The End As I Know It

by Kevin Shay

“Right.”

  “And then you were staying with your dad.”

  “Yep.”

  “And now you’re back here.”

  “I am.”

  She digs at the seam of her cardboard cup with a fingernail. “OK, see, that’s the part I don’t get.”

  “Yeah. Well, this may be hard to believe, but I was doing pretty well here until I had that…setback.”

  She laughs. “Fuck you too.”

  “Come on. You know that’s not what I mean. I think I need to keep trying, is what I’m saying.”

  “But…you still believe in what’s-it-called, TEOWOOKIE.”

  “Yes and no. Yes. But people believe a lot of things. Sometimes they’re wrong.”

  “I guess.” She glances over at Moira. “So you’re trying. Great. And I’m sitting here…why, exactly?”

  “Don’t worry, this isn’t a begging-for-another-chance moment. Not that I’m above doing that. But I don’t think I’m in such a good place to be close to anyone right now.”

  “Yeah, that was sort of abundantly clear.”

  “Sorry. So, the loft.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Rafael and Graham. Are they still looking for people to help with construction?”

  “Oh! I think so, yeah.”

  “Any chance you can put us in touch?”

  I never get motion sickness, but this ride is doing the trick, Paige and I rattling around in the empty rear of a cargo van, Rafael starting-and-stopping through heavy traffic over potholed streets. And now, from what I can see from down here, the Brooklyn Bridge. The smell doesn’t help. Someone may have used this van to transport incontinent cats. No, don’t think about those cats. Just breathe through your mouth, keep bracing yourself against the wheel well. Almost there, almost there.

  “Been to Brooklyn before?” Paige asks me. May vomit if I open my mouth to form words, so I shake my head.

  Paige has been much friendlier ever since I failed to throw myself at her. She even sent Moira home, leaving the two of us alone for a while before Rafael and Graham picked us up downtown. I told her she didn’t have to come along, but she said she’s been meaning to take a look at the place.

  “Here we are.” Rafael pulls the van to a stop. I tumble out the back doors and take a moment to compose my digestive system.

  The neighborhood seems halfway abandoned. Only a few cars are parked on the littered streets, and everywhere there are the decrepit facades of old factory buildings and warehouses, no activity visible through their soaped and soot-blacked windows. If you told me this whole area had been evacuated ten years ago, I’d believe you. The building Rafael’s leading us to looks even a shade more decayed than its neighbors.

  “Welcome home,” Rafael says to Graham.

  “Welcome hooome!” Graham high-fives him. This is evidently a private joke between them. They have a lot of those. Rafael produces a heavily laden key ring and pulls up the metal gate of a freight elevator. We all climb in.

  Rafael runs the elevator. “Wait till you see this place,” he says.

  “How long’s your lease?” I ask.

  “Five years.”

  It could take that long to prepare the loft for habitation, I realize when we reach the third floor and Graham parts the elevator doors. He flips a switch on a power strip with his toe, and four incongruous college-dorm halogen lamps sizzle on. It’s a gigantic cavern of a space, completely empty, with eight or ten load-bearing pilings distributed across the floor. A few pipes and cables snake haphazardly around the ceiling, following some long-obsolete floor plan. In one corner sit a toilet and a sink, unsheltered. Along one wall are rudimentary living quarters: a row of thick foam egg crates strewn with bedding, some suitcases. Along the opposite wall, a stack of lumber and a couple of bins of tools. And that’s it. No walls, no fixtures, no nothing.

  “Whoa. You weren’t kidding when you said raw space.” Paige’s voice bounces around in the vastness.

  Rafael strides around the loft, cranes his neck to admire the ceilingless ceiling. “I know. Isn’t it awesome?”

  “It’s big,” I say.

  “Hell yeah, it’s big. And it’s ours to play with.”

  “Yeah, the landlord lives about five hours away,” Graham says. “Dude’s some Orthodox Jew, inherited a bunch of buildings, has zero interest in what goes on in them.”

  “Basically he told us as long as we don’t burn it down or store dead bodies, we can do what we want with it.”

