Will McIntosh - Soft Apocalypse

“Sure,” she said, though she didn’t sound enthused. Deirdre didn’t seem to like hanging out with my friends, and, though she knew lots of people, she didn’t seem to have many friends of her own.

I held up the plastic bag. “Remember when I said I’d show you my childhood photos? Want to see?”

Deirdre took one of the albums, started flipping through the pages. I was excited about showing them to her. To me it was like catching someone up on where you’d been, who you were.

“Do you have any?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Nope.”

I waited for her to elaborate, but that was evidently her answer in its entirety. “How come?”

She sighed impatiently. “Because I don’t want to remember my god damned fucking childhood.” She closed the album. “Maybe I’ll look at these later?” She retrieved the remote, flipped through the channels.

“Okay. No problem.” Deirdre hadn’t told me anything about her childhood; now it was clear why. I stashed my albums under the couch, adding one more item to my mental list of things I should be grateful for.

At the concert that night tingles ran down my spine as I watched Deirdre perform her dark magic. Afterward people surrounded her, asked her to hang out.

“Nah,” Deirdre said, pressing close to me. The sensation was exquisite. “Come on.” She splayed her fingers low for me. I laced mine between hers. Her palm was cool and soft and full of promises.

We headed toward her apartment.

“Razors, Deirdre! You cut to the bone,” a kid called out as we passed. It was the kid with the lamp black around his eyes. He didn’t recognize me.

Most of Deirdre’s audience was so young. Most weren’t even old enough to remember what the parking meters lining the street were for, or what the rusty signs meant.

No Parking this side

Saturday 12:01 -4:00 a.m.

Sweep Zone

The street surely could use a good sweep.

We climbed the steps to Deirdre’s apartment. I stood behind her, my arms wrapped around her waist, looking down on the top of her head as she unlocked the door.

“Want to hear something?” Deirdre said, kicking off her shoes and pulling a CD from a long shelf.

“Sure. Is it a new song?”

“Nope.” She popped it into the player.

“Savannah 911: What’s your emergency?” said a woman’s voice.

“Is that real?” I asked. Deirdre shushed me, nodding.

“Someone just broke in here… they stabbed me and my kids, my little boys,” another woman said. It was real. No one could fake the anguish and adrenaline in that tone.

“Who? Who did it?” the 911 operator said.

“My little boy is dying.”

“Hang on, hang on, hang on,” the operator said.

“I have a whole collection of them,” Deirdre said. A vein in her neck, running over a stretched tendon, pulsed. “They’re not easy to get.”

“Oh my god, my babies are dying.”

I should have told her to turn it off. I should have sprung from the bed, stabbed at the buttons on the CD player until the voices went silent, but I didn’t want Deirdre to think I was… what? Weak. Uncool.

Deirdre unbuttoned her shirt. I leaned in and kissed the soft skin plumping at her cleavage.

“He’s dead. Oh, no. Oh, no. My babies are dead,” said the woman.

Deirdre’s lip was curled. “I don’t ride bikes.”

“Well, we can’t walk,” I said. “The beach is ten miles; everyone else would be heading home by the time we got there.”

Her fists were clenched on her hips, one knee bent. “Then go, I don’t care.” Of course she didn’t mean it. If I left her and went with my friends, she wouldn’t talk to me for days. I looked up into the branches overhead, feeling trapped. It was so rare that we did anything fun. I didn’t want to miss it.

“Well, how else can we get there?” I asked.

Deirdre didn’t answer. A woman with a cane who was way too young to have a cane struggled along the opposite sidewalk. Her legs were twisted, looking as if they might come out from under her at any minute. She paused to admire a small pack of dogs tied to a parking meter. They yipped and barked and wagged their tails, eager for the attention. It was the dog taxi—the owner was sitting on the curb, fanning himself with a piece of cardboard. He said something to the woman that I couldn’t hear.

“Ooh!” Deirdre said, pointing. “That’s how.” Before I could protest she had crossed the street.

She used her charms (lots of “pleeease?” while standing closer to him than was technically necessary for the negotiation to take place) to whittle the guy’s price down to $20. That wasn’t bad. Not as cheap as the nothing it would cost to bike there, but not bad.

I texted Ange to alert the gang that we’d meet them there, then climbed into the hollowed-out Mustang convertible as the driver hitched the team.

The dogs were pretty hilarious. They weren’t like a dogsled team, all lined up and pulling in a disciplined manner—more like the keystone cops, bumping into each other, biting ears, pulling at the wrong angle. They didn’t seem to mind the work, probably because they were getting fed, and had someone telling them they were good dogs.

Occasional traffic passed us on the single-lane causeway out to Tybee Island. Refugee tents were set up alongside the road, beside the golden marsh that stretched for miles.

“This was a good idea,” I said. “It’s a great way to see the marsh.”

Deirdre nodded. “Told you.” A car beeped behind us, then roared past. Deirdre gave them the finger as they passed, with a sweet smile on her face.

The gang was lounging outside Chu’s Beach Supplies when we arrived. Ange went right up to Deirdre like they were old friends. Cortez patted me on the shoulder and called me “bro.” Ange had almost backed out when I told her I’d invited Cortez, but he was a friend, so I didn’t think he should be left out.

The beach was packed with homeless people, leaving no space for us to spread the towels we’d brought. Strung out in a line, we stepped from one meager spot of white sand to the next and made our way to the ocean. Ange had a bottle of home brew that passed hands as we ran in the surf, splashing, laughing.

Deirdre and I swam out a few hundred yards and fooled around. The roar of the waves was distant; sea gulls screeched overhead.

“I almost expect to hear a lifeguard’s whistle, see him waving us in because we’re too far out.”

Deirdre just laughed. She pulled off her t-shirt, pressed against me. A big wave lifted us up, dropped us down.

“This kicks ass,” she said. She looked back toward shore. “Let’s go get more of Ange’s juice before it’s all gone.”

Ange was sitting on the shore, talking to Jeannie, not noticing me at all, but I still felt a little guilty about cozying up with Deirdre in front of her. Christ, we’d slept together on and off for, what, three years? It felt weird.

We rode the waves to shore. Deirdre pulled her t-shirt back on at the last possible minute, not that it helped much, given how wet it was. She made no attempt to tug it loose so it was less revealing.

I liberated Ange’s jug from Cortez and took a long swig, then went off with Colin down the beach.

“So you really like her, huh?” Colin asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “She’s high maintenance, but it’s never boring.” I thought of her collection of 911 recordings, and felt an uneasy twinge that had been nagging me since that night. “Why?”

“I’m just asking,” he said.

“You don’t sound like you’re just asking.”

“Well, that’s as may be. I’m still just asking.”

We stopped, looked out toward the tiny cargo ships dotting the horizon.