We Are the End

by Gonzalo Garcia

  ‘Aiii, don’t be jugoso, son.’

  ‘You don’t even know what that means.’

  ‘I know it’s a hip thing to say. Don’t hate the player, hate the game. Don’t hate… Everyone says that at the gym. But hating a game without players, now that’s jugoso. I’m not that old you know?’ He hears his dad mumbling something behind her. ‘Did you get our card? Your dad wants to know if you got our card. How are you? The card, yes, yes, I asked him, I think he got it. You got it right? Are you still at work? Your dad wants to know if you’re still at work.’

  ‘Retired!’ his dad shouts in the background even though no one asked him anything and his mum laughs.

  ‘So you finally did it,’ Tomás says, touching the chewing gum stars above him.

  His dad picks up the phone. ‘Yup, after thirty-eight years. It’s a long time. Isn’t it a long time?’

  ‘Oh, so looong,’ his mum sighs behind him.

  ‘It’s a long time.’ And it is a long time. His dad had worked at the Clover factory in Graneros for most of his life. When he started, his job was to put toys in cereal boxes. He gradually moved up to designing them, after revolutionising the field. He came up with a string that glued the toy to the bottom of the cereal box so that kids had to eat the whole thing before getting it. It was impossible to unstick so it made people eat faster. It had made Tomás popular in primary school because he could get his classmates any toys they wanted, but as he became older it made him unpopular because his house was always packed with cheap plastic superhero figures that no one cared about anymore. Once, he brought a girl home and she asked him why there were so many toys. He said he had a retarded brother in a care home who only visited on weekends. He called him Nacho because it’s what he felt like eating at the time, and he kept up the story throughout most of high school.

  ‘We just called you to tell you some good news. Right vieja? We have some good news.’

  ‘Some great news! Oh, look at the flood. Oh my God, a flood on TV, always so many floods in here. Jesus Christ save those poor people, oh my God so many commercials. This country, I tell you, and tomorrow it’s hot again!’ his mum says in the background.

  ‘What is it?’ Tomás asks, leaving nail marks in the chewing gum dots.

  ‘I start flying tomorrow!’

  And that is worse for Tomás than a Biblical flood. Every man in the Perez family after Tomás’s grandfather, all his dad’s cousins, even the distant ones (although they’re really all distant), have been, or are, recreational pilots. And Tomás’s dad loves saying it, over and over again, that during the dictatorship, he had flown to the border with Argentina, ready to start a war, and that he’s been frustrated ever since that he hadn’t got to kill any Argentinians. He once told Tomás that even when they screamed their accents were annoying, and that he still dreamt of screaming Argentinians. Tomás still hasn’t applied for his license because he’s afraid of heights, but his dad keeps bringing it up from time to time. Even Nacho would be flying by now.

  ‘Maybe you can come with me and I’ll teach you.’

  ‘He’ll teach you!’ his mum says.

  ‘I’m real busy with the game, sorry.’

  ‘Ah… And how’s Eva doing?’

  ‘She’s busy too. Sometimes I don’t see her for a whole day. She says hi.’

  ‘Great. Say hi back to her. Tell her I want grandkids.’

  ‘We want grandkids!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, someone’s got to buy your games,’ his dad says with a sigh. ‘Remember, it’s the simplest things that are the best. Just keep it simple. Remember the sticky string I invented? It was that simple.’

  ‘Say hi for me,’ his mum says.

  ‘Alright, I will.’

  ‘But seriously, you should come and fly with me.’

  ‘Dad, I have to go. Eva will be home soon and it’s my turn to cook dinner tonight.’

  ‘Again?’ his dad says.

  ‘Well done her!’ his mum says in the background.

  ‘OK, well, take care. If you change your mind, just give me a call. I have a cell phone now.’

  ‘I will.’