  “Is this, like, zoned to live in?” I ask.

  “Oh, God, no,” Graham says.

  “None of the shit around here is,” Rafael says. “We got a guy who knows who to pay off, though.”

  Paige pulls her collar around her neck. “Does it get any warmer than this?”

  Rafael shakes his head. “Heating system’s part of phase two.”

  “Until then, space heaters,” Graham says.

  “Anyway. Randall, if you’re interested,” Rafael says, “we could use the manpower over the next month or so. I’m on this full-time, but Graham works four days a week.”

  Graham lights a cigarette. “Ursula and Adrian are working too. So we could use a strong back with a flexible schedule to fill in the gaps.”

  We hear the freight elevator go back down.

  “Speaking of Ursula,” Graham says. “It’s Ibsen time.”

  “Aw, man,” Rafael says. “They’re coming up here again?”

  “Relax, dude.” Graham goes to greet the elevator.

  “Ursula told her theater group they could rehearse here,” Rafael explains. “Of course, she neglected to point out that this means we can’t turn on a fucking power tool all night.”

  “What are they rehearsing?” Paige says.

  “Whatever the duck one is—The Peking Duck, The Wild Duck Variations. Some fucking duck is involved.” Rafael lowers his voice. “You know, don’t get me wrong, Ursula’s great. She and Graham are perfect together. But Jesus, I could never date an actress. Think of all the shitty plays you’d have to pretend to enjoy.”

  He goes over to inspect the tools. The elevator doors open, and a gang of chummy thespians enter the loft, all talking and laughing at once. The anorexic one kissing Graham must be Ursula. They cast off their coats and scarves and begin a sequence of vocal warm-ups, ooh-ooh-oohing and may-me-mying up and down the scales, chanting tongue-twisters in accelerating unison.

  “What do you think?” Paige looks around skeptically.

  “It has possibilities.”

  “I sort of assumed they were further along. I mean, I was picturing, like, rooms.”

  “Creeeeate!”

  “Deeeestroy!”

  “Creeeeate!”

  “Deeeestroy!”

  The actors bellow these words back and forth at each other for some reason, with gestures to match. I keep expecting them to segue into Tastes great! Less filling!

  I turn around in a full circle, taking in the tens of thousands of cubic feet filled with nothing but dust and potential.

  Four weeks of manual labor in exchange for a makeshift bed in a near-freezing construction site. That part I don’t mind. But what the hell kind of sense does it make to renovate something, to build a living space, in New York City at the end of 1998? When there are thirteen months left, if that, in the lifespan of this city? Now is the time to pack up and get the hell out of the cities. I should explain that to these guys, and—

  No, wait. We tried that, remember?

  I walk up behind Rafael and tap him on the shoulder.

  “Count me in,” I say.

  chapter 21

  376

  Days

  We’ve got gas!

  Looks like it, anyway. Lifting parquet for three hours has kept me in too much of a swoon of exhaustion to pay attention to the contractor’s progress with the gas lines at the other end of the loft, but apparently he’s succeeded. He and his guys are getting ready to leave, and Rafael’s signing off on paperwork. Rafael knows hi
s way around electricity and has done most of the wiring himself, but gas is a whole other danger level, so he had to bring in outside help. And now there’s a live gas outlet in the kitchen area, capped and awaiting a kitchen.

  I sit down on the dolly for a breather while Rafael rides the gas crew down in the elevator. Graham is pacing over by the south wall, yelling into his cell phone. “And dude, listen to this. They’re looking for three CPM! I told them that’s twice what we’re giving SinGallery. I’m like, dude, SinGallery’s only the biggest traffic driver—No! Three! You believe that?” Nobody is entirely clear on what Graham does for a living, but it has something to do with putting ad banners on porn sites. Business must be good, because he’s been paying in cash for thousands of dollars’ worth of materials for the loft.

  “Gas working?”

  “So they tell me. How’s the wood coming?”

