We Are the End

by Gonzalo Garcia

  ‘Fuck this piece of shit!’ the driver says hitting the radio.

  ‘It’s the tunnel I thin—’

  ‘—What are you, a fucking professor now? Fuck this piece of shit.’ He hits it once more just before getting out of the tunnel and into the Kennedy Avenue, where the cumbia starts again. ‘You see?’ he laughs. ‘Piece of shit knows who’s the boss. I’m the fucking boss, right man?’ he asks, looking up at the mirror. ‘Right man? I’m the boss.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘That’s right, I’m the boss, you piece of shit,’ he tells his radio. ‘Love takes me hiiigher, so high.’

  Tomás nods and takes out his phone to text Fran.

  ‘I’ll be there in a few minutes. Hope you’re keeping well. x.’

  They turn into Las Tranqueras and the taxi stops in front of the police station. The driver presses a button on the price counter and the price goes up by a thousand pesos. Tomás doesn’t understand why it does that but he pays the driver anyway and tells him to keep the change. The driver doesn’t thank Tomás so Tomás thanks him again and then gets off the car. His phone vibrates and it says:

  ‘You quick up here. Death of so boredom. :- ) --- :-p xoxoxoxo F.’

  Tomás sighs because he doesn’t like smileys at all, although he knows it’s not her fault that she was born to a generation that replaces words with yellow faces because they can’t deal with the silence at the end of a sentence and… Or was it Eva who hated… Still, that could also mean that she’ll do most of the talking and he’ll just have to smile.

  He rings the bell outside Jaime’s apartment building and the caretaker in the downstairs lobby looks at him and the electric door opens.

  ‘Hi, and who are you?’

  Tomás looks at the caretaker who for some reason doesn’t recognise him (is it the suit?) even though he had lived with Jaime for three months. They even had lunch together once, when Tomás got locked out and felt too guilty to eat his food in front of him. But Tomás can’t remember his name so he chooses not to mention any of this.

  ‘Hello? Who are you looking for?’

  ‘I’m looking for Jaime Rivera, 1104.’

  ‘Hold on,’ he says, sitting back with the phone between his cheek and shoulder while he opens a can of Coke. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Tomás Perez.’

  ‘We have a Tomás Perez downstairs. Tomás Perez. Pe-Rez. Pe – Yes, that’s right. Should I tell him to come in? You sure? OK.’ He hangs up. ‘Come in.’

  Tomás goes into the elevator and presses 11. Inside, there’s a mirror on every wall and he tidies his hair behind his ears and checks his profile. He finds that he prefers his right side. He remembers reading online about a test that proved that most people usually find the opposite side of whatever they may consider better more attractive. He must remember to stand to Fran’s right. Although she did kiss him on both sides, so maybe it’s all bullshit and everyone just wishes that they had a better… The elevator makes a TING TANG and opens on 10. Tomás puts his hands in his pockets and looks at the old guy in white shorts who steps in.

  ‘Going down?’ he asks Tomás.

  ‘Up, to eleven.’

  ‘OK,’ the old guy says with a sigh, scratching the back of his neck.

  The doors open again and Tomás walks out looking for 1104. He can hear electro music and he can feel the bass under his feet. He rings the doorbell but no one comes out and the music and laughter inside just keep going, so he waits for enough seconds to make it seem like it’s not desperate to knock. And then he knocks.

  Jaime comes out with a champagne bottle and a red and black cardboard crown on his head.

  ‘Huevón! You came!’ Tomás nods and he looks inside and there are mostly women (he can count four other guys) and some people are dancing and Fran, Fran’s on the balcony smoking and talking to an old bald hippie woman who’s wearing a shaolin monk toga and smoking a pipe.

  ‘I thought you said it was mostly dudes.’

  ‘I know, right? I figured if I said it was a sausage party then most guys would call their girlfriends to come. But I guess you’re alone, right?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Fran’s here, you know? She’s been asking about you.’

