Soft Apocalypse (17 page)

“So you’re an economist?” I said, seeking a polite topic that would pass the time, while hopefully conveying that I thought she was interesting, but that I wasn’t interested. “Any insights to offer on the current state of affairs? When do you think the market’s going to turn around?” Not that I had a dime to invest in the market.

“Wow, that’s kind of a personal question, don’t you think?” Her voice dripped sarcasm—she saw what I was doing, and was calling me on it.

I laughed uncomfortably.

“It’s not going to turn around,” she said. “It’s going to get worse, and then it’s going to collapse completely.”

I laughed uncomfortably again.

“You think I’m kidding,” she said.

“It’s got to turn around eventually.”

“No it doesn’t,” she said. “It didn’t for the dinosaurs.”

“Okay,” I said. Next she’d probably tell me about the end of days, and ask if I’d made my peace with Jesus Christ.

“I can see you don’t believe me,” she said, gesturing toward the lie-detector, not unkindly.

“It’s not a question of believing. I can see you believe what you’re saying, and I’m sure you’re good at what you do, but how sure can you be about something like this? Honestly?”

“Every Nobel Prize-winning economist who’s still alive is sure of it,” she said. “The economy is slowly collapsing. Remember all those dire warnings about global warming, overpopulation, resource depletion, the rain forest, nuclear fallout, save the whales? Any of that ring a bell?”

“Uh huh,” I said mildly. I’d evidently picked the wrong topic. How much time did I have left with her? One minute, forty-six seconds.

“They weren’t kidding. Billions of people are going to die before this is over.” She gestured at my lie-detector readout with her chin. I looked at it. Ninety-seven percent honesty. Not even a hint of exaggeration. Billions of people, she said. It was the same estimate that Sebastian had given, back when he was convincing people to make our lives even more miserable by planting voracious bamboo.

She had an interesting face. Big, wide mouth showing lots of teeth—what I’d always thought of as a shark-mouth—and scary light blue eyes, like see-through gossamer fabric draped over sky. If it wasn’t for the wheelchair. Well, if it wasn’t for the wheelchair she’d be out of my league. I suppose if I was okay with the wheelchair, it would be one of those reasonable tradeoffs that we all pretend don’t really enter into love and relationships: she settles for a somewhat immature, big-nosed, skinny guy, and I get a woman who is more attractive than I could reasonably have hoped for, but in a wheelchair, with arms and legs that were mostly useless.

“Why haven’t they warned people?” I asked, not really wanting to hear the answer, but needing to say something because I’d been silent for three or four seconds.

She laughed. “They’ve been shouting it from the rooftops for years! There was an article in the
New York Times
just a few weeks ago. Nobody listens to academics. Smart is passé.”

It was a reasonable argument. And for the past ten years things had only gotten worse. Blackouts, war, fifty-seven varieties of terrorists, water shortages, plagues. It reminded me of a story about frogs: if you put them in an open pot of water and turn on the burner, they just sit there and boil to death, because they’re not equipped to recognize and respond to gradual changes in water temperature. They could jump out at any time, but there never comes a time when their little brains judge it’s time to jump. So they cook.

I looked into her earnest, translucent eyes, and tried on her hopeless, empty version of the future, filled with plagues and hunger, flies buzzing over corpses, thick-necked men with guns.

Could things really just keep getting worse? Could the economy really collapse? Now I wasn’t sure.

“This could be terrible,” was all I could think to say.

She checked the readout, softly nodded agreement. “I’m sorry I dumped this in your lap. It’s not why we’re here. But you asked.”

She took a deep breath, and smiled at me, showing all those teeth.

“Actually, I think what you asked for was financial advice,” she said. “Put all of your money in ammo.”

I laughed, and for a moment I thought
maybe
. There was something about her that gave me a warm, almost nostalgic feeling.

We sat in silence, listening to the patter of the fountain.

“So,” she said, clearing her throat. “Know any jokes?”

I laughed. “Yeah. There was this guy who could be kind of a jerk…”

Maya faded away, which was fortunate, because I didn’t know how the joke ended.

