The Book of the Unnamed Midwife Read Online Free Page A

then winced. “Ok,” he said warily. “We go slow for now.”
      They walked at his pace, away from the direction that Karen had come. They checked out the drugstore Joe had been in and had a soda each, but the water was gone. They tried a boba shop and a row of restaurants. Syrups and toppings, bottles of ketchup and soy sauce. No water. By noon the fog had cleared and they were very thirsty.
    “How the hell is there no water anywhere?” She was starting to feel crabby.
    “The panic,” Joe said simply.
    “The panic?”
    “Yeah,” Chicken broke in. “Bad news freak people out, they panicking.   They at the store, buying up toilet paper and water and guns, except they hardly any guns in San Francisco. Since the water been off, we been looking for water. Every day.”
    She tried to do the math. How many days in the hospital? How many days sick and unconscious? How many days until the city fell into panic? How long since the power and water died? The last day she could remember waking up in her apartment with lights on, catching the bus, and going to work was back in January.
    “What’s today?”
    “Huh?” Joe looked at her like she was crazy.
    “Do you guys know what today is? Like the date?”
    Chicken snorted. “You gotta be somewhere? Come on, let’s try in here.”
    They were at the door of an office building. The front door stood slightly ajar.
    “Why here?” she asked.
      “I got an idea.”
    They went up the stairs, which were windowless and dark. They came out on to the second floor into a huge room full of cubicles. Sunlight flooded in from the glass walls. Chicken went to one end of the room, Joe and Karen followed his lead and spread out. Karen looked at desks she passed, hoping for a water bottle at a workstation. She saw dead plants hanging over the sides of their pots and pictures of children. She came to a dead end. From the other side, she heard Joe yelling.
    “I got it!”
    She jogged in the direction of his voice. Joe stood beside the office bathrooms. Standing between them was a nearly full water cooler, with a fat, upright blue five-gallon bottle. Joe had sunk to the floor and was filling a paper cup. Karen grabbed one right after him and got out of Chicken’s way when he hobbled around the nearest cubicle. They sat and drank cup after cup.
    “Why are you called Chicken?” she asked when the silence had gone too long.
    “I won a game once,” he said.
    “A game of chicken?”
    “Yeah.” He stared into his cup.
    “Did the other guy die?”
    His head snapped up. “No! He swerve out the way. I won his car. Did that a couple times and sold the cars. Made some money that way.”
    “Oh. What did you do for a living, Joe?”
    “Mostly I worked in restaurants. Cooking and cleaning type of shit. Sometimes I worked lights in theaters for shows. That’s where I met Chicken.”
    “Yeah, I ran soundboards. We been dating like maybe three months before all the theaters were closed. Shit, I was pissed. But everybody was too sick to go on anyway.”
    She remembered the theaters closing about a month ago. A temporary measure, the city said, to combat the worst flu season on record. It was hard to think that she hadn’t seen it coming then, but no one had.
    “Have you guys seen many people since the panic died down? Besides shovel-man?”
    “Some,” Joe said. “Seems like everybody died or left the city. But everybody is like, crazy.”
    Chicken was nodding. “Every motherfucker got a gun or some shit. Everybody either act like they wanna kill you, or you gonna kill them. I couldn’t believe Joe let you in.” He wasn’t smiling.
    “Yeah, but…” Joe looked guilty.
    “Yeah but what,” she pressed him.
    “I haven’t seen no girls. No women. No ladies. Cero mujeres. You the first woman I seen alive since I left my mama, and I know she was dying. I left her in Sac while I could still get home. I needed to find Chicken.” He leaned his head on Chicken’s shoulder.
    “Are you