A stocky teenage boy straddling a bicycle rolled into the garden from the alleyway. Roy must have left the gate unlocked. Wendy pushed herself up on her elbows.
“Fire! Fire! Fire!” the boy shouted. He was red in the face and his eyes bulged.
“Shshh.” Wendy heard someone say. Or maybe she’d said it.
“Fire!” the boy shouted again. “There’s a kid in the house,” he sputtered, his face impossibly red. “I think he’s trapped in there. His parents are at a party.”
“It’s Bonfire Night,” Wendy told him.
The boy stared at her with wide, bloodshot eyes. A fire truck roared by, its siren wailing.
“Fire!” he shouted again.
* * *
Peaches shivered and squinted up at the stars. Mandy was sure taking her sweet time in the tunnel. She could tell Mandy she’d kissed her husband—that would get her out fast.
A gigantic ladder fire truck whooshed down Kane Street, sirens blasting. It ran the light at Clinton and flew over the speed bumps.
“Dudes,” Peaches complained, “this is a school zone. They’re going to run over someone.”
Inside the tunnel, Mandy checked her texts.
I don’t have Ted. I thought you had him.
No, I’m outside with Greg. I’m sure he’s fine.
Mandy slid out of the tunnel.
He probs went home by himself. I’m in the schoolyard.
Turning around. Meet you in a sec.
* * *
“Sorry, I can’t hear you,” Greg told Stuart, who had suddenly turned around and was half running, half walking back the way they’d come. “I’d take these off, except those fire trucks are really loud.”
* * *
Tupper went indoors. Elizabeth had not returned. She must have been chatting with someone in the kitchen.
“Elizabeth?” he called into the empty rooms.
Most of the other guests had left when the fireworks stopped. The caterers were scraping leftovers into tidy Tupperware containers for Wendy to take back to the office to nibble on during the week.
“Have you seen Elizabeth?” Tupper asked them.
“Elizabeth? Tall blonde in the orange prison suit?”
Tupper nodded.
“She just left.”
Tupper checked the downstairs bathroom and master bathroom just to be sure. He checked the basement and the towel cupboard and the coat closet. But it was just as the caterers had said. Elizabeth was gone.
* * *
“Shy?”
It was her father, right outside the door.
“Don’t come in!” Shy and Liam shouted together.
Shy envied the marooned couple in The Blue Lagoon. They had way more privacy. Not that she and Liam were doing anything. They’d segued from reading condom instructions to ordering pizza to checking out Black Ryan’s recent social media posts. He’d snorkeled in the Seychelles wearing a diamond Chanel necklace and held a blue snake in Australia wearing a tiny red Armani Speedo. Now he was in Texas, making a gun-control PSA. Only celebrities made PSAs. Liam’s friend Ryan was famous.
“Leave them alone, Roy!” Shy’s mum shouted up the stairs.
Wendy had rallied and shifted into high gear again. There were fires to put out and boys to rescue. If Shy got pregnant tonight, they would deal with that disaster tomorrow.
“Dad, please do not open the door.”
“It’s all right,” her mother called. “We’re going out for a bit. You just carry on.”
“Thank you, Mum,” Shy called back.
Roy peeked out the hallway window, which looked onto the garden. The bonfire had already died down considerably. The man from the bookstore and his girlfriend were toasting marshmallows with the Latin teacher, who, miraculously, was still alive.
“There’re a few guests outside,” he told Shy through the door. “They’re in charge of the bonfire. It’s dying down, but I don’t want to leave it untended.”
“That’s fine, Dad. We just ordered pizza.”
“Thanks, Mr. Clarke.” Liam’s crackly teenage boy voice followed Roy down the stairs, causing him to wince.
* * *
Kane Street was crammed with fire trucks and heavy-coated firemen. A ladder truck had been implemented. Spotlights had been erected. Fire hoses were connected to every available hydrant. There was a lot of smoke. The air smelled like charred wood and wet carpet.
When it became apparent that the fire was around the corner on Cheever Place, Stuart, Mandy, Peaches, and Greg began to run.
“That’s my house,” Stuart sputtered breathlessly at a fireman carrying a walkie-talkie. “My son—do you have him?”
“We’re on it, sir,” the fireman said. “Please stand on the other side of the street so the men can do their jobs.”
Stuart and Mandy backed away. Clinging to each other, they watched the spotlit scene in a confused haze. One of the side effects of Dr. Conway’s pot was that it was difficult to concentrate on more than one thing at once. They’d been distracted by the party and Ted had gone home and set it on fire? It hardly seemed possible. Ted was at the bonfire with them. He was having a good time. There was also their shared belief that nothing bad could ever happen to Ted.
The others were not so easily deterred.
“I’m a nurse,” Peaches offered. “I’m their nurse.”
Greg threw down his headphones and hat. He kicked off his Birkenstocks and unbuttoned his shirt. He was going to help save Stuart Little’s son. He was going to help save Stuart Little’s house.
There was a lot of shouting from the ladder.
Greg rushed past the firemen and into the smoke.
“Greg!” Peaches shouted after him.
