19. The Food Room Confessional
THE FOOD ROOM CONFESSIONAL
JOEL
Ican't sleep. Before all this I couldn't sleep most nights. I'd lie in my apartment and stare at the ceiling and think about pressure gauges. Pump schedules. The slow, predictable decay of infrastructure that nobody notices until it fails.
I was good at not sleeping. I had a system.
The system doesn't work anymore. Because the apocalypse gave me something I actually want to be awake for.
Beck is asleep in the booth by the kitchen.
Sprawled across the vinyl seat with one arm hanging off the edge and his mouth slightly open.
Grant is two booths down, curled on his side facing Pepper’s insulated pouch.
He fed her at midnight and fell asleep with one hand beside the pouch.
Captain's perched on the booth back above him like a one-eyed gargoyle standing watch.
Grace's booth is empty.
I sit up. The emergency lights cast everything in dim orange. The windows are dark. The plaza beyond them is darker.
I find her at the counter.
She's sitting on one of the high stools, bare feet hooked on the rung.
Her hair is down, which I've never seen before, and it changes the shape of her face.
She's eating mozzarella sticks. Cold ones from the batch we made for dinner, left on the counter in a paper boat because none of us had the energy to put them away.
I sit on the stool next to her. She pushes the paper boat toward me without looking up.
"They're better hot," she says.
"Most food is."
"Not ice cream."
"That's not food. That's frozen dairy."
"Frozen dairy is a food, Joel. It's in the food pyramid."
"The food pyramid was discontinued in 2011. It's a plate now."
She looks at me. The emergency light turns her eyes into something between amber and copper. "You know the food pyramid was discontinued?"
"I read."
"You read about the food pyramid."
"I read about nutrition guidelines. The pyramid had structural issues. Too much emphasis on grains."
She stares at me for three full seconds. Then she picks up a mozzarella stick and bites it in half, chewing while maintaining eye contact with an intensity that I think is supposed to be challenging but mostly just makes me aware of her mouth.
"Why are you awake?" she asks.
"Couldn't sleep."
"That's not an answer. That's a description of the problem."
"Why are you awake?"
"I asked first."
I take a mozzarella stick. It's room temperature and slightly rubbery, the cheese inside congealed into something that resists biting. I eat it anyway.
"Before," I say. The word comes out before I decide to say it. "Before all this. I used to lie awake and think about pump schedules."
"Pump schedules."
"Pressure gauges. Filtration rates. The rate of decay in mechanical systems. Predictable things. Things I could calculate."
"That sounds..."
"Boring."
"I was going to say calming. But also boring. Both."
I almost smile. I feel it start, the pull at the corner of my mouth, and I stop it before it gets anywhere.
"I worked here for three years. I knew every system in this park.
I could tell you the PSI in the fountain pumps without checking.
I could tell you which ride was going to break down next week based on the sound the motor made. "
"That's impressive."
"It's not. It's just paying attention. That's all I did. I paid attention to machines because machines made sense. They broke in predictable ways. They failed according to physics. You could see it coming if you watched closely enough."
Grace is quiet. Outside, the wind moves through the empty plaza, and I hear the distant sound of something I choose to believe is a trash can and not anything else.
"My last employee evaluation," I say, and I don't know why I'm saying this, except that it's 2 a.m. and something about this moment feels like a confessional booth without the religion, "said I was adequate.
That was the word. Adequate. Joel demonstrates adequate performance in all assigned duties.
No areas of concern. No areas of exceptional achievement. Adequate."
"Joel."
"I read that word and I didn't feel anything.
That's the part I remember. I read adequate and I thought: yes.
That's right. That's exactly what I am. And I went back to my apartment and I ate the same dinner I'd eaten every night for three years and I went to sleep and I woke up and I came back here and I checked the pressure gauges. "
"Joel."
"I was sleepwalking." The word tastes strange. True. "And I didn't know it because I'd never been awake. And then the world ended and I woke up. I don't know what to do with the fact that I feel more alive right now, in an apocalypse, than I ever felt when things were normal."
She's looking at me. The mozzarella stick is forgotten in her hand, halfway to her mouth.
"That's messed up," she says finally. "Like, genuinely concerning."
"I know."
"You're telling me the zombie apocalypse is the best thing that ever happened to you."
