Etiquette for the End of the World

by Jeanne Martinet

  Tess felt she had landed on anything but her feet—her ass was more like it. She changed the subject to Charlotte’s wood-painting class, which was her aunt’s latest passion. She was painting driftwood and pieces of found furniture. In the corner of the kitchen was an old step stool done over in black, white, and aqua spatters, Jackson Pollock style.

  After dinner they cleared the dishes away from the table and Charlotte led Tess into the living room—the room Tess always thought of as the Velvet Room—for the yearly birthday ritual: Aunt Charlotte’s tarot card reading. Whether or not Tess was in the mood, this reading was never optional. Surreptitiously Tess looked at her watch, wondering if she’d be able to make the 9:50 train back to the city.

  Charlotte had a fire ready to go, which she lit with a long match. The couch, which had been there for as long as Tess could remember, was a dull gold velvet. The walls were dark red. While the walls were not actually velvet, in the dim light they had always seemed that way to Tess and Stuart, when they used to come for a visits right after Christmas. On either side of the mantel there were two comically huge candlesticks, nine inches thick and three feet high, that once belonged to a church; Charlotte had picked these up in Greenwich Village when she lived there years ago.

  Charlotte sat down and pulled out her cards. No matter how batty she was, with her flowing muumuus and silly jokes, she always seemed powerful in the firelight once she brought out the tarot cards. The truth was her readings could sometimes be uncannily accurate. On the other hand, they were also sometimes wildly off base. Charlotte began to lay out the cards on the black lacquer coffee table. “Tess Eliot, age forty,” Charlotte murmured formally, to whatever spirits she believed were listening in.

  Her aunt turned the first card over. “Ah, the Tower,” she called out in triumph, as if she had expected it. The illustration on the card was of a cliff-side castle engulfed in flames, with big pieces of rock falling into a stormy sea below. “Everything is coming down all around you,” Charlotte went on. (Well, that’s for sure, thought Tess. It didn’t take a psychic to tell that.) Her aunt pulled a few more cards and began to arrange them in the traditional Celtic cross pattern. “Halloo! This says you are going to have a son … that he will arrive, probably, within the next year.”

  Tess laughed derisively, sort of a shout-laugh. “Charlotte, remind me to tell you about my love life when this is over.” But she felt a slight twinge of nervousness. She had always been very careful with Peter, but of course nothing was totally foolproof. God, that was all she needed to really send her over that Tower-card cliff.

  “Well, of course, it could also just signify a new creative project,” Charlotte giggled, and then turned over the Knight of Swords, depicted by two men in armor riding on a horse together, swords drawn. “The Discouri Twins, in this position … hmm … Tess, how’s your brother these days? ... Are you all getting along?”

  “Ah … well, not fabulously,” Tess said uneasily.

  “Aha. This reveals a painful sibling split of some kind, discord … disharmony, division! The three Ds.” She frowned and flipped out a few more cards. Then she nodded knowingly. “The Emperor. The Two of Swords. Whatever it’s about, you are unable to see that you’re not mad at your brother. You’re mad at your father.” This gave Tess goose bumps. Though she couldn’t see how her brother should get a pass.

  “You are at a major crossroads.” (Okay, Charlotte said that every year.) “Here’s the Wheel of Fortune … . You’re in the hands of the Fates … . Better hang on for dear life … . We reap what we sew … .” Charlotte went into her regular recitation of New Age aphorisms and Tess drifted off, only half listening. She was suddenly thinking about Betty Phoenix and Gregory Frankstein, and the terrible crazy threat of the computer bugs. She realized she had not really given it much thought since Peter had left. Which was weird, considering how much it had freaked her out. Could it be that Charlotte’s Tower card was about a larger kind of destruction?

  “So, Tess, are you involved with someone, romantically?” asked her aunt suddenly. At this Tess snapped back into focus.

  “Yes … I mean no. Not anymore. At least I don’t think so.”

  Charlotte stopped with a card halfway from the pile in her hand to the table, looking at her with raised brows. “You’re not sure?”

  Tess laughed, a little sheepish. “No, I’m sure. It’s over.”

  “Hmm. The Queen of Swords … This card tells me that the man you love is being kept from you by a woman who has cut him down to size. She is between you, she is getting in the way … .”