A new profile came up. It was hard for me to concentrate on it. Danielle, thirty-one, Energy Consultant (whatever the hell that meant), a daughter, twelve years old. Widow. I wanted time to think.

Danielle materialized across the table.

“Jasper, so nice to meet you!” she said, wobbling her head enthusiastically. She was very bubbly, attractive in an Italian sort of way. Really nice lips.

I tried unsuccessfully to keep up with her enthusiasm, and she didn’t seem to notice that I was speaking from inside a black funk. She asked about my job, I asked about hers. She dropped some flirtatious lines that I fumbled. I wondered how her husband had died.

When I was young I’d taken for granted that, while there might be intermittent wars, disasters, economic downturns, overall things would remain about the same. But people had always inflicted suffering on other people, pretty much unceasingly, since the beginning of history. So as better ways to inflict suffering were developed, of course more suffering would be inflicted. Once biotechnology advanced to the point where a bright amateur could devise and release plagues on a shoestring budget, of course some would.

And all of a sudden it seemed obvious. I was living through an apocalypse. I was at a dating service in the middle of a slow apocalypse. Things weren’t going to get better like the government said, they were going to keep getting worse.

Danielle told me that she’d really enjoyed meeting me; I said me too, although I had no idea whether I’d enjoyed meeting her or not. There was a song spinning in my head now, some really old thing about how when the world was running down, make the best of what’s still around. It’s funny how apropos songs find their way into your head without you realizing.

As Danielle faded, I looked at the water nymph stretching toward the sky, the plume of water pouring from her mouth. Her wings were too small for her body, giving the impression that if she were to fly, it would be a strenuous ordeal—not the soaring freedom of a gliding eagle, but the mad flapping of a fruit bat.

The next few speed-dates went by in a fog. There was Savita, a tiny Indian woman with big doe-eyes and long black hair that she draped over one shoulder the way Indian women do. Keira, who had raccoon shadows under her eyes. I struggled to hear them over the winding-down of the world and the sound of tearing photos.

Then came Emily, who made bad jokes and oozed desperation.

Most people can’t stand being single. I see people get divorced, then immediately implement the “best available” strategy, desperately seeking the most viable single person they could find in the course of, say, three months, and then marrying that person. They can’t stand the idea of not being with someone. It’s like the light is too bright. They race to the nearest shade.

When you’re unattached, you live life closer to the edge. A partner gives you a sense of security, and I think it can lead to complacency, to life-laziness, if you’re not careful. You don’t feel the need to live vividly. Being single means there’s no safety net. It’s riskier. If you lose a leg stepping on a street-mine, you won’t have a wife to wheel you around. If you drink milk laced with clotting factor and have a stroke, you won’t have a wife to wipe the drool off your chin. Despite my avid desire to meet a woman, I was proud of my ability to live in this time as a single person, to have the courage to wait for Ms. Right instead of running to the shelter of Ms. Best Available.

The next woman’s name was Bodil Gustavson. Thirty-three, artist. She materialized. My heart started to pound, slow and hard.

It was Deirdre. Jesus Christ, it was Deirdre.

“Oh, this is going to be good,” she said. She was sucking on a green lollipop. It brought back images that I quickly shoved aside.

Her cute little hands were fidgeting, as always, part of that childlike quality she had that had melted me like a creamsickle on a July sidewalk. But she was not childlike, not really. I reminded myself of her collection of 911 recordings—people screaming into the phone, people dying into the phone, six-year-old kids telling the 911 operator that mommy’s face had turned blue and foam was coming out of her mouth. Plus there was the song she wrote about my tribe.

“So tell me—Jasper, is it?—what are you looking for in a woman?” she said, pointing the lollipop at me.

“What did you do with my photos?”

“Fuck you, Jasper.” The day I broke up with her, I’d been shocked by the anger Deirdre could express with her eyes. She gave me that same glare now.

“So tell me, do you miss these?” She pulled up the conservative floral-patterned turtleneck shirt she was wearing and shook her breasts at me. I drank them in like a heroin addict welcoming the needle.

“Do you still have my photos? What did you do with them?” She dropped her shirt, smoothed it back into place.

