Things Fall Apart

by Harry Turtledove

  “Yeah.” Marshall grinned from ear to ear. He’d had one or two people recognize his name before, but only one or two. It was still a treat when it happened.

  Then he forgot about it, because Paul and Janine Werber showed up. Paul had put on fifteen or twenty pounds; his hair was thinning. Janine looked . . . just the way Marshall remembered. Damn good, in other words.

  Paul started gabbing with Mrs. Lundgren and even trying out bits of the Spanish she’d taught him. He’d always been a suckup—looked as if he still was. That left Marshall with Janine. “Long time,” he said brilliantly.

  “It has been, yeah,” she said, and held out her hand. Marshall shook it. Then—Paul was paying zero attention to anything but his old teacher (and himself)—he kissed her hand and quickly let it fall. If she didn’t like that, she’d let him know about it. If she did like it . . . He didn’t know what he’d do then. It was like putting a story together. If you didn’t write the first sentence, you’d never see how it came out.

  Her eyes widened. Whatever she’d expected, that wasn’t it. She didn’t look mad or anything, though. “What have you been up to?” she asked.

  “Got out of UCSB a few years ago,” he said. “I write some stories. I sell ’em, but I’m not getting rich at it or anything. How about you? Kids and all?”

  “No kids.” She shook her head. “I’m a paralegal. It’s not exciting, but it pays some bills. Paul’s practice is doing pretty well, too. We’re so busy all the time, we hardly get to see each other.”

  Was that a hint? He didn’t get the chance to find out, because Mrs. Lundgren said, “Come on, people. You didn’t come over here for Old Home Week. You came to work for your dinner. So work!”

  Work they did, hauling boxes and furniture out to a big U-Haul parked in front of the building. They went on talking while they worked, of course. Mrs. Lundgren, it turned out, was moving to Copala, a town on the west coast of Mexico not far from Acapulco. She spoke the language, her money would go further there, and the weather would be better. She liked it hot—to her, L.A. these days might as well have been Minneapolis.

  Marshall listened to her with one ear. With the other, he listened to Janine as much as he could without—he hoped—being too blatant about it. She seemed glad to see him and glad to talk to him. She’d always liked to talk. He remembered as much. But she seemed interested in him, too. “A writer!” she said. “How cool is that?”

  He shrugged, as well as he could with a box of books—why did even a little box of books always weigh a ton?—in his arms. “It’d be cooler if I could, y’know, make a living at it.”

  “But it’s so creative! All I do all day is look for papers and fill out forms,” she said. He was sure she got paid more than he did for staring up to the ceiling and making feckless lunges at the keyboard. But if she wanted to think he was cool and creative, he sure wouldn’t try to tell her she was wrong.

  By the time the apartment was empty and the truck was full, Marshall felt bent-kneed and long-armed, like an arthritic chimpanzee. The restaurant, a Chinese place called Helen Yue’s, was only a couple of blocks away. Had it been any farther, he might not have made it.

  He told himself he sat down next to Janine by coincidence. Even he didn’t believe it, but he couldn’t prove he was lying. Paul kept talking with Mrs. Lundgren, now about tax tricks for people who lived outside the United States. He didn’t even notice when Janine gave Marshall her cell and e-mail, or when Marshall gave her his. Tax tricks, now, tax tricks mattered.

  After dinner, they all went back to the Spanish teacher’s now-empty apartment. She hugged her ex-students one by one. “You get to go back home,” she told them. “Me, I get to see if I remember how to drive. I have a motel room rented for tonight, and I need to have that U-Haul at the pier by seven tomorrow morning. Ain’t life fun sometimes?”

  Just then, Marshall was thinking life might be fun sometimes after all. Mrs. Lundgren stepped up into the truck, started it, and drove away. She’d be Queen of the Road wherever she went. Nobody on a bike would argue with that big, noisy, smelly thing. Marshall remembered taking internal combustion for granted. No more. No more.

  The former Spanish students shook hands with one another, unchained their bikes, and climbed aboard. “Take care, Paul,” Marshall said. “See ya, Janine.”

