Station Eleven

The three nearest airports had closed in the previous ninety minutes, but Miranda didn’t know this yet. She’d been aware of the Georgia Flu, of course, but was under the impression that it was still a somewhat shadowy health crisis unfolding in Georgia and Russia. The hotel staff had been instructed to avoid alarming the guests, so no one mentioned the pandemic as she crossed the lobby, although she did notice in passing that the front desk seemed understaffed. In any event, it was a pleasure to escape the coffin chill of the hotel air-conditioning, to walk down the well-lit path to the beach and take off her shoes to stand barefoot in the sand.

Later that evening she would find herself troubled and at moments even a little amused by the memory of how casually everyone had once thrown the word collapse

around, before anyone understood what the word truly meant, but in any event, there had been an economic collapse, or so everyone called it at the time, and now the largest shipping fleet ever assembled lay fifty miles east of Singapore Harbor. Twelve of the boats belonged to Neptune Logistics, including two new Panamax-class vessels that had yet to carry a single cargo container, decks still gleaming from the South Korean shipyards; ships ordered in a moment when it seemed the demand would only ever grow, built over the following three years while the economy imploded, unneeded now that no one was spending any money.

Earlier that afternoon, in the subsidiary office, Miranda had been told that the local fishermen were afraid of the ships. The fishermen suspected a hint of the supernatural in these vessels, unmoving hulks on the horizon by day, lit up after dark. In the office the local director had laughed at the absurdity of the fishermen’s fears, and Miranda had smiled along with everyone else at the table, but was it so unreasonable to wonder if these lights might not be quite of this earth? She knew the ships were only lit up to prevent collisions, but it still seemed to her as she stood on the beach that evening that there was something otherworldly in the sight. When her phone vibrated in her hand, it was Clark Thompson, Arthur’s oldest friend, calling from New York.

“Miranda,” he said after some awkward preliminaries, “I’m afraid I’m calling with some rather bad news. Perhaps you should sit down.”

“What happened?”

“Miranda, Arthur died of a heart attack last night. I’m so sorry.”

Oh, Arthur.

Clark hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair. He worked at the kind of firm where doors are never closed unless someone’s getting fired, and he was aware that by now he was no doubt the topic of speculation all over the office. Drama! What could possibly be happening in Clark’s office? He had ventured out once, for coffee, and everyone had arranged their faces into neutral yet concerned expressions as he passed—that “no pressure, but if there’s anything you need to talk about …” look—and he was having one of the worst mornings of his life, but he derived minor satisfaction from saying nothing and depriving the gossips of fuel. He drew a line through Miranda Carroll’s name, lifted the receiver to call Elizabeth Colton, changed his mind and went to the window. A young man on the street below was playing a saxophone. Clark opened his window and the room was flooded with sound, the thin notes of the saxophone on the surface of the oceanic city, a blare of hip-hop from a passing car, a driver leaning on his horn at the corner. Clark closed his eyes, trying to concentrate on the saxophone, but just then his assistant buzzed him.

“It’s Arthur Leander’s lawyer again,” Tabitha said. “Shall I tell him you’re in a meeting?”

“Bloody hell, does the man never sleep?” It had been Heller who’d left the voice mail at midnight in Los Angeles, three a.m. in New York—“an urgent situation, please call me immediately”—and Heller who’d been up and working when Clark called him back at six fifteen a.m. in New York, three fifteen in L.A. They’d agreed that Clark should be the one to call the family, because Clark had met Arthur’s family once and it seemed kinder that way. Clark had decided to also notify the ex-wives, even the most recent one whom he didn’t like very much, because it seemed wrong to let them read about it in the newspaper; he had an idea—too sentimental to speak aloud and he knew none of his divorced friends would ever own up to it—that something must linger, a half-life of marriage, some sense memory of love even if obviously not the thing itself. He thought these people must mean something to one another, even if they didn’t like one another anymore.