We All Looked Up (24 page)

Andy was facing the other way, so he hadn't seen it. But as Eliza felt his hand drop down between her legs, as she unconsciously ground against him with her hips, she felt the wrongness of what she was doing crash like an asteroid against the planet-size need to connect with someone, with anyone, and she pushed him off her with a fury that she knew he wouldn't understand, that wasn't even about him, so hard that he fell backward off the piano bench onto her cup, and then she was up and out of the room without saying a word, just in time to watch Anita throw open the door to the outside world as it exploded with lightning and thunder, like the warm-up to an apocalypse.

A
ndy

ANDY KNEW THE FAMOUS SAYING
“be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.” But he'd always thought Morrissey's take on things made a whole lot more sense:
“See the luck I've had can make a good man turn bad, so please please please, let me get what I want.”
Getting what you wanted, as far as Andy was concerned, was pretty much the most awesome thing in the universe.

For years, he'd imagined what it would be like to hook up with Eliza. To feel her arms around his shoulders, the warm pulse of her body curving into his, the soft skin of her breasts against his palms—innumerable hours had passed in contemplation of such wonders. By a standard like that, the event itself should have disappointed. But it hadn't. He felt as if he'd simultaneously nailed the groove of a new song, landed a sick jump on his skateboard, and snorted a line of coke (a drug he'd tried only once for fear another go would kill him—it made his heart want to go for a run outside his body).

Of course, it was hard not to read something worrying into her sudden exit, but Andy figured there were three possibilities, only one of which was truly terrible: (1) Eliza totally regretted what she'd done and now she hated him and wished they were both dead (the F possibility); (2) she was totally wasted and needed some time and space to clear her head (the C-minus possibility); or (3) she was so overwhelmed by her desire for him that it scared her (the A-plus possibility).

Andy couldn't solve the riddle on his own; he needed another girl to give him insight into the mysteries of girlish behavior. Unfortunately, he couldn't find Anita anywhere. Back in the dormitory, the revelry had reached a fever pitch. More than a few couples could be seen moving in slow rhythms under bunk-bed covers, and the dancing in the middle of the room was as close to sex as dancing could be. Andy grabbed a bottle of tequila from the unattended bar and went looking for someone else to talk to. He finally found Bobo and Misery grinding against a bunk bed just off the dance floor.

“Dude!” he shouted, slapping Bobo on the shoulder.

Bobo detached his octopus sucker of a mouth from Misery's. “What is it, man?”

“It's that I'm gonna get that grand, yo! I just made out with Eliza!”

“For real?”

“Swear to Baby Jesus.”

Bobo put up a hand. Andy leaned back and prepared to land the most explosive high five of his eighteen-year-old life. But his palm got nothing but air; Bobo had pulled a too-slow on him.

“You do realize that making out isn't sex, right?”

“Yeah. But it means she's into me. The rest is, like, inevitable.”

“Inevitable? Then why aren't you hitting that right now?”

“Well, that's actually why I'm here. Miz, I need your advice.”

“You've got it,” she said. Her face was red from rubbing up against Bobo's stubble.

“So Eliza and I were just getting into it, and then she jumped up and ran out on me. What does that mean?”

“That you suck at making out,” Bobo said.

“I'm not asking you, asshole.”

Misery laid a hand on Andy's shoulder with a drunkard's weight. “She's confused, man. She's not trying to be a cock tease or something.”

“Yeah,” Bobo said. “If there's one thing Eliza is
not
, it's a cock tease. More like a cock
lover
, right?”

“Dude,” Andy said, but he still laughed.

Just then, some overexuberant dancer bumped hard against his back, sending him spinning. A black blur of movement, a meaty
thunk
. Bobo was suddenly bent over, holding his hands to his stomach. And there was Peter, appearing out of nowhere, like some kind of superhero.

“Did you just punch my boyfriend?” Misery said.

Peter knelt down low so he could look up into Bobo's eyes. “That was for being disrespectful.” He turned on Andy next. “And you oughta be ashamed, letting someone talk about your girlfriend like that.” Finally he addressed his sister. “Enough, Miz. It's time to go.”

“Can't we at least stay until the end of the party?”

“No.” He grabbed her by the arm and dragged her away.

Bobo finally caught his breath, straightening up with a wince. “That fucker.”

“No, he was right,” Andy said, mostly to himself. “I shouldn't have laughed. If I want Eliza to be my girlfriend, I have to stand up for her and shit.”

But Bobo wasn't listening. He'd begun to stumble back toward the dance floor.

“Where you going?”

“To find Golden.”

“Whoa, whoa!” Andy grabbed hold of Bobo's sleeve. “Just hold up a sec.”

“You wanna let Peter get away with that? He
assaulted
me, yo.”

