Etiquette for the End of the World

chapter Three





Coming home from a bike ride in Riverside Park, Tess saw that Victor was the doorman on duty and steeled herself for the inevitable weather talk. For the eight years she had known him, Victor, who was Polish, had never once let her pass without speaking to her about the weather, much as she tried to switch him to other topics. If was as if weather vocabulary was what he had first learned in English class, and he had decided it was the only thing he needed to succeed in all his interactions. He was unerringly affable about the weather, no matter what it happened to be.

“Very hot today, yes? Too warm … not good, not nice.” He shook his head and smiled sympathetically at her.

She took a deep breath and forced herself to smile back. “Yes. Not nice at all. I don’t like it when it is this hot.” She did not feel like having this conversation for the millionth time with Victor. And yet, ever since the WOOSH meeting ten days ago, the issue of hot weather had seemed more important, global warming more of an imminent threat. It really did seem way too warm for the end of September.

“Maybe rain tomorrow, yes? Cooler is comink!”

Tess nodded, her smile falling down on the job, pushing the elevator button repeatedly, hard.

When she opened her apartment door, Carmichael was waiting for her in the foyer as usual, tangling himself up in her feet as she tried to maneuver her bike inside. “Okay, Car,” she soothed, “hold your tail and whiskers.” This was what her mother had always said to their family cat, Dentine—and later (long after Dentine had gone off to the big sandbox in the sky), to her children. On her deathbed four years ago, she had even said it to the nurse who was giving her morphine. The nurse, misunderstanding, had responded, “What’s that you’re saying about my tail, Ms. Eliot? I shouldn’t wear trousers?”

After dumping a can of OrganiCat Chicken Feast into Carmichael’s bowl on the kitchen floor, Tess grabbed a liter of spring water and a bag of pretzel rods and headed immediately for her office. To get to her desk she had to weave her way carefully through stacks of mail, unread New Yorkers and newspapers, and a pile of books—all arranged on the floor like land mines, ready to topple at the slightest touch.

She turned up the AC and opened her laptop, then checked her phone and heard the beeping that indicated she had messages. She dialed in to her voicemail.

“Hi Tessie, it’s Harriet. Just checking to see how you are. Where are you? Call me back. I worry about you.” Tess had not talked to Harriet since the purloined letter incident. She had not quite decided whether she was going to tell her about the WOOSH job. “I also wanted to remind you of the Met opening next month on October 26. You know I am counting on you to take me there, darling.” Shit. Tess had forgotten about that party. She wasn’t at all looking forward to the whole ordeal with the wheelchair, but she knew there was no refusing Harriet.

The next message was from Matt. Why didn’t he stop calling? Didn’t he realize it was like pressing on an open wound? “It’s me again. I don’t know exactly why you won’t call or email me back.” Tess took a deep breath. She could tell from his voice he was trying hard to control his annoyance. Matt never had been comfortable with any of the emotions in the anger family. To him, all confrontations were a sign of ill breeding. “Tess, listen. I’d really like to get my coffee table and bookcase. I know you are mad at me but I am kind of in a ... bad place now where I really need my stuff. I mean … ah … I didn’t mean I was in a bad place, like I’m staying in a bad place. What I meant was that I am in a bad space. I mean … as in, more the space in my head … .” She heard the familiar sound of Matt’s embarrassed cough and couldn’t help smiling; Matt was notoriously bad at voice messages. Once he had left a message with his therapist about changing an appointment that had lasted a full three and a half minutes. (Tess had timed it with Matt’s very own stainless steel All-Clad kitchen timer.) But this message was turning out to be one of his masterpieces. “Anyway, speaking of space, I miss you. I mean, besides the fact of getting my table and stuff. It would be nice to see you … . Okay, bye. Call me.”

Tess could only assume from this message that Sarah had “fenged” his “shui” enough to satisfy her and had dumped him. She certainly hoped so; for the last four months she had been terrified of running into the two of them in her elevator. Half the time she found herself taking the stairs, or skulking around the security camera in the lobby to get a video view of the elevator so she would know it was safe to get on.

She pressed the delete button, hard.