“Ted’s fine,” Mandy said, clinging to Stuart.
“He’s fine,” Stuart said into her hair.
A walkie-talkie crackled.
“They’re coming out!” someone yelled.
The front doors had been propped open. The glass was broken. Greg emerged in his sooty sock feet carrying a small body wrapped in a bright yellow Ikea blanket. A dark head poked out from the blanket. Ted.
* * *
Stuart and Mandy sat on the bottom step of their neighbors’ house with Ted between them. Greg sat behind them, the yellow blanket covering his shaking knees. His pant legs were caked in ash. Peaches gave him small sips from a bottle of water and listened to his lungs with a stethoscope.
Roy and Wendy Clarke, Tupper Paulsen, and a stocky, red-faced teenager straddling a bicycle stood behind a police barricade across the street.
“Everything all right?” Wendy shouted.
Peaches gave her the thumbs-up.
Stuart remembered the Macaw. He pulled out his phone and played back the footage. A swath of something burning flew into the open kitchen window. The bills beneath the bed caught fire. Ted came upstairs and poked at the fire with various kitchen implements. Ted left the fire. The fire grew. Firemen peered into the windows and began hosing things down. Greg burst in with his shirt off, grabbed a gallon of organic milk and a gallon of extra-pulp orange juice from out of the fridge and poured them all around the bed.
“Jesus Christ,” Stuart said.
Then Greg walked through the kitchen, carrying Ted.
It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, the firemen said. Structurally everything was sound. There was a lot of water damage. Good thing some of the windows were open and that kid on his bike had dialed 911.
Mandy rubbed the space between Ted’s skinny shoulders. Ted was fine. Their house was fucked, but Ted was fine.
“We’re lucky,” she said.
“Yeah. Thanks, man.” Stuart reached behind him and fist-bumped Greg’s foot. It looked like they might have to move out for a bit. Not from Cobble Hill though. His son was a pyro and his wife was a beautiful, lazy liar, but this was their home and these were their people.
The ladder was lowered. Firemen continued to tromp in and out of the house with axes and rolled up thei
r spent hoses.
Stuart rubbed his knuckles against Ted’s bony knee. “Better get you to the hospital so they can check you out for smoke inhalation and all that cool stuff.”
“Do we have to?” Ted whined.
“The fact that he’s whining probably means he’s fine,” Peaches said.
“Just in case, though.” Mandy stood up and held her hand out to Ted.
“Better to err on the side of caution,” Peaches agreed, and stood up. She bent down and brushed her lips against Greg’s ear—the way she used to when they ran into each other in between classes at Oberlin. Then she crossed the street to talk to Bruce.
“You did the right thing,” she told him. “For once.”
“Does this mean I’m exempt from community service?” Bruce asked. He shook his inhaler and pumped it into his mouth twice. “FYI, that’s not why I did it.”
“You’re exempt,” Peaches said. The kid was still sort of an asshole, but so what? Everyone was an asshole some of the time.
* * *
It occurred to Tupper that Elizabeth might be at home. She might be taking a bath and packing her things. She might be booking cars or boats or trains—she rarely flew—and talking to sponsors. He wouldn’t let her sneak off again. This time he wanted a say.
Go, he’d tell her. I want you to go.
He checked his phone’s Macaw footage. Nothing. But there was something on the coffee table—a Post-it with a note. He zoomed in. It said something about rabbits.
“I’m just going to check our place,” he announced, and hurried down the street.
* * *
Wendy was shaking. Roy put his arm around her. Despite the fires and fireworks, the sky over their little patch of Brooklyn was clear enough to see the stars. From out on the harbor the Staten Island ferry sounded its low, mournful horn.
ONE YEAR LATER
“Before we begin,” Jefferson began, “I’d like to thank you for coming. I’d also like to invite you to stay after the reading. There will be wine and beer and hard-cider mini donuts—courtesy of Enjoy! magazine—plus cheese and crackers and some extremely entertaining live music by Greg Park, Stuart Little, JoJo Biederman, and Robbie Catchpoole of the Blind Mice, whose recent hit collaboration, ‘Sick,’ needs no introduction—it’s on the radio all the time. Congratulations, guys.
“Now, without further ado—Actually, why not? I’m going to make some ado. This guy is a god. I just heard he got a MacArthur ‘genius’ grant—there are actually two MacArthur recipients in the audience tonight. He didn’t keep the money though. He donated it to 718 Reads, an amazing organization that provides individualized reading instruction to low-income Brooklyn kids, so they could set up a new outpost in that impounded bar on Henry Street. We’re here to celebrate his new book. Buy it, read it, love it. Buy two! It’s truly an honor to welcome Roy Clarke, my favorite author, here to share with us his new masterpiece, Gold. He describes it as The Blue Lagoon meets Battlestar Galactica. Need I say more?”
The audience whooped, whistled, and applauded.
Roy smiled from his high stool. “Thank you, Jefferson, favorite owner of my favorite bookshop.” He was glad he’d gone with the title Gold. His agent liked the new title because it stood alone and couldn’t be lumped into the Roy Clarke Rainbow. Besides, Gold had more gravitas than Red. Red was the name of a pony.
