No tears. It’s the strangest thing, because I know I’m crying. My body is going through the motions: quivering lips, twitching cheeks, shuddering shoulders. Yet, my eyes are the Gobi.
Nothing feels normal, not even me.
I call James, because I have a sudden need to know he’s okay.
“I’m fine,” he says. “Except for the puking. I think I’ve got what Raoul’s got.” My heart is Icarus, sailing toward the sun in one moment, spiraling to the ground in the next.
“James, do me a favor. Go to the doctor. Both of you.”
“It’s nothing. Just some bad food, probably. You okay?”
“I’m fine,” I parrot. We are liars, the two of us.
We say our good-byes amidst the accumulating doom, but only I can feel its heft on my shoulders, riding me into the ground, because I know Ben is dead.
I wander into the living room to gather my thoughts and my purse. The jar is there. Of course. It’s always there. Omnipresent and omniscient.
Poor Ben. Poor, poor, socially inept Ben. And poor Stiffy, the cat who never came back.
My mind is a millstone churning the grit into a more palatable form. Into something of which I can make sense. One moment Ben cared enough about his cat that he risked the ridicule of strangers, the next he shrugged away the cat’s disappearance over fried rice.
The cat. It started with the cat sitting in my living room, staring at the jar like it mattered. Which means it didn’t start with the cat at all.
I dial the super. When I ask him my question, I can feel him struggling to formulate a number. After a long pause, during which he chews and swallows, he abandons the specific for the facile.
“Half the building, easy. Plumbing can’t keep up. Everybody’s flushing all the time.”
EIGHT
The clouds lift their petticoats for just a short time, long enough for the sun to dazzle us. We three lie spread-eagle in the middle of an arterial road and soak up all she has to offer.
For a moment the world is new and glorious. We forget death. And I forget to keep watch.
That’s when the strangers appear.
At first the shimmer-people don’t seem human. And who knows, they might not be. It’s too late to run now. The bushes are over there, a good sixty-second sprint away, while the open land on the eastern lip of the highway is no friend to a person in need of a hiding place—let alone three.
Their number is also three and they, too, sit beneath the sun, luxuriating in her smile. The road has worn them as it has us, until they’re little more than coat hangers for clothing long past its wear-by date. They’re thin, tired, and when they do notice us it’s with the same measure of suspicion.
I stand and my counterpart rises. My hand lifts in a greeting. As does hers.
“It’s a mirage,” the Swiss says, from his place on the blacktop.
My hand drops. So does my other’s. I feel a fool.
“Oh.”
Lisa covers her mouth with both hands. Her good eye crinkles at the edges like what she would call crisps, but what I remember as potato chips.
I strip off my coat, my shirt and spread them out over the dry asphalt. Then I lie beside my clothes and imagine I’m on a beach with a bed of hot sand to cradle me.
The next time we see a person, he is not a mirage, although at first I mistake the disembodied head for a basketball. The ball bobs along the horizon until shoulders appear, and a body below that.
Italy is known for its leather, and this man’s face is a testament to that: brown and smooth, baked by decades of sun. Patina, the salesperson would brag if he were trying to sell me a leather chair. His skin is stretched over a lean, muscular frame, suggesting he was fit even before the end. He takes long, purposeful strides. This is a man who knows where he is going or at least presents the illusion of being on the right path.
“There’s one of him and three of us,” the Swiss says.
The man draws closer. A cupped hand shades his eyes. His feet lose their certainty.
“Hi,” I say.
He raises both hands and gives a smile made of shattered piano keys.
The Swiss calls out,
The newcomer stops, holds up his index finger and thumb, presses them together.
“Little.”
He’s military. Or was. Or knew someone well enough that he borrowed their uniform. Or killed for it. But his boots, though battered, cling to his feet like a second skin, which leads me to believe he served.
“Hello, friends. I am come from Taranto.”
“Is it bad there?” the Swiss asks.
The soldier shrugs. “Is bad everywhere, friend.”
As it turns out, his idea of a little is my idea of a lot. The gaps in his English he fills with Italian.
“A ship came in a month ago full of dead mans. It crashed into the port. Boom.” His hands draw a fireball in the air. “There was one still aboard. He was crazy. He stands on that ship and laughs while the dead mans burn. I never see such a thing.”
“Were you in the war?” I ask.
“No. I was here. I helped guard our enemies in the…”
“Concentration camps,” the Swiss supplies.
The soldier’s nod is weighted down by his former job. “Yes. We put our enemies there when the war started. When the disease came…” He draws a grisly line across his throat.
Dusk arrives while we talk, and with it, dinnertime.
“Is he cute?” Lisa asks.
I look at the soldier so I can tell her the truth. “He might have been, once. He has a nice face, though. Kind eyes.”
“Do you think he’s married?”
“He’s not wearing a ring.”
Lisa feels her way up the bicycle’s skeleton; it’s leaning against a tree. Her lips move slightly as she counts the supplies by touch. The too-small number draws lines on her forehead.
“Do we have to feed him? We don’t have much.”
“He eats with us,” I say.
“Why?”
“Remember what I said about holding on to what makes us human?”
“Yes.”
“That’s why he eats with us.”
The men are talking some distance away while Lisa and I pick through our canned goods. The Swiss breaks away, pulls a small box from his hand, and places it in my palm.
“Matches?”
“It’s dry enough for a fire tonight. Make one.” He and the soldier melt into the oncoming night before I have a chance to ask questions.
I’ve never made a fire before, not like this, out in the open. But I know I can do it.
“Let’s take the wrappers off the cans,” I say to Lisa. “We need the paper.”
