I
“Flip it to the game, would ya? I’m sick of this end-of-days bullshit,” said Randall.
It was the first time he’d spoken since I’d arrived. Seated at the far end of the bar, he’d been lying with his face in his arms when I first sat down, the frothy bottom of a whiskey sour in front of him, barely a sip left. I would have thought him dead for sure were it not for Joe’s routine prodding—likely following a similar train of thought.
Without saying anything, Joe changed the channel on the TV above the bar. The Oilers were playing the Ducks—an environmentalist’s dream icebreaker made funnier given the context. Oblivious to the symbolism, Randall grunted in approval and settled back into his folded arms.
“You know I’m gonna have ta kick ya out if ya keep doin’ that,” growled Joe, already limping towards him, cane outstretched.
Randall didn’t move on account of not seeing him coming and got the hard rubber end of Joe’s cane to the side of his head, which lolled comically from side to side like a drunken bobblehead before returning upright.
“Whawazzat fer?!” he slurred.
Annoyed, Joe brushed him off and turned his attention elsewhere.
I was elsewhere.
“Want another, Andy?”
I still had half a beer, but it was only my second, so I said, “sure.” I wasn’t worried the new one would get warm before I got to it.
My name is Lou, but everyone calls me Andy.
My full given name is Lewis Sandy, but in high school Joe, my then-bully, took the liberty of pronouncing it ‘Loose Andy’ long (and loud) enough that it caught on amongst my peers. Over the years people dropped the ‘loose’ out of kindness, assuming Andy was my real name, and I found it too embarrassing to correct anyone.
As Joe slid my beer across the table, I remembered Stu was still talking to me. He hadn’t noticed my attention had drifted elsewhere.
“See, thass the thing, man. You can say, ‘okay, less talk about it, then’ but you never know one day to the next, man, if iss gonna be a good ‘structive conversation or just—,” he mimed an explosion, flecking my face with spit as he made the sound effect.
Stewart Garfield, or ‘Empty Stu,’ is another regular at Joe’s. He got the name after Joe pointed out he could talk the leather off an empty barstool. It was a weak pun, but it stuck, nonetheless. Seemed Joe had a knack for that.
Stu and his old lady had been going through it lately, and I knew far more about it than I ever cared to. I wiped the spit from my face and finished my beer in one gulp.
Suddenly, the whole bar shook. Joe cursed, spreading his arms as wide as he could and pressing his body against the mirrored back wall of the bar in a feeble attempt at keeping his booze on the shelves. Glasses clinked dangerously from all sides, chandeliers shook overhead, ornamental shards of metal and glass clacking like castanets, and the floor felt like an older brother holding the far end of the rug you’re standing on, a shit-eating grin plastered on his face.
Not sure what else to do, I grabbed my new beer off the counter so it wouldn’t spill.
The earthquake lasted only a few seconds. Everyone in the bar waited nervously for any immediate aftershocks, and when none came cautiously began assessing their surroundings. Joe groaned dramatically.
“Everything’s fine! Go back to drinking, you jerks!” he announced, and then, more quietly, “nothing you’re not used to by now.”
A small chorus of not-that-closes and too-many-these-dayses made their rounds through the bar, but Joe’s outburst seemed to do the trick of breaking the ice because shortly thereafter the only signs anything had happened were a few broken bottles on the floor and sirens blaring in the distance. Many returned to their conversations. The rest made a rush for the bar, looking for something to calm their nerves.
It was true, what Joe said. As unsettling as it was to have the very ground beneath you threaten to break apart, the frequency of earthquakes had increased to such an extent that they really shouldn’t have come as a surprise anymore. They were as regular as a vegetarian.
When someone inevitably asked Joe to change the TV channel back to the news, Randall was silent. Joe prodded him with his cane to make sure he wasn’t dead, and when he grunted in reply Joe figured that was approval enough.
Tamara Wilkinson, the news anchor (and Joe’s ex-wife) took up the right half of the screen, as live footage of firefighters putting out a burning building took up the left. The word ‘BREAKING’ repeated on a running loop ran across the top of the frame.
“Really, Joe?” came a voice from the back of the room.
“Can it, Steve,” Joe snapped back.
