Whether you are together with your housemates by choice or whether you have been absorbed into a passing tribe—
Tess looked up from her writing just in time to see Jason up on the front hood of the cyclemobile and getting ready to clamber up on the roof, where Carmichael had leapt up to get away from him.
“Jason!” Tess called out. “Sweetie, you shouldn’t climb up there, it’s too flimsy, and you might fall off.” She got up and moved over to him quickly to grab him. She gave him an affectionate squeeze and a kiss on the top of his curly blond head. Actually the cat should not be up there either—he’s going to scratch the canvas, Tess thought. “Carm, down! Now!” she scolded. She hadn’t worked out yet how she was going to keep Carmichael off the thing.
Tess had been stunned when, at the end of August, the most enormous box she had ever seen arrived from Suffolk. At first she had been afraid to open it; she actually had to open it in the lobby since it was too big to fit in the elevator. Inside, along with the cyclemobile, there had been a card from Orbus himself, which read: For one of my best U.S. ambassadors. Thanks for writing a wonderful book. At first Tess had been conflicted, thinking it was a payoff for keeping quiet about his plan; but as Richie pointed out, she hadn’t kept quiet about his plan, and the gift was also pretty good proof that Orbus hadn’t discovered they’d taken one of his vials. And hadn’t she earned a bonus? The cyclemobile fit nicely against the wall in the living room, now that Tess had sold many of her collectibles.
She wasn’t sure whether or not the so-called world shift was going to take place, but whether it did or didn’t, she had decided life would be simpler without so many belongings. So she had combed through her apartment and weeded out about half of her stuff—including her collection of deco cigarette dispensers (she got $200 on eBay for the one in the shape of a piano), her original vinyl Beatles dolls, and her 1950s swizzle sticks. She had gotten rid of the two little side tables where the knickknacks used to sit, as well as Matt’s coffee table and bookcase, which she had finally given back to him.
“Do you want to put your shoes on, Jason? Here you go.” She sat down on the couch, patting the pillow beside her for him to come sit so she could get his sneakers on. “When your father is out of the shower, we’re going to take a ride in Cyclops and go see a friend of mine! Won’t that be fun?”
The car was only about five feet long and three feet wide, and instead of two headlights (which would have used up too much pedal power, Tess assumed) it only had one. The first time he had laid eyes on it, Jason pointed and yelled, “Cyclops!”
“Tess, are you finished with your homework now?” the boy asked, bouncing up and down while she was trying to fix the Velcro straps on his sneakers.
“Almost,” she said to him with a smile. Actually she had handed in the final pages of the WOOSH guide weeks ago, but Dakota had asked her to write one more chapter.
Richie emerged in a towel, his hair all wet and wild, looking just like Tarzan after a swim (well, okay, Tarzan with just a little more meat on him). He had just installed a new showerhead for her and he had wanted to try it out.
“Do you want to blow-dry your hair?” asked Tess. It was sticking out in all directions.
He looked at her with a fake scowl. “Real men don’t blow-dry their hair,” he growled, and he leaned over and shook his head, sending droplets of water over them both. Tess giggled, and Jason went into paroxysms of laughter. This was part of a joke between Richie and Tess that would probably never grow old. He was always teasing her about the fact she’d thought he was gay. Tess thought he was pretty evolved to be able to joke about it; she herself still cringed at how clueless she had been, and for how long.
Tess could not believe how happy she was to have Richie in her life. She had never fit so well with anyone before him. It wasn’t only that she had never had such a considerate and creative lover, or a playful and stimulating companion, whom she never grew tired of being with. The thing that was so new, so thrilling to her, was the feeling of having someone in her life who truly loved who she was, deep down. All parts of her. Richie still did not stay over on weekends when he had Jason with him, but on weekdays when she woke up in the morning with his arms around her, she could not imagine that anything, any drug—heroin, cocaine, morphine, or Ecstasy—could feel as blissful. This high feeling stuck with her all day long, a warm vibration deep inside her soul.
