We Are the End

by Gonzalo Garcia

  He doesn’t know what to say so he goes to Abdul and helps him shelf the pile of books.

  ‘I’m not that old, I can do it by myself you know?’

  ‘What’s the order?’

  ‘I said, I’m not that old, damn it,’ he says, slapping the back of the book he’s holding.

  ‘Fine, fine.’

  ‘Hey, I’m just fucking with you,’ he laughs, looking at the others to see if they’re laughing too but they aren’t.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah, just put them anywhere.’

  Tomás picks up a pair and starts helping out, and as he presses on the row of books on the shelf to make space for the new ones, he thinks about how crap it would be to do this for a living, how boring life can be, and how lucky he was in his job. Sure, he always had so much to do but it always seemed so important, something that couldn’t end after an hour or even a day and he knows it’s because important things must always last. The most important things do so forever.

  He presses on the books on the shelf even harder but the new ones still don’t fit, which annoys Tomás because he doesn’t want to show that he’s incapable of simple tasks. Surely doing things that are below him means he just isn’t that boring. So he stands facing the shelf in silence.

  ‘Here,’ Matilde comes over and takes Tomás’s books and puts them lying sideways on top of the shelved ones.

  ‘Thanks,’ he says, but she stays quiet. ‘Congratulations on the whole New York thing.’

  ‘Oh, thanks.’

  ‘You must be excited.’

  ‘I don’t do ‘excited’,’ she says with a grin.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘How can I be excited over things I don’t know or haven’t lived yet?’

  ‘Well, because you don’t know them and you haven’t lived them yet.’

  ‘We’re not children, Tomás, we’re not children. Could you pass me those books over there?’ she says, pointing at one of the piles.

  ‘Listen,’ he starts, ‘I just wanted to apologise and thank you. It’s been a rough day.’

  ‘I don’t do apologies either.’

  ‘Oh.’ She’s just being cruel now. When he was younger he also felt entitled to only accept certain forms of love that could show others who he wanted to be. He doesn’t really know what that means but Eva constantly reproached the way he had always been so dismissive of her friends when they came round to eat. Once, she even made him sleep on the couch because this one guy kept talking about his issues with women and referring to himself and Tomás as ‘us men’ and so Tomás just had to lie about not having a Facebook account when he asked. Would he add him now? He would like to believe that he would because things have changed, he has changed, and no asshole in the world would be able to turn him from the things he really loves. That’s why old people very rarely argue with strangers. No one can fucking change them. That, and also because they’re alone and well, they’re old.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she says, just as he was about to ask her if he could add her on Facebook.

  ‘They fired me at work.’

  ‘Ouch, what did you do?’ she asks with a quiet laugh. He finds the question funny too because he hadn’t thought about it up to now.

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Early mid-life crisis, huh?’

  ‘How do I know if it is?’ he smiles at her, giving her a book from the pile.

  ‘I don’t think you’d be able to notice, unless you bought a motorcycle or something.’

  ‘Maybe I will,’ he says, knowing all too well that his mid-life crisis will be a quiet one, and full of quiet habits and quiet friends: a bench in the park, small-talk at the kiosk, reading one book over and over in a university library and telling on students who decide they can work in groups in the non-group study areas. But then again, if he can think about all of this, maybe he’s already there. Eva did once say that his projections for the future said more about his present than his future; this was when he told her one night that he had no idea where he was going with his life, that he was lost about his future. ‘That’s your problem,’ she said, ‘you’re always so absent now. You should try to come back to us some day, try to reappear.’

  ‘Anyway, aren’t you leaving soon too?’ Matilde asks him, shelving the last book of the pile and turning to him.

  ‘Sorry, what?’ he answers, even though he heard the question.

  ‘Are you leaving soon too?’

  ‘Yeah, just need to prepare a few more things and then I’m off,’ he says looking around the shop to find anything that might be useful.

  ‘I have an idea,’ she says.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I don’t know you. You don’t know me, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Well, if we’re both leaving it’s because we don’t like what we do now, our lives right now. Right?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says, but surely that’s a lie. It has to be a lie because he has no fucking life to dislike right now. Unless you count drinking rain, smoking way too much, browsing at a second-hand store, camping at home, and planning a trip. That could work, planning a trip is his life now, but he likes that part, so it’s still a lie, and he has no job and he is going to die young and alone if he just doesn’t…

  ‘Well, I was thinking… We could try and spend the best week either of us has ever had in Santiago. Together, I mean. I would hate to spend my last days here with the same people I always see.’

  ‘Isn’t that what most people do though?’

  ‘Sure, but it’s such a waste of time, and so stressful, everyone trying to make memorable moments out of familiar situations. It’s impossible and depressing.’

  ‘Are you asking me out on a date? Aren’t you still pissed off at me? I don’t think it’s a very good—’

  ‘Get over yourself. I’m just saying we can make the last days here something new, enjoy it one last time, and then we can forget about it. And it won’t matter because… I guess because I don’t know you.’

