Directions didn’t sound too complicated. The band kept talking about getting GPS. God knew the systems were cheap these days. But Rob and Justin both liked to navigate. Finding a place on your own made arriving mean something it didn’t when a computer held your hand all the way there. Even getting lost could be interesting. Rob thought so, anyhow. Charlie and Biff thought their bandmates were full of it. But they’d never missed a gig because they’d got lost, so the rhythm guitarist and drummer didn’t grumble. Much.
A roll, split in half. A little mayo, even if under an assumed name. Lobster-lots of lobster. A lobster roll. A Maine specialty. The finest invention since the wheel, as far as Rob was concerned. Maine was one of the few places where lobster didn’t cost an arm and a leg. Rob was happy to pay a mere arm for such concentrated deliciosity.
Justin had a big bowl of clam chowder-creamy, of course, with not a tomato in sight. Tomato chowder was a New York City thing, not a New England one. The divide was as fierce as Yankees and Red Sox. Rob actually liked both kinds, which made him either a neutral or a heretic, depending.
Charlie got a chicken pot pie. You could do that anywhere. Biff ordered the brrito. Rob didn’t think he would have chosen a lobster roll in Phoenix. A burrito in Portland, Maine, struck him as an equally bad idea. But it wasn’t his stomach. Sometimes the less you said to the guys you played with, the better off you were.
When they walked out of the restaurant, the sun was going down. It looked like… a sunset. The only screwy thing about it, as far as Rob was concerned, was that the Atlantic was at his back and the sun was sinking toward land. He was conditioned to think of the sun coming up over land and going down in the Pacific. This felt wrong- wrong enough for him to say something about it.
The other guys were all Californians, too. They nodded. “Hadn’t thought about it, but you’re right,” Biff said.
“I read somewhere that after Krakatoa blew up, sunsets were spectacular for a couple of years because of all the dust and ash in the air,” Justin said. “I was kind of hoping for something fancier than-this.” He waved across the parking lot at the ordinary red ball going down into the ordinarily reddening western sky.
“Give me a break, man!” Rob exclaimed. “It just happened a few hours ago, you know.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Justin had the grace to sound sheepish. “But this thing is a lot bigger than Krakatoa, too. This thing is a lot bigger than, well, anything. I mean, it happened in fucking Wyoming, and we heard it here.”
“Instant gratification, that’s all you want, dude.” Rob wanted to bite his tongue. Damned if he didn’t sound like his father. If you played in a band and your old man was a cop, what did that say about you? Nothing good, for sure.
“Hey, who doesn’t want gratification?” Charlie said. “We’ll pick up some girls after we play.”
“There you go!” Justin and Biff said the same thing at the same time in the same enthusiastic tone. Rob didn’t, but it wasn’t as if he hated the idea. It wasn’t as if he didn’t do it himself, either. What was the point of even fairly small celebrity, after all, if you didn’t take advantage of it?
Why this is hell, nor am I out of it. Vanessa remembered that was a line from a play, but not which one or who’d written it. Things she was interested in, she remembered-and she’d hit you over the head with the details, too. What she didn’t care about was as one with Nineveh and Tyre… which was also a line from something or other. From what? Who cared? If she ever needed to find out for some reason she couldn’t imagine now, she could always Bing it.
If she got the chance, she could. Denver was also becoming as one with Nineveh and Tyre. She’d never dreamt it could happen so fast. Ash started raining down on the city-Jesus Christ, ash started raining down on the whole goddamn state-the day after the supervolcano went off.
Vanessa got up that morning intending to go back to Amalgamated Humanoids. There hadn’t been any earthquakes big enough to wake her up during the night. She had power again; her digital alarm clock buzzed her at a quarter past six, as she’d set it to do when the electricity came on again. So, volcano or no volcano, everything should have been pretty much back to normal.
Well, almost everything. Pickles remained one freaked-out kitty, and who could blame him? Cats and cataclysms didn’t mix well.
