Everyone Says That at the End of the World Page 6

“Yes, Iola. Dr. Warner. Pods. One for me, one for my wife.”

  “You’re not married, sir.”

  “I might be by the end of the world.”

  Pumpy pumpy . . . smiley smiley

  CLICK THE HERMIT crab was hiding in his shell, which was hiding in the purse of a poet, who was hiding in the corner of a rave. The rave was hiding in a warehouse in downtown Seattle. The drug molly wasn’t hiding at all. It was everywhere. It was passing from hand to hand, surfing on waves of orange juice and Red Bull. Currently it was rushing through the poet’s veins like a child at a water park, squealing as it went, alerting nerves that it was time to feel more intensely, yelling at the emotion glands, “Hey, I’ve great news! I’ll give you the details later! For now, just know that everything is great! Really great!”

  Pumpy pumpy went the glands. Smiley smiley went the poet. Swingy swingy went the purse. Shit went the crab.

  The slow beat and white noise pounded into Click’s shell like the distant ocean that he remembered in only the vaguest sense. Rhythm, pounding, noises, all so constant that it became a kind of silence.

  The poet overzealously reached to feel the texture of someone’s corduroy jacket and as she did the purse escaped her grip and flew up into the smoky air. Click slipped past the zipper and out into the world. Floating, flailing, and splashing into a spotty teenager’s grapefruit juice. Like falling into the center of a sunset, all color, texture, taste, and sound changed in an instant. Then the glass was being lifted. Click scurried, but there was nowhere to scurry. Glunk glunk and Click was slipping along the glass toward two pink lips and a set of crooked teeth. Click snapped onto the pink. The sunset fell away and now Click hung at a perilous height, clinging with his larger claw onto the pink, puffy, waggling thing. New noises. High-pitched yelps. But the beat never slowed.

  “That is so cool,” someone said.

  “Get it off! Get it off!” the mouth yelled.

  “Dance, dude. Dance.”

  Click held on for dear life, but the boy swung his head back and forth, running into a bathroom. It was the lip that finally gave way, and Click went flying off with a tiny chunk of pink flesh in his grasp. He flew for a moment and then landed with a splonk in the room’s open toilet.

  Fist-size piece of strength

  SHE’S HOME. THANK GOD.

  Milton didn’t usually thank God for things. He didn’t believe in God, not anymore. But by the time Rica arrived home from Mundi House, he had seriously questioned his unbeliefs.

  “Rica,” he said as she climbed from her car. “I saw something.”

  Since his experience at Barton Springs that morning, Milton had not left the house. He paced the rooms, counting brushstrokes on the walls and saying aloud, “I’m as crazy as he was. Shit. Shit. Keep it together. Four days until what?”

  Finally Rica had pulled into the driveway and he raced out the door, tripping over a dead potted plant and lurching into the yard.

  But how could he tell her? What would he tell her?

  “I saw stuff.”

  “Okay, okay,” she said in her calmest voice. “Let’s go inside and you can tell me what happened.”

  He followed her into the house, kicking the potted plant off the steps.

  “Have a seat, babe. I’ll make some tea,” she said, disappearing into the kitchen.

  Milton plopped down in the papasan and took a deep, slow breath.

  “They don’t exist, I know that,” he said. “Which is making this all very difficult to grasp.”

  “We’ve got some new Tibetan lemon herb tea. You’ll like it,” Rica said from the kitchen. Her voice cooled Milton down. Always did. She could describe the qualities of tea while he ranted and that alone steadied him. Her voice—just a little scratchy and full of hums—was a rope he could grab onto, and the rope led to a solid stone in her soul. His soul, he felt, was mush. When the waves got rough, his soul churned. But Rica had a fist-size piece of strength that was often enough for both of them.

  “Now,” she said, walking from the kitchen and handing Milton a cup of tea in an old chipped mug. “What did you see?”

  “Barton Springs boiling,” he said. “And a man.”

