Free Points of Departure by Pat Murphy Page A

up—”
    “How long were you there?” he asked, knowing that he sounded angry.
    “About a week.” She did not try to tell him any more about Indians or acorns and he did not ask.
    As he made tea,he told her about the old woman. “The city is getting worse,” he said. “And it looks like this strike will go on for months.”
    They played chess and Michael tried not to think about the city as he played. But he could not help thinking—this lady can leave anytime. “It doesn’t affect you at all, does it?” he said at last. “It doesn’t matter what happens to the city at all. You can always leave.”

    She did not look at him. She looked down at the chessboard where the world was ordered by lines and squares. “I’m here,” she said softly. “I always come back here. I watch the city where I was born decay and I cannot halt the process.” Her eyes were angry and sorrowful.
    Michael reached out and touched her hand, but he did not respond. “I travel because I accept the world as it is. I watch andI run away.” She fell silent.
    “Hey, I’m sorry,” Michael started. “I didn’t mean to … I mean, you tried to take me with you, but …” He sat beside her on the couch. “Hey, let’s get out of this apartment tonight. We can go out to dinner. I know a restaurant that’s still open.”
    At his insistence, they went out. The wine was good; he managed to ignore the canned flavor of the vegetables. On the thirdglass of wine, he said, “You know what’s going to happen as well as I do.”
    She stopped, with her glass halfway to her lips. “No, I don’t. I never can see the next move.”
    “The city is dying—you know that. And those of us who live here will die with it. I’m dying with it. But you can leave.” He watched her and thought about how she had spent the afternoon picking wild strawberries. He suppressedhis anger and envy, and continued in a calm voice. “I resent that. And I’m going to resent that more and more. You’re going to have to leave eventually, so you might as well leave now.”
    She sipped her wine, blue eyes considering him over the rim of the glass. “Would you leave me?”
    His laughter scratched his sore throat and his face felt hot from the wine. “Don’t be silly, Karen. We hardly knoweach other.”
    “That doesn’t answer the question,” she said. He did not reply. She regarded him steadily. “I wouldn’t leave a friend to die alone,” she said.
    “Don’t be silly,” Michael repeated. He was sweating and the chair did not feel solid beneath him. He reached across the table to touch Karen’s hand to assure himself that she was still there.
    They walked back to the apartment complex, handin hand, after waiting half an hour for a bus that did not come. The driveway of the apartment court was blocked by an ambulance. The driver stood beside the vehicle, smoking a cigarette, and the spinning light above his head illuminated his face, flashing red, red, red.
    Michael asked the driver what was happening. “A drunk living in that apartment died of the fever,” the driver said.
    “Partof the epidemic. They’re going to quarantine this part of the city, I hear.”
    The news bulletin on the radio said that the quarantine was not just of one section of the city. The entire city was cut off, quarantined from the rest of the world.
    Michael sat on the couch, his head cradled in his hands.
    Karen laid an arm over his shoulders and he turned to face her. He was hot again, angry. He feltsuspended in a world that was disintegrating around him. “Don’t—” he started, and his words were interrupted by a racking cough. The world whirled.
    “Michael, I’m sorry. I want you to come with me. But …”
    Again, the coughing, the heat, and the pain deep in his chest. She was crying and he remembered, as if from a great, dim distance, another time that she had been crying and he had reached outto her. He could not reach out.
    “I wanted to change the world for you, I