[40]

The Powers signed their peace deal; the Powers allowed us then to return to our city.

Carl and I stumbled through the rubble along with everyone else though everyone else was like a cipher to me, caught in their own desires; for sure I was like a cipher to them too.

We came to our street and I looked up at our apartment building. The entire front had been sheared off by the bombs, revealing dining rooms, bedrooms, bathrooms. Yet there was one apartment’s facade that was intact, on the third floor; I realized then that it was our apartment.

“We have been spared,” I said. Purely by luck, we had been spared.

The stairs took some negotiating and stumbling up to get to the third floor. Dust and dirt everywhere.

There was our door. Like a zombie I pulled my keys out from where I’d always had them, in the same pocket I’d always used. I put the key in the lock with my hand in the same position as ever. I pushed open the door, and we went inside.

Everything was perfectly intact.

The door swung shut behind us, and our entire exterior wall fell into the street.