Songs for the End of the World

by Saleema Nawaz

  Owen tries to catch the eye of his preferred waitress, while wondering if connect-the-dots is a lost art. When he was a child, there was an old book of them around the farmhouse from the forties or fifties, and he remembers doing them with his cousin, and how far apart the numbers were spaced. The pictures remained unfathomable until they began to trace lines in arcs across the page to reveal a dog, a hatching chick, a Christmas stocking. With another look at the puzzle in front of him, he wonders if he has only forgotten what it’s like to be a child, how not to see at a glance the shape of an ending before you begin. Before images, ideas, events, and even people began to be as predictable as the alphabet. Maybe a child today would find this puzzle just as difficult. If only there was one near at hand he could ask.

  When the waitress comes—an acerbic redhead about whom he occasionally fantasizes—she sets down a cup of coffee and confirms his regular order. Poached eggs, sourdough toast, an arugula side salad. During the first forty-three years of his life, he never ate poached eggs, and he never ate arugula, at least not on purpose, though he consumed it willingly enough if Rachel put it on his plate. But Owen, through no inclination of his own, is the recipient of a new life, a new start. Perhaps not really so new anymore, four years in, but only now does it finally feel like his own. A new apartment, new furniture. No new friends, but he has managed to keep the few he had, which is more than most men his age can say. He has a new book out that is also not really new, but it is still being talked about because of its tenacious snail’s pace up the bestseller lists. It is what his agent calls a phenomenon, mainly because he can’t understand how it became such a success, though Andy has alternately tried to attribute it to excellent word of mouth or, given the subject matter, existential despair. Five years ago Andy was surprised to hear from him again, but now he is busy making esoteric deals for Owen’s phenomenal book that Owen barely even comprehends, like the one with the video game studio he’s going to visit after breakfast.

  He has a new routine, too. His small-town homebody ways from his years in Lansdowne are gone. On mornings he has appointments, Owen likes to go out for breakfast at this diner-bistro. On other days, he gets up early and goes over to Greenpoint, where he keeps his ocean shell, the same one that Rachel bought him when she still loved him, and rows out from the creek into the East River, going up and back or down and back, depending on the current. Even the river here—really a saltwater tidal strait—is more dynamic than what he’s used to. It changes direction every six hours.

  While he waits for his breakfast, he searches in his bag for a pencil and then traces through the dots until the fish and its bow tie are clear and defined, sealed within their own outlines.

  * * *

  —

  After breakfast, Owen takes the M train into Manhattan. A mother with a small baby sits next to him. The baby is asleep in a carrier, its tiny head lolling to the side in a purple knit cap.

  When Rachel decided she wanted a baby and Owen refused, she’d stayed with him anyway. She had loved him that much. And for seven years, Owen tried to be a better husband, and failed. He tried to make it up to her in other ways, and failed even worse. Of course he had. That kind of sacrifice on her part was obviously too much love. People who loved like that were bound to be disappointed.

  And during those years when he was working at the marriage, he was slogging away at the novel, too. Looking back, he wonders if his ardour for one outranked the other. At any rate, only one of them was a problem that could be solved with words. His extra attentiveness to Rachel merely allowed him to track with heartbreaking precision the diminishing tenderness in her eyes when she returned home from campus every day. As time went on, he began to think of his declarations of love as an ill-conceived engineering project, like digging graves along a shoreline; they could neither withstand nor contain her sorrow, nor his growing sense that he was no longer enough for her.

  He can still picture Rachel during that last month, uncommonly quiet and listless, bound to her disappointment and to him, his whole existence just an unwelcome burden. No wonder she cut him loose so fearlessly, without looking back. Ever since signing the divorce papers four years ago, she has ignored all his messages.

  He understands, too, that in the grand scheme of things, he exited his marriage as a winner. He has his freedom, his savings, a career. Everything he could want except for Rachel, who has cast him out, not just from her love but from her life. He knows it is a punishment for wanting too much, for not stopping her from sacrificing her needs to his. If he had let her go when she first brought it up, when her chances of conceiving a child were still that much higher, she might never have discovered that he was cheating. They could have parted as friends.