  ‘Man…’

  ‘Ah,’ he sighs spilling some of his drink on his fingers, which he then slurps up. ‘Have fun for once. Come in, here have this huevón, come in,’ he says, opening the wide door behind him and putting his own paper crown on Tomás.

  Tomás goes in and looks around and he’s way overdressed and most girls look so young in their jeans and tank tops and their fucking Hannah Montana faces and they dance like pros with self-aware asses and sweat and joke and every joke is so funny because everyone laughs so fucking hard and… Tomás hangs his coat by the door and takes out the plastic windmill from his pocket. He then walks up to the dining table and takes a cup of pisco sour. The young girls sitting at the head of the table next to the drinks look at him, at his blazer and at his shoes and the windmill. They laugh and Tomás smiles at them and he wonders if right now, right this moment, he should be having an epiphany about what it means to be old, what it means to pretend to understand younger people and their laughter, and all of it just to be spared of the shame of ageing. He suddenly has the urge to tell his parents that despite his never flying, despite never inventing anything that could come close to the simplicity of sticky tape in cereal boxes, he truly loves them because it’s not their fault they’re so…

  He takes a sip of pisco sour and his lips burn a little. He crosses girls dancing in the living room. Pink confetti lands on him as he walks up to the large window that gives out to the balcony. He can see himself on it, the suit and the tie and the pisco sour and his hair full of pink dots, the crown tilted to one side and the plastic windmill. He knocks on the window and Fran turns to face him and smiles, so he smiles back and waves hello with the windmill that doesn’t turn.

  She slides the window and kisses him the same way as before. One. Two. The old woman with the orange toga bows towards them and goes back inside. Tomás steps out onto the balcony and lights up a cigarette. Fran slides the window closed and walks up to the edge of the balcony, right by the wooden wind chimes, both elbows resting on top of the safety fence that wouldn’t save anyone who actually wanted to jump. He leans forward on it too, and for a moment, they can only hear each other breathe out smoke to the perfect major scales of the hollow bamboo sticks hitting against one another.

  ‘Hi,’ she says.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘You, um, like dress for funeral, king of funeral,’ she laughs, touching the crown.

  ‘Yeah,’ he says, smiling.

  ‘Well… I guess it’s a kind, a kind of party too. Like, not so good. But hope it don’t get to that bad!’

  ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t.’

  She raises her pisco sour and downs it so he does the same.

  ‘For you,’ he says, giving her the windmill, his back straight, slow hands, wind on his face, the kind of douchiness he knows will be a struggle to live with later.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says, putting her cigarette out on the floor and taking the windmill with both hands. She blows on it and it doesn’t turn so she looks at him.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ he says, unsure of what he’s apologising for.

  ‘Jaime right, you promising material,’ she laughs and Tomás laughs too.

  They both turn towards the city lights and Tomás notices she’s shivering, which makes him shiver too.

  ‘Look. I have question. I really do. One question, OK? Can ask you? Very um, weird. But I have to. I’m sorry.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Um… You know what? Forget. It’s very weird, you forget,’ she says.

  ‘Go ahead and ask,’ he says with a smile.

  She comes nearer to him and their shoulders touch and they face each other and Tomás is glad he’s standing to her right so she can see his better side even though all her sides are fuck
ing perfect, her nose and cheeks marked with freckles from another kind of sun that will never exist here, the kind that rests and forgives wrinkling, unties the skin, her large blue eyes and their lashes sticking out like miniature sea flowers and himself in them, the walking profile with only one best side, trying to sit still.

  ‘No, no! It so weird question,’ she takes his hand. Hers is warmer than his. ‘I do not want you freak, freak out. But I think about ever I first meet you, you know?’

  ‘It’s fine. What is it?’ He waits for her to lean towards him and he throws the cigarette down the balcony, watching the spot of light at the end of it become part of the city before it disappears and then, then he closes his eyes to hear her breathe between the wind chimes. Those lashes, those lashes, the sea flowers, the better side, perfect skin, another kind of sun, forgiving, the king of funerals…

  ‘OK. Here is… um, can me pray for you?’

