Love in the Time of Global Warming

by Francesca Lia Block

  The quote both frightens and reassures me. If we really are on a modern-day odyssey, as the parallels with the book seem to confirm, we may have the hope of returning “home” as Odysseus did. But what is home now and what if we can’t “restrain” ourselves? What more will we have to endure? What do we have to prove? And to whom?

  “Oy vey,” Ez says. “Doesn’t sound too good to me.”

  “Maybe this Tiresias guy was on crack?” Hex offers.

  “No, he was wise,” I say. “Because he understood both genders.” I squeeze Hex’s hand under the blanket and he kisses the top of my head.

  “Maybe because he was blind, too. It allowed him more sight. Our weaknesses are our strengths. Our flaws are our gifts.” Ash says all of this, unexpectedly for our usually less-than-philosophical pretty boy, bending his head toward the strings of his instrument as if they had just whispered that information to him.

  Then Hex and I fall asleep to the sounds of Orpheus’s lyre, readying ourselves for our own trip below the earth.

  * * *

  The next morning Tara still hasn’t returned. Worry gnaws at me, as hard a taskmaster as hunger. Worry for us, for her. I missed you. I’ve longed for you. Anyone who lives in this enchanted place (for the extent of its enchantment has fully hit me now that I am rested and fed) cannot be ill-intentioned. She was trying to help us, I’m sure of that now. What happened?

  “I say we leave,” Hex says.

  Ez and Ash look at him, baby twins with their big, soft eyes.

  “Don’t you think we should stay here, for a little while longer?” Ez says. I can tell he doesn’t want to give up the comforts of this place. None of us do but I have something more than comfort on my mind.

  “No,” says Hex, chin set.

  “I like it here,” Ash offers. “We all do, right?”

  Hex ignores him; I know he thinks that, unlike Ez, Ash hasn’t earned his right to weigh in yet. “Pen?”

  “I have to find out if she’s right about my mother. You think it’s definitely Las Vegas?”

  Hex nods. “Two sources told us so. But you two boys will be happy to know we can’t leave for a few days. We have some work to do or it’ll be the epic fail in sin city.”

  “What kind of work?” Ez is scraping the last bit of porridge out of the bowl, gobbling like he does when he’s agitated or scared.

  “I need to teach you to fight,” Hex says. “Maybe Tara will be back by then.”

  16

  MORE THAN WORDS

  “YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE to get over yourself, Pen, and learn how to kill,” Hex says as we stand on the bank of the oasis, his sword in my hands.

  Learn how to kill? Not me. It’s not something I can do. I was raised in a peaceful home.

  “But not in a peaceful world,” Hex says when I try to object. “It wasn’t even Then.”

  And I do know what it’s like to be angry. I used to get so angry at Congress and the banks, the bankers fighting with my father on the phone, the racists and homophobes on TV, the slaughter of animals, the poisoning of the water and the air, the burned-through ozone, the refusal to legislate on behalf of the helpless planet. Sometimes I’d take that anger out on my mom and my brother, the people I loved the most. But Then, during Then, I never picked up a weapon; I never harmed anyone, not even bugs. Did that mean I couldn’t learn about killing, that I couldn’t find it in me? Since Then, though blindly (in spite of two seeing eyes, for I kept them closed), I’d stuck scissors in a Giant’s orb. And I am harder now, toughened by the days on the road. Although we haven’t eaten much, the muscles in my arms and legs look more defined, and I think I move with more coordination than before. Maybe Hex’s grace and power have rubbed off on me a bit.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, “I just can’t let you back down now. I need you.” He looks out across the water. “I have a feeling,” he says, “that things are going to get worse.”

  He stands behind me, his hands on my arms as I hold his sword. He’s told me the name of its parts: shinogi-ji, hira, ha, shingo, hamon, mune, munemachi, nakago, hamachi, mei, mekugi-ana, nakagojiri.