  Paul Werber kind of grunted. “See you, Marshall,” Janine said. Marshall pedaled back to San Atanasio several inches above the potholed pavement.

  • • •

  Colin Ferguson was reading Deborah The Wind in the Willows. It was an unabridged version, so she didn’t come close to getting all of it. But it had plenty of colored pictures. She liked those fine. And she liked sitting on the couch with her daddy while it poured outside.

  Marshall came downstairs. He didn’t sound as much like a stampeding buffalo as he had when he was a teenager. He was wearing his plastic rain slicker. When he raised his bike’s kickstand and rolled it toward the front door, Colin called, “Where are you going in this lovely weather?”

  “Out.” Marshall threw the word over his shoulder.

  “Out where? Somewhere in particular, or kind of everywhere at once?”

  “Out to lunch.”

  “Who with?” Colin knew Marshall and Vanessa both could have gigged him for that. He wouldn’t have written it that way himself. But writing and talking were different critters. Dammit, they were.

  “Janine.” Marshall was out the door and had it closed and locked behind him before Colin could have answered even if he’d wanted to. As a matter of fact, he did want to, but he wasn’t nearly sure what to say.

  Deborah tugged at the sleeve of his sweatshirt. “Read more, Daddy!” Colin started to. Deborah let out an indignant squawk: “You already read that!” He had, too. He noticed once she reminded him. He straightened up and tried to fly right.

  Marshall didn’t get home till a quarter to four. Deborah had long since had as much of Mole and Ratty and even Mr. Toad as she wanted at one dose. Marshall settled his bike on an old towel and started wiping the water he’d brought in off the foyer tiles. “Long lunch,” Colin remarked.

  “Uh-huh.” Marshall didn’t look up from what he was doing.

  “Have a nice time?”

  “Yeah.”

  Colin sighed. “Am I wrong or am I right—she is married to that Paul fellow, isn’t she?”

  “Yeah—for now.” Marshall still didn’t look up.

  Colin sighed again. “Look, son, I’m not gonna tell you how to run your life. You’re a grownup. You’re entitled to make your own mistakes. Lord knows I did. But I am gonna tell you this: anybody who’ll cheat with you will cheat on you, too. That’s how those things work.”

  “Not always.” Marshall kept doling out words as if they cost as much as gasoline.

  “No, not always,” Colin agreed, which did make his son look at him—in surprise, if he was any judge (and he was). He went on, “Not always, but that’s the way to bet.”

  Marshall squeezed the old dish towel they used to dry the tiles. By his expression, he would sooner have had his hands around his father’s neck. In a voice colder than the Siberian Express, he answered, “It’s my life. You said it—I didn’t. So let me deal with it, okay?”

  “Okay.” Colin sighed one more time. Then, stubborn cop that he was, he also tried one more time, choosing what he said with care: “Cheating was what shot my marriage with your mother behind the ear, you know.”

  “Nah.” Marshall shook his head. “That just shoveled dirt over it, Dad. Mom wouldn’t’ve done it if she didn’t think you guys were already dead. Besides, Janine hasn’t got any kids.”

  “She’s got a husband.” Colin had to struggle to force out the words. Marshall might well have been right—from Louise’s point of view, anyhow. But Colin wasn’t used to looking at things from that perspective.

  Marshall let out a dismissive snort. “Not hardly. Paul won’t care. He only notices she’s around when he gets horny.”
/>   “That’s how Janine tells it,” Colin said. “It might sound different if you were to listen to Paul.” People who wanted to do something always told stories that showed doing whatever it was was the best, the most natural, thing in the world. They told those stories to other people, and they told them to themselves. They believed them, too. As a cop, Colin had seen that more times than he could count. You didn’t need to be a cop, though. You just had to keep your eyes open.

  Which Marshall wasn’t doing right this minute. Janine, no doubt, was keeping her legs open, so he had the oldest excuse in the world. The best excuse, plenty of folks would have said. And it was . . . for a while.

  “Dad—” Marshall wasn’t going to listen to Paul. He wasn’t going to listen to his old man, either. He’d listen to Janine, and to his stiff dick.

