As Alex crossed through the living room, he found Bri and Julie hard at work. "Where are you going:" Bri asked him.
"To Papi's office," Alex said.
"Papi won't like that," Julie said.
"He'll understand," Bri said. "Especially when he sees how many cans of mushrooms you got for him, Julie."
Alex grinned at the thought of Papi eating nothing but mushrooms for the next month. He left the apartment and walked the few feet to Papi's office. It wasn't much more than a supply closet, but Papi had a desk, and maybe he kept some cash there.
There was a minifridge in the corner, and out of curiosity, Alex opened it. There were three cans of beer and an untouched six-pack. Well, if Julie drove him to drink, Alex wouldn't have to go very far.
In Papi's desk drawer he found a directory of all the apartments, a deck of cards, and two envelopes. Both envelopes were sealed, but Alex could tell they held keys. One envelope said 11F, the other 14J. 11F felt like it had money in it. Curiosity and desperation overcame fear, and Alex opened the envelope. He found two twenties and a paint chip. Apparently Papi had agreed to paint 11F and was to use the cash to buy the paint. Well, if Papi couldn't make it home for a few days, the odds were neither could 11F or 14J.
Alex put the envelopes in his pants pocket. He debated about the beer, but then decided it was safer in the apartment. Besides, Papi would want a beer the minute he got home, whenever that might be.
Between his tip money, the couple of bucks in Papi's pants, and 11Fs forty dollars, Alex figured they had a little more than fifty in cash. With the food in the house they should be okay until Mami got home.
He went back to the apartment, beers in tow. "Papi's really going to kill you," Julie said.
"I'm holding them for him," Alex said. "Count them. Nine cans."
"When do you think Papi'll get home?" Briana asked.
"Late next week probably," Alex replied. "They have to get the airports open first, so it'll take a while."
"Do you think Mami'll be back tonight?" Bri asked.
"Mami may be stuck in Queens," Alex replied. "Father Franco said the subways aren't running."
"It's funny to think she's stuck in Queens and Papi's stuck in Puerto Rico," Bri said. "Like they were both really far away."
"What's funny about it?" Julie asked. "How do we even know7 they're okay?"
"Our Madre Santisima is looking after them," Bri said. "Isn't that right, Alex."
"Of course she is," Alex said, praying that the Most Holy Mother's arms were big enough to embrace the millions of souls, dead and gone, crying for her mercy.
Saturday, May 21
Alex knew his sisters would expect to go to Mass on Sunday, but he wasn't sure he wanted them to hear what Father Franco might say. It didn't help that the panic inside him was growing stronger and more uncontrollable by the minute. He told himself repeatedly that it had been Papi who'd called, that Bri couldn't be wrong, that it was just a matter of time before Papi made his way back home. But he couldn't shake the image of the tiny seaside town being swept away, Papi screaming as twenty-foot tidal waves carried him to certain death.
And Mami. The longer they went without hearing from her, the more terrified Alex became that they never would. Had she drowned on the subway like thousands of others?
It was only three days, Alex reminded himself, and three days was nothing when the world was in chaos and communication was impossible.
They had plenty of food. They had a home. They had the church. They had each other. They had Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Lorraine. If it came to it, they had Carlos. They were better off than millions of people. And it wasn't as though they didn't have Papi and Mami. They just didn't know how they were.
It would be all right. It had to be.
Still, before he let his sisters go to Mass, he wanted to know as much as he could about what was going on, at least in their neighborhood. So he decided to take a walk.
"Where are you going?" Bri asked with that tinge of fear he'd come to expect in her voice.
"Just for a walk," Alex said.
"Can we come with you?" Julie asked.
"No," Alex said.
"Why not?" Julie demanded. "I'm bored. There's nothing to do here. Why can't we go on a walk with you?"
Because I'm trying to protect you! Alex wanted to yell, but he knew that would only scare Bri.
"You'll be going to church tomorrow," he said instead. "Have either of you done any homework since Wednesday?"
They shook their heads.
"I expect to see it completely done by the time I get home," Alex said, the way Mami would have. "And I tell you what. If I find anything is open, a store or a coffee shop, we'll go as soon as 1 get back. All right?"
"You won't be gone long?" Bri asked.
"Not long," Alex said. "I promise. Now start your homework."
"Come on, Julie," Bri said. "I'll help you with your math."
"I don't need any help," Julie grumbled, but she followed her older sister to their bedroom. Alex breathed a sigh of relief. He couldn't blame his sisters for wanting to get out. But they had to be protected.
He knew he needed to check the bulletin board at St. Margaret's, if for no other reason than to see if there was a notice about the schools reopening. But instead of walking east to the church, he went west.
Alex told himself as he walked toward Riverside Drive that the Hudson River would be fine, but even so, when he got to the river, he felt a sense of relief. The river was agitated, but that could have been from the heavy rains on Thursday. New Jersey, across the river, was right where it belonged. If rivers had tides, and Alex had to admit he didn't know if they did, they didn't seem too bad.
Alex turned around and began the walk to St. Margaret's. There was hardly any traffic compared to the days before, and there weren't many people on the streets, but there was plenty of noise coming from the apartment buildings. Alex grinned. Usually when the weather was this hot, people had their air conditioners going, but with no electricity, windows were open instead. He heard quarrels, laughter, scoldings, even lovemaking, many of the same sounds he'd heard in Uncle Jimmy's neighborhood, only now in English instead of Spanish.
But for all the sounds of life on Eighty-eighth Street, Broadway felt dead. Nothing seemed to be open, not the supermarket, or the coffee shop, or the deli, or the Korean grocery, or the dry cleaner, or the Laundromat, or the liquor store, or the florist, or the Chinese takeout, or the movie theater. He saw a couple of cops but very few other people walking around. Even the fire engines and ambulances seemed to have stopped their downtown runs.
At least St. Margaret's had people in it. The bulletin board was surrounded, and it took Alex a couple of minutes before he could see everything that had been posted.
There were so many sheets that the walls around the bulletin board had been drafted into service as well. The first thing he noticed was a listing of the dead. There weren't really that many names on it: two sheets, single spaced, three columns across, alphabetical order.
Alex forced himself to look at the Ms. Nobody named Morales. His knees buckled with relief. As long as Mami wasn't on the list, there was no reason to think she was dead. That was something he could tell his sisters.
"Not many names," a man said, looking over the list.
"Most of the bodies can't be identified," another man replied. "A lot washed out to the sea. And they're still removing bodies from the subways. You looking for anyone in particular?"
"No," the first man said. "Well, a couple of people, but not family. How about you?"
The second man shook his head. "There's one friend we're concerned about but that's it. We're lucky."