  Tomás thinks it’s a terrible idea, that this is exactly what he hates about young people today, the new-age conviction that all things must pass so that they no longer feel accountable for their own mistakes. And then there’s the value they place on forgetting, on letting go, on getting over things, and all those other expressions people use to feel better about loss and being irresponsible. Because isn’t that what she’s asking him to do, to be irresponsible? She’s right about one thing though. She doesn’t know him at all.

  ‘Well, I’m not too—’ But before Tomás can make up an excuse to explain how responsible he still is for everything in his life, Abdul comes to them and slams a round metallic container on the table next to them and they both take a step away from each other.

  ‘You’re going to the Antarctic, yeah?’ he asks Tomás.

  ‘Yeah,’ Tomás says.

  ‘How serious are you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If you’re serious about going somewhere like that, you’re going to need to be able to breathe,’ he laughs.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘He’s a slow one,’ Abdul says, smiling at Matilde and rubbing his beard. ‘It’s an oxygen tank, you tool. Buy it. Is that simple enough for you?’

  ‘I guess I might need it.’

  ‘You will. Let me show you how it works.’

  Abdul turns a valve and the rubber straw attached to the tank makes a high-pitched whistle. Abdul then puts his hand at the end of the straw to feel the air pass through his fingertips.

  ‘Look,’ he says, taking Tomás’s hand and moving it under the straw. Tomás smiles because Eva would be so impressed that he thought of everything, even breathing, and if they ever faced a snowstorm and had to camp out somewhere, they’d share everything again, even their oxygen.

  ‘It comes with a mask too. I think it belonged to a dentist. It works,’ Abdul says.

  ‘Cool,’ Tomás says. But at soon as he takes his hand away f
rom the straw, the air stops coming out and the whistling disappears.

  ‘Oh, I guess it’s empty.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Good thing you didn’t buy it, huh? Horrible, horrible way to die,’ he says with a smile. Then, he turns to Lucas and Jesús and Matilde. ‘Never try things out before you sell them, understood? Do you want to buy it anyway? Half price. You can refill it yourself.’

  ‘Alright.’

  Abdul gives Tomás the tank without any oxygen and it’s much heavier than he thought, but he will have to figure out a way to take it on his trip, not only because he finds it so hard to return things at shops (he finds indecision the worst of all human afflictions, although mainly it’s just that he hates bothering people) but also because the thought of sharing air, breathing, his tank of oxygen with Eva is just too much to pass on. It could, after all, if they ever needed it, save her life.

  ‘Can I pay later? I’ll be back during the week,’ Tomás says.

  ‘I’ve heard that one before!’

  ‘Dad, I know him, just let him pay later,’ Matilde says, looking at Tomás.

  ‘Alright, alright… Lucas, huevón, make a note of it. Oxygen tank, no oxygen, twenty-five thousand.’ Lucas nods with a frown and goes to the front desk to write it up.

  Abdul walks off with a price-tagging gun, leaving Tomás with Matilde. They look at each other in silence for a few seconds.

  ‘So?’ she asks.

  ‘So what?’ he asks back. She sighs. He wants her to tell him about her plans for them on their last days in the city just so he can refuse and show her and himself that oxygen is now far more important than forgetting Santiago with her.

  ‘Nothing. I’ll keep things on the side for you until you go.’

  ‘San Cristóbal Hill,’ he says, turning red because it comes out much louder than he’d anticipated. It’s not that he changed his mind. It’s not that he needs anyone new. But if she’s willing to help him (help him breathe even!), the least he can do for her is help her get over this fucking city before she leaves.

  ‘What?’ she asks.

  ‘If you want to go somewhere, we can start with the hill.’

  She nods with a smile. ‘When?’

  ‘Tonight? At eight.’

  ‘Alright.’

  Tomás walks out of the shop and he smiles at Lucas who doesn’t smile back at him. He starts walking home and Matilde is right about another thing. A week doesn’t have to change your life. In the Great Narratives of the games he admires, everything is always changing as you near the end: characters die, you are in danger of dying, and you get the last power-ups before the last boss, and you still feel anything could go wrong… But that’s a lie, a limitation that exists only because in games you can’t experience anything outside of a world that’s been programmed and coded to end. But they are just games. In real life you never stop forgetting. Once Tomás is back with Eva, the whole time she’s been away will be but a blur and if so, why not start tonight, with Matilde, at the hill that started it all?

  He waits for a bus to pull over and watches a clown failing to make a child laugh by blowing on one of those whistles that make people sound like birds. He remembers the whole thing about birds only singing to get laid and he’s glad the kid’s mum comes to take him away from the clown. But the clown gets on the bus too and after whistling his jokes away, Tomás gives him some change because if he doesn’t, the clown might stand by him whistling about his empty oxygen tank sticking out of his bag the whole way back to his flat.