"I'm telling you I didn't know I was dead until I had to survive."
"Yeah," she says quietly. "I get that."
"You do?"
"The... not the dead part. Not exactly. But the..." She puts the mozzarella stick down. Wipes her fingers on her pants. Tucks her hair behind her ear, and the movement is so small, so human. "I was overlooked. Before. That was my thing. Not dead. Just... invisible."
"You're not invisible."
"I am, though. I was. The clumsy girl. The one who trips over things and says the wrong word and makes everything into a joke.
People looked at me and they saw..." She waves her hand vaguely at herself.
"This. The mess. The falling down. And they'd pat me on the head and move past because I was funny and harmless and not worth taking seriously. "
"Grace."
"I learned to lean into it. If I was already laughing, then it didn't matter if they were laughing too, because we were all laughing together, right? Same joke. Same target. Ha ha, look at Grace, how funny, how quirky, how..." She stops. Swallows. "How safe to dismiss."
The emergency light flickers. Just enough to remind us both that we're in a dead restaurant in a dead park in a world that's mostly dead and the light keeping us visible is running on borrowed power.
"You're not funny," I say.
Her head snaps up. "Wow. Rude."
I turn on the stool so I'm facing her fully. "You're not the joke. You've never been the joke. You're brave, and people laughed so they didn't have to take it seriously."
She doesn't say anything.
"You walked into an apocalypse with a foam trident.
You climbed over a turnstile because a man in a ticket booth told you no.
You looked at a horde of the wrong people and decided we were keeping this park because the logic was sound and the walls were good.
You held a funeral for a stabby fork. You named everything you saw so it couldn't scare you.
" I'm talking too much. I never talk this much.
"You're the bravest person I've ever met. "
The amber-copper thing in her eyes is wet now, just at the edges.
"Joel." Her voice is smaller than I've ever heard it. "You can't just say things like that."
"I'm not a person who says things. I don't know why I said that. I don't know why I said any of this."
"You called me brave."
"You are brave."
"You said I'm not funny."
"You're not. You're devastating. There's a difference."
I watch her throat move. I watch her hands, which are gripping the edge of the counter, knuckles white. She's shaking. I did that. I want to undo it and I also never want to stop doing it because this right here is the truest I've ever seen her.
"I don't know how to be that person," she whispers. "The brave one. I only know how to be the funny one."
"You're both." I'm closer now. The stools are right next to each other. My knee is touching hers and I'm closer than I've ever been to anyone in my entire adequate life. "You've been both since you walked in the door."
"Joel."
"I'm not good at this." My voice sounds wrong. "I don't know how to... I fix things. Machines. Systems. I see what's broken and I repair it. I don't know how to do this."
"Do what?"
I've said more in the last ten minutes than I've said in the last three years combined and I'm empty now. I'm running on fumes, and the only thing left is the thing I've been not-doing since the fish tube.
I kiss her.
It's not smooth. It's been long enough since I've done this that I've forgotten most of the mechanics, and the angle is wrong because we're on stools and she's shorter than me. I have to lean down and she has to lean up. Our noses bump once, briefly, before I figure out the geometry.
But then I figure it out. And Grace makes a sound against my mouth that rewires something fundamental in my brain.
Her hands find my shoulders. Then my neck. Then my hair, her fingers curling into it with a grip that borders on painful, and I don't care. I don't care about anything except the fact that she's kissing me back with the same chaotic energy she puts into everything.
I pull her off the stool. Or she climbs off. Or we both move at the same time and physics handles the rest, but the result is that she's in my lap now, her knees bracketing my hips, and my hands are on her waist, under the hoodie, finding skin that's warm and soft and alive.
My palm slides up her back. Her spine arches. She gasps into my mouth. I swallow the sound, and I think: I've never wanted anything this much in my entire life and I'm terrified and I don't want to stop.
"Joel." My name in her mouth. Against my lips. I feel it more than hear it.
"Yeah."
"I need you to know." She pulls back just enough to look at me, her eyes huge and dark in the emergency light, her hair a mess, her lips swollen, her hands still in my hair. "I'm probably going to fall off this stool at some point and ruin everything."
"I'll catch you."
