1 I was really depressed after I left my apartment. I went to stay at my dad’s house in-state, but even there all I did was mope around. There was nothing fabuleux about the parties friends invited me to, there was nothing chou about my dad’s big house, there was just nothing. Pollock knew how depressed I was. My dad refused to walk him, saying he was my responsibility, but I knew it was because he didn’t want me lying around depressed all the time. Pollock wouldn’t let me be too sad for too long. His little face, his dark eyes, his black nose, his little underbite, the happy little grunts he made—they all kept me going sometimes.
I started sort-of making plans to move to Allentown. But people who I know who know a lot were saying that it was over already, that all the good artists had moved out once other people started moving there and they had to start worrying about paying more rent instead of just making art. Which was sad and made me feel even more down about everything. I still kind of looked into it, because lots of people wouldn’t know it was over for a long time, so it might be worthwhile to buy a house there to rent out. But in the end I didn’t have the heart to go through with all the planning. Nothing good lasts anywhere.
My dad was sympathetic at first, but after about a month of me only getting up for meals, to walk Pollock, and to get myself ice cream for another full-season-marathon of old OLED screen shows, he started to get mad.
“You’re wasting your life,” he said. He had just come into the OLED screen room from his afternoon run, and was wearing his running shorts. He kept glancing at the screen embedded in his wrist to see his vitals. He took a break from video conference calls and whatever else he did every day just before lunch to run two miles. He ran at the end of the day, too, at least five miles. He said it helped keep him Zen.
He didn’t intend to be mean, but I still took it that way. I guess I looked hurt, because he leaned down and put his arm around me.
“I know you’ve been through a rough time, Evann,” he said. “But you need to do things besides sit in front of the screen all day. You’re not even watching anything that’s been on in the last twenty years.”
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll watch shows that came out this year.”
“Evann,” he said, dragging my name out. “Get it together. You’re going to get fat like your stepmother if you sit around all day.”
He didn’t say that to be mean, either. She’s not even fat. He knows it cracks me up when he makes fun of my stepmother, who I don’t like very much, and had been avoiding since I got there. Her name is Valentina, if you can believe that, though she likes to be called Tina. She only married my dad for his money, which she spends on clothes and makeup and salons. But I couldn’t even laugh at him making fun of Tina.
I stretched my arms out above me and stood up. Pollock started yipping like I was going to take him out, dancing around in little circles. I felt so neglectful it almost killed me.
“Okay, I’ll make a deal with you,” I said. “I’ll get off the couch if you promise to stop working and go somewhere fun with me.”
He shook his head. “No can do, sweetie. I have to meet Richard Bradley tonight.”
“Mayor Bradley?” I said. “Doesn’t he actually have things to be doing in the city? Should he not actually be working on getting things up and running there?”
“He actually wants to talk about plans for the city’s renovation, my little skeptic.”
I rolled my eyes. Since Superstorm Bernice, so many people who ran organizations or colleges or megachurches in the city wanted to have dinner with my dad. Sometimes, they came out to our house and I had to sit through the boring dinners with them. First they’d draw me out about my education and the art I collect. They might even try to get on my good side by being kind to Pollock, but I could tell they weren’t really interested. They were just waiting for the right time to bring their big ideas out to my dad, and ask for his big money. Sometimes he was interested. And sometimes the ideas were kind of fascinating. One developer, for example, wanted to make parts of the city like Las Vegas—casinos, live shows, disaster tourism with fancy resorts away from the worst of it, a place that people would go, spend all their money, and leave again. My father said that idea was “enterprising,” but in the end, he didn’t choose to invest.
I sat back down, feeling defeated. Pollock jumped into my lap. “I’ll just stay here on the couch,” I said, kind of pouting. “And watch Turner and the Taliban.”
“I think it would be good for you to come into the city with me, Evann,” he said. “FEMA has set up a little solar-powered community in Central Park. Old Upper East Side residents are coming to help generate energy by making solar power capturing sand murals. People aren’t living back there yet, but they go there for weekends, and I’ve heard that it can be fun, a real community thing. Why don’t you come in tonight?”
I thought about it. I still had all those terrible memories of my little chou apartment destroyed. But here I was, sitting on the couch, wasting away. I hadn’t washed my hair in three days, and it was stringy and greasy. I guess I didn’t smell too great, either, because I hadn’t showered in as many days. I hadn’t gone out to see my friends, I hadn’t done anything, really. So maybe the city wasn’t the worst idea. I would just avoid all the places I had loved, that would never again be what I had fallen in love with.
