Everyone Says That at the End of the World Read online

  Just before eleven, the folksinger arrived. He sat in the garden strumming new songs. Rica asked him how he was.

  “Angry,” he answered, going on to explain, in impressive detail, all the wrongs the American government and the popular media had committed in the last day.

  “There’s going to be another war in the Middle East,” he said.

  “There’s always going to be another war.”

  “This one is big. And the government isn’t saying a word. We gobble up their lies like cupcakes. And the media . . . ”

  Rica listened and nodded. “Too true,” she said. “All too true.”

  The folksinger paused, studied her face for a moment, then laughed and returned to his guitar.

  Not long after, the folksinger was joined by the writer. Rica could see them both leaning back in their chairs, tossing thoughts back and forth like a baseball. Rica knew they’d drink coffee till noon, then switch to beer, and by evening they’d be bumming cigarettes from the pretty girls, though neither smoked.

  When the soup was ready, Rica brought a bowl out to the old woman and refused the coins offered in return.

  “What is he like, Death?” Rica asked her.

  “Humble,” the old woman said. “And tired. So I told him we would meet here and chat.”

  “What will you talk about?”

  “I’m not sure. Simple things, I suppose.” A figure’s shadow crossed the garden’s stones. The old woman looked up and flinched, then, seeing it was just a tall boy with a book in his hand, relaxed. “I’m a little afraid,” she said quietly.

  “Don’t be.”

  “It’s nice to be a little afraid.”

  After the rush, Rica stepped outside to take a break. What would have been a smoke break, if she hadn’t quit four years before. The old woman was rising to leave.

  “Did Death come?” Rica asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you enjoy your chat?”

  She nodded. “He’s coming back tomorrow.”

  When the old woman left, Rica took her seat. Her body felt tired, more tired and heavier every day. She could feel her body thickening, swelling, and, most of all, changing. The baby squirmed. Rica placed her hand on the belly and whispered a lullaby.

  Sleepy, sleepy. Creepy, creepy. Sleepy, weepy, sleepy.

  She often whispered to the child. Sometimes lullabies, other times tiny secrets.

  I steal individual creamers from restaurants and drink them in traffic.

  I don’t believe strawberries taste sweet. They taste delicious, but not sweet.

  I think my insides are peach-colored. Are they?

  The fetus answered with kicks and pokes, like Morse code. Rica knew each kick carried a vast amount of meaning. A certain kick told Rica that the child loved Miles Davis but questioned Charles Mingus. Another poke: the child preferred waffles to pancakes . . . Coldplay is overrated . . . a hot shower is the perfect way to begin the day . . .

  Rica had not planned on getting pregnant. In fact, she and Milton worked to avoid a child. She had been on the pill since her late teens and often Milton brought home specialty prophylactics adorned with bumps, ridges, and tentacles. Milton wasn’t concerned that the pill would fail them, he just thought the condoms would be a pleasant surprise. Some boyfriends brought home flowers or boxes of chocolate, Milton brought home novelty contraception.

  They were using the Nibbler Special on the night the baby was conceived. Milton had been away on a birthday solo camping trip to the cedar woods surrounding Enchanted Rock State Park some seventy miles west of Austin. On the day he was due to return, Rica lit a fire and poured two goblets of port. She greeted him at the door wearing nothing but a wool cap and three strategically placed spoonfuls of Nutella.

  Often Milton returned from his solo weekends quiet and distant. But that night he moved with a slow and sweet boldness, like a Chet Baker ballad. He touched slowly, he searched and discovered. Sensation moved across Rica’s skin like orange across the glowing coals of the fire. Then came the Nibbler Special, grinning at her like a naughty, eager Muppet.

  She was surprised at what a fine lover he was that night. She was even more surprised a month later when the store-bought pregnancy test showed two red lines. “When we saw two, we knew,” went the jingle in the television ad.

  Rica was sure the test was wrong. Milton couldn’t impregnate her. She had always suspected that Milton’s sperm, like Milton himself, would be easily distracted and often unmotivated. Sure, they might set out to find the egg, but they would eventually get sidetracked in the fallopian tubes or lose their way and end up north of the bladder.

