Blind Lake

“Ultimately, no. Anyhow, I didn’t think of it as a muckraking biography. He was a brilliant scientist. When the book came out it got a good initial reaction, some of it just schadenfreude — rich people have enemies — but some of it balanced. Then Galliano had his accident, or committed suicide, depending on who you listen to, and his family made an issue of the book. Yellow Journalism Drives Benefactor to His Death. That makes a nice story too.”

“You were in court, right?”

“I testified at a congressional inquiry.”

“Thought I read something about that.”

“They threatened to jail me for contempt. For not revealing my sources. Which wouldn’t have helped, anyway. My sources were all well-known public figures and by the time of the inquiry they had all issued statements siding with Galliano’s estate. By that time, in the public mind, Galliano was a dead saint. Nobody wants to conduct an autopsy on a dead saint.”

“Bad luck,” Charlie said. “Or bad timing.”

Chris watched the curtains of snow beyond the passenger-side window, snow trapped on the car’s exposed surfaces, snow piling up behind the mirrors. “Or bad judgment. I took a tilt at one of the biggest windmills on the planet. I was naive about how things worked.”

“Uh-huh.” Charlie drove in silence for a while. “You got a good one this time, though. The story of the Blind Lake quarantine, told from the inside out.”

“Assuming any of us ever get to tell it.”

“You want me to drop you in front of the community center?”

“If it’s not too far out of your way.”

“I’m in no hurry. Though Boomer’s probably getting hungry. I thought they were getting all you stray day-timers billeted with locals.”

“I’m on the waiting list. Actually, I’ve got a meeting tomorrow.”

“Who’d they set you up with?”

“A Dr. Hauser.”

“Marguerite Hauser?” Charlie smiled inscrutably. “They must be putting all the pariahs in one place.”

“Pariahs?”

“Nah, forget it. I shouldn’t talk about Plaza politics. Hey, Chris, you know the nice thing about Boomer, my hound?”

“What’s that?”

“He doesn’t have a clue about the quarantine. He doesn’t know and he doesn’t care, as long as he gets fed on a regular schedule.”

Lucky Boomer, Chris thought.

Eleven

Tess woke at seven, her usual weekday morning time, but she knew even before she opened her eyes that there wouldn’t be school today.

It had snowed all day yesterday and it had been snowing when she went to bed. And now, this morning, even without pulling back the lacy blinds that covered her bedroom window, she could hear the snow. She heard it sifting against the glass, a sound as gentle and faint as mouse whispers, and she heard the silence that surrounded it. No shovels scraping driveways, no cars grinding their wheels, just a blanketing white nothing. Which meant a big snow.

She heard her mother bustling in the kitchen downstairs, humming to herself. No urgency there, either. If Tess went back to sleep her mother would probably let her stay in bed. It was like a weekend morning, Tess thought. No jolting awake but letting the world seep in slowly. Slowly, willfully, she opened her eyes. The daylight in her room was dim and almost liquid.

She sat up, yawned, adjusted her nightgown. The carpet was cold against her bare feet. She scooted down the bed closer to the window and drew back the curtain.

The windowpane was all white, opaque with whiteness. Snow had mounded impressively on the outside sill, and, inside, moisture had condensed into traceries of frost. Tess immediately put out her hand, not to touch the icy window but to hover her palm above it and feel the chill against her skin. It was almost as if the window were breathing coolness into the room. She was careful not to disturb the delicate lines of ice, the two-dimensional snowflake patterns like maps of elfin cities. The ice was on the inside of the window, not the outside. Winter had put its hand right through the glass, Tess thought. Winter had reached inside her bedroom.

She stared at the frost patterns for a long time. They were like written words that wouldn’t reveal their meanings. In class last week, Mr. Fleischer had talked about symmetry. He had talked about mirrors and snowflakes. He had showed the class how to fold a piece of paper and cut patterns into the fold with safety scissors. And when you opened the paper up, the random slashes became beautiful. Became enigmatic masks and butterflies. You could do the same thing with paint. Blot the paper, then fold it down the middle while the paint was still wet. Unfold it and the blots would be eyes or moths or arches or rainbow rays.

The frost patterns on the window were more like snowflakes, as if you had folded the paper not once but two times, three times, four… but no one had folded the glass. How did the ice know what shapes to make? Did the ice have mirrors built into it?

“Tess?”

Her mother, at the door.

“Tess, it’s after nine… There’s no school today, but don’t you want to get up?”

After nine? Tess looked at her bedside clock to confirm it. Nine oh eight. But hadn’t it been seven o’clock just moments ago?

She reached out impulsively and put a melting palm print on the window. “I’m coming!” Her hand was instantly cold.

“Cereal for breakfast?”

“Cornflakes!” She almost said, Snowflakes.

At breakfast Tessa’s mother reminded her that there was a boarder coming by today — “Assuming they clear the roads by noon.” This interested Tess immensely. Tessa’s mother was working from home today, which made it even more like a weekend, except for the possibility of this new person coming to the house. Her mother had explained that some of the day workers and visitors were still sleeping in the community center gym, which wasn’t very comfortable, and that people with room to spare in their homes had been asked to volunteer it. Tessa’s mother had moved her exercise equipment, a treadmill and a stationary bike, out of the small carpeted room in the basement next to the water heater. There was a folding bed in there now. Tess wondered what it would be like to have a stranger in the basement. A stranger sharing meals.

After breakfast Tessa’s mother went upstairs to work in her office. “Come and get me if you need me,” she said, but in fact Tess had seen less of her mother than usual the last few days. Something was happening with her work, something about the Subject. The Subject was behaving strangely. Some people thought the Subject might be sick. These concerns had absorbed her mother’s attention.

Tess, still in her nightgown, read for a while in the living room. The book was called Out of the Starry Sky. It was a children’s book about stars, how they first formed, how old stars made new stars, how planets and people condensed out of the dust of them. When her eyes got tired she put down the book and watched snow pile up against the plate-glass sliding door. Noon inched by, and the sky was still dark and obscure. She could have fixed herself a sandwich for lunch, but she decided she wasn’t hungry. She went upstairs and dressed herself and knocked at her mother’s door to tell her she was going outside for a while.

“Your shirt’s buttoned crooked,” her mother said, and came into the hallway to fuss it into place. She ruffled Tessa’s hair. “Don’t go too far from the house.”

“I won’t.”

“And shake off your boots before you come back in.”

“Yes.”

“Snow pants, not just the jacket.”

Tess nodded.

She was excited about going out, even though it meant struggling into her snowsuit in the warm, sweaty hallway. The snow was so deep, so prodigious, that she felt the need to see and feel it up close. Overnight, Tess thought, the world beyond the door had become a different and much stranger place. She finished lacing her boots and stepped out. The air itself wasn’t as cold as she had expected. It felt good when she drew it deep into her lungs and let it out again in smoky puffs. But the falling snow was small and hard this afternoon, not gentle at all. It bit against the skin of her face.