  She nodded and crawled into the papasan and onto Milton’s lap. It was a move she had often done, but one that was becoming increasingly more difficult as she expanded. “So there was a man . . . ”

  “This is crazy, I’m sorry,” he said, pulling on his beard. “He wasn’t a man. He was like a man, but very much not a man.”

  “What was he?”

  “My father called them Floaters,” Milton said. “I’d always presumed it was something I dreamed or made up. It’s unbelievable . . . but I was wrong about something, Rica,” he said. “Just because something is unbelievable doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”

  “Have you talked to Roy?”

  “Roy believes everything. I need a skeptic.”

  “I’m not a skeptic.”

  “It’s not a bad thing. You just tend to believe only what you see.”

  “I believe in plenty of things. Love, positive thinking. I do that yoga class. I believe in those kinds of things. I just don’t buy into Bigfoot or chupacabra.”

  “Exactly. A skeptic. That’s what I need.”

  Rica frowned and clambered out of the papasan.

  “Four days,” Milton looked down into his tea. “He said we have four days.”

  “Four days of what?”

  “I don’t know.” Milton got to his feet and walked to the window. “Rica, are you sure you want this baby?”

  “What?”

  “I’m just asking.”

  “What does that have to do with any of this?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just, you know, the world is so backward and—”

  “Fuck you, Milton.” She turned and walked into the kitchen. “That is such bullshit and you know it.”

  “It’s not bullshit.” He followed her. The kitchen table stood between them. “The world is a mess. People are getting more stupid by the second. There’s a new war every other day.”

  “If you don’t want a baby, say it! But don’t act like it’s some mercy choice, okay.”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t want the baby.”

  “Well, do you?”

  Milton said nothing.

  “Milton,” she said, the anger receding into something softer. “Tell me. Do you want this baby?”

  She stood, small. A hand resting on her belly. His stomach whined like a bag of chalk chunks.

  There I am

  HAYDEN BROCK FELT alive and safe driving through Los Angeles. This was his home. He was loved here, admired. He drove slowly, hoping fans would wave. Just before pulling onto the San Bernardino Freeway, Hayden passed a billboard with an enlarged image of his face.

  saint rick

  a little heaven on earth every tuesday on nbc.

  Hayden winked at himself. “Looking good, Saint Rick.”

  His image smiled down, handsome and kind, holy with just a hint of sexy. Look at those brown eyes filled with compassion . . . wait. Brown eyes?

  Hayden pulled down the rearview. He stared into his eyes. Blue. They have always been blue. He circled the block to get a glimpse of the billboard again. The eyes were the wrong color. Not just the color, the whole shape. Another look in the rearview mirror. He had more eye wrinkles. He circled again. Was his hair really that dark? No. His hair had lightened over the last year. And it was clear, when comparing the image in the mirror and the image on the billboard, that the proportional size of his ears was being horribly misrepresented . . . but it was also clear that the man on the billboard was younger, fitter, and much better rested. It was him, yes. But it was him airbrushed to the studio’s standard of perfection. And Hayden was appalled at the number of changes they felt perfection demanded. A horn blasted behind Hayden and he realized he had come to a complete stop in front of the billboard. With a jump, he slammed on the gas and sped up the ramp.

  “You�
��re no Saint Rick, that’s for sure,” he said, and pushed the pedal down a little farther.

  Part of him had snagged on that billboard, like a sweater on a nail, and the farther he drove east, the more he untangled, stretching down Interstate 10. Finally the thread unraveled completely, grew taut, and snapped, leaving Hayden loose and uncomfortably free two hours outside of L.A.

  Hayden liked directors. He liked them to advise or just plain order him how to play a scene. He enjoyed knowing someone was in charge. Someone other than him. He had been told to get out of town. He had done that. Now what? Where should he go?

  Hayden knew he was hungry. That was a place to start. He drove into a Flying J truck stop hours into the desert east of Los Angeles. He pulled up to the front door and hopped out, smiling and nodding, half expecting shrieks and camera flashes. But no one seemed to notice. He wanted someone to approach and offer to park his car. But no one came.