  He opens his eyes and looks at her and she doesn’t smile, she doesn’t laugh and fuck his life, she really means it. He doesn’t say anything and lights another cigarette and then turns to her again, trying to hide his now dying boner.

  ‘Can pray for you? Can I pray for success of your videogame? Can pray for your stories? You look you need God, you know, my king? Is ok, everybody need. And, and I do not means you look bad, you know? You just very look, I do not know how to say, like you not there sometime, like absent maybe?’

  He looks back at the people dancing inside. The girls at the table are looking at them and laughing and Tomás wonders if this is a joke, a dare.

  ‘Can I then?’ she asks.

  ‘Yeah,’ he says turning back to her, ‘I guess so.’

  ‘So great. I was scare it weird to you. But is OK if I pray to Jesus? Or you have other preference?’

  ‘Jesus will do.’

  ‘Dear Jesus,’ she starts and puts one hand on his shoulder and closes her eyes. ‘Please Lord, Oh Lord Jesus, me pray for you for Tomás Perez. I pray so hard right now, the way you like, that you…’ He looks at her lips, thick with red lipstick pressing together and opening and closing, opening and closing, opening and they shine with all the lights in Santiago. ‘I pray you make that his videogame success and it go well with his stories. I hope you that have good plan set for him because he really need it, Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you so much Jesus. Amen.’ She opens her eyes and smiles at him. ‘Thank you,’ she says to him and he nods and smiles back. ‘How you feel?’ she asks, taking his hand.

  ‘I don’t think I have the words.’

  ‘I know, I know, me can tell,’ she says. ‘But you still can dance, yes?’ She presses his hand with hers and then opens the window and the noise comes out to them: the music, the laughter, the glasses, the dancing, all of it coming for them hiding in the balcony, in the whispers of a prayer and in the sounds of the hollow wind chime that keeps moving although they can no longer hear it.

  ‘Let dance,’ she says.

  ‘OK.’

  They go in and she takes his hand and pulls him to the middle of the dancing crowd. She takes off her coat and she’s wearing a long black dress with a great cleavage. She throws the coat and the plastic windmill onto a sofa, gets two pisco sours and gives him one.

  ‘You’re also dressed for a funeral,’ he tells her and smiles. She laughs.

  ‘I glad you like it, you know?’ she says, looking at her dress and pulling one of her fallen shoulder straps back up. ‘Salud,’ she says in a perfect accent, and then downs her drink so he does the same.

  They dance and they look at each other and he can’t even remember if he ever danced with Eva. He’s pretty sure he never asked her to, but he thinks that if they had danced, she would have probably moved just like Fran: up and down, her arms on the sides and her shoulders doing circles at odds with the beat, her neck bent towards him and her face almost touching his. Right now, as he looks at his hands waving to the rhythm, he feels ridiculous and he wishes he were younger, that he didn’t have to remember Eva, that he wasn’t wearing a suit or the party hat and that he could just sit at the ends of a table and laugh with the rest of them at the older people who are always dressed for funerals. He shuts his eyes and Fran grabs one of his hands and puts it on one of her shoulders, the sharp bones that are always so new when they belong to someone else. And then the song dies out so they both stop moving and she smiles at him while people clap. She takes his hand away from her.

  ‘I’ll be two seconds,’ he says, and she nods and starts talking to the guy dancing next to her. He’s trying to put one leg between hers but they won’t open, so he ends up doing something like the monkey on his own, without anyone to watch him make it ironic. That guy is as old as Tomás and he’s also wearing a crown.

  He goes into the bathroom and washes his face with cold water. Behind him, the bathtub is still full and Tomás remembers this one party where Eva and himself and one of Eva’s friends sat inside it, clothes and all, and poured champagne on each other. They were wearing bright bird masks (his was an owl), and Eva’s hair was all wet and pushed back behind the ears and she had smiled at him, she had looked at him and neither of them had said a thing.