The last message was from her brother. “Hi, Tess, it’s Stuart.” The sound of his voice cut painfully into her chest. (When had her voicemail become the enemy?) Somewhere behind that voice was the big brother who used to carry her piggyback over the dunes when her toe was stubbed, the brother who took the blame when they both got caught melting crayons with matches under the porch. Tess had not spoken to Stuart in months; since the upsetting conversation about the will, they had communicated entirely by email. “I just wanted to let you know I’m sending you a package, so you should expect something, probably in about three or four days. It’s just something from the house that I thought you might like … . Nancy says hi.”

Something from the house? What about the house itself? She emailed him a curt, one-sentence note saying she could not talk because she was on deadline, and to go ahead and send whatever it was.

“If the world really were ending, then nobody would get the beach house,” Tess said aloud to Carmichael, who had jumped up on the desk. She gently pushed him off. She had to finally really get to work on the WOOSH project. Since the meeting, all she had done, besides making a few random notes, was procrastinate.

First she had reread How to Hold Your Head High with Your Foot in Your Mouth. Then she had Netflixed practically every end-of-the-world movie available—2012, Miracle Mile, The Road, A Boy and His Dog, whatever else she could find. She had surfed through more than a hundred 2012 web sites, from the historically informative ones on sites like Wikipedia to what Tess was starting to think of Wackipedia—the sites where people claimed that Prince William or Pee-wee Herman was the Antichrist, or that dogs and cats were going to inherit the Earth and eat all the humans. Also fascinating (in a car-wreck kind of way) were the Revelation sites: Christian fundamentalist treatises on the Rapture—including, of course, those put forth by Harold Camping, who seemed to change the date set for Judgment Day as easily as one would reschedule a lunch. Then there were the crazy pseudo-scientific theories: that the Earth and Sun would enter a high-frequency band, or that human DNA would be “upgraded” from a signal coming from the focal point of the galaxy.

Tess had also watched dozens and dozens of 2012-related YouTube videos. There were many relatively respectable ones with reputable (or semi-reputable) scholars and scientists. Listening to Harvard professors seriously considering the Mayan prophecy was unsettling. Some spoke about the “wisdom of the ancients,” and the “lessons of Atlantis,” and how modern human society was so unbalanced and unhealthy that it was time for a planet-wide do-over. Others presented geological evidence to prove that every twenty-six thousand years, when the galactic alignment occurred, there was an ice age. Tess watched one clip about Israeli mathematicians who had uncovered a secret code in the Bible, pointing to 2012 as the end of time. She watched another one about stonemasons embedding secret code about 2012 into the facades of churches. She watched yet another that claimed there was a code hidden in Homer’s Odyssey which foretold of the 2012 end-times. Tess began to feel a constant humming of nervousness in her body. She was starting to see why people bought into this stuff. The sheer volume of it was alarming.

Of course, most of the videos were obviously uploaded by crazy people. One of them, narrated in Spanish, featured a huge eyeball with the Earth as the spinning iris. But the weirder they were, the more she could not turn her head away. They were like potato chips. Worse than potato chips, because there was an endless supply. She just kept watching them, one after another, the way she had devoured the entire first three seasons of True Blood in only four days, after her breakup with Matt.

But not today, she told herself. As absorbing as it might be to explore the paranoid fantasies of video-blogging strangers, none of this “background research” was helping her with the task at hand. She took out the WOOSH outline she had been given and read the first part again:



INTRODUCTION

If you are reading this, you have the right DNA and skills to have overcome various disasters and hardships. But are you ready to start being civilized again? You may feel that, what with looting, famine, disease, etc., you never want to meet strangers again. But our social lives are even more important now.



Chapter 1

The Psychology of Fear in the Post-Apocalyptic Reality, and the importance of remaining calm in the face of chaotic social structures. How positive energy will be the most important element of human interaction after the Big Change. This chapter should deal with how important it is to temper caution with hope.



Tess put the outline aside. Jesus, she thought. I can’t believe I am writing this book. Josh would just love this. He fires me for being too negative, and now here I am writing a feel-good book about Armageddon.

All right—concentrate, Tess. Think humorous how-to. Witty and light. She turned to her laptop, opened a new Word document, stuck a pretzel rod into her mouth like a cigar, and began to write:





CHAPTER 1





Is That a Gun in Your Pocket or Are You Just Extremely Worried to See Me?


