Zone One

She shook her head. “Don’t get caught up in the deprivation game. That’s the old days.” She appeared vexed, and dumbfounded as to the source of her vexation. Then she looked up at the ceiling, where a crude map of old Dutch New York unscrolled in slapdash yellow strokes. The amateur nature of the rendering was intentional, to ameliorate the bloodless deliberation on display everywhere else. Her shoulders sank. “How are the rooms?”

“Fine. Apart from what’s in the folder.” He added, “As far as I know. I wasn’t here during the inspection. But they’re very good at their jobs.”

“In Buffalo all we have to go on is what you tell us.”

“Evacuated in the first wave. Whole place locked up.” He paused. Locked up except for the front doors. “But we can go upstairs and conduct a personal inspection if you like.”

“With the elevators out?” She made some notes. “Those will have to go,” she said, pointing to the wall art. Two monstrous canvases hulked above the black leather couches, depicting the metropolis at night from a vulture’s vantage. In the first, fires burned at intersections, faint but unsettling in their even dispersal through the grid, while the companion piece maintained the angle but captured the rapacious fires gnawing their way up the buildings, the inhabitants curled over windowsills watching the progress of the flames. The hungry catastrophe, creeping apace. Wall art.

“They are a bit gloomy,” Mark Spitz said. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to speak, if he was employing his expertise, but he wanted to let Bozeman off the hook. During their first weeks in the Zone, the sweepers hit the grids without the new mesh fatigues. An indispensable bit of gear, to say the least, but the sweepers were not at the top of the list. When the shipment was finally en route, Bozeman tipped Mark Spitz and he was first in line at distribution. “You’re a Long Island boy,” he explained later, “like me.”

“The thing about these boutique hotels is that you can be anywhere in the world,” Ms. Macy said. “They really had it down before the plague-the international language of hospitality.”

“Ever been to Barcelona?” Bozeman asked. “They stay up all night.”

“I’m thinking kids,” Ms. Macy said. She slashed a red marker across her mental wipe board: Let’s put our heads together, team. “Pictures of pheenie kids in the camps, cavorting and pitching in. Pressing seeds into the soil and sharpening machetes. No machetes-kid stuff. Smiling and laughing and doing kid stuff. They’re the future, after all. That’s what this whole thing is about, the future.”

The future required many things, but it had not occurred to Mark Spitz that it needed interior decorating. Yes, kids would really tie the room together. He hadn’t been aware that he missed the sleek argot of the urban professional class. It was like a favorite sweater pulled out at the first autumn chill, tested and reassuring and cozy. The future was what formerly had been called a transitional neighborhood. Essential services in short supply, the poodle-grooming salons and scruffy cafes, but if you got in at the right time it didn’t matter that the building next door was writhing with skels. Eventually they’ll be displaced three subway stops away by rising rents and you’ll never see them again. The boites are coming, be patient, my pet. “Why are you here, Ms. Macy?” Mark Spitz asked.

The visitor deliberated. “I’m not supposed to say anything yet,” she said, “but you guys are safe. We’ve been lobbying for it, and we just got word last week that Manhattan is going to be the site of the next summit. Great news, right?”

Mark Spitz and Bozeman marshaled an appropriate response.

“New York City is the greatest city in the world. Imagine what all those heads of state and ambassadors will feel when they see what we’ve accomplished. You’ve accomplished. We brought this place back from the dead. The symbolism alone. If we can do that, we can do anything.”

“We might even be in Zone Two at that point, if we stay on schedule,” Bozeman said, taking the advantage.

“This is America.”

“Shoot.”

“I know,” she said. She had a halo, trick lighting. “Isn’t it great?” She ran her fingers along the top of the reception desk, fiddling the dust between her fingers. “An oasis, as soon as they set foot in the Zone. I can sign off on this place, I think. They’ll enjoy their stay. As they used to say.”

They returned to the jeep. Ms. Macy walked backward, pinning the details into her mind’s scrapbook. “Rip up the carpet and put in something red,” she ordered her invisible assistant. “Some kids losing their baby teeth, grinning and doing what they do.” She slapped the pages of her notebook until she found a fresh page. “First thing at Wonton I’m going to get on the comm and have them send a photographer to Happy Acres and Rainbow Village to snag some head shots. There must be some good kids somewhere.”