Time to Go by Stephen Dixon

Devine will stay here and think of it as his home till the city’s no longer threatened.”
    We hear faint reports of what seem like distant explosions and buildings crumbling to the ground.
    â€œThere it is,” the super says. “You hear it once you never forget.
    Oh how I’m reminded from the last time when just our simple brownstone went. Remember, Phil? There we were, Gerta—my first wife and I having ourselves a fine old supper, when all of a sudden—”
    â€œI thought it was around lunchtime when you said the first rumblings came.”
    â€œThen a fine old lunch, which in those days were as big as our suppers are today, when all of a sudden—but why don’t I stand you both to another drink?”
    â€œMight as well,” Gerta says. “Mr. Devine—the same?”
    Should I run up and get Georgia and Jimmy? Warn them at least, because maybe their television’s on the blink and for some reason they didn’t hear those explosions and cave-ins before, if that’s what those sounds were. I start for the door.
    â€œYou don’t want to be leaving now,” Gerta says.
    â€œIf he thinks he’s got some better place to go to, let him. He’s experienced and of age.”
    â€œBut it can’t be safe out there. In fact, it’s—Mr. Devine, where, you going?”
    Outside their apartment people are lying on the floor, pressed against the walls, most in either of the two positions suggested in that film: mothers and fathers lying on their younger children, the elderly and sick with their medicines close-by, piles of food and beverages in communal out-of-the-way corners and in unbreakable containers, several televisions on showing that army communications officer with the anchor persons of the country’s leading network news shows.
    â€œBecause of the thousands of skeptical phone calls we’ve received regarding the authenticity of the government’s reports,” the officer says, “I’ve asked these people to appear with me to verify that a revolution is indeed taking place.”
    I ring for the elevator. But it’ll be bouncing me back and forth between penthouses and basements if it does come, so I run up the service steps, race down the hallway. I search for my keys. Hang the keys, and I rap on the door and ring the bell. Georgia says through it “Who’s there, please?” and then “You lose your keys a second time today, Phil? That’s so unlike you—really so rare,” and she opens the door.
    â€œWho’s it, hon?” a man says from somewhere inside. “Who’s here with you besides Jimmy?” I ask her. “Beg your pardon, sir?” an elderly woman says.
    â€œExcuse me, Miss, I mean, Ma’am, but I took it on my own to hurry all the tenants to the shelter below. There’s a good chance the entire city’s going to be directly involved in the war.”
    â€œNo picnic—we heard,” a man says, coming to the door. “But at least they didn’t throw the bull this time, which—bad as the situation is—is the way we like it. ‘All civilians,’ this spokesman guy said, ‘must take every precaution against antigovernment attack and cooperate with the government in every possible way,’ which is how it should’ve been worded in that last revolt here: full of facts and open and aboveboard.”
    â€œReady?” the woman says to him. They leave, carrying supplies and a cat in a carrier.
    I enter the apartment. It’s much different than the one we had on the third floor. Smaller rooms, many more home appliances, recessed spotlights in the ceilings and linoleum looking like parquetry on the living and dining room floors. From the windows the neighborhood seems calm: no moving vehicles, only a trio of singing drunks walking in the middle of the street, though a mile or so downtown I see lots of smoke and what looks