  I can smell the chemicals and perfume of the sunblock I took from the Giant’s store, activated by Hex’s sweat. He is so close that I could turn around and kiss him, feel the firm/yielding pressure of his lips, but I know now isn’t the time and I’m afraid he would gently put his hands on my shoulders, hold me at arm’s length, and remind me of this. Better to have him close this way, even if it’s for war not love. And Hex would argue it is for love, because how else can we be together when so much evil threatens us at every turn. So I let him teach me.

  I know the names of all the parts of the sword but I don’t know how to use the sum of them. Now my arms shake but Hex steadies me against him and I feel his heart like an anchor to which I am securely chained.

  “When you strike, it is not a thought.” He enunciates every syllable, speaking in the voice of a Hex I haven’t met before. “It is pure action. You embody the result not the action. Like the deepest meditation.”

  It doesn’t feel right to me to be holding something so sharp. But then I think of everything that has happened so far and I understand. I understand it as the natural outcome of what we have become. My arms and legs tingle with the Giant heaviness. Maybe I’m afraid of the sword not because I think I might fail to defend us but because I’m not so certain I won’t give up and turn it on myself.

  * * *

  After our lesson, Hex tries to teach Ez and Ash but he decides they’re hopeless and dismisses them. Ash wants to play the lyre while Ez, who has found some paints in Tara’s houseboat, spends the day painting a cornucopia, spilling with purple figs, green grapes, and overblown pink roses, on the side of the van. It’s uncanny, his work—museum quality, old master quality. Even Hex has to admit it almost makes up for his inability to wield a sword.

  In the evening, Hex and I go down to the shore of the oasis and he pulls off his T-shirt, exposing the inked heart and the word—Heartless. He undoes his belt and pulls off his jeans, stands there in black boxers, looks at me, runs a hand through his hair, steps into the water.

  It’s the first time we’ve been able to actually bathe. I care more about this, and the idea of being close to him, skin to skin, in the water, than about how I look, so I undress too, tossing my clothes aside on a rock, and step to the edge and slide in, up to my neck. The water is dark green, the color of Hex’s eyes. I move closer to him. The sun is starting to set, streaming red light across the oasis. Then his hand reaches for me under the water, grasping my wrist, drawing me close. I tilt back my head and close my eyes, inhaling the scent of—what? Quartz, garnet, cinnabar, serpentine, fluorite, wolframite, olivine, tourmaline, gypsum, hornblende. I try to recall the names of minerals I know, wondering which ones are really here, trying to distract myself from what is happening. Because it’s scary to feel this much in such a dangerous world. Even if what you feel, overwhelmingly, like inhaling the precious, still-surviving existing earth, is not fear but love.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks me, maybe sensing in the frantic thud of my pulse more than happy excitement.

  “I haven’t ever…”

  “Because I wasn’t born this way?”

  “No, not that. Not that at all.”

  Hex says softly, “Baby, I love you. Pen. More than I love the color black. More than I love cigarettes, more than I love books. Even music.”

  “More than food,” I whisper through our kiss, shuddering as his hands find me under the water. “More than art or stories.” Then I can’t speak anymore.… More than words …

  * * *

  For three days we stay here, in paradise. Tara doesn’t return. I missed you. I’ve longed for you. We eat small amounts of her food. Hex teaches me to sword fight. Ez paints, insectlike flowers and petal-ish butterflies on the van. Ash plays music. In the evening I borrow one of the large bright silk scarves from Tara’s closet, draping it as best I can around myself. (I was never
good at this type of girlish thing, though Moira tried to teach me.)

  Then I meet Hex down by the water.

  As well as instructing me to use a sword by day, by night he teaches me about my body. Sensations I had only read about or imagined quake through me with the urgency of disaster until I collapse in his arms.

  I grow bolder by the second evening, grabbing his hips before we’re hidden under the water, hoisting myself onto him, legs wrapped around, my mouth on his neck, surprising us both.

  But as we’re lying on the bank under the palms—a thin piece of chrysanthemum-yellow silk our only cover—I reach for him and he gently moves my hand away.

  The next night, our last one here, I beg him to let me touch him. Shy as I am, I want to see him experiencing pleasure, see the flash of incisors as his lips part for more breath. The sun is setting and the air grows chill; we’ll have to go in soon. In spite of the lull of the oasis, we’re never sure how safe we are here, especially after dark. I am standing behind him, my hands on his hips, my head on his shoulder.