She soon discovered she didn’t mix so well with cataclysms, either. When she opened the blinds after she got dressed, everything was grayish brown: the walkway outside the apartment, the stairs, the grass in the courtyard, the air, everything. She could barely see across the courtyard to the apartments on the other side-there was that much crap in the air. The breeze made it drift and billow, now thinner, now thicker.
“Fuck!” Vanessa said, which exactly summed up how she felt. She’d looked forward to watching snow fall in Denver. It was something she’d never seen before; she was an L.A. kid, all right. What was out there now seemed like a filthy parody of the genuine article.
Somebody across the courtyard opened his door and headed for his car. He took about three steps before he started coughing and frantically rubbing his eyes at the same time. His shoes kicked up ghostly clouds of dust and ash. He turned around and went right back into his place as fast as he could.
How much volcanic ash did he bring in with him? Enough to keep him coughing and rubbing for the next week? Vanessa wouldn’t have been surprised. She was glad she’d seen him. Otherwise, she would have charged out there herself. All of a sudden, that didn’t look like such a great idea.
Instead, after coffee and some oatmeal, she went back into the bedroom and turned on the TV. She’d already given Pickles his usual morning kitty treats. Now he jumped up beside her on the bed and meowed for more. The world had broken routine, she’d broken routine-why shouldn’t he? She fed him. If food made him happy, or at least happier, fine.
Then she opened up the bedroom blinds. The Black-and-White Fairy-actually, the Shades of Grayish Brown Fairy-had touched that side of the building, too. Dust drifted the vacant lot next door. The house on the far side of the house was painted a pink hotter than Vanessa would have used for anything but lipstick. You sure couldn’t prove it now.
A couple of cars chugged by on the street. Their lights speared through the dust as if it were fog. They kicked up enormous, plumy wakes of ash as they went. One of them stopped before it got to the corner. The driver popped the hood and got out. Then, like the fellow in the apartment across from Vanessa’s, the gal got in again and slammed the door. Only dimly visible, her hazard lights came on.
“This sucks. Big-time,” Vanessa said. Pickles meowed again. If that wasn’t agreement, she’d never heard it from the cat.
She turned on the TV. A talking head on CNN was going on about the climatic implications of the eruption. That wasn’t what Vanessa needed to hear. If you were somewhere else, somewhere far away, you could afford to talk about such things. Vanessa wanted to know what to do about the mess she was in the middle of.
She grabbed the remote again and fired an infrared beam at the set. CNN gave way to local news. It was news for morons, but the other local morning news shows were news for imbeciles. If not good, this was better.
It wasn’t the usual morning crew, but the gang who’d done the eleven o’clock news the night before. They were in the same clothes. They looked tired. One of them sipped from a styrofoam cup.
“If you’re wondering where Jud and Mariska and Meteorologist Mark are, they were advised not to come in today,” she said, setting the cup down. “Everyone in the Denver area is advised not to travel today-or for the foreseeable future-unless it’s absolutely necessary. This is an emergency the likes of which we’ve never known.”
Newsies usually laid things on with a trowel, to say nothing of a shovel. Vanessa began to think that they weren’t exaggering this time. Looking out the bedroom window again, she wondered if anybody could exaggerate this.
The advice the night newswoman gave was simple. Don’t go outside. If you have to go outside, for God’s sake don’t breathe. That was fine for the moment. What happened when you ran out of food, though? If you had a choice between filling your lungs with crud and going hungry, which should you pick? If it wasn’t Don’t know whether to shit or go blind, what would be?
“Ash continues to fall,” the weary-looking blonde said, brushing back a lock of hair that had come loose in spite of spray. News for morons, sure as hell. “Some geologists believe it may get three feet deep all over the Denver metropolitan area before it lets up. Roof collapses are probable, especially in case of rain.”
“Urk!” Vanessa said, a dismayed noise she’d got from her old man. She hadn’t thought of that. How much
