He’s smoking out the window in the dark.
Last night he was too excited to sleep and ordered a tent and a sleeping bag and some DVDs about the Antarctic, and he binned all his cigarettes (after splitting them in two at the filters) as well as all the lighters he could find around the house. But then Amazon sent him an email about the purchases not going through and Tomás remembered his dad’s cheque still hasn’t come through, and he was glad he hadn’t gone to the mall instead and had his card rejected in public. Having said that, he still felt embarrassed by the email and so he went to the kitchen, opened the bin lid and dug out four cigarettes he found between the trash Fran had emptied on the floor.
Smoking without filters is so unpleasant to him and he knew he’d feel so rough later, so he thought he might as well smoke a couple instead of just the one.
So why is he smoking in the dark? Well, when Tomás got home after all the running, he was laughing real loud and he felt so young he punched the air boxing-style when he opened his apartment door, and then he flicked the lights on and there was a tiny explosion and then all of the lights in the apartment started to flicker. So he turned them off. He used his phone to get to his room and noticed the ceiling was leaking. The leak must have screwed with the circuits or something but it was so late, or at least too late to fix, and so Tomás used his phone light to look for the cigarettes in the bin. He couldn’t make new coffee, so he drank what was left in the French press. In the dark. By himself.
Now somehow it’s 7am and Tomás doesn’t shower, doesn’t shave, and he gets dressed to go to work. But before work, he’ll go see Yiyo and tell him about the trip he’s planning. He wants him to know that despite him not being in a band, he still has dreams that take time, that take work and commitment and he wants Yiyo to wish him luck, just so he can then answer that it’s not about luck but about time, work and… But does it matter? Does it make a difference to him if someone’s watching? He doesn’t know or care about the answer to this, but what he does know is that the more people he tells, the more he’ll feel he has to do it, like when people tell their colleagues at work that they’ll bungee jump or parachute out of a plane or do something extreme like that. As he once said in class, once the ending of a story is a possibility, then the beginning and middle become certainties. And so, as he buckles his belt, he also decides that he’ll go to Abdul’s shop and e-mail his dad’s solicitor about that inheritance money on the way so he can start buying the things on his list.
He has a last cigarette by the window and it starts to rain. Since his flat is dark, the reds and yellows of the morning traffic and skyscrapers slide on the walls of his bedroom as if it were a metro wagon in its tunnel at full speed. And nothing is cream-coloured, nothing is still and nothing is boring and he, despite his collapsed ceiling, his wet carpet, his unbuilt bed frame, his lack of coffee cups and his two electric hobs, well, despite all that he’s still part of Santiago and all its moving lights and shadows.
This makes him want to take the metro, but when he gets there he sighs because it’s full of students dressed up as zombies carrying anti-government and free education banners. This one fat zombie sharing a metal pole with him isn’t wearing a shirt and he painted his belly white and patched with black scars. He doesn’t need the paint to scare anyone with that belly, but then a female zombie (much skinnier than him) is holding hands with him. Tomás lets out a quiet laugh, because he knows that militant people fall in love with other militant people just so they never have to think about how different they actually are. They stare at the sign with all the station names that they already know, and in the lapse of one hug they miss the sparks outside the metro windows, the silent hum of the doors sliding open, and the echoes of the steps of a leaving crowd.
But what really bothers him about the fat zombie is that he reminds Tomás about an argument he’d once had with Eva when the student protests began last year. He was getting ready to go to work and she asked him to go to a march with her and he had said that it was raining. She told him that for someone working at a university, she found it surprising how much of a shit he didn’t give about education and he answered that either way, free or paid, his job would be the same. There was no French breakfast that day and she left to protest before work, without him. Now don’t get him wrong – Tomás agrees with free education and all that stuff, but it had been raining that whole week, there had been endless crowds of douchebags shouting about a different world, and the only thing achieved was a full metro, a fight with Eva, and a day without breakfast. Still, he got hold of a banner on his way to work and left it by the door for her to see. When Eva came back she had sex with him and cooked patates sautées and some strange thing with duck liver he can’t remember the French name of, and maybe the protests aren’t so bad after all…
The metro gets to Baquedano and Tomás comes out and all the zombies come out behind him, and he walks quickly to the escalators to avoid any queues, and he can hear the echoes of their free education chants along the tunnels, their laughter and their insults against Piñera and the Right, and cheers for Marcel Claude and Allende and the Left. He turns right and left and walks up the stairs, and the echoes behind him disappear and are replaced by the same chants everywhere in the street in front of him, which is filled with other young zombies.
