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Then silence.
“Thank goodness,” Darwin whispered. “We’re in luck.” He helped Lucy to her feet and opened the creaking, groaning, coal room doors. “That beautiful sound was the all-clear signal. We just might live to see the morning after all.”
“You’re sure?” She hesitated. “Is it really safe?”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
They took turns dusting each other off in the shadowy darkness—turning, smiling, laughing, and gently touching. He took her hand and boldly kissed it once, then wiped off the coal dust where his lips had been.
Why not?
he thought as he paused, grateful for catastrophe. Then he let go.
As they stepped into the corridor, they squinted at Mr. Elliot and a custodian who Darwin didn’t recognize. Each of them carried a matchless flashlight. The majordomo bit down on his pipe and grunted, “Jeezus and Mary! I had better
never
catch you two down here again in this state of… aloneness.” He pointed to the stairwell. “Clean yourself up and get back to your stations—hurry along now. The show is over but the party will continue as pla
“But… the Tramp… ,” Lucy protested.
“What Tramp? Get upstairs,” Mr. Elliot barked. “Now!”
They hurried along the servants’ stairwell, then waved goodbye as they split up to go change into new liveries on their respective floors. Darwin, though, couldn’t wait to abate his curiosity. He peeked into the octagonal-shaped lobby where a host of guests were collecting themselves and waiters were offering everyone free cocktails and comet pills. He wandered from the stairwell out the front door and down the steps to the circular porte-cochére where three police motorcars were parked and a patrol of mounted officers clip-clopped by in the cold, brisk Seattle night. Darwin’s mouth fell open as he looked above the smoke that had settled in the Italian garden; he saw a fire engine, ladder extended, pumping water into the trees that were still ablaze. Above that queer spectacle floated a massive airship; a hot air balloon half the size of the hotel, hovered above the seventh floor balcony. Below the basket was an enormous wooden platform, still smoking, sparking, glowing with fireworks and a neon contraption that read DRINK REAL OLYMPIA BEER from the CLAUSSEN SWEENEY BREWING COMPANY. Darwin heard police officers with bullhorns shouting at the aeronauts to come down and face charges for public nuisance and disturbing the peace.
And for inciting a riotous stampede
. Darwin thought.
And for making a young girl cry in my arms. And for terrifying me, yet also making me happier and more relieved than I’ve been in a long, long time
.
• • • •
An hour later, the end-of-the-world publicity stunt was the talk of the party as comet-watchers resumed their previously scheduled frivolities, though some of the elderly celebrants had taken their heart medicine and gone to bed.
If the end of the world was nigh
, they had chirped,
they would greet it lying down, dreaming of greener pastures and tinctures of laudanum
. Several of the guests had been taken to the hospital to treat their bumps, scrapes, bruises, and one man’s broken leg.
Despite the somewhat subdued atmosphere, Darwin quickly ran out of machine-crafted cigars from Havana and had moved on to the hand-rolled labels from Trinidad and Brazil. No one seemed to mind the rough cohibas. And Lucy resumed her duties, though her pink cap had been crushed in the scrum.
Darwin stood his post and gazed out the window as the Madison Street cable car descended the steep hill to downtown, past sodium-arc streetlights that flickered in the darkness, beneath the aurora, which continued its heavenly performance, unfettered. He thought of Lucy and her touch, and the end of the world seemed farther away than it had been sixty minutes ago. But, perhaps he’d earn a measure of insurance just the same.
In Chinatown, Darwin heard that the locals had taken to the Underground—which had been publicly closed during the bubonic plague scare of 1907, but had quietly been repopulated ever since. First for opium dens, gambling parlors, and pleasure houses, and now for handsomely built comet shelters complete with brass bottles of air and Dr. Melvin’s Comet Tonic, which was advertised as wormwood but was probably nothing more than castor oil. The brick bunkers were so popular that only a few were left and could only be had through a lottery run by the Chong Wa Benevolent Association.
Darwin had bought a ticket last week, just in case, as a way of preventing disaster, like taking your bumbershoot out because you know it only rains when you leave it behind. The ticket had cost ten dollars, an extravagance that now seemed affordable as he palmed a pocketful of old folding money he’d earned in tips from guests who had currency to burn and perhaps a limited lifetime in which to spend such wealth.
“Quite the evening, eh?” Darwin said, as he cut and then lit the cigar of a cotton-haired gentleman stooped over a silver-tipped cane.
The old man looked back with a twinkle in his eye that might have been a tear. “Perfect night for the end of the world. And not my first, young lad.” The old man’s lips trembled and his hands shook as he spoke. “I saw the Sidereal Tramp back in 1835, the last time it came ’round—course they called it Halley’s Comet back then. Few of us are around to remember the same panic, the same stupidity. The same… indulgences.”
Darwin nodded, not realizing that people were still alive from the last apparition. “They say the Tramp’s gravity is closer this time. And the poisonous tail…”
“And this you believe?” the old man asked, but his question felt like a statement.
“Begging your pardon, sir. I honestly don’t know
what
to believe.”
“And that’ll be your downfall, your lack of faith in science. But soon… all will be revealed. Because at my age, I feel every storm, every snowfall—I feel it in my bones. This storm—
this thing
—I feel it coming. This unkempt world is falling to pieces.” The old man’s voice quavered. “I’ve lived my life, I should be so lucky as to expire with an entire continent to keep me company.”
Darwin sensed the same dread he’d felt in the boiler room. He heard the crowd’s chatter settle into a bouquet of delicate whispers. Everyone stopped dancing, or mingling, and slowly, timidly, drifted to the balcony, yet again.
“That’s more like it,” a woman cooed as she sipped a glass of sparkling wine.
The hunched old man stood a bit taller to see outside, and Darwin noticed the detachable collar of a retired science minister.
“
When beggars die there are no comets seen; the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes
,” the old man said. “That’s Shakespeare.” He squeezed Darwin’s shoulder. “G’night, lad.”
Darwin bid him well and peered, with the rest of the wait staff, over the shoulders of the regal men and women they’d been serving. He could see the Tramp appear just above the horizon, drifting slowly across the Western sky—an unmistakable white light, the size of his thumb as he extended his arm away from his body. The light flashed a ruddy crimson, arcs of fire hovering above the Olympic Mountains. The deep curve of the comet’s tail stretched out behind the glowing orb as partygoers made silent wishes, offered solemn toasts, or kissed as though celebrating the New Year all over again. There was a wave of apprehension that conceded quietly to relief.