The Last New Year (5 page)

By my fourth beer, I begin to get a little more
philosophical about the idea of burning to death in a supernatural flame wall.
Most of Asia is gone now. No more cheaply manufactured plastic crap from there,
I guess. No more kung-
fu
movies with bad lip-sync
either, though, so that's not great. I'm sure they do other things in Asia but
I'm at a loss for the moment.

The wall of fire (which is still referred to by the
increasingly hysterical media as the "phenomenon) continues on
it's
inexorable path. I try to
picture it in my head, what it must look like. I've seen video feeds, but I'm
not really getting a sense of the enormity. I try to imagine a ribbon of fire
over 300 miles high standing perpendicular from the earth and stretching 12 and
a half thousand miles from pole to pole. I don't usually have these numbers
saved in my head anywhere: the people on TV have been repeating it over and
over. I forgive them their excitement. This is obviously a pretty big news day.

"So," I say, a little on the bleary side. "I
guess this is it, then."

"Looks to be."
Zee drinks
deeply.
Burps.

"I mean, not necessarily though," I say. "We
are making a lot of assumptions about this being the end of everything. It
could stop right now." I snap my fingers and look over at the screen. The
phenomenon is still there, bright and huge and, one assumes, very hot.

"Or, like in a few minutes. We don't know anything for
sure. It might not be the end." I shrug, not really believing it but not
ready to accept what
is
apparently happening yet
either. The worst part
is not knowing
how or why it's
happening. With most terrible things, you at least have an idea of what's
behind it. Titanic: Iceberg and Leonardo Di
Caprio
.
Holocaust: Nazis (and almost certainly not Leonardo Di
Caprio
).
Columbine: Two angry, asshole kids. The World Trade Center bombing: Middle
Eastern Terrorists.

But this thing not only doesn't have any sort of motivation
attached to it, it also doesn't appear to be a thing which ought to be able to
exist in a world where physics remains a reliable way to run a universe. It's
either supernatural, or the product of some form of technology that's advanced
to the point where it might as well be. And it's killing people for no real
reason.

"Maybe there's a reason for all of this," I say.

Zee shakes his head, "Tell that to the sorry
plonkers
we've been watching get turned to ash all
morning."

He's right, of course. "How many you think it's been so
far?"

"More than a billion.
China
went up however long ago, and that's a billion
right
there."

A billion.
It's not a very big
word, and I don't really react. He might as well have said a
gajillion
. I know that a billion is a lot, but it's not a
real thing, like a couple or a dozen or even a shitload. I try to put it into
perspective: It's a thousand millions. Ok, but a million I'm kind of squirrelly
with as well. Well, then, it's a million thousands. That's not really helping
either.

It's simply a word for a concept that's not relevant to my
life. I don't think I've ever come in contact with a billion anything.
Probably not blades of grass.
Sand maybe?
Like a beach? There's probably a billion grains of sand on a beach.
So a beach worth of human sand particles, gone.
Vaporized.

Zee startles me by saying, "Are you going to call your
mum or whatever?"

I hadn't thought of that, actually. In fact, it suddenly
occurs to me that she might be trying to call me. I wonder if she knows about
all
this?
Of course she does. She has to. It's no
earlier where my parents are and they always get up and watch TV. As I get up
and cross to my bedroom, Singapore is wiped clean, removing another stain of
humanity that troubles the earth.

Check one more off the list.

I retrieve my cell phone from my crumpled pants pocket, and
press the wake-up button.
Nothing.
It's dead. So I
reach behind my bed and unplug the charger from the wall. As I'm leaving the
room with it, I glance out the window. Ape-Head isn't there, or if he is he's
not visible. The TV is still on. Maybe he's in the bathroom. I hear a bang like
a firecracker and look down toward the street. It looks more or less the same,
but some things are definitely off. The longer I look, the more I see that
isn't right.

It's mainly little things, like
a an
unnatural lack of the chaos I usually see out my window. No cars waiting at
stop signs, nobody walking their dog or pushing a kid in a stroller.
Nobody sleeping on benches or smoking cigarettes on the corner.
It's like the whole city (or at least the part I can see) has fallen under a
voluntary curfew. I don't even see any pigeons flopping around.

Then, from behind the corner of my building, a guy emerges,
looking agitated. He's probably homeless, just from his dress, that or he's
really rich and can afford to wear stylishly hobo-
esque
clothing. He has a lurching cadence to his step and is gesturing in close to
himself. I wonder if he's come unglued because of what's happening
today?
Maybe somebody should help him and try to calm him
down. Maybe I should—

There is another bang and the guy crumples like he's been
stomped on by an invisibly dinosaur. He's on his back, and it's too far away to
tell, but I have a terrible feeling he's staring up at the sky and not seeing
anything. I can't see any blood and I can't see at all where the bang came
from. It
turn
away from the window.

