and blue. The eye has swollen almost completely shut. Of course the injury is over his good right eye. Of course.
Tonight the Rescue Squad can’t help the displaced families locate and tag their valuables or to put out small fires in their kitchens. Tonight all the fires are enormous, and the squad can barely help themselves.
With difficulty, Julian drives the jeep. He doesn’t want to confess to Mia and Wild how poorly he can see. What a black irony it will be if he crashes. Burning London, with its pockets of intense heat between strips of frigid night air, looks and feels even more unreal through the Gaussian blur of Julian’s long-damaged left eye. The jeep is also not doing great. He almost couldn’t get it started. It’s sputtering. He can’t get it into gear. He drives the whole way in first and second.
“Finch will kill you, Swedish,” Wild says. “Not only did you take his girl, but you wrecked the transmission in his truck. Frankly, I don’t know which is worse.”
* * *
By the time they return to Bank, it’s after seven in the morning and everyone else has gone to work, except for Lucinda who wakes up long enough to take a look at them, not acknowledging their injuries in any way, ask if they’ve seen Phil and Sheila, and after determining that her husband and daughter are okay, to turn back to the wall. Wild climbs into his bed and is asleep or passed out in seconds. Julian and Mia stare at the empty bunks, at each other. They’re covered in blood and grime and dust.
“The laundry truck is coming at nine,” she says, uselessly patting the dust off Julian’s coat. “We can wash our clothes then.”
“We need a human laundry.”
“That’s at ten. Let’s sleep for a few hours. Then we’ll get up and take care of other things.”
“How can we sleep? We’ll get everything bloody. Look at us.”
“So?” Mia says. “We’ll wash the sheets and blankets, too. But I can’t climb into the top bunk. Let me lie down with you.”
On his side he lies down in the bottom bunk, and she fits in front of him, propping her injured arm with a pillow. He pulls up the blanket to cover them and carefully lays his arm over her. Mia, it’s us, he whispers. The way it’s always been.
“What I wouldn’t give for a bath and a proper bed,” Mia whispers back, as if she didn’t hear him.
“After we wake up, let’s go,” Julian says. “Let’s go to the Savoy.”
Thinly she laughs.
“I’m serious,” he says. “We’ll eat at the Grill and get one of their rooms. We’ll have a real bath.”
“Are we listing our dreams?” she murmurs, sounding almost asleep. “Because I’ve got a few of my own. On whose largesse are we going to do this?”
“Yours.”
“With what, the forty sovereigns you told the old bag were mine?”
“Precisely.” Julian feels in his pants’ leg for the pouch with the coins in it. Less than forty coins now. He sewed the pocket closed a few weeks ago after the purse had nearly fallen out during a tumble in a bombed-out house. Her money isn’t safe. She is not safe.
“I won’t lie, tonight was a little bit frightening,” she whispers. “Being enclosed by fire like that with no way out.”
Saying nothing, he presses himself to her, his face at the back of her head.
“Can I tell you something?” Mia says. “I had the strangest sensation when we were there. I can’t even describe it. It was almost like a memory. I’m breathing the hottest air I’ve ever been in. My throat is bloodied, and I’m about to hit the ground, and the bottoms of my feet are melting. I put my hand out and pray please don’t let us die like this. But it felt like I was the one on the ground not Finch, and you were leaning over me. It was so damn peculiar. I’ve never felt anything like it. I couldn’t tell if I was living it or reliving it.”
Peculiar indeed, Julian whispers.
Don’t take your arm away from me, Mia says. It’s not too heavy.
Wasn’t going to, he says.
They sleep through the laundry truck and the human laundry. They sleep until Wild wakes them at nearly five in the evening. He gives them an update on Duncan and Finch. Duncan’s X-rays were inconclusive, and the giant took that as good news and went to work, even though he could barely stand. “He told Shona he