  “You don’t have to. I’m fine,” he says.

  “But I’m not, I need it. It’s for me.”

  “I’m not sure I’m … I’ve never felt okay that way.” His voice roughens, cracks. “Like there’s something wrong. That’s one reason I had to get high all the time.…”

  This vulnerability surprises me. He’s always seemed so confident—with Beatrix, talking about the pretty girls.

  “There’s nothing wrong with you, believe me. You are the one perfect thing.” As I go on tiptoe to kiss his mouth over his shoulder, I let my hand slide down his smooth-pulsing belly to his groin, and though he startles he doesn’t push me off. Instead, almost involuntarily he pushes his hips forward, up against my fingers. I curl them into a soft fist and stroke him the way I used to touch myself before the Earth Shaker, when touch wasn’t something you thought you’d have to do without and when love wasn’t the difference between life and death. This time it is Hex, for once, who collapses in my strengthening arms.

  17

  DEAD SEA

  WE HAVE STOCKED THE VAN with Tara’s supplies, including some cans of oil we found in a shed. We hesitated at first but decided she would be okay with our taking them. Now we have water and jars of pickled vegetables and meats. They float in their brine like strange, colorful fetuses. I’m not hungry but Hex, Ez, and Ash savor each bite. We also have Tara’s small glass bottles of tinctures for purifying water and adding nutrients to soil and food, but we aren’t sure we trust them yet, or that we’re quite that desperate, so we haven’t tried. And we each have a knife taken from Tara’s kitchen since Hex says that’s the next best thing to a sword. I can’t imagine what I would do with mine if I needed to use it on a Giant. It is small with a white wooden handle and strange symbols etched into the sharp blade.

  On the way to Vegas we stop at the Salton Sea. While Ez and Ash sleep in the van, Hex and I wander out over what appears at first to be sand but is actually—when you look closer—crushed fish bones, barnacles, and debris. Rusted cars and ruined furniture make a devil’s living room. We reflexively put our hands over our noses and mouths when the rotten-egg stench of sulfur hits us in the face. The water is dark and thick with green algae, and dead fish and birds rot on the shore. Hundreds of eye sockets and mouths gape at us like creatures from a Hieronymus Bosch painting I used to have nightmares about.

  “This place was a wreck even Then,” Hex says and starts singing “Highway to Hell” under his breath. I wonder how many more hells we are going to have to traverse. I’m getting immune to them in some ways but I think that may be a sign of how I’m losing my soul a little each day. I was never as sensitive as Venice but the sight of an injured bird, a trip to the animal shelter, or the death of one of our pet fish used to make me cry. I think of Venice standing here, surveying the ruin, and for one second I’m glad he’s gone. He shouldn’t have to see any of this.

  Maybe my soul has left; how else could I even think of him being gone, even if it would spare him pain? I put my hands to my thudding temples.

  “No butterflies here,” I say, in what might be a soulless voice.

  “No,” Hex replies emphatically, squinting out over the wreckage, and for a second I think he’s read my mind and is telling me my soul is not yet gone.

  “Why do you think there were butterflies? When I met you, Ez, Ash, Tara. What does it mean?”

  “They’re the souls of the dead,” Hex says. “Spirit guides. Maybe your dad and mom and…” He stops. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, it’s okay.” Maybe my mom is dead. My dad is gone. Once again I wonder if I’m alive, because Penelope of the past could not have withstood even the idea of this. At least Hex didn’t say Venice; even dead-hearted Pen could not handle the destruction of her last shred of hope. I take my new knife out of my pocket and examine the blade in the vicious red light of the setting sun.

  Hex turns to me and gently takes the knife away, pockets it. This time it does seem as if he’s really read my mind. “I want you to be a fighter. But I don’t want you to forget who you are.”

  I move closer and look into his eyes where the sea is still alive. “I’m scared,” I say. It’s the first time I’ve let myself say it.

  “The true warrior isn’t immune to fear. She fights in spite of it.”

