Black Wave (27 page)

Ashley nodded.
I've got to go. My number is in the folder.
She leaned over the counter one more time, and as they kissed Michelle could feel a glimmer of the person she was with Ashley. How good it felt, that version of herself, what a gift it was to feel some dormant part of herself enlivened. Ashley caught a glimpse of her own future self, felt older, tougher, more of a boy than the girl she was then. They pushed their different selves between them until the door jingled open and Michelle jumped away from the kiss.
Ashley smiled.
Please call me and I will take you. I know you don't have any money, it doesn't matter.

Michelle didn't bother trying to defend her financial state, the girl knew everything. And if she knew everything, she had to have known that Michelle could never go with her.

21

Michelle enjoyed matching music to writings. Much of the music for sale in the shop was obscure to her, so she took a lot of chances with album covers. She played gospel as she read Dorothy Allison, and with Eileen Myles skipped between opera and Sonic Youth. Peter Plate and the Clash. Charles Bukowski and Tom Waits seemed too obvious. She tried Leonard Cohen instead, but went back to Tom Waits. Dodie Bellamy and Nico. Kevin Killian and Kylie Minogue. What would the sound track be to this folder in front of her, notes for a memoir of a life never lived? She found not an album but a busted cassette of Morrissey's
Viva Hate
, slid it into the tape player, and opened the folder. This was where she was when Paul stumbled into the bookshop.

Michelle had not seen her boss in weeks. He'd grown larger, his hair longer, more matted. If she hadn't known him she'd presume he was another drug addict looking to pawn a Danielle Steel paperback. When he spoke his voice
croaked, as if he hadn't spoken out loud for a very long time. He moved the phlegm around his throat with some coughs and gurgles.

Melissa
, he addressed her.
Excuse me. I haven't spoken out loud in a while
.

His eyes, Michelle noted, were crusted with sleep, as if he'd been lying facedown in a sandbox. The corners of his mouth looked sticky above his beard.

It's Michelle, Michelle said. She observed her boss, who leaned on the counter, taking a breath. He was a mess. Do You Need Water Or Anything? Are You Okay?

He brushed away her kindnesses impatiently.
I'm fine, I'm fine.
He turned his face to the windows, looking out onto the Strip.
The world is really deteriorating. Have you noticed?

Michelle shrugged. I Thought It Would Be Worse Actually, she said.

You're just accustomed to the pace of its unraveling. Go to sleep for a couple weeks and then take a look at it. It's much, much worse. You can hardly use the freeway now even if you wanted to, there are just busted cars and bodies—dead bodies, Rochelle—all over the road. It is a sight. People are considerably more unhinged, people in the streets.
He heaved a breath.
I'm going back to bed, ASAP. I just wanted to talk to you about the store.

You're Having Good Dreams? Michelle asked cautiously. Paul's appearance suggested that her suspicions that her bosses were using the dreamtime like drugs were correct.

Beatrice and I have synced ourselves up and figured out how to go anywhere we want, not just places we were destined to go on vacation. Truthfully, if the world were to continue, we wouldn't have traveled very far. I don't like vacations. Too much work, they're very stressful. But this dreaming thing is
wonderful. We just link up and poof, we're wherever we want to be. You should try it with someone. You've got to really love them though. It's gotta be the real thing.

Well, I Don't Have The Real Thing. I Don't Believe In It.

What, you haven't met your soul mate on one of those websites? I thought that was working out for everyone.

Michelle tried to think of something tough and cynical to say, but nothing came. She shrugged. Not For Me, I Guess.

You seem sad about it,
Paul squinted at her, his face cramped in a wince.
Don't waste your time, you're almost dead. Listen, I can tell you want to talk about this, so I'm going to get out of here. I don't want to be weighed down with your problems.

Michelle was taken aback by the man's bluntness. She
had
wanted to talk to him. Paul was very annoying but he was also sort of wise.

Do You Love Beatrice? she blurted. Do You Really, Really Love Her For Real?

Of course,
Paul said.

No—Really, Really Love Her? Or Are You Just Resigned To Her? Is She Your Habit? And Speaking Of Habits, Should You Really Be Spending All Your Time Dreaming?

One world is the same as the next, go to the world you like best, Melissa.
He sighed.
Are you afraid love is not actually real because you're experiencing romantic sadness?

Michelle nodded. I Think It Might Just Be Like Sexual Attraction Plus Codependency. Desire Plus Your Own Personal Damage Melding You To Another.

