Plague (21 page)

While Manny
Friedman busied himself gathering his papers, Ivor Glantz sat still, his head
in his hands. Esmeralda came and sat next to him, and stroked his few sparse
curls.

‘Papa,’ she
said. ‘It’s not the end of the world.’

He grunted.
Then he smiled warmly, and took her hand. ‘Don’t mind me,’ he said. ‘I’m
disappointed, that’s all.’

‘Don’t worry,’
she reassured him. ‘As soon at the plague is over, you can apply for the
hearing to continue.’

Ivor rubbed his
eyes tiredly. ‘The way this plague’s spreading, that could be never. If it goes
on like this, we’ll all be six feet underground by the time this action gets
heard.’

‘You don’t
think it’s that serious, do you?’

He shrugged. ‘I
don’t know. What disturbs me is that they don’t have any way to cure it. We’re
all so used to living in a society that protects us with drugs and medicines
that when we’re exposed to something really deadly, we don’t take proper
precautions.’

‘Come on,
Ivor,’ Manny Friedman said. ‘This whole thing will fade away in two weeks, just
like swine flu did. One minute
it’s
panic stations,
the next minute everybody’s saying, “Plague?
what
plague? – never heard of no plague!”‘

Friedman led
the way out of the courtroom. ‘What will you do now?’ he asked over his
shoulder. ‘Do you want to see if you can bring the action forward to a specific
date?’

Ivor shook his
head. ‘I don’t know yet. This thing has cost me a goddamned mint as it is. I
have five corporations wetting their pants to buy this process, and until I can
clear it through the courts, I’m fucked.’

Outside the
courthouse, in the humid afternoon sun, they met Sergei Forward and his
attorney. Forward came up to Ivor with his hand extended, and a watery smile on
his lean, Nordic features. ‘I hope there are no tough feelings,’ he said. Ivor
ignored the Finn’s hand, and pulled a face. ‘It is our patriotic duty, you know
– as Americans,’

Forward added.

Ivor turned and
stared at him. ‘You’ve been an American for precisely four months,’ he said
sarcastically. ‘When I need lessons in patriotism from you, I’ll pack my case
and go live in Russia.’

Manny Friedman
took Ivor’s arm. ‘Come on,
Ivor,
don’t get involved in
a fight. He’s up to something, and there’s no point in losing your cool until
you know what it is.’

Ivor shouted
angrily, ‘No half-baked Finnish quack is going to...’

‘Yes, he is,’
insisted Friedman, and pulled Ivor away. ‘I’m your attorney, and when I say
leave off, I say it for your own good.’

Esmeralda,
following close behind, said, ‘He’s right, papa. Let’s just have a drink and
forget about it.’

Ivor
surrendered, and took his stepdaughter’s hand. ‘Okay, Es. You win. I could do
with a quart of Scotch right now.’

They walked
around the block to the meter where Esmeralda’s Skylark was parked.

Manny climbed
into the back, and Esmeralda herself was about to get in when someone called,
‘Miss Baxter!’

Esmeralda
turned. A tall, good-looking young man in a pale suit was waving to her across
the street. ‘Are you calling me?’ she asked.

The young man
dodged a passing cab, and came across the street. He was a little out of
breath. He had dark, slightly Italian looks, with black curly hair, a straight
nose, and a firmly-cleft chin.

‘I hope you
don’t mind, Miss Baxter,’ he said, ‘but I’ve
been wanting
to meet you for some time. You are the Esmeralda Baxter who runs Esmeralda’s
gallery, aren’t you?’

Esmeralda
looked puzzled. ‘That’s right, I am. But should I know you? I don’t recall your
face.’

The young man
grinned. ‘Oh – I’m sorry. My name’s Charles Thurston. Charles Thurston III,
actually, but my father and my grandfather were so undistinguished that nobody
gets confused. I write books on art. Maybe you saw my book on Man Ray.’

Esmeralda
blushed slightly. ‘I’m afraid I didn’t. Listen – do you want to make an
appointment to see me? I’m pretty tied up right now.’

‘Can I call you
at the gallery?’

‘Well, sure.’

Unexpectedly,
Charles Thurston III lifted Esmeralda’s hand and kissed it. ‘You know
something,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you and I will get along like a house on fire.’