  He hangs up and sits against the wall under the desk. He just can’t bring himself to tell his parents about the breakup. They really liked Eva and they’d be so hurt. And his mum would say that it’s because he has no patience with other people. And his dad would say it’s because he doesn’t have a real job like his sister does, who is definitely not like Nacho because she writes the cultural section for El Mercurio paper and keeps meeting celebrities. Her work on the contemporary magical realism scene in Chile was called ‘revolutionary’ by the new magical realist Adolfo Genuino, although Tomás doesn’t know why because he never reads the paper, just as she never asks him about his own work. And his dad would then go on to tell him that to get over Eva he needs to learn to fly and think about shooting Argentinians and sticking strings, sticking them everywhere, at the very end of boxes just like him, just that simple, to make him learn about patience and deserving things you really want and… Plus, if he and Eva end up together again, it would make the whole conversation useless. He’s just not prepared to have useless arguments with that beige couch. His dad just retired and he needs to rest and fly and well, retire, and to force him to think about Tomás’s own problems would be too selfish.

  He hears the key turning on the other side of the office door so he gets up and sits by the windowsill and opens his IDEAS book. Jaime comes in and looks at the bird in front of him.

  ‘Amazing, you’ve been working here the whole time. Don’t worry, I’ll get rid of it then.’ He takes the bird, puts it in an empty crisp packet that was on the desk, steps on the plastic bin pedal and drops it inside. The speed of the whole thing makes Tomás swallow hard. ‘You haven’t left then? I thought you had lessons.’

  ‘Yeah, but they ended early. Most of them hadn’t even played Final Fantasy VII, can you imagine? Sometimes I wonder why we even call them students if they never want to study. They keep telling me what I should be teaching them instead. Something about a loop. They had little to say about the story.’

  ‘The Loop? They were on about that in my class too. It’s a shame about FF7 though. It’s a great game, amazing gameplay mechanics,’ Jaime says, putting his scarf on the desk.

  ‘How was your date?’

  ‘It was fine,’ he says, going through the post-its on his computer screen.

  ‘Just fine?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he sighs, ‘she was way too nerdy.’

  ‘Isn’t that the point of GeeksWithoutKids.com?’

  ‘Yeah but this was too much. Her name was Agatha. Fucking Agatha. Who the hell is called Agatha nowadays? And her favourite game’s Pokémon and you know how much I hate Pokémon.’

  ‘Yeah, you hate Pokémon. That sounds terrible.’

  ‘So, they finally left,’ Jaime says, looking out the window.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The hippies. They’re gone. They all fucking love nature but they’re allergic to rain. Hey, what’s that?’ Jaime says, coming closer to Tomás.

  ‘What’s what?’

  ‘Huevón, that!’ He touches Tomás’s right cheek with a big smile.

  Tomás looks at himself in the window reflection and Jaime leans back in his chair.

  ‘Classes finished early, huh?’ he laughs.

  ‘Come on, man.’

  ‘Student?’ Jaime asks and Tomás doesn’t say anything. ‘Just what we needed, huevón, you’re fucking a student. I’ve got to tell Claudio. Maybe they’ll make a meme out of you now.’

  ‘Could you talk any louder? And no, I don’t want a meme.’

  ‘Are you retarded? This is good, the best things that’s happened to you for a while. You’re finally getting over Eva.’

  ‘She’s a postgrad, she’s German, and don’t mention it to anyone because it was just a greeting and she can’t even finish sentences and she’s older than the rest and—’

  ‘
OK, alright, calm down, I won’t, I won’t.’ He stands and takes his phone out. ‘But you should invite her out tonight. There’s a Programming postgrad party at ten. It’s at my house.’

  ‘I won’t invite her. We could lose our funding.’

  ‘Well, you should. It’s always just men at these things. I was actually just picking some stuff up before going home to get everything ready.’

  ‘I’m not coming.’

  ‘Every night you don’t go out, you pass up an opportunity, my friend.’

  ‘I don’t want an opportunity.’

  ‘Come on.’

  Jaime leaves and Tomás checks his phone and lies under the desk to look at the chewing gum stars again, No word from Yiyo about Eva so he texts him.

  ‘Dude, what happened?’

  Yiyo calls back immediately.

  ‘I have something to tell you and you won’t like it. Didn’t know how to tell you, but I guess you have to know.’

  ‘What happened?’ Tomás looks at the troll doll smiling back at him.

