Will McIntosh - Soft Apocalypse

“You cry when you laugh,” I said. “Not just when you laugh really hard, but whenever you laugh.”

“Shut up,” she said, laughing harder. “I do not.” More tears welled up in the corners of her eyes and rolled onto her cheeks.

“You do!” I pointed at her cheek. “I’ve never seen anything like it, it’s like those birds who can’t help but make a peeping sound with every flap of their wings.”

She laughed harder, and more tears came.“ Liar,” she said, swabbing her cheeks with the sleeve of her sweater.

“Shall we to the slide?” she said when her laughter had settled down to intermittent bursts.

“We shall,” I said, motioning ladies first. It felt so good to be laughing, to be having fun and goofing off. Phoebe was so quick-witted; I didn’t remember her being like that when we met all those years ago. Of course, we’d only spent a couple of hours together.

“Did you go to traveling carnivals a lot when you were a kid?” I asked as we picked our way across what had once been the midway.

“All the time. It’s hard to imagine a time when things were that easy. You worked, you bought groceries, you took your kids to the carnival.” She shook her head. “It’s like some fairy tale world.”

Phoebe grasped a rung of the ladder, looked up. “I didn’t realize it was so high .” She craned her neck to look back at me, hand still clutching the rung. “I’m afraid of heights. We could have just as much fun sitting on the merry-go-round horses, don’t you think?”

“They won’t move, they’ll just sit there,” I said.

“That’s okay. They’re pretty, and I’ll make horse noises.”

I pointed at the ladder, laughing. “You promised we’d ride the slide, and it’s the only ride that works.”

“I didn’t promise , I just suggested .”

“The promise was implicit.”

Phoebe huffed. She grasped the rungs and looked up. “All right, but you may have to call the fire department to get me down.”

I laughed. “They’d get you down, all right. With a high-powered rifle.”

I caught a glimpse of Phoebe’s white calf as she climbed, remembered her long legs, how perfect her knees were when I’d seen her in shorts that first day in the motel. Phoebe never wore shorts around us, always jeans.

It took a bit of coaxing to get Phoebe to slide down. At first she clung to the sides and braked herself every few feet, but the first steep drop made that impossible, and gravity ruled the day.

Phoebe clung to her hat so it wouldn’t blow off, which, along with her auburn hair snapping in the wind, made her look like a woman in a Jane Austen novel.

There was something about her very proper, demure nature that was extremely sexy. There was no denying it. But the thought of the emotional part, the thought of love, the negotiation of what the physical part meant… I had no stomach for that, so better not to try to cross that bright red line between a hug and a kiss.

Phoebe shrieked her way down the third and steepest drop. So strange. Wasn’t this what I’d always hoped for? I was with a funny, attractive woman, and we got along effortlessly. We’d met only a few weeks ago, and already we were close friends.

I slid down while Phoebe shouted an undecipherable mix of encouragement and taunts. I hit the steep drop, and felt that tingly falling-feeling in my intestines. It felt great, simulating emotions I hadn’t experienced in a long time.

“What say we check out the World’s Smallest Woman exhibit?” Phoebe said as I climbed back to solid earth. “My parents would never give me the extra three dollars to go in. They said it was a scam.”

“I doubt she’s home,” I said.

“Still, I’d like to go through her tiny dresser and look at all her tiny shoes.” She led the way.

The World’s Smallest Woman’s tent was a bust. It was an empty husk—no tiny dresser, no tiny kitchen appliances.

“Well damn,” Phoebe said, letting the tent flap fall.

I wondered if, given a different past, this afternoon, in this abandoned carnival with Phoebe, could have been one of those magically romantic days that you never forget.

“You okay?” Phoebe asked. “You got quiet suddenly.”

“I’m fine. I just got thinking about something that happened to me a long time ago,” I said, covering my trail.

“What was it, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Why don’t we stop and eat, and I’ll tell you?”

We ate wild mushrooms and nettle in the merry-go-round, in a chariot. Cherubs in silver diapers and women in flowing burgundy robes were carved into its sides. The carvings were exquisitely detailed, though the fingers on one cherub’s hand, which was reaching toward the sky, were missing. While we ate I told Phoebe about my first encounter with Rumor, at the art gallery. It was the first thing that came to mind to mask what I’d really been thinking.

Phoebe reached out and stroked the hoof of the horse closest to her. Its front legs were curled under it in mid-gallop, its mouth open, tongue jutting out between square teeth.

“I can see how that would haunt you, even after all these years. The bad things get tattooed on your brain, don’t they? Even though they’re in the past, it’s like they’re not, like they’re still happening somewhere.”

“They do,” I agreed. “I wish I could take just three or four days of my life and cut them out. I would feel so much better.”

Phoebe continued absently stroking the hoof. “I know what mine would be.” She looked off into the carnival, her face turned away from me.

“Which would they be? Unless you don’t want to say.”

Phoebe didn’t say anything for a long time.

“I haven’t told anyone,” she finally whispered.

“If you want to tell someone, I’m a good listener.” I waited, studied the red Tilt-A-Whirl choked with weeds.

Phoebe laced her fingers together, looked down at her feet, and began a story.

“After I left Stephan, the guy who wanted me to share him with a fifteen-year-old, I went off to find my parents. I hadn’t seen them in over ten years, since the day I left home to live with Marlowe, a black guy, and they effectively disowned me. It took me a month to reach my parents’ house, and when I got there I found my mother in worse shape than I. She had just carried on as if nothing was happening—planting flowers in her garden, watching crap on TV, until there was no more food or power. I took her out of there, but of course I had no idea where to go. We headed east, toward Savannah.

“She hadn’t changed much in ten years. All she did was complain. Her feet hurt, she was hungry, why had I taken her out of her home to drag her across the countryside. All day long she complained.

“Then one day we were walking through the main drag of a small town, and the McDonald’s had a cardboard sign up in the window that said ‘Open,’ so I left Mom in the shade, because I wasn’t sure it was safe, and I went inside.

“The man inside was selling hamburgers made with some sort of critter meat, but he didn’t accept cash, only precious metals or guns and the like. I didn’t have anything like that, and I started to leave, and he suggested—”

She choked up. I considered putting a reassuring hand on her back, or squeezing her shoulder, but sensed that wasn’t the right thing, so I just waited.

“He suggested a trade: he’d give me the hamburgers if I’d sleep with him. I told him no and hurried out, but I was starving, and my mother was starving.” She wiped her eyes and sniffed; her nose was badly clogged. “So I did it. Behind the counter. I tried not to cry, but I couldn’t help it, and he said to me, ‘Just think about how good those hamburgers are going to taste.’” She laughed, although it was partially a sob, and now I did press my palm to her back and rub just a little to reassure her, and it seemed to work. She took a few deep breaths and calmed down.