsaken cars down there?”
“Maybe she could just take the shopping cart from the market. It’s not like anyone will mind,” Alan threw in. Nods all around.
“One more thing,” Eddie ventured. “Guns.”
Karl looked askance at Eddie.
“Ooh, I don’t know,” said Ellen, with a slight frown.
“What don’t you know? Guns would come in mighty useful against those fuckers out there.”
“How? We’d be like hunters in a blind shooting at ducks. You can’t shoot them all. We’d still be stuck here.”
“We should have guns,” Eddie reiterated.
“It would be sport shooting, nothing more,” Ellen added.
“So?”
“So what’s the point? I don’t like the thought of guns in the building. You think if you shoot a bunch you’re going to win a prize? This isn’t Coney Island, Eddie.”
Typical patronizing Upper East Side Jewy liberal, Eddie thought. What Ellen thought was, I don’t like the thought of you having guns, Eddie Tommasi. Too dangerous for the rest of us chickens.
“Just ask her, okay?” Eddie said, smoothing his features. “Let her be the judge. She brings ’em back, great. She doesn’t, so be it.”
Having omitted Eddie’s request for firearms, Ellen handed over the list and asked, “Is that too much, Mona?” She’d decided to always address the girl by name when speaking to her. Her theory was that maybe she’d had her sense of identity eroded by walking amongst the undead for however long she’d been out there on her own. Ellen was as determined to reclaim this girl as she and the others were to having her run errands for them.
“Maybe more’n one trip,” Mona mumbled, folding the slip of paper and tucking it in her pocket.
“And you’re cool with going back out there? We don’t want to pressure you.”
“No big.”
And with that she wedged the earbuds in-her signature gesture, like Carson’s golf swing-and rappelled out the window via the ratty rope they’d used to haul her in. When she touched down on the roof of Dabney’s ruined van she looked up at Ellen and the others, all of whom wore the expectant look of latchkey kids afraid mommy would never return.
“I’m getting new rope, too,” she said, dangling the frayed end.
The others nodded yes and Mona climbed off the vehicle, the zombies spreading out with a sibilant anthem of reproach. As she headed north toward Eighty-sixth Street, her Hello Kitty knapsack looking back at them with its vapid beady black eyes, the throng opened and closed, a long, wide mouth that couldn’t devour this one small girl. When she turned the corner everyone but Abe, the self-appointed lookout, left 2B to resume the daily grind. Abe sat and watched as the zombies settled down, some still hissing and spitting like rabid bipedal cats. He pawed his scruffy chin, images of cranky and crotchety cowboy sidekicks floating in his mind. All he needed was to be stirring a pot o’ beans on an open fire to complete the picture, and now, with this Mona girl, the pot o’ beans was attainable.
That’s who I look like, Abe mused. A Jewish Gabby Hayes. Well, not after I shave off this soup strainer. Oh, I can’t wait. He leaned on the windowsill and his smile faded, his stomach soured. From this same vantage point he’d watched this apartment’s previous tenant, Paolo, get devoured down below.
Abe hoped Mona could remove that stigma from this empty dwelling.
22
The sun was setting and although there was plenty of food in the building, Ellen couldn’t stop herself from looking out the window every few minutes. This wasn’t about food, anyway. If anything, at this moment having a full stomach just stoked her agita.
“You’re gonna wear a groove into the floor,” Alan said, in a poor attempt to break the tension.
“I’m just worried, okay? Am I allowed to be worried? She left hours ago and it’s almost dark. Maybe something happened to her. Maybe she isn’t immune and it was some fluke and we sent her out there and now she’s dead. And if that’s the case then it’s all our fault and we’re responsible for sending a young girl to her death.”
Alan opened his mouth to say something and then shut it. He’d already paid lip service to Ellen’s anxiety and it had done no good. It was troubling that Mona had been gone for the better part of the day. He’d posited several plausible scenarios. It was possible that several items on the list had proven more difficult to procure than others and that Mona was traipsing all around town in an attempt to accommodate every request. It was also possible that she had forgotten how to find her way back, even though she had neatly printed the address of the building in big block letters on the list. Maybe she lost the list. It was imaginable that she had gotten to one of her destinations and gotten jammed up by the zombies-but that she was all right. She was just temporarily waylaid and would be back soon. For Ellen’s sake he had to keep the propositions upbeat.
But it was also quite reasonable to assume that Mona had been devoured.
Ellen’s eyes darted back and forth from the street below to the sky above, both growing darker and more ominous. She wound her hair around her fingers and chewed the ends. Alan again attempted levity by suggesting she’d get split ends doing that but Ellen just looked at him like he was an idiot. Alan sat there internally reciting the names of hair products and quoting lines from TV commercials. “If you don’t look good, we don’t look good.” Vidal Sassoon. Pantene Pro-V. Paul Mitchell. L’Oreal. What the hell was the one with those stupid commercials where girls would rub it into their scalps in public and semipublic places? And for all intents and purposes they’d be having noisy orgasms? Then they’d emerge, from like the toilet on an airplane, tousling their shimmering manes and everyone would look at them with lust and envy? What was that stuff? Some herbal something? Maybe Mona should pick up some of that. Ellen could do with some shiny locks. What kind of thinking is this? Yesterday there’s no food. All that matters is some clean, drinkable water and food that will sustain the organism for another twenty-four hours. Now it’s “Ellen could use a nice shampoo.” I must be out of my friggin’ gourd.
“Seriously, Ellen, I’m sure she’s fine.”
“Oh really? You can say that authoritatively? You know that for a fact do you? How interesting. Because, see, the way I see it, none of us knows a damned thing right now and for all we know chunks of her are being digested-if those things even digest. I mean, do they? Do they eat and shit and breathe? What do they do besides stumble around and eat us when they can? They sure made short work of Mike. They gobbled him down like no tomorrow. But are there piles of zombie scat out there composed of my husband? Are there? We don’t know. I don’t know. None of us knows anything!”