And here she discovered the island’s artist laureate, slumped against a wall. Debbie stopped. Loopy regarded her idly, beret twisted in her hands.
Hi, said Debbie.
No, said Loopy, low. I’m feeling very low.
Oh yeah?
All my work, said Loopy, with a sweeping gesture toward the adjoining galleries, is going to be destroyed. And then what will I have? What’s an artist robbed of her work?
I’m actually looking for someone, said Debbie, inching past.
Wait.
Debbie froze.
Listen to me, said Loopy. All of you, you thought I was serious. The whole time, you never knew. This, all of this — none of you ever saw what it was.
What was that? said Debbie.
You think I didn’t know how absurd I seemed? I mean, Loopy? This ridiculous outfit? Paintings of people on TV? Not that it matters now. It’s all amounted to nothing, anyway.
Yeah, said Debbie, edging up the spiral staircase, that sucks, good luck.
Nothing. Nothing! NO-THING. .
Debbie climbed, Loopy’s squawking faded as she curled up and up, the tap of her sneakers, the swish of the banister under her hand, spiralling all the way to the towertop gallery. She tried the handle: locked. Her legs weakened, her spirits felt punctured —
A voice called, Who is it?
And Debbie said, It’s me.
Silence. A whispering of feet. A pause.
The catch clattered, the door opened, and standing there was Adine.
It’s you, she said.
Hi, said Debbie.
They stared at each other for a moment.
You’re not wearing the goggles, said Debbie.
No, said Adine. I took them off.
From somewhere in the Museum came a feeble, plaintive keening.
I guess you saw Loopy? said Adine.
Debbie grinned. Nothing, nothing.
No-thing! laughed Adine. And they kissed.
You found me, Adine said, pulling away. You came.
Of course, said Debbie. Of course I did. I’m sorry.
It’s good to see you, Deb.
Yeah. It’s good to see you too.
Check it out, said Adine, Sand City’s finally getting its due.
The model had melted into sludge inside the glass cabinet. The city’s topography endured in two lumps — the Mews and Mount Mustela — and a divot where People Park had been. Everything else was mud.
Magic, said Debbie.
Oh well, said Adine. I suppose it was always meant to be like this, wasn’t it? Before you stopped me, I mean.
Yeah. Debbie watched her. I knew you’d be here.
Adine moved to the window. Not much sense making up stories now, with all that’s happening. Was it him, all this ridiculousness, do you think? Or just nature?
Whose nature? said Debbie.
Adine laughed thinly.
Hey, we should probably go, said Debbie. The water’s coming up.
Go? Go where?
Onto the roof?
And then?
And then, I don’t know, wait to be rescued.
By?
By whoever! Why does it matter?
Where will this whoever take us? To wherever, right?
Adine’s hair drooped, gone was its usual ecstatic frizz. The sunset highlighted the puckered flesh across her forehead and around her eyes, those scars from a lifetime ago, her half-buried life, preserved in wounds.
Debbie said, Are you worried about Sam?
A pause. A slow blink. A swift sharp dip of her chin.
You shouldn’t, I’m sure he’s fine. They got all the people off the Islet, I heard. And over on the mainland I’m sure they’ll reunite people with one another —
Who’s this they? The NFLM?
No, not just them. The rescue people. Other people. Everyone.
That’s this mysterious whoever, right? They is just whoever, to take us wherever. Well they might as well take us nowhere. We might as well stay.
Hey, no, come on. Debbie moved beside her. But Adine pointed her face at the setting sun, which lowered blithely, almost obstinately, into the swollen lake.
Come on, said Debbie again. We’ll find Sam on the other side.
Deb, can we just not, for a second? Can we just wait here? I’ll go, I’ll go. I’ll go when we have to. But for now can we stay, just for a minute? And watch the sun go down?
Okay.
Will you stay with me?
Yes.
Say it.
I’ll stay with you.
They stood together at the window and watched the last dim shreds of daylight wane. People Park was gone. Cinecity was gone. A few buildingtops resisted the water, boats whizzed among them collecting survivors, and Podesta Tower rose defiantly above it all, a fist holding aloft a single finger — exultant maybe, or a last act of dissent before the end.
The dipping sun striated the sky: a pink ribbon upon the lake, up to deeper reds, then blues, before everything dissolved in blackness.
They waited.
The colours drained.
Everything darkened.
The sun was a wound replicated in the lake — then a slice, then a nick. At last its final sliver and reflected double swallowed each other. But before darkness fell completely, a vein of green light flashed across the horizon, sudden and blazing, then instantly gone. Did you see that, said Debbie, and Adine said, Yeah, a comet or something, and they pressed close and peered hard at the skyline. But the miracle was over: a brilliant, ethereal shiver, vanished, and all it left behind was night.
WAVES SWILLED into the tenement’s upper floors, Kellogg and Elsie-Anne were pushed to a corner of the roof of Laing Tower South. He held his daughter, she let herself be held, though her eyes fixed upon the IFC billboard ten blocks north, the top of a mainsail lifting from the shipwreck of the Golden Barrel Taverne. Walkie-talkie held high, Dack strode all over the roof, flipping through static to find a signal, while the lake came up and up and the crowd waited, hushed and helpless.
WATER CASCADED into People Park in syrupy chutes. Crocker Pond topped its banks, gushed into the common, sending the empty rowboat, floating there since midday, out with it. Screams were silenced as it bowled three people under, they came up spluttering and bloodied, the park’s basin filled rapidly, there was nowhere to go. Helpers in rubber dinghies and canoes and kayaks offered rescue at the hilltops. But how could anyone swim up waterfalls?
The only high ground was the gazebo, toward it the crowd moved through the churning current, Pearl among them. A girl struggled along beside her — and a sudden swell took her out at the knees in a flailing of limbs. The Grammar was swept away too, but Pearl kept going, reached the stage, climbed up.
A man was trying vainly to open, dislodge, or destroy Raven’s trunk. He hammered his fists on the lid, kicked its sides, the metal dented but the thing didn’t budge. Fug you, fug this, he screamed, a hopeless character with HOPE tattooed on his knuckles, then flung himself into the water and started swimming — where? Pearl took his place upon the ducktaped X. She tried the lid. No luck, shut tight.
Past everything, up the northern hillock, the Thunder Wheel arced out of the flood. From its highest seat Griggs watched the Institute swimteam coming for him, one Thundercloud to the next, teeth gritted. They’d formed a human ladder, leapfrogging their way up. And now others were chasing them: a middle-aged woman in workout attire reached the lowest student and savaged him with a chop to the kidneys, he dropped into the water. Resurfacing he clambered after the woman, grabbed her by the ankles, her face smacked a rung as she fell, and when her body hit the water it didn’t come back up.