  And now that Rachel has had a baby by herself (what that means exactly, he isn’t sure), his conscience has even this reprieve: that she finally has everything she wanted, in spite of him. Every so often Owen thinks about the baby—whom he knows is named Henry although he’s never met him, and who is now no longer a baby but a toddler—and considers providing for him in some way: possibly a trust fund from some of the proceeds of the book, which after all he wrote while he was with Rachel, even if it was only published while they were breaking up. But he has yet to figure out the details, and Rachel continues to shut him out.

  Owen only truly confronts what he has lost when he is sitting down to write, or during a rare wakeful hour in the middle of the night. The rest of the time he is careful to be preoccupied with the demands of other women, his work, the shape of his new life. He knows this is because he is a coward, and because Rachel is everything, morally, that he is not. It is what all of his books have been about, and why Owen suspects women enjoy them—they love that a man can recognize just how terrible he really is and express it on paper. It is a common human mistake: misinterpreting words for action. It is a mistake he often makes himself.

  When Owen stands up to get off the train, the baby opens her eyes and stares at him, her gaze at once innocent and reproachful.

  * * *

  —

  At the studio, he is greeted by Josh and Ryan, both white men in their thirties wearing glasses and superhero T-shirts. Josh has a mass of curly hair and Ryan sports a beard, details Owen absorbs for the purposes of distinguishing them.

  “Great to meet you finally,” says Josh, pushing his curls behind an ear.

  “Love the book,” adds Ryan. His beard is long and wizardish.

  “Nice to meet you guys,” says Owen. He has been dubious about the project ever since the studio bought the rights. His involvement was stipulated, but Andy warned him that the process might be painful.

  “Just remember it’s a very different medium,” Andy had said. “There’s got to be some give and take.”

  Owen tries to keep this spirit of exchange in mind as he follows Josh and Ryan down a hallway into a galley kitchen. A girl with electric blue hair offers him a soy meal-replacement drink from a fridge that appears to be exclusively stocked with identical glass bottles filled with chalky-looking liquid.

  “No thanks,” says Owen. She shrugs and takes one for herself.

  He follows the young men into a brightly decorated and aggressively casual meeting room, where they settle around a table. Owen chooses an orange leather armchair that seems less saggy than the others, but finds himself sinking down further than expected. The blue-haired young woman is with them, though Owen has somehow missed both seeing her come in and getting her name.

  “So, as you know, we’ve been in preproduction for a while now,” says Josh of the curly hair. “We’ve got our own ideas we’re excited to show you and some concept art, but right now the question we’re wrestling with is how the player actually wins.”

  “Wins? By staying alive, I guess,” says Owen. When nobody responds, he adds, “As in, not dying?”

  Ryan shakes his head. “Not specific enough.”

  “Eve
rybody dies,” says the blue-haired girl. “Eventually.”

  “I think it could be enough,” says Josh, considering. “But we need to complicate it.”

  “You’re basing this on the novel, right?” Owen asks. “The plot is already laid out there.”

  “Sure,” says Josh. “But we can’t just follow the book beat by beat. It has to be interactive.”

  “It’s about agency,” says Ryan. He spreads his hands out on the table and Owen can see he is wearing a series of dark metal rings shaped like dragons. “People want the illusion of control. They want to feel like their choices are meaningful, even if they’re not.”

  “So, like life, then,” says Owen.

  “Exactly,” says Ryan, as though Owen has not made a little joke, or possibly the joke is so little that no one deems it worth acknowledging.

  “In real life, the best way to survive a plague is to be alone,” Owen offers. “Just go off somewhere away from other people.”

  “But that doesn’t make for a very interesting game,” says Ryan.

  “Well, that’s what David does,” says Owen. “In the book.”

