Black Wave (24 page)

17

Michelle surfed the Internet. She'd learned everything she needed to learn about Chekhov's gun, which she had deduced was a .44 Magnum, which sounded like a a condom or brand of malt liquor. Michelle taught herself how to keep the thing locked. She practiced holding it in front of the bathroom mirror, aiming it at her reflection, squinting through the sight. After a bit the novelty of the gun wore off. Maybe she'd go shoot bottles with it, really learn how to handle it. But then, she didn't want to waste the bullets, either. The gun was not a toy.

On the Interweb, Michelle read about a new global phenomenon. Since the end of the world began, everyone had been having intensely sensory dreams of love affairs. Michelle was always a fan of such articles—dreams, the afterlife, hauntings. Anything supernatural fascinated her. And she had had one of these dreams, hadn't she? The boy in the garden. It wasn't often that Michelle found her own experience reflected in the media. She read on. Some
nutjobs were beginning to believe that the dreams were real. That the people in them were real people, alive on the earth right now. The article showed a picture of a couple smiling together, they lived a city or two away and had run into each other at a Chili's. They couldn't believe it. They recognized one another and they recognized their love, and had gotten married right away and were psyched to spend the End Times together.

And there were more couples like this. People began posting ads in papers and on Craigslist. Dreamtime missed connections. People found one another. Sometimes they liked each other and sometimes they didn't. They hooked up or else were totally repulsed by the person, who looked nothing like they had in the dream. It left some people bitter and some people obsessed. Michelle opened a new tab and went over to Craigslist.

There were many In Search Of Dream Lover postings. Just reading them was like cracking open a book of psychedelic poetry.
The ceiling was spinning, we were on top of it and you had three eyes,
read one.
We were on a soap opera set and we were being filmed by Princess Diana
, another offered.
Leaves flew from a tree like butterflies and carried us over a hole in the ground
. Michelle really liked that one. Michelle wondered why no one had thought to use their dreams as personal ads before. Back when the world wasn't ending and dreams were just dreams. It would have been a great way to get a vibe on someone.

That night Michelle dreamed she was having sex with a boy inside a painting. The paint was not yet dry and their sex tossed them against oily dunes of it, it got all over their skin but they liked it. Michelle was on top and the boy was shuddering beneath her. The ends of the boy's long,
greasy hair were clumped with wet color that slid across his cheeks and made him look wild. He was drunk but Michelle was not. Her body in the dream was a miracle, felt like a balsa-wood plane flung into the air. She rode him in a pool of paint glittered with sugar, the sprinkles clumped and hardened into little caverns, like the inside of a geode. The sparkle of it called to Michelle and she begged the boy to take her there, but no, the boy told her it would crumble, it was very delicate. Someday it was meant to be broken, but not by her. Michelle woke up.

The entire planet was dreaming of the lovers they would have had if only they had lived. In the dreams everyone was their highest self, everyone was present and their hearts were wide-open. It was a gift and a plea, from the planet perhaps, or from the universe, from the essence of life—no one knew enough about such things to be certain.

The planet is showing us how beautiful our lives will be if we stay here and work together to heal it,
pleaded mystical people and ecologists on television. Psychologists deemed it an episode of mass hysteria on a scale previously unknown and commentators blamed the Internet and globalization for allowing it to spread so rapidly. Christians blamed the devil and deemed sleeping a sin, other religious people insisted it was God and that what was happening was a miracle.

Michelle found that it was possible to achieve a sort of lucidity in her dreams, causing the more fantastical elements to fall away in order to get closer to the truth of the affair. Dreaming that a creature had implanted a device in Michelle's head, causing dark thoughts and spontaneous orgasms, Michelle became lucid and found herself holding
a cell phone, masturbating on a pillow while a girl on the other end told her filthy stories. Dreaming that her junk was an endless supply of pastries, a cornucopia of tiny cupcakes and fat croissants and cream puffs, Michelle became lucid and found herself in bed with a boy so skinny Michelle forced him to eat baked goods off her own naked tailbone. Dreaming her face was a popped balloon, bits of rubber and ribbon dangling from her mouth, she became lucid and found herself with a girl who had kissed her so passionately Michelle's lip had split against her tooth.

