The End is Coming

Chapter Thirty-one

Sarah Rourke watched the man she had just met—he was younger than she, she guessed. She fixed a drink for him—Seagram's Seven and ice—and a drink for herself. Her husband’s taste in liq-uor was as exciting and varied as his taste in women’s clothing. If someone at the Retreat didn’t like blended whiskey—and it was her favorite blended whiskey— they were out of luck.

“Good thing you’re not a Scotch drinker,” she called out to Paul Rubenstein, forcing a smile.

“Yeah—good thing,” he nodded.

He was sitting in the sofa in what she had learned was called the Great Room. As she picked up his drink and her own, she sipped at hers briefly, studying the kitchen. “A microwave oven—God,” and she felt herself smile. It would be good to cook again. Really cook.

She left the kitchen, walking down the three steps into the Great Room, setting Paul’s drink down in front of him on the coffee table on a coaster, then sitting down at the farthest corner of the couch from him. She tucked her legs up under her, tugging at her borrowed skirt, smoothing it over her thighs—thinking about the woman to whom it belonged. The label in it was a label she had never even considered affording before The Night of The War. And the woman—she rode with her husband through the night, to do some-thing or other that Sarah didn’t quite understand. She sipped at her drink again. Paul Rubenstein seemed nervous to her.

“Is there something wrong?”

He looked at her, pushing his wire-rimmed glasses up on the bridge of his nose—it seemed more than a nervous habit with him—a preoccu-pation.

“No, Mrs. Rourke.”

“It’s Sarah, Paul—call me Sarah, please.”

“Sarah,” he nodded, picking up his drink, tak-ing a swallow of it.

“There’s something bothering you—is it that John left you here to stay with us and—”

“He couldn’t have taken me the way my arm is—no. That just happened. It’s not his fault—so I guess—”

“But there’s something bothering you,” Sarah insisted. As she moved her right hand, setting her drink down on a coaster on the end table nearest her, she saw the picture of herself and the children on the far side of the couch. Near Paul Ruben-stein. She remembered when the picture was taken—they had just—

“I, ahh—” Rubenstein began, interrupting her thoughts.

“What?”

“I gotta talk—I shouldn’t, ahh—” and he ex-haled loudly—too loudly. It was as though some-thing were bottled up inside him and just about to escape—she waited, listening, as she moved her hand back from her drink suddenly aware of the fact that for the first time in—how long?—she wasn’t wearing a gun, she was wearing a skirt. She sat on a comfortable couch, in a secure place.

“I think we’re going to be friends, Paul—the children really seemed to take to you. And I think—well—I think, so did I—you can tell me—sometimes just telling somebody is—”

He stood up—too quickly she guessed, because she saw him touch at his left arm as he walked be-hind the couch and stood beside the glass-front gun case—there were empty spots in the case now. All she could hear was the water as it spilled down the falls at the far end of the Great Room and into the pool there. She had no idea where it came from, or where the excess water went, because the pool seemed less than three feet deep—a mother always checked the depth of water her children would be playing near.

Paul Rubenstein started to talk then. “Before I met your husband,” and his voice sounded slightly breathless to her, pain perhaps, but maybe not his arm. And his words were very hurried. “Well—I was just riding a desk in New York City. I had a girl—but New York isn’t there anymore and nei-ther is she. And I guess—shit—” and he turned around and stared at her, his eyes wide. “If what Natalia’s uncle talked about is right—and maybe the world ends but somehow we just go right on living—what the hell am— “ he turned away, her last glimpse of his face showing her that he seemed to be biting his lips, almost physically holding something back.

“That you’ll be lonely,” she whispered. “I know that feeling, Paul. John has me and he has Natalia and you have no one.”

He looked back at her, saying nothing. She watched his eyes.

There was nothing she could say. She closed her eyes.