The extent of the damage was horrific. An aerial view showed multiple buildings on fire, reaching four city blocks wide on all sides. As if reading their minds, Tamara assured viewers that the fire had been contained, despite the raging inferno seen onscreen. Emergency vehicles flooded the streets in red and blue light, throwing the shadows of fleeing civilians across the pavement as they roared past.
The ‘apocalypse,’ as this was being called colloquially, had so far been ‘not as advertised,’ one could say. There was no raining hellfire or plague dropping bodies in the streets by the thousands. No bombs arcing across the skyline or zombies clambering at the window. No, it was small, localized extreme weather events all over the globe. The fallout did include zoonotic viruses spreading at alarming rates, and international tensions were worn as thin as the ice on the polar ice caps—some nations having already been dismantled entirely—but it was indeed the weather events that were at the root of everything.
I was in the middle of undressing my beer bottle when Empty Stu finally got his voice back.
“Hey Andy, isn’t that your place?”
A hush went over the bar as I saw it—my work-in-progress, anatomically accurate, clay sculpture of Scarlett Johansson wilting in the window of one of the apartments. Someone said, “yikes.” It might have been me.
“Drinks on me, pal,” said Joe.
II
Joe pulled a bottle of wine from the rack, uncorked it, and poured me a glass to the brim, leaving the bottle behind.
“You can stay with me if you need to, bud,” he said consolingly.
I’d never seen this side of Joe before. I hated it, frankly. There was something about the ‘buds’ and ‘pals’ that got under my skin.
Right on cue, the news threw to an on-scene reporter I didn’t recognize—probably some intern—interviewing Ted Henry, the owner of a diner on main street by the same name. He and his wife had graciously decided to open their restaurant to anyone affected by the earthquake. They also owned the adjoining motel, and said whatever rooms were left could be boarded for free on a first-come-first-served basis.
I took this as my cue to leave. The restaurant was only a few blocks from Joe’s, and I figured I could beat the rush if I was quick enough.
I threw back the rest of my wine and burped wetly. I waited a beat or two until my vision stabilized, then made for the door. I was loaded, but with any luck the kind of loaded that meant I could run forever.
I was not the kind of loaded that meant I could run forever, and immediately puked in the trash can upon exiting the bar.
By the time I reached Ted Henry’s there was already a line outside the door. I cursed but took my place anyway. A meal was a meal. I could call Joe later and see if his offer was still on the table.
A balmy fourty-five minutes later I was seated by a frazzled Amelia Henry, Ted’s wife. She was the only waitstaff on duty.
“You. Next. Follow,” she barked.
She sat me at a table across from another man, who paid me no mind as I took my seat, voraciously ingesting a stack of pancakes soggy with maple syrup. The whole place was crawling with people, screaming at each other just to be heard across the table. Worried I might not get another chance to place an order for a while, I told Amelia I would just have what my boothmate was having. She nodded appreciatively. It saved her a trip, too, after all.
As soon as the kitchen door swung shut behind her, a young blonde came hurtling through the front door, pushing past the line of hungry customers, who parted immediately upon seeing the uniform underneath her coat. A cheer went up.
Amelia’s head poked through the kitchen door to see what the fuss was all about, and her body followed when she saw it was the Crenshaw kid—Erica. She sighed with relief and made the sign of the cross, kissing the crucifix she kept tucked between her breasts.
“I got here as fast as I could,” huffed Erica.
“No time. Kitchen,” snapped Amelia.
By the time my food arrived the line had dwindled slightly. Amelia announced she was taking a break, and not to bother her unless someone was dying.
“Actually, not even then!” were her last words as the door swung shut behind her.
I swallowed the last of my meal and hit the road. As I turned the corner to cut behind the restaurant I collided with Amelia in the alley. A good foot shorter than me, she went sprawling on the pavement. I apologized and reached out to help her up.
“Fuck you,” she spat, “Watch where you’re going.”
I pulled my hand back, opting for a cigarette instead. As I padded around my jacket for a light, Amelia’s attitude changed.
“I’m sorry. It’s just been such a fucking day,” she apologized, eyes locked onto my smoke the entire time.
I rolled my eyes.
