He shrugs, trotting next to me like a happy dog. “It’s the kind of thing you need to see for yourself.” He toes a bit of dirt over a dying campfire. “Looks like we came too late for the party tonight.”
As we progress through the clearing, Alex points out every “house” and tells me a little bit about the people who live there, speaking all the time in a whisper, so we won’t wake anybody. Some stories I’ve heard before; others are totally new. I’m not even fully concentrating, but I’m grateful for the sound of his voice, low and steady and familiar and reassuring. Even though the settlement isn’t that big—maybe an eighth of a mile long—I feel as though the world has suddenly split open, revealing layers and depths I could never have imagined.
No walls. No walls anywhere. Portland, by comparison, seems tiny, a blip.
Alex stops in front of a dingy gray trailer. Its windows are missing and have been replaced by squares of multicolored fabric, pulled taut.
“And, um, this is me.” Alex gestures awkwardly. It’s the first time he has seemed nervous all night, which makes me nervous. I swallow back the sudden and totally inappropriate urge to laugh hysterically.
“Wow. It’s—it’s—”
“It’s not much, from the outside,” Alex jumps in. He looks away, chewing on a corner of his lip. “Do you want to, um, come in?”
I nod, pretty sure that if I tried to speak right now I would only squeak again. I’ve been alone with him countless times, but this feels different. Here there are no eyes waiting to catch us, no voices waiting to shout at us, no hands ready to tear us apart—just miles and miles of space. It’s exciting and terrifying at the same time. Anything could happen here, and when he bends down to kiss me it’s as though the weight of the velvety darkness around us, the soft flutters of the trees, the pitter-patter of the unseen animals, come beating into my chest, making me feel as though I’m dissolving and expanding into the night. When he pulls away it takes me a few seconds to catch my breath.
“Come on,” he says. He leans a shoulder against the door of the trailer until it pops open.
Inside it’s very dark. I can make out only a few rough outlines, and when Alex shuts the door behind us even those vanish, sucked up into black.
“There’s no electricity out here,” Alex says. He’s moving around, bumping up against things, cursing every so often under his breath.
“Do you have candles?” I ask. The trailer smells strange, like autumn leaves that have fallen off their branches. It’s nice. There are other smells too—the sharp citrus sting of cleaning fluid, and very faintly, the tang of gasoline.
“Even better.” I hear rustling, and a spray of water descends on me from above. I let out a small shriek and Alex says, “Sorry, sorry. I haven’t been here in a while. Watch out.” More rustling. And then, slowly, the ceiling above my head trembles and folds back on itself, and all of a sudden the sky is revealed in its enormity. The moon sits almost directly above us, streaming light into the trailer and crowning everything in silver. I see now that the “ceiling” is, in fact, one enormous plastic tarp, a bigger version of the kind of thing you’d use to cover a grill. Alex is standing on a chair, rolling it back, and with every inch more of the sky is revealed and everything inside only seems to glow brighter.
My breath catches in my throat. “It’s beautiful.”
Alex shoots me a look over his shoulder and grins. He continues folding back the tarp, pausing every few minutes to stop, scoot his chair forward, and begin again. “One day a storm took out half the roof. I wasn’t here, fortunately.” He, too, is glowing, his arms and shoulders touched with silver. Just as I did on the night of the raids, I think of the portraits in church of the angels with their sprouting wings. “I decided I might as well get rid of the whole thing.” He finishes with the tarp and jumps lightly off the chair, turning to face me, smiling. “It’s my own convertible house.”
“It’s incredible,” I say, and really mean it. The sky looks so close. I feel like I could reach up and slap my fingers on the moon.