The Last New Year (10 page)

Despite my better judgment, I decide to head toward the
sounds. It's horrible: a grating, cracking sound that makes my teeth hurt. It
happens at uneven intervals, and something about the entire situation makes me
very uneasy. But now that I've decided on this course of action, whatever it is
is
right between me and where I need to be.

CRACK CRUNCH.

Part of me is trying to convince the rest of me that I could
go around, that finding out what is going on is nowhere near as important as
just getting past it and where I need to go. But then as I get closer I hear
something else.

It sounds like someone crying. Like a little kid crying in long,
phlegmy sobs. So instead of going around I get to the end of the block and see
exactly what it is that I am dealing with: there's a big, slate gray apartment
building with evenly spaced soulless windows. Kind of looks like any other
square cracker box in the area, a place for young professionals and retirees to
end up. About five floors up I see a window is open or broken out, curtains
streaming in the breeze.

I trip over something, go sprawling on the ground and scrape
my hand on the pavement. It stings, but what hurts more is the idea leaving me
that I am somehow physically immune to the bad shit around me. I am vulnerable
to this hostile environment after all. Even jumping out a window didn't hurt
me, but now I'm bleeding after
an
stupid, mundane stumble
over a—what is it?

It's a cracked, shiny black bowling ball.

CRACK! CRUNCH!

About 15 feet from me, I see another bowling ball has split
itself in half and lays in pieces on the sidewalk. I look around. Other bowling
balls are all over the place, some intact, some smashed to pieces, but all
right in front of the open window.

As if in answer to my unasked question, a dark, round shape
hurtles out of the window. It actually catches a little on the side of the
frame and rebounds off course some, heading off away from me and landing in the
small lawn in front of the building with a dull thud.

I hear another small sob, and my eyes move from the ball
about 10 feet to a little girl leaning over a shadowed figure prostrate on the
ground. The girl has her chubby pink hands over her eyes.

"Kid," I say, and crawl over to her as fast as I
can on my hands and knees, "Kid, you can't be here. It's not safe."

CRASH! Not five feet from where she is kneeling, another
ball hits the pavement and shatters. I actually hear a high pitched zing as a
shard of polyurethane zips past my ear. A few inches and it might have
thunked
into my eye.
Or my brain.
Shit. The kid doesn't react and just keeps crying.

As I get closer I see what I thought might be there but
hoped would not be. It's a woman, lying face down on the sidewalk, once again
surprising me by not looking at all like she's sleeping. I can make out in the
semi-darkness of the street that her head is not at an angle it ought to be.
Also there is a lot of blood where there shouldn't be, which is to say, not
inside her body. A little ways off is a pink bowling ball sporting a smear of
blood and
hair.
The hair is slicked to the side,
reminding me of old pictures of Adolph Hitler's forelock.

Printed on the ball is "Game Changer" in blocky
letters. It certainly appears to have lived up to its name as far as this woman
is concerned.

CRACK CRASH! Too close.

OK, that's it. Some asshole is doing spring cleaning and
thinning out his bowling ball collection onto the street and I'm not sticking
around to catch one in the face.

"Honey," I say to the kid in as child-friendly a
voice as I can muster. "Come on, we've got to go. We can't stay
here."

She takes her hands from her face and looks at me with big
glassy brown eyes. Ugh, kind of an ugly kid.
Too thin, hollow
cheeked, a little cross-eyed and buck-toothed.
An
unbecoming spray of brownish-purple freckles across her face.
Stringy dirty blond hair.
Or just blond hair that's dirty. I
feel bad for thinking this almost immediately, but it's true.

"My mommy," she gurgles through phlegm. Twin
rivulets of snot trail from her nose.

So, I guess this is where my paternal instincts kick in.
My inner understanding that children must be nurtured and protected
at all costs.
Only I don't really feel any of that. I just can't leave
this kid without feeling like an asshole, so I say: "Yeah, I'm sorry, kid.
You're
mommy's
, uh..." I grasp for a lie, all I
come up with is, "Sick?"

The girl wipes her nose with the back of her hand.
"She's dead," she says. "She got hit on her head really
hard."