  “That’s the same for the true lover.” I lean in and kiss the tattoo on Hex’s neck so that my lips feel the beat of his pulse. He throws back his head and shuts his eyes. His arms circle my waist, drawing me close so our pelvises touch. I’m glad he’s holding me up because my knees are collapsing with the relief of touching him again. He moves his head so our lips meet and it’s like I’ve been given some world-changing elixir. The sulfur smell, the bones, the rotting sea are all gone. It is just Hex, my warrior lover, and me.

  18

  AFTERWORLD

  WE’RE IN WHAT USED to be Las Vegas. The last time I was here was with Moira and Noey for Moira’s cheerleading convention. Cheerleading: one of the things that is hard to imagine ever existing.

  * * *

  Moira went out for cheerleading in eighth grade and made the team but she didn’t realize how serious it was, that she’d be practicing every day after school and going away all the time. Moira wasn’t what you might expect a cheerleader to be like, except she was pretty and could dance and do gymnastics. It was hard that year. She made new friends, girls none of us would have talked to before. I was relieved when she didn’t try out in ninth grade. But my mom took us all to the Vegas competition because Moira’s mom had to work again that weekend.

  The hotel wasn’t one of the fancy, themed ones; it had small rooms and bad fake gold and red velvet décor and the lobby smelled of desperation—grease, sweat, alcohol, smoke. In fact, the smell of cigarette smoke was in my sinuses all weekend. But we went to this buffet in the hotel the first night and ate all kinds of crazy junk food like Jell-O salad and cheeseburgers and fries and sodas and this pink whipped cream dessert thing and my mom didn’t complain. And then we went to the competition and Noey and I screamed when Moira came onstage in her green and gold uniform, her hair and her height and her long, pale limbs (the other girls all had real or fake tans) making her stand out from the rest. The whole thing reminded me of something out of a dystopian teen novel with the flashing neon, the cacophonic music, the howling, cheesy announcer, and the girls looking like endangered prey in the pit of the arena.

  That night, Noey and Moira and I ate at the buffet again and then took a Jacuzzi while my mom crashed in the room with some literary mystery novel. The sky never seemed to get dark, only to glow with a lurid haze from the strip of bigger hotels in the distance. A desert breeze rustled the skirts of the palm trees. I felt better as soon as I was in the warm churn of water with my friends, away from the rest of Moira’s team.

  “You were awesome,” I told her.

  She grinned, her head floating above the water and her glittery eye shadow starting
to melt. “I’m so glad you guys are here. I’d freak otherwise.”

  “Let’s come here again,” Noey said. “When we’re rich. And we’ll stay in that Egyptian hotel or Paris or New York and eat sushi and lobster and drink champagne and get married at one of those chapels.”

  “To each other,” Moira said. And my heart did a flip like a mermaid’s tail.

  We took the elevator back to our room and a drunken, white-haired man asked us what we were doing for the rest of the evening. Noey said, “Oh, you know, playing Barbies and eating Tater Tots,” which threw him, but Moira smiled her best cheerleader smile and waved dainty fingers when we exited the elevator, the steel doors sliding closed in his face.

  We were all in the same bed again that night, chilly under the thin blankets and scratchy sheets, skin and hair scented with chlorine we hadn’t washed off, Moira’s sharp toenails snagging, delicately, my shin in the dark.

  * * *

  And now I am here with Hex and Ez and Ash, and Moira and Noey are gone. I never let myself think about how they died in the Earth Shaker, if it was the earthquake or the waves or something worse. But I have also given up on imagining that they are alive. It would be almost more terrible to think that and then find out something else. Tara said she saw my mother and maybe my brother but there was no mention of my two best girls running away like nymphs across the lawn.

  * * *

  Las Vegas is a perfect place for Giants; everything still standing was built to their scale and now without the lights they can slumber safely and wait for prey. Ash is driving when we arrive, Ez directing him while Hex sleeps with his head on my lap in the backseat. We are always driving too fast, it seems, scared of what might reach out for us from the sky. Eventually Ash stops the van. Everywhere graffiti reads Welcome to the Afterworld.