Claire.
They kept us in assembly until after midnight. I’m sorry I didn’t call; my room was near the conference building but the doorman was gone and the power was out in the whole block. I walked up eleven flights of stairs to reach my floor. When I arrived at the landing I looked out over the square and I saw the representatives from every ward, still pouring out into the blackened streets.
We decided some things today, pushed them through and ratified them. I can’t tell you anything more about them here than that there are some that I’m satisfied with and some that—worry me. You’ll know what I mean when they announce them after the elections. Oh, Claire. You always knew what I meant, didn’t you?
As I stood on the landing, watching them spill out into the street, do you know what I thought of? It was that old canoe we found in the woods at Coventry. Remember, when I overturned it and beneath it there was nothing but spiders? Hundreds. Thousands. An entire ecosystem of spiders: multiplying, eating only each other, growing paler and paler in the darkness, packing themselves tighter and tighter, becoming stubby, weaker, dumb. They scattered, all over, splitting as they flowed around our feet as though they were a splash from a pail of muddy water. I’d never seen anything like that before.
I’ll send this express. With luck it will find you before you reach Italy.
Robert