He swished the dregs of his banana liquor around his paper cup and then tossed the last of it back. “I forgot your husband was an aspiring novelist.”
“Sometimes I think every man wants to be a writer. They want to invent a world with the perfect imaginary woman, someone they can boss around and undress at will. They can work out their own aggression with a few fictional rape scenes. Then they can send their fictional surrogate in to save her, a white knight—or a fireman! Someone with all the power and all the agency. Real women, on the other hand, have all these tiresome interests of their own, and won’t follow an outline.” A glumness settled upon her. It crossed her mind that she had never been Jakob’s friend or wife or lover, but only his subject, only material. Writers were as parasitic, she supposed, as the spore itself.
“I am in one hundred percent agreement on the subject of outlines. Any writer who works by outline should be burned at the stake. Possibly with their own outline and notecards used as kindling. That’s what I dislike most about our plan. It’s an outline. Life doesn’t work by outline. If I were writing this scene, I wouldn’t even bother describing our plan, not in any detail. I already know it won’t work out the way we’re hoping. It would just be wasting the reader’s time.” He saw the look on her face and kicked her foot. “Oh, come on. We have candy bars and smokes and booze and evil plans. Don’t get morose on me. What else is in that lunch box of yours?”
She took out a deformed, tumorous potato and set it on the bed.
The Fireman recoiled. “Aa! What the awful, bearded Christ is that?”
“That? That’s Yukon Gold, Chumley,” she said.
“Ah, well,” he said. “I suppose we’ve had enough chocolate. How about a baked potato?”
He picked it up and clasped it between his hands. Smoke began to rise from between his fingers and with it, the smell of roasting spuds. The smell cheered Harper up. She couldn’t help it.
“I love a man who knows how to cook,” Harper said.
11
He had salt and a little tumbler of olive oil and they split the potato. The fragrant mineral smell of it filled the shed. It was so good, it made Harper feel a bit teary, and when it was gone she licked oil and salt off her hands.
“You know what I miss?” she said.
“If you say Facebook, you’ll ruin a perfectly lovely evening.”
“I miss Coca-Cola. That would’ve been so good with a Coke. You know, we might’ve fucked up the planet, sucking out all the oil, melting ice caps, allowing ska music to flourish, but we made Coca-Cola, so goddamn it, people weren’t all bad.”
“As a species, we might not live to regret melting the ice caps. That’s where it comes from, you know: the spore. I’m eighty percent sure. That’s why all the earliest cases were along the Arctic Circle. It was under the glaciers. I think it’s happened before, too. Everyone believed the dinosaurs were wiped out by a meteor strike, but I figure it was the spore. It hides under the ice until the world warms up enough to let it back into the air. Then it burns everything until the world is so blanketed in smoke the planet freezes over again. The mold dies out, except for a little bit that is preserved once more under the ice. There have been six extinction events in the life of this planet. I bet every one of them was the spore.”
“You’re saying it’s a planetary T cell. It attacks any infection that throws the environment out of whack. Like us.”
He nodded.
“That’s the third-best theory I’ve ever heard. I like the idea that the Russians bred a superfungus back in the seventies, out on this island for testing biological weapons. Rebirth Island, I think it was called. They had to abandon the site in 2000 after the spore got loose. But the island was in a lake that dried up and animals crossed back and forth, carrying the ash in their fur. All the early cases were in Russia.”
“You said third-best theory. Is there something better than Arctic melt or a Russian island of pure evil?”
“I also like the idea that God is punishing us with killer athlete’s foot for wearing Crocs.” She gave herself another tipple of banana liquor. In her medical opinion, another sip wouldn’t give the baby a deformed brain. “Now that the world is over, what do you most regret not getting to do?”
“Julianne Moore,” he said. “And Gillian Anderson. At the same time or separately, it really would’ve made no difference.”
“I mean what did you want to do that actually might’ve happened.”
“I wish I had discovered a new kind of mold I could’ve named after Sarah.”
“Wow. You romantic son of a bitch.”
“What about Harper Willowes? What did you always want to do?”
“Me? Julianne Moore, same as you. That hot little bitch had one fine ass.”
The Fireman went and got a dish towel and apologized over and over for spitting his banana rum on her, while he patted her shirt dry.
12
He got up to stir the fire and came back holding the longbow that had sat in the corner all winter long. He stretched out on his cot, holding the bow as if it were a guitar and thwanging its one atonal string.
“Do you think Keith Richards is still alive?” he asked.
“Sure. Nothing can kill him. He’ll outlast us all.”
“Beatles or Stones?” he asked.
She sang the opening lines of “Love Me Do.”
“Is that a vote for the Beatles?”
“Of course I pick the Beatles. It’s a stupid question. It’s like asking what you like better: silk or pubic hair?”
“Ah, that’s disappointing.”
“Of course you’d pick the Stones. Anyone who’d walk around pretending he’s a fireman when he isn’t—”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Men who love the Stones are fixated on cock. I’m sorry, but that’s the only word. And a firehose is a symbolic fantasy cock. It’s pathetic. Male Stones fans are frozen at eighteen months old, just discovering the thrill of yanking on the rubber band of their own phallus. Female Stones fans are even worse. Mick Jagger has a weird gross mouth that makes him look like a cod, and this turns them on. They’re sexually aroused by fish-men. They’re deviants.”
“So what are Beatles fans fixated on? The glory of pussy?”
“Exactly. Strawberry Fields is not just a place in Liverpool, Mr. Rookwood.” She held out her hand. “Give me that. Every time you twang the cable you’re putting unnecessary torque on the cams.”
“You talk like an auto mechanic when you’re drunk. Did you know that?”
“I’m not drunk. You’re drunk. I’m a former archery instructor. Now give it.”
He gave her the bow. She stood it upright, ran her fingers down the slick of the cable.
“An archery instructor?”
“When I was in high school. For the town rec department.”
“What inspired you? Jennifer Lawrence? Did you have Catsass Everdame fantasies? Jennifer Lawrence was a corker. I hope she didn’t burn to death.”
“No, this was pre–Hunger Games. I went on this whole Robin Hood jag when I was nine years old. I started saying thy and thou and when my parents asked me to do a chore I’d drop to one knee and bow. At the peak of my obsession I wore a Robin Hood costume to school.”
“For Halloween?”
“No. Just because I liked the way it made me feel.”
“Oh God. And your parents let you? I didn’t know you were neglected as a child. That gives me a sad feeling in my”—he paused, to try and figure out where his sad feelings were located—“emotions.”
“My parents are sturdy, practical people who own several ratlike dogs. They were very good to me and I miss them very much.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“I don’t think they’re dead. But they are in Florida.”
“The first stage of decline.” He nodded sadly. “I suppose they dress their dogs in sweaters.”
“Sometimes, if it’s cold. But how did you know?”