Mary Miller - The Last Days of California

“Just be quiet for a minute,” I said, taking her hand. We backed away from the cage and waited. I glanced at Luke in his cot with its thin white blanket. He hadn’t bothered to cover himself, and his breasts—they could only be called breasts—were small and folded over. They were different from a woman’s, missing whatever was inside them that gave them shape.

Finally, a bird flew out and perched on the fat woman’s foot. It looked around with its jerky bird neck before flying from one wall to the other as if measuring the dimensions of the room.

“This one likes to peck,” the woman said. “Not hard, just little love pecks.” The bird flew back to her foot and demonstrated, and the woman squealed and tossed her head about.

“I want it to peck me,” Elise said.

And then the other bird was out of its cage and they were both flying, stopping to look at us from the desk, the top of the TV cabinet. It reminded me of being a little kid, how I’d stand on tables and chairs to see things differently. How it would alter my perspective in the most pleasant way. I leaned against the wall and watched them. At the beginning of summer, on a walk around the neighborhood with Cole, a baby bird fell from its nest and landed at our feet. I’d nearly stepped on it. I was sure it had been some kind of omen, like a black cat in a dark alley, only a thousand times worse. It was dead, slick and eyeless.

When I looked at Luke, his eyes moved off to the side. He was the kind of guy who walked into a library or a movie theater and shot up a bunch of strangers, the kind who wouldn’t even have the guts to shoot himself afterward. He’d put the gun in his mouth and pull it out, put it in and pull it out, and then maybe break down in tears.

No matter how she called them, or how still and patiently she waited, the birds wouldn’t go near Elise. She stood and held out her arms like a scarecrow and they cut an even wider arc around her.

We got in bed and opened the box of fries, drenched and soggy with cheese.

“This is the orangest cheese I’ve ever seen,” I said. I stuck a finger into a corner, cold and gloppy.

“That means it has a lot of nutrients,” she said.

Or it’s poisonous , I thought. “Mom called,” I said. “We should call her back.”

“You call her.”

“She called my cell, too. She’s probably freaking out.”

“So call the woman.”

We ate while watching Anderson Cooper, our dresses wrinkled and hiked up our thighs. She stopped eating to tell me about Anderson’s brother, how he’d committed suicide. “‘I can’t feel anything anymore,’ he said, hanging from the ledge of a tall building. And then he let go.” She said he was handsome and rich and had everything and he still wanted to die.

“Do you want to die?” I asked.

“ No ,” she said. “I love my life.”

“Are you being serious?”

“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”

“I thought that was your point.” I concentrated on getting as much cheese onto each fry as possible before putting it in my mouth. “How do you know Anderson’s gay?” I asked.

“He’s thin and well-groomed and eats a plain baked potato for every meal.”

“A plain baked potato?”

“That’s what I read. He thinks eating is a burden.”

“I wish I was like that,” I said. I closed the box and threw it away, washed the cheese off my fingers. Then I took off Elise’s dress and hung it in the closet, put my shorts and tank top on.

Anderson was over and some other guy was talking about the rapture. If the rapture was supposed to start at 10 P.M. tomorrow night in California, it would start earlier in other parts of the world. For some reason this hadn’t occurred to me. Australia was waiting to see what would happen. They were sixteen hours ahead of us and it would all begin, or not begin, in a few short hours.

“Shit,” I said. “I forgot.” It seems like God wouldn’t care about time zones. Why do we have time zones again?”

“Because people used to set their time based on the sun but it was a mess,” she said. “Imagine if you were traveling and had to catch a train or something.”

“How do you know everything?”

“I make stuff up a lot,” she said. “People don’t question it if you act like you know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m not going to be able to sleep now,” I said. “I’m going to have to stay up all night and watch.”

“You can sleep with the TV on,” she said, nuzzling my arm.

There was a knock at the door, a series of hard raps. Elise ran over and looked out the peephole. “What do you think? Should we let them in?”

They heard her and called yes.

“What about your boyfriend?” I asked.

“I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“Yes you do.”

“I think I’d know it if I had a boyfriend,” she said.

They knocked again, calling our names, and she opened the door. They walked in like they belonged, but when they got to the middle of the room, stood there looking out of place. And then one of them sat in the chair and another sat on the bed. One of them said he had to take a piss and went to the bathroom. The last one looked out the window and commented on the view.

The one who’d bought us date grapes, Brad, was on the bed.

“Make yourself at home,” I said.

“I will, thanks,” he said, taking off his shoes. He had a nice smile, much nicer than Gabe’s, but I wanted Gabe, my beautiful boy. My beautiful, lovely blond boy. Why hadn’t he texted me? I hoped he didn’t think I was just some girl who had given him a handjob in the back of his van. I was, of course, but I couldn’t think of myself that way, and couldn’t think of him thinking of me that way, either. There had been something special between us.

Brad ruffled my hair. I had the urge to go to the bathroom and check, but I just smoothed it back into place and looked at my sister, standing on the bed. She ordered the Yelapa guy to stand in front of her and climbed onto his shoulders. Then she directed him around the room, running her hands along the bumpy ceiling. She told him to jump and he hopped, his feet not even leaving the ground.

Brad played music on his phone, a tinny, desperate sound, as Jake took a tin of cigarettes from his shirtfront pocket. He pulled out a wooden box and slid the top off.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Weed,” he said.

“You can’t smoke that in here, people will smell it.”

They said everyone was asleep but us, that no one would smell it. They said they’d been smoking in hotel rooms for years. I imagined the police kicking down the door and arresting us, taking us to jail. Our father would have to come down to the station and bail us out, and he’d be disappointed in me.

“Light it up,” Elise said.

They passed the little metal cigarette around: inhaling, coughing.

“I might want to try it,” I said.

“I thought it was a gateway drug,” Elise said.

“It’s a slippery slope,” Brad said, passing it to Jake. Jake knocked it against the table and refilled it, handed it to me. I held a lighter to the end and the weed burned as I sucked. I didn’t feel like I was getting much, but I breathed out a huge puff of smoke.

“I don’t think I feel anything,” I said, after a while.

“It’s pretty shitty weed,” Jake said.

“I didn’t feel anything my first time, either,” Elise said. “Or I was so drunk I couldn’t tell if I felt anything.”

I took another hit, sucking and sucking and breathing out a ton of smoke. I coughed—it felt like the smoke was trapped in my throat and I couldn’t get it out.

“That’s enough for you,” Elise said.

They continued passing it around while I watched TV. The reporter was interviewing people on the streets, asking them whether they believed the rapture was coming. I didn’t know why reporters were always interviewing people on the streets. I had a thought about it, something that seemed like a very good thought, but then someone said something and I lost it and couldn’t get it back. I didn’t even bother trying because I knew it was no use.