Safe and Sound

Chapter 1Rory Murphy paced the limited floor of his university office. He nearly crashed into the other desk in the shared space several times since the cramped office on campus did not lend itself well to relentless pacing back and forth. If it wasn’t for his nerves, he would simply tell himself to stop. Sit down. Simply wait the remaining half hour until his interview in England was going to commence. But Rory was a ball of energy. He needed to pace, and so, he was going to wear a rut in the cheap tile floors and most likely take off a chunk of this recycled wood desk in the process. At least Calvin, his office mate, wasn’t around. The other late-stage PhD student in the English Department had gone on holidays the moment his grades could be posted in April and Rory hadn’t seen him since. The spring semester that ran from May to August was in its first weeks, and the students in his Introduction to University English class had barely handed in their first assignments for Rory to grade. The university campus usually felt as if it was full of life most of the summer. Not at one in the morning, though, and not in the basement of the English Department, where the grad student offices were. Everything outside his office door was oddly eerie, like a zombie movie or as if the Rapture had come when Rory wasn’t looking, and he’d been spared (or damned?) since he was too busy fussing about this professor job position he wanted so badly. When Rory nicked his knee another time, he decided to take his nervous energy to the hallway. After checking to be sure he had his campus office keys twice, he stepped out into the recently mopped floor. The basement of the English Department was long and winding, with plenty of places to wander as he waited. Since it was the basement, and it was the space marked for graduate students in particular, it also had the worst lighting, the creakiest doors, and the most ominous looking spiders hanging out in the corners. Rory shuddered as he bypassed one of those spiders and headed towards the bathroom. The light flickered as if it hadn’t been used in decades, but the lemon scent of cleanser let him at least know that the janitors had stopped by today. The grey and white casual suit Rory wore caught him off-guard in the mirror. He’d carefully selected the outfit this morning—with his best friend Mikayla’s help, of course—but he still couldn’t shake the fact that he was wearing a suit. Not even when he taught did he wear suits—at least, not anymore. He’d shown up for his first lecture dressed up, only to find out that he wasn’t giving the lecture but watching it so he could then explain the nuances of Emily Dickenson to first years. After that, he’d lived most of his academic student life in whatever he could find that wasn’t dirty, which were usually dark jeans and plaid shirts, with maybe the occasional nice sweater for an office party or the first day of class. “But this is different,” he said aloud, going slowly as he did. He tried to remember some of the exercises his childhood speech pathologist had given him to help with his lisp. “This is a job interview for a real-life professorship—a real life academic position—with all the perks that come with it. And it’s across the pond, no less.” Rory couldn’t help but smile at his attempt at an English accent. Austin, his sometimes on-again off-again boyfriend and former PhD mate at the school, had already settled in the UK a year ago, having landed a job in England the moment he defended his dissertation. It still weighed on Rory that he’d been stuck in Canada, at this small—but still no less prestigious—university in the middle of a rushing river and dense forest in Southern Ontario while the love of his life was away from him, experiencing all the things that the UK had to offer. At this point in his reminiscing, Mikayla would step in and tell him that he was being too dramatic. Austin isn’t even at Oxford or one of the other hoity-toity schools. For all we know, he’s working at a fish and chips shop and merely posting fake updates online about Martin Amiss or Colm Tóibín. Also, he is not the love of your life. That you have yet to find. Since Mikayla wasn’t here, though, Rory was left to fill in the blanks of doubt. Sure, it was true that Austin hadn’t texted or called him since he left a year ago, but that was just an expense thing. It was just the distance—distance that Rory was more determined than ever before to scale through his own academic prowess, and maybe they could both post updates about leading English novelists together. Austin still messaged Rory on f******k in the interim, though if Rory was honest, most of those messages came in the middle of the night (Austin’s time) and had mostly to do with sexting, which Rory either never got right away or couldn’t reply as he was in class or a meeting and because sexting made him uncomfortable. He’d respond with travel dreams instead, and eventually, Austin would come around with a nice reply or a comment on one of his photos—and so, Rory was sure that Austin cared. If Rory got this job at East Anglia, he was sure they’d pick back up on their whirlwind romance the moment he set foot off the plane. “It has to be that way,” Rory said aloud, allowing his voice to bounce and echo off the brick bathroom walls. “This is the only way the story’s supposed to end.” A flicker of a memory made him smile. The first PhD class he ever took in his long and now spanning seven-year academic career involved Mikayla and Austin. Both were newbie PhDs and sat next to him during a Victorian literature class. Everyone was engaged in a heated debate on whether or not Jane Eyre needed that