CRASH! This one is further away but I still don't like it.
Any one of these could come down right on—

SMASH! Right the FUCK next to me. Powdered concrete peppers
my hand. I grab the kid and yank her up. She struggles for a second then goes
limp in my arms as I stride meaningfully across the battered landscape of this
murderous, idiot block.

Once we are far enough away to assume we are safe from
falling sports equipment, I put the girl down and check to make sure she's ok.
I don't know what to look for, so I just ask, "Are you ok?"

She nods. I pat some dust off of her. She's pretty dirty.
And her clothes don't fit very well. And she smells awful.

I really find myself disliking this gross little girl. Whose
mother has just been
killed.
I am a terrible person.

"What do I do without my mommy?" She looks up at
me with shit-brown eyes.

"Is there somewhere I can take you? Were you going to
see someone?"

"
Me
and mommy went out. Mommy
was going to get her medicine."

Oh. So it's like that then.
Her
"medicine."
No wonder the kid is dirty. Her mom's probably a
crack whore. The kid probably has lots of "daddies" who don't stay
much more than a couple of days and just beat the crap out of mommy.
Just another drain on an already struggling societal structure.
What a messed up world.

The kid points down the street, "At the drug store.
Insulin."

I am a terrible, terrible person.

Walking, now with a little girl holding
my hand.
This is not how this is supposed to go. This is not part of the
plan. In fact, this is so far outside of the scope of the original plan that it
is its own new plan that I don't even know how to begin to deal with it.

She shuffles along slowly beside me, taking small steps and
stopping every few minutes to hike up her pants, slowing forward progress to
less than a crawl. I really don't have time for this. Plus, her hand is really
sweaty and inexplicably sticky.

It's now completely dark, and the cold is starting to get
really intense. I hadn't counted on everything taking this long when I set out.
It's probably almost 7 now. That means England is about to be gone. This makes
me think of Zee and my stomach lurches. The kid farts listlessly.

"Where are we going?" She asks.

"I don't know. I knew where I was going before. Now I
have to figure out what to do with you."

"Can I go where you're going?"

"You might have to," I say unhappily.

She sneezes, rubs her nose with her hand and then forces it
back into mine.

"What's your name?" I ask, grimacing at the
squelch in my palm.

She tells me. I start in surprise. She has the same name as
Em
, who I am travelling so far to see. Tendrils of
coincidence begin a slow twist around my brain, but I push them back. It's not
so uncommon a name.

"What about you?"

I almost tell her, but then I say, "Just call me Slow
Cat." Why? I have no idea. The two words come out of my mouth before I
even think. Something in me doesn't want to get involved with this kid any more
than I have to. Dead mother or not, this is not my problem. It's not like I'm
going to have time to develop into a father figure or anything. We'll both be
dead in five hours. And besides, I have stuff to do! I didn't ask for this.

"Ok, Slow Cat," she says. She's crying again. I
guess it's pretty tough to lose your mom, especially when things are already so
weird. I wonder if she's even aware of how weird things are, if she knows
what's happening in the rest of the world. I decide not to mention it just in
case she doesn't know. Let her figure it out when it comes, I guess. Until then
she can live as a normal little girl. Well, a normal little girl whose mother
got her head smashed in by a pink bowling ball with "Game Changer"
printed on it.

We continue walking: me toward my goal, her in a direction
that promises nothing and means not a thing to her. I think again that maybe I
should just cut her
loose,
leave her to her own
devices on a bench or in some bushes or something. I mean, not a lot can happen
to her in just a few hours anyway, right?

Then almost immediately we pass a dog in the street with its
stomach slashed open and its eyes gouged out, bloody tears running down its
muzzle. I decide, as I hastily point out to the kid a really cool store for
buying halal meat, that maybe a little too much can happen in a few hours for
abandoning her to be an okay thing to do.

She smiles dutifully and asks what "halal meat" is
and since the dog is now safely obscured behind a parked car, I shrug and say
that it's special meat because it's got
halals
in it.
What's a halal? It's a special kind of chemical. What's a chemical?
Magic, ok?
It's magic meat.

She seems okay with that answer. Zee would have known what
it actually is, I bet.

Half an hour later we stop because she says she's tired.
Half an hour and change earlier I would have said I would be where I was trying
to get to in about half an hour. But the kid is slow and small (and smelly! and
stupid!) and so I'm still not at my destination as we sit on the curb. My mood
is on a slow burn towards bitter frustration.

