Sole Survivor

what if they come looking and they do find the elevator?”
        “Gonna have to stop callin' you Presentable Joe. Better would be Worryin' Joe.”
        “After a while, they will come looking. They won't just wait till closing time and go home. So once I'm down there, do I have another way out?” he persisted.
        “Never tore apart the front stairs, where the customers used to go down. Just covered the openin' with hinged panels so you don't really see it. You come up that way, though, you'll be right across from the hostess station, in the middle of plain view.”
        “No good.”
        “So if somethin' goes wrong, best to skedaddle out the lower door onto the deck. From there you have the beach, the whole coast.”
        “They could be covering that exit too.”
        “It's down at the base of the bluff. From the upper level, they can't know it's there. You should just try to relax, sugar. We're on the righteous side, which counts for somethin'.”
        “Not much.”
        “Worryin' Joe.”
        He stepped into the elevator but blocked the sliding door with his arm in case it tried to close. “How're you connected with this place, Mahalia?”
        “Half owner.”
        “The food's great.”
        “You can look at me the way I am and think I don't know ?” she asked good-naturedly.
        “What're you to Rose?”
        “Gonna call you Curious Joe pretty soon. Rosie married my brother Louis about twenty-two years ago. They met in college. Wasn't truly surprised when Louis turned out smart enough to go to college, but I was sure surprised he had the brains to fall for someone like Rosie. Then, of course, the man proved he was a pure fool, after all, when he up and divorced her four years later. Rosie couldn't have kids, and havin' kids was important to Louis though with less air in his skull and any common sense at all, the man would've realized Rosie was more treasure than a houseful of babies.”
        “She hasn't been your sister-in-law for eighteen years, but you're willing to put yourself on the line for her?”
        “Why not? You think Rosie turned into a vampire when Louis, the fool, divorced her? She's been the same sweet lady ever I met her. I love her like a sister. Now she's waitin', Curious Joe.”
        “One more thing. Earlier, when you told me these people don't know who they're dealing with… You didn't say-‘We're Baptists?’”
        “That's exactly what I did say. ‘Tough’ and ‘Baptists’ don't go together in your head-is that it?”
        “Well-”
        “Mama and Daddy stood up to the Klan down in Mississippi when the Klan had a whole lot more teeth than they do now, and so did my Grandma and Grandpap before them, and they never let fear weigh 'em down. When I was a little girl, we went through hurricanes off the Gulf of Mexico and Delta floods and encephalitis epidemics and poor times when we didn't know where tomorrow's food was comin' from, but we rode it out and still sung loud in the choir every Sunday. Maybe the United States Marines are some tougher than your average Southern black Baptist, Joe, but not by much.”
        “Rose is a lucky woman with a friend like you.”
        “I'm the lucky one,” said Mahalia. “She lifts me up-now more than ever. Go on, Joe. And stay down there with her till we close this place and figure a way we can slip you two out. I'll come for you when it's time.”
        “Be ready for trouble long before that,” he warned her.
        “Go.”
        Joe let the doors slide shut.
        The elevator descended.

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    14
        
        Here, now, at last and alone, at the far end of the long room was Dr. Rose Marie Tucker in one of four folding chairs at a scarred work table, leaning forward, forearms on the table, hands clasped, waiting and silent, her eyes solemn and full of tenderness, this diminutive survivor, keeper of secrets that Joe had been desperate to learn but from which he suddenly shied.
        Some of the recessed-can fixtures in the ceiling contained dead bulbs, and the live ones were haphazardly angled, so the floor that he slowly crossed was mottled with light and shadow as if it were an underwater realm. His own shadow preceded him, then fell behind, but again preceded him, flowed here into a pool of gloom and vanished like a soul into oblivion, only to swim into view three steps later. He felt as though he were a condemned man submerged in the concrete