Songs for the End of the World

by Saleema Nawaz

  It’s just like Fabbrini to impute the outbreak to some sort of post-prandial orgy among the afflicted. Behind him, Alondra picks up the jettisoned napkins and rolls her eyes at Ed, who struggles to suppress a smile.

  “I think it’s a little worse than a cold, Mr. Fabbrini,” says Ed. From what she’s read in the newspaper, the eight individuals are being closely monitored by local health authorities after one of them was admitted to hospital for respiratory problems. She was disappointed the article didn’t mention anything about the restaurant. She gets a second-hand thrill from all the cipolla media coverage—just another instance of fame and fortune lurking around every corner of the city. Though she supposes in this case it wouldn’t be good for business.

  “Whatever it is,” Fabbrini grumbles, “it wasn’t the osso buco.”

  * * *

  Ed is browsing at the campus bookstore after class when she overhears two women talking about Owen Grant. The remaining signed copies from the reading two months ago are facing out in a thick stack on the shelf across from where she’s standing.

  “I’m telling you, he’s hot,” says a blonde in a pale, summery dress as she pulls out a copy of How to Avoid the Plague. She is carrying an enviable shoulder bag of soft, brown leather. “Have you ever seen him?”

  “Oh yeah,” says the other, who looks Korean and sports a cat-print sweatshirt and dark-rimmed glasses. A funky nerd aesthetic. “In the flesh. He used to live in West Mass, like my sister.”

  They flip to the author photo. “This guy. Brutally hot.”

  “Well, I heard his wife left him three or four years ago,” says the funky nerd, with insider authority. “He didn’t want kids, so she had one on her own. Sperm donor.”

  “Yikes. You think it was about the kid?” asks the blonde.

  “Nah. I think she found out he’d slept with half the town. Even a bunch of people in her department.”

  “God, that’s cold.”

  “Yeah, my sister works at Lansdowne as an administrative assistant. She fooled around with him, too, actually.”

  “What a dog.”

  “And now he’s off the leash. I feel sorry for whoever dates him.”

  * * *

  —

  Ed only has fifteen days left in the city, a realization that prompts her to create a spreadsheet of top New York activities compiled from over a dozen bookmarked websites. Then she spends the weekend working her way down the list, determined to visit at least some of the attractions alone. Ed fears that she has been seeing too much of Jericho in the past couple of weeks. She worries he has done something to her by giving her a new name, fettered her in ways she cannot consciously combat. She is afraid of leading him on. She knows from her experience with Owen that it doesn’t matter how well-informed everyone might be about who is or isn’t available for a relationship. It is not enough to say the words; romantic disinterest needs to be shown in brief flashes of cruelty, and hinted at with a degree of reticence, a reluctance to confide. Words are never enough to make the situation clear. She tells herself that the most important thing will be to remember not to kiss him. Then everything will be okay.

  * * *

  —

  Over the next week, Owen sends Ed five longing texts, ostensibly while his wife is at Zumba class. Ed tries hard to believe in the existence of said wife but agrees to meet him at a motel across town. She spends her subway ride uselessly vowing to turn around, and when she at last spots his car pulling up to their motel room, she is trembling and still resentful.

  For some reason he refrains from his standard dirty talk, and in the absence of their usual collaborative and profane narration, they lapse into silence, leaving only grunts and the moist sounds of slapping as their words fall away. With Owen’s hands on her hips, Ed closes her eyes. The din of their lovemaking begins thundering in her ears until she drops to the sheets, muffling her head in the pillow. Owen’s deep breaths are a Morse code of exhalations on her neck and shoulders. Ed realizes they are having a cold conversation: a back-and-forth of when they will finally end it.

  * * *

  “The way that you talk about Owen makes me think that you still love him,” says Jericho.