"Slow Cat?"

"Yeah."

"Why did that man kill my mommy?"

Oh, great. Now I've got to deal with this. I pick up a rock
and throw it across the street. "Was it a man? I didn't see."

"It was a mean man. He was yelling at us out the
window. He said we were all going to die and he didn't care. He said we could
have all his—-" She pauses.
"S-word.
And
then he started throwing stuff out the window. Mommy tried to get us out of the
way but the ball bounced funny and got her on her head."

I
loose
an irritated sigh into the
night,
a breathy cloud floats away contemptuously. I
don't need to hear this. She presses on.

"Why was the man so mean?"

"Because," I say. My patience is gone.
"Because he was scared.
I guess. He was scared because
everything he knows about is going to go away. His house, his bowling balls,
his life, it's all going to go away and there's nothing he can do so he got
mean and did stupid stuff.
Because he's scared.
I'm
scared too. Pretty much everybody out here is scared."

"But you're not mean."

"I'm not...
mean
, I guess. But
I'm not the nicest person in the world either at this point. I'm sure there are
people out there somewhere who are dealing with this in a super nice way right
now, but it's not here and it's not me."

She hugs my arm. "I think you're nice, Slow Cat."

I shrug her off. "You stink, kid."

She wrinkles her nose. "I know," she says, "I
pooted
."

She's an old woman, and her name is Pearl. Or at least
that's what I call her in my head as we approach. Erma. I guess it could have
been any old lady name—Myrtle, Edith—but to me she looks like a Pearl, so
that's what she is.

Pearl sits at one of the small tables in front of the coffee
shop, THE coffee shop, in fact.
The one where my life took
the first of a series of increasingly pleasant and unpleasant twists.
She drinks from one of the shop's mugs, and I marvel that the place is open
considering the situation. But then I notice the shattered glass at the base of
the empty door frame, and see through the front window that the cash register
is on the floor, upside down with the drawer extended and empty.

But in the midst of this chaos, Pearl is a warm beacon of
friendship. She offers a broad smile to us as we approach, and her eyes crinkle
benignly over the tea cup. I find myself grinning back, completely disarmed.
She could not possibly be more of a sweet looking old lady. She reminds me of
one of the Golden Girls, not the cranky one or the one who has sex all the
time, the other one. Right, she's an adorably wrinkled little Betty White
sitting there with a cup and a little cookie on a napkin.

Further down the street two people are yelling at one
another next to a pile of burning garbage, which adds to the weirdness.
Dignified Pearl taking tea at the end of the world.

I decide to go with it. I glance down at the kid, and she
smiles up at me, obviously taken with the woman. I figure she's probably a
better judge of character than me, so we go up to the table and I say,
"Hi."

Pearl takes a sip and puts the cup down. She looks at me
square in the eye and says, "You're not Jesus Freaks are you?"

I laugh. "No. I'm not." I look down at my
companion, "Are you?"

"What's a
jesus
?"

The old woman relaxes. "I suppose that answers my
question. I swear, if one more holier-than-thou motherfucker asks me where I
plan to spend eternity I'm going to lose it."

I shrug. She smiles.

"I'll get you some tea."

Ten seconds too late, I come up with this rejoinder: "Well
you don't look like a looter, but I bet you didn't pay for that cookie."

I feel kind of stupid, but Pearl has a twinkle in her eye
that makes it feel ok after all.

She gets up from the table and goes into the coffee shop as
we sit down and I lament that I'll never get old enough to learn how to make my
eye twinkle mischievously. The kid is eyeballing the cookie, and I realize that
I haven't eaten all day either. Not since my few bites of cereal.

Five minutes pass as we watch the lady do mysterious things
behind the counter. She emerges with two steaming cups and a wax paper bag. She
gives us the tea and unfolds a napkin onto the table, finally dumping an
assortment of pastries onto it.

The kid looks at me. I shrug, meaning "go ahead, why are
you asking me?" and she takes a scone from the pile and starts eating it.
I taste the tea.
Oolong?
Darjheeling
?
Earl Grey? Yes?
No?

Wow, I have no knowledge of tea whatsoever. It's hot,
though, and the steam is starting a sniffle.

