Project Reunion

by Ginger Booth

  We retrieved my overnight bag and waved our good-byes. We joined the ordinary passenger throng waiting to disembark at Brooklyn. Four Army M.P.’s detached to escort us. The natives shrunk away, giving us a wide berth. There was a lot of muttering and finger-pointing from the crowd, as the onlookers told each other who we were. Emmett ignored them and watched the approaching shore.

  “You’re being formidable,” I told him.

  “Uh-huh,” he said absently. “Sorry. Just…want to show you my new place.”

  “What? When did you move to Brooklyn?” He’d been living out of a small dumpy apartment in the Staten Island quarantine zone since Christmas, upholstered in ugly plaid. Or he’d been sleeping there, at least. Seasickness had become an issue with getting a decent night’s sleep, living on a destroyer out in the harbor through the winter storms.

  “Moved in last week,” he said. “Thought I’d surprise you.”

  I nodded judiciously. “Not really fond of surprises.”

  Emmett barked a laugh. “No. Me neither. Sorry.” He sighed. “Guess I’m nervous. What you’ll think of it.”

  Because…? But I left it at that. There was too much ogling to do right then, as we disembarked in Brooklyn. My eyes drank in the bustling surroundings. By the docks, our route led through a warehouse district. To the right, wagons and trucks and porters carried in plates of glass and salvaged wood for storage and distribution. The warehouse to the left seemed to specialize in electronics. An army of dumpsters collected up the rejects.

  Emmett halted and glanced down at my pretty open-toed dancing heels. “Do you have any…?”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. I fished my deck shoes out of my bag and switched, right there on the street. I’d have to watch my step even in deck shoes. Broken glass was everywhere, glittering painfully bright in the summer afternoon sun. Fortunately I wore sunglasses. The natives all wore something over the nose and mouth, despite the grueling heat, and protective eyewear, to keep the billowing dust out.

  I hacked a cough. Emmett fished a clean handkerchief out of his dress uniform and offered it to me. Apparently he didn’t have another. “I have…socks,” I suggested. “Oh, wait! Tissues.” So I held tissues over my lower face, while Emmett deployed the handkerchief.

  The breeze off the water died out, blocked by the warehouses. My crisp cool peach cotton party dress was developing a brownish peach fuzz of dust. And we passed on into the land of reclaimed bricks. Whole blocks on either side rose in massive ziggurats. After the buildings were razed, Emmett explained laconically, teams sorted out the reusable bricks. Broken bricks filled in the empty foundations, or abandoned subway lines, or were broken up further as an ingredient for soil for the greenbelts. Very industrious. Very dusty.

  “You cut down the trees?” I asked. Based on the dirt squares in the sidewalk and the surface-level stumps, this had been a tree-lined avenue once.

  “Apples did that,” Emmett replied. ‘Apples’ was polite slang for the survivors in the Apple Zone. “Burned them for fuel. Hardly any trees left alive in this city. Can’t blame them. Ash has new trees on order, from all over. Small ones. We can start planting them, end of August. Not here in the warehouse zone, though.”

  The next block was dustier yet, though the apples hosed this one down to control the dust. “Greenbelt,” Emmett explained. This particular stretch was still a rubble-belt at the moment. But it was leveled and attractively graded small rubble. The wide avenue we walked on was left intact. All the abandoned cars were gone. Other streets to right and left were rubbled over. Knee-high retaining walls of brick separated the sidewalk from the greenbelt-to-be. Planting this swath in the heat of July would be a waste of good seed. The natives were just building the substrate here for now, a giant mixing trough.

  “The smell…” I said, not really wanting or needing an answer.

  “Solids from the wastewater treatment plant,” Emmett confirmed. “And… They were planting the bodies last night when I walked through here. Maybe a half foot deep under the gravel.”

  I flung my arms around him for a hug. He held me, harder than I expected. “It’ll be beautiful,” he said. “Soon.”

  “What a horror to watch,” I replied.

  “If I can order them to do it, I can damn well watch them do it,” Emmett said harshly. But he swallowed and pressed me closer, kissed my forehead. He promised, “Not much farther, darlin’. Three more blocks.”

