Page 159 of The End of the World As We Know It
Hey, there. Hi. Whoa. It’s okay. I’m by myself. Didn’t mean to sneak up on you. I mean, fine, I did sneak up on you, but I didn’t mean to scare you. You look exhausted, by the way. Are you all right?
All five foot five of me is unarmed. See? Don’t let the field jacket fool you. I don’t even know what epaulets are for. You know, these buttoned thingies on the shoulder? Never mind.
Yeah, I know, sorry. I wasn’t following you. Well, I kinda was, but only for a day, maybe two. I was trying not to be a creep about it even when I watched you twitching in your sleep.
I can’t tell when I’m joking, either. I am a friend, not a foe. Probably.
Yeah, I know about the dreams. Let’s talk about those later.
I saw the fire and I decided you didn’t look like a vampire, or a cannibal, or a cannibal vampire.
It’s only weird when you say it, dude. Sheesh, you know how to make a girl feel welcome.
Hey, relax, I’m just fucking with you.
Mercy. And before you ask and before either one of us answersthe loaded where-ya-headed question, let me honor our palaver by the campfire with a story.
The short version is a nineteen-year-old, let’s call him Art Barbara, had always feared that his life wouldn’t be important within thegrand schemeof things. Whether anyone’s life was of import, or cruelly held more import by comparison to the billions of less fortunate, was a different question entirely. Art supposed it all depended on how grand the scheme was within the context of the abrading passage of time. When Art was given clear evidence that his life did have a kind of cosmic value, or currency—with all that word’s degraded meaning and political implications—that evidence came in the form of a choice.
Settle in. I’m going to tell the long version.
When Art came home in mid-May after completing his freshman year at Providence College, he was feeling good about himself. As good as he had ever felt. He was fully recovered from the previous summer’s spinal fusion surgery that had straightened his crooked, scoliosis spine. College was indeed the opportunity to, if not reinvent himself, then more fully become who he wanted to be. His new college friends called him “Punk Art” and not “Bones” or other hey-eat-a-sandwich-you-rail nicknames he had been tagged with as a younger teen. If he never saw another person from his high school years again, including your humble storyteller, that would’ve been fine with him.
What else do you need to know about Art? He was extra-willowy after the surgery, and with his long face and freaky fingers, he would’ve made a great Nosferatu, but he was afraid of his dark basement. He was prone to melancholia and would’ve made a great goth, but he hated the Smiths and the Cure.
The universe fired two torpedoes at Art, scuttling his burgeoning inner peace. The first was finding out Dad was sleeping on the living room couch because his parents were in the process of separating. Despite Art being old enough to understand Mom and Dad were no different than any other pair of adults mired in an unraveling relationship, he reacted to the news poorly, like he was a surly preteen. IfArt had been more observant, he would’ve recognized their marriage’s fraying threads years earlier—I had tried telling him by not telling him. Anyway, he spent his first month back home avoiding his parents when he wasn’t working his summer gig at the United Shoe Factory.
I don’t have to tell you the second torpedo was Captain Trips.
Let’s fast-forward, and I’ll fill in other backstory details as needed.
Unlike the rest of us who were still alive—or dead but dreaming, right?—and had started wandering toward the west, Art remained in his empty house in Beverly, Massachusetts. He was grief-stricken and shell-shocked, but he had enough food, mostly boxes of dry cereal, and he had enough double-A batteries for his Walkman. He had scrounged a sweet Gibson Flying V guitar on which he was teaching himself his favorite punk songs. The desire to learn the next song was the only thing keeping him going.
On the afternoon of July 12, it was dreary, drizzly, and unseasonably cool. There was a knock on his front door and an older woman called out his name. Art considered answering with the guitar still strapped to his back, and if necessary, he could use it as a weapon. But what was the point of fighting/surviving if he wrecked his beloved guitar? He left it leaning against a wall in the living room, to keep a watch over things.
Art opened the door. The white woman was somewhere in her late forties or early fifties. She had short, feathered brown hair, held an umbrella, and was dressed like a TV sitcom mom with high-waisted jeans and a thin, lemon-yellow sweater. She smiled warmly, showing off nicotine-stained teeth, and she sighed a you-poor-thing sigh. She introduced herself with “Everyone who knows me, calls me Hilly,” spiced with a Maine accent, and then she asked if she could come in out of the rain. Art mumbled an agreement. Agree-mumbling even when he didn’t want to agree was his default setting. He should’ve known better than to invite a stranger into his house without considering the potential consequences. The world is full of vampires, metaphorically speaking.
