Pariah

“I want you to come inside me,” Ellen snarled, thrashing her head back and forth. This was very odd. This wasn’t a hate fuck. Alan had only experienced that phenomenon once or twice in his past, especially with his ex- wife. She’d stare up at him, eyes squinted in concentration, slowly and with great deliberation intoning, “Fuck my cunt,” over and over. This wasn’t like that exactly, but it was certainly angsty. And very aggressive. Ellen snapped her head back and her hair whipped across his face.

“Clairol,” he said, slapping his forehead. “Clairol Herbal Essence!”

“What?”

“Nothing,” he said, feeling lava pump into his face. He smacked her ass and pumped harder to throw her off the scent of his wandering mind. After several more minutes of violent hammering he obliged her request. His knees and thighs immediately turned to jelly and he sank to the floor. Ellen slumped beside him. She pressed her head against his chest and murmured, “Hold me.”

It always came down to a hug.

And as he ran his fingers through her oily hair he silently mouthed, Clairol Herbal Essence.

FEBRUARY, T HEN

It had been two weeks earlier that Ellen had teased Alan as he trudged up the stairs, Bataan Death March- style, with case after case of Kirkland bottled water. Nothing had really happened yet-certainly not on the level into which it would blossom-but Alan’s girlfriend, Tammy, had convinced him that preparedness wasn’t anything to scoff at. So there he’d been, doing the lion’s share of lugging, wishing for an elevator.

“All you need are some camouflage fatigues and a headband,” Ellen said with a smirk as he approached her on the landing. Her infant daughter, Emily, was suckling a full, barely veiled breast. Though Alan found nothing sexy about nursing-lactation was not a kink he found appealing-he was enamored of Ellen Swenson’s boobs and any peek was welcome. Tammy, tart-tongued and efficient, was all nipple and no tit, her chest a smooth plane of milky white skin dotted with two pencil eraser-size pink protrusions. Though not in love with Tammy, Alan was fond of her, but he craved suppleness and Ellen had it. He blinked away his unchaste thoughts and refocused on Ellen’s eyes.

“Huh?” Despite the temperature outside, his face was awash in perspiration.

“You and the gal pal are really kicking into survivalist mode.”

Alan eased the case to the ground with a thud, panting. “Better safe than sorry. That’s Tammy’s philosophy.”

“It’s just some infected rats,” Ellen countered. “They’ll be dead in no time. You’ve seen all the open manholes everywhere.”

“Yeah, I know. Between the rats and the noxious fumes, driving back with the supplies was a bitch.”

“You keep a car in the city?” With all that was going on, that was what Ellen marveled at. It made Alan smile. These were the real concerns of full-blooded New Yorkers. Not rats biting and infecting commuters down in the subway and pedestrians on the street. Not crews in hazmat suits spelunking the city’s subterranean infrastructure for the last two weeks, pumping who knows what kind of toxic gas down there in hopes of obliterating the ferocious rodents. Not people either stumbling around hacking in each other’s faces looking like death warmed over or sporting surgical masks. Where you parked: that was a thing at which to marvel.

“Tammy keeps it in Brooklyn. It’s her car.”

“Ah,” Ellen said. “Brooklyn. Remember when Manhattan was the place to be? Now it’s Brooklyn.”

“Now it’s Brooklyn,” Alan agreed.

That exchange had been two weeks ago. Now, Alan was side by side with Mike, Ellen’s husband, hammering nails into planks of plywood to further buttress the closed-off entranceway to their building. Over the clatter of their work Mike shouted, “This doesn’t bode well!”

“What?” Alan stopped hammering, as did Mike.

“This. This doesn’t bode well. Us sealing ourselves in, FEMA barricading the only exit… this doesn’t look like it’s gonna be resolved anytime soon.”

“Soon?” Alan replied, taking a breath.

