Odds Against Tomorrow

by Nathaniel Rich

  Mitchell glanced around the room, avoiding eye contact with Tanizaki. He had their attention. There was the white-knuckled concentration he had grown accustomed to in his months at FutureWorld, the dry mouths and anxious, tapping fingers. For him these subtle signals were like the roar of applause. He took a deep breath, then continued.

  “But what are the odds, really, of this happening? I mean, it’s one thing for a Category Four hurricane to hit the East Coast. But in order to create the kind of worst-case scenario I’ve outlined, the hurricane would have to follow an extremely specific course. It would have to make landfall east of Atlantic City and then continue on a north-northwest path into the New York Bight, with the eye of the storm passing within fifteen miles of Staten Island. And the odds of that, despite the latest trajectory analyses, remain fairly low.”

  “How low?” asked D’Espy. She leaned forward; her expression had softened.

  “I haven’t done all the math yet. But I’d estimate odds of less than one in eight. There’s a high probability of some damage regardless, of course, but nothing worse than the 1992 storm.” He smiled uneasily.

  “Oh,” said D’Espy. “Is that so?”

  “Yes,” continued Mitchell. “I think we’ll all be OK. Soon everything will be back to normal.” He tilted backward slightly, and for balance he grabbed the edge of the table, his fingers smudging the glass.

  “Mitchell,” said Tanizaki. “Are you all right?”

  If he could only get the most recent numbers out of the National Hurricane Center, he’d be able to determine the odds precisely. Was it really one in eight? Might it be higher? The truth was that he had invented the figure. Twelve point five percent seemed a safe, low number. It was a hunch—no more, no less. The calculations were vague because the data was vague. He needed better numbers. When could he get better numbers?

  “Bring the boy some water,” said Ms. D’Espy. The others around the table muttered and ruffled their papers.

  The first thing he’d do, once he got the new figures from the National Hurricane Center, was calculate the odds of the storm maintaining its Category 2 status. He’d have to cross tab those odds against the storm’s range of potential trajectories. A graph would help. The x-axis would represent the distance from the center of the New York Bight at which the storm would pass; the y-axis would represent the strength of the hurricane, measured by the Saffir-Simpson scale. At x = 0 and y = Category 5, the storm would be at its most powerful, and it would make a direct hit on New York harbor—

  “I don’t think he’s telling us the truth,” said D’Espy. “Mitchell? Do you hear me talking to you?”

  At the right end of the x-axis, mark one thousand miles. Set the y-axis between Category 1 and 5. Plot each data point with a hash mark. Connect the points. What would the line look like? What kind of shape would form? Would it be a Poisson distribution? A parabola? A sine curve? Or would it be pure chaos, the marks like drops of water in a rainstorm? Any hash mark that landed near the point of origin would represent variations on the worst-case scenario—high probability of major impact, high Saffir-Simpson rating. High casualties. High chaos. Out rushes Cerberus, barking with all his heads—

  Rough material abraded the back of Mitchell’s neck. He was annoyed to discover that it was carpet pile. Someone pressed a cold, damp paper towel to his forehead. A large drop of water leaked down the side of his face and trickled into his ear. Water seemed always to be trickling down his face—first in the high-rise on Spruce Street, then in the rainstorm, and now. What the hell did it mean?

  “Mitchell? Are you OK?”

  He looked into a reassuring, smoothly contoured face, a face like a well-made bed.

  “Jason?”

  “You gave us quite a scare.” The others had gathered behind Tanizaki in a circle around Mitchell’s body. “Give him air,” said Tanizaki.

  Once the others backed away Tanizaki removed the compress. “You especially scared Ms. D’Espy,” he said in a confidential, prideful tone. His voice softened to a whisper. “I think you scared yourself.”