Michelle inspected shyly the bustling Internet world of dream missed connections. She found the anorexic pastry boy but he lived in Stockholm and his English was poor, and he was not even a boy but a girl, a fifteen-year-old girl who cut herself with razors and whose parents were poised to send her off to boarding school. The one who had busted her lip with a kiss, she too was a troubled teenager, with a bristling jet-black Mohawk and a Joy Division shirt hung on her slouched shoulders. The painter was a girl as well, also quite young. She emailed a photo of herself atop a horse, in a pair of jodhpurs and a velvet helmet, leaping over a small white fence. Michelle stopped emailing these children. She felt like a creep.

18

In the bookstore Michelle rang up a customer, a woman buying old feminist books from the 1970s, herbal healing and witchery. A book about periods. So many women didn't even get periods anymore, hadn't for years. Michelle's were spotty. The doctor at the free clinic in San Francisco had told them everything was fine, no growths, no cancers, that's just what was happening to some women. Michelle had had a dim concern about it, like what if she maybe wanted to have a baby someday, was she no longer able? But now that the world was ending it wasn't an issue. Michelle felt a sad kind of relief. She'd always felt torn about having a kid and wished the decision could somehow be made for her—that the people she slept with could accidentally knock her up or that she would become infertile, anything to cancel the seesaw of indecision in her mind. And now it was done. No babies, no planet, no future. Most everyone who had become pregnant was having an abortion and those who weren't looked disturbed. Michelle had glimpsed women too far along, committed
to the things inside their giant bellies. They looked like animals at the pound, stuffed into too-small cages. A lot of pregnant women were killing themselves, but then a lot of people were killing themselves. Michelle didn't know if the percentage was any higher.

The lady left and Junkie Ted came in, the doorbell jangling with his entrance. Michelle reached into the waistband of the cutoff camouflage pants she'd sworn never again to wear in case she ran into Matt Dillon. Chekhov's gun was tucked into her underwear, little boy's briefs that sat snug on her body. She unclicked the safety and pointed.

Get The Fuck Out Of Here.

One of Michelle's unexpected talents in the world was appearing totally detached and together when really she was practically shitting herself with fear. She could be very, very inebriated and hardly anyone around her would gather that she was more than a bit tipsy. Her vision would be split into a blurry triad but her voice would leave her mouth clear and concise, not a slur to her words. And she could fake it even better sober, freeze the surge of adrenaline, becoming as cold as a gun-toting avatar in a video game.

Junkie Ted put his arms in the air as if Michelle was a cop busting him for possession.
What'd I ever do to you?
He kept coming toward her, in a ratty flannel and a pair of sweats.

Get The Fuck Out Of Here. I Am Not Buying Your Fucking Mariah Carey Cassingles, You Got No Money To Shop, You Got No Business In Here, Get The Fuck Out.

Ted's arms flopped to his sides.
Come on, now,
he whined.
You work in a fucking bookstore, what do you need a gun for? You gonna kill someone to protect a fucking roomful of used books? Huh? That's how you want to go out?

Michelle honestly believed that she could shoot and
kill Ted and feel no remorse. She doubted the cops would care enough to come after her or that anyone's life would be ruined by his subtraction. That's not right—a little thought, her conscience she supposed, nagged at her. It wasn't, it wasn't right, and yet Michelle would be lying to herself if she acted like she couldn't do it. Or that doing it would traumatize her somehow. Didn't Ted threaten to kill black people and faggots?

I'm A Fucking Dyke, Michelle said. You Want To Fucking Kill Me? You Want To Fucking Kill Black People? You're Not Allowed In Here. You Know Who I Want To Fucking Kill? Junkies In Sweatpants. Get Out!

The door jangled open and Matt Dillon walked in. Fuck! Michelle said out loud. She looked down at her shitty camouflage pants. She could not believe it. Her camisole top was at least okay and the chains she had around her neck were tough and cute. Also, she hadn't drunk wine last night and couldn't underestimate the effect of a night of abstinence on her system. Her skin was brighter and the overall puff of her body had come down, like a molested soufflé.