I leave my bedroom, not knowing for sure if I really saw
this thing, or if it was a creation of my mind which is still reeling from the
influx of information I'm processing. I decide not to try to convince myself
either way. I will accept my role as unreliable narrator to myself.

I detect the rise of police sirens as I sit back down next
to Zee.
Seems like someone's still interested in maintaining
the status quo.
It's comforting, somehow. That there are still people in
charge, still capable and willing to make sure we're all treating each other at
least mostly all right. I think of the dead guy I saw or didn't see and I
shudder. Zee glances at me but says nothing.

I plug in my phone and wait for the little Nokia to go
through its boot-up process.

 
the
day before.
5:38 pm, December 30, 1999

After
Em
has disappeared around
a corner, I make my way up the street, still buzzing from the chance meeting
and a series of specific moments that jostle for attention in my brain. I'm not
so foolish as to think that I've really fallen in love, I don't think. But it's
something that feels like that. Maybe she slipped something into my drink.
Maybe the whole thing was an elaborate prank. I slow my breathing and try to
regain perspective.

When I looked at her, it was like putting a hand on an
electric fence.
Jarring, strange, difficult but not
completely unpleasant.
Well, wait. Actually I did once grab an electric
fence by accident when I was a kid and it was in fact really, really
unpleasant, so the metaphor is not apt. But there was definitely some sort of
energy exchange going on. Inanely, the image of the Star Fetus from
2001: A
Space Odyssey
jumps into my brain.

Somehow that's right, though. That's how I feel right now.
A giant space baby.

I realize I am whistling, which is weird. I don't usually
whistle
,
I am not even aware that I know how to
whistle, but here I am tootling out an unrecognizable, jaunty melody as I
traverse the sidewalk. Something alight with anticipation and excitement needs
to get out, and apparently I am letting it do so through pursed lips.

As it is still fairly early, the sun is low in the sky but
has not begun to set. The sky is only showing the faint hint of orange and
purple between the
smattering
of buildings. But
nonetheless, evening is approaching: shadows are getting long on the street,
gray and washed out in the diffuse light of a winter sun. The air is cooling,
crisp and fresh in my lungs.

I take my cell phone out of my pocket and call my friend
Thwacker
. He lives a little ways from my apartment, and he
is generally not annoyed if you show up with nothing to do as long as you're
enthusiastic about it. As I am still lightly buzzing, the idea of a little unfocused
carousing with an amenable person holds a lot more promise to me than going
home and finding Zee on the couch complaining loudly at the television for
having the poor taste to show television programs.

Two rings and the electronic click of a
connection.

"You
sonofabitch
.
How dare you call me?"

This is a fairly routine beginning of a conversation with
Thwacker
, so I take it in stride.

"C'mon, man," I say, "Your mom came on to
me
."

A beat.
"Yeah
but my sister?"

"Well..."

"And my dog?"

"What can I say?" I'm tiring of this now.
"I'm a sucker for an optimum croup angulation."

"Yeah, all right, I'll give you that one."

A second later he adds, "Asshole," and then coughs
away from the mouthpiece, for which I am glad. He continues: "But don't worry,
some of my best friends are assholes, of which you are one."

"Noted.
What are you doing
right now?"

"Decorating for some people who are
going to come over.
I nailed a paper plate to the wall. I wrote 'happy'
on it. I hope it's not overselling anything."

"Is it all right if I come by?"

"You are one of the people I'd hoped to impress with
the 'happy' plate. Sorry for spoiling the surprise."

"Ok, I'll be there in a few minutes, then. I've got
some stuff to tell you."

"Right.
Later,
asshole."

I hang up. Or, rather, I press the button with the green
stylized phone receiver to end the call. It's not quite so satisfying and
slamming down a receiver, but then few things are these days. Our typewriters
have become Whisper-Touch™
keyboards,
we communicate
in a quiet self-made vacuum. I like the Internet though, now that I've figured
out how to make it work.

I suddenly recall that I've been juggling this coffee cup
along with my phone and my book, awkwardly hooking a finger on the inside,
still goopy with syrup. For all its quirky charm, writing addresses on paper
coffee cups is not the most convenient way to get important information across.
I think about transferring the address to something easier to handle, like the
inside cover of my book.

(Wouldn't that be something nice to see and remember in 20
years when we're sitting by the fire or whatever and I say, "remember this
book?" and she'll light up and take it and open it and see the address
inside and get all misty and we'll hug and I'll kiss her and then the dog or a
kid or something will come in all loud and spoil it and we'll have a good
laugh.)

I realize I might be getting ahead of myself. I don't have a
pen anyway.

I look at the bottom edge of the cup. Written there in large
block lettering is:

GET BENT, LOSER.