  The day before, after a marathon session of movie-watching at his tiny apartment, Ed finally leaned into Jericho’s patient, looming face—and into the kiss that had always seemed inevitable. It was better than she thought it would be. Soft and insistent, urgent and sweet. But Jericho has seemed sadder since the kiss, as though whatever his daily burdens, they have become harder to bear.

  “I don’t,” she says. She never loved him, but Owen is still with her, the thought and shape of him, the things he says and writes. He seems to linger in these ghostly traces, like something that might show up in a photograph—a dark mark, a smudge somewhere behind her head. Though their affair was already bound to end in a matter of days, when Ed returns to Lansdowne, Owen has abruptly cut off contact again. This, more than anything, has shaken her. Before, she had his words to cling to, if nothing else. But it is as though by kissing Jericho she has severed whatever invisible and improbable thread used to exist between her and Owen. “It’s not that at all.”

  “I know.” Jericho turns his head away. They are at his apartment again, just two blocks away from cipolla, and lying close together on his mattress on the floor. It’s the only place to sit, apart from his desk chair. “In my heart I believe you, but the things you say make me doubt my true instincts.”

  “I’m sorry,” says Ed, and she is. She knows Jericho is preoccupied by her imminent departure, though they’ve avoided mentioning it since the kiss. “I don’t know what else to tell you.” She reaches for one of the cold beers they brought back from the bodega downstairs and takes a sip. The cool, blank white walls of Jericho’s apartment seem to stretch up forever towards the ceiling.

  “Don’t you see?” His eyes are fixed on the floor, a pink and blue Afghan carpet swirled with rings of roses. “It’s what you’ve told me that’s the problem. We shouldn’t have to say anything to one another.”

  His books are stacked around the room, surrounding his mattress in piles divided according to subject: Buddhism, evolution, philosophy, opera, Esperanto. Ed sits up and examines them, running her finger along each title in turn, pretending to be absorbed. Earlier, she thought it might be convenient to stay over, given how close Jericho lives to the restaurant. Now she is starting to reconsider.

  “Let’s put on some music,” she says, and she can hear him moving behind her, getting up, heading for the computer. “Do you have any Dove Suite?”

  He makes a strange, choked noise in his throat. “Told you before–we don’t share that particular obsession.” He puts on an electronic album by a band she’s never heard of.

  Later, when Ed asks Jericho about old girlfriends, he is pleased and fair-minded. Returning to the mattress, he lists his few significant relationships, offering a fond and considered analysis of their breakdowns. Stroking her wrist with his thumb, he mentions one desperate unrequited love, for a classmate during his undergraduate degree.

  “I did something I’m not proud of,” he says. “On some level I thought it would be good for her to know how much she really meant to me. To show her.”

  Ed shifts closer to him on the mattress, feeling worried and a bit diminished. She ignores her beer, which is growing wet with condensation on the rug. “What do you mean? What did you do?”

  Jericho shrugs. “I guess you could say I tried to become someone else entirely.”

  Ed says, “I wouldn’t want us to become quite so desperately in love with one another as all that.” She is suddenly tired. She thinks of Owen, her foolish notebooks, and a sigh escapes her lips.

  Finishing the last of his beer, Jericho gets up in silence to place the empty bottle on the desk.

  * * *

  The radio is turned on low in cipol
la’s kitchen, where Fabbrini is perched on a step stool, waiting for the hourly news update. His anxiety is veering into panic. He has had two more visits from the health inspector, followed by a call from the CDC, who are apparently coming in to do health screenings of the staff. According to the advisory released the day before, all eight of the hospitalized patrons have now died of their illness, and another two hundred people in New York have been infected. The restaurant has been officially cleared of wrongdoing—the people who got sick are suffering from a respiratory virus, and apparently nothing food-borne—but given that everyone who died ate at cipolla three weeks ago, it still wouldn’t play well for business if word got out. According to Alondra, Fabbrini has been using all of his influence to keep the name of the restaurant out of the papers.

