The Last New Year (4 page)

 
the
day before.
4:41 pm, December 30, 1999

It's not long before the barista calls my name and I
wander over to the counter, distracted now by the book in my hand. I take the
cup (size
venti
, not large. Nothing
so
simple as large) and steel myself for the herculean (and
probably Sisyphean) task of finding an empty table in this mess of humanity. I
wonder if there is a Greek myth relevant to burning the hell out of your
fingertips because you forgot to get a cardboard heat shield tube thing.

Is there an actual term for those?
A
technical term for a piece of corrugated cardboard looped on itself and slipped
onto cups?
Someone, it occurs to me, works at a manufacturing plant and
is in charge of making sure they get made and knows exactly what they are
called.
Probably an XJ-13 or something.

As I ponder this, a frowning man right next to me shakes his
newspaper noisily and gets up as he folds it. Ah ha! I immediately slide into
the seat, practically under him, and put down my book and the cup on the table.
Claim staked!

I waggle my hand around, trying to lessen the sting in my
traumatized fingertips. I am vaguely aware of annoyed and envious eyes pointed
in my direction, but this barely registers. The law of the coffee shop is akin
to the law of the jungle.
Except there are no predatory big
cats in here, just several small and overly-excited dogs.

I leave the coffee to cool itself, but the book I open,
spreading it with my right hand as I put my chin in my left.
At
last.
It's just me and the words now, me and the words against the
encroachments of the other caffeinated patrons and their babble of inanities. I
sigh at the fact that I even sound to myself like a sententious jackass. I turn
the page. A shadow falls across the small square of sunlight on my table.

"I think you got my drink."
A
female voice.
Pleasant and lilting with a slight
accent from somewhere other than the mid-Atlantic region.
I look up.

It's the giggler, standing at my table holding out a paper
cup. She's smiling with a slight frown.
A neat trick.
Up close I can see that her eyes are gray but also actually have maybe a hint
of green. I don't usually notice people's eye color but
her's
are almost supernaturally large and it would be like not noticing a person's
head had been replaced with a fishbowl filled with eels.

I have completely forgotten what she just said.

"What?" I say like someone who isn't an idiot.

The eyes crinkle a bit with good natured exasperation and
she reaches for my coffee. Takes it from the table and replaces it with the one
she was holding. On the new cup I can see my name scrawled in its familiar
coffee shop employee illegibility. I glance at the cup she took, now in her
right hand. I see she is wearing
a simple silver rings
with a small green stone on her middle finger. On the cup there's what looks
like an "M" and a scribble. I guess, insightfully, that this is her
name: something starting with the letter "M".

Malavika
, maybe.
Like Zee's sister.
Probably not.

"No big deal," she crinkles again. "You must
have grabbed my drink by mistake, uh," she leans forward, squints at my
cup and tries to pronounce the name written there: "Um, Letter
Letter
Squiggle Something."

From this angle I can almost see down her t-shirt but I make
a conscious effort to keep my eyes in her non-cleavage areas. I think that
somewhere in the far reaches of the universe this pleases some obscure God of
Inter-Sexual Communication because she looks up from the cup at me, grins and
snatches the book out of my hand.

She closes it over her thumb and says, "Oh, you're
reading _________! I love _________!"

(I refuse to admit to what I am reading on the grounds that
it will make me sound even more like a pretentious twat than I have already
managed. It's just this philosophical treatise that I've been trying to make
heads or tails of since my
Freshman
year of college.
Suffice it to say that it is quite an obscure coincidence that she knows of
__________ as well. Deal with it.)

She sits.
Takes a sip of her newly rescued
coffee drink.
Opens the book and scans the page like it's the most
fascinating thing she's ever seen. I watch her doing all this, my heart
suddenly beating like a heart that's beating really fast. (Similes have failed
me at this point.) I'm not sure how all this came to be happening to my
afternoon but I find myself smiling and nodding as she begins to talk about
__________'s influence on 20th century thought. I'm concentrating very hard on
trying to take in everything about her in the moment.

What I forget to concentrate on is what she is saying, and
as she stops talking and looks at me expectantly there is a brief moment of
panic. I realize she's waiting for me to say something in response. So I wing
it and say something. She nods, slowly. So I say something else.

