THE GREAT SLUR
The next day, a new order of strangeness, The Great Slur, broke out across the city south of Union Square all the way to J.F.K.
A nearly undetectable bluish sparkle enveloped buildings, permeated their concrete and brick exteriors, seeped deep inside. A fine shimmery azure haze sheathed furniture, coated walls and fixtures, overlay everything from toothbrushes, silverware, and ashtrays to houseplants, shoehorns, and spooked cockroaches.
Before the government could respond, inhabitants in the affected area awoke to the slow comprehension that their apartments had relocated to different floors, or, more disconcerting, between floors like stalled elevators. The streets filled with the sound of police and hook-and-ladder sirens.
Some apartments manifested in other complexes entirely, while others subtly reordered—a few unsettling inches added to a bathroom here, space at the back of a closet gone missing there, the height of a ceiling increasing or decreasing by a centimeter or two, a chapter of a novel on a disheveled bookshelf packed with them arising earlier than recalled, the advent of typos, foreign words, unreadable languages.
Intermittently, doors went away.
Bystanders reported it was as if another plane of existence were infiltrating this one.
As if the anxious perplexity everyone had been feeling recently surged out of them and into their surroundings.
Wives and husbands took in their partners with barely suppressed suspicion, speculating that they, too, had somehow been contaminated by the shadow life, become other than who they claimed to be.
Now that I know you better, they thought to themselves, sizing each other up, I know I don’t know you at all.
Five buildings from Queens glittered into being across the East Village, overlapping with those already in place to create elaborate Escheresque configurations in whose impossible hallways tenants became irremediably lost, followed by the search teams in spelunking gear sent in after them.
The ninety-three-story Brooklyn Tower snapped into view at twilight, fully intact, in a remote area of the Nevada desert near an old nuclear testing site.
That evening, a 747 bound for Heathrow tilted up its nose for takeoff and vanished along with all but three of its four hundred six passengers, two of whom moments later flickered back into being at separate terminals, one at the Suvarnabhumi in Bangkok, one at the Galeão in Rio de Janeiro. The third appeared at sunrise the next day on a seldom-used LAX runway, curled into an embryonic ball, thirty years older, hair white and frowsy, torso bruised, stammering about the bitter taste of sound and how thought ice is the most painful kind of motion there is.
New York declared a state of emergency.
New Jersey. Rhode Island. Connecticut.
The banking industry faltered.
The stock market tumbled.
At twilight, thousands of National Guard troops flooded into Manhattan, along with military flatbed after military flatbed loaded with blast walls, quarantining the area below 20th Street and all the boroughs on the far side of the East River.
Tanks surrounded the Brooklyn Tower. Smartphones in hand, flummoxed onlookers drove in from Los Angeles and Las Vegas, St. George and Ash Springs, to gather at the security perimeter and document the inconceivable. The news crews. The newlyweds. The sun-staring visionaries living in trailers without air-conditioning scattered across the desert calamity.
Attack helicopters circled the skyscraper like a small swarm of enormous titanium wasps.
THE AGE OF INTERPRETERS
Thanatologists posited what we were seeing was a keyhole through which lay the life hereafter, a brief bulletin sent to let us know what we can expect following expectation: deafening babble and boundless confusion.
If you believe our lives here and now are treacherous, the dead seemed to be telling us, just wait.
If you believe the beyond will ultimately provide a sanctuary of stillness and serenity, keep jerking your own chain.
The bulletin behind the bulletin proclaimed: Enjoy every in-suck of breath. You have fewer left than you think.
Or conceivably, the inverse was true. Conceivably The Great Fluctuation was evidence of the dead’s compassion. Maybe they were actually trying to calm us, affirm everything was going to be—after a fashion, give or take, roughly speaking—all right, fine, good enough, by showing us that what comes next won’t be as bad as our faiths have viciously taught us.
Death wasn’t nothing, granted, no snapped off light switch, no ebbed battery, but it wasn’t hell either, wasn’t white tunnels, reincarnation, spirit worlds, nine realms or seven, unconsciousness, family reunion, judgement cataclysm, gray in-between, a summer meadow bustling with furry Norsemen, or bright balls of divine light.
What awaited us was no more and no less than an unending low-grade mayhem, not unlike this life, only louder.
Or perhaps it was that the departed weren’t even aware of us, couldn’t see us, had no sense of our presence, couldn’t have cared less, had simply begun spilling out of their beyond because it had become so crowded over the millennia, that what we were hearing was them calling out in alarm at the disruption to their non-lives, asking what had happened, where they were, begging to be let back in like cats on a rainy night, even as a portion of their domain spilled out around them in a torrent of blue illogic.