unauthorized sequel, and Rory’s simple response had been, yes of course it deserved a sequel, even if it was written by another author entirely decades later, simply because that was not how the story was supposed to end. Mikayla had agreed with him, while Austin had challenged him. Austin’s first challenge had come in class, and then much later on over drinks at his apartment where the two first made out. You have to admit it, Austin said in the aftermath. I’m right and there’s nothing else to it. Rory had teased him, once again, that that was not how the story was supposed to end, and the two had eventually, taken the argument to bed and then expanded on their own travel dreams to other countries to continue to build up their academic knowledge. Thinking of that first moment now allowed for all the worries and doubts about Rory’s interview melt away. It didn’t matter. He knew exactly who he was the moment he set foot in that PhD class, the moment that he bet his best friend and boyfriend. This interview was going to go well. “It simply has to,” Rory said again, and again, making sure his nostalgia didn’t tamper with his voice. He sounded okay, but he didn’t want to relax yet, as sometimes his lisp or tell-tale lilt came back when he was excited. He was in the middle of going through some of the minor vocal exercises he’d done in his youth when the lights flickered. Rory grew silent. He was bathed in darkness for three long seconds before the emergency lights in the bathroom came on. They washed the brick walls and porcelain with an amber glow from the back of the bathroom and the front door. “What the…?” Rory didn’t care that he heard the tell-tale “gay” lilt in his voice anymore. He was far more concerned about the lights. He stepped out of the bathroom and into the long hallways that seemed to be perma-dark. Another faint orange glow from emergency lights reminded him where the twists and turns of the basement hallway were. His heart pounded in his chest as he jogged towards his office door. He grabbed his keys in shaking hands to open the door. His laptop was still on the desk, of course, nothing else disturbed—but the lights were off here, too. All the lights in the building seemed to be off. His computer was running on battery life, which thankfully, was at full capacity. He didn’t know what had happened, but the power was clearly out in the building. Not even the hum of the air conditioning was running anymore. Rory glanced at the digital clock on his laptop. It was only another fifteen minutes until his interview. He had at least three hours of battery life. That’s okay, he tried to tell himself. “More than okay,” he said aloud again, trying to straighten his voice. He ran a hand through his recently cut tawny hair and tried to settle in his seat. “You know, I might be able to use this, too,” he said, still talking to only himself. “Maybe I can say this office is like London in the 1880s, that maybe I’m really going for a China Miéville-esque Un-London sort of homage…” He was in the middle of brainstorming where to find candles in case the power didn’t come on again when he realized the Wi-Fi signal was not picking up a thing. He fiddled with the control panels a bit, before giving up and taking out his phone. The internet for the school wasn’t there, either. It had flickered off along with the power. “Oh, no,” Rory said aloud. “No, no, no.” He still had his mobile connection, but it was weak in the basement of the building. The interview was over Skype, and while he was sure that maybe he could still stream it on his laptop using his phone’s data plan, the bill for that at the end of the day would be as much as a flight to London. “And at least that would have bought me a night with Austin. Shoot.” Rory was at a loss of what else to do. He didn’t want to cancel. He didn’t want to postpone the interview to later, either, since he knew he would not sleep. But what was left? In a rush, and with only ten more minutes until his interview time on his clock, he packed up his laptop and walked up the still-dark stairs of the English Department basement. He emerged onto the campus and glanced at the surrounding buildings. All of them seemed to have had their power go out as well. Or maybe they’ve shut down for the long weekend in May? As Rory combed through his school email, now only using his phone data, he realized he’d bypassed several announcements earlier in the week alerting everyone to the long weekend Victoria Day weekend being earmarked for shutdown to allow the staff to clean or something like that. He fixated on the times of the blackout period, not realizing how stupid he had been. He’d scheduled his most important interview, the one that would reunite him with the love of his life, during a blackout period of the school. He was in the middle of some impressive combination of swear words when he caught the last paragraph of the email. The only building exempt from this shutdown on campus is the student run cafe and bar, The Campus Cavern, located on the east side of the campus off the student parking area by Ring Road. Their hours are 9 A.M. to midnight for M—W, 9 to 2 A.M. on Thurs—Sat, and they are closed on Sundays. Rory had only ever been to the student bar once before, early on in his degree, when Mikayla had wanted to discover the local spots to drink before she’d gotten pregnant, and then pregnant again. In spite of how long ago that time felt—wow, Mikayla had two babies now—Rory knew exactly where that building was. He looked at the clock on his phone one last time and hoped to hell that he could channel some sort of former athlete, before he took off like a shot. His life—and love—depended on it.