  17

  It’s Just Water

  Of course it’s not cheating. Isn’t cheating about giving away moments and words and memories that should belong to someone else? Or is it simply about fucking? No, no, either way, what he’s doing has always been for her. If anyone’s cheating, it’s the world, the city. And he isn’t just thinking this to make himself feel less guilty. No way. He really fucking means it, somehow, but he’s not too sure how it would… And in the end, does Eva really have to know about it anyway? He messed up with Fran, but that was because he’d tried to convince himself that it was what Eva would have wanted. How in the world could that possibly… Yes, that Eva wanted him to move on, at least a little, and it had been so… But he always knew it couldn’t be that simple. And won’t she also hide the months, the faces and the names that don’t relate to him when they meet up? And he’s sure as hell that she would never cheat on him either. How? He doesn’t even… She had told him so in one of their weekend walks up the San Cristóbal Hill, when he had asked her if she had ever cheated on someone. ‘I don’t cheat,’ she said, ‘I get cheated on though,’ and he said he would never, never ever, ever, ever, ever…

  And here he is again, walking past the bars and the lights and the ceviche restaurants in Bellavista on his way to the foot of the hill. He forgot to set a specific meeting place with Matilde and he hopes she hasn’t taken the cable car lifts up already, because there are so many people and so much noise that they could spend the whole night looking for one another. But he reassures himself that it’ll be fine, because what two people would decide to meet at a hill and not want to climb it together?

  He turns away from the main street with all the bars and passes by Neruda’s house because it’s always quiet there, and he likes to see if anyone’s painted new graffiti on the wall opposite. But when he gets there he remembers that new graffiti appearing and disappearing on these walls are a thing of the past. It really fucking gets to him. For the last couple of years it’s mostly just been filled with gig posters on top of other posters and behind them, hidden, the last fading traces of painted faces and gang signs and crosses and dicks and angry sentences written with intentional spelling mistakes. In front of this wall he wonders what happened to the city he arrived to so many years ago, when did it stop feeling like home? Was it ever? But he knows that what really bothers him is the way a wall can be there for centuries and still be unrecognisable in a matter of weeks. And so he keeps walking until he reaches the lifts. Eva had once told him, when they were together in the lift, that she hated the bit on the way up where she couldn’t see the buildings below or the top of the hill because, she had said, she disliked being nowhere, that it made her feel as if she had disappeared.

  Matilde isn’t there and there’s a short queue of gringos with big cameras waiting to buy tickets. Years ago, when they were still in high school, Yiyo told Tomás that you can tell who the gringos are because at least one in the group would be wearing a visor or a money pouch. Even though Tomás had disagreed, he is yet to prove Yiyo wrong. He leans by the railings at the beginning of the queue to wait for Matilde. The gringos make gestures at the ticket man inside a booth who looks all angry at them in silence. Tomás could help them. Eva would have helped them. She would have introduced herself and even asked them their names, and she would have had something to small-talk about, and then would have wished them all luck using their first names, and even in all her broken English the gringos would have felt important and even better, welcome. She was always saying that when you meet foreigners you represent the place you’re from but the truth is that Tomás isn’t sure what he’d represent and why he would even have to, since there’s no one representing him back. And so he decides not to help them.

  He looks up at the clouds starting to gather and he listens to the crowds on top of the hill. Crowds at a distance always sound like everyone in them is shouting real loud but when you get to them they’re quiet as hell and most people are alone. Anyway, it looks like it might rain and Tomás wonders if he should just leave because, like the crowds, Matilde’s idea is starting to sound better at a distance.

  He lights a cigarette and decides to wait until it dies out before leaving. The gringos go into the cable car and when it lifts up from the ground they laugh all excited although it’s a pretty slow lift. The man wearing overalls inside the ticket booth is looking at Tomás, still frowning, and Tomás avoids him by looking back at the poster-covered wall but whe
n he turns, the man is still staring and Tomás sighs because he always does the same thing, he always looks somewhere else, the sky, his sleeves, his shoes, anything… As if that could make him suddenly invisible to all those he dislikes, those he’d like to see disappear, dead, dying and…

  Just as he’s stepping on his dead cigarette he sees Matilde running towards him and he waves.

  ‘Hey, so sorry I’m late,’ she says with a smile.

  ‘That’s fine.’ He bends down to kiss her cheek but she doesn’t look at him because she’s putting her motorcycle helmet inside her backpack, and so he finds himself bent over for nothing.

  ‘There,’ she says and leans to kiss him. ‘The traffic is crazy. I think there’s a student protest coming over to Plaza Italia tonight.’

  ‘They will never be happy,’ Tomás says, realising in an instant that since Matilde is younger, she might still believe that no one must ever be happy with what they have, and so he looks back at the man in the booth and then at the wall because he’s still there and why hasn’t he died, why isn’t he…

  ‘I hope not,’ she says. ‘Not like this at least.’

  For a moment neither of them say a thing because both lifts are in the middle of their trip up and down the hill, and they can’t even see them with all the clouds and the thick layer of smog that always shrouds the city. Tomás notices the man on the booth is now smiling and staring at Matilde’s ass. He lights another cigarette.

  ‘Should we get the tickets?’ she asks him.

  ‘It might rain.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘You’ll be drenched. The queue down will be so long if it starts raining.’