When The Lights Go Out.... Barbara Daly

This was one of those times.

      Resigned, she picked up a stack of galleys and focused her gaze on them. Suddenly, with a flash of monitors going black as computers shut down and the grinding sound of air-conditioning coming to a halt, the world dimmed.

      From her cubicle Blythe could hear the newsroom catapulting into chaos. “What the hell?” somebody shouted.

      “I’ve lost my story!” came from the Obituaries editor next door.

      Blythe got up and darted around the corner to comfort him. “In a minute the generator will kick in,” she assured the hysterical young man who was still staring at his screen and jabbing at the enter key as if that would bring back his golden prose. “You won’t lose the whole story.”

      Everyone else in the newsroom seemed to have gotten up at once. Reporters and editors were milling around like a herd of sheep, consulting each other, wringing hands or trying to act blasé. Someone began raising the blinds they’d closed earlier against the searing sunshine, and the omnipresent dust of Manhattan swirled in the harsh rays.

      One by one the staffers picked up their phones to find them dead, then stabbed at the keys of their cell phones, only to slam them down in frustration.

      Silence fell just as suddenly as the chaos had erupted when their shepherd, Bart Klemp, plodded out from his office at the end of the room, a private office with a door and actual walls that went all the way to the ceiling.

      Blythe was reminded of movies in which the benevolent plant-eating brontosaurus moved across the landscape, making the earth tremble with each ponderous step. This was a very odd comparison because Bart wasn’t a particularly tall man and he was chunky rather than obese. It was something in his attitude. Bart always looked as if he and his entire species were about to go extinct, and the thought made him terribly sad.

      “I’ve been listening to the radio,” he said, “and the power’s out.”

      We know that much without listening to a radio.

      Bart’s face turned scarlet. Everybody must have been giving him the same “Duh!” look Blythe probably had on her face. “What I mean is,” Bart said, “that it’s not just us. It’s the power grid that serves the whole East Coast, Toronto south to Maryland and west into Michigan.”

      The buzz in the newsroom was like a crowd-noise sound effect on an old radio show.

      “Here on the home front, the generator’s not working, either, and the phone system’s down—they need electricity from somewhere, apparently. Anybody wants a briefing in electrical engineering, don’t look at me. All I know is nothing’s working at the Telegraph, and those of you still putting stories together, you’re going to have a hard time getting a circuit on your cell phones.”

      Blythe still didn’t have a cell phone, and while she reflected that it really was well past time to be the last on the block to get one, Bart paused to rest a beefy hand on a desk and go even more fully into collapse mode. “I don’t know who’s going to show up from the night crew, so I’d appreciate it if some of you guys would stick around, see what we can pull together for a paper tomorrow afternoon if we get the power back in time. We’ve got radios to get the news, find out if it’s a terrorist attack or a lightning strike or somebody just screwed up, so there’s no excuse for us not to have those stories ready to print just as fast as the Times will.”

      Blythe had her hand halfway up in the air. This was a dream come true—not that she was happy the entire East Coast had to suffer on behalf of one of her dreams—but this was her chance. Help get the paper out under impossible conditions. Save the day. Be a hero. Be indispensable.

      But Bart wasn’t asking for volunteers. He was reading off a list of names. Hers wasn’t on it.

      There it was, in actions that spoke louder than words. She wasn’t indispensable. Not that she didn’t know she wasn’t indispensable to the Telegraph, but it still hurt to have it confirmed. Gone, gone were her dreams of spending a few years being a latter-day Lois Lane, dashing about the city to uncover the facts for a front page story, always on a tight deadline while the entire newsroom waited with bated breath for her return, because if she didn’t get the story, the Telegraph would die a humiliating death in bankruptcy and all would be lost.

      That part of the dream she’d have to revise to suit the power outage, but the second part remained intact. That at the end of an endless day, victorious, having saved the paper, she’d go home to her own personal superhero.

      Crumpling inside, she turned toward her cubicle to get her handbag. In the background, she heard the political editor ask Bart, “When was our new guy supposed to land? I was counting on him to get out the columns on this City Council scandal…”

      Counting on him. When would anybody ever count on her?

      Feeling useless and defeated, Blythe walked down the four flights of stairs and onto the street. The subway system wasn’t working obviously, but the buses were. Perhaps a hundred people were waiting at the first bus stop. Twenty minutes later, after several already-stuffed buses had passed them by, flashing the Wait for Next Bus sign, she decided to splurge on a taxi and moved to the middle of the block to flag one down. Fifteen minutes worth of already-occupied taxis later, she knew walking was her only option.

      Walking was dangerous. It gave her time to think.

      Her stomach lurched with worry. Poor Candy. Was she all right? Was she one of the terrified people stuck on subway trains in the dark and the heat? How would she ever get home? Candy’s poor friend, the shrink. Blythe hadn’t even wrung his name out of Candy, and now she might never meet him.

      What was he like, Candy’s friend? You’d expect Candy’s friends to be dingbats, but the ones Blythe had met on those holiday visits had been quite nice people, Candy being the wild child among them. So he probably was nice. And sensitive.

      If she’d let Candy have her own way and the power hadn’t gone out and her friend had arrived for his blind therapy session with Blythe—you could hardly call it a date—she would have handled it in her own way. She would have offered him a drink and explained to him that, as fond as they both were of Candy, he ought to know that his friend had grown up to be a nutcase, an instant-gratification freak, a steamroller with no brakes. Well, no, it wouldn’t do to criticize an old friend. She’d put the blame on herself instead.

      “I’m delighted to meet you, of course,” she would have said, “but Candy overreacted to my little, ah, problem. You mustn’t feel any obligation to take me out.” And don’t even think about taking me to bed.

      And he might have said, “Ha, ha. Candy overreact? You must be joking.” And they might have had a good laugh together and maybe met for coffee sometime.

      But this pleasant little exchange wasn’t likely to happen. Blythe didn’t like thinking about what might have happened to Candy’s friend.

      His plane might be speeding desperately toward an airport where the air traffic controllers had electricity and the runway had lights, knowing the gas gauge was sinking lower, lower, lower. He’d feel the plane begin to lose altitude and think regretfully of the wild affair he might have had with Candy’s little redheaded roommate, a spitfire, a hot-blooded sex goddess, cursing fate for what he’d missed out on.

      Blythe took in a sharp breath. He might have crashed while he was cursing fate.

      Now he’d never know the truth, that the only thing hot about her was her hair color. That and her passion for correct spelling and good grammar.

      Or he might still be at Logan Airport, simply cursing because his flight had been canceled. Wherever he was, she felt he must be cursing. How could he have grown up next door to Candy without being a world-class composer of creative expletives?

      Blythe stopped daydreaming long enough to take stock of where she was. She’d almost done the cross-town part of her journey home. Now for the uptown part. She’d keep walking while she watched for a bus or a taxi. Just thirty-five blocks. Thirty-five blocks was nothing more than a