  When at the top of the hour the newscaster begins by announcing twenty confirmed new cases of the mystery virus, Fabbrini claps his hands together and shakes them reverentially at the ceiling, while the line cooks exchange nervous smiles.

  “How is that a good thing?” Ed asks, glancing at the door as Alondra slips in to join them. “People getting sick from a dangerous virus?” It occurs to her that she hasn’t seen Tia in a while, or Lawrence, or the friendly hostess with the jade necklace. She has an involuntary vision of a pandemic-ravaged planet and a new global culture that will have her doing a Skype call in Esperanto with someone in China.

  “Don’t you see? Now nobody is worrying about cippola,” says Fabbrini. “And that son-of-a-whore health inspector can go get fucked in the ass.” Everyone cheers because it is a treat when the old man lets loose his tongue. Then, as the laughter quiets down, the announcer’s voice cuts through: “Officials are investigating whether any of the new cases can be traced to the first infection cluster at cipolla, a trendy bistro on the Lower East Side that officials have pinpointed as ground zero for the infection.”

  Fabbrini begins swearing again, but this time nobody is smiling. He flings a baking sheet to the floor and lunges for the cellphone he wears in a holster on his belt. The cooks begin to edge away and return to their cutting boards. Ed, too, sees this as a good opportunity to check on her tables.

  Alondra pulls her aside on the way out, flashing a wicked grin.

  “I called someone at the Post,” she whispers, dark eyes brighter than normal. “That little fucker is finished pinching asses for good.”

  * * *

  Two days later, after her final class, Ed heads to the Esperanto workshop a little late, carrying coffee and all the notes she can find. She hasn’t been going regularly, as the workload for her summer course started piling up towards the end. When she enters the classroom, she finds only three people sitting around the front, each separately muttering something from Jericho’s large-print Esperanto handouts.

  The girl with the meticulous binder looks up at her. Her eyes are wide and shrewd. “Is Jericho sick or something?” she asks.

  Only then does Ed realize that he is not there.

  * * *

  —

  Ed avoids passing by cipolla on her way to Jericho’s place, noticing the traffic backed up along that block, the cacophony of honking horns propelling her down a side street. With the pungent taste of smoke hanging in the air, she waits for him to answer the buzzer as a couple of guys outside the bodega discuss the rising price of fire insurance. When a man leaving the building holds the door open for her, she hesitates for only a moment before going inside. Upstairs, she finds Jericho in his unlocked apartment, curled up on the mattress. His eyes are open and glazed, his glasses folded on the floor beside him. His hair is greasy, clinging to the sides of his face.

  “There’s no word for it,” he says. “What I feel. For you. You’ll never understand.” His voice is raw. “And I know we’re breaking up when you leave.”

  Ed crosses the room to join him, trying to keep the surprise from showing on her face. She’d imagined something long-distance, coming to New York to visit him or hosting him in Lansdowne, but now her whole body is flooded with relief.

  “I told you,” breathes Jericho, as though she has said something.

  Ed blinks. Then she lies back on the mattress, face to the ceiling, and he rolls over until their arms are touching. Taking his hand in hers, she exhales in a long, slow rhythm, and when he squeezes her palm, she squeezes back, again and again, until the pressure starts to feel like a message, or maybe a question, and then a release.

  Dove Suite Announces ARAMIS Fundraising Concert

  September 9, 2020

  VANCOUVER—Platinum-selling rock band Dove Suite have announced they will be headlining a music festival in Canada in support of ARAMIS relief. Dubbed “To America With Love,” the day-long event will be held in Vancouver on Saturday, September 26.

  Frontman Stuart Jenkins, who founded the indie rock quartet with his wife, Emma Aslet, commented that “a crisis like this has a way of making people feel powerless. We decided to take that feeling and do something with it.” A donation link for ARAMIS relief organizations has also been set up on the band’s website.

  Dove Suite rose to prominence in 2010 with their first album, WhisperShout, which was certified triple-platinum. Their fourth album, Beads, was released in June to favourable reviews, but a planned worldwide tour was abruptly postponed earlier this spring for “personal reasons.”

