“Yeah, no,” James says, looking around, fake smiling, as if everyone were trying to read his lips. “No fucking way.”

“Maybe for a night?” I offer. I would like to be flexible. I would like to bend myself around this situation, which is certainly not ideal and is almost laughably experimental. One imagines doctors behind one-way glass somewhere, rubbing themselves into a scientific frenzy over the predicament they’ve designed for us—two aging soft bodies forced into an open-air sleeping environment. Maybe we are tired enough, and armed with enough pharmaceutical support, to render ourselves comatose on these trim little cots until it’s safe to go home? But will people fuss with our inert bodies? Will they see that we are so heavily tranquillized as to be unresponsive and then proceed to conduct whatever procedures they like on us? I surrender myself to my sweet medicines only when I can lock a door, because I hate the thought of being fiddled with when I’ve brought on elective paralysis and can’t exactly fiddle back.

“The storm hasn’t even touched down on the island yet. We are talking days, maybe,” James says, rubbing his face. He rubs it with real purpose, pulling the skin into impossible shapes, before letting it not exactly snap back onto his head—it takes its time, like the gnarled skin of a scrotum—and I fear for him a little, as if his hand might drag too far and pull his face free.

Together we look around, as we might if we’d just entered a party. There’s no one here we know. It’s just a crowd of ragged travellers, forced from their homes, with far too many children running free. The children seem to believe that they’ve been released into a cage match. Kill or be killed—that sort of thing. The cots, mostly empty, are launching pads for child divers, exploring their airborne possibilities. They leap from bed to bed, rolling into piles on the floor, whooping. A kind of topless nudity prevails, regardless, it seems, of age. Certainly there is beauty on display, but it’s ruined by all this noise. One might reasonably think that there should be a separate evacuation receptacle for children. A room of their bloody own. Answering to their special needs. Relieving the rest of us from the, well, the special energy that children so often desire to display. Lord bless their fresh, pink hearts.

I text Lettie, because there’s no way she and Richard would put up with this sort of bullshit. Are they here? In what quadrant? Could they issue a specific cry, maybe holler my name?

“Airbnb!” she texts back. “Headed to Morley’s for clams and bloodies. Where r u?”

Oh, Jesus, right. People made plans. People thought ahead. I think it’s best not to mention this to James, because that’s something I could have been doing while he drove—securing our safe, private, cozy lodging and making dinner rezzies and otherwise running advance recon for this sweet adventure of ours.

James has curled up on the cot and is staring into space. He looks so tired. His color is James-like, which is never that great. I worry that he’s parked for good now, that the powerful laws of the late afternoon, which seem to visit men of a certain age, are pulling him down into some bottomless, mood-darkening sleep, from which he will wake crankily, trumpeting his exhaustion, denying that he ever slept.

“Are you going to be napping?” I ask him, as neutrally as I can. “Because . . .”

“No, I’m not going to be napping. Are you kidding me? Here?” He has a way of shouting in a whisper. It’s his evacuation-shelter whisper, I guess, although it has caught the attention of certain of our neighbors, who might want to scooch their cots somewhere else, come to think of it.

Yes, I want to assure them. We will be like this all night, whispering our special brand of kindness at each other, so pull up some chairs and put your heads in our asses. That’s where the view is best. Perhaps that’s one way to secure our area and erect a kind of privacy barrier.

“Maybe you should get up?” I say.

“Jesus, Alice, I’ve been driving for hours. I can’t relax for a minute?”

“Yes, you can, and even longer. Take all the time you want. I would just like to know your plans so I can plan accordingly.”

“What?” he hisses. “Are you going to go out and meet some friends? Go out for coffee, maybe?”

We have a different strategy when it comes to the timing of our emotional broadcasts. James buckles in public, and a hole opens in his neck or whatever, and out comes his sour message for me and the world. One feels that he is emboldened in a crowd. It is possible that he does not see other people as human, and thus fails to experience shame when he debases himself in their midst. Like masturbating in front of a pet. Whereas I frequently wait until we are alone, and then, in the calmest voice I can manage, I quietly birth my highly articulate rage in his direction. I certainly have my bias, but it is possible that neither style is superior, and that a steady silence in the face of distress or tension is the ultimate goal. Silence, in the end, is the only viable rehearsal for what comes after, anyway. I mean way, way after. And one certainly wants to be prepared. One wants to have practiced.

“Not here, James,” I say, as brightly as I can.

“What you mean is not anywhere, right, Alice? Not anywhere and never?”

Not bad. He is learning. Although I do not doubt that he will share his feelings with me when we find some privacy.

We decide to go to the car and talk this through. The cots will be here as a last resort, although it feels odd using the word “resort” with respect to such a location. James feels that we should start driving, because there will be plenty of other people with the same idea, all of them racing to find the closest hotel room. It’s kind of like the plot of “Cannonball Run,” except that these people are old, they drive very slowly, and some of them just might die tonight. Eventually, James explains, if we go far and fast enough, we should find some part of this hellish country that is not affected by this storm and has plenty of empty beds. He would like to express confidence now, I can see that. I imagine that he wants me not to worry. If only he could do it without making me worry so much more.

The roads may still be packed, he says, and who knows about the weather. Around us there’s a fringe of rain and the sky is black, and there’s that sound, a kind of pressurized silence, as if the orchestra were about to start playing. The conductor will tap his baton and all hell will break loose. We figure we should get out of here, head further inland, and maybe there will be some food and a nice clean bed in a room where we can lock the door. It sounds decadent and delicious to me, and I sort of cannot wait. We are a team, and it feels as though we’ve just broken out of jail together.