“It's not that.” Andy wasn't sure how to defuse the situation. A bad joke at Eliza's expense didn't give Peter the right to slam Bobo in the gut, but it also wasn't worth getting Golden involved. That dude was straight-up
nuts
. “I'm just saying we can take care of it ourselves.”

Bobo smiled. “Now that's the Andy I like to hear! And I know just how to do it. Follow me.”

He led Andy to an empty bed near the windows. Underneath the pillow were a couple of blocky plastic guns. Andy recognized them from television.

“Tasers?”

“For real. I found them in that gatehouse thing outside.”

“You really think we need them? It's two on one.”

“Don't be a pussy,” Bobo said, handing him one of the guns.

Outside the barracks, the rain was falling in sheets. Peter had already made it halfway across the tarmac. Misery wasn't fighting him anymore, but they were still arguing loudly as they walked. The chill air combined with the downpour sobered Andy up just enough to make him wonder exactly what he was getting himself into. He didn't really have a problem with Peter, especially now that they were all tied up—one brief hookup with Eliza in a dark room to one brief hookup with Eliza in a darkroom. And as for the sucker punch, Bobo
had
been acting like a dick.

“Hey!” Bobo called out.

Peter turned around. “What now, man?”

“Misery doesn't want to go with you.”

“Back off, Bobo. She'll see you later, I'm sure, whether I want her to or not. We're just going home to see our parents.”

“You're not going anywhere.”

Bobo raised his Taser and fired.

Nothing happened. The two tendrils of wire hung loosely from the barrel of the gun, like a couple of dead vines. They'd landed a good five feet shy of Peter.

Peter looked back and forth from the barbs of the Taser to Bobo, incredulous. “You stupid shit,” he said, and began to close the distance between them in angry athletic strides. “I was holding her arm, you moron. You would have shocked her, too.”

“Andy!” Bobo said, backing up.

“What?”

“Fucking shoot him, man!”

Andy had forgotten he even had the Taser. He found it now, like a tumor bursting suddenly from his skin. He didn't want to shoot anyone. But in another few seconds, Peter would be close enough to knock Bobo's teeth out.

“Stop there,” he said weakly, pointing the gun, but Peter either didn't hear him or didn't care. Bobo threw his Taser at Peter's head and whiffed entirely. Only a few seconds left. If Andy didn't do something right now, it would mean the end of his friendship with Bobo. He didn't have a choice.

There was barely any recoil. At first, Andy thought Peter was playacting—quaking and quivering like a fish just pulled out of the water, little grunts coming out of his slack mouth. Then his knees buckled and his forehead collided with the pavement. His body went still. Andy dropped the Taser.

“What did you do?” Misery shouted, falling onto her knees next to her brother.

“That's what he gets,” Bobo said. “Now come on. It's pouring out here.”

Misery pulled hard at her brother's shoulder and managed to turn him over. She wiped away the hair plastered like tar across his pale white forehead. A rivulet of blood ran down from his scalp and was diffused into a bloom by the rain. “Just leave us alone, Bobo. This is all so fucked up. Everything's so fucked up.”

“What, you're angry at
me
now? We only did this because he was trying to kidnap you!”

Misery didn't answer.

“Whatever,” Bobo said, and headed back to the barracks alone.

Andy was still holding the bottle of tequila in his left hand. He set it down next to Peter's head, then looked to Misery for some sign of understanding or forgiveness. But she only blotted at the blood with her sopping sleeve, over and over again, waiting for her brother to come around.

A
nita

THE DOOR SWUNG SHUT BEHIND
her. Anita broke into a sprint, each slap of her sneaker like a tiny little gunshot against the wet pavement. She hid behind a big black Dumpster, then peeked out through shimmering curtains of rain.

“Anita! Talk to me!” Eliza was running so fast that she slipped, going down hard on her bony ass. So much less than she deserved. Anita had never approved of the way people described Eliza—that one word that somehow spelled shame for a girl and prestige for a boy: S-L-U-T. And yet now, she found herself muttering the epithet into her palm, like a curse.

Eliza rose shakily to her feet. “Fine!” she shouted. “Don't talk to me then!” She staggered back toward the barracks.

Anita realized she was crying, though the storm washed every tear away as soon as it slipped free of her eyelid. She was also intensely, unprecedentedly drunk, having imbibed most of a bottle of bourbon over the course of the last hour. The Earth turned perceptibly beneath her feet, revealing the vertiginous uncertainty underpinning reality itself. As if Ardor weren't evidence enough that there was no safety to be found anywhere on this doomed, malignant planet, she'd just walked in on Andy and Eliza making out, already half-undressed. Did that mean they were some kind of couple now? And would they end up sleeping together? Probably, given that Eliza was such a total, shameless, nasty-ass
slut
.

This was all Peter's fault, really. If he weren't so goddamn nice, he would've already confronted Eliza, confessed his undying love, and revealed Andy's deception. Didn't he realize this was the end of the world? There was no time left to be nice.