“Want one?”
Hers lit up.
“Please.”
I held out my lighter for her, and she leaned over it, inhaling deeply. Despite her tense, irritated expression, I could see why Ted might have fallen for her all those years ago.
As the nicotine entered her bloodstream her face softened, and the faintest hint of a smile played at the corners of her lips.
“Thank you,” she said, exhaling.
I nodded.
“Mind if I join you?” I asked.
She tensed up again, then glanced down at the cigarette in her hand, likely weighing how much courtesy she owed me.
“It’s fine,” she said, then, after a beat, “so I guess it’s your turn now, huh?”
I took a drag.
“Yup,” I said through a cloud.
“You know, when I was younger, before I met Ted, I was homeless for a little while. I’d rented this place out in California while I was trying to get my acting career off the ground. Ran out my savings until I was on the street, holding out hope—even after I’d already lost my place—that I might still get that callback that pulls me out of poverty and into the limelight.”
She chuckled the way one does reminiscing about a younger, more naïve version of themselves and took another drag. Her eyelids fluttered.
“Sorry for the overshare,” she recovered slightly.
“It’s nothing,” I said, “So, what’s with the free meals?”
Her smile dropped.
“That was Ted’s idea.”
“I figured. I don’t get the impression you’re totally on board, either.”
She stamped out the last of her cigarette.
“No, I am,” she said, replaying arguments in her head that would beg to differ, “he makes a good point.”
“What’s that?”
Amelia shrugged pathetically, giving away just how exhausted she truly was.
“It’s the right thing to do.”
Without another word, she turned and walked back into the restaurant.
III
I spent the night on Joe’s couch. After leaving the Henrys’, I went right back to the bar and had another round. Joe lived in the apartment above the joint, so he tossed me his keys and said to leave the door unlocked. I said, ‘you got it,’ went upstairs, locked the door behind me, and fell asleep.
I was too drunk to be woken by the pounding, and Joe wasn’t going to risk breaking his own windows, so he slept on the patio chair out front, hoping to catch me when I left in the morning.
Now, I may be a drunk, but I’m no idiot. I snuck out the back door and took the alley as far as it would go before popping out onto the street. An emaciated teenage boy, no older than sixteen, was sitting on his t-shirt on the ground outside an abandoned shop window with a cardboard sign next to him that read ‘licker for food.’ I stuck my tongue out at him.
“Whatcha got?” I asked.
He looked up at me, squinting so hard at the brightness that his eyes looked shut, and smacked his lips lazily.
“I’ve got…”
He rifled through a sports bag next to him, loose bottles clinking and clonking.
“…half a Beefeater and two Buds.”
I reached into my pocket. All I had to offer was a Clif bar I’d been hoping to have for breakfast.
The boy’s eyes lit up when he saw it. He couldn’t speak, just nodded so fast that I was sure he’d knock his own head off.
I tossed him the bar, which he immediately opened and took a huge bit out of. He took a moment to savour it before I decided the moment had gone on just a tad too long. I was thirsty. I cleared my throat, and the boy snapped out of his reverie, retrieving my spoils from his bag.
“You call this half?” I snapped, holding up the mostly empty bottle of gin.
“No returns,” said the boy through a mouthful of food.
“No re—?!” I bit my tongue. My stomach growled loudly, watching the kid eat my breakfast. Defeated, I cracked open one of the Buds and walked away.
The buzz kicked in early on account of my stomach being empty. I wandered down the road, bartering with the little booze I had to try and find something to eat, when I finally convinced an old woman to trade me half a loaf of bread for my second Bud. It was freshly baked—which she tried to use as an excuse to upsell me on the gin—and so warm I had to wrap it in my shirt to carry it.
I found a spot in the park, far enough away from any others milling about—not to mention the group of feral teenagers who had claimed the far end as their ‘camp’—to stretch out on the grass and enjoy my spoils.
I unwrapped the loaf and slugged back some of the gin. Surprisingly, it didn’t seem watered down at all. I took another, more deliberate sip, enjoying the rare delicacy, and chased it with a chunk of bread.
