Soft Apocalypse (14 page)

“Typical,” I muttered. The Pink House was a silk tablecloth, sniff- the-wine-cork place.

“Yeah. It was his usual shit—the grope-hug greeting, reaching over to brush my hair out of my eyes, all the sexual innuendo crap. I asked if we could schedule my defense, and he said no, he thinks I need to run another fucking study. Then he pulls out his appointment calendar and says his wife will be out of town the first half of next week, and why don’t I come over to his place Tuesday night for dinner, to discuss the new study?”

Uzi strained hard on his leash, eager to get moving. We continued walking.

“It suddenly hit me that he’s not going to let me defend my dissertation until I let him fuck me.” She started to say something else but choked up. I waited as she took a few deep breaths and got herself under control. “He’s going to throw one obstacle after another in front of me, make me sit through a thousand excruciating dinners, because that way he has power over me.”

A Jumpy-Jump lounged on a stoop up ahead, watching us approach. Watching Ange, really. He was dressed in a mock-mailman outfit, the “U.S. Mail” shoulder patches executed in ornate calligraphy.

“For four years I’ve been dreaming of walking across that stage, with my whole family—even my bitch grandmother—watching. What do you think of your crank-addict loser, drug-rehab dropout, gypsy granddaughter now, you old bag? I wouldn’t even have to say it out loud. Probably none of them but my mom and Cory would actually show up, but the fantasy works better when they’re all sitting in a row on those metal folding chairs, watching.”

“That’s a big dog for such a little peanut,” the Jumpy-Jump said as we drew near. We kept our pace steady. I’d seen the guy around—he was ethnic, maybe East Indian. Long braided hair. He spoke with the singsong accent that Jumpy-Jumps evidently had invented out of thin air.

“Where are you two and your big dog so urgently needed?” He stood lazily, not exactly blocking the sidewalk, but impeding it. Ange veered into the street, cutting a wide path around him, and I followed her lead.

“I’m talking to you, don’t disappear me,” he said. He moved to block our path.

Uzi snarled and lunged. Ange held his leash tight; the Jumpy-Jump leaped clear of Uzi’s snapping teeth.

A heartbeat later, there were blades all over the Jumpy-Jump, jutting from his belt, his boots. He clutched what looked like machetes in both fists. “You think your big dog can protect you?” There was blood and a ragged gash on his thumb—Uzi had just caught his retreating hand.

I grabbed the leash and helped Ange drag Uzi backward. He was barking and snapping, scrabbling to get at the man. We just kept pulling, retreating the way we’d come, until Uzi finally relented and reversed direction as well.

“I can fuck you any time I want, Little Peanut,” the Jumpy-Jump shouted at our backs. “Right here on the daylight street. Strip off your false security and live in constant fear, where you belong.”

We ran five blocks before slowing.

“I hate that I can’t walk the streets without being afraid. I hate it,” Ange hissed.

“I know,” I said. My heart was still thumping like mad. “What’s wrong with those people? And what happened to the police? Or even the Civil Defense? What happened to their whole thing about taking back the streets?”

“Now they all just look out for themselves,” Ange said. “Just like Charles.”

A street sweeper rumbled along a side street, churning up plywood and cardboard shelters, its whooping alarm warning tenants to get clear or be swept up with their houses.

“Have you complained to the Department Chair about him?”

Ange nodded. “I was there this morning. She says there’s nothing she can do, that I should switch advisors. But Charles is the only botanical biotech person left on the faculty, so I’d have to start my dissertation over in a different area. When I told her I couldn’t afford to start over, because my financial support ended this year, she suggested I let him fuck me.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said.

Ange shook her head. “She said when buildings are being bombed and politically outspoken faculty are disappearing in the middle of the night, ‘small incivilities’ don’t mean much.”

“I can guess what you said.”

“I bet you can,” Ange said. She stopped in front of the Savannah College bio building. “This is where I get off.” She waved. “Bye, sweetie.”

I waved back. No public displays of affection. Somehow we’d made it work for four years, the friends-with-sex thing. Probably because neither of us had met anyone, or really wanted to meet anyone at this point. Things with Ange were comfortable and easy. Uncomplicated.

