36
Gloria Fava was weepy.
A woman had just announced through a megaphone that flights to the Northeast were boarding, and Gloria fanned her eyes with her free hand as she stood from her messy cot. A man in an AC/DC shirt, who didn’t even stop to mutter an apology, bumped her left arm as he hustled to get in line. It remained rigid in its sling.
Dan hooked a Red Cross bag around Gloria’s good shoulder. Mara fought her way up, waddled over with her crutches clicking beneath her. It was early morning. Outside the tent, the sun hadn’t risen, but massive floodlights cast shadows on hundreds of aid workers in reflective vests scurrying along the airstrip. They pushed handcarts and wheelchairs, signaled box trucks and bulldozers. Broken families and friends huddled in tight circles, while many guests stood alone, their hands at least half as full as when they arrived.
Mixed with the smell of jet fuel and antiseptic was the smell of eggs, and peppers, and sausage. Simon Cowell, who actually was at the resort the whole time, believe it or not, had stayed behind even after most of Building A was gone. He announced one morning that he was using his private jet to fly down some of the best chefs in Los Angeles, and they were here now, preparing breakfast burritos, and making jokes, and hugging people because maybe not everyone in Building A was that bad.
They reached the line for Gloria’s plane. Mara wordlessly hugged her, a long, heavy hug, and when they detached, her shoulder sleeve was damp. Dan hugged Gloria next. He could feel the weight of loss on her, feel Lenny’s spirit leaning against her shrunken frame, just out of sight.
She cupped Dan’s face as he pulled away. “So handsome,” she whispered.
The three of them just stood there a moment, Dan unsure of what to do with his hands or eyes or anything else. They shared a weak chuckle, because, you know, now what?
A Jeep rumbled onto the airstrip and screeched to a halt, seizing everyone’s attention. It was the crew from Disappearance Report , Netflix had flown them down, and Jane MacCallum’s husband was there too. He was in his seventies but in great shape, and he hopped from the Jeep with the vigor of a man on the trail of something long ago lost. He had a hurried, hushed conversation with an FBI agent while the Disappearance Report cameras rolled, and then the FBI woman signaled to more FBI people, and several of them spoke into their radios as they rushed to their SUVs. They sped off together, the Jeep leading the pack, and murmurs swept over the tarmac like wildfire.
The general consensus was that they’d found Shae’s body.
People began to cheer, to embrace, guests from A, B, and C celebrated with one another because nothing brings people together like something to collectively hate.
“Oh, I hope it’s true,” Gloria said with a sniff. “Look what that man did to all of us.”
Dan hoped it wasn’t. It seemed too simple an end for Shae, too convenient, tidy. Crushed to death by the weight of his own sick experiment, how poetic, how trite. Dan wanted to see him in handcuffs, wanted to see him answer for Alan, for Charles, for Lenny, for Jane , for everyone.
But Dan could feel in his gut Shae was gone. It was up to them to pick up the pieces he left behind.
They made a final boarding call for Gloria’s plane.
“Okay, well.” Gloria took a deep breath. “Guess I don’t have much to carry on. Ha.”
“You get home safe, Gloria,” Mara said. She reached out and grasped her hand. “Keep in touch. Really.”
“What will you do?” Gloria asked. That’s what she said, anyway, but it sounded more like What should I do? which no one knew the answer to. She was going back to Jersey and her family and the deli, of course, but only part of her.
“We’re just going to do the best we can,” Mara said. “And we’re going to make sure Alan and Charles’s boys are okay. We owe that to them.”
“Yeah.” Gloria nodded. That seemed to be enough for her, at least for the flight home. “Do good, find good. Okay. I better go before the waterworks start again. Look, I’ve got your numbers, I’m gonna call you when I get a new phone, I’m gonna keep in touch because we went through something together, okay? I’m gonna be in touch. Maybe we go see those boys together.”
“We should,” Dan said.
“Okay. Sounds great, doll. Love you guys. I’m gonna go.”
Flights to the Southeast wouldn’t take off until later in the morning.
Mara was helping pass out meals, and Dan had been too, but he needed a break, so he sat alone on a pallet of bagged rice, away from everything. Marvel Maids emailed him again. Using Shae’s data, someone had uploaded to YouTube a supercut of every instance where Dan bitched about his job to Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5.” Marvel Maids wanted him to know it was making its way around the office, and they weren’t mad, not really, but maybe he could say something to the troops when he got back.
