'Interesting,' she said.
He peered at her, and felt a little drunk, even though there wasn't so much as a beer inside his system. 'Annie. Do you think all that stuff's true? About me growing up?'
She mulled it over. 'It's up to you.'
He made a little smile. 'Yeah. Your mom would've said something similar.'
'I guess it can't be that bad, then.'
'No.' A thought. It lit up his face with an enthusiasm that made her want to laugh. 'Hey. They got this new plane for the President. A new Air Force One.'
'So?'
'He said, if we were ready, we could fly back with them to Washington. Right now. Today.'
Annie's eyes grew wide. 'Wow. In Air Force One?'
'Yeah. Well…?'
'You're the grown-up.'
'No, but I'm working on it.' He put his key in the door, felt it turn, and was satisfied. He did have a choice. Of a kind. 'Here's the deal,' he said, stepping into the narrow, gloomy hall, thinking this place wasn't so great after all, he wouldn't even miss it. 'You pack. I'll make the phone call.'
'Yeah!' She raced for the stairs.
Too fast for him already. He knew that, just watching her take the steps two at a time. She'd be going to college when he was pushing his mid-fifties. He might not live to see her kids. Life was so cruel, so complex and unforgiving. Sometimes it just made you want to curl up and lie on the ground, wondering at the dead weight of the generations that surrounded you, going back, going forward. All of them expecting something, all of them asking: What about us?
He hesitated in the grey, empty ground-floor hall, and wondered at the pictures, the memories, running through his mind. Helen Wagner and the Pandora's box of files she'd passed over the table. The big, complex, friendly figure of Tim Clarke, vast hand extended, ready to jerk you out into the great wide world the moment you touched it. And, bigger than all of them, the sky on fire, casting its fierce, burning light on Mo's face, still with death, in the shadowy interior of an ancient, run-down barn. This was an image carved deep inside his head, omnipresent, always waiting for some kind of an answer.
'Michael?'
He couldn't miss the thrill, the anticipation inside Annie's distant voice as it echoed around the bare, soulless interior of the apartment block.
'Coming,' he said, then took a deep breath and began to climb the stairs.