Apocalypse for Beginners (14 page)

“Have you seen this?”

I arched my eyebrows. All I could see was that good old advertisement for Amazing X-Rays, and I thought Hope must be joking around. She shook her head.

“No, in the corner!”

My eyes shifted to the left and my heart froze.

PREPARE YOURSELF!

THE WORLD WILL END ON JULY 17, 2001

DON’T WAIT TO DISCOVER

THE PROPHECIES OF CHARLES SMITH

TRANSLATED INTO 18 LANGUAGES (INCLUDING TIBETAN)

SEND MAIL ORDERS TO:

LEVY PUBLISHING —PO BOX 2816362 NEW YORK

47. A TINY OASIS OF WARMTH

I read and reread the box in disbelief, repeating that it was nothing more than a coincidence, but Hope wasn’t buying that. For her, the probability of another crackpot predicting the end of the world for July 17, 2001, was on the order of 1 in 16 billion.

Having suddenly lost our appetite for partying, we spent a long time searching for our boots in the jumble of soles, laces and odours of the apartment hallway. Hope ended up putting on a pair at random (surreal white Tony Lama boots).

The city was dead—not a single car in the streets. A warm front had rolled in during the evening and we could hear the snow crackling on the ground. We were (once again) the last living creatures on the continent, surrounded by thousands of abandoned bungalows where the lights went on every night and went off every morning, activated by an army of automatic timers.

We walked slowly. More tired than she had let on, Hope clung to my waist and leaned her head on my shoulder. I heard her grumble as we passed the municipal stadium.

“Charles Smith. Talk about a name for a prophet.”

It was colder inside the Bunker than outside. We climbed under the covers without even undressing.

Hope fell asleep almost at once, pressed against my back, her breasts resting between my shoulder blades. I sensed an erection taking shape under the layers of bedding but refrained from making the slightest movement. I was afraid to interfere with an infinitely delicate ceremony: Hope’s breath on my neck, her arm across my chest, the tips of her fingers under my belt.

Our two bodies formed a tiny oasis of warmth in a universe that had been cooling down inexorably for fifteen billion years.

48. CRUMBS AND FOAM RUBBER

I woke up in the early afternoon, my head throbbing and my heart tilting at a forty-five-degree angle. The other half of the bed was empty and cold. Hope had decamped to take care—I assumed—of Hope’s business.

I swallowed three pills of the first analgesic I could find, took a boiling-hot shower and went upstairs. The house was deserted and gave me the impression of a third-rate New Zealand sci-fi movie. The light hurt my eyes. I hated Sundays. I poured myself a large glass of orange juice, snapped up the newspaper (with a flurry of toast crumbs) and went back down to the Bunker.

I was about to drop down on the couch when a detail caught my attention: one of the cushions had been removed and then put back askew. A bad feeling came over me.

I tossed the cushion aside, plunged my arm inside the couch and groped around in its entrails for a good while. There could be no mistake: instead of a thick envelope stuffed with money, my hand found nothing but springs, foam rubber and unidentified crumbs.

Hope had closed her secret account.

49. THE END IS NIGH

Hope got off the bus and, without any hesitation, strode across the terminus, her Tony Lamas cutting white streaks through the grey of the morning.

She stopped at the foreign exchange office to transmogrify a few dollars and used the change to buy a map of Manhattan. Then she went to a pay phone and dialed 411 to get the address of Levy Publishing, which she memorized. According to the map the Lower East Side was an hour’s walk away.

Hope was in no rush.

She headed due south on Broadway in the light rain, moving at a relaxed pace, taking everything in with her curious eyes. Each stride brought something new to marvel at. At the corner of Lafayette, she gave a dollar to a vagrant carrying a sign that read The End Is Nigh. In the window of a Dairy Queen, she waved to a double of David Bowie sipping a milkshake cold and long. From time to time she would stop to tap on a wall and was amazed to find it dense and solid against the palm of her hand. So this is what New York looked like, the city so often attacked by Hollywood.