  ‘She’s gone, man, Eva’s gone for good,’ he says and Tomás swears that the circle of chewing gum has turned into a square again, and that its corners are sharper than they ever were before.

  4

  The Party

  ‘Cut its head.’

  ‘I think it’s looking at me.’

  ‘Tomás, dead things can’t look at you. It won’t mind, I promise. Here, just take the knife.’

  Eva puts down the onion, wipes her face with the Arc de Triomphe tea towel (though he’s the one tearing up), and stands behind Tomás. She kisses the back of his neck, takes his hand, takes the knife.

  ‘Now, just like a guillotine,’ she says, pronouncing it in French: Guilluhteeneh.

  He had done the same with her once. They had played pool at a bar in Bellavista and he’d walked behind her to guide her shots. She’d laughed. But she’d let him do it. Though not for long. Her parents owned a pool table and she was much better, so much better than he was. She had beat him. They never played again, or even spoke about it. But now, with the whole feathered chicken on the chopping board, he wishes he could cut it in one slice, one motion to show her a history of motions because, as she had once said, there’s nothing more impressive than seeing the results of years of practice in the space of a second. She’d been talking about the Monet show she had gone to see in Paris when she said that. He’d said he didn’t get painting at all. She’d said it was about the immediacy of everything, though he hadn’t understood what she meant by that. And she now tightens her grip on the knife.

  ‘On three.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Un, deux…’

  They make a slight dent on the chicken’s neck.

  ‘You do it,’ he says, smiling and giving her the knife.

  ‘Man do you give up easily.’

  ‘You just do it better, so what’s the point?’

  Tomás moves over to let her cut everything, and a drop from the leaking ceiling falls on his head. She chops the chicken’s head off in a single slash. The immediacy of everything.

  And then Tomás wakes up without her, dreamless, as always, unsure of anything but the words after, after, after and Serge on repeat, dying and dying again.

  • • •

  To Antarctica. She’s gone to the Antarctic. Who the hell goes to the Antarctic? Only people who hate everything must go there because there’s nothing, no one to see in a six-month night and… But should it surprise him? Whenever he notices something has surprised him, it stops being surprising. It’s the end of a twist-driven movie, their biggest mysteries cheapened because they were always certainties to those who knew but… Did he know? OK, so maybe it’s not the place itself that surprises him, maybe it’s that he never thought she’d make it to Antarctica. He had once wished that she’d pull it off but not NOW. Is NOW a pure coincidence? She’s getting back at him, she’s saying ‘I am alone and better for it and here’s your proof.’ Leaving without telling him, sending a birthday card over with an acronym… She wanted him to find out, to hear through other people that her dreams were easier to achieve without him. But surely it hadn’t been his fault that it had taken her so long, surely it… If anything, the fact that she’s done it can only be proof that he helped her get there. Yes, it’s his fault she’s achieving so… She had always accused him of being distant, but this is by far a greater gap between them than any argument over gas bills and cooking habits could ever create.

  ‘She did it,’ Tomás says in front of the bathroom mirror, while he shaves and shaves only for himself. As a maritime biologist, she had always been drawn to the extreme poles, their topography and their wild life. Once, they drove to Viña del Mar and when they were on the hills, where the ocean suddenly appears white with sun at the distance, she hugged him and told him that she’d been born to be on water. One of the last things he heard of her from Yiyo was that she had joined a group of scientists who are all passionate about this one ice hole that tunnels down into the deep ocean from the frozen surface just outside of the Chilean Antarctic coast. He knew she had been hoping to join the group of scientists on an expedition to study Antarctic ice sheets but had never asked about it because, what’s the point of asking about something no one knows anything about? The team would go and study whatever it was they found at the bottom of the world; they still don’t know how deep the tunnel goes, or where it leads to, or if there’s any life in it at all. Yiyo told him she’d joined the team months ago but Tomás thought she would stay in Santiago. He can only imagine her in this city.

  Tomás washes the shaving foam off his cheeks and then goes to his room. He gets undressed and lies on the floor in the bedroom without a bed and looks up at the ceiling. He notices two wet patches over him and one of them lets out a small drop that lands right in the middle of his forehead. What are the chances? He rolls over to one side and in front of him is a pile of clothes and on top of it, a suit bag.