Interesting,
Paul stroked his grimy beard
. I do think we have an interesting relationship with personal damage in this culture. The ways our lives, our families, and our childhoods ruin us is exactly what makes it possible to be in relationships
with other people. If I hadn't been raised by such a depressed mother, could I tolerate Beatrice's constant weeping? I think it would creep me out.

It Is Disturbing, Michelle confirmed.

I'm sure it is. But it feels familiar to me and I accept it and I don't try to make Beatrice change, you know. She can cry all she wants. I buy her hankies.

Why Is She Always Crying?

She's just sad,
Paul said.
Some people feel that more than others. Anyway, listen, love is real, I love Beatrice very much, I love her because I am a damaged person, not in spite of it—damage opens your heart, you know, if you allow it to—and, oh, that's all I have for you. Good luck with the rest of your life. I wanted to give you the bookstore.

For Real? Like I Can Have It?

Yeah, take it. We're done. We're retiring. We don't need anything, I mean we've got enough food in the house for the rest of time—we're not expending very much energy sleeping so we don't need a lot. We're just going to sleep as much as we can until the world ends.

What About Joey? Michelle asked. Shouldn't He Inherit It? I Just Started Working Here.

Oh, Joey picked up his heroin habit again,
Paul said with a shrug.
I don't think he'll be around much. I made sure he had food, but junkies don't eat a lot.

That's Not Good, Michelle said.

It's fine,
Paul said.
The worst thing that can happen is he dies a few months before he dies. It makes him happy. It gives him better dreams, he told me.
Paul clapped his hand on the counter, done.
So, do what you like.
He gestured around the store
. There's a safe under that patch of peeling linoleum in the back room. The key for it is on that key ring, one of those. Buy
yourself some food, canned stuff, that's all you're going to need. If Joey comes by, you know, share it all with him, but it's yours I'd say. Nice knowing you, Melissa.
He smiled through the web of his beard.
Who would've known when you got hired here that I'd end up giving you the place? That you'd be the last human I spoke to, huh?
He shook his tangles.
You gotta love life, just for things like that. Gotta love it. Listen.
His sleepy, bloodshot eyes widened with a sense of seriousness and bore into Michelle's like they were seeking out her soul.
There's not enough time on the planet for you to get over your heartache, but you should just trust that if things hadn't all gone to shit you would've gotten over it. You would have been in love a bunch more, I can feel it. You're one of those people. I bet you fall in love easy, don't you?

Michelle shrugged. I Suppose.

Nothing to be ashamed of. Doesn't make the love less real. It's just your state. It's a gift. Anyway, you'll probably never love again, but just know that you would have. Just know that. Sayonara.
The man lumbered out the door, exiting with the familiar chime. He was no longer her boss. Michelle looked around her workplace, the bookstore. She was a business owner. She owned a bookstore. It had ceased being a functional bookstore, of course, and was more of a strange library, a place for addicts and fragile people to come out of the killing sun and find some peace, maybe leave with a book or a dollar in their pocket. Michelle supposed it was becoming a sort of social service agency, which was not the worst thing.

She locked the door and grabbed the ring of keys from beneath the register. There were about fifty keys on it, all sort of grimy, stinking of metal. She rattled them in her hand as she walked to the back room, that corner of
linoleum. She'd kicked it idly during lunch breaks, listening to the
flick flick flick
of it beneath her combat boot as she heated up leftover pasta in the microwave. She pulled it back and saw the cubby that had been created beneath it, found the solid safe, heaved it out with some difficulty.

On the twelfth key the top came off. Lots of money was inside. Michelle could imagine an earlier moment, maybe even last week, when finding such booty would have filled her with adrenaline, such joy, that she would have had to lie her body down on the floor and wait till the feelings passed into something functional. But the money looked oddly like any collection of anything. A box of seashells, a jar of marbles, a store full of books. Paul was right, all she really needed was food. She'd stopped paying rent and that seemed fine. She'd stopped drinking and cigarettes didn't work without alcohol to both feed the compulsion and numb her of its grossness—the stink, her moist and yellowy fingers, the swamp in her lungs. Michelle needed hardly anything and now had more than enough to secure it for her. She took out a small bundle of cash and sunk the safe back into its cache beneath the floor.

22

Michelle had stopped drinking—because it was killing her. This story isn't bound by what really happened, but Michelle's sobriety in this book and in life is a rare moment of narrative resolution. She'd be a fool not to exploit it.