By the time those thanatologists spoke up, however, no one was paying much notice anymore. Too many conjectures had been put forth only to be contradicted, bickered about, pushed aside for others which were then contradicted, bickered about, and pushed aside for yet others.
The Age of Interpreters had come and gone.
All people wanted nowadays was to eat their breakfast in peace, then take the dog for a walk. All they wanted was a not-heinous McJob with benefits, including dental and vision. If they had a few minutes to nap, watch a flea-brained movie, scroll through a dozen social media sites, type a couple dozen texts while lamenting how many texts they had to type, and share a beer around a chiminea with acquaintances they could pretend were more than acquaintances in a backyard they could pretend was more than drab, they were content.
Who cared about what was going on Out There when everything worked plenty well In Here?
Who genuinely cared about havoc when it wasn’t yours?
There came the talk of clarity. Of healing. Of breath and balance and opening hearts.
All at once everything was personal.
All at once everything was public.
All at once everything was Zoloft, Paxil, Wellbutrin, and radical love.
Because the only thing big questions ever led to were big agitations. Thought has always been the greatest trauma trigger of all. Whereas the touch of somebody’s lips on your right shoulder, the sensation of somebody’s arms tightening around you as they draw you in close, the numb mind in the middle of morning meditation pretending it’s alert: those are the only solutions that matter—those and perhaps the latest video console, a good Sunday football game, a toke of high-grade weed, some flyfishing in a mountain stream a couple yards down from someone else flyfishing in the same mountain stream, a few happy-hours a week at the your local taproom, chilling, putting up your feet, letting down your hair, passing a smeary afternoon boozing and gambling at your nearest seedy casino before passing a smeary evening boozing and gambling at your nearest seedy casino.
If there were more to life, people said, they’d sure like to see it.
There came the talk of classical guitar lessons. Yoga studios. Adult education classes.
Talk of intention and surrender.
Of high-end hazmat suits, the flexitarian diet, Self-Isolation Advocacy.
The book clubs.
The microbreweries.
The celebrity doppelgängers, the trend forecasters.
Squat challenges and moon phases.
Everyone is precious.
Everyone is dangerous.
Unicorns vomiting rainbows and the Shellshock Massage developed to follow that dim squander called your dayshift.
That’s how the movement Joy Pride™ burgeoned. Its motto, printed in plain black Baskerville on plain white t-shirts, sweatshirts, and baseball caps: I missed the part where that’s my problem.
The healthy salads with kale, flaxseed, and dried cranberries preceded by a Klonopin, an Ativan, a BuSpar.
The side of grilled salmon.
The side of grilled chicken.
The CBD-specific gummies.
The talk of black carbon aerosol, habitat fragmentation, flavor fatigue.
Of going with the flow. No coincidences. The biome.
The tactical vitamin supplement.
Self-care and TikTok. Jade eggs and vaginas. Celery juice and kombucha.
The Corpse Pose.
The Sky Destroys the Rabbit Pose.
That tingle of superiority sensed in the modest everyday display of kindness and gratitude.
The boosted post. The dark post. The hashtag.
The listicle. The lurker. The cost per mille.
Newsjacking and vanity metrics.
Quantcast and coffee enemas.
Oxygen shots and Yelp.
Placenta pills. Penis facials. Eco-friendly menstruation.
The information coming in.
The information going out.
ELECTRICAL SYSTEMS AS VOYAGE DEVICES
This year was the first Eduard’s sister and brother-in-law didn’t invite him over for the holidays. Eduard had waited. He had waited some more. And in the end he came to appreciate that their silence signified Jim was too far gone by this point, Rhouth far too unmoored to send up the vestigial social flare.
It was awkward for Eduard to admit, but their remoteness relieved him.
Their situation wasn’t his situation, and he had the end of a life he was busy trying not to live.
Should he call Rhouth to pass half an hour with formulaic holiday cheer?
He weighed the pros and cons of this notion as he listened to his pee froth beneath him, the concentrated morning stink of it rising.
He should.
Why?
Why not?
That’s what you did with sisters.
Wasn’t it?
Ten minutes, twenty, and it would be over, after which he could work out how to unthread the rest of this stupid consensual hallucination of a holiday to his liking.
He returned to the kitchen table, took a seat, tugged out his cell phone, checked on Rhouth’s kids’ names, and dialed.
He sipped his coffee inside a morning cloud of photons, anticipating. Once the ringing starts, he knew, there’s no escape. Once the ringing starts, they know who placed the call, what time, who hung up before—
I don’t understand anymore, Rhouth was saying out of nowhere.
It was as if they had been talking for hours and she just starting to conclude. Her voice warped across icefloes, overran with static and then cleared.
It used to—, she said. And now this. What is this?
Merry Christmas, sis, said Eduard. What are you and Jim up to today?