We know you are quite alarmed at what has happened but listen: Will everyone just take it easy, please? And yes, many of us are living in makeshift shelters and other less than ideal circumstances, and food may be scarce, but is hysteria really going to help?



Tip Number 1: Don’t panic. Panic is not only unattractive but will not help you. You must project a confident energy. This has always been important for social success, but now if you look at somebody the wrong way, you could actually be killed. Literally.



Tip Number 2: There is safety in numbers. One-on-one socializing is out, unless of course, it occurs in the safety of your locked, barred, and bolted home. You will discover that the group dynamic—for conversation, meals, and even sexual activity—is more fun than you might have imagined.





Weapon-Wear—Displaying Your Firearms:

When out in public, it is considered gauche to make too great a display of one’s firearms. There is a fine line between the show of force necessary to stave off potential interlopers and the show of force that is simply tacky or ostentatious. For instance, a gun handle protruding partly from your pocket is a cavalier gesture—something that indicates you are prepared and confident—while carrying a gun in your hand as you are strolling in a park could be considered somewhat crass.



Tess stopped typing to read what she had written. Well, it was upbeat, wasn’t it? Though it was more ironic than funny. She had to concentrate on writing the guide as if this whole thing were real. And as long as her name wasn’t on it when it was printed, what did she care if she was producing something absolutely absurd? Still, she couldn’t help wishing she knew a little more about what they expected. But no matter what, she had to churn out some pages. She was a long way from fifty.

As if on cue her BlackBerry chimed. It was a text from Peter Barrett: Need to check in/can u meet me tmorrw at 5pm—will call 2 arrange. Yikes. Tomorrow? They couldn’t possibly expect her to be ready with the pages. Could they? And why was it Peter Barrett who want to “check in” with her? Wasn’t he supposed to be in charge of fund-raising? She glanced at the time display on her BlackBerry—shit, 12:20! She was going to be late—she was supposed to meet Ginny at 12:30. As she raced around her apartment in a frenzy, trying to find her shoes, her lipstick, and her keys, she realized there was more than one reason for her heightened adrenaline. She was going to be seeing Peter Barrett again.



***



Tess found Ginny at her favorite table of vintage linens just inside the chain-link fence entrance to the playground of P.S. 87. She was rifling through a stack of brightly colored 1950s tablecloths as if shuffling a giant deck of floppy cards.

“It’s okay, Tess. I told you not to rush,” Ginny said, noticing how out of breath Tess was. “You know the more time I have with old linens, the happier I am.” They kissed each other on both cheeks the way they always did. Ginny put the tablecloths back in their proper place and mouthed a thank-you to the owner of the booth, who was busy helping a customer. She pushed her short black hair back behind her ears. Ginny had a thin, tiny face and a tiny body to match. People always thought she was anorexic, she was such skin and bones, but in actuality she had the appetite of eighteen-year-old twin boys.

Almost every Sunday Ginny and Tess would meet at the 77 Street flea market. Today they had a specific goal: to find the perfect birthday present for Ginny’s assistant. They strolled down the center aisle of vendors, scanning tables to the left and right. They passed scarves, dishware, costume jewelry, children’s games and toys, postcards and magazines, jade and clay Buddhas, hats, sterling flatware, boxes and boxes of antique buttons, funky lamps and vases… . “Look at this, this is fabulous!” Ginny picked up a piece of milk glass in the shape of a bathtub. “Do you think Susan would like it?”

“Does she collect milk glass?” Tess smiled and looked at her friend over her sunglasses, giving her a “just think about it” look.

“No … . But it’s only twenty-five dollars. Maybe I should get it anyway… .”

“Stay focused, Gin.” Ginny put the bathtub back and moved on to the next table, running her fingers over items, checking price tags. Tess automatically wandered over to a table in the next aisle where she knew the dealer sold Bakelite poker chips. There was, in fact, a luscious set in plain view: a rich, marbled orangish red holder, filled with gold, dark blue, and red chips. Ordinarily the sight of the smooth plastic case with its creamy translucent chips would quicken her heartbeat. Now she glanced down at it and realized with surprise that she did not even care to see how much it was. She walked away and then stood still for a minute, looking around at the whole scene—the rows and rows of tables, the crowd of people looking, touching, bargaining, buying. All this stuff that had no real meaning, except for getting to look at it in your house, and having a souvenir of somebody else’s past.

