Robert Butler - Tabloid Dreams

I try to stand up. It’s okay. One hand braced on the table, then the back of the chair, and my legs are working for the moment. She touches my arm, on a bare place, near my wrist, and her hand is impossibly soft. We move off.

She says, “Is it that you can’t see us together?”

“No. I’m seeing everybody breaking up,” I say.

“You have nothing pierced,” she says. “This would be such a sweet thing for me.”

“Like a virgin,” I say.

“Yes,” she says. “You are.” And she puts her arm around my waist. I feel her bones there, her ulna, or her radius, whichever, what the hell good was all that education anyway, I think, with no world left. And her fragile bones: how simply, how completely, Janis would disappear. And all of us. I stop. We are in the middle of tables. People are all around. My face grows hot again, quickly. This woman smiling. That man dabbing at his mouth with his napkin. What a sad gesture, trying to keep himself clean while his death rushes to him, very near. Any day, perhaps.

“You’re crying,” Janis says.

“I’ve got something in my eye,” I say, and I draw away from her. Her arm slides off me, but something remains, a shadow of her. I stumble on, down a passage, past a pay phone, a woman talking there, whispering into the phone, a man on the other end, no doubt, and they think they will marry and have children but there will be no more children, never again. I push into the men’s room and into a stall and I slip the bolt and I back up against the wall and then I turn and lean my head into the wedge of the corner.

I don’t know all that much about death. My dad’s mother died, but I was very little, maybe about four, and I don’t really remember her. I don’t even remember whatever talk there was about Nana going to heaven to be with God, though there must have been some of that. Yes I do remember something. I grew up in Seattle. My dad works at Boeing. I think I had a picture in my head of Nana flying off to heaven in a 747 made by my dad. Which shows you what a little kid knows. If you’ve earned heaven, you should do better than airline food on the way. And they still had smoking sections back then. And the idea of God depending on my dad to get His souls to Him: no wonder I’m so unprepared for this moment. And there aren’t enough jets in the world for all of us. That’s a thing that makes me push my head harder into this wall. No seats. No room. Sold out.

I’m still crying, I realize. I dig at my eyes with the heels of my hands. I try to think about the bright side. The budget deficit will disappear. The whole national debt will be forgiven. Discrimination will end. All the handguns will fall silent. You don’t have to go out and burn up your days working at meaningless things. You don’t have to slowly drip your days away trying to do nothing. And you and Madonna will share a very intense moment.

I’m not sure I’m doing better, but my eyes are dry. I pull my head out of the corner and it feels like my skull has been compressed. I cover my temples with my palms and I worry, for a moment, that I’ve caused permanent damage to my brain. But that’s another worry that instantly loses its bite.

I go out of the restroom and the pay phone is idle, and I stop there for a moment. I think about who I should call, just in case this happens to be the last day in the life of planet Earth, if the meteor is slipping past the moon even now and due on Earth in four minutes. My mom and dad, for instance. But the last time we talked, we actually got through about a five-minute conversation without an argument, and that would be a nice way to end it. And I think of Janis. I suddenly want to be with her. Even if she won’t believe me, I’ll be beside her when the thing itself, grown white hot from its plunge through the atmosphere, appears in the sky and persuades everyone. I’ll hold her. You knew, she’ll say, and I’ll just hold her closer. I hurry now.

But she’s not there. The table where she was is empty. Justin and Seth are gone too. Suddenly, it feels like death. One moment you’re here and the next you’re not. The meteor will take everyone in the world, but right now it’s Justin and Seth and Liza and Peggy Sue. And Janis. Their sudden absence makes my legs go weak again and I think about falling down. But then I hear my name.

I turn and Janis is standing in the door to the Zima Garden. She motions for me, and I move toward her, a little bit pissed, for some reason. I realize what it is about parents when their child wanders off and then is found and the parents are happy, but mad too. Here. Take this whack. I was afraid you’d been harmed. That whole funny thing.

I get to Janis and she has her head cocked a little to the left. All her rings are visible — the three in her right ear, the two in her right nostril and the one in her lip, off-center to the right. She’s a right-brain person, she always says. Emotional. Well, I’ve reached a point where I put on a suit and tie five days a week, but I’m emotional too.

She says, “Is your eye okay?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Good,” she says, and right away she slides off again. “If you do this thing,” she says, “you can always know who you are even under your dress shirt and suit coat.” She taps me on the left nipple, very lightly.

I snap a little bit. “Back off, Janis. I like my nipple the way it is.”

Her face clouds up and all the rings quake faintly. She turns on her heel and moves off and I follow her. The sun is bright in the garden. More radios are cheering here and there. Our friends have lowered the umbrella at our table and are leaning their heads back, catching rays. Janis plops down and I stop and I look up into the sky, half expecting to see the flame of entry beginning. But there is nothing. Not even a wisp of cloud. So I sit and I reach out right away and touch Janis’s hand. “I’m sorry,” I say. One irony I don’t want is for the meteor to hit while I’m cordial with my parents and arguing with Janis.

But she turns her hand at once and takes mine. This gets to me. Even more because of the meteor. She doesn’t realize what’s happening and yet she’s quick to make up with me. And it was me who snapped at her.

I look around. Everybody’s just going on with their business. I feel very tender for them as they drink their coffee and their beer and they eat their croissants and they chat and they read their newspapers (which have missed the biggest story in history). Then I turn to the four lifted chins and four sets of closed eyes in front of me and I look at Janis, her face turned a little away. We are still clutching each other’s hands. I look at her rings. The one in her lip: I focus on that one. What is it I feel? The ring says she is soft, her flesh can part and yield to this tiny hard thing. It stirs me a little, too, that something is inside her. I want to be inside her. The ring carries me inside her body. And the ring says she is vulnerable. A thing can break through her, rip her open.

“You have to listen to me,” I say. Loud enough for the four chins to sink and the eyes to open. Janis turns her face to me. “Something is happening,” I say. They look at me blankly. The thing I have to say is too much there . It’s just there. There’s no angle on it. There’s no in-between. No place to hide. But still I have to try. “I have something important to say.”

Then we’re in shadow. It comes quickly over us and I know there are no clouds and Justin’s eyes go up first and he lifts his face and his mouth opens, in wonder, and then Seth is looking and Peggy Sue and Liza and the shadow is cold, very cold, and they’re all filled with awe and, I think, with terror, but Janis isn’t looking. She’s looking at me.

She asks, very gently, “What do you have to say?”