  And Colin couldn’t do thing one about it. He’d said as much to Marshall. His younger son wasn’t so very young any more. If all this ended up without a happy ending, Colin could be there to pat Marshall on the back. That was about as far as it went.

  It might have a happy ending. They might discover They’d Been Meant For Each Other All Along. Colin heard the caps in his own mind, as if he were listening to a movie trailer’s voiceover. He never believed movie-trailer voiceovers. He didn’t believe this would have a happy ending, either.

  “Good luck,” he said, and he meant it. “You’ll get plenty of new stuff to write about, any which way.”

  Marshall rolled his eyes, as if to say What am I supposed to do with such Philistines? He went upstairs without another word. He was in love, or at least getting laid more often than he had been any time lately. No, he wouldn’t listen to anybody who didn’t see the world through similar hot-pink-colored glasses.

  “Shit,” Colin muttered. “I sure wish he would.”

  “Nothing we can do about it,” Kelly said later, when Colin grumbled to her. “As soon as his old teacher told him Janine was gonna be there, you could watch the brains dribbling out of his ears.”

  “You know what the worst of it is?” Colin said.

  “Tell me,” Kelly answered, since that was what he plainly wanted to do.

  “It’s embarrassing, that’s what it is,” he said. “Far as I know, we’ve never had anybody in the family who broke up someone else’s marriage. There’s a name for people like that, and it’s not a nice name.”

  “If she wasn’t already hot to trot, he wouldn’t have got anywhere with her,” Kelly said. “And if he hadn’t come along, she would have found somebody else.”

  “He said pretty much the same thing,” Colin answered. “It’s fine as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough. So Janine dumps Paul and grabs hold of Marshall. So yippee. But what happens when she gets itchy again six months from now, or three years, or five years? You know what happens as well as I do. But Marshall? Marshall hasn’t got a clue.”

  “Or maybe he just doesn’t care. It isn’t quite the same thing.”

  “He may not care now. Why should he? Things are great now. He’ll care when he’s wearing egg on his face, though.”

  “Yeah, probably.” Kelly sighed. “When that happens, try not to go ‘I told you so’ too loud, okay?”

  “Who, me?” Colin did his best to seem perfectly innocent. Since he was anything but, the effort fell flat. He poked his wife in the ribs. “Okay, I’ll try. Won’t be easy—I’ll tell you that.”

  “Try,” she said again. “Anyway, it may blow over. Once she’s had her fling, Janine may decide she likes Paul better after all. CPAs make a lot more money than writers.”

  “Huh! If it wasn’t for that Playboy sale, I’d say the stupid cat made more money than Marshall.” Colin knew he wasn’t being fair. He also knew he was being less unfair than he wished he were. Marshall wasn’t the most practical person ever hatched, but maybe Janine was. A paralegal married—for the moment—to an accountant? She didn’t sound like a love-struck waif.

  No matter what she sounded like, a couple of weeks later Marshall reported, “Paul’s moved out of their house.”

  “Oh, boy,” Colin said—not quite the cheer his son might have been looking for. He went on, “And when do you move in?”

  “Umm . . . Haven’t worked that out yet,” Marshall answered. “Probably won’t be too long.”

  “Well, good luck and all that,” Colin said. “We won’t rent your room out to refugees—not right away, anyhow.”

  “That’s nice,” Marshall said. He wasn’t usually as dry as his father, but every once in a while. . . .

  Colin chuckled, acknowledging the zing. Then he said, “I hope this works out for you, son. Honest to God, I do.”

  “Why wouldn’t it?” Marshall returned. So many reasons sprang into Colin’s head, all of them clamoring to go first in line, that he couldn’t get any of them out. Which was bound to be just as well; Marshall knew what a rhetorical question was. The younger Ferguson added, “Who knows? You may get grandchildren who aren’t a whole country and a glacier or two away.”

  “Have you talked about children with Janine?” Colin hoped his voice didn’t show his alarm. A breakup without children in the middle of it was bad. A breakup with college-age kids in it, like his, was worse. A breakup with little kids stuck in the middle was worst of all. Gabe Sanchez could sing more verses to that song than Marshall would ever want to hear.