2 There were party lights strung between the FEMA trailers. They cast this magnifique little glow over the tiny town that had been built up in the North Meadow. It was really just a bunch of trailers, and of course people wouldn’t stay in them for very long, but it was Friday night and people had just come for the weekend, and there was this electricity. Generators, powered by the solar sand murals, and happy people on stationary bicycles, hummed and kept the food cold, the ice cold, the stoves hot, the people warm. We were all outside the trailers in our winter coats, drinks in our hands. I had come alone, but everywhere I turned, people wanted to talk to me.
“My insurance money came in the other day,” a woman in a dark, heavy pea coat was telling me. “They say it will still be a while before the disaster assistance money from the government gets here, but who wouldn’t have private insurance, the way things have been? It’s not what my apartment was worth, but it’s enough for a new place somewhere inland.”
She lifted her plastic cup full of clinking ice cubes and amber liquid, and I raised my own, full of vodka and soda.
“To new beginnings,” she said.
My father had been right—there was a real feeling of community, one like I don’t know if I’ve ever known before. People may have been neighbors in their old lives, but they may have just been overflowing with post-disaster goodwill, I don’t know. Everyone seemed to care about everyone else.
After chatting with a few more people, I met a man maybe a few years older than me. He had diamond studs over the arch of one eyebrow, and said he was in acquisitions.
“Oh?” I said, raising an eyebrow. “What sort of things do you like to acquire?”
“Small towns, mostly,” he said. “The ones that were abandoned in droughts, after hurricanes.”
“What do you do with them?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I haven’t decided yet. Most of them are still too empty, too run down. But when the coasts crumble, people will want them and they’ll come back. Good investments, I think.”
We talked for a while, drinking more, then ended up in his trailer. It was so chou and rustic, just a little bed in one corner with a sleeping bag, and a cooler and camp stove.
“It reminds me of back when there were still big forests, when I was a kid,” he said. His eyes were filled with nostalgia. “It’s like camping out.”
We were both a little drunk, and I remember our kisses being sloppy. I unbuttoned his shirt, and he had a hard stomach and more diamond studs embedded around his left nipple. They were set deep in the skin, which meant that they’d been done when he was young, which meant he’d come from money. It wasn’t like I was going to marry him, or anything, but you still notice these things.
There were smooth pearl studs up the sides of his cock, so he didn’t have to take them out, just slipped the condom over them. I felt their texture inside of me as he lowered me down onto the bed. That felt great, but the rest was a little boring, the kind of mechanical pumping that guys who are just looking to get off do. I started thinking about other things. If I would have to spend the night here, which might be okay, but might be boring or depressing, too. If I should move to Allentown, after all, or maybe move to one of these little cities like this guy owned and buy a bunch of it up myself, or if it would be too boring and depressing waiting for anything to happen there. Everything seemed pretty boring and depressing. What the hell was I even alive for, really? I mean, food is great, and I like to drink every now and then, and take move or even drag once in a great while, but what else did I have now that my little apartment and my art was gone? Pollock, I guess Pollock is the answer. I thought of how long he would live. It wouldn’t be that long, in the grand scheme of things. And what would I have then? I almost started crying, but didn’t because I was with this guy and that would be uncomfortable.
He seemed like he was almost done when I heard this noise. I wasn’t quite sure what it was at first, because I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything like it before. It was twangy and deep and far away. It was like it was floating through the air, through the party lights, in through the slightly open window. It got faster and higher, then lower, then slower again. I grabbed the guy’s hips and pushed him out of me.
“What the hell?” he said.
But I wasn’t listening. I sat up in bed, leaning toward the window.
“What is that?” I asked him.
“That?” he said. “Don’t worry, babe. Sometimes the people in this little setup pay one of the people from the other parts of the city to play music here. That’s . . . I can’t remember what it’s called . . . some gourd and string instrument. It’s pretty primitive, but it’s nothing to worry about.”
I sat there in bed, listening to the sound. A singing rose up with it, words I didn’t understand. The guy kept trying to get me to pick up where we left off, and eventually it just seemed like less of a hassle to let him finish.
Outside the window, the music played until I drifted off into sleep.