Anita stayed outside in the rain for a few minutes longer, punishing herself for something she couldn't quite name. Her shivers turned to outright convulsions. And sure, she could have just gone back to her car and left, but that felt too much like a surrender. Her presence at the detention center was the only thing keeping Andy and Eliza from getting married and starting a fucking family together.

The barracks had seemed cozy enough back when she was dry, but now it felt chilly and dank. Members of Golden's crew, drunk and menacing, skulked up and down the halls. Anita needed to sober up somewhere, preferably alone. She tried a dozen doors before finding one that was unlocked—a stairway.

“‘
There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold
,'” Anita sang as she climbed upward into the dark, “‘
and she's buying a stairway to heaven.
'”

The upper-floor windows, many of which had been knocked out by the fusillade of rocks, looked out over the whole naval base, a landscape of cracked cement and gnarled trees, illuminated in brief electric bursts like a strobe light set to the slowest possible setting. The rain drummed a metallic melody on the roof just above her head. Only after she'd unpeeled her socks and sweater did Anita notice the light at the end of the hallway. She crept closer, but the creaking floor gave her away.

“Is someone out there? You can come in. I sit in peace.” It was a man's voice, his tone affable and mild.

The office was lit by a small green-shaded lamp perched on the windowsill and a half-dozen long-stemmed candles. Behind a large desk sat a rotund, ruddy-cheeked man wearing enough camouflage to tent a small house. In the glimmering, Anita could just make out his nameplate:
CAPTAIN MORGAN
. It was his name that kept her from immediately turning around and running away; somehow it seemed impossible that a man called Captain Morgan could be a threat. Only after she'd landed safely in a chair did she notice the mostly empty bottle of rum on his desk, and the mostly full glass in his hand.

“Hey there,” he said.

“Hey.”

“I'm Doug Morgan.”

“Anita.”

Doug raised his glass to her. “How you doing, Anita?”

“I've been better. You?”

“I, too, have been better.” He drank, as if they'd just toasted.

“What are you still doing here?”

“Good question. I gave the order to evacuate, so I figured it was on me to stick around and make sure nobody burned the place down. I was meant to be keeping in touch with my superiors on that contraption, but it broke down on me yesterday.” He rapped the side of a green metal box that squatted on the narrow table behind him. It was clearly a relic, corroded at the corners, with an old-fashioned black handset on the side.

“What is it?”

“A shortwave radio. Phones and cell towers are out, so we're back to the Stone Age.” He polished off the rest of his glass. Just the thought of consuming more alcohol caused Anita's stomach to make a sudden and violent request to externalize its inner conflict. She swallowed it down.

“Your turn,” Doug said. “What brings you up to the attic?”

“I'm not totally sure. Just wanted to get some space.”

“I hear that.
Un momento
.”

He leaned down to open one of the desk's lower drawers. Anita's eye was drawn to the single photo frame propped up on a bookshelf—one of those digital things that played the same slideshow over and over again. It showed three babies becoming three toddlers becoming three elementary school kids, then only two teenagers. In photo after photo, just two, until the cycle restarted and a miraculous resurrection took place.

“Sometimes I forget that death existed before Ardor,” Anita said.

Doug sat back up, already unscrewing the top of a fresh bottle of rum. “One of the many advantages of youth,” he said.

“Those are your kids, in the pictures?”

“Yeah.”

“Don't you wanna get home to them?”

“I would love to. But they live with their mom. In California.”

“Why?”

Doug shrugged his massive shoulders. “Because there are no second acts in American lives.” He didn't so much speak the words as recite them.

“Who said that?”

“F. Scott Fitzgerald. You know him?”

“We read
Gatsby
in English.”

“Did you like it?”

Anita tried to remember the paper she'd written about the book. “Sort of. A lot of it was really beautiful, but I didn't like how he wrote about women. I got the feeling he didn't respect them very much.”

Doug acknowledged this with another one-sided toast; rum splashed over the side of his glass, leaving rust-red splotches on the papers beneath it. “That's a fair read, Anita. I didn't love it either, to be honest—I was never much of a fiction guy—but I have a lot of respect for the character. Gatsby had a goal, and everything he did was about reaching it. That's admirable, even if it turns out your goal was a stupid one.”

Anita was reminded of her own stupid goal, to make a little bit of music she could be proud of before the end came. She might even have achieved it too, if she hadn't allowed herself to get distracted by this whole rescue fiasco. And for what? On the off chance that her selflessness would be rewarded with love? Pathetic. The tragic truth was that somewhere along the line, without her even noticing, Anita had traded in her big stupid dream for something even stupider: a boy who didn't want her.

“And you know the funniest thing about that line, the one about second acts?” Doug said.

“What?”