  * * *

  The rest of the day proceeded much the same way, minus the fainting spell. The rain intensified slightly. It collected in pools that eddied by the sewer gutters, conveying trash from every alley and garbage can into the avenues. The breaking reports about the hurricane grew increasingly dire—now it was veering straight at New York, now the gusts were as high as 130 miles per hour, a robust Category 3—and Mitchell had to work harder in order to convince himself that the worst could be avoided. This put him in an unusual position with clients. They had not seen him like this before. Never had his prophecies been so optimistic, so full of hope. Those who knew him, like Tanizaki, seemed disturbed by this transformation. It was obvious that something was wrong with him. Mitchell’s phony optimism fooled nobody. His speech became erratic; even his math began to suffer. When Nybuster pointed out that one of his calculations was off by a factor of ten, Mitchell turned pale.

  At the office Charnoble greeted him with a handshake and a broad paternal smile.

  “Whatever you told Lady Madeline, it worked. They’re scared shitless, in a manner of speaking.”

  “It’s not really a manner of speaking, Alec.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” said Alec, winking. “In any case, they want a follow-up meeting tomorrow morning.”

  “Tomorrow morning might be too late.”

  “They’ve already started shutting down their Middlesex factory. I received a personal call from Madeline D’Espy herself. She wanted to express her gratitude for FutureWorld’s foresight and wisdom. Madeline D’Espy herself!”

  The phone rang continuously. Tewilliger yelled out the names of the callers to Charnoble. As soon as he was gone Jane entered Mitchell’s office.

  “What in the world have you been telling your clients?”

  “I’m telling them not to worry,” said Mitchell. “That the odds of Tammy hitting the region at the point of greatest impact are extremely low.”

  “But they didn’t believe you?”

  “Not at all.”

  “God, you’re good.” Jane shook her head. “I never would have thought of that. Brilliant.”

  “I’m lost out there.”

  Jane seemed not to hear him.

  “With an imminent natural disaster,” she said, “the only thing scarier than confirming their worst fears is to be crazily optimistic. It’s as if the threat is too atrocious even to discuss. You mind if I use that?”

  Mitchell slumped over in his chair.

  “Charnoble was right,” she said. “You are a natural-born terrorist.”

  “Jane, be honest—aren’t you a little bit scared?”

  “Of what?”

  “This thing might really hit, and hit hard. What if it’s Galveston in 1900? No one foresaw that hurricane either.”

  She smiled, her eyes comically wide. “C’mon—we’ll be fine. An itty-bitty Category Four ain’t gonna hurt us! At least not for a day or two. This is New York City. Winnetka, it’d be another story. Or Kansas City. Don’t you worry: we’ll stick together. Jane will take care of you.”

  “I might hold you to that.”

  Jane chuckled. She began to leave the room, but when she reached the door, she turned back.

  “Refresh my memory. What happened to Galveston in 1900?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “What, was Galveston badly damaged?”

  “Damaged?” Mitchell laughed—or choked. He couldn’t tell which. “Galveston disappeared. The city completely disappeared.”

  6.

  Mitchell had spent most of the night in the skycity. Or a version of it. In his dream, when he looked outside his window, instead of cobalt-blue sky and sparkling skyscrapers extending infinitely, he saw trees—giant, soaring oaks perforating a green-black night. Below was a green lake on which there floated a canoe, rocking in the slow waves. On the bottom of the boat lay a girl in a plain brown dress, sprawled
on her back in an irregular position. Her arms were bent at strange angles. Her eyes were open. The eyes stared at him from an impossible depth.

  When he’d awoken at five in the morning, a pale glow had just started to creep across the parquet floor of his living room in the shape of a lady’s fan. It looked like a beautiful day. Could the storm have veered off course? Once, in kindergarten, his school was closed because of a twister-spawning thunderstorm that was buzzsawing its way across Johnson County, headed straight for Kansas City. Old Tibor boarded up the windows with plywood and secured them with duct tape.

  “We’re not on the ground, Toto!” yelled Tibor.

  “Oh stop it,” said Rikki.

  “The Wizard of Oz,” said Tibor, “starring a certain Miss Judy Garland.”

