letters, are the words EVOLVE OR DIE. Her hair looks as if she’s rubbed a balloon all over it and used the static charge to make it jut out in little tufts; her cheeks are flushed and the subtle scent of dried sweat follows her into the room like a faithful dog at its master’s feet.
She shambles over to the fridge and throws open the door, blinding me for a moment with the unexpected light. I cup my hand over my brow, shielding my eyes from the stinging glare, and blink away the needles of pain.
Polly bends over to dig around on the bottom shelf and the hem of her shirt raises to the small of her back. She’s not wearing any underwear and I see these two perfect ass cheeks staring back at me: tight and firm from hours spent at the gym, little twin dimples on either side. My pulse quickens and I look away as she pulls a bottled water from the shelf and closes the door.
“Oh hey,” she seems unsure of her words and begins to fidget slightly, tugging at the bottom of her shirt as if she could stretch it a little lower, “I didn’t, uh, see you there, Richard. Umm… can’t sleep?”
I glance back at her and try to keep my voice from betraying the little quiver that vibrates somewhere between my heart and gut.
“Yeah. Keep thinking about everything that happened today. It’s crazy.”
“Tell me about it.”
She sounds relieved, as if she were perhaps expecting me to say something about the noise of her lovemaking. Perhaps to buy a few seconds time, she twists off the lid of the bottle and takes a swig; I try not to stare as her throat moves slightly while she swallows.
Wiping her lips with the back of her hand, she makes her way to the table and pulls up a chair across from me. So close now that I can smell the faint hint of her perfume, like wildflowers after a spring rain; but there’s also the slight smell of passion still clinging to her like a needy lover.
Cody had left an empty yogurt cup on the table and she pulls it to her; for the first time, I notice the pack of cigarettes in her other hand. Flipping open the top of the box, she slides out a lighter and a smoke.
“You know,” I warn, “Jane will have your head if she catches you smoking that in here.”
Polly shrugs and flicks the lighter in the semi-darkness. She holds the flame to the tip and puffs slowly. Half closing her eyes, she blows out the smoke through pursed lips, a long slow plume that hangs in the air like a bluish nebula in the depths of space.
“Yeah, well what Jane doesn’t know won’t hurt her, right?”
Polly winks at me and I feel as if my heart has forgotten to beat as my breath catches in my throat. Is she talking about smoking? Or something else? Something more?
“Uh, yeah… I guess. I mean, I won’t tell her or anything.”
She takes another drag off the cigarette and the ember glows like a meteor just before it begins to burn up in the atmosphere. The apartment is so quiet that I can hear the tobacco crackle slightly as she inhales and I wonder if she can hear the way my heart is pounding in my chest….
“So what do
I lean back in my chair and look up at the ceiling for what seems to be an eternity before committing myself to an answer.
“The way I see it, people just don’t give a damn any more. I mean, it would be easy if we could blame this on some kind of disease. Some virus or something. At least then it would kind of make sense.”
Polly nods her head as she flicks her ashes into the yogurt cup. But she stays silent, letting me talk. If I’d been having this conversation with Jane right now, you can bet she would’ve already had some little counter to what I’d said. Maybe something along the lines of not enough research being done to entirely discount a viral theory. But Polly, God bless her, was content to simply listen and smoke. Which was good. It gave me a chance to actually sort out and piece together the scattered thoughts that had been going through my mind over the last several weeks. To try to form some kind of coherent reasoning.
“But this? This is scarier. A disease can be cured. An infection can be stopped.”
“So, if not a disease… then what?”
I reach across the table and pull her pack of cigarettes toward me. She raises her eyebrows but doesn’t really say anything as I fish one out and light up my own. The smoke feels scratchy in my throat and my eyes immediately start to water. But God, it feels good… like running into an old lover who you haven’t thought of in years only to find that old spark still exists.
“You want to know what I really think?”
I feel slightly woozy from the nicotine. Or maybe from Polly’s scent, so maddeningly close. Or maybe both.
“What I think is that civilization is this really fragile thing. I mean, we have laws that were designed to protect us. But the only reason those laws work is because the majority of people
“Well, you got to keep in mind that if you break those laws you go to jail, Richard. Fear of losing freedom… that’s a pretty strong incentive, isn’t it?”
Her voice sounds husky and soft, like a starlet from some old film noir movie. I take another draw from my cigarette and hold the smoke in, using it as an excuse to simply admire her for a moment without needing to continue the conversation. She really is beautiful: those high cheeks bones, that perfect nose, the creases in her brow….
“Not really.” I finally say. “I mean, let’s face it. There’s a lot more normal people than there are cops and soldiers. If everyone decided, all at the same time, to simply do whatever the hell they wanted there really wouldn’t be anything the authorities could do about it.”
Polly narrows her eyes and chews on her bottom lip for a moment as she thinks over what I’d said. For the first time, I see a hint of fear touch her eyes. As if she’d finally realized that this was something more than just an intellectual exercise.
“And you think that’s what’s happening? That people are just… well, just
“It’s the only thing that makes any sense. At least, to me. And that, my dear, is precisely why I can’t get to sleep tonight. In a nutshell.”
Polly glances over her shoulder, almost as if she’s afraid that some shadow might be sneaking up behind her. She rubs her arms briskly and even in the darkness of the kitchen I can see the goose bumps creeping along her soft flesh.
I know that I’ve been laying it on a bit thick, spacing out my words with dramatic pauses and speaking in tones normally reserved for melodramatic b-films. But, to be perfectly honest, there’s kind of a small thrill in knowing that you’ve entirely captivated a beautiful woman. Knowing that a seed of fear has been planted and that maybe, just maybe, somewhere deep in the back of her mind she is seeing you as a potential hero. Someone who’ll protect her and make sure that nothing bad ever darkens her doorstep.
“If you’re right… and I’m not saying you are, mind you… but if you are then there’s really no hope, is there?”
“Honey, I don’t think there’s been any hope for a long, long time. And that’s precisely why we find ourselves in this current predicament.”
CHAPTER THREE
The smell of smoke still hangs heavy in the air, thick and greasy, like the ghost of a refinery explosion. I wonder to myself how long it will take for that particular stink to dissipate, for the air to simply smell normal again? Even the warm breeze that blows across the streets doesn’t do much to help scatter the stench. Instead, it’s almost as if the wind is scooping it up from the burnt out shells of buildings, carrying it down alleys and throughways, and depositing it into a cloud that hangs just over our heads.