No calls. Not from my mother, not from anyone. I am
actually kind of surprised. Figured somebody would want to compare notes or
commiserate or blame me for what's happening.
But no, not a
peep from anyone.
Not even a text message.

I guess there's really not a whole lot to say. But still it
bothers me.

So I text my dentist:
HOW#
ABO8UT THIS,
HhUH
?
It takes me five minutes to
put this sheer poetry together on my shitty keypad, and then I have to stop and
wonder for another minute or so why I have my dentist's cell phone number.

It begins to really dawn on me that these are minutes I will
never get back. People say that all the time, but generally it seems kind of
silly and funny. Like you watch a bad TV show and say "Well there's 28
minutes I'll never get back!" exasperatedly and then proceed to watch TV
for another 6 hours. But it's not funny now, and these minutes are actually
minutes from a stockpile of minutes that is dwindling rapidly. And now I've just
wasted
another two
thinking about this.

I look up from my phone and see that Zee is trying to make a
kind of brown glass pyramid out of beer bottles. His hands are exceptionally
steady as he prepares to place the bottom of one
bottlon
on top of two others. His brow creases in concentration as he ever so slowly
lowers the bottle into place. A tiny clink and
it's
there, wobbling ever so slightly. He exhales his held breath and sweeps his
hand across the bottom of the pyramid, bottles falling and bouncing over each
other. It's very noisy but none of the bottles break. Zee looks at the carnage.

"Easy come, easy go," He says, and gets up for
another beer.

One of the bottles that rolled off the table is resting on my
bare foot. I lift it, balancing the bottle on the top of my outer arch as I
lean back on the couch. I slowly lift the whole thing higher and higher. It's
about at the level of the coffee table now. I can't decide what I want to do
with it, the bottle that I'm carrying. There's a part of me that wants me to
kick upward and see if I can smash it on the ceiling. I almost do this. But
then I don't. I just sit there, my thigh getting tired.

Then I put my foot down flat on the coffee table and the
bottle rolls off my foot into the remote control for the television, knocking
it off the table.

It hits the carpet and something in the remote's electronic
innards makes it release a burst of infrared light that turns off the TV. Just
as well. The repetitive newscasts hand long ago ceased to hold my attention.

Zee comes back into the room, carrying two open bottles.
"No thanks," I say. He doesn't reply but sits down and puts one of
the beers on the coffee table. He drinks the one in his hand in a series of
long gulps, belches,
takes
the other one.

"Why'd you turn off the
telly
?"

I shrug.

"Yeah, I get it. Nothing we really need to see at this
point. We've got the gist of it," He drinks again. "So what do you
want to talk about?"

"I don't know," I say. I think about it for a few
seconds, then: "What would you do if you won Who Wants to be a
Millionaire?"

"You mean after hugging Regis?"

"Yeah, after that."

"I
dunno
. Be a millionaire, I
guess." He looks at his watch. I never noticed he wore a watch before.
"For about nine hours. I'll die a rich man."

"Kind of a waste though. You couldn't even be buried in
a diamond coffin," I say, sadly.

"No time to make one. Not a real quality diamond coffin
anyway. Takes time, that level of craftsmanship."

"Right, and who'd bury you? We'll all be dead
too."

"I was hoping you'd do the eulogy, mate."

"I would have, if I wasn't so busy dying myself."

"Ah well, It looks like
it's
plain old vaporizing in a wall of fire for this millionaire, then."

"Just like everybody else."

We sit in silence after that. Zee is drinking still but the
joy of it seems to have left him. He now does it as if it is a test to see who
will win, him or beer. So far he seems to be hanging onto his lead, but beer is
gaining fast.

"I was
gonna
watch the ball
drop," Zee says. "I wonder if they're still doing
that?
"

I don't know. Zee turns the TV back on and flips around. No
sign of Dick Clark. A lot of the channels are just static now. I wonder if that
means some of the satellites are being affected. Or maybe the cable's been... I
really have no idea. I don't even know why I'm speculating. Probably somebody
just said "to hell with it," shut everything down and went home. Like
TV is so important.

Zee thumbs the remote and we are in a television-less room
again. A few precious minutes go by. I think about a tree I used to climb when
I was a kid. What a stupid thing to think about.

Zee turns to me, "What were your plans for
tonight?"

"Well, I—" and then I remember.

Like an idiot I have completely forgotten the most important
event of my entire adult life that had happened to me just the day before. The
whole world ending thing drove it right out of my head. Which is understandable
but now that I remember, I stand up and say in a loud voice that I hope denotes
a man full of determination and verve:

"I've got to go meet someone."

Then my cell phone buzzes and I pick it up.
ITS
QUITE A THING, YEAH
. A few
seconds later, another buzz:

DONT FORGET
TO FLOSS.