"So," Pearl says brightly, "Where are you two
young people off to this fine evening?"

The girl giggles. I put down the cup and take a croissant.
"I'm going that way," I gesture that way. "I have to meet
someone."

The girl says, "My mommy's dead."

The old woman's face darkens. "Did he do it,
dear?" Her eyes flick to me.

"No. It was a mean man in a building. Slow Cat's
nice," she says, pulling my arm closer to her. "Slow Cat's his
name." She releases my arm, puts both hands around the mug of tea and
drinks noisily.

"Don't slurp, dear." Erma says. To me: "All
right, Slow Cat. You're not a Jesus
Freak
and you're
not a murderer. So what are you?"

Good question, I say to myself. "Good question," I
say out loud.

"I'm nobody special. I'm just a guy trying to get to
the address written on this cup." I fish the flattened wax cardboard tube
from my pocket. The address is slightly smeared now, but that's ok because I've
memorized the address. Something I should have done a long time ago, really.

"And who or what is at the address?"

I pause and they both look at me expectantly. I don't know
what time it is, I know it's getting later and later, but I guess it can't be
helped. I start telling the story of the last two days, haltingly at first,
skipping back and forth to fill in details. But after twenty minutes I think
I've got most of it out, ending with seeing a little old lady drinking tea at
the same place where the story started.

Pearl seems to consider her fingernails when I trail off.
She sucks her teeth in a way that would be annoying if I had to deal with it
for too long. The kid seems more interested in the floating tea leaves in her
mug.

"Well, I hate to say this, Mr. Slow Cat," she
says, "But despite the deep note of detached cynicism you tried to convey
in most of that story, I think you might be a hopeless romantic."

I nod slowly.
"Maybe."

"Well," she says. "There's no shame in that.
But it will be a shame if you waste your time here with the two of us when
you've got important places to be."

"Look an elephant!" The kid says
,
pushing her blob of tea leaves around with a grimy finger. I look in her cup,
and to her credit, the bunched up leaves do kind of look like an elephant,
especially in the slanting street lights.

"Try to make a giraffe," Pearl stands up slowly,
puts a hand on my arm. She gives me a look to come with her, which I do after
putting a placating hand on the kids shoulder. The old woman leads me away a
few feet into the shadows. She puts her head close to mine and whispers:
"Does she know?
About all of this?"

"I don't think so," I tell her. During the time
we've been together, the kid hasn't said anything about the world
ending,
though she hasn't seemed particularly surprised by
anything she's seen either. "I think maybe she knows something's wrong,
but nothing specific. I don't know
,
I figured maybe it
would be better if she just didn't worry about it for as long as
possible."

"That was wise, I think." She eyes me
appraisingly, "You might have made a good father, in a different set of
circumstances. You have empathy."

"I guess." I'm getting anxious now, I've already
been here too long, and I don't really feel like any of this is really going
anywhere.

She seems to take in my anxiety. "I want you to leave,
Slow Cat," She whispers, "Right now. Go find your mystery girl and find
someone to go out with. It's no fun being alone."

"Ok," I say, "We'll go. Thanks for—"

"No," she shakes her head.
"Just
you.
I know you've grown attached to this girl—"

"No, I really haven't."

"—
And
I know she's attached to
you—"

"No. No, seriously. Take her."

"—but I want you to leave her with me, despite your
feeling of responsibility."

"
Which is none.
I have
literally no feelings of responsibility."

I turn back to the table. The girl is still poking the
leaves aimlessly. "I
gotta
go, kid. You stay
here and drink tea for a while."

She doesn't look up from her cup. "Bye, Slow Cat."

Pearl sits down, puts a hand on the girl's. "I think I
saw some books inside. I might be able to read in this light for a little
while." She puts a hand on the girl's head. "Would you like
that?"

The kid burps. Then: "Mm-hm."

"Lovely."

That's that, then. I gulp the last of my cold tea, grab
three cookies and my address cup, and start down the sidewalk away from the
coffee shop. A dozen paces and I stop.

"Hey," I call.

"Yes?" The old woman answers from the shadows.

"My name's not really Slow Cat."

A brief pause.
She says: "Get
out of here, you idiot."

I shrug and return to the gloomy streets of my
pre-apocalyptic wasteland.