We’re up to Jim is sleeping. That’s what we’re up to. That’s how Jim Jims lately. Can you point out Slovenia on a map? I can’t. I don’t have a clue. I’d hypothesize near Hungary. But then the question becomes: Where is Hungary? It’s like that, all the time.
Everything feels obsolete, Eduard said. Two minutes ago—prehistory. Three—the primeval fireball.
Tell me: Is Moldova still a country, or is it one of those that went away after World War Two?
Why go out? Ed said.
I couldn’t have said it better. There’s enough crap to deal with staying in. Do you know what the checkout guy at the convenience store told me yesterday when I asked him to please use hand sanitizer before touching my products?
I don’t.
He told me I was harshing his mellow.
People talk like this?
Unselfconsciously, Rhouth said. He wore metal things instead of eyebrows, which he had shaved off. Imagine the distress of insertion, I thought, standing there, trying to invent a witty rejoinder.
What did you come up with?
I apologized.
You apologized was your witty rejoinder?
The GPS is busted. We’re coming in hot.
How are Emma and Noah doing?
How should I know? Rhouth said. They’re doing fine, I’m supposed to say. I’m supposed to list their recent accomplishments and the accomplishments of their children, then feign maternal pride. Then you’re supposed to perform supportive delight. They’re doing great, I’m supposed to say. They couldn’t be better. Which I will make something up if you’d like. I think Emma may have an eating disorder. Either that or she’s taken up running.
What from?
Her life as a barista at forty-two, if I had to wager a guess. I want to lose interest in it all. Who doesn’t want to lose interest in it all? My husband, this man I have known and loved and not loved and loved again for however many millions of years—now it’s Häagen-Dazs. This is who he is. Ice cream has come to determine his Jimness.
Häagen-Dazs, Ed said.
He looked out his kitchen window at the grungy brick wall ten feet away which hadn’t been there a month ago.
Once it was painting, Rhouth said. Once it was time in the studio. Now it’s ice cream. He smiles while slurping. If you can call that thing he does a smile. Ice cream and pepperoni pizza. The New York kind with pooling grease that saturates the paper plate beneath until orange and slimy. But mostly Häagen-Dazs. Strawberry and chocolate-chocolate chip. Nothing else. That’s what we talk about. The banks coming apart? Climate refugees? Forget it.
The temperatures, Ed said. The aridization. Telehealth. I’m sorry.
Think five years, said Ruthie.
How so?
Don’t be sorry. Who can be sorry when you think five years?
It’s all our fault.
How?
Fuck if I know. We had occasions, evidently.
Everybody has occasions, evidently, Rhouth said. Heart-searing guilt is the new black. Urgently feigned Zen indifference. An emergency irony that implies we had it coming, that announces: If only you people had listened to me.
In the final analysis, you’re saying, we’re Neanderthals in Adidas.
Knuckle-draggers in Gucci. New flags, new banners, new threats, new deceptions, and it’s: Where’s my strawberry ice cream? Where’s my chocolate-chocolate chip? Chocolate salted fudge truffle, I should mention, is out of the question. Banana: not on your life. Don’t even get Jim started about the deficits inherent in sorbet.
This is a problem?
This is a breakfast.
Give it to him. It’s the least life can offer by way of apology.
What was democracy?
The total saturated fat. The rush of sodium through the arteries.
And they say: Be grateful.
That it isn’t worse, Eduard said. What was privacy? Here, have mine. I’d rather chalk up likes on Facebook. I’d rather be able to buy overpriced items on Amazon while simulating meaningful relationships.
It’s everyone’s above average.
Botoxed and detoxed.
Everyone’s a winner.
Except those who aren’t. Super-predators, for instance. As opposed, I assume, to run-of-the-mill predators. The word impactful. How are your eyes doing?
Macular degeneration is a breeze, I’m supposed to say. This is the point in our conversation where I’m supposed to downplay the repercussions of slowly losing my eyesight and lead you to feel pressured to say with a mixture of encouragement and affirmation that I’m built from pure grit. Which I will make something up if you’d like.
Jesus.
Basically, it’s why get out of bed? Rhouth said. Why get into bed? Do you happen to know if Dupuytren’s contracture runs in our family?
Why do you ask?
It just occurred to my synapses, she said. They wondered, not me. I couldn’t care less. This is the point in our conversation where you’re supposed to ask what’s in store for Jim and me today. A shuffle around the block? A witless movie on the couch accompanied by clever eyerolls undergirded by a sense of critical sanctimoniousness?
What’s in store for you and Jim today?