“Hey, what about this?” Ginny called, motioning Tess over. She pointed at a salt and paper shaker set made from cut-glass perfume bottles.

The dealer moved quickly toward them. “I kin make you a real good deal on these,” he said with false casualness. He was wearing a Yankee baseball cap and a white sleeveless T-shirt. There was a tattoo of a cobra on his shoulder.

“Ginny,” said Tess with an apologetic but firm smile. (Shopping was the only time she was the leader when they were together.) “Your assistant is twenty-two years old and has two roommates. Isn’t that what you told me? Who knows what kind of kitchen she has? I somehow doubt that crystal salt and pepper shakers is the thing.” Tess took Ginny by the elbow. “Sorry, thanks,” Tess threw over her shoulder to the dealer. Then she turned back to her friend, “I think you should get her a nice piece of jewelry. Let’s go inside; it’s air-conditioned.” They headed toward the school building, where the better jewelry was displayed. Twice on the way Tess had to grab Ginny’s arm, gently drawing her away from tables.

When they finally pulled open the door to what during the week was the school’s cafeteria, the cool air was so heavenly it made them shiver. Tess and Ginny slid their sunglasses up to the top of their heads. Tess scanned the jam-packed tables with a discerning eye. This was her one true super power: she had antique jewelry shopping radar. Within ten minutes she had guided Ginny to a pair of marcasite and carnelian dangle earrings from the 1920s.

“I bet Susan will love these … . You told me she likes to wear clip-ons, right?” With minimal effort, Tess talked the dealer down from sixty dollars to forty-five.

“These are perfect. Thanks, Tessica,” said Ginny, putting them into her purse. “Let’s go back outside. We missed the whole last row of tables.”

“Ginny, do you mind if we bail on shopping and just go have lunch now?”

“Bail? Usually I have to drag you out of here kicking and screaming. I mean, it’s fine with me—I have about fifty thousand manuscripts to read today, and lord knows, Bill will kill me if I come home with any more tablecloths or tchotchkes. But what’s wrong with you?”

“I don’t know, maybe it’s because I’m so broke.”

“That’s never stopped you before from looking, and coveting,” Ginny laughed.

The hot air blew into their faces as they left the indoor area. “I just don’t feel like it today … . I guess it’s the heat.”

They headed in the general direction of the schoolyard exit, picking their way slowly through the thick crowd.

“Ginny, what do you think would happen if all these people suddenly thought the world was going to end? Wouldn’t everyone stop buying? … I guess there would be a run on certain things, like—besides the food in the green-market area, of course—people would buy hand-held tools, maybe the raincoats … and those quilts … . Hey, actually you know what? All those tablecloths you own might very well come in handy.”

“Bill will be so happy to hear that,” Ginny said with a smile.

“Really, you could use them for blankets, make them into bandages, ponchos … .”

“If I didn’t know about your doomsday book, that kind of talk would alarm me, Tess. So how is it going? Did you ever find out why WOOSH doesn’t have a web site?”

“Oh, they have one.” Tess shook her head. “I can’t believe I could not find it before the meeting. In my defense, it doesn’t come up when you put in WOOSH—it’s actually ‘WorldSolsticeHarbinger.Org.’ But there’s not much on it. It’s like one of those CIA web sites, just a front page. Like a locked door with the blinds pulled down … . There is a prompt for a password, so I assume there are areas of it I just can’t get to. And a couple of the people I met did seem pretty paranoid … . Hey, don’t look at me that way, Gin. It’s a paid writing job. Do you want to be buying my lunch forever?”

“It’s a paid job if you actually get paid,” said Ginny, stopping to paw through a box filled with aprons and napkins. “Otherwise it’s a crazy hobby. You haven’t seen any money from them yet, have you?”

“I told you, I have to write the fifty pages first.”

“I don’t know, Tess. I mean, they sound like a cult, and I just think, after all you’ve been through, it’s like you’ve been thrown in the river and you’re climbing onto the back of a crocodile, just because it’s the only thing that looks like land.”

“It’s not like that. I mean, I know I’ve been talking about how weird it all is, and of course it is—I mean the whole idea is completely insane—but I really think most of the people at WOOSH are well-meaning. Like, for instance, the brochure they gave me? It has a photo of a car they’ve invented for when there is no more gas and no electricity. It’s this cool-looking foot-pedal car. Supposedly they have designed it so a little pedaling goes a long way. It actually sounds like a good idea, just on its own.”