  “A woman?” Tess stared at the card, a stern queen sitting on a throne, her long blonde hair flowing out from under her helmet, her left hand holding a long silver sword. Marla! It’s Marla with a big knife! Tess caught her breath, suddenly shivering in spite of the fire burning in the fireplace next to her. Oh my god. Maybe Marla had sent that text from Peter, the text that had sounded so unlike the urbane man she knew. Why had she completely rejected the possibility that something bad had actually happened to him?

  “I’m not sure what that could mean,” she said aloud to her aunt.

  Charlotte looked at her closely, then finished up the reading with her usual positive-sounding flourish. “Future outcome card is the Ten of Pentacles, Tess. A card of success. Congratulations.” But Tess was distracted, thinking about what she might do to find out whether Peter was all right.

  When she got home to her apartment, Tess unwrapped Charlotte’s present. It was a green plastic hand-crank radio. On the back Charlotte had painted a red face on it with its mouth open—to connote communication, Tess supposed. In her frame of mind, it was disturbing to say the least. There was also a card from her aunt: You may never know when you will need this. (Oh great, thought Tess, another paranoid survivalist sentiment, and not only that but another hand-cranked device—the last thing she wanted.) Tess stashed the radio in the back of her closet with last year’s Aunt Charlotte gift—Siamese cat slippers that meowed when you walked. They had scared the shit out of Carmichael.

  ***

  The next day Tess decided the thing to do was to go down and talk to Dakota, or if she wasn’t there, someone else at WOOSH. (She only prayed she would not have to deal with the creepy Alfred.) It was imperative to ascertain if her project was still on track—and the check on the way—but more than that, she wanted to find out if anyone had heard from Peter. Of course, she needed to somehow manage this without revealing that she had been sleeping with him, and she was not quite sure how to go about it. But she certainly could not go to the police, not when all she had was a story about stitched-up suits, a tarot card reading, and being stood up on New Year’s Eve. They’d put her away.

  The #1 train was not crowded at eleven in the morning. Tess smiled across the aisle at a mother and her toddler, who was playing with a small toy. Lately, when she looked at children, she had a longing feeling verging on jealousy. What would have happened if she had broken up with Matt two years ago, when she probably should have? She might have had time to find someone else and have a baby, even if she had had to get fertility treatments like everyone else she knew. The toddler took his yellow plastic toy and jammed it at his mother’s ear as if he were trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

  “Ouch,” said Tess with a “yikes” kind of smile, trying to show empathy to the mother. But inside she was thinking: Okay, maybe there are some pluses to the no-kids life. Like undamaged orifices.

  Tess looked out the subway car window to see they were just passing 28 Street, her stop. Damn it. Now she would have to walk five more blocks in the cold, and it was already a hike to begin with.

  After exiting the subway at 23 Street, she tromped through the dirty slush up Seventh Avenue, then turned west on 25th. At Eighth a man in a black puffy coat had a woman by the arm; he was shouting at her, “Well. I am miserable, so I’ve done that much for you, right? What else do you want? Can’t you be satisfied now?” Tess hurried by, her boots plopping
uncomfortably into the deep curbside puddles. Everyone Tess passed seemed to have their heads down. When had everyone stopped smiling? Was everyone in the world unhappy?

  The hydroponic plants in the WOOSH window looked more lush then they had before (Tess wondered how they managed that in the middle of winter), but everything else—down to the bleached-blond receptionist, the pamphlets on the coffee table, and the Enya music—was the same. Tess felt sheepish about not having called to make an appointment, but to her relief the boy announced pleasantly that Dakota Flores would be out in a minute.

  Dakota greeted Tess with a surprisingly warm hug, which took Tess off guard. “Oh, Tess, it is such a blessing from the Universe to see you today,” she said, leading her back to the conference room.

  Well, that’s a good sign, Tess thought. At least Dakota didn’t say, What the hell are you doing here?

  Dakota was all dressed in a flowy, white gauzy something, which looked odd to Tess, because it was winter. It was as if the woman had just been transported from the middle of an island spa. She wore the same medallion she had at the first WOOSH meeting, which Tess now recognized as the symbol prevalent in so much of the 2012 lore—a carved sun with a face in the center with a lot of complicated markings around it. The Mayan/Aztec calendar.

