“Hello!” I shouted.

“’ello!” he yelled back, his accent thick and unidentifiable.

“What are we going to do?” I shouted.

“We have to figure out a way out of here,” he yelled back. “My wife and baby are here. We’ve got to get to somewhere safer. Is your cell phone working?”

I shook my head, then yelled, “No! Do you have enough food for now? Water?”

“For a little while,” he shouted. “We have a radio. They said there’s a shelter not too far, on the third floor of MS 587. We’ve got to figure out how to get there.”

He stood there waiting for me to say something back, but I had nothing to say. I looked down at my combat boots. They were soaked and felt like wet weights on my feet. I tried to think of something to say to this man who was worrying about his kid’s life, and I couldn’t think of anything at all. His arms, which he’d been gesturing with, fell down to his sides as the silence extended. We stood there quiet for a few more minutes, looking at each other. I don’t know what he saw in me, but I could see his desperation, his fear, all the responsibility on him that he had no idea how to handle given the circumstances. When he finally saw that I wasn’t going to say anything else, he turned and walked to the other side of his roof and started shouting off the edge. I couldn’t hear what he was saying.

I turned to find Jaden sitting on a dry spot on the roof. His head was down between his knees. He usually looks so smooth and strong and like he’s right in control of everything. Right then, he looked shaken.

“They’ll come for us, right?” he asked when I got up close to him. “Somebody’s going to come for us eventually? They wouldn’t just leave us here to die, would they?”

“I don’t know, Jaden,” I said. “Depends on who they are. And who they think we are.”

“We’ll be able to flag someone down,” he said. He tried to make his voice firm and failed. It sounded like another question.

All morning the boats went down the canal-streets just near us, but not next to us. When we saw people manning the boats far off, they looked official. Some wore uniforms and caps, some had on army fatigues. We went down into Jaden’s apartment and watched the TV for a while. It told us things like “State of Emergency” and deployment of the National Guard. We went back up to the roof and saw birds flying overhead like they do when someone’s on the loose. We tried waving up to them. We wished aloud that we had those bright-colored flares like they have in the movies. Of course, we didn’t.

I saw the man across the alley again. I yelled out to him, “What’s your name?” It seemed important, suddenly, that I know who was there in trouble right next to me.