  “Not really,” Marshall said, which eased Colin’s mind . . . a bit. But Marshall went on, “She has said she wants kids one of these years. She’s, like, my age, so she’s starting to hear her clock ticking. Gals don’t get second chances the way we do.” He glanced at a photo of Deborah on the mantel.

  “Tell it to your mother,” Colin replied. “You’ve made a fair pile of cash babysitting her second chance.”

  “Hey, she didn’t have him in mind,” Marshall said, which wasn’t the smallest understatement in captivity. If Louise had thought there was any chance she might catch, she would have been more careful. Then she and Teo would be lovey-dovey to this day.

  Unless they weren’t. Maybe Teo would have run into a girl he’d been sweet on in high school and found out she wasn’t attached—or wasn’t too tightly attached. Stuff like that happened all the time. And the rage that went with it was one of the many reasons police forces wouldn’t go out of business day after tomorrow—or millennium after tomorrow, either.

  XIII

  I

  t was May. In what Bryce Miller kept thinking of as normal times, the countryside around Wayne State would have been bursting with spring. The grass would have been green. New leaves would have decked the trees. The birds would have been singing their heads off. Half the sophomore girls would have been wearing as little as the law allowed. Nebraska or not, that would have made for some pretty fine eye candy. Even after the supervolcano eruption, spring would at least have been thinking about showing up most years. Not in the wake of the Siberian Express and the two other, almost equally horrendous, blizzards that followed it. Good old Theocritus wouldn’t have got very far with pastoral poetry about the landscape he could see in these parts.

  Snow still lay on the ground—not here and there, as it had in some other post-eruption springs, but all over. The drifts were taller than a tall man. Bryce, a tall man, could testify to that. Daytime highs hadn’t got out of the thirties yet. The weathermen kept hopefully saying they would real soon now. The weather kept making liars of the weathermen.

  A crow hopped across the crusted snow. It cocked its head now this way, now that. Its beady black eyes were alert for anything that might be food. A mouse? A discarded parsnip fry? Crows weren’t fussy. They ate anything people did, and more besides.

  Compared to what the winter had brought, of course, highs in the thirties seemed wonderful. Bryce was just chilly as he walked over to the library to meet Susan—she’d come to campus to do some research for an article she was writing. She still hoped for an academic job of her own, but the hiring situation looked bleaker than ever.

 
; The paths on campus were free of snow. Machines had done the hard work at first. There weren’t enough machines to cope with the new winters, and fuel cost too much to keep them going. Like so much of what had been routine before the eruption, nowadays they were for emergency use only.

  For non-emergency use, Wayne State had students with snow shovels. Throwing snow around wasn’t a requirement like passing your English courses and U.S. history. But the college paid for the work, either in money or in meal tickets at the student union. From what Bryce had heard, more shovelers chose meal tickets. The food at the union wasn’t great, but Bryce didn’t think you could get great food at any restaurant in Wayne.

  A student coming the other way on a bicycle raised one hand from the handlebars to wave to Bryce. “Hey, Professor!” he called as he went past.

  “Hey!” Bryce waved back. Little by little, he was getting used to students calling him Professor. The student population stayed pretty much the same age, while he—dammit!—kept getting older.

  He’d started noticing that back in L.A., when he taught at Junipero High. The boys there had all looked like kids. Some of the girls, though, were definitely edible, to his eyes if not necessarily to the eyes of the law. Just how edible some of them seemed was something he’d never discussed in detail with Susan. No, he’d never done anything about it. No, he’d never even intended to. But he’d never discussed it with her, either.

  Students here were college-age, of course. He’d put on a few years, too, though. And he kept putting them on. These days, even some of the girls in his courses looked like escapees from middle school. They weren’t, but they looked that way to him. It was almost reassuring that others still seemed pretty damn hot.

  The girls, hot or not, also called him Professor. They called him sir, too, which made him feel all the more an antique. They were polite here, more polite than in SoCal. That part of the courtesy, he could have done without.