“Yeah, soon. I’ve got faith. This’ll blow over. Everything does. A monsoon hits, people die. Still, life goes on, normalcy resumes. Tsunamis. Collapsed levees. Earthquakes. This’ll blow over. New York’s a tough town.”

Alan nodded at Mike’s hopeful platitudes but wasn’t buying. And anyway, according to the news, New York wasn’t alone in this predicament. This was global.

“I tried to load up on reserves,” Mike continued, “but it was pretty picked over at D’ag’s and Food Emporium. I don’t get why Food City closed up so soon. What’s that all about?”

“Maybe ’cause it’s not a chain,” Alan posited. “The owners probably just took what they needed and booked.”

“Maybe,” Mike allowed. “Still, I think we’re pretty well stocked. I think if we pushed it we could go a month, but that’s not gonna happen.” Mike smiled without conviction and looked to Alan for reassurance. “We’ll be fine. London during the Blitz and so on. We’ll be okay,” Mike nattered.

Alan closed his eyes and drifted inward, Tammy’s face imprinted in the darkness behind his eyelids. Phone service had been spotty at best and it wounded him that she and he had parted badly. Right after the Costco trip they’d had a nasty public fight and after he’d finished hiking his half of the supplies up to his apartment she’d screeched, “Don’t thank me all at once you fuckin’ prick! Aw, your arms hurt, your poor, delicate, artist’s arms! Aw, you got a fuckin’ callous on your precious digits?! You’ll be fuckin’ glad I’m ‘an alarmist,’ you asshole! Mark my fuckin’ words!” She’d slammed into her Honda CR-V and sped off, and though they’d since made up via Instant Messenger, that was the last he’d heard from her. Land lines were tied up or nonoperational. Cell service? History. And now the Internet was iffy, too.

Even though Tammy had stocked up equally, Alan wished she’d stayed, not because of that but because she was on the ground floor of a private house in Bay Ridge. He thought of the Three Little Pigs, he residing in the brick house, she in the wood. At least it wasn’t straw. He suspected he’d never hear her voice again.

Tammy’s face rippled away, replaced by Ellen’s. Alan wasn’t sure why but he always went for tart women (as opposed to women who were tarts). Ellen, whose serial hallway flirtatiousness-especially since she’d had the baby-always seemed seasoned with a smidgen of sarcasm, was close to Alan’s ideal, at least physically. At the moment, convinced he’d never know the touch of a woman again, Alan resented Mike. He resumed hammering, then stopped, sighed, and gave Mike’s arm a gentle squeeze.

“I’m taking you into my confidence, Mike. I’m serious, no fucking around.”

“Okay.”

“Seriously, Mike. This is life or death stuff here.”

“I know, I know. This is super serious.”

“This isn’t just fortification, Mike. We’re sealing ourselves into our crypt. The cavalry isn’t coming for us.”

“Sure they are.”

Alan looked deep into Mike’s worried, wearied, eyes. People with kids had to think positive. “No, Mike, they’re not. This is it.”

“You artistic types are so gloom and doom,” Mike said without judgment. “I don’t roll like that. It’s a disaster, granted, but people rally. Maybe we batten down the hatches and wait, but-”

“Fine, Mike, cling to your illusion, but,” and here Alan lowered the volume to a barely audible whisper, “I’ve got plenty of supplies. Tammy and I bought a buttload.”

“Yeah, Ellen mentioned you were stocked up.”

“Not so loud,” Alan hissed. “I don’t want to become the Sally Struthers to 1620’s starving children. I’m offering-so long as we keep it on the QT-you and Ellen some of my stuff. Water, canned goods, whatever. You’ve got a kid to feed. But it’s between us. I don’t want the others to know. I can’t feed everyone.”

Conspiratorial, Mike nodded and then threw his arms around Alan, his voice cracking. “We’re fucked, aren’t we?” He began to sob and Alan, ensnared by the other man’s limbs, mourned the death of Mike’s optimism. He