He wasn’t as nervous as the last time he’d stood before an audience in this shop. He’d found the perfect passages to read. He was going to skip around, really give them a taste of the book so they didn’t have to read it at all if it was too much trouble. At least they’d have an entertaining evening.
As with his others, now that the book was finished and in print, he had misgivings. He could have done more. The book could have been longer or shorter, the names less annoying. He could have had a glossary of Martian terms, a Russian dictionary, and an introduction by someone from NASA. He could have written something more sensible and less inane. Best not to think about that now.
“I want to express my sincerest gratitude to you all for coming tonight.”
Roy recognized almost every face in the shop, as if all of the guests from Bonfire Night had been squashed into one room, plus a few extras. Nurse Peaches, her musician husband, Greg, and their son, Liam, Shy’s boyfriend, with their rescued three-legged greyhound at their feet. Wendy’s friends from work, Manfred and Gabby, who’d made the donuts. Stuart Little, his beautiful wife, Mandy, and their pyromaniac son, Ted. Stuart Little’s rock star bandmates. Shy’s Latin teacher and table tennis coach, who was really rather brave to show his hairy face. The handsome doctor, who’d brought another very handsome man with him. Jefferson, the bookstore owner, and his girlfriend. That big knucklehead who’d started the schoolyard fire and helped rescue the little boy. Tupper, wearing his signature navy-blue suit spattered with plaster because he was working on something new, and beside him an empty chair with a piece of paper on it that read THIS CHAIR LEFT INTENTIONALLY VACANT. Christian, the Scottish student currently renting their newly renovated Airbnb basement flat. Shy and her sisters, Chloe and Anna, whose stroppy glares had not worn off since they’d arrived at JFK. And, of course, Wendy.
“Thank you for being such wonderful neighbors. I’d like to thank my youngest daughter for learning to make those cinnamon buns out of a tube and for eating some of them so I don’t eat them all. I’d like to thank my other two daughters for deigning to be here.”
“Don’t forget Mum,” Shy whispered loudly.
“How could I possibly forget?” Roy whispered back even louder, setting off a ripple of laughter.
“The writing of this book and all the others, my brilliant daughters, my brilliant life here… are all thanks to Wendy. Would you mind standing up please, my darling?”
Whistles and applause. Wendy half stood, waved modestly, and sat down again.
He paused. Whenever he tried to explain to anyone why’d he’d written Gold, how the idea of teenagers stuck on Mars had come to him, he drew a blank.
“When I lived in England, I wrote about America. When I moved here, rather logically, I found myself writing about Mars.”
Encouraging titters of laughter.
“Someone asked me if this was a young-adult book. Someone else asked if it was dystopian. Honestly, I have no idea.”
More titters of laughter.
“I’ll let you decide.”
Roy opened the book. The room fell silent. He began to read.
An extremely tall, thin woman wearing a black hoodie with the hood up and enormous tortoiseshell sunglasses arrived late, crept noiselessly into the audience, and sat down in the chair next to Tupper, ignoring his THIS CHAIR LEFT INTENTIONALLY VACANT sign.
Roy continued to read. This was the funny bit.
The rows of rapt listeners giggled and snorted uproariously. They were a good audience. Of course, he knew most of them. If they misbehaved, he could yell at them in the street. But he loved this bunch. He would write Silver next. Or Platinum. Or maybe Copper. And set it here, in Cobble Hill.
He turned the pages. Now for the sad part.
Breaths sucked in with just the right balance of empathy and distress. A few people, Roy included, began to cry.
He stopped reading and looked up. “You’re all right,” he said. “We’re all all right. The ending’s happy, I promise.”
Acknowledgments
This book would never have been written without the constant nagging of my well-meaning family members. “Are you done yet?” “Are you actually writing a book?” “Did you send your book to Bill Clegg?” Thank you to Brooklyn Writers Space for providing me with a no food, no phones, no talking place to escape their nagging, open my laptop, and hope something good would happen. The final result would not have made any sense at all without the intelligence and diligence of Bill Clegg, the real deal. Thank you, Bill.
Peter Borland at Atria gave the book a home as well as his kindness and attention. Thank you, Peter, I owe you
lunch. Sean Delone kept me organized and calm when I was freaking out. Thank you also to Simon Toop and the other Cleggers. Thank you, Team Atria, especially Sherry Wasserman, Kyoko Watanabe, Gena Lanzi, and Laywan Kwan for the wonderful book jacket.
I would also like to thank my Brooklyn friends. I’m so lucky to have grown older and raised my children with you.
These pages went into production during a global pandemic and, a little later, a time of tragedy and protest. Our world has changed for good. I’m not sure what happens next, but I am hopeful.
More in Fiction
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The Storyteller
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About the Author
CECILY VON ZIEGESAR is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Gossip Girl novels, which inspired the hit television series of the same name. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her family.
SimonandSchuster.com
www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Cecily-von-Ziegesar
@AtriaBooks @AtriaBooks @AtriaBooks
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