The door behind her swung open. It was Brad. “Were you the one making all that noise?”

“Yeah. Say, have you been in there the whole time?” Iris scowled and looked up again at the stairs above her.

“Down the hall.” He shrugged and held open the door.

Iris left the stair tower, telling herself the other person in the stairwell must have been Ramone. Maybe he was hard of hearing. “What’d I miss?”

“Not much. I’m glad you’re back. This place is giving me the willies!”

Me too, she thought. They were in a large lunchroom area populated by orange plastic chairs and empty tables. Some of the tables still had napkin dispensers sitting on them, filled with yellowed napkins.

“I see you found a good place to eat lunch.” She motioned to the tables. “It’s kinda weird that all of this stuff is still here, isn’t it?”

“Tell me about it. This isn’t the strangest part either.”

Iris raised her eyebrows and followed Brad to an alcove that contained three vending machines. The machines were still lit and buzzing. They advertised five-cent coffee, Mars bars, and cans of Tab.

“Are you kidding me?”

“Wait. There’s more.”

Brad pulled a nickel out of his pocket and put it in the coffee machine. Iris’s jaw dropped when it spit out a Styrofoam cup and began to fill it with a black liquid that must have been sitting inside the machine for years.

“Want some coffee?”

“Oh, I’m good!”

Iris backed away. Her eyes darted from the tables to the cup dispensers to the half-full trash cans. “It’s like a nuclear holocaust came through here and left all of the furniture.” She peered down at the red and green floor tiles and saw her footprints in the dust. They were the only sign of life past the year 1978 in the whole room.

CHAPTER 4

It was 5:00 p.m. when Brad finally packed up the tape measure. “I think we’ll call it a night.”

“Sounds good.” Iris nearly took off running for the loading dock. They’d only managed to finish laying out the floor plans for two levels, but she couldn’t care less.

“I’ll meet you back here tomorrow bright and early.”

Iris nearly tripped over her feet. She hadn’t agreed to work Sunday too. Damn it. “Uh, okay. What time?”

“Oh, nothing crazy. Let’s say 9:00 a.m. again. Okay?”

“Sure,” she said through gritted teeth. Brad sucked.

On the way home, Iris decided she needed a drink. It was a Saturday night after all, and she’d earned it. Just one drink. There was nothing waiting for her at home but dirty laundry and dirty dishes anyway.

The red walls and stained ceiling of her favorite bar, Club Illusion, were just as she’d left them two nights before. Ellie was still behind the bar, as if she’d slept there. With her dyed-black hair, nose ring, and tattoos, she couldn’t have been more different than Iris, but Ellie was the closest thing she had to a best friend, even though they rarely saw each other outside the bar. They had met at Club I two years earlier when Iris applied for a weekend job.

Besides beer and cigarettes, they didn’t have much else in common. It was kind of sad when Iris stopped to think about it, which she didn’t like to do. She didn’t have many girl friends. Any, really. The other women in engineering school were few and far between and tended to be high-strung or painfully quiet or both. Worse, they were boring. They came from nice families. They had nice manners. They were nice girls. They didn’t swear or smoke or spit. As much as she hated to admit it, Iris was just another one of them. She attended every class, turned in every assignment, and did exactly what she was supposed to do.

Iris plopped down on her usual bar stool. Ellie poured two whiskey sours and grabbed an ashtray. The regulars hadn’t trickled in yet, and the frat boys were still on summer vacation. They had the place to themselves.

“How goes life in the salt mines?”

Ellie must have thought it was hilarious that Iris had to sit in an office every day. She didn’t give a shit what the world thought she was supposed to do. Ellie was a sixth-year art student with no plans of graduating. Pleasing the parents or the teachers wasn’t even a thought. She was free. At least, that was the way it seemed.

Iris forced a smile and took a huge swig of whiskey. “Just peachy. How’s tips?”

“Shitty. If things don’t pick up, I’m going to have to get a real job.”

Ellie would never get a real job.

“Nice tattoo. Is that new?”

The new addition to the intricate mural running down her left arm was a black-and-white image of two dice sitting in a skeleton hand.

“Yes, ma’am. Just took the bandage off this morning. It comes from this Nietzsche quote I read once. ‘The devotion of the greatest is to encounter risk and danger and play dice for death.’ ”

“Wow.” Iris nodded, trying not to stare at the angry red skin surrounding the bones. She’d never had the guts to write something on herself she couldn’t erase. It looked like it hurt.

“So what’s new with you?” Ellie asked.

Iris was thrilled to have something fun to say for once. She often wondered if Ellie found her remotely interesting, or if she was merely tolerating the engineering nerd who kept coming around. “You won’t believe where I was today. I spent the whole day surveying this weird bombed-out building downtown. It was fucking crazy in there.”

Iris filled her in on the post-apocalyptic scene in the cafeteria.

“Tell me you drank that coffee,” Ellie said, laughing. “Which building was it?”

“First Bank of Cleveland. It closed down in the ’70s. Ever heard of it?”

“Nope.”

“I guess it closed down around the time the city went bankrupt. How does a city go bankrupt anyway?” Iris polished off her drink in one large gulp.

“Eh. Everyone’s got their theories on that one. My old man thinks it was some conspiracy down at city hall. Of course, he thinks the river catching fire was a conspiracy too.”

Iris nodded. In the five years she’d lived there, she’d heard her share of Cleveland underdog conspiracy theories.

“Want another one?”

Iris could see the whole night play out as she stared into the bottom of her glass. She and Ellie would tie on a buzz. The bar would fill up. Some random guy would sit down next to Iris and strike up a conversation. For a few fleeting hours, Iris would be the most fascinating woman he’d ever met. He would laugh at all of her jokes and hang on her every word. They’d be the closest of friends until the end of the night, when she’d mutter some excuse and stagger home alone. She never let them take her home. She sighed, thinking of Nick.

“Not tonight. I have to work tomorrow, if you can believe that shit.”

“What’s up with that?” Ellie went ahead and poured herself another cocktail.

“They asked me to take on this weird assignment at that bank I was telling you about. It’s after-hours.”

“And you said yes?”

Iris shook her head. “I didn’t really have a choice. The head of the department asked me to do it.”

“What, was he going to fire you or something if you said no?”

“I don’t know. Probably not. But it’s supposed to be this great opportunity to show my worth and maybe get better assignments.”

“Your worth? Christ, Iris! Never look to a job for that, okay? You can’t trust these corporate types. They’ll chew you up and spit you out without a second thought if it makes them more money. Fuck ’em! Do what you want.”

Iris nodded in agreement as she stood up to leave.