It still baffled me how much my life had changed in the last eight months—since people had shifted from calling it ‘clusters of extreme weather events’ to the pithier and more-to-the-point ‘apocalypse.’ The initial panic had been devastating, and violence and terror had certainly become a part of everyday life in a new way, but now it seemed people were taking stock of the speed at which their lives were ending and realizing the time they had left more closely resembled terminal cancer than a car wreck.
The public generally went one of three ways:
In the wake of a series of unoriginal and ineffective crisis plans, just about anyone who wasn’t still employed by them had lost faith in the government. Many of the people became very community-focused, using existing societal models to try and retain a sense of normalcy in trying times while at the same time shifting towards a smarter, more effective method of governance. Most of the human population fell into this category.
There were also those who went the other direction. Without the interference of a trusted law enforcement agency, gangs ran rampant. Some acted as security forces, some were violent hate groups, others Robin Hood-esque thieves who served as scavengers for their respective tribes.
The third type, the category under which I fell, were those whose entire ethos could be summed up as ‘fuck it.’ Many former high achievers fell into this group—people who had spent their entire lives dedicated to a dream that had become vapid and meaningless so quickly they weren’t sure what else to do with themselves but destroy what was left. Some turned to drugs, others to sex, but me, I liked to keep things simple. The drink was enough for me.
So, as I sat in the park that day, eating bread and drinking gin, I couldn’t help but laugh as the thought ‘well, isn’t this nice?’ ran across the ol’ mental ticker tape.
Wild times.
IV
When the sun dipped below the horizon, a deep chill hit. I was out of gin, and had only a small portion of bread left, so I packed it up and wandered down the road in search of a warm nook to sleep in.
It didn’t take long. About twenty minutes down the main thoroughfare, the street abruptly ended.
With no regular maintenance, some roads had become unusable very quickly, particularly the main rural in-outs, and it looked like this one had been demolished intentionally to prevent others in the community from travelling on it and damaging their vehicles. It also made for a useful defense tactic. If no one could leave, no one could get in, either.
Just beyond a blockade made of discarded wood and car parts lay a small complex of storage units. With a bit of luck, one of those would be empty and I could crash under a roof for the night.
The closer I got, the more I was able to make out the sound of music coming from somewhere within. Music was an uncommon thing to come across those days, as it took electricity to play records and amplify instruments, and electricity was in high demand. The only music one typically heard was played live in the street on acoustic instruments, and that was still a rare occasion.
But this was decidedly not live, and it was being played loud.
Intrigued, I followed the music down rows and rows of locked units with no one else in sight until it suddenly dipped to my left. Until that point, it hadn’t been much more than a kick drum and bassline. Now I was met with a stinging fuzz guitar, raucous drums, and soaring seventies rock vocals and I realized I knew this record. It wasn’t a particularly important detail, but somehow knowing the material made the situation even more surreal.
The sunlight had almost completely faded, making the light spilling from the bottom of the only unlocked unit in the complex a beacon. I walked towards it boldly, too preoccupied with remembering the lyrics to ‘Mr Limousine Driver’ to consider discretion.
I stepped into the doorway and was glad not to be holding an umbrella. The sheer volume of air being moved by the gargantuan stereo system in the unit would have taken me halfway across the Pacific.
Perhaps more interestingly, in the middle of the unit, dancing wildly while swinging around an open bottle of wine, was a young woman in the nude. Her eyes were closed, but even if they had been open she still might not have seen me for the way her knotted, dirty blonde hair fell across her face as she whipped her head from side to side.
I stood spellbound. Beads of sweat flung from her body as she jerked and twitched around the unit, oblivious to my presence. There was nothing graceful about it, except maybe for the way she nimbly avoided the furniture—never opening her eyes once to take stock of her position. Her movements felt frenzied and frantic, as if she was dancing not because she wanted to, but because some unseen force compelled her to. Then, gradually, her movements softened, and the thumping in my head began to slow. She took a swig from the wine bottle, a line of purple liquid running down her chin. She wiped it off with the back of her hand and turned her back to me.
The song was fading out.
I snapped out of it a moment too late. The woman turned on her heels and met my eyes. My heart raced and I felt my face go red.