But telling it, really telling it, would be too much. Michelle tried to encapsulate it in a sort of montage, like Rocky Balboa training for his big fight.
Flash,
Michelle meditates.
Flash,
she overcomes a moment of craving.
Flash,
she learns how to pray.
Flash flash flash
she goes to a bunch of AA meetings and gets a sponsor, someone she can't write about because of the anonymity thing. Actually, Michelle worries that writing about AA violates the anonymity thing.

Michelle could make Michelle get sober without AA, but that would encourage any alcoholics who deeply want to believe they can do it on their own. I mean, who wants to go to meetings in churches and listen to weird strangers who've ruined their life talk about God? Michelle didn't. She, too, tried to get sober without AA and found that her
twisted life minus the familiar coping tool of alcohol was more hellish than a hangover. She hadn't known then that people went to AA to learn how to live. She thought it was a support group for losers who needed help with the fact that their life would never be fun ever again.

Michelle didn't want it to seem like she was the rare person who could get sober and achieve actual sanity without AA. And Michelle thought it was weird that she could write a bunch of stories about being wasted all the time but then couldn't write honestly about how she had become sober. But from here on out, Michelle doesn't drink anymore.

23

I haven't talked to you,
Wendy said, her tone a bit hurt.
You know they're shutting down the telephone services. I wondered if you would even say goodbye to me. And your brother. I worry about you two, especially now with the world ending. You don't know what it's like to be a mother worrying about her children. It's its own thing. You'll never know. You'll never know such worry, now.
Michelle could hear her mom exhale smoke.

I Wouldn't Have Known Anyway, Michelle said. I Never Wanted A Kid.

You say that, but I had a dream. One of those dreams everyone's having. You had a baby, your brother had a baby, it was like we were all a real family.

Michelle hadn't recalled seeing anything about a baby in Ashley's files. But Ashley's files, she realized, stopped at the end of her and Ashley's relationship.

You really haven't dreamed about the baby? Oh, it's a cute thing.

Boy Or A Girl? Michelle asked.

Wendy snorted.
You won't say. In the dream. You give it some weird name so no one knows if it's a boy or a girl and you say you're going to just let the baby figure out what it is. Good thing the world is ending, huh? You'd have some kind of confused person on your hands if you did that.

It sounded like something Michelle would do, actually. Am I Alone, she asked, With The Baby?

No, no, you have some person, you know. She looks like a boy but she's a girl. She's good, I like her. She gives people a good feeling. You're happy.

Really?

Yeah, really, you're in love. You really haven't dreamed about this?

No.

Well, you're older in the dream. Kind of old to be having a baby. Maybe it hasn't come yet.

I Was Thirty-Seven In My Last Dream, Michelle said.

Oh, no, you're older than that in the baby dream.

Jesus, Michelle said. That Sounds Grotesque.

Well, how are you doing in the real world, huh?

In truth, Michelle was doing fine. Every morning she woke up in a different part of the bookstore. She dragged a pile of cushions onto a pile of books and slept there, like a child surrounded by toys. She slept upstairs in the stacks of cassette tapes, she slept in the break room above her hidden pile of money. Michelle opened and closed the bookstore depending on how she felt about humanity that day. She had to have an open heart to open the door. One afternoon a woman, batshit crazy, began hurling books at the wall, emitting a shrill keen. Michelle joined her. It felt
fucking fantastic.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeee!
she trilled, the sound coming from deep in her throat. She chucked book after book at the wall, where they collided with other books, the lot of them tumbling to the floor to land in a pile of still more books. The woman stopped, just briefly, to see if Michelle was mocking her, but feeling safe in her insanity resumed her cries and hurls. She cackled and Michelle cackled back. Almost every day had a moment like that to open into, something totally apocalypse.

In the break room she made a lousy cup of coffee, regretting that she would probably never taste real quality coffee again, but grateful nonetheless for the caffeine. She would select a book and read it. She'd read in her pile of cushions, sneezing at the dust. She'd read behind the counter as if she were a normal girl at a normal workplace during a normal era, slacking off in a normal manner. She'd sit on the counter. She'd sit on the ladder or a chair. She selected books at random, ones she'd never heard of.
Glory Goes and Gets Some
.
Car
.
The Speed Queen
. She grabbed ones that made her think of San Francisco: Kevin Killian, Dodie Bellamy. She read the entire
Tales of the City
saga. She read books about Los Angeles: Kate Braverman and Mike Davis.

The hours of operation were ruled by insomnia, anxiety, boredom. On many nights Michelle stayed open through till sunrise, closing up shop in the morning to sleep like a vampire in the windowless back room. The novelty of living like this, like the kids in
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
, was not lost on her. Michelle imagined that it would take a while for the odd romance of it to wear off, and Michelle didn't have a while.

