Odds Against Tomorrow (24 page)

They were jolted by a loud electronic trill. It was the first time in two days that they’d heard the sound of a machine. The woman beside them leaped to her feet. Like a soldier checking himself after an explosion to make sure all his body parts were intact, she patted herself down and located the ringing phone in her jacket pocket.

The signal had been restored. It was the first service to come back, before running water and hospitals and even dry ground—the cellular towers and their omnipenetrative electromagnetic fields. Mitchell could feel the electric current zipping through his temporal lobes.

“I have seven messages from Charnoble,” said Jane after listening to her voice mail. “They’re all for you.”

A generator was activated, and a television screen that had been rolled into a corner of the gymnasium zapped on. The national news aired hallucinatory images of flooded New York. A traffic light bent like a cheap spoon. A frenzied school of orange carp fed on the torn garbage bags outside a half-submerged Chinese restaurant on First Avenue. A Gramercy Park brownstone had caught on fire; because the adjacent buildings had crumbled, the brownstone appeared to be standing alone in the water, a fiery monolith. And finally the watery outlines of bodies floating like lily pads on Second Avenue. Mitchell looked away.

He turned on his portable and listened to the messages he had skipped earlier at the public phone. The first three were from Charnoble. A frightening urgency distorted his voice. Charnoble had checked the FEMA website and seen that Mitchell had registered at the Fort Lee relief center.

“Mitchell!” said Charnoble. “I am
so
pleased you’ve survived.”

He explained that FutureWorld was the only consulting firm to have predicted the flood. Word had gotten out—Jason Tanizaki at Lady Madeline had talked to a reporter from
Forbes
, and now it was everywhere. “I’ve been getting calls all day. Everyone wants to talk to you. Mr. Brumley and even old Mr. Sansome have called me personally. So have cable news, networks, websites. They want to talk to the man they’re calling the Prophet.”

There were several more like this, interspersed with increasingly frantic messages from his parents and several from college friends he hadn’t seen since graduation. One, who reminded Mitchell that they had sat next to each other in Sputnik for Nudniks on the day of the Seattle earthquake, was now a journalist; he had been assigned to write a feature about Mitchell for
The Wall Street Journal.
There was a final message from Charnoble. “This is big,” he said. “This is mega. FutureWorld is going mega.” Mitchell thought of megaton nuclear bombs. When he was standing on Beekman Street—the wind crushing umbrellas and hurling them into buildings, the rain like falling ice picks, the security guard’s tired, terrified eyes—Charnoble must have been scurrying to a secure location. The coward was probably in the company car, escaping, at the very moment he’d called Mitchell.

“What does that monster want?” said Jane.

She had just spoken with her mother and stepfather. The conversation seemed to have exhausted her. At the beginning of the call she had tried to sound calm, reassuring, but after a few minutes she hung up in exasperation. Just the sound of Winnetka was enough to make her skin pucker.

“They’re reporting that FutureWorld is the only firm to have predicted the flood,” said Mitchell.

“That’s right. We were. You were.”

“Charnoble wants me to do interviews. Though I don’t see why I should help him at this point.”

“But the flood scenario—you came up with it yourself. Charnoble doesn’t deserve the credit.”

“They’ll lose interest soon. They’ve got more important things to cover than some consulting firm’s predictions about things that have already happened.”

Jane wasn’t listening anymore.

“What,” said Mitchell. “What is it now?”

She was staring at the television, her mouth open. Mitchell turned.

A patrol boat was ferrying patients from New York Hospital up the East River to the Bronx. Semiconscious bodies doubled over the railing; others lay sprawled on the deck. They had wild eyes and gaping mouths, like astonished fish heaving on the bottom of a fishing boat.

“Exactly. They don’t have time for FutureWorld when this kind of thing—”

“No,” said Jane, impatient. “Read the crawl!”

Squinting, he focused on the text scrolling beneath the images:
“… Zukor, a consultant at the firm, the only financial analyst to have foreseen the tragedy…”

“Jesus King,” said Jane. “No wonder Charnoble wants you to call.”

Mitchell’s phone started to ring. It was an unlisted number. When he picked up, the caller introduced himself as a producer from the
Morning Show
.

“Morning, like top of the
morning
?” said Mitchell. “Or mourning, like
mourning
an unspeakable tragedy.”

Jane gestured at him frantically. “Tell them you’ll call back.”

Mitchell hung up.

“Let’s think about this,” she said.
“Strategize.”

