Songs for the End of the World - Saleema Nawaz Page 0,18

blond hair was swept back in a clip.

He gazed at her with intent, and a few seconds later she raised her eyes to his as though she could sense him watching. Owen gave what he knew was the barest crinkle of a smile—a twitch at the corner of his mouth and a slight crook of his left eyebrow. The woman smiled back at him, but her gaze was distracted and vaguely curious. Then, without warning, she bent down so her head was hidden from view by the aisle. When she arose, she was carrying a toddler on her hip. The child seemed to be a boy, based on the little red and black sneakers and the truck on his T-shirt. His long blond curls fell over his ears, and his luscious lips pouted as he caught sight of Owen.

As the cashier rung up her purchases, the woman pulled out an apple from her purse and took a bite before holding it out to the boy, who sucked in his lips, shaking his head until, coaxing, she brought it right up to his mouth. As she held out the fruit to him, he took a small bite, and then she took another before passing it back. Their eyes never left each other as they traded bites, but though they said nothing, they amused one another. Then the boy let loose a delighted laugh, and a bit of apple fell from his mouth and landed on his chin. His mother flicked out her tongue and lapped it up.

Owen looked away as the woman in front of him in line asked for cigarettes. She was a heavy-set black woman with a huge bosom that intrigued him as his eyes passed over it.

“Sorry this is so slow,” she said, as the cashier took a key from the register and headed for the glass cabinet behind the customer service desk.

Owen waved her off. “I’m in no hurry,” he said, returning the courtesy. She had kind, watchful eyes. “Don’t worry about it.”

When he looked back to the blond woman in the other lineup, she was already picking up her bag. She smiled over her shoulder at him, but her ear was bent to her son. The cashier in Owen’s aisle returned with a king-size package of Marlboros. The woman in front of him said, “You smoke?”

“No,” he said, wondering what would happen if he said yes. “Thanks, though.”

As the cashier counted out her change, he pocketed his wallet, left the condoms on the counter, and headed for the exit.

* * *

—

“So?”

“They were out.” Owen let the lie come out flat. He hung up the empty cloth bag on the coat rack inside the front door. “Can you believe it?”

Rachel blinked at him. Her mouth opened as though she was going to say something, but then she turned her back on him and went into the kitchen.

“I’m sorry,” he called. “I’ll be in my study.”

Even with his office door closed at the top of the landing, he could hear her washing the dishes. There was recrimination in the sound, in the almost indistinguishable clatter of plate on plate. The water running into the sink might as well be a bucket of tears.

He turned on his computer and opened a couple of the sites he’d bookmarked the night before: the National Centre for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health. If the novel was going to be as gripping and frightening as he imagined it, he had to get the details right about the risks of contagion and the safest way to avoid infection during a global pandemic. He jotted down some facts and some phone numbers, too, for when he was further along.

He wrote in a concentrated burst for forty-five minutes, until his shoulders started aching. Standing up, he paced from one end of the room to the other, swinging his arms back and forth in a stretch. He knew he was on to something with this imagined disaster in the near future. It was liberating to free himself from the constraints of the past, the historical record. He sat back down at the computer and scanned through the pages he’d written.

Midway through his reread, the door to his study swung open without a knock.

“Can we talk later? At length?” The question cut through the room like a command. Rachel rarely got angry, and even more rarely at him, but when she did it brought a strangled precision into her voice. And for reasons he didn’t