Truth be told, I was beginning to doubt that I would ever find someone to love in any case. I suspected that the sort of relationship I was looking for just wasn’t possible any more, that it was an artifact from the time when those photographs I missed so much were taken. There was a line drawn in my memory that separated my life before The Decline from my life after. I imagine everyone has that line. Everything else had changed after The Decline; there was no reason to think that love had some special dispensation.

I headed home. The sun was low in the sky, filtering through the twisted, moss-covered branches of the oaks, adding a gold tinge to the red brick path. I felt so bad for Ange. She was so close. A two-hour defense, three signatures, and she had a Ph.D. She could teach at a university, or continue her research for an agro corporation. The stakes were so high. Once upon a time if you didn’t make it into a lucrative career, there were plenty of semi-lucrative alternatives. Now it seemed as if the divide between rich and poor was a chasm. There was no middle class any more. On one side there were the rich—safe and comfortable, living in luxury—and on the other, on our side, it was a challenge just to stay alive.

As I approached Jackson Square, I stopped short. Sebastian was sitting on a bench in the square, with the Jumpy-Jump who had threatened us a half-hour earlier. They were laughing like old pals. Sebastian spotted me and waved; the Jumpy-Jump turned, smiled.

“Little Peanut’s big brother! Come join us.”

I headed toward the bench.

“You two know each other?” Sebastian said as I approached.

“Yes indeed,” the Jumpy-Jump said. He held out a bandaged hand without getting up, looking amused, as if we’d shared a joke rather than an altercation. I ignored his hand.

“We began our song with the wrong note, I fear.” He dropped his hand, stretched out on the bench and sighed contentedly. “So, Mister Peanut, what do
you
think of our Dada Jihad?”

I’d read everything I could about the Jumpy-Jump movement since that night at the art show. It had started in Detroit, after the Foxtown Massacre, when the police broke up a protest using nerve gas. A Native American street singer named Dada Tanglefoot began preaching a weird mix of anarchism, Zen, and Dadaism that spoke to the people. Tanglefoot was assassinated in quick order, probably on orders from the feds, but her words spread like a virus through the poor and angry neighborhoods. As far as I could tell, the actual doctrine was incoherent bullshit. Maybe Tanglefoot’s teachings had gotten tangled as it passed from person to person.

“I understand why you’re angry, but I don’t think much of killing random people,” I said. “What do you expect to get out of it?”

“Me?”

“Jumpy-Jumps, I mean.”

“We don’t expect anything.” He shrugged, his eyes twinkling.

“It doesn’t make sense.”

“Does anything make sense? It’s all absurd. We’re just unleashing some vicious absurdity to underscore the point.” He stood, made a peace sign. “Sebastian, it was a pleasure.”

Sebastian returned the gesture. “Same here, Rumor.”

“Down is up, and sinners are saints, Mister Peanut,” Rumor said as he turned to leave.

“My name is Jasper.”

“Down is up, and sinners are saints, Jasper.”

Rumor stood at the edge of the square, waiting for a truck to pass, before sauntering between two abandoned gas hogs and across the street.

“Why were you talking to that asshole?” I asked Sebastian. “He threatened Ange and me just half an hour ago, waving a machete at us. If Uzi hadn’t been there we’d probably be lying dead with our throats cut.

“I’ll talk to pretty much anyone.” Sebastian said.

“Well hooray for you.”

He met my sarcasm with a big grin. “If you always keep things amiable you minimize the chance of ending up in the street with your throat cut.”

“Nothing minimizes the chances of getting your throat cut when it comes to Jumpy-Jumps—they’ll happily cut you open and pull your guts out while they sing you a love song.”

Sebastian laughed delightedly. “You almost sounded like a Jumpy-Jump when you said that.”

I smiled. It was difficult to hate the guy too much because of his demeanor. “So, what’s it like? The virus.”

“It’s invigorating.”

“Invigorating? So, you’re happy all the time, and you don’t want to hurt anyone? You’ll even have a friendly chat with a terrorist? It sounds like a lobotomy.”

“Oh, no.” He clasped his hands together and held them to his heart. “It’s the exact opposite of a lobotomy. You glimpse the infinite. Just a glimpse, but that’s enough. If I were cracked open any wider I might go mad—we’re not built to experience all that emptiness.”

“Oh, now I get it. You’re basically on a permanent acid trip.” I gave him the peace sign. “Peace, love, all-is-oneness.”

An ultralight copter buzzed low over the square. Sebastian waited till it passed before answering. “That’s about right, I guess.”