He walks between painted faces, riot police, banners and chanting on megaphones and he starts his way to Yiyo’s shop. A zombie stops him and gives him a sign that says ‘This is The End, My Only Friend’ with a photograph of Piñera but with Jim Morrison’s hair, and he takes it and the zombie cheers and takes a photograph of Tomás with his phone.
As he reaches Yiyo’s street, the crowd stops and listens to a zombie leader on a podium, and she’s wearing a green military jacket despite all the zombie cosplay, and she lifts her fist up and people cheer and play drums and then she says…
‘We will march peacefully today! And to show them how organised we can be, how afraid of us they should be, we, we will dance!’
Everyone cheers and Tomás squeezes past more zombies and the rain gets heavier but zombies are immune to heavy rainfall, and he must get to Yiyo’s shop before all the face paints start to melt because then the riot police won’t be able to know who’s a zombie and who isn’t, and they’ll beat everyone up like they always do. He can see the shop and then Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ starts playing real loud on the podium speakers, and the zombies make a line formation and start doing the dance from the video, and this fat zombie yells something at Tomás and pulls him into formation, and he stomps to their rhythm but he doesn’t know how to do the dance at all and so he runs out of the crowd as soon as the bit with the sideways hip-shaking jiggle starts, and he pinballs between people and arrives at the shop, closing the door behind him.
Yiyo’s bagging some drumsticks for a zombie. There are other kids trying out guitars and playing blues solos.
‘Jesus, man, I can’t stand this anymore,’ Tomás says, rubbing the rain from his face.
‘Hey dude, how’re you?’ Yiyo asks and comes to hug him. ‘Dude,’ Yiyo tells Tomás, holding his shoulders, ‘if it’s about fucking Fran, I didn’t know you guys had dated. She told me after we did it.’
‘You what?’ Tomás asks, and then just shakes his head. ‘No, man, I don’t care.’
‘OK, good. Well, how’re you then?’
‘I’m OK, just tired of all this shit outside.’
‘Oh, come on man, don’t be like that.’
‘So now you’re a protester too? You’re a fucking cliché, man.’
‘Nah, couldn’t give less of a shit about it… But every time there’s a protest I sell two or three guitars and a lot of gear, mainly bongos. Though who knows if I’ll ever sell that fucking blue drum kit. It was the worst decision of my life, buying that piece of shit. I wish they made a much bigger protest. Maybe I should paint a peace sign on the bass drum skin.’
‘You’ll sell it man.’
‘Yeah, whatevs dude. I can’t complain today.’
A skinny zombie wearing a black Nirvana hoody takes some guitar picks and gives Yiyo the cash.
‘Free education, fuck Piñera,’ Yiyo sings, giving the zombie his change back.
‘Yeah whatever, old man,’ the kid tells him, leaving his change behind.
‘You see?’ Yiyo tells Tomás.
‘Yeah, well, I hope it’s the blue drum kit one day.’
‘So, what’s up? Come to get a guitar to start playing again dude? You know, you can always join me to texture my new songs. You probably can’t be a member. I mean, we can’t just kick out people who stuck around when things were bad. But you can definitely help at the studio.’
‘No, I actually came to tell you that I’m leaving soon.’
‘Where are you going to go, huevón? Did you sell your new game? Going to the US or something to promote it? We want to go to the US with the band too. Converse was interested in doing a deal with us, but Chino, our new bassist after you left, you know him? Nah, you don’t know him. Well, the guy has like, dactyl-something, or something-dactyl, who knows? Anyway, he like, can’t wear normal shoes and won’t wear fucking Converse, but man, me and the others, we’re like going to chop his foot off if it means we get to the US with a sponsor. It’s pretty cool isn’t it?’
‘Yeah, it sounds amazing… But no, I’m not going to the US. Although that might happen later. The game isn’t finished yet.’
‘Where then?’
‘I’m going to go get back with Eva.’
‘What? You got in touch with her? Did she tell you to go visit?’
‘Well,’ Tomás says, playing the strings of a guitar on a stand.
