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“What’s the difference?” Sean echoed, staring east as he decided. “True,” he said. They meandered, heading at times slightly downtown along the path, and then cutting back up. Someone had built a bonfire on the bridle path that ran alongside the north end of the reservoir. They heard a man’s voice cry out, but they kept walking. When they were finally closing in on Fifth Avenue, a man and a woman stepped in front of them and demanded their wallets. The man was holding something under his T-shirt that might have been a gun. Mac and Sean held up their hands.

“Hurry,” the man said, stepping close to Sean’s face while the woman watched Mac. But Sean didn’t move.

“Okay,” Mac said, using the same tone he used when he wanted to calm a horse. “Relax.” In the dark, no moonlight, it was impossible to tell if he was really holding a gun. Mac’s own wallet held maybe six dollars, but in Sean’s was all the money they’d collected at the bar for the baby.

Mac leaned to the side as he pretended to reach for his wallet and as he did, Sean punched the guy, just as Mac knew he would. “Hey!” the woman shouted, lunging at them, but Mac and Sean were already gone. They pumped their arms and legs like they were twelve again, barely touching the ground. Side by side, they kept running, zigging and zagging around groups of people and cars until they reached York, where they heard smashing glass, the boom boom boom of heavy objects being pushed step by step down flights of stairs.

“You’re all right?” Mac asked, his hands on his knees, catching his breath.

“I’m all right. You?”

The relief was so overwhelming that Mac started laughing, so Sean started laughing too.

When they reached Barry’s building, they found him outside on the stoop, standing sentinel with a hammer in one hand and a skillet in the other. He didn’t express the least surprise at seeing them.

“You wouldn’t believe what’s gone on here since I left you at Dunleavy’s,” Barry said.

“We certainly would believe it,” Mac said.

MAC AND SEAN STAYED ON the stoop with Barry all night, and then just after dawn, the power still out but the sidewalks finally empty of people, Regina brought them tea she’d made for them by lighting the gas stove with a match. Some of the other supers came outside to check in with one another and Barry returned from the ad hoc meeting in the middle of the street to tell them that one of them offered his car to get Mac and Sean home, as long as someone filled the gas tank. Together, including Regina, who wouldn’t be left alone, they drove up to the Bronx. When they climbed the five flights of stairs and Mac opened the door to their apartment, the three eldest brothers found three more brothers sprawled around the small sitting area stripped to their underwear, sound asleep.

“Hey,” Mac said, shaking Fearghal awake. “Shouldn’t you and Noel be at work?”

“Shit,” Fearghal said, scrambling around for clothes. Noel woke, too, and when they left they said not to worry about them, if they got overtime they’d take it so they might not be back home for a long time.

Sean went to check on Delia at his sister-in-law’s apartment. Barry and Regina went back to Manhattan. Mac hadn’t slept all night, but instead of being exhausted he felt keyed up. He kept flicking the lights just to see, but still nothing. Thomas, who hadn’t bothered reporting to work the night before, had gotten a full night’s sleep for the first time in weeks.

It was too hot to stay inside the apartment, especially without a working fan, and there was no way Mac was going to Nino’s where it would be even hotter. He was pretty sure Jim who lived on the second floor would loan Mac his car if offered some money.

“Should we go to the beach?” Mac asked Thomas. The idea had occurred to him in the shower, when he was soaping the night from his skin.

“Which beach? Where?” Thomas asked, perking up.

“Rockaway’s supposed to be nice. Let’s go there.”

“Okay!” Thomas said, thrilled.

They found cutoff shorts in Noel’s drawer for Thomas, and Mac had his own. They found two clean towels. What else did a person need for a day at the beach? He didn’t have a hat. He didn’t have a sand umbrella or sunglasses. There was no food in the apartment, so Mac told Thomas to bring money if he had any. They’d stop at the market.

After borrowing Jim’s car and picking up a few sandwiches and bags of potato chips, Mac said he had two small errands and then they’d be on their way. They drove over to 231st street and Mac told Thomas to wait in the car. It was a Thursday, but very few people were going to work that day with the subways still out and the buses overloaded. He checked the list of tenants at the door, and then he followed someone inside. He knocked on the door that said 3C.

“As I live and breathe,” Lillie said when she opened the door. But her expression was hopeful. “You’re only about fifteen hours late.”

He blamed the evening before on the blackout, but she rightly pointed out that he stood her up fully two hours before it started. Still, she softened when he told her about Sean’s new baby, and that his brothers were late, and that Sean was out of work, and that he had underestimated how long it would all take.

Lillie agreed to come along to the beach but told him to go downstairs and wait—she needed fifteen minutes to organize herself. So Mac bounded down the stairs and told Thomas to get in the back seat.

When she finally came down, Lillie looked like a movie star—dark, wavy hair, big sunglasses, a pale green sundress with a straw bag.

“That’s her?” Thomas asked, his tone impressed.

“That’s her,” Mac said.

“Is she American?” Thomas asked as he picked at a pimple on his jaw. Mac knocked his hand away.

“She’s Irish.”

“She looks American.”