Saturday, December 9, 2017

T

ravis pulled me down the stairs to the fourth floor, where George was lounging on the couch, dangling upside down with his feet up and his head behind the coffee table as he hung a huge chunk of cooked salmon like a branch of grapes over his gaping mouth. When George saw Travis and me dashing across the room, he dropped the salmon and nearly choked.

Dropping his legs and flipping himself into upright position, he shouted, "Jesus you two scared me! Why are you running--" And in a split second his eyes caught that Travis was holding my hand as Travis pulled me to the next stairway, and George and I locked eyes while I could only imagine him thinking to himself—Damn, Zara, you really are one promiscuous girl when your life is in desperate turmoil.

George raised a devilish smile again, the same one he shot me when he suspected Brett and I were having an affair, and he surely assumed he had more power over me this time than even before. If you don't want me to tell Jack, George's eyes said, you'll have to give me tomorrow's food ration just like you gave me today's.

George sniggered at me and I rolled my eyes and shot him a furious glare before George dropped down behind the coffee table to pick his dropped salmon off the carpet, and Travis yanked me away through the threshold to the stairs where he led me down to the third floor, and then the second. Next thing I knew, he dragged me (as my tiredness caused me to nearly faint) across the second floor to the stairs that went down to the cellar. In the cellar, he let go of my hand, and that's when I wondered why we were even down here. Why was alcoholic relevant to make a rescue signal?

"What are we doing down here with the whiskey and scotch, Travis?" I leaned on the wall and carefully stepped over the inch of floodwater on the floor. I shielded my tired eyes as the soft gray rays of light beaded in through the thin window above the cellar's locked metal door that barred ten feet of water from rushing in. Through the slit of window, the sky's blue diamonds twinkled behind the stormy clouds. I looked to Travis. "How do you expect to make a flare gun down here?"

Travis grabbed the tallest bottle of whiskey he could find, then ran over to a rack on the wall where there lay a bottle opener. He popped the cork and it shot up at the ceiling and plummeted to the wet floor with a splash at my naked ankles. As I wiped my ankles and grumbled in annoyance, Travis snatched a dirty white towel off the same rack. He shoved the towel into the neck of the bottle so it hung out of the neck like a white flag. He held the bottle up so it glinted against the window's gray light. "Walla!"

I looked at it with a blank stare. I was not amused. "I don't get it."

Travis shot me a grumpy look. "What do you mean you don't get it?"

I pointed at the stupid contraption and said, "That doesn't look like a flare gun to me."

He sighed and said, "It's not a flare gun."

"Obviously. What is it?"

Travis held it up higher with a triumphant smile. "It's a Molotov cocktail. I'll light the towel with matches from upstairs. The alcohol is flammable enough so that when you throw the bottle it'll act as a bomb!"

I eyed him and shook my head. "First of all, you don't have the athleticism to throw it high enough for anyone to see it catch fire. Second of all, even if someone like Brett, with baseball pitcher abilities, threw it up at the height of ten giraffes standing on top of each other, no one across the horizon would see it."

Travis shook his head at me. "Zara," Travis said, "throwing the Molotov cocktail up in the air is not the plan."

I said, "Oh good, Travis, then what is your master plan?"

Travis circled his hands at all the bottles around us (there was enough to intoxicate all of Ireland on a payday), and said with an unbreakable spirit, "We're going to set all these bottles on fire and throw them at the building next door." He pointed through the wall. "The whole world will see the smoke."

My jaw dropped to the floor. I shouted, "We're going to set the building next door on fire?!"

"You bet we are!" He said as he grabbed my hand and pulled me so as to run me upstairs to tell the others of our plan. But suddenly I stopped him and said, as my tummy grumbled-- "But Travis, wait!"

Travis turned in surprise.

I continued, "What if--"

"What if what?" Travis said.

"What if there are people in that house?"

Travis dropped his hand from mine and stepped back in horror, like the idea of people surviving next door had never crossed his mind.

To break the awkward silence I said, "What are you thinking, Travis? Don't you think there might be people next door?"

Travis immediately shook his head and shot down my idea. "Absolutely not."

Feeling insulted, I crossed my arms and said, "Why do you have that look on your face like you just realized something?"

Travis covered his mouth. "Because—you just gave me an idea. Before we burn that house down to send the smoke signal, we ought to at least search it."

I was suddenly curious. "For what?" My tummy rumbled. I was so hungry now that I could faint.

Travis's eyes lit up. "For food!"

I looked at him and jumped up and down. I hugged him and planted desperate kisses all over his genius head. "Food. Food? FOOD!"

But he squeamishly pushed me off him and raised a finger. "But wait! We still have to figure out a way across. We need to bridge the gap, which between these two houses must be a distance of over fifty feet." (I had no idea how long fifty feet was with respect to real life. Thankfully Travis clarified for me when he saw my uncertainty.) "That's about 16 meters. Or sixteen one-meter measuring sticks like the ones you've probably seen before in classrooms."

Finally, I nodded. "That really is a large gap," I said. But knowing how smart Travis was, I honestly wasn't that concerned about the challenge to bridge the gap to the other house. I had so much faith in Travis's intelligence that I would trust him with my life.

Travis said, "And if we are able to make it across to the other house without touching the water, which is probably toxic from local sewage wastes or chemicals or energy batteries bursting from the tsunami, or without falling to our deaths if we choose to form a bridge high up across from our roof to the neighboring roof, then not only might we find extra food, but we might even find that we like the other house better and stay there, or—" Travis's eyes lit up.

I jumped up and down with joyous excitement. "Or what, or what!"

Travis turned to me and grabbed my shoulders hard. "If we check their garage, and it's not totally swamped," he said, smiling, "we might find a boat!"

I raised my eyes at him. "Ho—ly—shit!" I hugged Travis and jumped up and down, laughing and shrieking from excitement. Food! Smoke signal! Escape boat! Any one of those alone sounded like a ticket to our survival! "Travie, you're a genius! A GENIUS!" I went on kissing his skull and he finally broke into laughter before pushing me away for one moment so Travis could say, "It's not for sure that any one of those will work though. They might not have any food. Or if they do it might be expired."

"Come on, Travis. Don't kill the mood. Of course they have food in their kitchen!"

But Travis said, "We don't know that for sure. Also, if we can't find a way across to the other building, we'll never find out."

But I said, "But of course you'll find a way!"

But Travis said, "We don't know that either. And also, if the neighboring house is too damp, or we run out of matches, or we run out of towels, or the towels don't stay lit when we throw them at the opposite house, the neighboring house won't catch fire and won't be an effective smoke signal."

Now Travis was really starting to bum me out. He could always kill a good mood.

"But, Travis, what about the boat?"

He merely looked at me sheepishly in my eyes, and for a moment, I could tell he wished he could have my optimism. But he ran on evidence, not on expectation, and he said to me, "We don't know if they have a boat. And if we can't cross the gap to search the neighbor's house, we'll never know. I would hate to burn that house down without seeing what's inside."

My shoulders drooped under the weight of his hands. I looked at him with want for much, much better than what he just proposed. "Oh Travis," I said, "I hope they have a boat."

Travis nodded. "Me too," he said, pulling my hand and turning toward the door. "Now let's go tell the others."