She made the journey back to the living room and sat down on the sofa. “Any luck?” Matt asked.
“I couldn’t even get a dial tone.” She waited for him to curse or say something, but he was silent. “Wasn’t there supposed to be a full moon tonight?” She had noticed that earlier, on her office calendar at the library. Matt kept up on things like that.
“Yeah.”
“So you’d think we’d see some light through the blinds, wouldn’t you?”
“I was thinking the same thing. Maybe it’s gotten really cloudy. Maybe the clouds are really thick. That’s what I’ve been telling myself.” His hand slipped around her wrist. “But that doesn’t explain the flashlight. Light doesn’t work that way.”
“I know.”
She turned off the flashlight. They sat there in silence. This was what it must be like to be blind, Lydia thought. At last she said, “Maybe we should see how the people across the street are doing.” They had been living in this house for almost four months now, and she had still not met any of their neighbors, but Matt must know something about them by now, since he ran his business from home. “I mean, this is the third power failure since we moved here. Maybe they can tell us how often this happens.”
“They’ve got three kids,” Matt said. “At least I think all of them are their kids, the ones I saw playing on their lawn the other day. Hard to believe anybody can afford three kids these days.” He sounded a little more like himself. “Guy’s name is Olaf. He looks like an Olaf, too. He’s a big blond-haired guy who’s built like a linebacker and his wife is this little tiny thing with black hair.”
“What’s her name?”
“Don’t know. I only talked to the guy for a few seconds. He asked me what I did, and I told him Web site design and computer workshops for individuals and groups, and he asked if maybe I could design a Web site for him if he ever quits his job and starts a landscaping business. And that was it.” He sighed. “I could head over there, see if he’s found out anything.”
“I’ll come with you.” She fumbled for his hand, afraid of sitting alone in the dark; his fingers closed around hers.
They moved slowly toward the front door, clinging to each other. After long moments, Matt let go of her and then she heard the door creak open. The still air seemed even colder than it had been earlier, when the wind had started to pick up. It was as dark outside as inside the house; the other houses on their street were completely invisible.
“Matt,” she whispered. Even the thickest cloud cover wouldn’t have turned the sky this black; there would have been some sign of the full moon, a soft silvery glow behind the clouds, a break through which she could have seen stars.
A speck of light suddenly appeared in the blackness. “Olaf?” Matt called out. “That you? It’s me, Matt Polgrave from across the street.”
“Matt?” That was a man’s voice, sounding very faint.
“Olaf?” Matt replied.
“Yeah, it’s me. This flashlight isn’t working.” The speck of light disappeared. “Maybe it’s the batteries. I knew I should have picked some up on my way home.”
“My flashlight’s got the same kind of trouble,” Matt said.
“Vicky tried calling National Access, but she couldn’t get through. National Asshole, I call them. We’ll probably be the last ones in town to get our power back on.”
Olaf was very likely right about that, Lydia thought. They were on a cul-de-sac in the middle of nowhere, or so it had always seemed to her, since it took her a good five to ten minutes just to get to the highway and another half an hour after that to drive to work. “We’ll be able to have two cars,” Matt had told her before they moved, “and we won’t have to worry about parking.” She would have preferred just the one car and the parking hassles and her former ten-minute walk to her job at the library. She had felt freer in the city, with the sounds and movement of so many other people around her. Here, she often felt cut off, embedded, trapped. Inertia had become the ruling principle of her life.
“This is the third time since we moved here,” Matt said to Olaf. “How often does this happen around here, anyway?”
“Not this often. Not until the last few months, anyway.”
Another point of light appeared far to Lydia’s left, then vanished. Another neighbor, she thought, somebody else she didn’t know who was probably bewildered by the totality of the darkness. She began to wish that she had made more of an effort to meet the people here, that Matt had been more outgoing. It had been mostly his idea to move out of the city, to get away from worrying about burglaries and getting mugged and hassles with parking the car and to have more space for his computers and his workshop and all the other stuff that had cluttered and finally overflowed their condominium and the small office he had rented down the street.
“Want to come over?” Matt asked.
“I’d probably get lost crossing the street,” Olaf said. “Can’t see a goddamn thing. Anyhow, I better get back to Vicki, she’s got a thing about the dark.”
“See you,” Matt said, and laughed.
“That’s a good one.” Olaf’s voice sounded even fainter.
“Step back,” Matt said to her, and Lydia knew that he was going to close the door. She felt her way back through the doorway and had to grope her way back to the sofa, brushing her hand against the bookshelves as she passed them and taking tiny steps so that she didn’t hit her legs against the coffee table.
She felt as though she would never get to the sofa.
Her leg bumped up against an obstacle that felt like the sofa. She turned and sat down. Matt plopped down next to her.
“He was right,” she said.
“Who?”
“Olaf. About getting lost crossing the street. I read this article the other day that says if people don’t get certain kinds of cues, they end up walking in circles, that’s how people get lost in the woods. We could go out the front door now and end up just circling around to the back of our own house.”
Matt said, “You’re creeping me out.”
She had thought she was making a joke. Now she knew from the flat tone of his voice that he was really frightened. She felt around the coffee table for her cellphone, found it, and pressed a button with her thumb; it still wasn’t working.
“The radio,” Matt said. “You know, that old one we took with us up to the lake this summer. I think I left it in my workshop.”
“What about it?”
“We could tune into one of the local stations, find out what’s going on. Might as well find out if it’s a major blackout.” He brushed against her as he stood up. “Think I can get to the basement,” his voice said overhead. “I’ll take it slow.”
* * * *
The first power failure they had experienced in this house had happened in the middle of dinner, and the power had come back on just as Lydia was lighting a candle for the table. The second had actually turned into a pleasant experience, giving her a chance to talk to Matt while they finished some wine instead of her having to sit through a DVD of a crappy action movie.
This power failure was different. This darkness didn’t feel