As she passed a TV repair shop she remembered—oddly enough—the existence of a certain Mickey, several hundred kilometres to the north, and ducked into a telephone booth to bring him up to date, calling collect.

50. MORE RELIABLE THAN A PACKAGE OF RAMEN

MICKEY:
What the hell are you doing in New York?

HOPE:
I want to meet Charles Smith.

MICKEY:
The prophet? Have you got his address?

HOPE:
No.

MICKEY:
You have a plan?

HOPE:
I’m going see his publisher to start with. After that, I’ll see how things stand.

MICKEY:
It makes no sense.

HOPE:
 …

MICKEY:
Okay. Fine.
Assuming
the publisher agrees to give you the address. Do you really think this Smith, how can I put this …

HOPE:
 … will turn out to be a more reliable source of information than a package of ramen?

MICKEY:
You took the words right out of my mouth.

Momentary silence
.

HOPE:
We’ll see.

51. THE MOST UNPLEASANT PUBLISHER IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE

Hope stepped into the lobby of one of those glazed-brick office buildings so prevalent on the Lower East Side. She ran her finger over the list of tenants: an import-export company, a photography agency, a number of unidentified businesses and (bingo!) the offices of Levy Publishing, suite 701.

While the freight elevator, of Great Depression vintage, climbed from floor to floor in painfully slow motion, Hope tried to work out a clever plan of attack. She had not come up with anything by the time the gate opened onto the seventh floor. She would have to ad lib.

The offices of Levy Publishing sat directly opposite the elevator, behind a glass door that Hope walked through without hesitating.

There was no one at the reception desk. Through a side door, Hope glimpsed some girls who were busy filling cardboard boxes with piles of books. Seeing that the girls took no notice of her, Hope used the time to survey the reception area. A few chairs, a desk, a corridor and—notably—a large portrait of Charles Smith, a man in a white medieval-style shirt, with piercing eyes and a pair of eyebrows worthy of Zeus.

The picture covered one whole section of wall, an indication of Smith’s stature in the Levy Publishing catalogue.

“May I help you?”

Hope turned and found herself standing face to face with a generic receptionist: fifty-sevenish, grey pantsuit, hair tied up in a bun, an air of endless weariness and endless impatience.

“I’m looking for Mr. Smith.”

“You’re looking for Mr. Smith?” the secretary responded, narrowing her eyes.

Hope gave her an emphatic nod, thinking it better not to say any more. The secretary picked up the telephone and exchanged a few words with an unspecified individual while looking Hope up and down. Her gaze lingered momentarily over the plutonium-blue nail polish and the cowboy boots, which elicited a nascent smile. Then she hung up.

“Please come this way.”

She walked down the corridor ahead of Hope. The place had seen better days: pitted walls, stained carpet, swarms of dust mites. To all appearances, Levy Publishing was not in the habit of hosting formal visits.

At the far end of the hall, behind the very last door, was a man in shirtsleeves with a yarmulke riding askew on the top of his skull. Seated at a huge oak desk, he was eating a Reuben on rye over a paper plate. A little plaque on the desk identified him as Sammy Levy
himself
, the founder-owner-director of Levy Publishing and the most unpleasant publisher in the known universe.

52. A RAPIDLY EXPANDING NICHE

In a corner of the office, a TV on mute was tuned to CNN: George Bush giving a press conference with the stock prices streaming by at the bottom of the screen. A subtle dialogue going on between the two.

The room was spare, but the window afforded a breathtaking view of New York. Dozens of skyscrapers filled the field of vision, and at the mouth of the Hudson, to the west, rose the twin towers of the World Trade Center. A commercial space like this in Manhattan must have cost a fortune, but, given the condition it was in, Hope figured that the lease had been signed in the 1970s.

Levy never took his eyes off his corned beef sandwich except to glance up at CNN. He did not seem very inclined to have his meal interrupted, and Hope wondered whether she should wait or press ahead. After a minute, Levy licked his fingers, straightened up in his chair and deigned to look at her.

“Nice boots.”

“Thank you.”

“So you’re looking for Charles Smith?”

She nodded.

“I have no idea where he is.”