“So what? Why not just use a bike with a basket?”

“I guess because it’s enclosed—maybe it’s safer? And it can carry a group of people. WOOSH is very big on the group idea. The rest of the material in the brochure is kind of doublespeak—not too many specifics, lots of hype. But they don’t seem to give workshops or anything; they really seem more like Greenpeace on steroids than anything like Scientology or the Landmark Forum people.”

“They still sound like a cult.”

“What’s the definition of a cult? They’re not asking me to give up my family and friends, or my poker game.”

“Not yet, they’re not.”

Tess laughed. “Some of the people are kind of odd, but I think they’re just misguided do-gooders.”

“Ever hear of Jonestown? I believe they thought they were doing good.”

Tess rolled her eyes. Jonestown was a cheap shot. “Oh, come on!”

“Tess, I was not going to tell you this, because for some reason my author swore me to secrecy—speaking of paranoia—but, remember Lila Tulane, from Georgia? She wrote that really strange but interesting afterlife book we published last fall called What If the End is Just the Beginning and the Middle? She is very big on the 2012 movement. She knows all of the dot-orgs there are, and she told me that WOOSH had been a very small fringe group—until about ten years ago. Now she says suddenly they are everywhere; they seem to be riding the wave of the whole 2012 zeitgeist. The group’s been gaining momentum, suddenly getting publicity. But from what Lila told me, the head of WOOSH—what’s his name?”

“Wayne Orbus.”

“Okay, well apparently he has had some trouble with the British government, they tried to arrest him for something but his lawyers got him out of it. And she heard he was thrown out of Oxford University.”

“Hmm. The web site just says ‘educated at Oxford.’ Whatever. Sounds like several VPs I knew when I worked at Samson-Gold—in trouble with the law, thrown out of an Ivy League school. Who cares? Besides, I don’t think he comes over here very much. On the other hand, there is this one man in the group … .”

Ginny looked closely at Tess, who found herself blushing. She even let out a tiny giggle.

“Man? What man?” asked Ginny suspiciously.

“He’s the head of Donor Relations.”

“Donor Relations? Does he have relations with the donors?”

“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. He may be the most good-looking man I have ever seen in the flesh. I am actually meeting with him tomorrow.” Tess smiled.

Ginny lifted an eyebrow. “Aha! I thought I detected some life in your libido when we talked on the phone. Now I understand why you’re so big on this WOOSH.”

“No, I’m not saying I’m interested in him. It’s just he is abnormally handsome and charming. You know I’m not attracted to super-handsome men … at least not usually,” Tess said, with a faraway look in her eye.

“Right,” said Ginny sarcastically, “unless they are super-handsome and psycho, like that Irish mafia guy you dated, or that crazy drummer-anarchist, Lou Sexty.”

“That was a long time ago, Ginny.”

“Tess, you cannot even consider this man. The man is in a—okay, maybe not a cult, but a weirdo group who thinks the world is blowing up or whatever next year.”

“I know, I know! Don’t worry!”

“I’m just saying, you don’t want to go from a boring cheater to a sexy cult leader.”

“Ginny, I have no intention of—” Tess put her arm around her friend’s shoulder. Then she suddenly took it back off. “Wait, boring cheater?”

“I’m sorry Tess. But Matt just was never in your league. It was like you always had to try so hard, when you were with him. I’ll tell you something I never told you before: Bill used to dread those evenings—he totally loves you, but Matt just drove him crazy. I thought he was going to lose it that one night Matt wouldn’t stop going on about his mandoline. I mean, it’s just a grater!”

“I know, I know,” said Tess, shaking her head slightly in a self-disgusted way. “Sometimes when I think back … I think when I met Matt, I thought that was me growing up. I thought, Oh, this is what an adult relationship is supposed to look like—going to upscale kitchen stores, wine-tasting vacations, movies with other couples, and that expensive department-store diamond locket he gave me. Never mind that he didn’t get my sense of humor, and that, actually, he didn’t even have a sense of humor, last time any of us tried to look … . Don’t laugh, it’s not funny. Okay, I guess it is funny … .”