“There’s nothing to think about. I’m not going to shill for FutureWorld.”

“No,” said Jane. “You should talk to them.”

Mitchell’s phone buzzed again, a different number. They stared at it. Mitchell pressed
REJECT INCOMING CALL.

“Look, Charnoble sent you out in the hurricane too,” said Mitchell. “Just so you could make him a few extra consulting dollars. We might have died back there. We
should
have died. By all odds.”

“That’s just it. You do the interviews, but only on one condition: they don’t credit FutureWorld.”

“What would it say under my name—freelance consultant? What’s the point?”

“It doesn’t say freelance consultant. It says ‘Founder and Director, Future Days.’”

“Future Days?”

“Your new consulting firm.”

“
Hold
on.”

“You were the soul of FutureWorld. Charnoble was just an administrator, a scheduler. Brumley was the money behind the whole operation—and it was their idea anyway. But you’ve been devising worst-case scenarios since you were a kid.
You’re
the talent.”

“No way. I appreciate the thought. But I’m not interested.”

“Every scenario we presented to our clients, you created. You did the research. Most important, you were the one who scared the bejesus out of all those Nybusters we met with.”

“Thanks. You were pretty scary yourself.”

“Glad you think so. Because now that you’re the director of Future Days, I was hoping you might consider hiring a number two.”

“Have you been plotting this?”

“
Plotting
sounds devious. But yeah, I’ve been planning some future scenarios myself the last couple of days. Mitchell, the money is going to be flooding in.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“In a manner of speaking,” said Jane. “Look, you deserve this. Now’s the time to move. It’s a new market. We could make serious,
consequential
money. For you, frankly, the flood is a best-case scenario.”

“Listen to yourself. You sound like Alec.”

“Alec had his points. He was a good salesman, at least. He knew how to turn fear into capital.”

“Mm.”

“We might as well make the best of a bad situation, right?”

There was a heightened mania in her eyes. Passionate Jane had seized on another passion. She was like a puppy with a new toy clenched between her teeth. Mitchell remembered how she looked in Central Park, dancing when the storm broke, the rain bouncing off her exposed neck, her hair in wild tendrils, giddy and free.

“I can’t think about this now,” he said. “It’s too soon.”

“If we wait much longer, other people, other firms, will jump in. You know Brumley will.”

Mitchell thought of his father, gaping in awe of the high business machinery of New York City. The moral of the Hungarian Revolution: Greed is Good.

His phone rang. Jane tried to read the number that popped up on his display.

“Television calling?”

It was Anchor Liberty, a FutureWorld client. Mitchell plugged in his earphones and connected.

“Zukor, thank God.” It was Harold Harding, the investment firm’s boss. “You’re alive.”

“Mr. Harding? I showed up yesterday morning for our appointment, but the building was closed. The security guard didn’t let me in.”

Jane tapped Mitchell on the shoulder, indicating that she wanted to listen to the conversation. She nudged close to him, and he handed her one of his earbuds.

“Yesterday morning?” said Harding. “You mean the morning Tammy hit? You’re goddamned right it was closed.”

“Oh. Sure.”

“We assumed you left once the storm started bearing down. Why, we were following the directions you gave us yourself.”

“I suppose Alec wanted us to be sure—”

“Charnoble! He made you stay? I never trusted the guy. You, I’ve always respected. Always thought you had a real ability. You know that.”

“Yes sir.”

Jane, next to him, was smiling.

“But he forbade you from leaving the city,” said Harding, incredulous. “He made you go against your own recommendations? Frankly I’m stunned.”

“I’m stunned myself. I’m still in a state of stun.”

“We evacuated all our employees in time—not just the Manhattan office but also Fairfield. Followed your scenario to the letter. Everyone with an Anchor Liberty Go Bag. They avoided the traffic too, sticking to your escape routes.”

“They took Tenth Avenue, then?”

“Tenth to Amsterdam to the 181st Street bridge.”

“So it worked. I’m glad to hear it.”

“A bonus will be arriving with the first mail. Count on that. And now I see you’re some kind of national celebrity. Well, this has been a nightmare, a hell of a nightmare. But we’re grateful to have had your wisdom guiding us through.”

“See what I mean?” said Jane, after Mitchell disconnected. “They depend on you now.”

“It’s not a bad idea.”

“There’s a logic to it, right?” she asked. “A
logic
, no?”