“All those pepper seeds we planted on the balcony?” she said. “They all came up. Red ones and green ones and purple ones… they were pretty.”

That had been a good day, Deirdre planting peppers naked, strips of sunlight filtering between the slats of the fire escape stairs.

And for the briefest instant, I considered getting back on the horse and riding the chaos that was life with Deirdre, surrendering to her dark charm, allowing my personal life to mirror the violence that was all around me. If nothing else, I could stop feeling guilty for dumping her.

I realized that as soon as I sleep with a woman I feel responsible for her happiness. Pretty much for the rest of my life. I’ve no idea why that is. Two or three years of therapy would probably uncover the reasons.

I thought of the 911 collection, of her complete lack of distress as she played calls for me. It was a soothing methadone that killed thoughts of reconciliation. Besides that, Colin and Jeannie would never speak to me again if I got back with Deirdre.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

And Deirdre was gone.

I downloaded her bio-vid. I couldn’t resist. How would Deirdre present herself to a prospective date? Would it be raunchy sex scenes? Footage from one of her flash concerts? I wasn’t sure she’d emphasize the rock star part of her life, given what had happened at her last concert.

I couldn’t wait—I played her bio-vid during the sixty-second break before my next date. It opened with an eleven-or twelve-year-old Deirdre squatting in a little garden on the side of a garage, a wood pile in the background. She pulled a big red tomato and held it up, grinning. The scene drifted into another: An eight-year-old Deirdre sitting cross-legged on a hardwood floor in pajamas, working on a puzzle, pieces spread all around her. Then Deirdre buried in Christmas gifts and torn wrapping paper, sitting beside my sister, Jilly, in front of our tree, both of them grinning wildly. Deirdre, getting on my school bus on the first day of kindergarten, waving goodbye to my mother. Pedaling a three-wheeled bike, my cousin Jerome standing in the big basket on the back, his hands on her shoulders. On vacation with my family in Puerto Rico, sunburned in a restaurant with half a dozen leis around her neck. Sitting on the porch of my childhood home, before a hurricane tore it apart.

It was beautifully done, brief moment drifting into brief moment, all of them happy, nostalgic, all of them scenes adapted from my photos, with Deirdre in my place.

I cried as I watched. It was so pathetic. My heart broke for her. Suddenly I wished I could give her some of that childhood—that garden, that puzzle, that vacation, instead of whatever it was she’d really gotten. I didn’t like to imagine what she’d gotten. I’d once asked her about the little scar under her chin, and she said it came from the button-eye on her teddy bear, when her stepfather hit her with it. Maybe she was actually doing well, given the memories she was trying to keep crammed into the basement of her mind. I don’t know.

As the images faded to black, I thought again of my conversation with the wheelchair woman, whatever her name had been—Maya. There would be no more childhoods like that for anyone, not when a kid had to carry a gas mask, pass through security checkpoints, run from a hungry stray dog out of fear that someone had surgically implanted a bomb in it.

A lovely red-haired woman materialized. I was a wet, sobbing mess. I wiped my eyes. She tried not to notice.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I’m not feeling very well. I’m going to discontinue. No offense.”

I terminated my session.

The room seemed dingy and scuffed after the virtual garden. I went on crying. I felt my hope for a better tomorrow, for blue skies and a button-nosed girlfriend, slough off like dead skin, leaving me pink and raw.

I felt like I’d been struggling in every aspect of my life for a hundred years—struggling to earn enough money to survive, struggling to find love, struggling to not die a violent death. The weight of all of that was crashing down as I considered the possibility of things actually getting
worse
.

The selection screen dropped down, startling me. For a long time I just stared at the little pictures of all the women I’d met. Then I started tapping profiles. I didn’t look at any of their bio-vids, I just started tapping away at the women I would be interested in dating. Danielle, the Italian happiness-machine; Savita, the Indian princess; three, four, five others.

I hesitated at wheelchair woman.

I sniffed, wiped my nose on my sleeve, stared at her smiling picture.

I had a connection to her. She was my sensei—she’d whapped me with a stick, and I’d awakened to the truth. I tapped her profile. What the hell.

Then I came to Deirdre’s profile.