They stood for a moment beside the organic tomato booth. The sweet fresh tomatoey smell wafted over them. In her mind’s eye Tess could see her mother carrying the huge blue-and-white Willow platter of sliced tomatoes out to the back-porch table at the beach. How she wished she could transport back to one of those childhood summers … . Tess turned to Ginny. “Toward the end,” she said, “a part of me was aware it was never going to be right with Matt … . But, f*cking hell! Couldn’t he have been a little more original? Why doesn’t anyone’s boyfriend ever dump them for an older woman? Now that would have been refreshing. ‘Stop the presses! Man leaves longtime girlfriend for unattractive older woman with no money.’” But Tess still felt a clutch of pain in her stomach whenever she thought of Matt and Sarah.

“Matt always was a follow-the-herd type of male” said Ginny. “And you are just not the follow-the-herd type, Tess Eliot … . I know you might not want to hear this, but maybe you can be more you, without him.”

“Oh great. Just what the world needs. More me.”

Ginny gave her a patient look. “You’ve just had a really bad summer.”

“More like a bad decade.”

“Listen, you obviously need to do this job, and you should, if they really pay you.” Ginny led the way past a glut of people and through the exit onto Columbus. “But, I swear to god, if you ever call me up and tell me you no longer want to go vintage shopping with me, Bill and I are going to kidnap you and have you deprogrammed.”

Tess cocked her head as if pretending to mull this over. “I don’t know, Ginny … . When the world ends next year, no one is going to need antique earrings or cookie jars.” She grinned.

“Like hell. The world will always need cookie jars.”



***



This is bad, Tess thought, sitting at the small, rickety aluminum table in the back corner of the Scrub-a-Dub-Pub. She should not be having this meeting with Peter at her very own neighborhood hangout. It was almost like inviting him into her home. She should have chosen a more upscale, neutral-territory restaurant in Midtown. But when Peter had called asking her to suggest a place for their meeting, Tess had suffered a brain freeze and not been able to think of anyplace else. This had become her default location, apparently.

Richie was suddenly standing in front of her. He looked taller when he wasn’t behind the bar. He had on a baby-blue Hawaiian shirt that exactly matched his eyes. He was thick around the waist, but not flabby; when Tess had first met him, she thought he was the first person she knew who perfectly fit the description of “burly.”

“What are you doing sitting over here?” he asked.

“Believe it or not, I am meeting a client.”

“A client? Tess!” His whole face lit up. “That’s great! Isn’t it? What’s the job?”

“Oh, nothing special,” she said, rolling the salt shaker idly between her thumb and fingers, “Just a how-to book for surviving the Apocalypse, that’s all.”

“God,” said Richie, with a painful grimace. “Who’s the client?”

“WOOSH.” Tess sat the shaker down and reached inside her briefcase on the chair beside her to check for her few paltry manuscript pages (which she prayed Peter would not ask her for).

“‘Woosh’? What do you mean? Are you trying to tell me it’s a secret?”

Tess giggled. “WOOSH is the name of the organization. They want me to help them prepare people for the end of the world.”

Richie looked uneasy. Tess laughed again. “No, I haven’t gone off the deep end … . It’s okay. Really. It’s just a writing job. And before you ask, yes, I am going to make sure I get paid before the world ends. But listen, Richie, this guy I am meeting makes me a little … nervous. I don’t know that much about this group. Will you kind of, keep an eye on us, and if I go like this”—Tess roughed up the back of her hair and then raised her arm over her head as if she were stretching—“will you come over and ask us if we need anything?”

“Absolument, ma belle chérie,” answered Richie, placing his hand over his chest and bowing. Tess felt herself relax a little. Maybe coming here wasn’t so crazy after all. Richie always made everything seem less scary. He smiled, and taking his hand off his chest, pointed at the top of her head. “But you might want to fix your hair again before he comes.”



When he arrived, it was like someone turned the lights up. At first Tess thought the bar looked dingier in contrast to the dazzling figure of Peter Barrett, but that impression passed, and then it was just the opposite: Everything in the Scrub-a-Dub-Pub suddenly looked better, with Peter standing just inside the doorway, searching for her. He spotted her and headed over.