She kisses me again. Harder this time. Her hips shift in my lap and my hands tighten on her waist. I'm about three seconds from doing something that requires more privacy than a restaurant with two sleeping men in the booths behind us.
Something hits the window. Hard. The glass shudders. Grace jerks back so fast she almost falls off my lap. I catch her hips, and we both turn to look.
There's a face pressed against the glass.
Wrong face. Dead face. Gray skin and clouded eyes and a mouth that's working open and closed against the window, trying to bite through the pane.
It's wearing a Hawaiian shirt, bright orange with little blue parrots on it, and cargo shorts, and a fanny pack, and there's a lanyard around its neck with a plastic sleeve that says HELLO MY NAME IS and then a name I can't read because the plastic is smeared with something I'm not going to think about.
It hits the glass again. The whole window rattles.
"Oh my God." Grace scrambles off my lap, catches herself on the counter, and spins to face the window. "Are you kidding me?"
The wrong person hits the glass again. Its hands are slapping at the pane now, palms leaving prints, fanny pack swinging with each impact.
"Great timing, Gregory."
The wrong person, who is definitely not named Gregory based on the lanyard, continues to slam against the window. It doesn't care that it has a new name. It only cares about the glass between it and us and the fact that the glass is, for now, winning.
"Gregory?" I say.
"That's Gregory. He's interrupting. Gregory is rude."
"The lanyard says..."
"I don't care what the lanyard says. His name is Gregory now. Gregory the mood killer. Gregory who showed up at the worst possible moment."
"Grace."
"He's still doing it. He's still hitting the glass."
Gregory doesn't stop. Gregory is committed to his work.
"What's happening?" Beck's voice is groggy and confused, from the booth behind us. He's sitting up, hair flattened on one side, squinting at the window. "Is that a zombie?"
"That's Gregory," Grace says.
"Who's Gregory?"
"The zombie, Beck. Keep up."
Beck looks at the zombie. Looks at me. Then Grace's face. Then her hair, which is a disaster. Then back at me. A grin spreads across his face. "Did Gregory interrupt something?"
"Gregory interrupted nothing."
"Uh huh." Beck stretches, arms over his head, grin widening. "So you and Joel were just... hanging out in the dark, eating mozzarella sticks at 2 a.m. And Grace's hair just... does that naturally?"
"My hair is a journey, Beck. It goes places."
Gregory slams the window again. The glass holds, but the sound echoes through the restaurant, and two booths down, Grant stirs. He sits up slowly.
"What's happening?" Grant's voice is thick with sleep. He blinks at the window. "Is that a zombie?"
"That's Gregory," Beck, Grace, and I say in unison.
Grant stares at Gregory, who's still slapping the glass. "Why is it named Gregory?"
"Because he showed up uninvited and ruined everything," Grace says. "That's a Gregory move. Classic Gregory."
Grant considers this. Nods slowly. "Fair."
Gregory hits the glass one more time, then seems to lose interest, shuffling sideways along the window, fanny pack bouncing, disappearing into the dark of the plaza.
The restaurant is quiet. Beck is still grinning at me.
Grace clears her throat. "So. Anyway. That's Gregory. He lives here now. New resident of the big middle. I hate him."
"Noted," Beck says. "We hate Gregory."
"Hate is a strong emotion for a zombie you just met," Grant says mildly. "But I understand the impulse."
Grace picks up the paper boat of cold mozzarella sticks, stares at them, and then puts them down.
"I'm going back to my booth," she announces. "To sleep. Because it's late. And nothing happened. And Gregory ruined nothing because there was nothing to ruin."
She walks past me. Her shoulder brushes my arm. She doesn't look at me. But her hand finds mine, squeezes, and lets go. Then she's in her booth, lying down, pulling her hoodie up over her face like a blanket, and the conversation is over.
I go back to my booth. I lie down. I stare at the ceiling and I think about pressure gauges and pump schedules and the complete inadequacy of my previous life and the woman three booths away who tastes like cold mozzarella sticks and chaos.
Gregory shuffles past the window one more time, fanny pack swinging, parrots on his shirt catching the moonlight.
I should get up, and clear the variable. But the glass is holding, the doors are locked, and everyone is exhausted past the point where brave becomes stupid. Gregory becomes a morning problem.
I close my eyes. I don't sleep.
But I don't mind being awake.