Thank god she had never married Matt. She felt like sending Sarah Feng Shui a thank-you present for enticing him to cheat.
“Ready to go?” Tess asked Richie and Jason. In order to get the Cyclops down to the street, they had to use the freight elevator, which needed to be operated by a doorman. Tess could tell the doorman didn’t really mind, so fascinated was he with the unique machine (and of course, liberal tipping didn’t hurt). Tess didn’t really like riding in it when there was a lot of traffic, but Harriet was expecting them at five thirty and they knew Jason would love going there in the Cyclops. The real trick would be on the way back, getting across 96 Street in the dark with the city buses. As Orbus had said, the cyclemobile was not really meant for coexisting with gas vehicles. But it wasn’t far—they just had to go up Broadway a few blocks, and then across 96 Street, and through the park.
Richie was steering as they both pedaled. Although Jason was frustrated because the pedals were too far away for him in the backseat, he still loved the novelty of the Cyclops. Thank god Orbus had had seat belts put in; they were made from hemp rope and not all that comfortable, but at least they were there.
The car would not fit in Harriet’s elevator, so they parked it on the street in front of the building’s awning, chained to a lamppost. Harriet’s doorman promised to watch it.
To Tess’s great delight and surprise, Harriet, wearing black slacks and an orange silk top, answered the door herself, without her wheelchair. It was true she was leaning heavily on a cane, but she looked better than Tess had seen her in years.
“Wow! Congratulations, Harriet.” Since Tess returned from England three months ago (she had not dared to tell her mentor she was going, but when she got back she had given her a full report), Harriet had redoubled her physical therapy efforts. She wanted to get out of the wheelchair in order to “walk once more in Central Park before the end of the world.” Tess was relieved. She had been afraid the news about Orbus’s scheme would have the opposite effect. But she should have known: Harriet’s fighting spirit was a constant in the Universe.
“Well, well,” Harriet said, peering at Jason, who was staring at her with solemn eyes and his hands stuck into the back pockets of his jeans. “Who is this handsome young man?”
“Go on, tell Ms. Schulberg your name,” said Richie, laying a hand gently on his son’s back.
“Jason,” the boy said in a shy whisper.
Harriet gave Jason a look Tess had never seen before; it was as if her whole face was pursed but also enormously delighted. “Well, Jason,” she said, “you can call me Harriet, if you like.” Then she looked up at Richie. “And who is your handsome father?”
Tess introduced Richie, and then Richie and Tess got Jason some juice and set him up in the den to watch a DVD they had brought with them. (After some goofing around in the video store, they had decided on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Tess thought that Jason would enjoy it, particularly because of his love for the cyclemobile.)
“Well now, Richie,” Harriet said, when the three of them had settled into the office with their drinks, “I have heard a great deal about you, and I could not be more pleased. You seem to have done a lot for Tess, and that puts you on my good side. And believe me”—she flashed her eyes at him, the subtle warning peeking through her good spirits—“you don’t ever want to be on my other side.”
Harriet turned to Tess. “So, have we heard from your brother? Are we headed for the fallout shelters? Unless I get the all clear, I’m going to Mexico well before December 21. It will be safer there when the computers go down. You two should come too.”<
br />
“Stuart says he still can’t get an answer from anyone,” Tess told her.
“Assholes! It’s the end of September already. How long has it been now since he actually put it in someone’s hands?”
“About seven weeks now.”
Betty Phoenix had arrived at Tess’s apartment one day in late July, without any warning. In fact, Tess had been just about to go out to meet Richie for lunch. The doorman had buzzed her and announced, “Someone’s coming up to see you, Tess,” which was about as much screening of visitors as she got from the guys who worked weekdays. Sometimes they even buzzed her after her visitor was already at her front door.
When she looked through the peephole and saw it was Betty Phoenix, Tess let out a yelp and ushered her in as fast as she could get the door unlocked. Betty was in her uniform; she had come straight from the airport.
