"I...I think so..."
"There certainly aren't any trains...and we can't hear any in the distance...but there are doors going everywhere. Oh, and there's an escalator, but it's broken. All dusty, and some of the treads are broken." He pauses, and when he speaks again he does so in a lower voice, as if afraid of being overheard. "People are leaving. Some climbed the escalator-I saw them-but most are using the doors. I guess I'll have to leave, too. For one thing, there's nothing to eat. There's a candy machine, but that's broken, too."
"Are you...honey, are you hungry?"
"A little. Mostly what I'd like is some water. I'd kill for a cold bottle of Dasani."
Annie looks guiltily down at her own legs, still beaded with water. She imagines him licking off those beads and is horrified to feel a sexual stirring.
"I'm all right, though," he adds hastily. "For now, anyway. But there's no sense staying here. Only..."
"What? What, Jimmy?"
"I don't know which door to use."
Another beep.
"I wish I knew which one Mrs. Corey took. She's got my damn cards."
"Are you..." She wipes her face with the towel she wore out of the shower; then she was fresh, now she's all tears and snot. "Are you scared?"
"Scared?" he asks thoughtfully. "No. A little worried, that's all. Mostly about which door to use."
Find your way home, she almost says. Find the right door and find your way home. But if he did, would she want to see him? A ghost might be all right, but what if she opened the door on a smoking cinder with red eyes and the remains of jeans (he always traveled in jeans) melted into his legs? And what if Mrs. Corey was with him, his baked deck of cards in one twisted hand?
Beep.
"I don't need to tell you to be careful about the FedEx man anymore," he says. "If you really want him, he's all yours."
She shocks herself by laughing.
"But I did want to say I love you-"
"Oh honey I love you t-"
"-and not to let the McCormack kid do the gutters this fall, he works hard but he's a risk-taker, last year he almost broke his f**king neck. And don't go to the bakery anymore on Sundays. Something's going to happen there, and I know it's going to be on a Sunday, but I don't know which Sunday. Time really is funny here."
The McCormack kid he's talking about must be the son of the guy who used to be their caretaker in Vermont...only they sold that place ten years ago, and the kid must be in his mid-twenties by now. And the bakery? She supposes he's talking about Zoltan's, but what on earth-
Beep.
"Some of the people here were on the ground, I guess. That's very tough, because they don't have a clue how they got here. And the pilot keeps screaming. Or maybe it's the co-pilot. I think he's going to be here for quite awhile. He just wanders around. He's very confused."
The beeps are coming closer together now.
"I have to go, Annie. I can't stay here, and the phone's going to shit the bed any second now, anyway." Once more in that I'm-scolding-myself voice (impossible to believe she will never hear it again after today; impossible not to believe) he mutters, "It would have been so simple just to...well, never mind. I love you, sweetheart."
"Wait! Don't go!"
"I c-"
"I love you, too! Don't go!"
But he already has. In her ear there is only black silence.
She sits there with the dead phone to her ear for a minute or more, then breaks the connection. The non-connection. When she opens the line again and gets a perfectly normal dial tone, she touches star-sixty-nine after all. According to the robot who answers her page, the last incoming call was at nine o'clock that morning. She knows who that one was: her sister Nell, calling from New Mexico. Nell called to tell Annie that her plane had been delayed and she wouldn't be in until tonight. Nell told her to be strong.
All the relatives who live at a distance-James's, Annie's-flew in. Apparently they feel that James used up all the family's Destruction Points, at least for the time being.
There is no record of an incoming call at-she glances at the bedside clock and sees it's now 3:17 P.M.-at about ten past three, on the third afternoon of her widowhood.
Someone raps briefly on the door and her brother calls, "Anne? Annie?"
"Dressing!" she calls back. Her voice sounds like she's been crying, but unfortunately, no one in this house would find that strange. "Privacy, please!"
"You okay?" he calls through the door. "We thought we heard you talking. And Ellie thought she heard you call out."
"Fine!" she calls, then wipes her face again with the towel. "Down in a few!"
"Okay. Take your time." Pause. "We're here for you." Then he clumps away.