  Hayden Brock was a fish made for Los Angeles waters. Those were the only waters in which he thrived. Pools of L.A. exist all over the world. You can find them in the ski resorts of Colorado or the dance clubs of New York or the photo galleries of Paris. Hayden had been to all these places, hopping from L.A. pool to L.A. pool. He thought himself well traveled, but in a sense this desert drive was the first time in his adult life that Hayden Brock had left the Los Angeles city limits. He was a fish out of water.

  No one in the truck stop recognized him. There weren’t many people, just a few large truckers and cow-eyed waitresses, but still he expected something from someone. He sat in a booth and ate a fried egg sandwich. To his surprise, the waitress brought a check for him to pay. To actually pay.

  After eating, Hayden walked through the store section of the truck stop, examining car air fresheners and leather steering wheel covers. Next to the sunglasses display, he found the magazine rack.

  “There I am,” he said, pulling out the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly. hayden brock, the cover read. hollywood’s holy man. He looked closer. The eyes were blue . . . but the face on the cover was younger, cleaner. The expression was wiser, the chin stronger, the skin smoother. He looked up at the mirror on the sunglasses display. Even the color of his skin was different. Had he ever been that tanned? For a few minutes he tried to match his expression on the cover. He couldn’t quite do it. He looked again at the magazine cover. That man would be on the way to a real spiritual retreat. That man would be sober more often than drunk. That man would never inappropriately fondle a goat.

  “Hell, you’re no Hayden Brock either.”

  His cell phone rang and Hayden was thankful for the distraction.

  “Ted!” Hayden said on answering. “I did what you said. I’m out of town.”

  “Yeah, well, you can stay out for a while.”

  “What do you mean?” Hayden felt an uneasy tremor pass through his body.

  “The studio called. You’re out. No more contract.”

  “But I’m . . . ” Hayden stared at his image on the magazine cover. “I’m Saint Rick.”

  “Not anymore. Rumor has it they’re going to try for Ryan Gosling.”

  “To play me?”

  “No,” Ted said with a clap of his teeth. “To play Saint Rick, which you are not.”

  Hayden said nothing.

  “Look,” said Ted, a hint of kindness creeping into his voice. “I’m going to work on this. Maybe we get you a farewell episode or something. And who knows, this might be good for your career. Get you back into movies. Though I kind of doubt it. Maybe some commercial work. You like commercials? Don’t sweat it. Just lay low a few days. You still there?”

  Hayden nodded.

  “Brock?”

  “I’m here.” The new compassion scared Brock more than anything. Ted was not kind. Compassion indicated that things were indeed very, very bad.

  “Okay, Brock. I’ll call you in a couple of days. Be good.”

  And that was it.

  Hayden walked to the bathroom. He found an empty stall and sat down on the closed seat. His chin lay on his fists. The stall stunk. Not of the smell of excrement, but of the odors we use to cover the smell of excrement. A fake, flowery, wet smell with tints of acidic citrus, like a bouquet of plastic roses doused with half-digested lemonade.

  Hayden let his face slide into his open palms. He was not the man on the billboard. Not the man on the magazine. Hayden Brock, not Saint Rick.

  Television sainthood was gone. Taken from him. Pulled from his being like a tooth. Fierce and fast and irrevocable. What else could be taken? His face? His chin? His car? His name? The once-solid world was now riddled with cracks and could crumble to dust in a day.

  What if he became a has-been? A once-was?

  Who the hell am I?

  Everyone would forget him. Restaurants wouldn’t comp his bill, fan magazines wouldn’t send Christmas cards, studio interns wouldn’t bang him in on-set prop closets. What if he lost all the money? Lost the houses?

  In a panic, he pulled out his cell and dialed Ted. It rang. And rang. And rang. Finally clicking to voice mail. It was already happening.

  He tapped his feet frantically on the stained tile floor. He thought about calling his parents, or his ex-wife, or even his therapist. But he couldn’t. He would have to tell them he was no longer Saint Rick. He couldn’t stomach their reaction, whatever it would be. Any response would confirm that it was true. He was no longer Hayden Brock, star of Saint Rick. Soon, very soon, he would no longer be Hayden Brock, celebrity. He was fast on his way to being simply Hayden Brock. And he didn’t like Hayden Brock.