  “That’s not all he does,” says the girl, tapping a pen on her notepad.

  Josh stands up and moves over to a wall-mounted whiteboard. “Okay, so part of the goal is to be the last man standing.” With a dry-erase marker, he writes LAST MAN STANDING. “And maybe something else. Maybe something harder?”

  The girl tries again. “Well, the kids are the ones getting sick. That’s the heart of the book, isn’t it? The player character should have to save as many kids as possible. That’s the challenge.”

  Josh points the uncapped marker at Owen. “Tell us more about the player character. The main character, I mean. David.”

  “He’s a science teacher,” says Owen. “A microbiologist by training. He’s overqualified for his job, but a lifelong learner. And he has an interest in pandemics, kind of as a hobby, so he’s able to guess what’s happening a little sooner than everyone else.”

  “So he puts it together himself,” says Josh.

  “Not all by himself. But he has the opportunity of seeing things unfold up close. And, like I said, he takes an interest. He tracks the warnings coming out of the World Health Organization and the Center for Disease Control.” Owen takes out his phone. “They post health advisories and alerts of new infection clusters worldwide.” He pulls up the CDC page and starts reading out the titles of some of the bulletins. “Salmonella Outbreak in Utah; Pneumonic Plague in Madagascar; Mystery Virus Being Investigated in New York City.”

  “New York? Look out,” says Ryan. “It’s starting.”

  Josh laughs.

  “Huh,” says Owen. The conversation continues around him while Owen clicks on the advisory, posted just that morning.

  August 10, 2020: Twenty-eight reported cases including four deaths attributed to a suspected coronavirus in Manhattan. Unidentified respiratory virus with possible airborne infection. Foodborne pathogen ruled out. All surviving patients hospitalized, with one-third in critical condition.

  “You still with us, Owen?”

  “Yes,” says Owen, putting down his phone.

  “I think…” begins the girl, clearing her throat.

  “So I’m thinking we should have an ongoing tally,” says Josh, “of how many kids he saves. That’ll be part of it.”

  “Right, great,” says Owen. “That makes sense.”

  The girl with blue hair gets up with a glare of loathing and leaves the room. Josh and Ryan exchange a puzzled glance.

  Owen turns his attention to Josh’s scattered scrawls on the whiteboard. If they have been working on the project for months, how are they only just now having these sorts of conversations? He says something to this effect.

  “We usually do the story last around here,” says Ryan. “It’s the fastest part.”

  Josh, perhaps catching Owen’s look of alarm, says quickly, “The VR environment build isn’t quite ready, but if you come back next Monday, I’m sure we’ll have something to show you that will really knock you out.”

  Though he’s unsure of what he is being told, Owen nods. A visible relief permeates the room.

  * * *

  —

  Afterwards, Owen catches the subway, gets a seat near the door. Standing close by is a twenty-something model-thin blonde, chic in jeans and a white T-shirt. Then a woman sitting opposite catches his attention: a fiftyish brunette with a battered briefcase and terrible fashion sense, totally absorbed in a highbrow, prize-winning novel that until as recently as last week outranked How to Avoid the Plague on the New York Times bestseller list. Almost certainly an academic. But he appreciates the seriousness of her face, the slight flare of her nostrils as she frowns at the page. Her lack of self-consciousness as she shifts in her seat, sending the lower flounces of her tiered jade skirt cascading over the feet of the next passenger. Women are always surprised to discover that Owen has a very expansive sense of the beautiful. Younger women in their twenties and thirties. Older women in their forties and fifties. Every woman is a secret waiting to be unlocked. And the key, the tantalizing key, is sex, and the means of getting it.