  But she was wrong. His fellas could swim, as the saying goes. More than that, they could swim upstream, through latex, and against odds. These were highquality sperm. Her own zygotes, in collaborating with Milton’s, had equally shocked her.

  But the surprise was quickly replaced with a sick nervousness. Rica had never had a child. Neither had Milton. She wasn’t sure if Milton should. The thought of him owning a pet seemed ill-advised. Even a fern would be a risk. It was just the way his mind worked. He might be focused and delightful with a child for a good half hour, but then he’d notice an odd cloud formation or a strange insect and wander off.

  On one of their early dates two years before, Rica and Milton had thrown a Frisbee around the open grounds of Zilker Park. Milton was tall, a good three inches over six feet, and each time he leaped for the disc his thick brown hair and beard bounced around his head like a beaten rug. It was a good date. Sunshine and laughter. Then Milton ran to retrieve an overthrown disc near the park road. A car drove by. Milton casually glanced at its bumper, then continued to stare; finally he broke into a run chasing the car. Rica watched him go, his nappy hair flapping behind him. He looked a little like a dog running on its hind legs.

  Milton followed the car out of the park and onto Barton Springs Drive, running on the shoulder and staring at the bumper. Eventually he stopped, rubbed his head, and looked around. He saw Rica, gave her a little wave, and walked back, stopping once to slap his calf with the disc.

  “What was that all about?” she asked.

  “Mosquito.”

  “No. The car.”

  Milton looked around.

  “The one you were chasing?”

  “Oh,” he said, nodding his head. “Bumper stickers. Couldn’t read them all at first.”

  She paused for a moment, then asked, “Good read?”

  “Not bad,” he said. “Want to go get a beer?”

  She did, very much so. As they walked from the park she thought to herself, Okay. Can’t see myself staying too long. But I’ll stay for a while.

  With that understanding, Rica relaxed. Knowing she would eventually leave allowed her to stay. And to her surprise, she never wanted to leave.

  They were a strange match. Rica was a beautiful creature, admired and pursued by many. More than she knew. And in many ways she was a practical woman. But there was nothing practical in her choice of man. Milton was not wealthy or ambitious to be so. He was thirty-one and had no real career. He paid his bills on residuals from his old band, Pearl-Swine. He did own his house, inherited from his father, but it was in bad repair. He enjoyed her soups, but not with the passion of a fellow artist. He was a recluse. A bit of a freak. One of those kids that used to sit on the front lawn of the high school smoking weak joints and arguing about the geography of World of Warcraft. Finding Rica in Milton’s embrace was like finding a ballet dancer inside an Elks Lodge.

  So why did she stay? Hard to say. Maybe she enjoyed the kinky absurdity of it all. Maybe it was an act of rebellion against her own pragmatic ways. Maybe because he unintentionally surprised her with nearly every word he uttered. Or maybe Rica cared for Milton because Milton needed to be cared for. Perhaps she was drawn to his need as a gardener is drawn to a sick radish. Maybe none of these fully answered the question. It’s just one of those mysteries.

  Rica had been content with the m
ystery for two years, but now she was going to have a baby, and mystery seemed too flimsy a foundation to build a family on. But what could she do? What else was there for her to build on? The baby was coming, and with every day Rica felt a little less free, a little more afraid.

  She leaned back in her chair and stared up at the blue sky behind the green and brown of the elm tree. The baby kicked. “Calm down,” she whispered. “Baby, baby. I love you, I love you. I’m just a little afraid.”

  Two college girls walked off, leaving a copy of Entertainment Weekly on their table. Rica reached over and picked it up. Hayden Brock, star of television’s Saint Rick, gazed up from the cover. Rica studied him: his bright, almost luminous, blue eyes, his sandy blond hair slightly ruffled as if the perfect breeze from a perfect sea had perfectly blown past. She touched a finger to the crinkles that formed around his eyes when he smiled. And his chin. God must have wept in joy the day he made that chin. Perhaps God, realizing he had created perfection, dropped his chisel and declared he would never make another chin. That would explain Milton.

