He was damned anyway. He might as well take what he could when he could.

He let Julie sleep while he worked out the system. It had to be done today. He couldn't remember the last time there was electricity over a weekend, so he couldn't wait until then. Friday morning was food line, and Friday afternoon was probably the best time to barter what he could, since he suspected a lot of Harvey's supplies conveniently fell off the food line truck Friday mornings.

As he dressed he thought about asking Kevin to help him unload the apartments, but decided against it. Kevin had been great, but it would be too much temptation.

Still, he felt guilty body shopping with his friend that morning. But guilt was as much a part of his life as cold, hunger, and grief. And if Kevin noticed his mind was elsewhere, he didn't say anything. The two found a fair number of shoes, watches, and coats, which they traded in for soup, mixed vegetables, black beans, and rice for Alex and vodka for Kevin.

Julie was up when he got back. "We're not going to school today," he said, handing her the groceries. "We're spending the day going through the apartments, taking everything we can barter or use and bringing it all down here."

"What about lunch?" Julie asked.

"I don't know," Alex said. "Do we have enough to get us through to Tuesday?"

Julie checked out what Alex had just brought in and what remained in the cabinets. "We can stretch the rice and beans for two meals each," she said. "And we can each have a can of soup for supper tomorrow. We have the can of mixed vegetables and a can of carrots and a can of peas. Won't you get food tomorrow?"

"I hope so," Alex said. "But we can't count on it."

"Then no lunch today," Julie said. She scowled. "I used to like holidays. Now they just mean no lunch."

The refrigerator began its useless whir, and the light that Alex always left on in the living room began to shine. "We've got to use the electricity while we can," he said. "Let's get the shopping carts and garbage bags. We can risk taking the elevator up, but we'd better be careful, because once it goes off, it might stay off until Tuesday."

Julie looked thoughtful. "Maybe we should take all the stuff to one of the upstairs apartments," she said. "If someone looks into our windows, they could see the stuff here."

Alex hadn't thought of that. He looked at the iron grilles on their windows, which prevented people from breaking in. But if someone was desperate enough, he could break the doors down.

"We'll keep the curtains closed," he said. "We're not getting much natural light anyway. And we can cover the windows with blankets, once we have some extra ones. That'll keep some of the cold air out, and no one will be able to look in. I'd rather have the stuff here, where we can control it."

Julie dug out the garbage bags from under the sink.

"Okay," she said. "What are we looking for?"

"Anything and everything," Alex replied. "The food's all gone, but I bet there's plenty of coats and sweaters and shoes. Blankets and quilts. Flashlights, candles, batteries, matches. Socks. Liquor. Whatever's in the medicine cabinets. I'll trade what we can't use. We'll need to move fast but be thorough."

"Are things going to get worse?" Julie asked, and Alex could hear the suppressed panic in her voice.

"Yeah, I think so," Alex said. "If you can believe that."

"I don't want to eat rats," Julie said. "Or dead people."

"Me neither," Alex said. "Let's get going so we won't have to."

Monday, September 5

"Julie!" Alex said, unable to keep the irritation out of his voice. "My shirts are filthy. Can't you do a better job with them?" He told himself no one was as clean as they had been, but with school officially starting again the next day, he wanted to look as respectable as possible.

"Why don't you do your own damn laundry," Julie said.

Alex grabbed her arm. "Don't ever talk to me like that again," he said. "Never."

"Or what?" Julie said.

"Or you won't eat," Alex said.

Julie stared at him in horror. "You don't mean that, do you?" she asked. "You'd keep all the food for yourself?"

Alex tried to remember what it felt like not to be hungry. Bri wasn't hungry, he thought. She was fat as a kitten. If he'd let Uncle Jimmy take Julie, maybe she'd be fat as a kitten, too.

"I didn't mean it," he said, releasing Julie from his grasp. "As long as I have food, you'll have food."

"It's hard washing clothes by hand," Julie said. "Maybe I should stay home from school, when the electricity is on. Then I could use the washer and drier."

Alex shook his head. "School is more important," he said. "I'll wash my own clothes. That way if they're not clean enough, I'll have only myself to blame."

"Papi never washed clothes," Julie said.

"Yeah, well, I'm not Papi," Alex said. Papi would never have threatened to starve a child, no matter how dirty his shirts might be.

Tuesday, September 6

Alex was relieved to find that at least some of the guys he'd gone to school with in the spring had returned for fall classes. He did a count at Mass and figured the chapel was about a third full —not bad given that there was no new batch of seventh graders to replace the seniors who'd graduated.

Father Mulrooney welcomed everyone back and said that, once again, attendance at Mass was mandatory. The faculty had increased by two, with a couple of nervous-looking seminarians joining the three elderly priests who'd held the fort during the summertime. Mr. Kim would teach all the science classes, and Mr. Bello all the math classes. There were no more requirements for lunch; if you were at school that day, you would be fed. Alex was relieved. It had grown increasingly more difficult and depressing to check up on the people on his list. He was reluctant to admit it, but physical exertion was getting harder —maybe because he was eating so little or maybe because the air quality was so bad. And although he hated to think about it, the bad air and the lack, of food was probably killing off some of the people he'd been checking up on all summer.

He had lunch that day with Kevin, Tony Loretto, and James Flaherty. James had spent the summer in Pennsylvania with his grandparents, and it felt strange to see him back. It was hard to remember that people with money could come and go, and that gone didn't always mean dead.

"What's it like out there?" Alex asked as he devoured in three bites his lunch of red cabbage and baked beans.

"Bad," James replied.

"So's lunch," Kevin said, but Alex noticed he ate everything on his plate as fast as Alex had.

"Bad like how?" Tony asked. "Earthquakes? Floods?"

James shook his head. "It's dead there," he replied. "Here we're still getting food shipments and there's electricity most weekdays. There, nothing. It's a little warmer here, too, if you can believe it. The city traps the bad air and the warm air. Out there, without the skyscrapers, the air stays cleaner but colder. But the crops all died, and a lot of the farmers were talking about how they were going to have to slaughter their animals, since there wouldn't be enough feed for them to get through the winter, even assuming things get better next spring."

"Which they won't," Kevin said.

"I don't think so, either," Tony said. "Not around here, anyway."

"But at least in the country, they don't leave dead bodies lying around everywhere," James said with a shudder. "That's new since I left the city. How do people put up with it, the corpses and the rats?"

"After a while you don't really notice," Tony replied. "You have to be careful about the rats, in case they're rabid, but for the most part they're okay, too. They eat the bodies and leave everyone else alone."