‘Wait, does she, does she even know about it?’
‘That I want her back? Of course she—’
‘No huevón, does she know you’re coming? Have you told her? And isn’t she like really fucking far in the middle of nowhere?’
‘I thought, you know, it’d be better to surprise her.’
‘Dude, no, don’t do—’ Another kid comes to pay for a jack lead. ‘Free education and fuck Piñera,’ Yiyo sings quickly and the kid smiles. ‘Dude,’ he whispers to Tomás, ‘don’t do it. That’s so fucking lame. I can’t tell you how lame that is.’
‘Come on, I think she’d really appreciate me just going, being impulsive and taking initiatives and all that crap. Didn’t you once tell me to worry about stuff like that?’
‘But you were together then. And dude, you don’t even own coffee cups or a bed and you have the shittiest kitchen. Two electric hobs only. Jeez, what were you thinking?’
‘What? How do you know that?’
‘Fran told me.’
‘Jesus.’
‘It’s a really bad idea, man.’
‘Let it go, dude.’ The zombie playing blues calls Yiyo. ‘I’ve got to work man. Hey, my band’s playing a show tomorrow at Bar Loreto in Bellavista. Come and we’ll talk about it some more. But don’t like, do anything stupid.’
‘Not sure I can make it to the show. I’ve got so much of my own work to do, man. Sorry.’
‘Alright, whatevs, whatevs.’
‘Alright.’
Tomás turns and leaves the store to the sound of guitars feedbacking and a bongo solo and why couldn’t Yiyo just encourage him? Was it so difficult for him to appreciate the most important parts of Tomás’s life when Tomás had always supported his music projects, his mediocre music projects, just because they were important to him? Friends or not friends, everyone just does and says whatever suits them better and this is why Tomás should go, must go, because it is what he wants, who he wants, and Eva will appreciate the impulse despite the absence of cups and kitchenware because doesn’t the desire for one thing justify the lack of all other things?
• • •
IDEAS BOOK P. 40:
Pajitnov invented Tetris in 1984 at the Soviet Academy of Sciences, and it’s still played today. It’s so good that there are rumours online saying that Soviet officials had to lock up every single floppy disk they could find containing the game because it kept other officials from doing any work. Imagine something so addictive today, like meth, coke, FarmVille, but totally legal (FarmVille should be illegal), totally simple to play, suddenly getting locked up by police around the world. And he didn’t even do it for the money (unlike the makers of meth and coke and FarmVille). Nope. Pajitnov didn’t touch a cent until a decade later, when he claimed that all he really wanted was for people to have a good time. The man is pretty much virtual Jesus, and his lessons, much like those of real Jesus, have now been completely fucked over.
Anyway, the guy believed in fitting parts. He was OBSESSED with them. He even made a game called Hatris, where you fit hats into people’s heads. But what is truly remarkable about it all is the fact that despite putting all his effort, all of his trust and artistry into every moving block, the game cannot be beaten! That’s right, his vision was not only to manipulate virtual space but also to transcend actual time. The max. score is 999.999 but even then it does not end. Most people top out at far less and try again. The sense of victory you get when you line up the shapes is a bit like when you line up the coke is the satisfaction that you’ve won at everything in life, you beat the machine that fed you random shapes and limited possibilities. And, when you lose you know it’s your own fault, your own doing, because you were not able to build anything resembling a simple straight line despite the machine feeding you random shapes and limited possibilities. The game is so fucking addictive and frustrating at the same time that a 1987 PC version included a ‘boss button’, which immediately left the game and changed your computer screen to display a generic spreadsheet so you could pretend to work.
So how can we build a Tetris clone? The main design choice here is SHAPES
SPEED/TIMELIMITED SPACE. It will be for mobile platforms, and using the touchscreen will move the shapes you will form different shapes, as if you were using modelling clay or plasticine. Instead of landing perfect lines to keep the game going, there will be parts already missing from a line of ascending bricks and you will have to form said missing parts yourself for the bricks to descend. The choice will be about which shapes you’ll spend your time forming first or, in other words, which shapes you will have to form just after and so on.
But just like Tetris, the max. score will be 999.999 and no one will be able to beat it, not even a computer playing itself. In fact, once, an advanced AI was left to play Tetris by itself. Because even it couldn’t beat it, it decided to PAUSE indefinitely and never play again. It couldn’t stand the thought of losing, and it was too clever to know it couldn’t win. So it decided not to play at all. We will not be including a PAUSE function, though it’s impossible not to wonder, what would that same AI do now?
