The End As I Know It

by Kevin Shay

  “Sure, I remember that.”

  “Well, I hated it. It drove me up the wall. I stared at it for hours trying to figure out which one was missing, where he went.”

  “And?”

  “Oh, you know the answer, right? The twelve are each one thirteenth bigger than the thirteen. But the real answer is, the question is wrong, because those aren’t leprechauns at all, it’s just a bunch of lines and colors. I mean, if the puzzle were with, like, black rectangles, and someone said to you, ‘Here’s a piece of cardboard with X amount of black ink on it that happens to be in thirteen blocks, and you cut it up and move the pieces around and now the ink’s in twelve blocks, isn’t that amazing?’ it isn’t amazing at all, is it?”

  “No.”

  “So the trick isn’t that a leprechaun disappears. The trick is that they made you see leprechauns in the first place.”

  Weren’t we talking about computers a minute ago? Leprechauns! What about the broken code, for God’s sake? This is exactly the sort of issue-skirting that always drives me into a rage when I encounter it online. But I don’t feel provoked to argue with Paige for some reason—maybe nicotine, maybe attraction. She’s peeling the label off the bottle of wine and running her bare feet through the grass and hell, maybe she’s right, even if I have no idea what she’s talking about.

  “I’ll have to think about that one for a while.”

  “So what’s your deal? You gonna stick around here?”

  “We never really discussed anything beyond Thanksgiving. I’m supposed to do a show at my old school in Boston in a couple of weeks. I guess I’ll come back after that, if they want me.”

  “Oh, they want you. Except maybe Megan.”

  “Yeah, we haven’t quite clicked. Is it me?”

  “It’s not you. She’s just at that age where she can’t relate to any male she doesn’t have a crush on.”

  “She loves you, though.”

  “Oh my God, she loves me. I feel like I have a little puppy with braces.”

  “But yes. If they’ll have me. I guess I can get used to this.”

  “Yep.” Paige hands me the bottle. “That sounds familiar.”

  “Let me guess. That’s just what Hilary said.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  Serenaded by deafening crickets, I stare into the pitch-black woods, thinking about leprechauns.

  chapter 14

  400

  Days

  400 days.

  Four hundred days until the countdown ends, and with it the life we know. If we even make it that long.

  This month’s survey hasn’t gone out yet, but here’s a sneak preview of my Neuhardt score. 10. I’m finally at 10. This thing has been a 10 all along. I just couldn’t see it until now.

  Four hundred days. Every day, one less day until the collapse. Every day,

  “Randall?”

  “Hey, Claude. Come on in.”

  “Hope I’m not interrupting anything. Just wanted to let you know breakfast’s almost ready.”

  “Thanks.”

  Claude takes a folding chair from between the desk and the file cabinet and sits down on it. The blueness is barely noticeable. This must be one of those rare lighting conditions. “I just wanted to have a word with you, also. About what happened yesterday. I would hate for you to think I didn’t want you here.”

  “No, no—”

  “It was part of a complicated—well, we’re going through a little bit of a rough patch, Hilary and me. It had nothing to do with you. Just wanted you to know that.”

  “I understand. Thank you.”

  “So Hil and I were talking it over. And we’d love to have you on board.”

  “Oh! That’s great. Thank you.”

  “Well, thank you.” He shakes my hand. “We’ll make it through this.”

  It’s unclear whether he means all of us, through the rollover, or him and Hilary, through the rough patch. “Absolutely,” I say.

  He gets up and replaces the folding chair. “OK, great. Pancakes whenever you’re ready.”

  He leaves. I stare after him for a second, then turn back to my post.

  Every day, in the IT departments of the world, thousands more programmers and managers are

  What the hell am I doing?

  Who is this person, typing this? Pontificating about IT departments. Raising his Neuhardt score. Signing impassioned thousand-word missives with the name of a hand puppet. Inserting himself into a family that’s falling apart. Systematically slashing and burning his personal relationships. I used to laugh at people like him. Like me.