  Tomás touches the water, now cold. He turns off the light and sinks his right leg into the bathtub. He knows he’d look mental if someone were to suddenly walk in but he’s so tired, so tiring, and a bit drunk. He then sinks his left leg and slowly sits inside against the bathroom wall and he shuts his eyes and the music and laughter get quieter until all he can hear are the tiny waves of water spreading around him.

  And then he wakes up to a hard knock on the door. He stays sitting in the bath hoping no one will knock again. But someone does knock again, and he gets up and his suit sticks with the water and drips. He steps out of the tub and his shoes sound like wet sponges. He opens the door and it’s Fran and she smiles at him, comes in and locks the door. She kisses him and he kisses her and she grabs his ass and he takes her waist. She tastes of pisco and cigarettes.

  ‘Wait. I bring your coat. We can get hell out of here.’

  Tomás nods. She leaves and he locks the door again. He looks at himself in the mirror. He looks so small, so thin with the suit stuck to him but that doesn’t matter because he knows that when you don’t sleep you see the world as it is, the world without yourself in it, just a plain pile of small single objects: the soap holders, the shaving cream, the cotton buds, the electric toothbrush, the wet suit… Everything else is a backdrop: the party, the jokes and the dares, himself and Fran. She knocks and he puts on his coat.

  ‘I call taxi already. We wait downstairs,’ she says.

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask me about this?’ he asks, looking at his shoes.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I afraid I don’t like you after. No talk before OK? We fuck first, then talk a lot, but keep the crown, OK?’ she says. She leaves and he follows her out.

  In the living room a group of girls are finishing a game of musical chairs. One of them sees Tomás’s trousers dripping when he walks by, and she stops moving so her friends look at him too. He waits for Fran to get her stuff. The music stops and one of the girls sits on the last chair and shouts ‘I win!’ but no one gives a shit, so she stands instead. Jaime walks up to Tomás, laughing and leaning on him.

  ‘Have a blast, man. You know, I always knew you were lucky. I told you, didn’t I tell you huevón?’

  ‘Yeah. Hey, I’m leaving. Thanks for everything.’

  ‘But we’re just… Just…’ He looks at Tomás’s shoes and laughs real hard and then walks back to the dancing people and falls on a sofa.

  ‘Let is go,’ Fran says to him and he nods. She takes his hand as they walk to the elevator.

  Inside, she doesn’t look at him but she looks at herself in the mirror and draws a smiley on the glass with her lipstick. She doesn’t say a thing so he doesn’t either.

  They walk past the caretaker who looks at Tomás’s shoes and sighs as he picks up a mop behind them
to clean the puddles. They keep walking in silence and the taxi driver waves at them and Fran waves back.

  ‘Where to?’ the taxi driver asks.

  ‘Where you live?’ Fran asks Tomás, and he notices the sun starting to rise just over the hills, and her thick lips shine red under the streetlight as they split into a smile, the ocean flowers taking in everything, the silhouette of a skyscraper frozen against the waves of a black river, the single man walking back alone forcing laughs at lit-up windows, the stills of birds that appear in the flash of rooftops, the fading print of a plane in the sky, and then the fucking tunnel.

  5

  The Night The Sky Fell

  IDEAS BOOK P. 28:

  The game starts off with a rocket launching into space. As Vince (an astronaut) is carried into space with nothing more than a robot companion (that can only talk if it’s answering a question), we get the backstory in captions and translucent stills.

  The stars and the moon and the sun have all disappeared. It was all very sudden, all without cause. People took days to notice. In fact, No one noticed until the tides, with no moon to calm them, came out in waves to drown out the coasts. Everyone’s afraid now. Riots break out for supplies, people kill each other for canned food. They kill each other over bomb shelters to wait out the darkness. Activists appear on news channels happy and smiling because now everyone listens to them. A Blue Peace hippie frees caged animals from the zoo, others make peace with those they spent a lifetime hating. And others pray for the Rapture, head into the streets to preach the end of everything. The chosen ones, the chosen ones will make it, it’s too late now and the unchosen people (pretty much the whole world according to the chosen) should get ready for something far worse than darkness.