• • •
He closes his IDEAS book and crosses the avenue to the park by the Mapocho River to walk to Plaza Italia. The river’s full with rain but even with all the new water joining its flow, it still looks dark brown and smells like shit. But Tomás walks by the river anyway because the bad smell makes the zombie protesters gather up on the other side of the avenue.
He considers throwing the banner into the Mapocho but he doesn’t because there’s a beggar watching him from under a bench. He always feels judged by hobos because they can always take the moral high ground since they have it so bad owning fuck all. Someone should find them all social housing so that Tomás can walk free of judgement. But then he feels like a total cunt for thinking this way. And beggars can’t even throw anything into rivers because that’s the opposite of begging and he doesn’t want to insult him with his own waste. He gives him some money and the beggar just gives him a dry grunt.
So he crosses the avenue again to get to the bank to ask about the inheritance cheque before heading to the market. It’s closed because of the protests. For now, he’ll have to just browse at Abdul’s shop and he hopes he will agree to put things to one side for him so he can come for them later.
He gets to the market and heads straight through the open corridors and into Abdul’s shop. There’s no one at the counter but he can hear people talking inside so he walks in. Abdul’s sticking price tags onto old tape recorders on a shelf at the other end of the hut and Jesús is sitting by the ski poles with a shoebox on his lap.
‘Hey,’ Tomás says, and they both look at him.
‘Piss! You made me stick the price all wrong and now it’s going to leave a glue mark when it comes off,’ Abdul says.
‘Sorry,’ Tomás says, and Abdul sighs.
‘Hey, man, how’re you?’ Jesús asks.
‘OK, I guess. A bit annoyed with the protesting and all that.’
‘I hear you bro. But the zombie costumes are pretty damn awesome. You got to give them that,’ Jesús says with a smile.
‘Zombie costumes. Awesome? You’re all children,’ Abdul says, sticking more prices. ‘Children, fucking children, children,’ he repeats after every tag.
Jesús shrugs and begins tidying things in the shoebox again.
Tomás starts to look at the shelves and he takes out his list. Under a shelf with old Thunder Cats action figures there are two kitchens with the oven doors open and all the hobs full of dirt.
‘Interested in this kitchen? It’s German. It cooks all your meals in half the time,’ Abdul says with one hand on Tomás’s shoulder.
‘I don’t think that’s true.’
‘You calling me a liar?’ Abdul says, tightening his grip on his shoulder.
‘No, but I’m not—’
‘It’s OK,’ Abdul laughs, ‘you’re too easy to fuck with, you know that?’
Tomás laughs but he finds it hard to smile.
‘So, you want the kitchen?’
‘I’m looking for something smaller, portable even.’
‘I have some electric ones that are good. They’re really good actually. Not German though.’
‘I need a gas one. It’s for a trip.’
‘Well, we only have electric.’
‘OK.’
‘Where are you going? If you go to Argentina I have things I want you to deliver for me.’
‘Huh?’
‘I’ll pay you, I’ll even give you a good price on our best kitchen. Come on, it’s German.’
‘I’m going to Antarctica.’
‘Are you stupid?’
‘No,’ Tomás says, frowning at Abdul and stepping away from him.
‘I’m just fucking with you,’ he says. ‘Antarctica sounds nice.’
‘OK.’
‘But why the hell would you go there?’
‘Work, actually.’
‘I see.’
‘I have a list of things I need to buy.’
‘Can I have a look?’
‘No, sorry, it’s a personal copy, I only have one.’
‘Alright. Jesús,’ Abdul says, waving at him, ‘help him find what he needs. I don’t have time for this. ‘Going to Antarctica,’ he says! Fucking children,’ Abdul laughs, shaking his head.
Jesús walks up to Tomás. He’s wearing a Cannibal Corpse T-shirt where a guy in black and white makeup is holding a shovel and is burying a priest alive who’s crying inside a see-through coffin.
‘How’s the flat? Fixed your roof yet?’
‘Getting there.’
‘So, what are you looking for?’
‘Anything that could be of any use in the Antarctic. Rope, snow axes, snow goggles, a compass, anything.’
