Page 66 of 56 Days
“The senior partner,” he says. “At KB Studios. He’ll be out there too.” His tone is desperate and his eyes glisten as if he’s on the verge of tears. “And it’s four in the morning. You can’t be visiting if you’re here at four in the morning.”
Responses to this rush up Ciara’s throat—it’ll be dark, we can stay away from him; we can separate, he won’t recognize her anyway; who the hell cares when the alternative is either going insane from this noise orburning to death in a fire?—but instead of saying any of them, she yanks her arm free and turns around, to the medicine cabinet.
She opens it and pulls out the packet of masks Oliver came home with a couple of days ago, carelessly enough that other things come out too (a can of shaving gel, a box of Band-Aids), which she lets fall to the floor.
Along with all the masks as they spill out of the packaging, except for the one she holds in her hand. She snaps the elastic bands over her ears, roughly pulls on the material until it feels like it’s sitting comfortably on her face, and then slams the cabinet closed again for good measure.
Her hands, she realizes, are shaking.
“Good idea,” Oliver says, “but you reallydon’tneed to go out—”
“Let me go.”
It sounds like what a prisoner might plead of her captor and she fully intends it to.
The words have an immediate effect on Oliver. Something melts away from him. He hangs his head.
And he steps aside so Ciara has a clear path to the door.
She doesn’t waste any time. She pulls it open. With the siren back at full tilt, it feels like the inside of her brain is being burned by each wail. She runs down the hall, toward the front door.
She doesn’t look to see if he’s following her.
She doesn’t care if he is.
On the other side of the apartment door the noise is even worse, with siren wails from every individual unit joining the assault from the speakers installed in the corridor. It’s a tunnel of aural torture and Ciara can’t get outside fast enough. When she reaches the double doors that lead into the courtyard, she jabs the Press to Exit button and pushes her way out into the night.
A small crowd of residents has gathered in the courtyard. They stand at varying distances from each other, shifting their weight from foot to foot, arms crossed against their chests. Everyone has the pale, puffy face of the deep sleeper suddenly disturbed, is wearing some combination of pajamas and outerwear, and is stealing surreptitious looks at their fellow neighbors. They’ve all been locked up together for a while now but have never seen each other quite like this, together in a group, up close. Other residents stand on their balconies, shivering in shirtsleeves and looking annoyed.
No one else is wearing a mask. Ciara quickly pulls hers off and stuffs it into her coat pocket. She’d only bemoreconspicuous with it on.
The siren wails out here too, but at a much more manageable level. There is no sign of any flames or smoke. She can see there are redbell-likeunits outside everyone’s balcony doors; a little blue light on each one flashes on and off. She feels very sorry for anyone who lives in the vicinity.
One woman paces up and down by one of the courtyard’s benches, barking into her mobile phone aboutthis happening yet againand howthis disruption is utterly unacceptableand whyevery false alarm makes us less likely to be alarmed when there’s an actualfire.
The other residents are mostly silent, not even talking to each other. Some rub at their eyes, others roll them. One lights a cigarette.
She can’t see anyone who might be the partner at the architect firm that Oliver is apparently living in fear of, and no one seems to be paying her an unusual level of attention.
The woman on the phone drops the device to her neck and says to no one in particular, “They’re saying I can’t turn it off. They’re telling me to wait for the fire brigade.”
A ripple of scoffs and sighs spreads through the residents.
“We’ll be hereages,” someone groans.
A thumping has started in Ciara’s right temple, a pulse out of time with the wail of the siren. As she stands in the cold, she feels it spreading out across her forehead and down over her right eye, but she doesn’t know if it’s actually getting worse or if thinking it is is what’s making her feel that way.
She wants to be in bed in the dark with a Solpadeine tablet. She wants to not be hearing this bloody noise. She’d settle for one out of two for the moment.
Ciara goes back through the double doors that lead to the lobby, and then out the second set directly opposite them, onto the street.
On this side of the building, the night holds everything still. The roads are bare, the sky is a dark mass of starless clouds. There’s a row of terraced houses opposite, just beyond the narrow strip of unlit park; she counts eight whose windows she can see from here and zero signs of life. Surely it would be like this at this time of night anyway, but there’s a deeper level to this stillness, a concentrated quality that she hasn’t experienced anywhere before. It’s as if the city has been reduced to its inanimate parts, the brick and the steel and the glass. The flow of human life that would otherwise be passing through it has slowed to such a trickle that it no longer leaves an afterburn in the night.
It’sempty, that’s what it is.
While she can still hear the siren, it’s nowhere near as loud.
And then a voice says, “God, it’s so much better out here, isn’t it?” and Ciara turns and finds herself face-to-face with Yoga Woman.