“It never even got published. Fitzgerald wrote this one great book, right? And that was the finale of his first act. Then he drank himself stupid, cheated on his wife, and basically pissed away every opportunity he got. And that line comes from the book that he hoped would turn it all around. The one that would have been his second act. Only he died before he could finish it. So the book didn't get a second act, and neither did he.”

A waver of the candlelight placed a living spark inside the droplet trickling down Captain Morgan's stubbled cheek.

“Are you okay?” Anita asked.

“Me?” He chuckled. “I'm fine. I'm over the hill. It's you I'm worried about. Your generation, I mean. Just look at you. So young and gorgeous and full of . . . life. You deserve a second act.”

Anita stood up and walked around the desk. Maybe it was because Andy had done what he'd done with Eliza, or maybe it was because Doug had called her gorgeous and she'd really needed to hear that tonight. Whatever the reason, it seemed like the right thing to do. She bent down and kissed him gently on his rum-sweet lips.

“Who says the end of the world is all bad?” he said, smiling. Then he pushed up out of his chair with a groan and went to a cabinet in the corner of the room. “You're soaked, my dear.” He fished out a pile of green fatigues and threw them her way. “Wear them proudly.”

“Thanks. So how long you think you're going to stay here?”

“The generator should give out before morning. They'll all go after that.”

Next to the broken shortwave was a more traditional radio, faux vintage, or maybe
real
vintage, with a brown metal grille for a speaker and a curved wooden top. Doug switched it on. The long, skinny bar of frequencies glowed the same butter yellow as the candlelight. He spun the dial, swimming across waves of static, until he found a lone voice, trembling above a cloud line of backing vocals and a ghostly rhythm section: “
I don't want to set the world on fire . . .
”

“Someone's still out there,” Anita said.

“It's almost enough to make a man hope.”

“Almost.”

“It was nice to meet you, Anita.”

“Likewise, Doug.”

Once the door was shut behind her, she stripped off her wet clothes and changed into the fatigues. She was still half-naked when a flash of lightning revealed that she wasn't alone in the hallway: Eliza stood just at the top of the stairs.

“Hey,” she said.

Anita quickly finished buttoning up the too-large shirt. “Hey.”

“I followed you up here a few minutes ago. Hope you don't mind. I wanted to talk to you, but then I heard you in there with Captain Morgan, so I just figured I'd wait until you were done.”

“You know him?”

“A little. Anyway, listen, what you saw downstairs, with Andy? It was a mistake.”

“I know.”

“I was pretty drunk—I still am, actually—and Peter had just basically accused me of having a boyfriend or something and totally rejected me, which really messed my head up. So I did something stupid, and I'm sorry for it.”

“Why apologize to me?” Anita asked. “Why would I care what you and Andy do?”

Eliza frowned. “I'm not really sure. But I think you do. Am I wrong?”

The song was still seeping quietly out from under Captain Morgan's door: “
I just want to start a flame in your heart
.”

“Stay right here,” Anita said. “I'm going to fix everything.”

She worried she'd be conspicuous walking back into the party in full military regalia, but nobody even seemed to notice. She saw Andy before he saw her.

“Dude, where have you been?” he asked. “The most amazing thing happened. Me and Eliza made out. And it was unbelievable.” His excitement was an excruciating twist of the knife.

“And did you tell her what you told Peter?”

“Are you kidding? Of course not! Speaking of which, shit just got
crazy
with him. He punched Bobo. Like, out of nowhere. So we had to tase him. It was messed up.”

“Peter punched someone out of nowhere?” Anita caught the brief flash of remorse in Andy's eyes. “I bet it was because of something Bobo did, wasn't it? And then he got pissed off, and you did whatever he told you to do. Like always.”

“Peter was gonna kick his ass! What was I supposed to do?”

“You let him. You let Bobo get what he deserves. Because he's an asshole, Andy, just like you.” Andy looked stung, but that only made Anita angrier. “And let's be honest here, yeah? Do you really think Eliza wants you? Because I'll tell you straight—she doesn't. You were just the closest warm body. And the funniest part is that she doesn't mean anything to you, either! The only thing you care about is winning your little game!” She wanted him to yell back, but he only stood there shamefaced, like a dog caught tearing up the couch cushions. “What is it even worth, huh? Would sleeping with Eliza protect you somehow, from what's going to happen?”

“She's all I've got,” he whispered.

And that was the cruelest blow of all. “Is she? Fine. Then I wash my hands of you. I'm done. Now, where's Peter?”

“He's out on the tarmac.”

“You left him in the rain?”

“Miz is with him. Wait, why do you want to see him?”

But Anita was already gone. Outside, her nice dry clothes were soaked through in seconds. A dark-blue dot in the middle of the runway came into focus—Misery sitting cross-legged with Peter's head in her lap. She raised a bottle of tequila by the neck as Anita approached, preparing to throw it.