In response to Hope’s evident astonishment, Levy explained that Levy Publishing was just a run-of-the-mill publisher with no control over the physical existence of Charles Smith. As it happened, said Charles Smith had been unreachable for two or three years, which, from a strictly administrative point of view, was not a problem, as he had ceded all rights to his book against a lump sum. The guy may as well have been dead for all the difference it would make.

“Might even increase sales,” Levy mumbled.

Hope could not believe it. How could you lose touch with a prophet? Levy burst out laughing. He apparently found the word
prophet
quite amusing. Charles Smith, he said, was no more than a trademark. A product. There was a market for everything and the apocalypse represented a rapidly expanding niche.

“Any other questions?”

Hope muttered no, she didn’t have any other questions, and Levy took her back to the reception office, where he asked the secretary to kindly give the young lady a complimentary copy of the works of Charles Smith. Then, without saying another word, he vanished back to his office.

The secretary gave Hope an inscrutable smile and glided into the adjacent room.

Left on her own, Hope simmered with anger. Levy was obviously bluffing. Surely the receptionist had some information about Smith, and as Hope weighed the options of deceit or bribery, her eyes fell on a huge Rolodex sitting on the corner of the desk.

A shiver ran up her spine. She could see the receptionist searching through some shelves with her back to the doorway. Hope had only about ten seconds to act. She flipped up the cover of the Rolodex and located SMITH Charles, with the prophet’s full contact information listed: home, office, telephone, fax.

She tore out the card and slunk off without saying goodbye.

53. MISSION

“New York reeks!” was how Hope summed things up as she chewed on a hot dog an inch away from the handset. I immediately asked for a geospatial update.

“I’m in a phone booth at the corner of Fortieth Street and Eighth Avenue.”

These particulars evoked no mental picture for me. Between mouthfuls, Hope explained in detail her visit to Levy Publishing, praised the fifty-cent hot dogs served at Bobby’s—which I gathered was a nondescript stand on Forty-second Street—and dwelled for a (long) while on the ergonomic virtues of her new Tony Lamas. I tried to visualize the phone bill.

In any case, troop morale seemed high, despite the admittedly slow progress of the investigation. For the time being, all Hope knew was that Charles Smith could be reached at the offices of Mekiddo, a company located in Seattle, Washington.

“What does this company do?”

“No idea.”

“Is that all you’ve got?”

“Yup, that’s all.”

“Very promising.”

“Well, I’ve gotta run. The bus to Seattle leaves in ten minutes.”

“Are you joking?”

“Have I mentioned my new boots? They’re really comfortable. You should get some.”

This leave-taking filled me with nothing but apprehension. I wanted to dissuade Hope, to convince her to come back, but I just didn’t have it in me. It took a lot of courage to stand up to Hope. The most I could manage was to remind her that she had a major calculus exam coming up on Thursday afternoon.

“The mission I’m on,” she stated just before hanging up, “is more important than differential calculus.”

54. GREYHOUND

Hope spent three nights and two days on the road. She crossed three time zones and two watersheds. She changed buses five times, and every bus seemed more run-down and uncomfortable than the one before, but they all had little screens suspended from the ceiling and tuned exclusively to one channel:
Thank You for Travelling with Greyhound
.

She watched the landscape stream past. Cornfield, scrapyard, soybean field, cornfield, incinerator, drive-in theatre, industrial park, Wal-Mart, cornfield, Ford dealer, cornfield, motel, deserted GM factory, empty lot, marshalling yard, soybean field, industrial park, nuclear power plant, cornfield, motel, cement plant, seedy neighbourhoods along the railroad tracks, seedy neighbourhoods under the A-41 interchange, seedy neighbourhoods behind kilometres of chain-link fence, industrial park, river, bungalows, skyscrapers, garbage dumps and countless small animals that had ended their days as roadkill.

When her brain had had enough, Hope did math problems in her head, read the newspapers left behind by other passengers, dozed off curled up in her seat. She subsisted on vending machine fare—the sort of food that is digested in seven minutes and induces fits of hypertension.