“How did you get infected?” I asked.

“I volunteered.”

“You’re shitting me. You volunteered to be infected with an incurable virus? Why would you do that?”

Sebastian sighed. “My wife and daughter were raped and killed in front of me during the Atlanta gas riots.” He gave me a wan smile, as if he were talking about an old friend he missed. “I was going to hang myself; what did I have to lose?”

How do you respond to something like that? “I’m sorry.” It was all I could think to say.

A tall, scrawny girl hurried past carrying a bucket of water, her body canted to compensate for the weight.

“What did you do in Atlanta?” I asked.

“Research and development. I’m a virologist.” He closed his eyes, turned his face up to the sun. “I led the team that developed Doctor Happy.”

“So what are you doing here? Why aren’t you back there working on other fabulous new viruses?”

He made a face like he’d just bit into something foul. “I don’t want to sit in a concrete room under artificial lights all day. I want to be around people, in the sunlight.”

“Well, if it’s people and sunlight you’re looking for, you came to the right place.”

The night of the bamboo party, Chair and his entourage dressed as homeless people, which basically meant getting a little dirtier than usual, looking a little more hopeless and depressed than usual, and taking along a couple of trash bags of what looked like their belongings. Only instead of just their belongings, the trash bags contained bamboo roots and containers of gray water, wrapped inside belongings.

The crickets were in full stereo as Ange, Cortez, and I crossed MLK and walked up the on-ramp to I-16. Vehicles rumbled past occasionally, the drivers taking no notice of us. It was nice to be invisible; I thought maybe I should haul a bag of shit around with me all the time.

“Do you ever find yourself envying Sebastian?” Cortez asked.

“Shit, no,” Ange said. “I crave a good buzz as much as anyone, but I want to come down after.” There was a slight breeze; it was almost bearable tonight.

“But nothing would ever bother you again. Doesn’t that sound even a little tempting?”

“It’s virus-induced,” I said. “Those little fuckers are doing things to his mind.” We reached the interstate, walked alongside, staying in the weeds well away from the road.

“Yeah. I’d never do it to myself, but still, sometimes I envy the bastard’s peace of mind,” Cortez said as he looked up and down the interstate. He dropped his trash bag and squatted, pulled a garden trowel from his pack and dug a hole in a bald spot. Ange dropped a bamboo root in the hole, pushed dirt around it. Ange had decided to participate fully in this operation; she said it didn’t feel as much like rape as spreading Doctor Happy had. I, on the other hand, was there solely because I was afraid for my friends’ safety, and there was safety in numbers. Plus I didn’t have anything else to do. Colin and Jeannie were having a date night, and no one else was around.

Cortez poured water over it from an old soda bottle. We headed back toward the on-ramp. It had taken all of thirty seconds.

“How are you doing with that asshole Charles?” Cortez asked as we walked.

Ange filled him in on the latest; Cortez looked more pissed with each word. I peppered Ange’s monologue with the occasional “Can you believe it?”

“You want me to take care of him?” Cortez asked when she’d finished. “I can soften his dick in a hurry.”

Ange looked tempted. “He deserves to be hurt, but I don’t think that would help. Thanks, but no, I have to do this myself.”

Cortez looked disappointed. “Let me know if you change your mind.”

Ange stopped short, holding out her arms. “Shh. Listen to that.”

We listened. Splitting, popping, crackling sounds lit the air, as if the entire city was built on ice that was giving way. It was an eerie, awesome sound. The other teams had been hard at work.

“Unbelievable,” Cortez said.

We headed up Abercorn, under a canopy of oaks that cloaked the sky, as sirens began to compete with the hungry sound of awakening bamboo.

The effect was breathtaking. Broughton Street, the main retail strip, was completely impassable, choked with bright green bamboo stalks. Just as Sebastian had said, they pushed through the asphalt like it was cardboard.

The air smelled of blooming azeleas and piss. A group of young Dada wannabes in mock police, cowboy, and FedEx outfits strutted toward us, each sporting his own signature cool-walk. I put my arm across Ange’s shoulder protectively. She smiled; I knew what she was thinking: she had a seventy-pound dog with her, and Uzi had no qualms about putting a hurt on someone, whereas I had once eaten an unidentified fetus, and did all but thank the Jumpy-Jump who fed it to me.