Chapter 3 #2
She nodded as if that was the answer she expected. “That’s fair. And probably as best an answer as any of us can hope for.”
Rodney snorted into his chili. Pantomime either didn’t hear him or ignored him.
“We’re going to Canada,” she said. “Came up from Houston.” She shook her head.
“Had to get out of the city while we still could. Military were in the streets, telling everyone to stay at home, to stay off the roads.” She looked at them with eyes reflecting the firelight.
“A lot of people refused, so they were shot and killed.”
“Jesus Christ,” Don muttered.
“It’s happening all over,” she said. “I don’t know why anyone expected anything different. You tell people that nothing can save them, and what do you think is going to happen? For them to just lie there and take it? For them to say, oh, well, we had a good run? That’s not how humans work.”
“And how do they work?” Rodney asked, his tone sardonic.
Pantomime laughed. “We’re animals. All of us. Take away the sense of societal normalcy, and everyone turns at least a little bit feral.”
“Did you?” Don asked.
“Can’t turn into something I already was.” She shrugged. “I’ve accepted who and what I am. It took me a long time, and now, with everything … I might as well be the real me while I still have the chance.”
“Why does it take the end of the world to be you?” Rodney asked.
“Why are you going to Washington now?” she countered, neat as you please. “Why not last month, last year?”
Rodney glared down at his chili.
“Did I upset him?” she whispered in Don’s ear.
“Yes,” Don said. “But he’s always a little upset.”
Pantomime laughed. “Aren’t we all? It’s strange, really.
How different we all are. And yet, it’s universal.
Things like anger. Grief. Happiness. Maybe the causes aren’t quite the same, but we all know what it feels like to laugh.
To cry. To rage. Have you accepted the truth?
” She plucked at the flower crown on Don’s head.
“What truth?” he asked.
“That we’re all in this moment together. We’re all going the same way. It doesn’t matter what color you are. Your background. Your beliefs. Your heritage. Who you love. Everyone, right now, is all the same. There’s something beautiful about that.”
“So,” Rodney said, “those people who were shot. Those people who died. That’s beautiful?”
“Of course not,” Pantomime said. She didn’t seem offended.
“That’s horror. That’s ugly. But then that’s also humanity, isn’t it?
Look at us, in the middle of nowhere. We’re celebrating the fact that we’re here.
Right now, in this moment, we’re alive. Some would want to take that from us without a second thought.
Because they’re following orders or because they have malice in their hearts and the permission to act on it.
It’s the duality of humanity. One side, capable of great love, the other, great harm.
There’s nothing like us anywhere.” She perked up when a new song—the B-52s and “Love Shack”—began to spill from the speakers.
“I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere!” She stood and practically floated toward the fire.
A man wrapped his arms around her shoulders as they both started to sing at the top of their lungs.
“What have you gotten us into?” Rodney asked.
“I notice you finished all the food they provided.”
“It wasn’t bad,” Rodney muttered. “Not spicy enough.”
“Yes, I’m sure we can let the chef know. I bet he’ll comp the meal.”
“Please do. And no corn bread? I want to speak to the manager. You must have corn bread with chili.”
“I’ll get right on that.”
Rodney said, “Hey.”
Don looked upon his worn and lovely face. “Hey.”
“You ever think we’d end up in a field in Ohio with hippies?”
“I’m surprised it hadn’t happened to us before, to be quite honest.”
“Sass,” Rodney said fondly. “Always with the sass.”
Pantomime brought the man over. They’d met him briefly before but hadn’t caught his name. He introduced himself as Juniper, and Rodney looked as if he wanted to jump into the fire.
“Pantomime said you’re married?” Juniper asked as he sat on the log with them, Pantomime in his lap, her long legs dangling off his. The man had long, beautiful hair that was braided and hanging off his shoulder. In the braid, wildflowers and twigs.
“We are,” Don said.
“For how long?”
“Legally, since 2015. But much longer than that.”
“Forty years,” Rodney said.
“Holy shit,” Juniper whispered. “That’s longer than any of us have been alive.”
“Yes, well,” Don said, used to the fact that most young people viewed older folks as dusty exhibits in a museum.
Juniper laughed. “I like you. You’re funny. Me and Pantomime, we want to get married. Haven’t been together near as long as you two, but when you know, you know.”