Whoa,
Matt Dillon said in that voice, that gruff voice, classic Matt Dillon, Dallas Winston, Rusty James.
What's going on in here?

She's a fucking crazy dyke,
Ted spat
. I just want to sell some fucking books, she pulls a gun on me. I know the owners, you know. I'll get you fired, good luck finding a job in the apocalypse, no one's hiring.

I Will Fucking Shoot You. Michelle tried to stay on track with Ted, which was hard with Matt Dillon watching her. She blew her bangs, an indigo fringe of split ends, out of her face so she could see clearly. If You Don't Want To Die, Get The Fuck Out Of My Store And Don't Come Back.

Why don't you leave, man?
Matt clapped sweaty Ted on the back.
C'mon. And don't be calling girls dykes, it's rude. C'mon.
Matt held the glass door open with a tinkle.
Here, guy.
Matt pulled out his wallet, a leather billfold tucked in the ass of his jeans. He pulled out some money and pushed it into Ted's hand. Ted took it.

I'm not scared of you!
he spat at Michelle as he left the bookstore. Matt Dillon released the door and it swung shut with another tinkle. Michelle laid Chekhov's gun down, gently, on the counter. Her hands were shaking, which was embarrassing. A gun was a heavy thing to hold in front of you like that. Those minutes she had considered, really considered, killing Junkie Ted had felt like hours. She was grateful to Matt Dillon. She didn't think she really wanted to shoot anyone, no matter how cold and determined she could feel when she got scared. All the pent-up nerves threatened to burst through her eyes in the form of tears. Please God don't let me cry in front of Matt Dillon. Michelle believed in no such God, but had to clutch at something lest her face turn blotchy and snotty. She took a deep, rattling breath. She felt like there were two people inside her, regular Michelle and then the Michelle she was capable of becoming under extreme provocation. She wondered which was true. Matt lifted the gun.

You know how to use this thing?
He clicked the safety back into place and turned it in his giant Matt Dillon hands.

I Haven't Shot It Yet, Michelle admitted.

You got a good stance
, Matt admired.
I found you very believable. I would not have argued with you if you had pointed that thing at me.
He grinned a Matt Dillon grin at her. His mouth twitched up at the corners but something
in his eyes stayed dark and hard, out of reach. He looks like a dog, Michelle thought, but in a good way. There was something of the puppy in his face. It was the sort of hot he was, dog hot.

You really a dyke?
Matt Dillon asked.
Or was he just being an asshole?

Michelle was torn. If she said she was a dyke would Matt Dillon like that? A lot of guys liked that. A lot of guys thought it was cool. This pissed off many of Michelle's queer female friends, but she always felt a sad sort of sympathy, a kinship with these guys. Michelle thought dykes were cool, too. Matt Dillon seemed like the sort of guy that thought dykes were cool. He was also the sort of guy that a lot of dykes would take a boycation with.

I Date Girls, Michelle said vaguely. I Date Guys Too.

Matt nodded.
Bisexual
, he said.
Cool. What's your name?

Michelle.

Matt
.

Michelle nodded. She didn't tell him that she fell in love with him as he took Kristy McNichol's virginity in
Little Darlings
, how the love was so real that when he died in a rain of bullets in
Over the Edge
she had cried, and when in
The Outsiders
he stabbed the pillow and was cruel to the nurse she had swooned, at both his stabbing and his cruelty, and how she had loved him in
Rumble Fish
, and how she would have gladly swum headlong into an IV drug habit alongside him in
Drugstore Cowboy
, how his squint had haunted her psyche all these years, that squint and that voice, and here he was squinting at her in the bright sun that came in through the bookshop windows, speaking to her in that voice, holding a gun, her gun, and the day took on the sharp
focus of an apocalypse dream as she asked Matt Dillon if he wanted to make out with her. He shrugged, his grin deepening.
Sure. You want me to put the gun down?