  Mitchell hadn’t been able to sleep the night before, he was too afraid; he remembered stumbling to the bathroom in the middle of the night and sitting in the empty bathtub with his pajamas on, as if in a bomb shelter. But when the dreaded morning arrived, they awoke to the music of two woodpeckers cautiously tapping the plywood on their windows. The family gathered in the dimmed living room, and Tibor tentatively peeled off strip after strip of duct tape. Then, in a single dramatic gesture, he snapped back a sheet of plywood. A rectangular shaft of clear blue light shot through. It landed like a spotlight on the face of Mitchell’s mother. She laughed, startled, and they all joined in, snapping off the plywood, as if a normal sunny day were the craziest thing they’d ever seen.

  Rikki, in fact, had called Mitchell several times since Tammy had strengthened to a Category 3. He hadn’t picked up, and he didn’t have the heart to call her back. No matter how calm he pretended to be, the moment she heard his voice, she would sense his terror. There was no need to worry her any more than she was already. In her last message she asked whether he had thought about where he could go in case the hurricane was as bad as some were predicting. Of course he had thought about where he could go. He had no place to go.

  But am I still dreaming? Out the window the sky over the East River was a weird curdled pink—the color of fresh scars, inflamed gums. It sparkled like fish scales.

  The phone rang. Was Rikki already up? Had she never gone to sleep? It was just after 5:00 a.m. in New York, which meant 4:00 in Overland Park. He picked up.

  “Zukor! Glad I got through. You up?”

  “It’s early, Alec.”

  “I know, it’s just—I couldn’t go to sleep. Too excited.”

  “Can we talk at the office?”

  “Listen, at two a.m., after the latest numbers came in from the NHC, the mayor issued an executive order. Mitchell, he’s ordered an evacuation. All zones.”

  The sun itself was a bloody disk. There were clouds—a linty blanket of them—white on top, fading to lavender below.

  “Mitchell? You there?”

  “They waited too long,” Mitchell said. “They should have made the announcement yesterday. By the end of the workday.”

  “I know. Because of that, I don’t see our clients taking the warning seriously.”

  “You’re saying you want me to go to consultations. You want me to work today? During an evacuation?”

  “We don’t have a choice. Besides, the evacuation is a political thing. It’s stopped raining, for godsakes! I’ve even been hearing that the storm might miss us completely. And if our clients request meetings and we stand them up, well—how will that make us look? No, no, that won’t do.”

  “Nobody’s canceling?”

  “Listen, we won’t be foolish about it: we’ll monitor the weather minute by minute and act accordingly. Besides, you yourself spent all of yesterday telling people that we’d be safe.” Charnoble was speaking very quickly now. “We may never get another chance like this. This is the day by which FutureWorld will be judged from here forward. If we fail, our business is in jeopardy. If we succeed, we’ll be the leaders of the most important new sector in the financial industry. Mitchell, this is it! This is what we’ve been working for. I need this from you. We need this from you—all of us. Tewilliger, Jane, and me. We are in this nest together.”

  Across the street from his apartment, at the entrance to the Queens Midtown Tunnel, traffic accumulated. New Yorkers weren’t leaving so much as fleeing. There were no cars heading in the other direction except for the occasional police van. Pedestrians were running into the tunnel wearing backpacks, carrying suitcases, tripping in their galoshes.

  “When I said that about the hurricane yesterday,” said Mitchell, “about how it wasn’t going to come? No one believed me.”

  “I believed you.”

  “They didn’t believe me because I didn’t believe it myself.”