“And how long have you been an item?” Don asked.
Juniper frowned, the lines on his forehead deep. “Uh … hold on. Three—no, four months.”
“Four months,” Pantomime agreed. “The best four months I’ve ever had.”
“Oh my god,” Rodney said.
“Yes,” Don said quickly. “That’s exactly right. Oh my god, how wonderful.”
“I saw her at a farmers market. Selling these wicked hemp bags. I must have bought three of them before I got the nerve to ask her out.”
“He was so awkward,” Pantomime said, smacking a kiss on the top of his head. “I thought he was trying to case the joint so he could rob me later.”
“At a farmers market,” Rodney said dryly.
“Exactly,” Pantomime said. “Luckily for me, he wasn’t planning on armed robbery. He was after something else.”
“Her heart,” Juniper said seriously.
“That’s achingly romantic,” Don said. He didn’t like to lie, but sometimes, a situation called for it. This seemed like one of them. “Congratulations.”
They both beamed. “Thank you,” Juniper said.
“We all float through space on a rock, hurtling toward forever. So many of us forget that it’s other people who make life worth living.
As much as we like to think so, we can’t do this alone.
Everyone needs someone. Maybe not all the time, but enough that it matters.
And hey, you could give us some advice. How have you made it work? ”
“Made what work?” Rodney asked.
“The two of you,” Pantomime said.
Rodney and Don looked at each other. Rodney shook his head pointedly.
Don ignored him. “I suppose it’s different for everyone.
You could say it all comes down to love, but is that really all there is?
” He paused. Then, “That’s a big part of it, perhaps the biggest, but I also respect him.
I trust him. I know he wants what’s best for me, even if that means telling me something I don’t want to hear. ”
We have to live, Rodney whispered in his head, a memory, desperate and aching. It’s not fair what happened—I want to scream until I can’t anymore—but we’re still here.
Rodney touched the back of his hand.
“That’s lovely,” Pantomime said. “Why are you going to Washington?”
They both froze. Don shouldn’t have said where they were going. A mistake, a slip of the tongue. Don couldn’t get the words out.
Rodney said, “Something we need to see to.”
She didn’t push. “I hope it’s everything you’ve been looking for.”
Don bristled, a bright burst of anger, unbidden. Or was it? Guilt did that to a person, didn’t it? “We’re not looking for anything. We know what we’re going to find.”
Rodney dropped his hand on top of Don’s. Not as a warning, but to let Don know he was there.
“Okay,” Pantomime said easily, as if they were discussing the weather. “Whatever it is, you’ll succeed. I feel it.”
Don deflated. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped.”
Juniper laughed. “That was you snapping? My guy, you’re allowed. Hell, we all are. What’s the point of knowing the end is coming if you can’t scream and wail about it? I have. Does it help? I don’t know. But I know how I feel when I finish.”
“Better,” Pantomime said.
“Much better,” Juniper agreed. “We got this energy in us, right? Sometimes, it needs to be released before it consumes us. We’re like black holes, in a way. Sucking in all the light and stardust until it has nowhere else to go but out.”
“That’s not how black holes work,” Rodney grumbled.
“Would you like a cookie?” Pantomime asked. “They have THC, but it’s not too strong. I’ve had a couple, and I’m feeling pretty great.” She lifted her legs, flexing her toes. “Better than great, even. I like being alive.”
“I’m glad you do,” Juniper said, his face in her hair. He turned his head slightly to look at Don and Rodney. “What do you think happens next?”
Rodney and Don exchanged glances. Rodney asked, “Next?”
“After we die,” Juniper said. “When the black hole eats the Earth, where do we go?”
Hadn’t they talked about this? For hours and hours and hours.
Not because of the black hole, not because the world was ending.
No, this came before, when things were somehow worse.
Rodney went in circles, one moment believing in the idea of Heaven, the next, saying there was nothing, that it was all empty space where everything was black.
Don didn’t agree, not quite. He wasn’t sure about the idea of Heaven—it sounded like an exclusive club that could turn away anyone for any reason.
Granted, the alternative—if one believed such things—was downstairs where it got a little hot.
But if the religious version of what came next was wrong, what did that mean?
Where would they go? And what would go? The soul—who even knew what that was.
Perhaps it was the mind, the consciousness. Would the body be there?
Don said, “I don’t know.”