Strangely, she seemed entirely unbothered to discover me there. Almost as if she’d expected to. She began to walk towards me, and I felt fear well up in my chest. Her boldness was alarming, especially being in as seemingly vulnerable a state as she was.
I realized later it was only because she had seconds in which to act before the stereo kicked in again that caused her to move so hurriedly.
When she was within earshot, she called out, “wanna dance?”
I was taken aback. I expected a ‘get lost, creep,’ or maybe to be eaten alive, but not an invitation to two-step with a naked stranger.
No time to waste, she gestured for me to follow, and I dumbly accepted. I hated to dance. I didn’t know what I had just agreed to and was already thinking of ways to back out when she suddenly gestured for me to stop. Again, I did as I was told.
We were at the threshold of the unit. The next song had begun, so she communicated entirely through gesticulation. She pointed at my shirt, then my pants, then my shoes, then, sticking one thumb out, threw her hand over her shoulder.
I desperately hoped I had misunderstood, but it seemed clear that she wanted me to get naked, too. I didn’t share the same lackadaisical attitude towards being discovered in the nude, blaring music in an empty storage unit as she did, but she insisted I could come no further without swapping out my jeans and t-shirt for my birthday suit.
Sensing my apprehension, she offered the wine bottle. Our eyes met for a moment, and she smiled encouragingly. I took a swig from the bottle and had barely swallowed when she began yanking my shirt over my head. With that same frenzied energy she had been dancing with, she stripped me naked, then grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into the unit.
I did my best to do what felt like dancing, occasionally lifting my head from watching my feet to take in the sensory soup that I was bathing in. The song twisted and turned, and we followed its lead, until finally I felt my inhibitions slide off like a veil. I was no longer intensely aware of my penis flopping around, or the way my stomach jiggled when I hit the ground too hard. I was free.
The song hit a solo guitar section, musicians hooting and hollering in the background, and the woman’s energy picked up, up, up! She grabbed both my arms and screamed, “keep up! Keep up! Keep up!” over the deafening snarl shredding the speaker cones, her knees pumping furiously. My heart raced and I feared I might pass out. I hadn’t eaten enough for this kind of physical exertion.
Then came the grand finale as the band rejoined the guitar for one final hurrah, and as the last notes rang out, I collapsed on a couch pressed against the wall. The record player clicked, and the arm lifted on the turntable. The woman started towards the stereo.
“Wait,” I gasped.
She turned.
“Can we… talk… for a… sec?”
She took a swig of the bottle, then passed it to me as she joined me on the couch.
“Anything… but… the elephant,” she wheezed, as out of breath as I was.
The elephant. I certainly liked the ring of that a lot better than ‘apocalypse.’ I nodded. It was hardly a subject I was itching to talk about.
We took a moment to catch our breath. The woman pulled two glasses out from a box in the back corner and poured me a proper glass of wine.
“What is this place?” I asked.
“My sanctuary,” she replied, smiling widely. There was an air of disingenuousness about it.
“It sure is nice.”
The entire unit was decked out in mid-century modern décor—teak chairs, yellow suede couch, a large, bright red shag rug in the middle of the floor—and the shorter back wall was stacked end-to-end, floor-to-ceiling, with audio equipment—mostly speakers.
“And who are you?” I asked.
She paused for a moment.
“Janice?” she replied.
It was the most unconvincing fake name I’d ever heard, but I only needed something to address her by so I let it slide.
“I’m Lou,” I said.
“It’s nice to meet you, Lou.”
We sat in uncomfortable silence for a beat as I mustered up the courage to ask about my own elephant.
“Why are we naked?” I finally blurted out.
“Because it feels good,” she said plainly, then added, “and I’m tired of feeling bad.”
She met my eyes and I saw a great deal of pain inside them. I understood now what all this was—a big ‘fuck you’ to the universe. A great big crescendo on life. Going out with a bang.
She leaned in towards me, and I felt the warmth of her skin on mine. She brought her mouth up to my ear, and, as enigmatically as anything else she had done that night, whispered, “do you hate me, too?”
Once again left speechless by her audaciousness, my mind raced for the right thing to say. I blurted out a quick, ‘of course not!’ and immediately felt I had played the situation with too little tact. I was the clumsy bull in her emotional china shop.