Afterwards, as
they drove back to Concorde Tower, Ivor said caustically, ‘Did you see the way
he kissed your hand? Goddamned almost swallowed it. Maybe kids these days don’t
get enough to eat.’

‘Oh, papa,’ Esmeralda protested.
‘He’s
not a kid. In fact I think he’s rather gracious.’

In the plush quietness
of their condominium, Mr. and Mrs. Victor Blaufoot tried again and again to
call their daughter Rebecca in Florida. Each time, the lines were busy.

After five
hours of dialing, Mrs. Blaufoot went and sat at one end of the shot-silk
settee, fiddling restlessly with her large diamond engagement ring, and biting
her lips in endless nervousness.

Mr. Blaufoot
came up and put his arm gently around her shoulders. ‘The lines,’ he said,
‘they’re bound to be busy. It’s a crisis. But don’t worry. If she’s in trouble,
she’ll find some way to let us know. She always has, hasn’t she? Always, when
there’s a problem.’

Mrs. Blaufoot
suddenly started to weep. Her tears dropped on the rug.

‘But what if
she’s dead?’ she cried miserably. ‘What if she’s caught that plague, and she’s
dead? How could she call us then?’

At five-twenty,
Kenneth Garunisch announced on television that the Medical Workers’ Union
were
coming out on strike, after the failure of negotiations
with the federal government for emergency pay increases during the plague
crisis. There would be no porters, no hospital cleaners, no janitors, no
administration assistants, no sanitation engineers, no ambulance maintenance
men, no electricians,
no
pharmacy assistants.

The government
insisted that to pay emergency rates would be to surrender to ‘heinous moral
blackmail’ and that it would create ‘a disturbing and destructive precedent.’

On the six
o’clock news, an outbreak of possible plague was reported at Newport News, and
the ban on sea bathing was extended northwards to Delaware Bay.

Residents of
cities and towns along the eastern seaboard were urged to remain calm, and not
to take hasty or ill-considered action. All airlines reported heavy bookings
for westbound flights, and the Highway Patrol said that traffic through the
Alleghenies was well above seasonal norms.

Quiet fear
began to spread throughout the eastern states, but nobody knew quite how bad
the plague was, or what to do about it, because the press and television were
still keeping a low profile. Nobody knew that four hundred people – men, women
and children – had been shot dead by the Army and National Guardsmen while
trying to escape from quarantined areas.

Edgar Paston
ate a quiet dinner at his home in Elizabeth, New Jersey. His wife Tammy had
come home from the telephone company half-an-hour early, and had made a
chocolate pudding. Edgar sat at the round table with its red check tablecloth,
silently spooning the pudding into his mouth, and thinking.

‘You’re awful
quiet,’ said Tammy, bustling into the dining room in her apron. She was a
short, big-breasted woman of 33, with wiry blonde hair and plump cheeks.

‘I was
thinking,’ said Edgar.

‘You’re not
still worried about those kids?’

He sighed,
chasing the last spoonful of chocolate around his bowl. ‘No, I guess I’ve
reconciled myself to that. I was thinking about this epidemic, this plague.’

‘What about it?
It’s
miles away! I mean – how far is Georgia from New
Jersey?’

‘I don’t know.
Eight hundred miles, I guess.’

‘Well, then.’

Edgar Paston
laid down his spoon and pushed his plate away. ‘
It’s
eight hundred miles away today, Tam – but how long is it going to take to get
here? I mean, I’m kind of worried.’

Tammy took his
plate away, and flapped some crumbs off the table with her apron.

She kissed him
loudly on the forehead.

‘The television
said it wasn’t going to spread too far, and that nobody should worry about it,
or panic. If the television says that, well...’

Edgar pushed
his chair neatly under the table, and followed Tammy into the kitchen to help
with the washing up.

‘I guess you’re
right,’ he said. ‘They don’t usually put anything on the television unless it’s
true. All the same, I think we ought to have some kind of emergency plan, in
case the plague does spread.’

Tammy stacked
the dishes in the dishwasher while Edgar rinsed them under the tap.

Their kitchen
was simple and modern, and decorated in candy-apple red. On the wall
was
a color print of fall tints in the Catskills, and a
wrought-iron profile of President Eisenhower.

‘Emergency
plan?’ asked Tammy. ‘Eddie – I don’t think we have to. You remember the last
time we had an emergency plan, during Cuba? You spent the whole weekend digging
a hole in the garden for an atom shelter!’

