matched with test results and used by the government, used like those lists of Jews. At least this was what he said. Maybe he was just terrified, like everyone. Teddy was earning his PhD in philosophy at Loyola, and he tended to come up with elaborate philosophical covers for terribly average feelings. Teddy and Julian would occasionally have a “thing” on, but mostly Teddy just floated between Kierkegaard and bars and clubs. Yale always suspected that Teddy had at least seven distinct groups of friends and didn’t rank this one very highly. Witness his leaving the party. Maybe the slides were too much for him, as they’d been for Yale; maybe he’d stepped out to walk around the block, but Yale doubted it. Teddy had other places to be, better parties to attend.
And then there was the list of acquaintances already sick, hiding the lesions on their arms but not their faces, coughing horribly, growing thin, waiting to get worse—or lying in the hospital, or flown home to die near their parents, to be written up in their local papers as having died of pneumonia. Just a few right now, but there was room on that list. Far too much room.
When Yale finally moved again, it was to cup water from the sink, splash it over his face. He looked frightful in the mirror: rings under his eyes, skin gone pale olive. His heart felt funny, but then his heart always felt funny.
The slide show must be over, and if he could look down on the crowd he’d be able to spot Charlie. They could make their escape. They could get a cab, even, and he could lean on the window. When they got home, Charlie would rub his neck, insist on making him tea. He’d feel fine.
He opened the door to the hall and heard a collective silence, as if they were all holding their breath, listening to someone make a speech. Only he couldn’t quite hear the speech. He looked down, but there was no one in the living room. They’d moved somewhere.
He came downstairs slowly, not wanting to be startled. A sudden noise would make him vomit.
But down in the living room was just the whir of the record, spinning past the last song, the needle arm retired to the side. Beer bottles and Cuba libre glasses, still half full, covered the tables and couch arms. The trays of canapés had been left on the dining table. Yale thought of a raid, some kind of police raid, but this was a private residence, and they were all adults, and nothing much illegal had happened. Probably someone had some pot, but come on.
How long had he been upstairs? Maybe twenty minutes. Maybe thirty. He wondered if he could’ve fallen asleep on the bed, if it was 2 a.m. now. But no, not unless his watch had stopped. It was only 5:45.
He was being ridiculous, and they were out in the backyard. Places like this had backyards. He walked through the empty kitchen, through a book-lined den. There was the door, but it was dead-bolted. He cupped his hand to the glass: a striped canopy, a heap of dead leaves, the moon. No people.
Yale turned and started shouting: “Hello! Richard! Guys! Hello!”
He went to the front door—also, bizarrely, dead-bolted—and fumbled till it opened. There was no one on the dark street.
The foggy, ridiculous idea came to him that the world had ended, that some apocalypse had swept through and forgotten only him. He laughed at himself, but at the same time: He saw no bobbing heads in neighbors’ windows. There were lights in the houses opposite, but then the lights were on here too. At the end of the block, the traffic signal turned from green to yellow to red. He heard the vague rush of cars far away, but that could have been wind, couldn’t it? Or even the lake. Yale hoped for a siren, a horn, a dog, an airplane across the night sky. Nothing.
He went back inside and closed the door. He yelled again: “You guys!” And he felt now that a trick was being played, that they might jump out and laugh. But this was a memorial, wasn’t it? It wasn’t the tenth grade. People weren’t always looking for ways to hurt him.
He found his own reflection in Richard’s TV. He was still here, still visible.
On the back of a chair was a blue windbreaker he recognized as Asher Glass’s. The pockets were empty.