With the exception of Matt Dillon, Michelle spent
time with hardly anyone. His visits were infrequent, but when he came he brought Michelle cigarettes, which she began to enjoy again. He liked spending the night on her cushions.
Like camping
, he'd laugh, enjoying the weirdness of it, reading out loud to her from books strewn across the floor, playing a divination game where he picked a sentence at random to forecast their next day, or explain the nature of their erratic coupling, or detail what they could expect in the moment the earth exploded. Together they remembered the places they'd longed to sleep as a child—inside refrigerator boxes, in a play structure at a park, behind the couch, beneath the Christmas tree, beneath a stairwell in the library. They agreed that the bookstore was as good as all such places rolled together, though Matt was quick to return to his own home, which Michelle imagined was quite lovely and probably home to a quite lovely woman as well.

I'm Fine, Michelle said to her mother. She had slid into her loneliness and found it oddly comfortable. She felt badly for the years she'd pestered her mother into increased happiness, trying to rouse her into someone else's life. I'm Thinking Of Starting An End-Of-The-World Book Club. Like Where We Read Books About The End Of The World. And Discuss.

Well, you'll never guess what happened at my work,
Wendy said, and continued without pause.
We all moved in. We took over.

Moved In Where? Into The Asylum?

That's right!
Wendy exclaimed.
Oh, it's excellent. We play games all night, we've got that big kitchen, we all take turns
cooking, all the nurses. I made shepherd's pie last night. It was good. I used that packaged cheese on top, you know the stuff that comes in the mac and cheese boxes?

The Orange Powder? Michelle asked. You Put That On Your Shepherd's Pie?

It was delicious,
Wendy insisted.
We've been eating mostly ramen so it was a treat. Everyone's calling me “Chef “ now.

But Where Are The Patients?

Some are still around, we still take care of them. Some wanted to go, we let them go. Listen, everyone is crazy out on the streets. Who am I to tell someone they got to stay all cooped up when they're gonna be dead so soon?

Are You Going To Get In Trouble?

Nah,
Wendy said.
This is happening in a few places. My friend Dolores is a nurse at an old folks' home, she said whenever one of her patients dies a nurse moves into their room. Or a CNA or whatever. It's better than living alone right now, waiting for some gang to rob you.

Alone? Michelle asked. What About Kym, Is She With You?

Oh, honey,
Wendy said.
Kym left me.

What? Where Did She Go?

She left me for a man.

No! Michelle shrieked.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, she did.

When? Oh My God! Are You Okay?

Wendy laughed
. Yeah, yeah. I'm fine, we're fine. You know, we were more like roommates for a long time. I mean, it was hard, don't get me wrong. But it's good now. It's better. You know, it's a relief not to have to take care of someone all the time.

Is She Sick, How Is She? Where Is She?

She's living with him, some guy. I don't know, I don't like him, but she does. He's just some guy from the square, you know, a guy who hangs out down there. He's a toughie. Got tattoos and stuff like that.

He's Taking Care Of Her? Michelle asked.

She's fine!
Wendy screamed.
She's fine. She's not sick anymore.

Are You Kidding?

I guess she just needed to get laid. You know?

Oh My God. I Can't Believe This. Does Kyle Know?

I don't talk to you kids. You don't call me, I don't call you two, we don't talk.

I Know, Ma, Michelle said. I'm Sorry.

It is what it is. You know I love you?

Yeah, Michelle said. Of Course I Do. Do You Know I Love You?

Oh yeah, I know it.

Really? Michelle asked. Really? You Really Do? Michelle felt that love rise up inside of her, that scared and frustrated love. She wanted to push it somehow into her mother, make her feel what it felt like to love her. How tremendous and difficult.

You don't have to try so hard, 'Chelle,
she said.
Just love me, okay? And I'll love you. Simple. Okay?

Okay. She was crying.

Are you safe where you are? Wendy asked.

Yeah,
Michelle said.

'Cause you know you can come and stay with me if you need to. I could try to find the money to get you here. We all help each other out, it's really nice.

Michelle thought about ending her life in a mental hospital with her mother. It had its appeal. I Don't Think It's Even Possible To Get To You, she said.

Well, I'm glad I got to talk you,
Wendy said.
Before they turn the phones off. And I hope Kym gets it together to call you, you know she loves you, don't you?

Michelle did. Yeah.

I'd like to speak to your brother too but he doesn't return my calls. You know what that means.

What? Michelle asked.

He's got a boyfriend. He never wants to talk to me when he's got a boyfriend.