Edgar laughed
at the memory of it. ‘I guess you’re right.
Tam.
I guess
I made a fool of myself over that.’

After they had
washed and wiped the dishes, they went into their yellow-decorated living-loom
and joined their children, 10-year-old Marvin and 14-year-old Chrissie.

Both children were
watching television. Edgar asked, ‘Is there any more news about the plague?’

Chrissie said,
‘Nothing much, dad. They said they had some people in isolation at Newport
News, but they didn’t know if they were sick with the plague.’

‘Newport News?
I though they only had the plague in Georgia.’

‘Well,’ she
shrugged, ‘that’s what they said. They’re going to have another speech by the
President later.’

Edgar frowned.
‘That doesn’t sound too healthy. I just hope the darned thing doesn’t spread up
this way.’

‘Dad – what’s
plague?’ Marvin said.

Edgar Paston
blinked.
‘Plague?
Well, it’s a kind of disease. You
know, a real serious
disease, that
you can die of.’

‘Sure, Dad.
But what’s it like?’

Edgar Paston
looked at Tammy, but Tammy knew as little about it as he did.

‘I don’t know.
Why don’t you look it up in your Children’s Encyclopedia? It cost me five
dollars a month for three centuries, you might as well use it.’

Edgar watched
television until seven o’clock,
then
roused himself to
go and close the store. Gerry was in charge at the moment, but Edgar always
liked to check the final day’s takings himself, and make sure that everything
was locked up. He kissed Tammy at the front door, and went out into the cool
darkness to fetch his car.

A cricket was
chirruping on the front lawn. He climbed into his Mercury wagon, and switched
on the lights. Tammy waved from the front door. He drove down the
road,
and round the corner to the junction where the Save-U
Supermart stood.

He didn’t
realize that anything was wrong until he pulled up outside. He saw Gerry inside
the brightly-lit store, bending over for some reason. Then, as he climbed out
of the wagon, he saw what had happened. He ran heavily across the car park and
into the supermarket, panting with exertion.

Gerry had a red
bruise on his left eye. ‘I’m sorry, Mr. Paston, I did try to stop them.

But they held
me down, and they hit me. I’m just trying to clear up.’

Edgar looked
around his store in frantic horror. Every shelf in the entire store had been
cleared of groceries, and every can and packet and bag had been tossed on to
the floor. Thousands of dollars’ worth of flour and candies and nuts and
cake-mixes and household goods had been spilled and trampled on.

He walked the
length of the supermarket in a stunned dream of despair. A few customers still
stood around, embarrassed and silent. As Edgar walked, he trod on fruit and
broken glass, corn-meal and crumpled packets. Gerry, dabbing his bruised eye,
followed behind.

‘What happened
here?’ Edgar said hoarsely, when he got to the freezer cabinet.

Though he could see for himself.

‘They – er –
they pissed in it,’ said Gerry. Tm sorry, Mr. Paston. I did try my level best
to stop them.’

Edgar stood
still and cast his gaze over the whole wrecked store. The new storefront
window, which had been installed first thing that morning, had been cracked.

Displays and
signs costing hundreds of dollars had been torn down and smashed.

Honey and
molasses oozed from cracked jars, the contents of cereal boxes were strewn
everywhere.

‘Who was it?’
asked Edgar quietly.
‘McManus?’

Gerry looked at
the floor. ‘They said they’d kill me if I told. I’m sorry, Mr. Paston. I’m so
sorry.’

Edgar laid a
hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘I understand. Well, I guess we’d better call the
cops.’

‘I would have
called them myself, sir, but after yesterday I didn’t know whether they’d like
it.’

Edgar shook his
head. ‘It’s not a question of whether they like it. It’s their job.’ He went to
the wall phone, and picked it up.

He was in the middle
of dialing when he heard someone laughing outside the store.

A raucous, mocking laugh.
He paused, and then laid the
telephone receiver down again. Quickly, making sure that he didn’t tread in any
debris, he made his way towards the cash-desk, searching in his pants pocket
for his keys.

Gerry called,
‘Mr. Paston-’ but he ignored the boy, and ducked low behind the counter. He
lifted his keys, examined them closely, and picked the right one. Then he
unlocked the drawer under the till, and took out a .38 revolver.