The bag beside Dan deflated.
Dan didn’t recognize him at first, but then realized it was the guy whose beard was his whole personality, but his head was shaved because of a nasty gash that had been stitched up. His facial hair was still intact, thank God, and he was wearing the same Red Cross–issued, gently used clothing as Dan.
He had two beers. He handed one to Dan. The sun hadn’t risen yet, but Dan had grown accustomed to not waiting for the sun.
Neither said anything for a bit. They quietly sipped and watched planes come and go.
“I owe you an apology,” Dan finally said, not breaking his gaze.
“Nah, man.”
“I do though.” Dan turned to him. “I was really shitty to you, like, several times under the dome. I shouldn’t have been like that.” He saw Mara across the airstrip, smiling and handing a stranger breakfast wrapped in foil. He sighed. “I’m not sure why I was.”
“I’m Tim,” beard guy said, and he offered his hand and Dan took it.
“I’m Dan.”
“Yes, you are,” Tim said. “You’re going viral, man. I rewatched the wedding on Facebook last night.”
A forklift carrying boxes of computer equipment lumbered by.
Tim said, “Did Shae really have to upload, you know, everything ? My girlfriend’s tits were on a message board.”
He’d violated them all. Most websites were doing their best to remove anything private that popped up, but the creeps already had it. One final fuck you from Shae.
“One of the gossip websites posted a picture of me getting out of the shower,” Dan said. “The headline was, Love Handle Dandle: Five Fast Facts about Dan Foster .”
“Did they pixelate it at least?”
“Yeah. But it only took, like, one or two pixels.”
They laughed.
A thought occurred to Dan. He took a panicked glance around the airstrip and then back at Tim. “Your girlfriend. She—”
“She’s okay,” Tim assured him. “Traumatized, you know, but okay. She’s around here somewhere. Said she needed to walk.” He tore at the label of his beer, considered the tarmac awhile. “We lost some friends though.”
Dan grunted. “Us too.”
A plane to the West Coast was boarding. Dan and Tim watched as they lined up. A woman wrapped in a blanket wept. Another nearby was on a video call, and she said, “Mommy’s coming home, I’m coming home,” and then a little voice asked if Aunt Sharon was coming too, but the woman just repeated that she’d see them soon.
Tim took a gulp of his beer and pushed back further into the rice.
“You know,” he said, his voice steady, “my first job was working for this kids’ birthday party company.” The shadow from a taxiing jet stretched across his face. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot since the dome fell.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“I was fifteen, couldn’t even drive yet. The lady had to pick me up, take me to these places all over. Wilmette. Lake Forest. Glenview, sometimes. They dressed me up like Batman, you know, or SpongeBob SquarePants.” He chewed on that for a second. “That’s actually where I learned ukulele.”
Dan laughed but Tim didn’t.
“I was Spider-Man a lot. The tights, you know, the mask. Costume was legit too, man, movie-quality stuff. Kids loved it, right, I’d swing into the party on a zipline that their dads hooked from the treehouse to like a tractor or whatever. Music playing. They went nuts.”
“Sounds fun,” Dan said, though it didn’t sound like fun at all.
“It was alright. Paid cash. Only had to work weekends. Free food, usually.” He shook his head, smirked. “But at every party, dude, at every party there were always the older kids, you know?” He pointed his beer at no one. “The older brothers who were too cool for this, you know, older than me a lot of times. And they’d always try to ruin it, right, prove to everyone they knew better. They’d be off to the side, shouting at me while I was playing with the kids. Saying, ‘Spider-Man, do a flip! Jump on the roof, Spider-Man!’ Shit like that. Man, I couldn’t do flips. I was just trying to make some money so I could take girls out.”
Dan sipped his beer. “Yeah. Assholes.”
“That’s what I thought,” Tim said. He finished the last of his bottle, eyes lost in the rubble beyond the airstrip. “Now I think back on it, and I’m just like, who can blame them? I was the one who kept putting on the mask, you know?”
Before Dan could even consider a response, Tim’s girlfriend appeared, and she wrapped herself around his shoulders.
“We’re boarding soon, babe.”
Tim stood, and Dan stood along with him. Dan offered his hand this time.
“I wish I could say it’s been fun,” Dan said with a wry grin.
“Oh, my review is going to be scathing .”
It made Dan laugh.