  It hurt to watch Emmett seeing this fresh through my eyes, and finding it horrible. But it was horrible. This whole damned city was a horror. And I felt like a coward and a cad for putting him up to tackling this, while I stayed home on my placid little farm, in my pretty green town of Totoket, amidst the clean salt marshes and the maple woods and the blue-gray waters of the Sound. While Emmett watched them cart in rotted bodies, Alex and I were partying on the Niedermeyers’ yacht yesterday evening. Like the man said, I could damned well face what I’d helped to do. My heart broke for him, though. This was ghastly. And this was on a good day, after nearly 9 months of Herculean effort.

  An island of buildings rose ahead of us. This particular enclave seemed to have selected a hollow 9-square downtown concept, similar to New Haven’s, with a block-sized giant town green in the middle. Some structures had been torn down even in the outer blocks, leaving gaps.

  “Is that safe?” I asked, pointing. One of the empty foundations was filled with water. Kids and adults splashed and played in it as a swimming pool. Not very many kids. Project Reunion had relocated all the orphans, and gave evacuation priority to families with children. But some families chose to stay.

  Emmett smiled briefly. “Re-engineered as a pool, Dee. They didn’t just fill a foundation hole with water. It’s sealed. Water pumps and filters, lots of chlorine. Not very deep. We’re just decorating with reclaimed brick these days.”

  Indeed, we were approaching new brick structures, built on the outer edge of the sidewalk. These were about 4 by 4 feet square, and stood waist-high on me. My eyes widened as I saw into the first one.

  “Romaine lettuce! How handy!” I laughed. “Is this a cold frame?” Cold frames were planting boxes with optional transparent lids, for growing greens in winter. In warm weather, they were simply boxed garden plots, sometimes with cloth covers to keep out the bugs. I used see-through tunnels at home instead, but cold frames were a similar idea.

  “Yup. We call them apple boxes. Don’t pick anything,” Emmett warned. “You see that woman? With the green flag? She’s open for business. Picking from this box would be stealing.”

  “I won’t pick,” I promised. But I did poke, into the soil, to see what it was made of. This particular one seemed a blend of potting mix, fine-grained pulverized brick, and God knew what else. “Huh. It sure grows well.”

  “Yeah, Dori’s one of the best street farmers,” said Emmett. He drew me along. “Hey, Dori! What do you have for us today?” he greeted the green flag woman with a big smile.

  “French breakfast radish, Colonel!” the elderly apple replied, with a gap-toothed sincere smile. “Mild and refreshing! Perfectly ripe today. Six a buck.”

  The official name of Cullen’s new currency was the Hudson dollar, but everyone called it a buck. Similarly, New England was beginning to retire the tax credit concept in favor of the clam. The neighboring currencies were set deliberately unequal in value. They traded at somewhat over three bucks to the clam at the moment. The currencies were electronic only. There were no coins or paper bills, no untraceable cash.

  Emmett and Dori tapped cell phones to complete the transaction, and Dori handed us a half dozen small elongated radishes, with all their leaves. “Be sure to wash the roots,” Dori admonished. “Leaves are fine.”

  “You really want to wash all of it,” Emmett confided in me, before I could crunch into a root. He knew I wouldn’t have bothered in my own garden. I just picked ’em and ate ’em, even fresh from the soil. “They use sewage tea for fertilizer.”

  That made sense. And
erased any temptation for me to eat the radish before washing.

  The green inner square showed what the outer rubble belt aspired to become. Several hundred yards on a side, it was already planted for pasturage near the brick walkway we took across it, with plenty of young clover and grasses. My experienced eye spied the starter strips of lawn sod, laid in to help kick start the microbiology. A few young saplings had even been installed by the walkway before the onslaught of summer heat. Further away were garden plots and some chickens. I couldn’t be sure from this distance, but it looked like some buildings facing the square had cucumber vines growing up their south faces. Even the dust abated here in the green zone. They were off to a great start in here.

  I slipped an arm around Emmett’s waist, and beamed up at him. “This is really pretty, Emmett!”

  “Thank you,” he mouthed, though no sound came out. He cleared his throat, and pointed. “That house is mine. Center one.”

