Yet, tonight the housemates are throwing something of a party.
The six of them are gathered around the dining room table. Along with the canned goods, toilet paper, batteries, candles, blankets, and tools in the cellar, there are a few bottles of rum—which nicely complement the grass brought by Felix (who sheepishly admitted he expected more of a “hippie” gathering than the clearheaded troupe he met upon arriving). Malorie, out of respect for her condition, is the only one who doesn’t partake in the drinking and smoking. Still, some moods are infectious, and, as Rodney Barrett uncharacteristically plays some soft music, Malorie is able to smile, and sometimes even laugh, despite the unfathomable horrors that have become commonplace.
In the dining room there is a piano. Like the stack of humor books beside the dresser in her bedroom, the piano appears as a remnant, almost out of place, from another lifetime.
Right now, Tom is playing it.
“What key is this song in?” Tom, sweating, is yelling across the dining room to Felix, who sits at the table. “Do you know keys?”
Felix smiles and shakes his head. “How the hell would I know? But I’ll sing with you from here, Tom.”
“Please don’t,” Don says, sipping rum from a drinking glass, smiling.
“No, no,” Felix says, grinning, “I’m really very good!”
Felix stumbles as he stands up. He joins Tom at the piano. Together they sing along to “It’s De-Lovely.” The radio rests on a mirrored credenza. The music Rodney Barrett plays clashes quietly with the Cole Porter song.
“How are you doing, Malorie?” Don, sitting across the table, asks her. “How do you like the place so far?”
“I’m okay,” she says. “I think a lot about the baby.”
Don smiles. When he does, Malorie sees sadness in his features. Don, she knows, lost a sister as well. All the housemates have experienced devastating loss. Cheryl’s parents, scared, drove south. She hasn’t spoken to them since. Felix hopes to hear news of his brothers with every random phone call he makes. Jules often speaks of his fiancée, Sydney, whom he found in the gutter outside their apartment building before answering the same ad Malorie found. Her throat was slit. But Tom’s story, Malorie thinks, is the worst. If such a word applies anymore.
Now, watching him behind the piano, Malorie’s heart breaks for him.
For a moment, when “It’s De-Lovely” comes to an end, the radio is audible again. The song Rodney Barrett is playing ends as well. Then he begins talking.
“Listen, listen,” Cheryl is saying. She is crossing the room to where the radio sits. She crouches before it and turns the volume up. “He sounds more depressed than usual.”
Tom ignores the radio. Sweating, sipping from his drink, he fumbles through the opening chords of Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm.” Don is turning to see what Cheryl is talking about. Jules, stroking Victor, sitting on the floor with his back to the wall, turns his head slowly toward the radio.
“Creatures,” Rodney Barrett is saying. His voice drags. “What have you taken from us? What are you doing here? Do you have any purpose at all?”
Don rises from the table and joins Cheryl by the radio. Tom stops playing.
“I’ve never heard him speak directly to the creatures before,” he says from the piano bench.
“We’ve lost mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers,” Rodney Barrett is saying. “We’ve lost wives and husbands, lovers and friends. But nothing stings as much as the children you’ve taken from us. How dare you ask a child to look at you?”
Malorie looks to Tom. He is listening. There is distance in his eyes. She rises and walks to him.
“He’s been heavy before,” Cheryl says about Rodney Barrett. “But never like this.”
“No,” Don says. “Sounds like he’s drunker than we are.”
“Tom,” Malorie says, sitting beside him on the bench.
“He’s going to kill himself,” Don suddenly says.
Malorie looks up, wanting to tell Don to shut up, then hears the same thing Don has. The complete desolation in the voice of Rodney Barrett.
“Today I’m gonna cheat you,” Barrett says. “I’m gonna take it first, the one thing I’ve got left that you can take from me.”
“Oh God,” Cheryl says.
The radio is silent.
“Turn it off, Cheryl,” Jules says. “Turn it off.”
As she reaches for the radio, the sound of a gunshot explodes from the speakers.
Cheryl screams. Victor barks.
“What the fuck just happened?” Felix says, staring blankly toward the radio.
“He did it,” Jules says emptily. “I can’t believe this.”
Then silence.
Tom gets up from the piano bench and turns the radio off. Felix sips from his drink. Jules is on one knee, calming Victor.
Then, suddenly, as if an echo of the gunshot, there is a knock at the front door.
A second knock quickly follows.
Felix steps toward the door and Don grabs his arm.