  I don’t want to be this guy.

  “I don’t want to be this guy,” I say to the Burseys’ computer.

  I’m not sure how to achieve that, but I do know the world won’t be any worse off if I don’t type the rest of this sentence. I delete the unfinished message—“Milestone Musings” was my pompous title—and go in search of pancakes.

  Throughout breakfast, I keep staring at Claude. Wondering what he was like before he discovered Y2K.

  “Paige, can you pass me the OJ?” Claude says.

  Normal-skinned, yes, but what kind of man was he? What kind was I? What is it about Claude Bursey and about me that made us Get It, while any number of other people, presented with the same facts, refuse to see?

  Maybe it’s us.

  The thought stuns me, makes me put down my fork in midbite. The possibility that we’re not seeing things more clearly than everyone else, but seeing things. Leprechauns.

  It’s impossible, of course, preposterous. The facts are the facts: the code can’t be fixed in time. I know that, haven’t seen anything to convince me otherwise.

  But what if that’s just me?

  Well, that would be great. Fantastic. I’ve always hoped I was wrong about all this. So let’s say the next century dawns peacefully. No problems at all. Impossible—but just suppose. A blessed reprieve, a victory.

  And would it even matter to the Burseys? This household will be lucky to survive intact into 1999, let alone 2000. Claude and Hilary have expended so much energy to prepare for problems in the world outside that they’ve neglected the possibility of meltdown from within. And where would a bump-in-the-road scenario leave me? Still breathing, but as this joyless, singleminded weirdo I’ve turned into?

  “Hey! Who wants to help me put up some apple marmalade later?” Grandma Helen says brightly.

  “I do!” Ann yells.

  No.

  I don’t want to put up apple marmalade. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to trade in my family for these strangers. I don’t want to spend every waking minute of what now passes for my life obsessing over power plants. No more, no more of this shit.

  Maybe it is TEOTWAWKI, maybe we’re all going to die. I can’t stop that. But for however long we have left, I can stop being this guy.

  I throw my napkin on the table and leap to my feet.

  “I will not die as this guy!” I shout.

  “Everyone in this house is crazy,” Megan observes.

  “Well, if you reconsider,” Hilary says as she helps me fold up the air mattress, “you’ll still be welcome here.”

  “Thanks, Hilary. I appreciate that. I think I just need to figure some stuff out, you know?”

  “I understand. Believe me, I do.”

  She leaves me to pack up. And decide where the hell I’m going. Anywhere but here, but where? All I know for sure is that everything I’ve done so far has failed miserably. So I might as well try the exact opposite. Old plan: research relentlessly, keep abreast of every new development. New plan: hide head in sand. Old plan: seek out safest possible place to be if and when disaster hits. New plan—

  I go into the living room, where Sean and Gregory are watching football. I used to like watching football. Go Patriots. From now on I’m watching football. I am a guy who watches football. I don’t follow Gary North. I follow football.

  “Who’s winning?”

  “Ag
gies,” Gregory says miserably.

  “You guys seen Paige?”

  “I think she’s outside,” Sean says.

  I find her behind the mobile home, smoking.

  “Hey, Randall.”

  “Hey. Listen. Can I offer you a ride to New York?”

  She exhales smoke and appraises me for a few seconds. “You’re going to New York City.”

  “Yep.”

  “The deathtrap.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Where did that come from?”

  “I’m not entirely sure. But that’s where I’m going. Want to come?”

  She stubs out her cigarette on the side of the Winnebago. “Here’s the thing, Randall. I like you. You seem like a nice guy. And even the whole, like, puppet thing, which you’d expect would be a total turnoff—”

  “I know! But it’s oddly endearing, right?”

  “Yeah, what’s up with that? Anyway, what I’m trying to say is, right now I don’t really need, like—how can I put this delicately? Someone with…like, theories, and…interests…”

  “You’re not in the market for a prophet of doom.”