  “Actually I have not seen Peter at all since our meeting on the Winter Solstice five weeks ago,” Dakota remarked when Tess casually asked after him. Tess’s feeling of worry intensified to alarm. In her mind’s eye she could see Peter slowly bleeding to death in Marla’s Malibu house. How could she tell Dakota she had been expecting him to show up at her apartment on New Year’s Eve, that he was majorly MIA, that she knew something had to be wrong—without letting Dakota know they had been dating?

  “I did have a phone conversation with him, however,” Dakota continued, pouring out two glasses of water. “He called me from the beach, actually. He said he would be out of town for a while. Apparently he’s on vacation somewhere exotic. To tell the truth, it sounded quite enviable, considering the cold here. I think it was Australia. Hamilton Island, I think?” As if she had suddenly fallen out of a tall tree into the dirt below, Tess’s fear for Peter’s life switched immediately back into a feeling of betrayal. So. He was just a callous bastard after all.

  Dakota added quickly, when she saw Tess’s face, “If you are worried about your payment for the book, Tess, don’t be, he signed off on it. We really love what you have done so far.” (Thank god for that, thought Tess.) “I don’t know how much Peter had to do with it, but you really got what we were saying, about the humor and everything. Alfred thinks some of it too silly, but I’ve always been someone who believes that silliness is another word for love on a playground.” Dakota didn’t just smile, she positively beamed, and for the first time, Tess found herself drawn to her. Love on a playground. Maybe there was more wisdom to her than Tess had realized.

  Dakota poured some more water into Tess’s glass. Tess hadn’t even been aware it was empty; she must have drained it in almost a single gulp. Dakota looked thoughtfully at Tess. “When I last saw Peter, he did seem super-fired up about some wild new fund-raising angle … . I probably should not say this to you, Tess, but back in my hometown in New Mexico that man is what my tunkasila used to call a Flim Flam Sam. If it were up to me personally, we would not be involved in exaggerating possible scenarios in order to gain funds through fear-mongering.” She sighed. “But Orbus knows best, I suppose. Often they say the end justifies the means, don’t they? And I suppose, if it helps us to prepare, to help more people, then I guess …” She trailed off.

  Tess donned the face she used in her poker game when she was holding four of a kind. The last thing she wanted Dakota to know was that the computer virus story had come from her.

  Dakota went on to say that she would be Tess’s direct contact on the project going forward. They still hoped Tess could finish by the end of the summer, sooner if possible.

  As she left the WOOSH offices (going back out “The Way Through” door), Tess comforted herself with the thought that at least her money was coming. Now she had to get back to work. As ridiculous as this assignment was, and even if only a handful of people ever read what she wrote, it was still a job. Whatever might happen on December 21, it would help not to be destitute.

  ***

  Harriet and Tess sat side by side at Harriet’s dining room table.

  “But, Tess, it says ‘push here’ to retrieve messages. I can’t push here. When I do it beeps and there are these two upsetting arrows! Where is ‘here’? How do you push ‘here’?” Harriet looked helpless and desperate. She was poking her index finger with vehemence at the display on the phone. She suddenly looked about eight years old and begging for help. It was in such contrast to her usual tough-as-nails modus operandi that it made Tess laugh. Harriet could out-talk, out-smart, and out-scare anyone, but here she was, beaten by a simple cordless telephone. And admitting defeat.

  This was one of the few skills Tess had that Harriet didn’t. She could fix Harriet’s phones, her printer, her internet settings. And when she did, Harriet always acted as though it were a holy miracle.

  Tess took the handset firmly out of Harriet’s grasp. “Let me just see this … . Right. You have to push “menu” first. See, Harriet? Look, here.”

  But instead of looking at the phone Harriet looked into Tess’s face in helpless amusement and they both started laughing.

  Eventually, with only a little bit more knowledge of how her telephone system worked than she had had before, Harriet put away her phone to fight another day.

  “So what did you mean when you said you were finished with men?” Harriet wanted to know. “You said that when you came in. Matt again?”

  “No, not him.” Tess grimaced. “I got stood up—stood up on New Year’s Eve!” She filled Harriet in, briefly, about her affair with Peter.

