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Darwin feigned a smile.
“I’ll make us some pearl tea,” Lucy said. “After the party. We’ll have our own celebration—why not live a little, while we still can?”
Darwin watched as she smiled and walked away.
In my dreams
.
They’d lived under the same grand roof for three years but had never been alone, not even for a minute, and had hardly spent any non-working, non-dining time together. Darwin resided in the east wing of the walkup basement with the colored men of the kitchen staff, custodians, and boiler mechanics, while Lucy lived one floor below with the rest of the resident female workers. Only Mr. Elliot, the majordomo, was allowed to live on the ground floor, and aside from group meals, which Mr. Elliot grudgingly tolerated, their boss frowned on social contact between the men and women. Though lately some of the doe-eyed servants had met up on their rare days off. But the couples were invariably discovered and, apocalypse or not, they found their employment contracts voided.
Darwin wondered (and worried) that Lucy had caught comet-fever and was willing to take that chance on his behalf. But as he heard hooting and a wild commotion from the balcony, he wondered if
he
was willing to meet that risk.
“Here’s to the end of the world!” a woman shouted, above the boisterous piano and the popping of a dozen champagne corks.
Darwin shut the humidor’s lid as everyone rushed outside or pressed their faces to the windows to get a better look.
The end of the world has become a joke
, Darwin thought,
a debate to be hashed out in the editorial pages of newspapers
.
“It’s here! Glory, it’s huge!” someone hollered.
“Good Lord,” a man stammered, his voice cracking. “Why is it so damn close?”
Darwin watched in awe as white lights exploded, silhouetting men with long-tailed jackets and women draped in fur cloaks and shawls. Then the laughs and jovial cheers dissolved into panicked shrieks and the sound of glass breaking. Darwin ducked as he heard thunderous booming, and the windows rattled in their panes. He smelled smoke, and burning, like fetid sulfur as fire and lightning filled the night sky. Scores of patrons swarmed back inside like ants caught in a rainstorm, climbing over each other and the serving staff. So many people piled into the elevator that the brass gate wouldn’t close and the lift remained a wobbling, jerking cage of mewling bodies and fine haberdashery.
Darwin chewed his lip and squeezed through the frenzied crowd, past drunk men at the bar who guzzled their drinks, and around the piano player who began Chopin’s
Funeral March
in earnest, her head down, eyes closed.
He finally found Lucy crouched beneath a serving table and helped her up.
“Follow me,” he said, as he took her hand and guided her against the tide of terrified revelers, past the balcony doors, which were filled with smoke and flashing luminescence. They hurried toward the servants’ stairs. He put his hand around her waist and led her down the serpentine steps, down seven floors, pausing on the ground level as he heard screams from the foyer and the sound of pottery shattering.
“It’s not safe out there,” he said, unsure if she could hear him. Then he led her down two more flights, through a long hallway, past the cellar and into the boiler room.
“What are we doing down here?” Lucy asked, catching her breath.
“If the Tramp is that close we’re safer below ground,” Darwin looked around the dimly lit room, which was a cave of load-bearing columns, metal pipes, clanking pistons, and machinery that ran the length of the high, joisted ceiling. An enormous boiler, the size of a locomotive engine, dominated the center of the room, radiating heat. “This place is built like the Airship Kentucky.”
“But the poison vapors outside, the comet dust,” Lucy said. “Won’t that come through the doors, the cracks in the walls… ?”
“This way.” Darwin cut her off and led her inside the large coal bin. He climbed a pile of black rock and closed the coal chute, then he scrambled down and closed the heavy iron coal bin doors, sealing out light and smoke and the terrifying world above. He remembered that gas masks used filters lined with crushed charcoal.
This room might filter out the toxic fumes
, he hoped, as they sat down and huddled into the pile. He felt her hip, smelled her perfume mixed with sweat amid the smoky coal. He brushed her bare leg for a moment before he found her fingers laced between his.
The room was pitch black.
“This… this can’t be happening,” Lucy whispered. “I didn’t believe it…”
Darwin didn’t answer. He held her hand and listened, straining to hear something, anything above the pounding of his heart and his worried breathing. He heard what sounded like sirens in the distance and the muffled cries of people shouting. He couldn’t quite accept that the world was ending, but he recognized fear when he saw it, when he felt it.
“Darling, Daring…
Dying
.” Lucy sniffled. “
I don’t want to die… want to die…
”
“We’re not dead yet.” Darwin tried to talk about something—anything—to fill the silence, the dread of not knowing. “You know, my last name is Qi. It’s sometimes a lucky name because in Chinese it means life, or breath, or
air
—that’s a good omen, right? Though it’s kind of a fu
is
falling.”
As the sirens faded, the world grew quiet. He heard her breathing soften. He felt it proper to let go of her hand but he didn’t want to. He held on tighter.
“I’m not laughing,” she said. And then she did, just a little.
“See,” he said. “The end of the world’s not so bad. All we need is that cup of pearl tea, with lemon.” He squeezed her hand. “Quickly, tell me about your family.”
She sneezed twice from the coal dust and Darwin blessed her out of social habit, though he didn’t practice any such primitive religion.
“What family?” she said as the coal settled beneath them. Her voice echoed in the hollow steel chamber. “My parents came down from Vancouver to work in the copper mines. My father contracted green lung from the dust and couldn’t work. I was the youngest of seven mouths to feed so they sold me—put me in service, just like you—until I’m eighteen, just like you. I haven’t seen them in years. They’re probably dead now, or will be soon.”
Darwin understood the same sadness. The same bitter loneliness. He imagined suffering through the end of the world, only to be the last two survivors.
She patted his arm. “You can be my family.”
He mulled that over—the good and bad. Lucy had hinted, smiled, flirted, and nearly broken the rules to catch his eye. Part of him had known this all along and a part of him (the doubting, insecure part) had half-pretended to be oblivious—better to be wrong in his apprehension than right in her possible rejection. Where does that leave them now?
Family
. Darwin thought.
Like husband and wife, or kissing cousins?
Before he could ask, he startled at the clanging of the fire bell in the distance—the same alarm he’d pulled earlier—but this time he heard three sharp rings.