  “Almost done. Couple more loads.” About two hundred square feet left, out of two thousand square feet’s worth of nine-by-nine-inch parquet tiles. My exciting afternoon: take tiles from van, put tiles on dolly, bring dolly up in elevator, take tiles off dolly, groan, stretch, repeat. I’ll be seeing parquet patterns in my sleep. The wood is ash, I’m told. Graham had his heart set on plank flooring, but the cost to cover this amount of space with planks of any halfway decent wood was astronomical. They knew a guy who knew a Russian guy who had some parquet he wanted to unload, so we prevailed upon Graham to lower his sights. Rafael and I drove out to Brighton Beach this morning to pick it up. I waited in the van while Rafael went into a restaurant to negotiate with the Russian. He came out half an hour later with directions to the warehouse where we’d pick up the wood. He looked woozy and told me I had to switch seats and take over driving, because he’d just done six vodka shots he couldn’t refuse.

  I stand up creakily and wheel the dolly to the elevator for another load. My arms and lower-back joints hate me after five days of this. Hauling in tools and parts and supplies, buckets and workbenches and plaster and drywall and lumber. Most of it obtained in four epic-length visits to Home Depot, plus one to a different Home Depot, in Queens, when the Brooklyn Home Depot didn’t have some things in stock. We’re completely spent at the end of each day, when we bed down in our sleeping bags on our egg crates, as close to the space heaters as we can get without waking up on fire. After two minutes of staring proudly at the silhouette of the growing mass of raw materials I’ve helped assemble, I’m out like a light.

  And exhaustion suits me just fine. No time or energy left to expend on obsessive worry. Day by day, I feel my terror losing its shape.

  Oh, the thing is still out there. I’ve read too much, thought about the facts too much to go into denial. But what used to be a solid jagged protrusion into every thought is now a soft-edged shadow that darkens the landscape slightly, gives me an occasional unpleasant jolt but doesn’t wreck my head.

  It’s out there, though. Wonder what’s been going on with the Social Security remediation—

  Shit, sitting still too long, brain took over. I hurry down to the van and unlock it. The sun’s going down, and the air has gone from cool to wintry. I start stacking tiles, ten at a time, warming up, moving in a slow rhythm to voices in my head. Voices chanting: Creeeeate! Deeeestroy!

  Rafael and Graham are about to head out by the time I unload the last dollyful of parquet.

  “You coming out, Randall?” Rafael says.

  “Laundry night.” I indicate my bags of dirty clothes. “Maybe I’ll join you later. Where to this evening?”

  There’s a great bar a block away that would be our local, but it closes at sundown, because the proprietors don’t want to attract a nighttime clientele from the nearby housing projects. This infuriates Rafael, not out of any sense of social justice but because he likes the bar. So they’ve been trying out various places in Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill, constantly complaining how nothing measures up to their favorite haunts in Hoboken.

  “Some new place on Atlantic,” Graham says.

  “It’s gonna suck,” Rafael adds sullenly.

  I hit the shower. Quality of life around here took a great leap forward yesterday, when we installed the clawfooted bathtub and hooked up the faucets and shower head. No walls on the bathroom yet, but a couple of those big Japanese folding dividers do the trick for now.

  I bring my bags down to the car and make the short drive to a laundromat in the Heights. I get three machines going with my clothes and sheets and towels. Then I set a fourth machine to knits/delicate, take R. K. Raccoon out of my backpack, and toss him in.

  R. K. is going on a trip. I’m sending him to Bethesda as my Christmas gift to Morgan. And since he’s going to live under Nicole’s roof, he needs a cleaning first. If he arrived in his present condition, I wouldn’t put it past my sister to chuck him in the trash and claim the package got lost in the mail.

  I watch my favorite puppet founder in a sea of suds. Morgan will be ecstatic, of course. And me? After I impulsively thrust two of the mainstays of my act onto the Bursey kids, I expected a wave of regret, but instead there was only a sense of appropriateness, of closure. I gave voice to these things for years, or vice versa, and had a good run with them. Now it’s someone else’s turn.

  While R. K. rinses and spins, I go outside to the pay phone on the corner.

  “Hello?”

  “Nicole?”

  “Randall!”

  “Hi, sis.”