  Harriet’s face went dark with disapproval. “What were you thinking? I told you! Tess, those WOOSH people …”

  “But he wasn’t one of them,” Tess said, “That was part of why we bonded. They were all nuts, and we weren’t. But I guess I really never knew what his real feelings were toward me. He was just so … so much larger than life—I always thought that was a ridiculous expression, but now I get it, because it was like Peter was in a movie all the time. I don’t know, he was always joking, and moving on to other subjects … . ”

  Harriet snorted. “His real feelings? My darling Tess, you haven’t learned? Men don’t have feelings, men only have ideas about having feelings.”

  Tess laughed a rueful laugh. Harriet’s opinions were always the most outrageous, but that’s what made them so comforting. “To be honest I feel more humiliated than anything else. I mean, he just left me without a word. Who does that?” Who knows, thought Tess, maybe that was just normal for him—having a romance that is just a convenient thing while you’re in town, then leaving it behind like the extras in a hotel room you don’t want to bother packing.

  The doorbell to Harriet’s apartment rang. Tess rose to get it, but Harriet motioned for her to sit back down. “Don’t get that, it’s the exterminator. The super sent him because a few tenants have roaches—supposedly. But I’m not going to have this place full of pesticides. It’s poison to my lungs. I’d rather have a roach or two. It’s not like it’s bedbugs. Tess! Do you know I now know three people with bedbugs? My friend Mallory wrote in yesterday’s Times that bedbugs are the nouveau riche of vermin—completely aggressive and consuming everything in sight.”

  Tess blinked, trying to listen to Harriet while ignoring the insistent buzzing of the door, and then said, “Actually, Harriet, speaking of aggressive insects, you will never guess what happened to me.” Tess began to tell Harriet about meeting Betty Phoenix, about the missing book, her trip to the boat basin, the alleged NSA document. While Tess was talking, Harriet turned her breathing machine on, and inhaled her asthma medicine. She had the look of a professor puffing solemnly on a pipe.

/>   When Tess finished, she waited for Harriet to dismiss the whole thing as crazy, but instead she seemed thoughtful. “Fucking hell, Tess. That’s just the kind of horrific thing those Pentagon pricks would think up. Christ!” She sounded almost scared.

  “Tess,” Harriet wheeled over to her desk and took out her date book, “I’ve decided to go to Mexico in two weeks. I want you to come with me. I’ll pay your airfare.”

  “Mexico?” Tess knew Harriet adored her house in Mexico, but she had not been for some years because her poor health made traveling so difficult.

  “I found Margie,” Harriet went on, a fighting glint in her eye. “I have not spoken to her yet, but through the museum, from those paintings of Mr. Chilam Balam”—she raised one brow for emphasis—“I obtained her whereabouts. I’ve had an email from her. She wants to see me. Besides, I need a change of air. So do you. Haven’t you always wanted to see my house?”

  Tess opened her mouth to tell Harriet that of course she could not go to Mexico with her. For one thing she had work to do, and then there was Carmichael, and (though she would never say this to Harriet) Tess balked at the logistics of traveling with her. It would be like being a personal assistant and a medical aide besides, what with the inhalers, the drugs. and the paranoia she knew Harriet would carry with her. And Tess was in no condition to plan for this kind of trip, in her current state of mind.

  But then, all at once, like a light switching on inside her, going to Mexico with Harriet seemed the perfect thing to do, as if it were predestined. Tess might even be able to write her expenses off on her taxes, if she went through the motions of doing some “research” about the Maya while she was there. What the hell. Why not? Why not go to Mexico?

  And so, fifteen days later (the WOOSH check having finally arrived and—rather miraculously, Tess felt—cleared in one day), Tess found herself on a plane to Guadalajara. After she had finally gotten Harriet settled into her seat (organizing her two different kinds of water, her portable ionizer, the Mozart CD on her clunky Walkman, her shopping bag full of vitamins, her special pillow, and her emergency-only Ativan) with the help of the most of the flight attendants and several of the more amenable passengers, Tess leaned back, opened her purse, and took out her copy of Eat, Pray, Love. Okay, so maybe she would read it after all. She could at least get some travel tips, right?