  South of Milton’s bottom lip was a simple slope reaching to his neck. Milton wore a beard and shuddered at the very idea of shaving it. Rica thought that was silly, especially in Austin summers. But when she saw his younger clean-shaven face on the Pearl-Swine album cover, Rica agreed. The beard stays.

  She looked back at Hayden Brock staring up from his glossy plane. “Now you’d be an excellent father, I know that,” she said. “We’d have to get you out of California. Then get the California out of you. But eventually . . . ”

  Jeppy came out into the garden with her one-year-old son, Carl, balanced on her hip, a chunky big-eyed drool geyser and eater of all things unclean. Jeppy placed a hot cup of thick tea in front of Rica.

  “Remember, one cup a day. It’s got everything a growing placenta needs.”

  “Jeppy,” Rica asked. “How was pregnancy for you?”

  “Best months ever. Loved it. Loved the sick, loved the tireds. Loved it.”

  “Of course, you were trying to get pregnant.”

  “Yeah, we were trying,” Jeppy said, using one hand to stack yerba maté gourds from a nearby table. “But we didn’t know what it meant. We were just as clueless as you. Maybe more because we thought we weren’t. Are you feeling freaked out?”

  “A little,” Rica said. Carl was squeezing his entire fist into his mouth and moaning. “The timing seems bad.”

  “When a baby decides it’s ready to let you be its mother, it comes. That’s all.” Jeppy chuckled. “Now drink your tea.”

  Eber you ara

  HAYDEN BROCK’S FAVORITE episode of Saint Rick is called “The Write Step.” In it Saint Rick meets a little deaf girl who desperately wants to be a professional singer and her dyslexic farmer father, who is in danger of losing the farm to the bank. While working as a hired hand on the farm, Rick teaches the little girl to dance, explaining that “dancing is singing for the deaf.”

  Rick also teaches the father to overcome his dyslexia using a clever metaphor involving chickens and a combine head. In the final scene, the little deaf girl wins a county dance contest while her father and Rick watch from the audience. The cash prize is enough to pay off the farm mortgage. The father runs onto the stage and hugs his daughter. He picks up the trophy and reads the plaque. “First Palace?” he says. The crowd sighs. “Just kidding,” he says. “First Place, you betcha!” Everyone laughs and applauds. But Rick’s seat is empty.

  “The stranger is gone,” someone says. “What was his name, anyhow?”

  “Rick,” the father says, lifting his daughter on to his shoulder. “They call him Rick.”

  “Gnood nye, Rick,” the daughter says. “Where eber you ara.”

  The final credits roll while Saint Rick walks alone down a dusty road stretching toward an orange-red sunset.

  Hayden Brock nearly cried when he won the Emmy for that episode.

  It was the morning after the awards ceremony that Hayden, passed out on his room-size water bed, was pulled to near consciousness by the ringing of his phone. He did his best to remain in his dreams. He had been enjoying one of his favorites, a reoccurring one in which he lay entangled with a small woman with almond skin and sharp eyes. But the ringing frightened her away and she disappeared into smoke.

  Still mostly asleep, Hayden reached out a hand and answered, if only to stop the ringing. But the screeching voice of his agent was several levels worse.

  “Brock, you really fucked up last night, you know that? You really bit a big one.”

  “Ah, come on, Ted. It was Emmy night. I was letting loose.”

  “You had sex with a goat.”

  “I did not.”

  Hayden clicked a remote and a wall-size screen popped to life.

  “Brock, you had sex with a goat at Visions.”

  Hayden put the heel of his hand to his forehead. He had gone to the nightclub Visions, he remembered that, and it had been Shepherd Night. Visions was known for its theme nights. On Belly Dancing Night no patron or staff was allowed to veil their midriff. On Foam Night the dance floor, bar, and bathrooms were filled to the ceiling with a nontoxic foam. On Bum Night homeless men and women were corralled in and the bar’s patrons served them sandwiches and hot coffee while the DJ spun techno beats under old Jethro Tull albums. And then of course there was Shepherd Night. Yes, there had been a goat . . .