  Most of the buildings ringing the green were six to twelve stories or so, many with storefronts at ground level. The group of three Emmett pointed to, however, were classic Brooklyn brownstones, isolated by green lots to either side. Despite the stress on growing food everywhere else, the brownstones grew flowers, bright and cheerful portulaca and nasturtiums in big built-in planters at the top of their broad front steps, and in window boxes above.

  I gazed up in awe from the foot of those steps. The brownstone looked perfectly renovated, in loving detail, better than its New York Knickerbocker glory days of centuries past. Three and a half stories high – the lowest servant floor sank below street level – plus crown molding. The front bowed outward to either side of the central stairs, curved to provide bay windows for the interior. There were elegant moldings and fiddly bits everywhere, and a painted cast-iron railing.

  The brownstones weren’t actually brown. The set of three were painted in sandy shades of cream, rose, and tan.

  “Did you say ‘house’?” I inquired. Before, such a double-wide brownstone would likely have been split into a dozen apartments. Really expensive apartments at that. A whole brownstone…

  “Last sold for twenty-eight million,” Emmett supplied. “It’s nice.”

  “Nice,” I echoed faintly.

  He nodded dismissal to our guards and headed up the steps. A middle-aged apple housekeeper opened the door for us before we reached it, and curtsied us in.

  The house was even more gorgeous inside. A golden wooden staircase rose in front of us. To its left, a formal dining room. A formal living room to the right, gleaming with wood from floor to chest height on me. Above the paneling, creamy plastered walls rose to ceiling molding. True to Emmett’s taste, the room capitalized on its polished bare wood floor. An unfussy conversational grouping of beige leather couches and chairs formed a small island around a fireplace.

  Emmett immediately kicked shoes onto a shoe rack, and ripped off necktie, jacket, and dress shirt just as quickly as he could peel them off. His undershirt was sopping with sweat, as was his hair and every other part of him, probably. That dress uniform was not ideal for a summer day. And it wasn’t much cooler indoors. The beautiful windows were all wide open.

  “Will sir need his uniform again today?” the maid inquired, taking his cast-offs.

  “No, thank God,” Emmett replied. “We expect four more guests for dinner tonight, Gladys. Six total. Casual, something light. Out in the garden, I think. They should arrive in an hour. Maybe later.”

  “Yes, sir. Perhaps a salad nicoise. And will madam need the dress again today?” she asked.

  “Please, call me Dee,” I invited with a smile. I’d never had someone speak to me in the third person before. It was creepy. Especially with a harsh Brooklyn accent. “I don’t have another dress with me. Emmett?”

  “Just the Niedermeyers and Camerons tonight,” Emmett explained. “The kids are staying on the yacht. With guards.”

  “Oh, nice! I guess I will want my dress then. And salad nicoise sounds perfect. Were you a cook before, Gladys?”

  She shot me a look of pure hatred, quickly tamped to pursed lips and eyes cast down to the floor. “I’ll carry this up for you,” she hissed. She grabbed my overnight bag and stomped up the staircase.

  “Apples hate it when you ask personal questions,” Emmett observed mildly.

  “I think I caught that,” I agreed. “What did she do before?”

  “Never asked. She hasn’t volunteered a word about herself. Just, ‘Gladys.’ She does a good job.”

  “That is so weird,” I complained.

  “Some things take time, Dee,” he murmured softly.

  Emmett pointed and led me toward the back of his fancy new house. Beyond the formal living room, through glass French doors, was a beautiful library, turned into Emmett’s office. He had two computer displays on his huge oak desk, in addition to his laptop and tablet, plus a giant screen on the wall that rivaled my living room display. Extra box devices blinked their LED heartbeats.

  I did a double-take. “You have full power and Internet!”

  “Cell phones and meshnet, too,” he agreed. “Indoor plumbing. Fridge, stove, laundry. Even air conditioning. I just don’t use it.”

  “Your library could use some books,” I suggested. Built-in shelves of gleaming wood stretched empty from floor to ceiling.

  “Books are easier to burn than trees,” Emmett responded shortly. He continued to the back…garden. Those weren’t just windows at the back of the library. He stepped aside to wave me through another set of French doors, still solemn.

