He slowed to a walk, his head turning back and forth as if taking his bearings. A moment later he came to a complete stop, letting her slip a bit so that her feet were touching the ground. She stretched her legs, trying to take some of her own weight away from him. But her knees were too weak to give any support, and a terrible fatigue was beginning to wash over her. In the distance behind them she could feel the calls of chaos and consternation and growing anger. "This... isn't right," she managed to whisper. "I need... to go back."
He leaned down and lifted her again off her feet, stifling her protest. "It'll be okay," he murmured as they headed off again.
The last thing she remembered before drifting into a nightmare-filled sleep was the sensation of her head bouncing rhythmically against his shoulder as he ran through the night.
1
The play at the Miller Theater had been one of those modern psychological dramas, exactly the sort of thing Roger Whittier would expect from a Columbia University student production: dark and pretentious, relying heavily on deep sociological quirks, without any pretense of rationality in its plot. From the polite applause bouncing off the lowering curtain, he guessed that most of the audience had found it as mediocre as he had.
Which was practically a guarantee that Caroline would love it.
Suppressing a sigh, he continued to slap his hands together, trying not to be embarrassed by the fact that his wife was one of the half-dozen people who had jumped to their feet in standing ovation. In four years of marriage he had yet to figure out whether Caroline's enthusiasm in these situations was genuine, driven by sympathy for the underdog, or just stubborn defiance of popular opinion.
The applause went down, the house lights came up, and the rest of the audience got to their feet and began unscrunching their coats from the backs of their seats. Roger joined the general chaos, mindful of his elbows as he pulled on his topcoat and buttoned it. He'd endured the play; and now came the verbal diplomacy as he tried not to tell Caroline exactly what he'd thought of it. The more enthusiastic her response, in general, the stonier the wall of silence that went up if he tried to point out how much the thing had actually stunk.