Then she laughs and says "I know, right?" and
suddenly we're talking and the rest of the world is gone except for me and this
woman with the eyes and the fresh perspective.
And of course
the musings of _________.

I discover later that we had ordered the exact same drink.

Zee is right. The world is ending.

The haggard woman from moments before is replaced by another
reporter, this time a wild-eyed man who is nonetheless keeping it together
enough to speak words that mostly make sense. Video footage plays of helicopter
shots, desperate humanity, and always that bright orange wall of fire in the
background.

"The phenomenon has continued its relentless pace
across the eastern hemisphere ... scientists are at a loss for a cause or a way
to stop it ... No communication from areas affected ... people fleeing,
panicking crowds of people trampling each other to escape the phenomenon ...
Japan, gone, approximately three hours ago ... Russia and China are currently
being overtaken ... Where possible, thousands flee to the coastline ... many
crushed by the fleeing mobs, some boats are working to stay ahead, but so far
all have been swallowed up by the phenomenon ... No escape..."

I take this all in reluctantly. Zee hasn't said a word since
his off-hand proclamation. The TV starts showing grainy footage of some city I
don't
recognize,
only it has to be Asian because of
the writing on the billboards. There's more of that crazy wind, blowing stuff
all over the place, and through the buildings I can see that swirling orange
again. Somebody knocks the camera over, feet running away as the picture
cantilevers onto its side. From this new angle another building is visible.
It's beginning to collapse because, whatever that shimmering orange curtain is,
it's devouring everything it passes over. And there doesn't seem to be an end
to it.

I am suddenly unable to deal with the solemn and dignified
silence and am forced to babble like an idiot: "What is it? Zee, What the
fuck... what is it?" My cereal bowl is on the coffee table, forgotten. I
no longer care if my
Cap'n
Crunch gets soggy.

"I
dunno
, mate." Zee
scratches his nose.
"Been up all night.
Couldn't sleep for some reason.
This mess, it started about
5, when Samoa was counting down to the
new year
.
Time zones.
They was all excited and carrying on and
everything, and when it come midnight in Samoa there was the hooting and
crackers and everybody cheering.
Until this...
Thing,
whatever it is... showed up. Just poof, out of nowhere: Wall of fire. And it
stretches, like, all the way from the North
pole
to
the South pole, and it's about 300 miles high, all the way to the top of the
atmosphere. Scientists got some satellite snaps and that's when they figured
how this thing was traveling and that it was following the time. Everywhere
it's midnight this thing moves across... Australia got it, New Zealand, Japan,
you saw that. It's swallowing everything up, and it's coming at everything and
nobody's got clue one how to stop it."

"And everybody's dead?"

"You heard it, mate
. 'No
communication'."
He sighs, "I mean, some people are speculating
that it might be something other than it looks like—a hologram maybe—but you
saw it, it's burning things and nobody's come through from the other side or
sent a message saying 'Ha
ha
very funny guys' or
whatever. I imagine they're dead. And if it keeps going, I think we're all
dead."

I stare at him. My mouth has gone dry. The milk coats my
tongue and sours there. I swallow but my throat just clicks.

Zee gets up. "Bloody hell this is depressing," He
says, lumbering toward the kitchen. "Want a beer?"

"Thought you were saving those for tonight," I
croak.

"Fuck it." I hear the
fffssssh
of the bottle opening. "It's midnight somewhere,
innit
?

 
the
day before.
5:19 pm, December 30, 1999

Now we're walking. Neither of us finished our drinks but
it was getting a little noisy inside so we decide to walk and sip the lukewarm
coffee as we go. It's a gorgeous brisk winter day, and the sunny patches on the
sidewalk are tiny oases of warmth that keep us moving.

"Are you going this way?" She asks as we set out.

