there's the smell of bread where in five days Fertility says, boom. In the back of the pet store, the hundreds of canaries flutter from side to side of their stinking crowded cage. Next week, they'll all be free. Then what? I want to tell them, stay in the cage. There are better things than freedom. There are worse things than living a long bored life in some stranger's house and then dying and going to canary heaven.
At the gas station Fertility says will explode, the attendants pump gas, happy enough, not unhappy, young, not knowing that next week they'll be dead or unemployed depending on who works what shift.
It gets dark pretty fast.
Outside the hotel, in through the big plate glass lobby windows, the chandelier looms over victim after victim. A woman with a pug a on a leash. A family: mother, father, three little kids. The clock behind the desk says it's still a long ways from 3:04 next Tuesday afternoon. It would be safe to stand there for days and days but not for one second too long.
You could go in past the doormen in their gold braid and tell the manager his chandelier was going to fall.
Everyone he loves will die.
Even he will die, someday.
God will come back to judge us.
All his sins will a him into Hell.
You can tell people the truth, but they'll never believe you until the event. Until it's too late. In the meantime, the truth will just piss them off and get you in a lot of trouble.
So you just walk home.
There's dinner to start. There's a shirt you need to iron for tomorrow. Shoes to shine. You have dishes to wash. New recipes to master.
There's something called Wedding Soup that takes six pounds of bone marrow to make. Organ meats are big this year. The people I work for want to eat right on the cutting edge. Kidneys. Livers. Inflated pig bladders. The intermediate cow stomach stuffed with watercress and fennel, cud-style. They want animals stuffed with the most unlikely other animals, chickens stuffed with rabbit. Carp stuffed with ham. Goose stuffed with salmon.
There's so much I need to get home and perfect.
To bard a steak, you cover it with strips of fat from some other animal to protect it while it cooks. This is what I'm up to when the phone rings.
Of course, it's Fertility.
'You were right about that weird guy,' she says.
I ask, About what?
'That guy, Trevor's boyfriend,' she says. 'He really needs somebody. I took him out on a date like you wanted, and one of those cult people was on the bus with us. They had to be twin brothers. They looked that much alike.'
I say, maybe she's wrong. Most of those cult people are dead. They were crazy and stupid and almost all of them are dead. It's in the newspaper. Everything they believed in turned out to be wrong.
'The guy on the bus asked if they were related, and Trevor's boyfriend said no.'
Then they weren't related, I say. You'd have to recognize your own brother.
Fertility says, 'That's the sad part. He did recognize the guy. He even said a name, Brad or Tim or something.'
Adam.
I say, So how is that sad?
'Because it was such an obvious, pathetic denial,' she says. 'It's so obvious he's trying to pass as a normal happy person. It was so sad I even gave him my phone number. I felt sorry for him. I mean I want to help him embrace his past. Besides,' Fertility says, 'I have a feeling he's headed for some terrible shit.'
Like what shit, I ask. What does she mean, shit?
'Misery,' she says. 'It's still pretty vague. Disasters. Pain. Mass murder. Don't ask me how I know. It's a long story.'
Her dreams. The gas station, the canaries, the hotel chandelier, and now me.
'Listen,' she says. 'We still need to talk about us getting together, but not right now.'
Why?
'My evil job is getting a little thick right now, so if somebody called Dr. Ambrose calls to ask if you know Gwen, say you don't know me. Tell him we never met, okay?'
Gwen?
I ask, Who's Dr. Ambrose?
'That's just his name,' Fertility says. Gwen says. 'He's not a real doctor, I don't think. He's more like my booking agent. This isn't what I want to be doing, but I work on contract for him.'
I ask, what is it she does on contract?
'It's nothing not legal. I have it all under control. Pretty much.'
What?
And she tells me, and the alarms and sirens start going off.
How I'm feeling is smaller and smaller.
The alarms and flashing lights and sirens are all around me.
How I'm feeling is less and less.
Here in the cockpit of Flight 2039, the first of the four engines has just flamed out. Where we're at right here is the beginning of the end.
Part of her doing suicide intervention is my caseworker has to mix me another gin and tonic. This is while I'm talking long-distance on the telephone. A producer for
Top priority is my hooking up with a good agent.
Upstairs, the beds are still unmade.
The garden needs to be repainted.
Over the telephone, this one top agent is stressing about what if I'm not the sole survivor. This has to be the case is what I'm saying. The caseworker wouldn't be dropping by for a breakfast gin and tonic if there hadn't been another suicide last night. Right here on the kitchen table I have spread out in front of me all the other case history folders.
The government's whole Survivor Retention Program is what you'd call a washout. It's the caseworker mixing me gin and tonics who needs some suicide intervention.
Just to make sure I don't go south on her, the caseworker is eyeing me. Just to keep her out of my way, I have her slicing a lime. Get me some cigarettes. Mix me a fresh drink, I say, or I'll kill myself. I swear. I'll go in the bathroom and hack all my veins open with a razor.
The caseworker brings my new gin and tonic back to where we're sitting at the kitchen table and asks if I want to help identify some bodies. This is supposed to help me achieve closure. After all, she says, they are my people, my flesh and blood. My kith and kin.
She's fanning the same ten-year-old government photos out on the table. Staring up at me are hundreds of dead people laid out shoulder to shoulder in rows on the ground. Their skin is all bruised black from the cyanide. They're bloated so much the dark homemade clothes on them are tight. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. The whole recycling process should be that quick and easy, but it's not. The bodies lying there stiff and rank. This is the caseworker trying to jump-start my emotions. I'm repressing my grief, she says.
Would I like to wade in and what you'd call ID these dead people?
If there is a killer out there, she says, I can help her find the person who should be pictured here dead but isn't.
Thanks, I say. No, thanks. Without even looking, I know Adam Branson won't be dead in any of her