‘We do have an axe somewhere, actually. I’ll get it for you.’
‘That’d be great, thanks.’
‘But it’s just a regular axe.’
‘I’ll check it out anyway.’
‘It’s so cool that you’re going there. I would love to go. I imagine there are no people there, as if the world were already ending. Maybe you can write about it. We really need a new theory as to how and when it’s going to happen.’
‘If I do I’ll let you know.’
‘Thanks. I’ll go get the axe. I’ll be two minutes.’
‘Thanks.’
Tomás walks along the shelves and looks at the toys, the tools, the tiles, the kitchens and the pans and the postcards and photographs in old tins with tags for food that no longer exists. All these things once belonged to someone until they became a waste of space or something that people grew out of. But doesn’t the fact that Abdul sells them mean that no matter how useless and how uselessly old a thing can be, they can always be rescued, always be put to some use in some room other than those they were intended for, without ever needing to be new again? Yes, this is what Tomás wants, to see Eva again in a new setting, to make new plans and new mistakes, without ever losing what made them so good to each other when they were still together. He knows their relationship never ended. When Eva said she knew she could do better he hadn’t understood. She hadn’t meant she could find someone better. She had tried to tell him that he, he could be better and that she knew it too. Things don’t just end. They’re put on hold, like the toys on the shelf, waiting to be wanted again and Tomás is sure he’s never wanted anything so much in his whole life.
He pulls a pair of gardening gloves from a hook on the wall and tries them on. They feel warm enough and he keeps them on to buy them later. Lucas and the typewriter girl come into the hut laughing together. They both have black and white zombie face-paints but all smeared with the rain. She’s wearing a tight black dress that stops just above the knees and black tights and a pair of black Vans and she reminds him about being young, when the women he knew would wear dresses and sneakers and he would wear jeans and sneakers too, before it all went to hell and everyone started to look like their parents, who no longer care about how they dress (even when they think that they do) because really, there’s no fixing age and the bodies time creates.
She’s carrying a flowerpot without any flowers and Lucas, wearing the same polo and khakis as always, is carrying one too. Tomás waves at him but Lucas doesn’t see him and leaves through a door next to the ski poles.
‘Hey again,’ she says to him, coming closer.
‘Hi,’ he says, ‘the protest?’
‘Yeah, until the police started hitting people,’ she says with a smile.
‘Fuckers, fuck Piñera,’ Tomás says.
‘Yeah… Hey, nice gloves.’
‘Thanks, nice flowerpot,’ he answers, instantly wishing he hadn’t said a thing.
‘Hey, could you help me put this on top here?’
‘Of course.’
She gives him the empty flowerpot and gets a chair to stand on. Tomás looks at her long thin legs and he wonders why there aren’t more people with long thin legs like hers, and maybe she’s a dancer and if she is, he’d like to see her dance.
‘OK, give it to me,’ she says, and Tomás hands her the pot and she puts it next to old tin boxes on top of the shelf.
‘You come here often?’ he asks her as she steps down from the chair.
‘Yeah, most days.’
‘You preparing for a trip too?’
‘I guess you could say that.’
‘I’m going to Antarctica.’
‘Ah, so you’re the one Lucas and Jesús talk about. The roof guy.’
‘Oh…’
‘I’m Matilde.’ She shakes his hand and he wishes he wasn’t wearing the gloves. ‘Call me Maty. I hate my name.’
‘Tomás.’ He now hates his name too, but there’s nothing he can do about it.
‘Lucas told me you write stories.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Are you published?’
‘One of them, sort of.’
‘I write too, but I always hate what I write,’ she says, looking up at the flowerpot.
‘That’s common.’
She nods and then there’s silence. Abdul turns the radio on and it’s Caravana playing that song he doesn’t know the end of, and he wishes he could either meet women who talked nonstop or hated all conversation just so he didn’t have to hate silences so much and didn’t have to listen to the ending of a song he doesn’t want to know because…
‘So why do you come here so often?’ he asks.
‘I work here. He’s my dad,’ she says, looking at Abdul who’s humming the tune.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t—’
‘You’re sorry? Believe me, you’re not the only one,’ she says.
‘No, I didn’t mean—’
‘Here’s your axe, man,’ Jesús says behind him. Matilde laughs so Lucas laughs too.