Am I going this way? It's a question not ever worth asking.
I'm going wherever she's going. So we're walking together, me in my jacket and
ridiculous hat,
she
in a coat, no hat. She says her
hair keeps her ears pretty warm. But she likes my hat. She is one of perhaps a
trio of people who has ever said anything positive about the shapeless
head-covering nightmare I habitually wear from late fall to early spring. I
like that she says she likes it, even if I suspect she might not really. At an
intersection I say, "
cool
umbrella" to an
old guy carrying a not very cool umbrella. He grins appreciatively and seems to
walk a little taller. It's that kind of day I guess

We've learned each other's names by this point. Hers does
indeed start with
a
"M" but it is not
Malavika
, as I suspected it would not be. When I tell her
mine, she says she always wanted to meet someone with my name. She says it is a
name that reminds her of people with character, like the guy in WWII who got
all the medals or that doctor on TV who's always saving people.

Despite her affection for my name, she decides instead to
call me "Squiggles" after the bad writing on the coffee cup. She says
she likes the sound of it and that in some ways I really seem like a Jumble
Line. I'm not sure how to take this, but she's smiling when she says it so it
actually doesn't bother me too much. I'm in no mental state to argue over what
she wants to call me. I'd change my name legally for her at this point if she
wanted me to. Only it's the day before New Year's Eve and whatever government
office you change names in is probably closed. So I decide to just go along
with it in an unofficial capacity.

The entire time all these thoughts are going through my
head,
Em
and I are continuing to talk like we've
known each other for years and haven't run out of things to say yet. My coffee,
which I held onto as a safety net—to swallow from thoughtfully during lulls in
conversation—is cold and
undrunk
in my hand.

And all the time the sidewalk feels as if it is going to
either swallow me up or bounce me to the moon, my knees bend with lubricated
precision, the air is smoothly dense and charged electric.

All my senses are reacting only to a very specific
wavelength. All I can really hear is
Em
. All I can
see is her hair and her long, thin fingers cradling her own cup. I sense my
voice more than hear it, like a conversation in another room. So I'm not really
aware of my part of the conversation, but I think I'm doing ok nonetheless.

This is really strange. I've never been affected like this
before, never given myself over to a situation so willingly and completely. My
insides are at war with themselves, and my brain is a POW crouching in a tiger
cage. How did this happen? I'm a romantic, no doubt, and I've had my share of
crushes, infatuations, carried torches, but somehow this feels different.
Somehow this feels important.

I don't believe in love at first site, I don't think love is
as trite as that, but suddenly my insides tell me that I think I might be in
love. I don't let my brain know for fear of short-cutting to my mouth and
saying something earth-shatteringly stupid. Instead, I set my mind on a loop to
repeat "I am in Lubbock, Texas with this girl", which is fine because
it wouldn't matter if I was in Texas as long as I was talking and walking with
her there.

Suddenly,
Em
stops. "Are we
to your neighborhood yet?"

I realize we've been walking a long time.
In
the opposite direction of my house.
I don't know what to say.
"Only," she continues, "I have an appointment to get my cat
shaved in about an hour, so I have to go."

I assumed we were walking to her neighborhood and that I
would find my way home after. I almost say this but I think better of it.
Instead I say, "Cat shaved?"

She tosses her mostly empty coffee into a trash can.
"It's not secret code for a bikini wax, I promise you," She laughs. I
try furiously not to blush. "It's a long story, about my cat.
Really.
I'll tell you about it some time."

"Ok. Sure. We should, uh, you know, do that. Talk again
sometime."

She tilts her head at me. "I think that's a good
idea." She puts her hands in her pockets, extricates a pen. It looks like
a fine point black marker, which is, it turns out, exactly what it is. My brain
wonders inanely if she bought it at Office Depot because I've seen pens like
that at Office Depot before. I decide not to pursue it. She takes my coffee
cup.
Scrawls something around the bottom of it.

"This is my address," She's trying to keep it neat
on the round surface. Her tongue pokes out adorably from between her teeth.
"You should come by tomorrow night if you don't have other plans for New
Years. It's going to be quiet I think but who knows what can happen?"

Em
hands me the cup, re-caps the
pen. "I'd like it if you came," She says. I nod, stricken.

She says goodbye and I say see you later and she walks in
the opposite direction from where were going. I watch her for a few seconds
until she turns and waves as I wave back. After that I am sure she's not going
to turn around, so I start walking toward my place, which is in a perpendicular
direction from where we were going. After a few steps I return to the spot and
pour the dregs of my coffee into the trash can.

I look up and see that we stopped under the canopy of a
hotel. It is called the Phoenix Park Hotel.