  For several minutes he stayed right where he was, sitting on the toilet, alone at a Flying J truck stop over two hours from the Los Angeles city limits, the clues to his identity flaking away. Under the layers of fame, of luck, of looks, of money was a dark blob of wants, likes and dislikes, fears and instincts, all hardly distinguishable from a billion others. There was just nothing to being Hayden Brock.

  “Well then,” he said out loud, “be someone else.”

  He heard the idea as if it had not been him who had said it.

  “Who?” he asked, again out loud, his voice echoing against the stall walls.

  “Be someone they can’t take from you.”

  “Okay. Who?” he asked himself.

  He stood up fast, tensing with a new energy. He slammed the stall door open as if the answer might be hiding on the other side. Instead he found the smudged mirror running along a row of sinks. He stepped to the counter and stared deep into his own face, perhaps deeper than he ever had before. And for Hayden Brock, who spent many hours before a mirror, that’s saying quite a bit.

  He watched his own eyes, desperate to see something of value in them.

  “Who can I be?” he asked his reflection. His image paused. It seemed to know the answer, but was teasing Hayden, hesitating like a woman withholding a kiss.

  Finally his image leaned in with a smile and whispered, “Saint Hayden.”

  “A saint? A real saint?”

  His image nodded. The idea was outlandish, silly even. And Hayden fell in love with it instantly. It was an idea that had the power to change everything in Hayden’s world.

  “Yes,” he said to himself. “I can be a saint. Not a pretend saint, but a real, live saint.”

  Hadn’t he received thousands of letters thanking him for inspiring their faith? Hadn’t people requested his prayers? Hadn’t a mother approached him at a publicity event and asked that he lay hands on her autistic son? If all those people believed he could be a saint, why couldn’t he believe it himself?

  His reflection smiled at him.

  In ten minutes the roll of the hills tickled his innards, the smell of spruce sweetened the wind, the top was down, the music was loud, and Hayden, untethered, sped farther east.

  No more acting, he thought. No more pretending, no more glitz, and certainly no more goats.

  Hole of light

  IN PURE INSTINCTUAL horror, Click threw his crab
legs out to either side and clasped to the crusted walls of the pipe. Below him he could sense a warm darkness, a realm of steamy unknown. Above him was one small hole of light with the muffled music of the party somewhere beyond. Click reached one claw upward and slipped an inch before finding a place to cling. He rested for a breath. Then, using his larger claw to hold him in place, he reached with his smaller claw. He pushed, extending his body out and up, pulling his shell behind him. From above came the echo of water and air. Click raised his eyes to see a cascading downpour. He braced himself. The flush tore the smaller claw’s hold, but the larger purple claw held strong. After the water passed, Click continued his climb.

  Inch. Inch. Flush. Inch. Inch. Flush. Click’s muscles burned. His external joints squeaked. He kept his eyes flicking about searching for holds, only occasionally allowing himself an upward glance to see how far he had traveled. He was closer. Bit by bit, closer. The hole of light, brighter, larger, closer. He could do this. He could reach the hole of light. He was making an impressive cross-claw reach when the light was eclipsed. Click looked up. The hole was now a muted red ring. Click was confused. His goal, the light, gone. For a full two minutes the eclipse blotted the light. Then came the flush. For an instant the light returned, but for what it illuminated, Click wished light would disappear forever.

  Cruel to the cat

  MILTON SAT ALONE on the metal patio furniture in front of a taco trailer watching the sun set behind the buildings and oaks of South Congress. He bit into his third migas taco.

  Four days? Four days until what? What if more of them were coming? What did they intend to do?

  He felt sure there was something to know that he didn’t know, and his thoughts complained like an itch in the center of his skull. He ordered another taco from the sleepy woman inside the trailer.

  Maybe he’d seen nothing? Maybe he was as mad as his father? Maybe there was nothing to know at all?

  You can’t trust what you see. He knew that. You can’t believe in anything. Physics had taught him that. He hated physics.