He was wearing a crisp beige linen suit and a white shirt with no tie, with an unbuttoned collar. “Hi there, Tess-Knows-Best Eliot,” he called to her in an easy manner as he approached. Tess stood up, and saw his eyes quickly sweep up and down her form-fitting black turtleneck and black slacks. She caught her breath.

Inwardly she shook herself. This was not a date! Get a grip, Tess. Don’t blow this job. You need the money. Plus this guy could be Charlie Manson. Or Charlie Manson’s handsome brother anyway. She quickly stuck out her hand, grabbed his, and shook it firmly.

“I hope you don’t mind this place,” Tess apologized.

“Not at all,” he assured her. “I love it. I should have brought my laundry. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Tess was about to explain that it was not a real Laundromat when she realized he was teasing her. He gave her his powerhouse smile.

Richie came over to take their order. He raised an eyebrow ever so slightly when Tess ordered a seltzer. Peter quickly scanned the drink menu and ordered a Static Cling (lime juice and vodka over ice, with a lime twist rubbed vigorously around the rim).

“So, how are you faring on the book?” he said to her, when Richie had gone.

“Great!” (Oh, good: she was not too flustered to lie.) “But I am still kind of searching for the right tone. It’s … challenging to find the right balance between humor and … well, you know … the end of the world!” She laughed nervously and, thank heaven, he laughed too.

“Of course!” he said. “Not to mention that it will most likely be your last project, so that adds some pressure.” He flashed his straight white teeth at her.

“Yes, well … ” Tess blinked. It was important not to seem completely disbelieving. “I do hope I can… that is, the book will be … be of some help to people,” she finished weakly.

Peter burst out laughing. Richie and a couple of people at the bar turned to look.

“I’m sorry,” he said, putting a hand on top of hers. “It’s just … you should see your face.”

Tess was confused. Bearings totally lost.

“Let me explain,” said Peter. He kept his hand on hers, which made Tess nervous, but not unhappy. “I’m not one of them. That is, I was hired as an independent contractor, for fund-raising. I don’t believe the world is going to come to an end any more than you do.”

“Oh” was all that Tess could manage for the moment.

“And … I hope you will be happy when I tell you I convinced Dakota that I should be your official liaison. It was going to be Alfred.” Tess shuddered, and Peter laughed again, taking his hand back to his side of the table.

“You’re right. That guy is so strange he could give the willies the willies,” he said. “He never lets go of that iPad, and you can’t make out most of what he says. I don’t know where Dakota ever found him. You know, we have a dinner meeting every month on the twenty-first, at the ‘21’ Club—because of the solstices—clever, right? … I think they mean it to be a perk for the volunteer members. But Alfred Hassenbach actually showed up one time with a whole bundle of WOOSH pamphlets hidden in his backpack like hand grenades.” Tess smiled. She felt she could listen to Peter’s smoky “just rolled out of bed” voice forever. “He wanted to whip them out and distribute them to the patrons—you know, all the heads of companies and rich tourists having drinks there. Obviously the maître d’ wouldn’t let him. I think even Dakota, as open-minded as she is, was embarrassed.”

“Wow,” said Tess. “Is he … somehow valuable? I mean, what does he do? Media something?”

“His title is Media Manager.” Tess tried hard to focus, but even the way Peter said ‘Media Manager’ seemed to somehow reek of sexual innuendo. “I’ve been told in real life he’s a projectionist at a movie theater, but he devotes all his spare time to the cause. They’re all volunteers; I’m the only one who gets paid, besides Dakota, as far as I know. Except now there’s you.” Peter’s eyes were so big and beautiful, they were like tractor beams. (Beam me up, Scotty.) “I’m so glad to finally have somebody to talk about WOOSH with who’s not delusional. You’re not, are you?” His piercing look and wide, seductive smile stopped her brain in its tracks and she could only smile back and shake her head inanely.

When Richie brought the drinks, Peter thanked him and then quipped, “No starch in these, right?” Richie smiled politely and gave him a sharp once-over that Tess had never seen from Richie before. Hmm. Could he be interested in her hunky new client? Then again, why shouldn’t he be? Peter was like a million-dollar advertisement for the male species.

“Well, so why are you doing this, if you don’t mind my asking?” said Tess.