“Yes,” he said, humoring her. “I see the logic. But how? We have nothing. We might not even have access to our apartments or the office for weeks.”

“That’s my job. All we need is our clients’ information, and I have that on my phone. They know you’re more valuable than Charnoble. We’ll call Anchor Liberty and Lady Madeline and a few other firms right away—those contracts will stake us while we develop our business plan. Especially since you’ll be able to bill more than FutureWorld. A lot more.”

“Future Days, huh?”

“It has a certain ring. If I don’t say so myself.”

“We’ll need a financial team, office space, a marketing strategy.”

“There are profits to be made,” said Jane, “in being prophets.”

“Yep. Got it. But first I’m going to Maine.”

Jane cocked her head, as if he had suddenly started speaking Farsi.

“All right, how’s this,” said Mitchell. “Come with me, and we’ll sort out the details of Future Days on the way.”

The phone rang, another unlisted number.

“Let me take it.”

Mitchell handed Jane his phone.

“I’m his representative,” she said. “Only on one condition,” she said. “Future Days,” she said. “Founder and director.”

Jane hung up.

“This,” she said, “is going to be mega.”

2.

In the ziplock bag the bills had thawed and were lightly perspiring. But he hadn’t needed them yet. All bus and train transit had been government commandeered. The refugees received frequent handouts: sandwiches, bananas, Jell-O cartons, phone chargers, water bottles. There were no longer any shortcuts out of the city. They had to follow the masses; they had to ride the motorcoach. Traveling so slowly was exhausting. They might have made it more quickly on foot. The highways had been transformed into parking lots, shrouded in clouds of exhaust. But it wasn’t just the roads that were crowded; the cars were packed too, crammed full of possessions that had been accumulated over lifetimes. Save two of everything, so that they can replicate in the new world: two flatscreens, two laptops, two gaming consoles.

In the torn-up fields beside the interstate, sinuous white vapor rose like smoke in the wake of an explosion. Tammy had spent the greatest portion of her rage on New York and had weakened once she reached Connecticut, but not considerably. The earth had still been scoured, as by a vast cloud of steel wool. And the road itself was an obstacle course: car crush-ups, roadkill, fallen trees. It took half a day just to reach the Rhode Island state line. Every few hours Mitchell tried to call Billy, but there was not even a ring signal, just an empty, scratchy noise, the sound of a record that keeps spinning after the side is over. The Ticonderoga phone, or the wires, seemed to be dead. Anything that was frail before the storm was now dead.

When television or radio producers called, Jane answered his phone. She introduced herself as Mitchell Zukor’s publicist. She coached Mitchell to speak with humility and formality, and she limited interviews to five minutes. When newspaper and magazine journalists called, Jane introduced herself as Mitchell Zukor’s spokeswoman. She did those interviews herself.

“This is just the very beginning,” said Jane. “Keep them wanting more.”

At one point in almost every conversation he was asked, “What’s going to happen next? To New York, to America, to the world?”

“That information,” said Mitchell, “we reserve for our clients.”

Nobody on the bus paid them any attention.

After midnight the driver pulled over at a turnpike motel in Warwick, where power and electricity had been restored. Mitchell and Jane were given a room with a queen-size bed, dingy yellow carpeting, fluorescent lighting, and a dense cigarette aroma with a urine finish. The bus would leave again in less than six hours. When Mitchell entered the bathroom he was surprised by his reflection. The face in the mirror looked unhappy. In fact the face was giving a very strong suggestion of tears.

Mitchell dumped his sewage-stained clothes into the bathtub: slacks, Leonardo Fibonacci T-shirt, socks, even the boots. He emptied the contents of his Go Bag onto the sink counter—opening the ziplock bag to let the bills air—and then tossed his backpack into the tub as well. He twisted the hot faucet as far as it could go. When the water hit the clothes it released a metallic smell that thickened into something raunchy, animalistic. Mitchell squeezed the microbottle of courtesy shampoo into the tub. He tore open the microbar of courtesy soap and scrubbed at his shirt, trying not to let the blackening water splash on his naked body. But it couldn’t be helped. The stray drops left blue stains on his flesh. Mitchell let the tub drain, then refilled it. This time he emptied the microbottle of courtesy conditioner; it bubbled into an ashy foam. After thirty minutes the clothes, while not clean by any measure, had at least regained their original hues. He hung them on the towel rack and, with the last butter pat of soap, took a shower. When he came out of the bathroom Jane was asleep under the covers, in her clothes.