  Hayden was starting to remember.

  “Ted, calm down,” he said into the phone. “I was joking around on the dance floor. There was no penetration. I’m sure of it.”

  “Shit, Hayden, it’s in the papers. There’s a picture, for God’s sake!”

  The television caught Hayden’s attention—an enthusiastic studio audience watched a screen flashing images of earthquakes, forest fires, grainy footage of buildings collapsing, bridges twisting, a bright expanding mushroom cloud.

  “Brock, are you listening to me?”

  “It was a joke, Ted. The goat was on the dance floor. It was harmless.”

  “You don’t get it,” Ted said, his voice tightening like a twisted rope. “You are Saint Rick. Saint Rick can’t fuck goats.”

  “I told you, there was no penetration.”

  On the television a round man with a sweaty face full of cooper-red hair gesticulated to the studio audience. The screen behind him now showed computeranimated people climbing into bright blue coffins like oversize Advil capsules. Was he selling tombs?

  “Listen, Brock, I told the media that the photo was doctored.”

  “Nice. Good,” Hayden said, stretching and ringing for his morning coffee. “In fact I think that’s exactly what happened.”

  “I don’t want you talking with anyone. I’m putting out a press release that you’re on another spiritual retreat.”

  “Have I been on one before?”

  “Your drinking binge in Aspen.”

  “Yes. Good. Nice, Ted.”

  “But the producers aren’t stupid, Brock. They’ll drop you. Emmy or no Emmy. They’re that close. Just get out of town for a while. Lay low.”

  Hayden’s Haitian manservant, Iola, appeared at the door wearing a cream-colored mock turtleneck and balancing a small espresso and an orange juice on a tray. The size of the water bed allowed for only a narrow walkway between it and the wall. The manservant turned sideways and skillfully shuffled to the bed’s side.

  “Where should I go, Ted?”

  “Shit, I don’t care. Just go. Get in your car and drive someplace where people don’t own cameras.”

  “Like the Amish?”

  Ted hung up.

  As the manservant placed the tray on the nightstand, Hayden nodded a thanks and turned up the television’s volume.

  “ . . . tsunami, earthquake, bomb, asteroid!” As the red-bearded man spoke, tiny square examples of each disaster popped up on either side of him. “Whatever hits, you’ll be safe a mile beneath the Earth’s surface in our hidden facility far from any major strike points or
geological hot spots. You’ll be prepared to outlive the danger.” The camera zoomed in on his face. “Lifepods!”

  The phone rang again.

  “Hello, Mother.”

  “Your name is all over the chat rooms.”

  “Yes, Mother. Doctored photo. A fake. I wasn’t even there.”

  “There’s a video. They just played it on the news. Wow, that goat looks scared.” She sighed. “And you know how your father feels about these kinds of things.”

  “Was he watching?”

  “He was asleep.”

  “Good.”

  “So I woke him.”

  “Mom, come on.”

  The screen was now showing a smiling bleached blond climbing into one of the ginormous Advil capsules. The studio audience cheered.

  “With our patented Lifepod system the guest will sleep peacefully through the disaster in our subterranean shelter. They will wake to a stockpile of dried food, supplies, and all the comforts of a five-star hotel. Spots are limited. Make sure you reserve your Lifepod today!” The bearded man appeared again, staring into Hayden’s room with bright-blue eyes. “This is Dr. Kip Warner reminding you, only the best survive the worst.”

  “ . . . so your father is dressed now and we’re coming over.” His mother’s words pulled him from the advertisement. “We’ll be there for lunch.”

  “No can do, Mother. Spiritual retreat.”

  “Aspen?”

  “No, no. Secret location. Can’t say. Very special.”

  “No goats, I hope.”

  Hayden clicked the phone off.

  “Iola, will you ready my car?”

  “Which one, sir?”

  “Lexus, I think,” Hayden said. “And pack a bag for me. I’m going driving. And while I’m away order a couple of Lifepods, will you?”

  “Lifepods?”