1999 (2 page)

OVER BRIDGES
and through empty states Esme drove her mother's Audi, the thermometer dropping as she made her way east. She knew what the guy on the radio wanted. And now, why not? It wasn't that Carlo hadn't been The One, with his frantic grappling and the salami smell of his neck. Or that since the first occasion she'd allowed it back in October, at every opportunity he thudded his crotch into hers for forty seconds – and then he retreated gasping, like a waiter whisking away a bowl of soup before Esme had even had a taste. Not to mention that maybe three weeks prior there'd been this: “Shit, I think the condom broke” – that same waiter splashing soup into her lap. No, none of that mattered. There was no more Carlo. There was no more anyone. There was nothing left; nothing mattered at all. It was only Esme and the fat grey ribbon of highway, desolate save the few abandoned shells of tractor-trailers at rest stops every few counties – oh, and the voice on the radio, providing directions. Here was a toll, unmanned, and Esme blasted through, the barricade splintering over the hood of the Audi. She cheered and veered across the highway and back. The world was hers: seventeen years old and free. She honked the horn. She cranked the stereo. She stomped on the gas. “Fuck everything!” she screamed, as loud as she could, speedometer fluttering between eighty and ninety. But maybe now with snow and ice on the road she should ease up, so Esme did and breathed, and then hesitantly checked the rear-view, half in fear and half in hope of seeing another car reflected there, closer than it might appear, following behind.

“I JUST WANNA
let all U women know, each and every special one of U, first off right now that I know how lonely U R feelin'. But B4 you start to feel like no one's left, know I can feel U out there. And I know U can feel me 2. And that's why I'm telling U all right now, all U women left on Planet Earth, that we're gonna make somethin' special 2gether again. I want each of U 2 look out at the stars 2nite and know that we're all lookin' at the same sky, and I want U 2 pick just one star and imagine that I'm lookin' at it 2. And wherever U R I want that 2 B UR guidin' star. I want it 2 B the star that brings us 2gether, that brings U 2 me. And I want U 2 follow that star as long as it takes U, all the way 2 me, cuz I'm waitin'. I'm waitin' here 4 U, women of Planet Earth. We gotta cum 2gether. Because it's not over. We're not thru. Cum 2 me. We can make it. If U believe in me, 2gether we can believe in love, and I believe in U.”

?
WHAT WAS
supposed to even be, wondered Sonya. She pulled up her jeans and stepped around the puddle of ale-coloured pee she'd left in the middle of the highway, shiver-ing in the icy air.
, ugh.

Back in the car, hangover settling into a dull throb at her temples and a mossy paste in her mouth, Sonya pictured him shimmying about in doilies and fabric cropped from his grandma's plush sofa. “The Artist Formerly Known as Who the Hell Cares,” Sonya had called him the night before. “It's not just that his music sucks,” she'd ranted, “or that he's totally ridiculous. It's more the hypocrisy that gets me. He's a raging misogynist,
and
a homophobe, yet he'll throw on garters and high heels and prance around like a drag queen. He doesn't love women, he's just confused. And ‘Pussy Control'? Come on, that's just offensive.”

Now
this
– this Armageddon, or whatever – and here she was behind the wheel of the Accord and continuing south into the United States. The winter was everywhere: thirty below and the trees lining the highway garlanded with snow, and instead of sky there was a sort of absence above, grey and hanging there, emptily.

Sonya had always said the thing she craved more than anything was to be alone, mercifully alone, making art in some cabin secreted away in a deep dark wood. She would live on berries and delicious forest creatures roasted on spits; there would be much chopping of wood and a surfeit of profound existential thoughts sublimated into oil paintings and sculptures. And now here was that chance, offering itself up like a free, post-apocalyptic lunch.

But she couldn't exist out there in peace while the planet was being reinhabited by a race of velveteen maniacs with symbols for names, all those toddlers wailing away on sparkling toy guitars, performing cunnilingus in the air, pooping into sequined diapers. And so Sonya would stop it – and only then, knowing she had done right by the world, could she retreat to a life of hermetic bliss, away from everyone and everything, and live out her days in perfect, silent, uninterrupted solitude.

OH, HERE WAS A “FUNKY” SONG
, thought Mrs. Mendelbaum in her snowsuit. She'd even heard it before, maybe, and turned the volume up just a touch – riding on the highway now, the snowmobile sliding along, ever mindful of black ice. What were they saying, though? Something about the future. “Something something the future will B…” Will be
what
? Was there a future? Wishing someone would tell her, Mrs. Mendelbaum shivered and looked out through her visor at the world. She was
so close
to Minneapolis – close to everyone, close to the future! But looking up the sky did not look like the sky of the future. It struck her instead as still and lifeless, a great pale corpse slumped over the world. How depressing; it was enough to make her want to take a break. Also she had to pee.

ESME PASSED A TACO BELL
, Carlo's favourite restaurant. Carlo, lurching Carlo: all chicken soft tacos and pico de gallo and that clumsy slug of a tongue. But, aw, so sweet – he'd made a piñata for her, after all, for her birthday (though he'd filled it with condoms, and when they'd tumbled forth she could have sheared him for wool, his grin was so sheepish). Was it only last night that he'd worked at her button fly – for, what,
ever
? – before Esme, like a prisoner unlocking her own cell for a cute but hapless warden, snapped it open: here you go!

She'd wanted so badly for it to be good with Carlo, and when it wasn't she could only trust it would get better, later. She could wait; she loved him. But here was later, Esme thought, gazing through the windshield. Later was nothing at all.

was singing again: “Until the end of time, I'll be there 4 U.” She vaguely remembered what the guy looked like from the jacket of an LP that might have belonged to one of her mom's boyfriends – Tom or Roger or Luis-Enrique, Esme wasn't sure. And despite what appearances might suggest, apparently
wasn't gay. Just sort of elfin and a little
purpler
than Esme was used to (Carlo wore mainly camouflage and black denim).