  “Where are you? Dad said New York City, but I was like, that can’t be right.”

  “No, it’s true. Brooklyn.”

  “Huh.” She pauses to absorb this. “Does this mean the world’s not ending?”

  “I don’t know what the world’s doing or not doing. Me, I’m refurbishing a loft.”

  “Huh,” she says again.

  “Listen, Nicole?”

  “Yeah, Rand?”

  “I’m sorry about what happened.”

  “Oh. Me too.”

  “I appreciate what you were trying to do. And I hope you realize I’m not proud of how I reacted.”

  “Well, thank you. No harm done. I still have one of your little pamphlets, by the way.”

  “Ha. Hang on to that. Could be worth something one day.”

  “Anyway, I’m glad you and Dad worked stuff out.”

  “Hey, so I met Candace.”

  “Oh, right! Isn’t she perfect?”

  “Totally. Oh, before I forget. I’m FedExing Morgan a present. Which when he opens, you’re not gonna know quite how to take it. But it’s just something I really want him to have. So don’t worry. OK?”

  “Sure. I’m sure he’ll love it. He’s a little sad we won’t be seeing you for Christmas.”

  “I am too.”

  “We should make a plan earlier for next year.”

  “Next year. Definitely.”

  chapter 22

  372

  Days

  At the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge on a cloudy Christmas morning, I turn around and look back at the river I just walked over, the borough where I now seem to live. Somewhere over there sits our building, our space, the walls I’ve sweated to frame. My first idle day since I started, and I wish I was back there, making more progress. Funny, my only goal was to swing a hammer for long enough to take my mind off things. Never expected to feel such fierce ownership of the place.

  I straighten my backpack and start walking uptown. I haven’t spoken a word all day—woke to an empty loft, everyone else having left town—and I have the sensation of traveling in a bubble of solitude through the holiday-subdued streets of lower Manhattan.

  It’s only when I get to Paige’s block that I realize I might not be able to find her building. Only been there once, and that was at night. But a particular stoop jogs my memory, and lo and behold, when I climb the steps, there’s her name on the buzzer for 3F.

  “Yes?”

  “Paige? It’s Randall.”

  She buzzes me in. I take the stairs slowly, not wanting
to arrive gasping for air. When I reach her landing, she’s standing in front of her door in a big green bathrobe, waiting for me, holding the door slightly ajar with her heel.

  “Hi, Randall. Merry Christmas.”

  “Merry Christmas. Didn’t know if you were in town.”

  “I’m leaving with Moira in a couple of hours to go to her family in Jersey.”

  “Nice.”

  “You have any plans?”

  “I was thinking maybe a sleigh ride, and then a little caroling.”

  “Oh! Really?”

  “No. But actually, I have a favor to ask you.” I take off the backpack and hand her a manila folder. She opens it and finds a sheet of heavy white paper, hand-lettered on the top and bottom: my name, TUESDAYS 7–8, and the name and address of a bar in Chelsea.

  “Hey, you got a gig?”

  “Yep. It’s a hole in the wall, but I figure it can’t hurt to advertise.” I point to the blank space in the center of the paper. “I’m gonna shrink it down to postcard size. Wondering if you could put a guitar or something in there.”

  “I could do that. You want to come in?”

  “I can wait out here. I’ve seen you draw. You’re speedy.”

  “It would help if you’d brought a guitar. I can find a picture online, though. Be right back.”

  Five minutes later she comes back out and shows me the flyer, now adorned with a splendid little still life of a guitar leaning against a wooden chair, a bottle of booze on the ground next to it.

  “This is perfect.”

  “Wait, did I do the right number of strings? How many are they supposed to have?”

  “Not eight, usually. But it’s fine. I should’ve had you do the lettering too.”

  “Next time.”

  “Well, thank you so much. I love it.” I put the folder into my backpack. “Hey, I have a Christmas present for you.”

  “You do?”

  I hand her a wrapped package the size and shape of a cereal box. It is, in fact, a cereal box. “It’s really nothing. Just a whim.”

  “Should I open it?”

  “Nah, open it whenever. I should let you get ready to go.”