“Ah. Good question. Well, it’s a long and sad story. I’ll give you the ‘log line,’ as they say in my neck of the woods: Man from moneyed family in L.A. gets fleeced in divorce, then loses more in financial crash of 2008. Subsequently manages to land surprisingly lucrative if somewhat ridiculous job with harmless cult.” He took a sip of his drink and twinkled at her over the rim.

Tess smiled. This man was definitely a fringe benefit. Right in the middle of the biggest desert in her life, she felt as if she had come across a wonderful, unexpected oasis.

She began to relax. He was a kindred spirit. Still, she reminded herself that he was (kind of) her employer, and she did not want him to know that she felt completely lost. She certainly did not want to let on that she was as far behind as she was on the pages.

“So, Peter, what kind of humor do you think they want for this book? Like … anecdotes? Puns? Or just … you know, wit?”

“I must say I don’t really know. But I’m sure you do—who better than you? After all, it can’t be any harder than going from publishing to financial writing to a newspaper advice column.” He raised a brow. “You see that I have read your résumé. How did those transitions come about?”

“The truth is—” Tess was about to offer her standard professional line about needing new challenges, but all at once she felt she could tell Peter anything. “The truth is that I wasn’t sure where publishing was headed, and I wasn’t making enough money, so I switched to the financial industry. But even after four years at Samson-Gold I still felt like an alien—not to mention feeling increasingly morally bankrupt. And then I tried to start this funny, informal office-etiquette newsletter at Samson, which got completely squashed by management. Actually it sort of got me in trouble.”

“I hear you.” Peter said this softly and looked at her so intently, Tess was slightly startled. Had he had something similar happen to him?

“So then I started a blog,” she said, “which got very popular, much to my delight, and I took a leap and quit Samson-Gold. The blog turned into my newspaper column—‘Tess Knows Best.’”

“And she did,” said Peter. “Know best.” His dark eyes were dancing. Tess met his gaze and found herself laughing for no real reason. His playful energy was contagious. And what was wrong with a little harmless flirting? She could not believe this man could be available. But maybe in L.A. all the men were this handsome. Maybe straight men grew on trees out there.

“Well, I certainly thought so, until about a month ago, when they canceled it.”

“Idiots,” Peter said, raising his glass up. “But, our gain.”

“Thank you, kind sir,” said Tess, clinking his glass.

They talked over the schedule for the book. Peter told her that WOOSH needed a signed contract (which meant they needed her fifty pages) by no later than the end of November, and a draft of the whole book by the end of the following summer.

“Part of the reason for the schedule is that Orbus wants the manuscript to be disseminated among various WOOSH members, vetted, and then edited and proofed,” Peter said. “Then they plan to run off the first copies in November of next year.” He explained that there was a small generator-operated press somewhere in England, from which they were hoping to be able to keep printing copies after the Big Day. “They won’t tell me where it is, but I know that Maryanne and her people have spent a lot of time doing calculations about the latitude and longitude and safety zones,” Peter said, waving Richie over from the bar, “lest their press be turned to dust and rubble … .”

“What can I get you two?” Richie asked smoothly. Tess looked up at him. It was strange to be pretending not to know Richie well. He had become a friend and she felt, oddly enough, as if she was somehow betraying him, sitting here laughing alone with Peter, instead of at her usual place up at the bar. She realized she did not want Peter to know what a Scrub-a-Dub regular she was. Peter was … well, he was glamorous. And this was not a glamorous place.

Peter handed Richie his empty glass. “I would love another Static Cling—these are really delicious. Tess, won’t you have one? I guarantee it will send you right into the gentle cycle”—he smiled devilishly—“and besides, it’s on WOOSH.” Richie glanced down at her, his expression unreadable.

In the end, she had not one but two Static Clings. During the second one, while Peter was regaling her with an incredibly funny story about the time he lived next door to a woman in Beverly Hills who raised rattlesnakes, she spotted Richie, out of the corner of her eye, watching them. When he caught her looking, he waved, then pretended to muss up the back of his hair and raised his arm up behind him, as if he were stretching.

Tess wondered for a second what on earth Richie was doing, then she remembered her previous instructions to him and shook her head at him. Still, every time she happened to glance over, there was Richie, staring in their direction. Wow, I guess he really is bent on protecting me, Tess thought. It can’t just be Peter’s looks. And, for the thousandth time, she wondered why the really sweet guys were always the ones who were sweet on other guys.