Relationship between Larry Underwood and Rita Blakemoor

Larry Underwood and Rita Blakemoor meet in Central Park on the morning of June 27, 1990, days after the superflu has emptied New York City. Rita, a wealthy widow in her fifties, is sitting on a bench near the bandshell, calmly taking a pill. Larry, a young rock musician who has just watched his mother die in a crowded hospital hallway, approaches her. Their first conversation is marked by a brittle, sophisticated humor. Rita shoots a hole in a chinaberry tree with her late husband's .32 revolver, and they share lunch in an empty steakhouse where Larry cooks. The encounter is a reprieve from the horror and isolation that surrounds them, and they quickly become companions.

A Fragile Alliance

Rita presents herself as elegant and self-possessed, but her composure is a thin veneer. Larry is drawn to her apparent strength, seeing in her a partner who can share the burden of survival. However, the relationship quickly becomes unbalanced. Rita's psychological state deteriorates rapidly after they discover the body of the "monster-shouter," a man who had been stabbed to death in the park. She becomes increasingly dependent on Larry, following him from room to room and relying on sleeping pills to get through the night. Larry, who has his own history of emotional evasion, finds himself cast in the role of caretaker, a role for which he is profoundly unprepared. He feels a growing resentment, which he struggles to suppress, recognizing the familiar pattern of his own selfishness that his mother and others had criticized.

The Journey and the Breaking Point

They decide to leave New York, and Larry plans a route through the Lincoln Tunnel. The journey is harrowing. Rita's impractical sandals chafe her feet bloody, and Larry explodes in a rage, screaming obscenities at her. He later apologizes, but the damage to their fragile trust is done. In the darkness of the tunnel, Larry, panicked by the dark and the corpses, fires his rifle blindly, nearly killing Rita. The experience forces them to cling to each other, and they emerge on the New Jersey side, exhausted but together. Rita promises to follow Larry's lead, but her dependence has deepened into a desperate, clinging need. She repeatedly asks him not to leave her, a plea that echoes Larry's own deepest fears about his own character.

Death and Reckoning

On the morning of July 4, in Bennington, Vermont, Larry wakes to find Rita dead in their shared sleeping bag. She has overdosed on pills, her mouth filled with green vomit. The discovery is a brutal culmination of their relationship. Larry is forced to confront the fact that he failed her, that his attempts at care were insufficient to meet her needs. He feels a profound sense of relief mixed with guilt, a confirmation of the worst things his mother and others had said about him: that he is a "taker," that "something has been left out" of him. He cannot bring himself to bury her and abandons the tent, a decision that haunts him. The relationship with Rita becomes a defining trauma for Larry, a crucible in which his old, selfish self is burned away, forcing him to begin the difficult process of becoming a different kind of man. He later confesses to Nadine Cross that Rita's death was "seventy percent accident and thirty percent suicide," acknowledging his own failure to provide the friendship, understanding, or help she needed.