  He opens it and takes the suit out. He’s only ever worn it once, for a friend of Eva’s wedding, and they fought over it because Eva thinks black suits are only good for funerals. He leaves the suit on top of the pile, goes to his living room coat hanger and reaches into the inside pockets of his jacket. He finds the ball of paper with Fran’s number and spreads it on the sofa’s arm and dials.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Listen, there’s—’

  ‘Yes, yes. What time you will be get party?’

  ‘Oh… Ten, I think.’

  ‘OK, see you at party.’

  ‘Bye.’

  ‘Bye,’ he says again, but she’s hung up.

  Tomás goes back to his room and tries to find a white shirt in the pile of clothes. He finds one between the black 2013 Deftones Tour hoody (which Eva hated) and the red and black flannel shirt (which she hated less) and spreads it in front of him. The collar has brown dirt marks on the inside and the sleeves are full of creases. He must remember not to take off his blazer at the party and to wear an obnoxious tie to hide it all, which won’t be hard since really all ties are obnoxious.

  He takes off his jeans and T-shirt and carries the suit and white shirt to the bathroom. He leaves the suit on the toilet seat, still with the hanger, and looks at himself in the mirror. He spots a white hair and pulls it out and then puts on the suit and the fucking purple tie with the fucking yellow lines and 90s cartoon Super Mario faces all over it. Eva’s probably right, he does look like he’s going to a funeral, and if he had to choose whose funeral it was, he’d say it’s his career’s because he hasn’t been able to come up with a single fucking story for the game and he hasn’t marked any of the fucking papers and he still hasn’t fucking slept and now he’s going to have to talk to his colleagues (‘colleagues’! What kind of cunt would say that?) and the German who talks like a mistranslated game from the past and then the rest of the postgrad students about… But he already arranged to meet Fran and he can’t think of an excuse not to meet h
er. He will have to keep seeing her in class anyway.

  He looks at himself one last time and goes back into his room. He puts on his coat and in his right pocket he can feel the plastic windmill he never binned. He takes it out and blows on it but it doesn’t turn. He carries it with him anyway and walks to the front door and sees a folded note on the WELCOME carpet. It says:

  Please come to Abdul’s vintage shop at the Plaza Italia market. We sell everything and we really need your help to stay open. Please come.

  Cordially,

  Your neighbour, Lucas.

  PS. Please man, come on…

  Tomás makes a paper ball with it and throws it on the sofa. He opens his door and the corridor is empty and the lights have gone off and he can hear a torrent of heavy guitar riffs and the tiny earthquakes of a doublepedal bass drum from inside one of his neighbour’s flats. He sighs and walks along the corridor using his phone to light it up.

  Downstairs, he waits for a taxi to drive by and looks up at his bedroom window. HI – I HOPE YOU’RE WELL he reads. But tonight he’s lying to Eva, to the street facing it and every person walking and looking up to it, and to the whole city and its flashing lights and the silhouettes moving about in other flats, and the unfinished skyscraper with the hanging plastic sheets flapping in the wind like the sails of an old ship about to set off, and the mall workers still filling buses now on their way home, the buskers with them too, pouring the same fucking guitar lines back and forth, back and forth, back and always with the deep voice, always with the long strum at the end of a chord meant for the oceans and the mountains and the countryside and change, the always silent begging for change in the smallest possible coins. Tonight, in the noise of Santiago in the dark, which is never dark enough because its nights too are lies, he laughs at the crooked sign and hopes no one he knows has ever seen it.

  He lifts his hand to stop a taxi, gives the address, and they drive up the Kennedy Avenue and into Las Condes. He looks up at the balconies of the apartment complexes as they drive by and sees people smoking and partying and kissing and playing guitar and then this one guy, on his own and wearing a bathrobe, looking down into the road. Everyone’s moving out of synch, like TV screens stacked together and tuned to different channels. The driver’s quiet and the radio’s playing a cumbia about love lifting people higher and higher. When they drive into a tunnel, the song crackles into static.