  “Not so much, no. So if you’re just offering me a ride, as in a ride, then yeah, I’d love to get back. But if you have, I don’t know, any expectations—”

  “Not at all. Just a ride. Maybe some gas money.”

  “Gas money I can do.” She chews on her upper lip, looks at me with penetrating scrutiny. I try to appear devoid of theories and expectations.

  “Do you want some time to think about it?”

  Paige ponders my face for another long moment, then shakes her head. “Let’s get the hell out of here. I’ll go pack.”

  The clan congregates outside to see us off. Foil-wrapped turkey sandwiches are provided. Aside from Megan, who’s glowering at me for depriving her of her heroine, everyone is beaming at Paige and me as if we just announced our engagement, and Victor is positively leering. It’s just a ride, I want to explain, but mostly I want to keep the goodbyes shortish.

  I reach into the backseat. “Ann, I have some souvenirs for you and your brother.” She steps forward, leading Taylor by the hand.

  “Salmon Ella and Carlos the Crab just told me that they like it here, and they want to stay. So here you go.”

  Their parents start to protest. “Oh, no, you don’t have to do that.”

  “No, Randall, really.”

  “It wasn’t my decision,” I say. I hand Ann the puppets. She glows with delight. “Carlos is for Taylor, but you should probably take care of both of them until he’s a little older. Will you take good care of them, Ann?”

  “Yes.”

  “OK, all you have to remember are three things. No bleach, delicate cycle, drip dry. Got that?”

  “No bleach, delicate cycle, drip dry.” She looks lovingly into Ella’s eye.

  Claude nudges her. “Annie?”

  “Thank you!”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Frances, who seems unfazed by her daughter’s abrupt departure, steps up and air-kisses me near each cheek.

  “Randall, until we meet again.”

  “Goodbye, Frances.”

  “Take good care of my girl.”

  “Of course. Although we’re not—”

  She grips my shoulders and leans in toward my ear. “I think you’ll be good for each other,” she whispers.

  “Um, you may have gotten the wrong—”

  “Mom! What are you doing?” Paige swats her mother on the arm. Frances releases me and steps back with a cryptic smirk.

  A few hugs and handshakes later, we buckle ourselves into the Isuzu and wave back over our shoulders as we drive slowly down the dirt road, in the general direction of civilization.

  “That was nice of you, with the puppets,” Paige says once we’re past waving distance.

  “Yeah, well, Ann’ll enjoy them more than I do. Maybe it’s time for some new characters anyway.”

  We emerge from the woods. I idle for a minute at the edge of the narrow state highway, listening to the turn signal, looking at the tissue-papered mailbox.

  “Second thoughts?” Paige asks.

  “No.” I pull out onto the road. “Deathtrap, here I come.”

  We find our way to I-30. “OK, I think we’ll be on this for three or four hours,” Paige says, looking at the road atlas. “Just let me know whenever you want to switch.”

  “Thanks. I’m sort of used to driving for inhuman stretches, though.”

  “How long have you been doing this?”

  “Oh, God. Forever. Let’s see, the end of August? That was when I left Boston.”

  “Wow.”

  “And you? Did you grow up in Austin?”

  “No. So, as Mom told you in her inimitable fashion, Dad made a lot of money in computers in the seventies. After they split up—I was five—we moved from California to Houston, where Mom met Kenneth.”

  “Sean and Gregory’s father.”

  “Right. He worked for BPX. British Petroleum, Exploration.”

  “BP explores in Texas?”

  “Oh, yeah, are you kidding me? The oil companies all do stuff in each other’s backyards. It’s really more like all one big oil company. Or like, I don’t know, different labels of a record company.”

  “Imprints.”

  “Right. Anyway, my mother married Kenny, which is what I called him because he hated it.”

  “Yeah, I have a thing about Randy, myself.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. So my brothers were born. Mom agreed to raise them Texan. Kenny was back and forth to Alaska all the time. I don’t think they paid him a ton, but he got rich investing in futures. Then there were the affairs, which we all pretend I don’t know about. Not just him, she had a couple too. I was at college at Chapel Hill while their lawyers were breaking them up. Then I went to New Zealand for a year and a half.”