  With an intellectual like the brunette sitting across from him, Owen’s conversational gambit might be something about the inadequacy of reason in the face of primal urges. It was a tactic that worked before, and had the advantage of being something he actually believed. Owen would lean in, and at a certain attentive moment would run his index finger over an inch of her wrist and contend that it is neither laughter, planning, nor cooperation that define humanity. Rather, a Cartesian project of mind and body separation has undermined the unity of how human beings see themselves, to their detriment. Owen would muse, as if for the first time, that the culture is only sex-obsessed because it is essentially prudish, and that sex is human and natural and not to be controlled or repressed—in fact, the instincts they share with the so-called lower orders are valuable and profound. Though it was also possible, Owen would acknowledge to her, with a longing and complicit glance, that he was just rationalizing.

  The subway car slows and lurches as it enters the station, and Owen sees the blonde coughing into her hand. Then she grabs at the pole to steady herself before hurrying through the doors, leaving behind a smear so wet it seems to sparkle under the light.

  He stares at the smear, then gets off at the next stop and starts walking the fifteen blocks to his apartment, trying to avoid thoughts of the mystery virus. When he stops at an intersection, he pulls out his phone and sends a message to Edith. He knows she would prefer to be called Ed, which he finds absurd, so he avoids calling her anything at all. I need you, he writes. Do you have time this afternoon? He might as well meet her; the day has been squandered and he’s too agitated to write, anyway.

  By the time he gets home, Edith has written back: Okay. When he sees her response, he gets into his car rather than going inside. He tries to avoid driving in the city, but the train ride has unnerved him.

  Edith is a good example of Owen’s comprehensive taste in women. She is of average height, average prettiness, though with a nice body and an intelligent face. She is of Asian heritage, a fact he notes only for his record, which is diverse. They met at a book signing ten weeks ago. She was a fan and made that fact known. He made it known in turn that he found her attractive. The normal things ensued. Then an abnormal thing ensued: a repetition of the normal things, over and over again, with Edith.

  In his old life, he would have avoided repeat encounters with the same woman to protect his relationship with Rachel. But one irony of his divorce is that he is still a liar, except now he tells women he is married in order to protect his solitude. Rachel left behind a space in his life, and Owen doesn’t want it filled by anyone else. And Edith does not require seduction, only satiation. It is simply more efficient to continue sleeping with her
rather than spend time pursuing more conquests. It is a conservation of energy. It is good for the planet.

  He is meeting Edith at a motel he found online. He has asked her to get a room, though he will of course pay her back. It is an elaborate ruse, as well as an indulgence. And though it is a bit ridiculous, the pretence gives him a rush—one he chooses not to examine too closely in case it gives off a hint of his own sexual neuroses, which are bound to be as small and sad as everyone else’s.

  At the motel, Edith is stunning and tremulous in her desire. He usually talks dirty to her when they are together—it is his secret gift, this filthy commentary—but this time he is silent, which seems to bother her. But he likes her better when she is bothered.

  The sex is hot, spectacularly so. It is one for the ages, like something out of a porno, except that, as usual, Edith refuses to perform or accept oral sex. Nevertheless, he knows how to make her come.

  When they drive away from the motel, he steels himself for the inevitable conversation.

  “Do you want to get something to eat?” she asks. “I’m starving.”

  “I have to go home and write,” he says. He is technically in the middle of a new novel, though its progress is slow. “I’ll drop you at the subway.” He never drives her all the way home.

  “Cool,” she says, turning to gaze out the window.

  Edith is not the kind of girl he could love. Woman. Whatever. She exists too much on the surface, like most young people. She conceals nothing, keeps nothing back. If she has an inner life, it is as thin as a magazine. She thinks she can get to know him by quizzing him. He does admire her seeming independence and her willingness to go after what she wants even with minimal encouragement. At the same time, he wishes they could dispense with these exchanges. She talks about books she reads and asks him for recommendations. (He declines.) Then she begins filling the silence with talk of her life, her summer class, her waitressing job, and her boss, a conceited, foolish sort of man. The kind of man who is so small, in his vanity, that he is actually beneath them to mock. Owen resents that Edith does not understand this, and that certain details about this man have become etched in his brain. His variable accent. His waxed moustache. Now she is telling him that health inspectors have visited the restaurant.