Was it sad that Joey was high for the end of the world? Would it be sad for Michelle to be drunk? She hadn’t drunk now for many months. The thick, syrupy perfume of the liquor wafted from the wide glass. It caught at the back of her throat and made it clench. At night, before sleeping, Michelle would select a book from the Self-Help, Psychology, or Religion sections. She was no longer obsessed with drinking, but if the thought of it began to nag her she’d close the store and meditate, her ass on a pillow, feeling the dust sweeping against her face with every inhalation.
She supposed, in a sense, that it would be no big deal if she drank the brandy tonight, or even if she kept on drinking it until the world collapsed tomorrow, she could feel it, too, they were done. But, she just didn’t want to. The strength of its smell, a fume rising up her face, reminded her of the choking toxic fog of the sea. She shrugged.
I Don’t Like How It Tastes, she said honestly. Kyle laughed at this and Walter took back her goblet, split the drink among the two of them. The remains of the meal were before them, a mess of sauce and chocolate-stained napkins. Walter’s plan was to dump the entirety of the table out the window. He giggled like a kid whenever he mentioned it.
What the fuck? he’d ask for affirmation. Right? What the fuck?
What the fuck, they’d agreed.
He placed a pack of menthol Nat Shermans before her on the table. Well, at least smoke! he exclaimed. It made people nervous, Michelle realized, when you didn’t have a vice. Menthol Nat Shermans were her favorite cigarette. She smoked three in a row, stubbing her cigarette out on her plate like she remembered her grandfather doing when she was a child. It was disgusting and decadent and it delighted the men.
She said goodbye to them casually. There didn’t seem to be a point to a large farewell, they’d been building up to this moment for so many days, it was nearly a relief. I want it to be over, Kyle had said earlier, and the others had nodded solemnly. She kissed Walter’s cheek and he pressed the pack of Nat Shermans into her hand.
Keep them. And, wait. He dashed to the kitchen and returned with a little bag of what looked like dirt. Coffee, he said. Good coffee.
Michelle shoved the fragrant bag in her shorts pocket. She hugged her brother tight and kissed both his cheeks, like Parisians. Are You On Xanax? she asked him.
He brought his thumb and forefinger together and winked. A little.
Good. I Don’t Want To Worry About You.
Don’t worry about me, girl. We’re going to drink and fuck all day long and when it all comes down we won’t even know what hit us.
I Love That, Michelle said.
Outside Walter’s apartment Michelle stepped around the contents of the dining-room table, the smashed china and shattered goblets and silver flatware shining under the moon. The sky was filled with stars now that the lighting had mostly been shut off. Los Angeles was as dark as the countryside. A single candle flickered in a melted lump at the bottom of a metal candleholder. Michelle lifted it to light another Nat Sherman and walked home to the bookstore, lighting one cigarette off another. Smoking was divine, she thought. It really let her know that she had lungs, had a body. Her air passages expanded with the diabolical menthol, it felt almost healthy. Michelle giggled. She’d never felt so safe in a crazed urban place, in the dark, alone. With everyone about to die, who would bother her? And if they did, why should she care? She anticipated running into fellow humans, almost longing for one last possible adventure, even a bad one, on this her last night on earth, but the streets were empty and even the freeway was silent of crashes. Michelle figured anyone who’d made it this far must have wanted to stick it out. It suddenly struck Michelle as very special to be one such person.
26
The last night on earth Michelle dreamed of a person who was a girl and a boy and together they swam in a sea Michelle had never seen. The sea was blue and waves broke upon rocks that were not rocks but something else, something alive, and beneath the clear, sweet water they spied sea fans, the leaves shaped like the tails of whales, webbed and purple, swaying with the suck of the tide. The brightest fish darted around Michelle, with her face in the water she watched a ray lift off from the ocean floor like a great bird in flight, its back scattered with sand, its elegant and deadly tail streaming behind like a ribbon. A turtle lumbered by, the water around it lit blue from the sun, the sort of light that encircles angels in religious paintings. It dove toward a rock and began munching fuzzy scum from the cragged surface. Everything appeared to fly, as if the ocean were another sky, a bluer, truer firmament. Was this how it used to be? Dreaming Michelle wondered at the deep, at the snake of an eel moving with the undulations of a whip cracked.
The person who held her in the salt of it kissed her with an open mouth, passing a golden fish between them. Their kiss was the fish, the fish their love, something wet and sleek and iridescent. Waves pushed their bodies together as if the ocean were a meddling friend, a matchmaker, and when their hips bumped their cunts became luminescent and the glow was visible beneath the waters. Michelle felt the tender fish swim into her mouth and she pushed it back soft through the lips of her lover.
Luciferin, the person whispered to her, tickling her ear with the fish. Photoprotein. Jellyfish tentacles unfurled from the depths of their bodies, the venomous lashes loosened and stinging, the fantastic pain of it bringing them beneath the waves where they fucked against the coral.
Tipping on lucidity, Michelle observed their junk with fascination, wondering at the pulsing, transparent lamps they had become. They kept their humid jungle air tucked deep in the balloons of their lungs. It would have been wiser to grow gills. The lovers couldn’t stay under the water forever, like the turtles they would have to break the surface for a gulp of oxygen.
In tandem the lovers rose from the deep, spitting water. They kissed in the waves, no fish now, only their mouths, and the person held Michelle gently, floated her like a child. The ocean and her person held and bobbed her. Both gazed up at the sun and felt lucky and content. Michelle could feel the fish of their kiss swimming in her belly.
Are we really here? asked the person.
Yes, Michelle affirmed. The ocean was so warm and so blue, like the person’s eyes. Michelle gazed at her. She looked like a sea elf, with mischievous ears and the facial architecture of a model. Her eyes were both oval and slanted, like in anime. Michelle gazed at the face as if it were a planet, and it gazed back at her.
Face! she said in recognition.
Face! Michelle giggled back. Is Love Real?
Oh yes, the person nodded. Love is very, very real.
Michelle could feel the love radiate out from the person’s heart. It seemed to be the very thing that warmed the sea they swam in, the thing that fed the coral, the source of all life. They wrapped themselves together and found they fit perfectly. Michelle had never felt so soothed and wanted. Inside her surged a desire to do magnificent things for this person. She wanted to lay her on the sand and pet her head forever. She wanted to tell her every truth she’d ever known. She wanted to feel them grow as close as a hermit crab and its shell. She wanted to move inside her with the perfect motion of a sea fan in the water.