  “For what?”

  “I went down there to study native painting, but I ended up as more of, like, a pro bono art dealer. Turns out the Maori are a little more interested in rising above the poverty line than in teaching some American chick how they mix their pigments. So I spent half my time in town, showing photos of tribal paintings around to tourists and trying to get a decent price for them. Anyway, long story short—you ever notice how anytime someone says that, the story’s already been really long?—I came back and moved to New York. Which brings us up to date.”

  “And you’re painting?”

  “Yeah. For a while I was doing freelance illustration for ad agencies. It paid really well. But half the time I didn’t even know who the client was. They’d tell me, we need a, I don’t know, a kid in a field, and it could be for, like, Soup Kitchens of America or it could be for Union Carbide. Anyway, I sort of gradually stopped taking work and now I’m concentrating on my own stuff.”

  “That’s cool.”

  “Speaking of New York. Do you have any idea where you’re staying when you get there?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “Well, some friends of mine just leased this huge-ass loft in Brooklyn that they’re starting to work on. I mean, it’s, like, raw space still, but you could probably crash with them if you’d be willing to help out with the work for a few days.”

  “Interesting. Thanks. I’ll probably just look for some cheap hotel, though.”

  “I don’t know if you’ll find much available. It’s a holiday weekend.”

  “I can always swing out to the airport. I usually have good luck with airport motels.”

  “Jesus, Randall, that’s really depressing.”

  “Welcome to my life. But that’s nothing. Wait until I tell you about my sister’s cocktail party.”

  “They didn’t give us chopsticks?” I root in vain through napkins and sauce packets.

  “This is Tennessee. Use a fork.”

  We discussed trying to drive through the night in shifts but decided that was just asking for a backwoods flat tire and a Deliveranc
e moment. Moreover, I think Paige doesn’t entirely trust me not to dismember her in her sleep. So here we are in my room, one of two adjacent rooms we’ve taken at a Holiday Inn somewhere outside Nashville, about to enjoy a fashionably late supper from the Chinese takeout place that was the only thing open at this hour.

  I watch Paige lean over the desk and scoop white rice and sesame chicken onto paper plates. I’m starving and tired, but not disoriented and nerve-shot the way I usually get after long highway days. Amazing how much faster 600 miles goes by when you’re not alone with your thoughts. Paige passes me a plate, sits down in the desk chair, and cuts into a fragrant chunk. “Good, it’s chicken.”

  “What else would it be?”

  “Pork stomach. You used to get that a lot more often in Chinese restaurants. You know how certain chicken dishes have those little rubbery pieces that don’t really—”

  “Think we could discuss this later?”

  “Sorry. You better double up your plate. There’s some crazy grease going on here.”

  I sit down in the armchair. Grateful to eat something that isn’t a soggy turkey sandwich or from a rest-stop vending machine, we dive into the food with abandon.

  “My boyfriend in high school worked two summers in a meat warehouse. That’s how I know about the pork stomach.”

  “Will you stop with the pork stomach?”

  “Actually, he was my fiancé.”

  “Really!”

  “Yeah. The summer after graduation he bought me a ring. I don’t know, he was an impulsive kid. I think as soon as each of us got to college we realized how stupid it was, soon as, like, our horizons were broadened or whatever, but we stayed engaged until we both came home for Christmas.” She laughs. “Man, we couldn’t break up fast enough. It was so silly, you know? Here I’d spent the past three months worrying about how I was gonna have to break his heart, and then I find out he’s worrying the same thing about me.”

  “You gave back the ring?”

  “Not only did I give it back, he returned it for a refund, because he bought it on his dad’s credit card, who was ready to kill both of us.” Paige throws down her plastic fork. “I can’t sit next to this food anymore, or I’ll finish it.” She gets up from the chair and sits down on the bed. “Jesus. I think I can feel my blood clotting. Is that possible?”