‘I thought you wrote stories,’ she says, smiling.
‘I really get into character,’ he answers with a smile, wishing again that he were dead, that he could shove the axe into his mouth and just end it all.
‘It’s for his trip,’ Lucas says.
‘Well, good luck,’ she says, turning and walking to Abdul.
Jesús and Lucas are both smiling at him and Tomás hears the end of the song. He’s disappointed to find that it ends on a fade-out of the chorus just looping over and over because it means the band love their song so much they couldn’t or didn’t want to decide on an ending. And as Yiyo says, that’s just douchy as hell.
‘She’s amazing, isn’t she?’ Lucas says.
‘You’re obsessed,’ Jesús starts. ‘There are way more important things to think about,’ he says, giving Tomás the axe.
‘Like The End Of The World?’ Lucas asks.
‘For example,’ Jesús answers.
‘Jesús, come here and take this crap out of my desk!’ Abdul shouts.
‘Again?’ Lucas sighs at Jesús. Tomás looks at them. ‘The pamphlets for the gig tonight,’ he tells Tomás, ‘they actually think Satan will turn up.’
‘Hey, I’m just trying to raise money,’ Jesús says.
‘Idiots,’ Lucas says, shaking his head. Jesús just shrugs and goes to Abdul’s desk.
‘Hey, you’re good with girls, right?’ Lucas asks Tomás.
‘No.’
‘But you were talking to Maty. And you’ve had girlfriends before, right?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘Well, it’s just that Jesús is the worst wingman on Earth. I tell you, him and his Satanist group always talk about lust and bondage, but I’m not sure how because they’re always single and anyway, it gets all a bit sour.’
‘I don’t think—’
‘Wait. I just wanted to ask you if you could come to the gig tonight and put in a good word for me with Maty.’
‘I don’t know, why don’t you just talk to her yourself? I hardly know any of you.’
‘Are you crazy? I have nothing to say.’
‘Me neither.’
‘Bullshit. You’re a writer.’
‘For videogames.’
‘Same thing.’
‘It is, come on. And tell you what, you help me and I’ll gather up anything in the shop that could be useful for your trip.’
‘Not sure this is a good idea, man.’
‘Come on, show some commitment.’
Tomás looks at the axe and his gloves and then at Lucas’s zombie face and he doesn’t know what to say. Lucas is right, he should accept, but isn’t this meant to be his own trip, all done in his own time and with his own effort and his own money? Why must he involve himself in the stories of others? Are people really that scared of being alone, that they ask others to join them just so that if they fail and lose it all they can still claim to have gained something, someone?
Still, Tomás did not bring any money with him and he should really be taking back home anything useful he can find here.
‘Where’s the gig?’ Tomás asks.
‘Amazing.’
‘Where is it?’
‘It’s in Bar Loreto, have you heard of it? It’s in Bellavista.’
‘Wait, Yiyo, I mean, are Fármacos playing?’
‘Yeah, they’re amazing, huh?’
‘Yeah, they are… Alright, could I take this then and pay for it later?’
‘Yeah, just try not to let Abdul see you.’
‘Cool, thanks.’
Jesús and Matilde walk up to them with a box full of old Minolta cameras.
‘He’s coming to the gig, dude,’ Lucas tells Jesús.
‘Great. It’ll be good. Just remember the money, it’s for a bad cause,’ he laughs.
‘OK,’ Tomás answers.
‘See you there,’ Matilde says taking two cameras to the shelves.
Tomás nods and puts the axe and the gloves in his bag. Part of the blade is still showing so he puts his scarf on top of it.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll distract him. See you tonight,’ Lucas says.
‘See you.’
‘Hey Abdul, you coming to the gig too?’ Lucas asks him.
‘With those clowns you call your friends? No. Children, all of you are nothing but fucking children.’
Tomás walks out and it’s still raining and he opens his mouth to the sky and catches a few drops. They feel cold and lucky because with all the fog, the skyscrapers disappear and the sky is infinite, enveloping the road and its people, all in grey and all of it, all of it coming down in drops. Tomás lights up an unfiltered cigarette and wraps his scarf round his neck just to see the end of the axe as he walks towards the metro. There are less zombies now and it’s quiet and if the world ended tonight, the rain would fall in single drops and he’d be there to taste it next to Eva, just as he is right now, like always.