Making out with Matt Dillon was weird, because he was Matt Dillon and also because he was a man, and so tall he was able to lift Michelle with one of his famous arms and hug her to him there in the kiosk where he had joined her with two strides of his long man-legs. Michelle felt like Fay Wray in the palm of a monster, swaying with vertigo on a skyscraper's peak. Matt Dillon's face was so much bigger than hers, his mouth was bigger, she was lost in his kisses, the wet from his mouth smearing her cheeks, his tongue unruly, she tamed it a little and his kisses grew softer and Michelle's grew wilder until they were in sync, and he pushed himself against her there at the bookstore wall and she could feel him insistent against her baggy camo cutoffs, and Michelle marveled at how it should feel softer than a dildo, being flesh and all, but it didn't, it didn't feel softer at all. Matt held the gun against Michelle's temple as he fucked her, and Michelle felt like she was a dying little girl granted one last wish by a benevolent organization, and her wish had been to be in a movie with Matt Dillon and here they were in a sex scene, his prop pistol against her head. Michelle swooned so hard her head knocked over a pile of books. As he began his denouement, Matt lifted the gun above Michelle's head and fired it into a wall of books. Singed paper exploded around them as the recoil jerked Matt backward and then forward into Michelle's body. She sucked gluey shreds of binding into her mouth as she gasped. Matt placed the gun down gently atop a copy of
Portnoy's Complaint
.

There
, he said.
Act Two.

Michelle was straightening the mess of books behind the counter when Joey came in. The fact of her having just fucked Matt Dillon right there in the bookstore, the electric gossip of it clacked against her teeth, she wanted to spit it out. How her head had been on the pile of books she was currently stacking, how the pages of
Atlas Shrugged
had fluttered against her cheek as the actor heaved above her. Maybe it was too personal, though.

Joey started at the sight of the gun on the counter, bringing his hands to his cheeks like Macaulay Culkin.

Mary!
he exclaimed.
What is with the firearms? Peace on earth! Good will toward men!

Michelle stood upright and lifted the weapon. She considered tucking it back into her waistband where it felt so good, but not with all the bending and lifting. She slid it into her army bag beneath the counter.

I Pulled A Gun On Junkie Ted, she said. I Fucking Hate Him. I Am Not Dealing With Assholes Like Him Anymore. I'm Not Going To Walk Around Scared For The Rest Of The Year.

Mary!
Joey repeated and shook his head, stunned.

What? Really, Though. Don't You Want A Gun?

Slippery slope, girl.
Joey shook his head.
I want my soul. That is my Armageddon resolution. Hold on to your soul.

I Don't Think This Compromises My Soul, Michelle lied.

Uh-huh.
Joey looked at the disaster of books littering the kiosk.
What happened back here? I just straightened this out yesterday.

I'm Sorry, Michelle said.

No, no, it's like the greatest thing ever. I am having so much anxiety today, cleaning really helps. Shoo,
he flipped his wrist at Michelle, brushing her out from the cubicle.
Give me
space. Entertain me or something. Do you have any good apocalypse anecdotes? Besides pulling a gun on Ted? Where did you get a gun, even?

I Stole It From My Neighbor After He Killed Himself.

Joey poked his head above the counter like Kilroy, visible from the nose up.
You saw someone die?

No. He Was Already Dead. He Killed Himself. But I Saw His Body. And I Took His Gun.

Did you take anything else?
Joey's voice had a lilt to it, like there was actually only one right answer to this question.

No, Just The Gun. But Really, Do You Think It Would Have Been Bad If I Had Taken His Wallet Or Something?

Yes, I do.

But Why? He's Dead. I Wouldn't Care If Someone Picked My Pocket If I Died.

When you die,
Joey said briskly
, it's all about the soul, girl. The care of your soul. That's all that's gonna count. If there is a bigger picture—and millions of cultures for millions of years have seemed to think there is—your soul is all you're going to have, so you better work on keeping it right, you know? I would refrain from pickpocketing corpses.

Michelle mulled it over. I Just Don't Think It Would Sully My Soul, she maintained.

I don't know,
Joey singsonged. A tower of books was rising into view behind the counter.
Who's to say, who's to say.
A pause in his movements, and the hollow rattle of the aluminum trash bin.
Holy Mary, Mary,
Joey said.
What do you make of this?
He aimed the barrel of the bin at Michelle, pointing to Matt Dillon's condom, slumped in a nest of receipts and the browned core of an apple.