Tess started to hug her and Betty stopped her: “Hold on, I did not even stop at the ladies’ room to transfer this after I got off the plane, I was too nervous. And I’m dying of the heat.” And she removed her jacket, carefully. At her request, Tess brought her a small scissors and Betty carefully unstitched the inside pocket, into which she had sewn the vial.
Tess took it gingerly from her and put it in a hatbox she kept on the top shelf in her closet. Then she and Betty went to meet Richie for lunch.
The following week, when Richie had two days off, he and Tess took the Bolt Bus to Baltimore to see Stuart, with the vial carefully stashed in Tess’s purse. Stuart and Nancy thought Tess had come for the sole purpose of introducing her new guy to them. (Tess and Richie had been too afraid to talk about the computer bug to anyone on the phone, especially with the vial was sitting in Tess’s hatbox.) Stuart’s eyes almost popped out of his head when they recounted what had happened in England and showed him the vial.
He was hesitant at first, but with Nancy’s help, they convinced Stuart that he had no choice but to try to get the substance to the right government agency for analysis. As Tess wrote down Wayne Orbus’s name, address, and the name of the organization on a piece of paper for her brother, so that he could tell the appropriate authorities about the origin of the vial, it was as if he suddenly got it, all at once. He rubbed his face hard with one hand as though he were trying to wake himself up and said, “Oh, god … this is real? This thing could be released in cities? The effects of that would be a disaster of monumental proportion.”
“Yes, Stuart, we know!” Tess said, and had to keep herself from rolling her eyes. Incredibly, in spite of the vague sense of impending doom over everyone’s head, they still managed to enjoy their dinner of hard-shell crabs out on Stuart’s deck. (Indeed, Tess thought it made them appreciate it more.) Stuart was so interested in Richie’s design ideas that after dinner the two of them disappeared down to Stuart’s workshop in the basement, to look at god-knows-what.
“I think you found yourself a good one, Tess,” Nancy had said. The next morning, Tess and Richie traveled back to New York feeling like a weight was finally off their shoulders.
But now, all these weeks later, they were still waiting for word from someone in D.C., and it was driving them nuts.
Harriet was indignant. “What the fuck are they doing? I bet they’re so embarrassed a weapon like that got left on the floor of the public library for anyone to pick up, they’ve just buried the whole thing. I mean, can you imagine if John Q. Public knew that someone within the NSA had even invented something like this, how reckless that is? I should go to Tim at the science section of The Times and give him the story! Halliburton is probably behind the whole thing … .”
“No!” said Tess, for once adamant with her. “Harriet, look, Richie doesn’t know you as well as I do, and you’re making him nervous.” Tess looked over at him and, maddeningly, he actually looked quite calm.
“All right,” said Harriet. “I know it’s bureaucracy and they move slowly. But have you thought about why they haven’t contacted you to ask you what you know?”
“You’re probably right; they want to keep the whole thing as quiet as possible, until they know if there’s a real threat. Even then they might just be dealing with it discreetly by themselves. It’s the NSA, for god’s sake! They don’t need me to tell them what Wayne Orbus is up to—they can just find out! They probably already have a whole file on him, and on WOOSH.”
Eventually Tess managed to change the subject to Richie’s furniture, and after a while Harriet stood up to go get some more cheese and crackers. “Look, I’m walking!” she cried with pride. At that very moment Jason came out of the den. He looked at Harriet and, thinking it was a game, put his hands up in the air, yelling, “Look, I’m walking!” The triumphant expressions on the face of the six-year-old and the eighty-four-year-old were identical.
***
A month later, at around four thirty in the afternoon, Tess was packing up more stuff she had sold on eBay (she was really enjoying lightening her load; it had taken the end of the world to get her to unclutter!) when the phone rang. It was Richie calling from the Scrub-a-Dub-Pub.
“Hey, Rich,” she said. “Did you forget something?” He usually did not call her at the beginning of his shift.
“Tess, there’s someone here who is looking for you.”
“Oh really?” she said, trying to cradle the phone between her ear and shoulder while she taped up a box. “Who?”