  The cars were loaded to their roofs with baggage, sleeping bags, moving boxes, and whatever else could fit: a basketball, a television, a stack of women’s dresses on hangers, a bubbling fish tank. Children’s faces pressed against the windows. Sleeping children; flushed faces. The adults were determined but feverish. They yelled at each other, pounded on the windshield, punched the roof of the car. They glanced frequently in the rearview. One man took a final look at the Chrysler Building before the tunnel swallowed him up. Or perhaps he was staring at the sky. The sky had gone cuckoo. On the horizon the streaks of cloud were curved like the grains of an oak board—brick-dust red speckled with curling yellows and oranges. God doing van Gogh. Mitchell had seen these colors only one other time, during a winter vacation he had taken with his mother on Vancouver Island. He must’ve been eight or nine. At a highway rest stop they happened upon a stream where salmon were spawning. The huge fish lay spent on the rocks, their roe already discharged, the water rushing over their bloated bodies. Their skin was the same unusually strong pink hue, almost bloody. The fish weren’t quite dead yet—they still flicked their tails and blinked idiotically—but sections of their flesh had already begun to decompose and flake away. The skeletons started to show; a fin detached; an eyeball hung loose from its socket. He asked his mother why the salmon, having already given birth, didn’t just drift back to the ocean. Why, even as they died, did they still face upstream, fighting against the current?

  Three reasons, she said. First, they know, on a primitive level, that they won’t survive long enough to make it back to the ocean. Second, they want to keep the way clear for their offspring. And finally, like human beings, their instinct is to die looking up.

  Charnoble cleared his throat.

  “I appreciate this, Mitchell.” He paused. “Oh, and Mitchell? Enjoy yourself. This may be the most glorious day of our lives.”

  “Wait—Alec. Have you looked at the sky? This sky—”

  But Charnoble was gone.

  7.

  When he went to the bathroom to splash water on his face, the tap sputtered. In the refrigerator he found a jug of purified water. He bent over the sink and poured the cold water over his head. There was something absurd about drenching himself while a monsoon was speeding in his direction, but the cold slap of wetness on his neck and cheeks achieved the desired result. His thoughts clicked into place. His first resolution: no way was he going to work. He’d escape. If the trains weren’t running, he’d follow the traffic through the Midtown Tunnel, weaving between the stopped cars, escaping to Queens, then on to—no. Long Island, surrounded by water, would be even more dangerous. Better to head west to New Jersey, then Pennsylvania. The phone rang.

  “You talk to Alec?” It was Jane. She sounded exhausted and bored.

  “Yes, but…”

  “You’re not thinking of bailing, are you?”

  “You saw the scenarios. If we stay here too long, we’ll be trapped. Stuck. Cut off—”

  “Hold on a minute. It’s not even raining.”

  “The mayor ordered an evacuation,” he said.

  “Wait. Are you freaking out?”

  “No. Yeah. Maybe a little.”

  She paused, and when she spoke again her voice had dropped an octave. The note of playfulness had vanished.
/>
  “Don’t abandon me,” she said.

  The sound of her voice did something physical to him. It entered him, diving into his abdomen and extending prickly brambles into the soft parts of his stomach. He thought of his family, begging him to leave. And of Elsa, lying in a hospital bed in Augusta. Was her brain working? Did she know what had happened to her?

  Psycho! Where Do You Go When You Sleep?

  “I’d never abandon you,” he said. Despite the water dripping off his face, he suddenly felt flush. “You know that, right?”

  She paused for a second, as if she were trying to figure out whether he was joking.

  “FutureWorld,” she said at last. “Hope springs infernal.”

  “FutureWorld,” said Mitchell. “You made your bed. Now die in it.”

  “We’ll check in with each other, OK?” said Jane. “In a couple of hours?”

  Mitchell nodded.

  “Are you there?”

  “Sorry.” He took a breath. “Yes. I’m here.”

  * * *

  The storm broke at six-thirty. As soon as he stepped out of his cab on Broad Street, large, pregnant drops sopped his hair and soaked his neck. They detonated in giant asterisks on the sidewalk, the backsplash drenching his pant cuffs. The sewers were stopped up and beginning to flood; estuaries bulged around each street corner. At the building where he was scheduled to meet with his first client, Affiliated Data Systems, the revolving door was jammed with a crowbar. He sprinted north to Anchor Liberty’s office on Beekman Street. An anxious janitor stood outside the shuttered lobby ordering workers to go home. As the janitor shook his head, a file of water dripped from the brim of his hat onto his chest.