  “Oh…” I said, rapt, face breaking into a smile. “You have a tree.”

  A strip of deck stepped down into a surprisingly large brick-walled garden. The walls were perhaps 8 feet high. From the deck at the half-story first floor, I could see across the tops of the other gardens filling the core of the roomy block. But Emmett’s garden was fairly private at ground level. It stretched perhaps 75 feet back, as wide as the house, around 30 feet. Near the deck, a modest-sized maple tree cast dappled shade over a bricked lounge area, complete with teak furniture. A narrow lap pool stretched the length of the garden, with plantings in the narrow strip between the pool and the wall on that side. Against the back wall stood a quartet of brick 4x4 planters like the ones on the street, currently barren. I drifted down the long brick walkway to look at them.

  “Soil,” I said wonderingly.

  “Uh-huh. Not sure I did the right thing there,” Emmett replied. “There was garden soil, but the walls block the sun. Figured higher was better. Maybe room for some chickens, too.”

  “It’s gorgeous, Emmett!” I said. I wanted to throw my arms around him. But he remained aloof, leaning with hands on the brick raised planter bed before us. I sat on its edge and looked up at him. “Talk to me, Emmett,” I whispered.

  “It’s hot,” he sighed. “Let’s change into bathing suits and get into the pool.”

  “In a minute,” I agreed. “What’s wrong?”

  It took a minute, and a slow Ozark minute at that. But I waited him out. “Is it good enough, Dee?” Emmett finally murmured. “For you to live here? With me.”

  “You want to stay here,” I said, dismayed. “Not just to September.”

  “No,” he said. “Maybe. I don’t know. I just want you with me.”

  “Emmett, is this an ultimatum?” I asked, eyes narrowed. “Are you breaking up with me, if I don’t move in?”

  “No.” He turned to perch on the brick beside me, hands between his knees. “No threats. I love you. I don’t want anyone else. Just want you here with me. Wherever we go next. Please. It’s just too hard alone.”

  It cost him to ask, to beg. But if he felt this way, watching Adam’s wedding must have been excruciating. With this house and garden, he’d bent over backwards to please me, to make a place for me, where I wouldn’t hate living in New York. I wasn’t likely to love it anytime soon either. And I doubted I could make friends among the apples. New Yorkers were none too friendly b
efore the epidemic. They seemed downright squirrelly now.

  In New York, I’d live under curfews. Never leave the house without armed escort. Socialize with the occupying armed services, separate and above the apple natives, like some bizarre throwback to the British Raj. Enjoy maybe the only tree left in Brooklyn, walled off from the voracious hordes of human tree predators. No more kayaks and beaches, marshes and woods and apple orchards, squirrels and raccoons. Yet.

  But there would be. If I can make him do it, I can damn well watch him do it.

  I’d been quiet more than a minute. Emmett sighed defeat. “Never mind.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Whatever you’re up to, I’ll face it with you. I believe in you, Emmett.” I squeezed his knee. “Partners.”

  “You’ll…?” Emmett asked, daring to look up at me.

  “Yes. With you. I love you.”

  He clutched me tight. I smoothed his back, his hair. I was afraid for a moment he was going to ask me to marry him right then and there. But no. “Thank you,” was all he said.

  “We are leaving in September. Aren’t we?” I asked doubtfully.

  “If you want,” he promised. “Gotta warn you, though. I’m pegged as a remediation specialist now. Got offers from all over.”

  I laughed. “I bet. We’ll figure it out.”

  “Together,” he agreed.

  “At least the weather is improving,” I said wistfully.

  Emmett sighed. “Don’t bet on that.”

  “We made changes in time,” I insisted. “Huge changes. This year hasn’t been so bad.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Emmett.

  “What.”

  “You don’t want to know,” Emmett said.

  “Yes. I do.”

  “I believe God gave us a break. Because we – the whole Northeast – were willing to save New York.”

  I shot him a look that said, You’ve got to be kidding me. But what I said was, “It’s better, Emmett. Rain fell in the Dust Bowl. Some.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Tell me.”