“Peter Barrett.” She dropped the phone and the tape as well.
“Tess?” Richie was saying as she picked the receiver up again.
“Yes … okay … um … I’ll be down there in fifteen minutes.” She knew Richie would not like it if Peter came to her apartment, and she also wanted to see him on neutral territory, in public. For one thing he still worked for Wayne Orbus—at least, she assumed he did.
Peter was standing at the bar, with one leg propped up on the rung of a stool. Aside from being a little tanner, he looked the same. His suit was a crisp as ever, and his smile as she came in was like the blinding tropical sun emerging from the clouds. God, he really was the handsomest man she had ever known. Richie was standing behind the bar, just to Peter’s left. He was rearranging glasses in the overhead rack in a much more industrious manner than was strictly needed at this time of day.
“Tess!” Peter called, walking over to meet her at the door. “How I missed you, my beautiful contessa,” he said in her ear as he hugged her. He came out of the hug and aimed for a kiss, but Tess dodged it.
“Yes, it has certainly been a long time,” she said coldly. She could see Peter assessing the situation, recalculating the terrain.
“I know—I am so sorry, Tess. Let me tell you what happened. Shall we have a seat, at our old table?” He smiled brightly again, still trying to win her over. Tess allowed herself to be led to the table where they had first sat together, just a little over a year ago.
“What shall we drink?” Peter said, twisting his head to look back toward the bar. Richie was pacing back and forth like a caged lion, vaguely pretending to move things around.
“I don’t think there is table service this early,” lied Tess. “Anyway, I don’t feel like a drink. What I feel like is an explanation.”
“Don’t be that way, Tess.” He turned his best bedroom eyes on her and reached for her hand. She removed it from the tabletop and put both her hands in her lap.
“Look, Peter,” she said, taking a deep breath. “You stood me up on New Year’s Eve and then I never heard from you again. I know you consider yourself a charming man, but there’s no amount of charm on the planet that can make up for that.” Tess really was more interested in his level of involvement with Orbus, but she thought the best way to begin was with the classic scorned-female stance. Besides, it still hurt a little, even now.
Peter’s mouth stopped smiling. “Okay, fine. You’re right. What I did to you was horrible. But it wasn’t me. It was Orbus.” His lip curled slightly. “He told me I couldn’t have any contact with you—he threatened me.”
&n
bsp; “Really? Threatened you how?”
Peter rubbed his forehead with the fingertips of his flawless hand. “I need a drink,” he said, getting up. “You sure you don’t want anything?” She shook her head no. He walked over to Richie at the bar, and she saw him pour bourbon into a glass, and then fill another tall glass with water.
Peter came back, setting the water down in front of her. “For some reason, Orbus didn’t like that story we concocted about the computer insects,” he said, shaking his head. “Remember that crazy thing you came up with, the computer bugs that were actual bugs? I don’t know—I guess Orbus is touchy about the whole Mayan thing. He thinks it’s sacrosanct, and you can’t have any new end-of-the-world theories. Or perhaps he found out we were lovers and that’s not in the WOOSH bylaws. All I know is that two days before Christmas he called me and ordered me ...” Peter took a sip of bourbon. “He told me I was not supposed to talk to you, even by text or email. Then he sent me to Australia; I barely even had time to pack.” All at once he laughed. “What are you going to do? Cult leaders—can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em.” It was a ghost of Peter’s normal wit, and a pretty pathetic ghost, at that.
Tess looked down at the aluminum table. “I see. So your boss orders you to stand me up, with no explanation and, like, never to talk to me again, and you just do it. Is that what you are saying?” She met his eyes again.
“I’m telling you, Tess,” he protested, “I risked my neck even sending you the message I did, the one about my being on a business trip.”
“Thanks a lot.”
Peter fixed his eyes on hers and spoke in his softest, most seductive tone. “Tess, listen, I’ll make it up to you. Let’s get out of this Laundromat and I’ll take you to the Four Seasons, or Yasuda or Jean Georges—anywhere you like.”
Etiquette for the End of the World Page 24