Häagen-Dazs and autonomous synapses. That’s where my lifework has taken me. That and wondering where the alley went I used to look out on from my bathroom window. It was here a week ago. There was a cat. White and bloated. A furry pocketbook with legs. Its owner had dressed it as a French nihilist. Red beret. Red ascot. Black-and-white striped Breton fisherman’s shirt. The cat plainly craved euthanasia. You could see it in the eyes.
Dirty bombs, Eduard said.
Sliding markets, said Rhouth.
The seepages. The investigations. The unknown unknowns.
Help me out here: what’s trauma porn?
Don’t ask. In Japan, you can rent a mother. A father.
One of each has been plenty for a lifetime, thank you very much.
Grisly information’s advent as booming industry, Eduard said. Big numbers. Batch processing.
Data lakes.
Raw water as atonement. White noise machines. The discourse about collective helplessness.
Legionella bacteria, Eduard said. Superfund sites. The next variant after the next variant’s variant.
The arsenic duststorms once referred to as The Great Salt Lake.
Don’t worry, said Eduard. Be happy.
Live, laugh, love.
Have no regrets.
Forgive yourself.
Do no harm.
Trust the process.
Question authority.
Let it be.
Let it go.
Just go for it.
Just do it.
Just do the work.
Just get over it.
Just get on with it.
Life is short.
Life is a journey.
Life is a short journey.
Be still.
Keep moving.
It was meant to be.
Shit happens.
You can’t take it with you.
Unless you can.
Follow your bliss.
Feed your soul.
Today is a gift.
Tomorrow is an exchange of that gift for one that fits.
You got this, girl.
Crush it.
You’re only as strong as the drinks you mix.
Stay grounded.
Stay present.
Have it your way.
Balance your chakras.
Balance your meds.
Be yourself.
Be anyone you want.
Don’t leave home without it.
Wait, Eduard said. I think that’s a corporate tagline.
These are all corporate taglines, honey.
I hear you.
I see you.
We believe you.
You are worthy.
Run wild.
Run scared.
Run like your goddamn life depended on it.
Take back the night.
Take back the morning.
Don’t forget the afternoon.
Wield your stun gun like you fucking mean it.
…
…
…
Well, that was fun, Rhouth said. What do we do now?
…
…
…
You would imagine there should be a way to outthink the difficulties, Eduard said, wouldn’t you?
I take some small consolation in the knowledge we still have punctuation. God bless the Oxford comma. God bless the em dash used with panache. Except—why do you suppose no one speaks about the imminence of nuclear war anymore? I have to confess I feel a certain gentle nostalgia for its terror. The good old days of duck-and-cover. The shadows on the walls. The turtle in his shell. The cartoon children beneath their cartoon desks. His name was Bert. The turtle. Why do I have to recall this? By the way, I suggest we give ourselves a different name for each phase of our lives.
Because why?
Because we’re never us. Because every day is identity theft.
What would your name be for this one? Eduard asked. This phase.
Fifi Trixiebell. Boomquifa. Have I made it clear that I for one believe memory is overrated? She paused, added: Why did I just say that?
Because our computers are trying to kill us, Eduard said. Gray goo and insurgents on the crosstown local. Because someone is short-circuiting our power grids on a regular basis. Let’s call it North Korea. Let’s call it a teen named Dylan sitting in his basement in Hackensack, eating Doritos.
Did you have light last night?
I read by it, Eduard said. You would have thought we could have considered vulnerable power grids at an earlier date. How are Noah and Emma hanging in there?
You already asked that.
Oh.
What were you reading?
The Odyssey.
Spare me, Rhouth said. You open that book and it’s clear our outthinking days are behind us. I used to be a respected attorney fighting the good fight against whatever it was I was fighting the good fight against. Soon it will be the Cyclops. Circe. That guy with the prophecy thing.
Tiresias?
How should I know?
You’ve read The Odyssey?
Of course not, Rhouth said. Talk to me of contingency fees. Wrongful death, hearsay, medical malpractice. Then we’ve got ourselves a game.
Give Jim his goddamn Häagen-Dazs, sis. May every meal be a holiday treat for us all.
What are you saying?
I’m saying it’s on me.
You’ll pay for it?
I’ll endorse a proof of concept.
You’re saying give him pleasure and hope. That platitude.
No, no. I’m deploying a different platitude. I’m saying, make him comfortable because what’s there to lose?
I’m highly dubious of this comfort business. Go ahead, Ed, define the word in such a way that any two people would agree on its meaning across time and space.
I’m just saying—what am I just saying? I’m just saying—
…
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…
…
…
Hello? Rhouth’s voice said from somewhere in outer space.
Sis? Eduard said.
Ed? You there? Ed?
Can you hear me?
Hello? she said. Hello?
I’m right here. Rhouth? Here I am. What if I just— Can you hear me now?
Hello? Rhouth said. Hello? Hello? Hello?
