Who Knows the Moonlight by Tere Michaels

Author:Tere Michaels [Michaels, Tere]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Gay Romance; Tere Michaels; Dreamspinner Press
ISBN: 978-1-63216-786-6
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Published: 2021-12-20T00:00:00+00:00

Interlude

DAMIAN OH has lived on the Lower East Side for his entire life. Three generations living in one of the few remaining townhouses in the neighborhood. He’s never wanted for anything, not really. He loves New York.

Even after his parents and grandparents retire to North Carolina, Damian stays behind.

He’s tried, on visits to see them and then for the various funerals that seemed to follow one after the other, to get accustomed to being outside the city, but it’s just too alien.

He lives in the same house, big and empty. He works long hours as an accountant for the city. He goes to the gym when he can. He takes in a ballgame or two with co-workers, old college friends who haven’t made a mad dash for the suburbs. He gets promoted when his boss, Mr. Guthrie, steps down suddenly for “health reasons.”

The storm cloud depositing more and more rain on the northeast corridor seems parked over Manhattan, and Damian sits at Mr. Guthrie’s desk in mute horror.

Mr. Guthrie, it seems, never quite got the trick of covering his tracks.

It also seems he has retired with quite a windfall of kickbacks at his disposal.

Damian panics as he goes through the numbers. He calls an old college buddy with contacts in the construction industry to try to make sense of what he’s seeing. He panics a bit more.

His cousin calls him from San Francisco and tells him to quit his job, come stay with her and her husband.

He puts her off.

He waits.

Half his department goes home and never comes back. He half pays attention to the news, the increasing catastrophic conditions.

Damian stops going home to sleep.

Soon, he’s the last person in his department.

“You should leave,” the head of security tells him as he packs up whatever’s collected in the little desk he’s used for twenty years. “Pretty soon, you’ll be stuck.”

Deprived of sleep and sitting on a powder keg of terrible information, Damian nods. At his desk, he sifts through the mountain of evidence that bribes have corrupted the building of the affordable housing that graces the southern tip of the island. Does the mayor’s office know? Does the financer know? Does the real estate developer know?

Who can he trust?

In the end, nature makes a decision on his behalf.

Damian finally leaves one night. It takes him six hours to get home because all public transportation has ceased running and many streets are too flooded to use. He stands under a hot shower spray and resolves to gather all his findings, get the hell out of the city, and then turn it all over to a government agency once he’s safely far away.

He finally sleeps.

In the morning the National Guard wakes him with a bang on his front door, alerting him that he has to leave the city immediately. Mandatory evacuation. Panicked, he packs a bag and then begins the long trek back to his office.

Which is a wet, smoldering pile of nothing.

He stands in the rain, jaw dropped. Everything is gone. All the evidence….

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