But it turned out that that was all she needed, because before I could overthink myself into oblivion, she was on top of me, her lips pressed firmly against mine. She reached down, guided me inside of her, and we made love.
V
I woke up to the smell of coffee, another rare delicacy.
In fact, coffee had been one of the first things to go, well before the earthquakes hit. To smell it now, still half-asleep, I couldn’t be sure what year it was.
I opened my eyes. Across the unit, right next to the stereo, stood Janice, pouring two cups of black coffee into ceramic mugs on a small collapsible table I hadn’t noticed before. She was still naked but looked as if she had recently bathed. Her hair was tied up on top of her head in what looked like an old band t-shirt.
I took her in. For a moment I forgot the world was ending. The day seemed filled with so much promise, I felt light in a way that I had almost forgotten about.
She turned to me.
“Oh! You’re up,” she said, smiling, “I made coffee.”
She sat down on the couch next to me, draping her legs over my lap.
“Where did you find this?” I asked.
She shrugged innocently and said nothing. A moment passed. I found myself running my free hand along her leg and pulled my hand back, embarrassed.
“Don’t stop,” she said, “it’s nice.”
I met her eyes.
“You know,” she said, “it’s kinda fucked up that even during the apocalypse everyone is still an asshole.”
I must have looked shocked because she immediately followed up with a quick, “oh, not you!” She had that same look in her eye that she had had the night before, when she had asked if I hated her, too. I recognized it now for what it was. Not necessarily a cry for help—it felt less desperate than that—but certainly a voracious attempt at meaningful connection. She was emotionally gaunt—a haunted, hungry heart—but not yet so anaemic that she couldn’t cling to her egotism with fierce determination. Only in moments of weakness did her human need poke through like a sputtering, gasping fish left behind by a receding tide.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I don’t know, I just thought that, what with the world ending and all, maybe people would be, like, kind? Every time I have to go out there—,” she gestured towards the open door of the storage unit, “—it’s the same as it always has been. Only everything’s shittier. Like, why do we have sports on when the roadways are back to the fucking stone ages?”
“Maybe people are just trying to have a good time.”
“A good time?! ‘Honey, the oven’s on fire!’ ‘That’s fine, dear, come back to bed!’”
I laughed.
“More like, ‘yeah, hun, everything’s on fire! Hurry while I’m still wet!”
I could tell she didn’t want to, but she smirked, nonetheless.
“I think everyone’s an asshole because that’s what humans are,” I said, “by default, I mean. It takes real effort to do the ‘right’ thing, or to think about other people. We’re not really hard-wired for the way we live—or used to live, I guess. We expect to eat at the table but forget to ask if we can help in the kitchen.”
“That’s awfully poetic of you,” she chided.
“What do you think, then?” I asked defensively.
She took a long sip of her coffee, staring straight ahead.
“I’m not sure I care anymore.”
The sentence hung in the air—I could practically see the words spelled out like smoky apparitions in the middle of the unit—before she continued:
“It’s weird. It’s like something clicked in me. I used to be so preoccupied with, like, what did this person think of me, or did I accidentally say something I shouldn’t have, but it doesn’t really matter, does it? I used to be so shocked by how much other people only thought of themselves until I realized obsessing over their opinions of me was doing the exact same thing.”
“You make a fair point, but…” I couldn’t quite find the words.
She turned to look at me, and I could tell she wanted me to prove her wrong. There was yearning in those eyes—yearning to be shown where she went wrong, to be given a roadmap out of her new worldview.
“This morning. While you were making me coffee.”
“Hm?” she looked confused.
“I was looking at you, and… I’m not sure how to say it. It wasn’t like I’d forgotten about the—what did you call it? The elephant? I just felt more… okay with it, I guess.”
She smiled, and I lost my nerve. She leaned in and kissed me.
It wasn’t well articulated, nor was it fully on-topic, but the idea planted in both our minds, germinated, and grew into a lush understanding each on its own. There was nothing that could be done about the world we found ourselves a part of. The earth would continue to quake, and people would continue to be assholes, but maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t be so bad if we weren’t alone to face them.
“So, what now?” asked Janice.
I shrugged.
“More coffee?”