Hilly asked if he was alone, and without an ounce of self-preservation Art said, “Yes.” I would’ve lied, or more likely had joked that a friend stayed hidden down in the basement. You know, something that was funny, but also vaguely dangerous.
Yes, just like my joke about standing over you while you slept. Don’t interrupt me again.
Partly out of habit, Art led her to the kitchen, though it wasn’t a very bright or airy space, especially on such a gray day. There was nowhere else on the first floor for them to sit comfortably. The living room and TV room were nests of cassette tapes, clothes, blankets, pillows, and magazines. Seated at the round kitchen table, Hilly was weakly backlit by one of the two shaded windows, so she was mostly in shadow, or had become mostly shadow, as though she wasn’t fully there.
She asked how Art was sleeping and if he’d had any dreams, and before he could answer she said that he looked wan, washed, and the bags under his eyes were as purple as plums. We can safely assume Art was dreaming at night, but we can’t yet assume what kinds of dreams he was having. Even if I had stood over him and had watched him twitching in his sleep night after night, I couldn’t know his dreams. There are limits to my storytelling powers, as there are limits on all storytellers.
Art did not trust Hilly. If her true purpose or form hadn’t been fully revealed yet, it had been outlined within his shadowy kitchen. He played it cagey, admitting to dreaming, but refusing to describe them.
What else do you need to know about Art? He was many things, but he was no fool, or no more foolish than the rest of us.
Hilly said, “A group of us are headed west, to Las Vegas. Give me cheap all-you-can-eat buffets and roulette wheels and I’m as happy as a clam. I used to go to Vegas once a year with my husband and sister, obviously before they were taken away from me, before so much was senselessly taken away from us all, yes?” She paused to leave room for Art to commiserate, to share his own tale of catastrophic woe,but how she spoke about the deaths of her loved ones and the apocalyptic ravages of the superflu wasn’t rooted in grief. It was exultant. Despite the other terrors to come, her rapturous tone scared Art the most. She continued, “Are you surprised that someone like me liked going to Vegas? Don’t be. The city welcomed all comers, and will still welcome us. That walking fella—surely you’ve heard of him by now.” She paused again, and Art still didn’t respond. “Well,” she said, “if not, you will. He gets around. He promised we’d be welcomed in Vegas again. As it was carefully explained to me, there’s a coming battle and everyone has to choose sides. The old ways, the ways that got us into this whole fudging mess in the first place, versus the new ways. There has to be new ways, don’t there? We can’t go on being the same anymore. It’s not possible. You’re a smart young man. You know that. And here’s the kicker: you-know-who gave me and my merry little band your name and where to find you. He said you, Art, are the fulcrum in the upcoming battle. Little old you. I know it’s a lot. And don’t take this the wrong way, as hard as it is for me to believe that a baby beanpole like you is one of the most important people left alive, I know it to be true because he said so.”
Normally, Art was the kind of guy who fumbled and spilled his words all over the place, and only later could he build the perfect thing to say, or at least what it was he had meant to say. But Art was up to this moment—and, yeah, I’m proud of him. He stood up from his chair and said, “I’ll pass, and I’d like you to leave now. Unless you can show me a better way to play a B7 chord.”
He walked out of the kitchen and into the dining room, heading toward the small foyer and front door, expecting Hilly to follow. He got about halfway across the room and stopped. He locked eyes on his unlatched basement door, which was tucked away on the far side of the wall and in the corner. What kind of house had a basement door in its dining room? This one did. And that basement door with its chipped off-white paint was unlatched. He had left it latched. He always left it latched.
Art turned his back to the door and Hilly was still seated at the kitchen table, a vaguely human shape now fully consumed by shadow. There could’ve been anyone on earth sitting at that table.
“I don’t want us getting off on the wrong foot, Art, but time is short. And no choice is the same as a choice,” Hilly said. “Our guy is patient, but only to a point. He’s also a realist. If you won’t choose to come with us, then you become a problem to be solved. Being the fulcrum means that if you go over to the other side, we will lose.” Hilly got up from the table and just about floated from the kitchen into the dining room. “Hewon’t let that happen.”