  The charity show will feature mostly Canadian performers, with Dove Suite headlining the evening portion. Event organizers promise that the full lineup is sure to thrill concertgoers and that “there will be something for everyone.”

  Further details to be announced.

  STU

  SEPTEMBER 2004

  On the day he left for college, Stu Jenkins’s mother tucked two twenty-dollar bills into the pocket of his leather jacket before he headed out in a cab to the Greyhound station.

  “For notebooks and things,” she said. Her hair was unbrushed, and the breeze blew it out in wisps around her face. “Okay?”

  “Okay, Ma.” He kissed her on the cheek.

  He knew she was sorry that he had to take out a loan. But only a little sorry, and not sorry enough to say so in front of his father, who had already said goodbye inside—a clap on the shoulder in front of the television and a gruff exhortation to study hard and don’t forget who you really are. During dinner the night before, he’d asked Stu if he thought going to college was going to make him a better person. Stu had stared at his lap. His mother had said, “It’s going to help him get a better job.”

  Stu was the first person in his family to go to college. Though none of them had acknowledged the milestone out loud, their mutual avoidance had created its own unspoken pressure. His parents had saved, he had saved, and it still wasn’t enough. His education was already a kind of failure that he felt compelled to put right.

  “Be sure to look out for Jericho,” his mother said. Jericho and Stu, as their mothers never tired of reminding them, had met in a Mommy and Me play group in the park when they were toddlers.

  “I’m sure Jer is going to love college, Ma.”

  Stu did not look back before the cab turned the corner, in case his mother was still standing there in her robe, watching him go, and because he couldn’t decide whether knowing that for sure would make him happy or sad. The worst part was that he only sort of wanted to go to college. School was just a way of buying himself some time.

  On the bus to Lansdowne, Stu pulled out his lyrics notebook and wrote Don’t forget who you really are. He’d started out writing protest songs, but now he was gathering snippets of overheard conversations: telling phrases or tiresome, mangled platitudes or painful truths that rattled his heart with their very ordinariness. Over the summer, he’d spent time eavesdropping while he worked nights at the same steel factory as his dad, gathering bits of lives and other ideas he could use. So far, he had a song about a man whose wife couldn’t have a baby, anot
her about a man whose daughter had stopped speaking to him, and one about a man who only met his kids once they were grown.

  The money Stu earned went into the bank, and it meant that next year there might not have to be a loan at all. When he’d told his father that, expecting to elicit a little pride, his father had said, “Don’t boast, Stu. It isn’t Christian.”

  * * *

  On the first day of classes, Stu crossed the Lansdowne University campus feeling like an actor plopped down onto the wrong set. He recognized the quad from the brochure: the grey stone buildings nestled on the rolling green lawn, the perfect blue sky vaulting overhead an exaggerated symbol of unlimited horizons, though the colours in real life seemed muted. But standing there on the bustling, tree-lined path, he was surrounded by strident birdsong that rivalled even the lively conversation of the other students who streamed around him, carrying book bags and coffee cups. He followed the path to the river that wound its way around the edge of the campus. Its steep, muddy banks were clumped with reeds and wildflowers, and there, too, he was struck by the sheer noise of the water rushing past. Even the river was in a hurry to get somewhere.

  As he headed to his first class, Stu found himself trailing a young woman into the room. She was slight with dark hair, and her smile was warm as she propped open the door. Stu was ready to follow her into the rows of desks, but she dropped her leather satchel on the large table at the front of the room, then went to the blackboard and wrote Professor Rachel Levinson in neat, cursive letters that bled chalk dust. Stu blinked and took a seat near the door, as did the student walking in behind him—a skinny guy with red muttonchops and an Anti-Flag T-shirt. Stu was just thinking of Jericho, who was wiry like that but taller, when Jericho himself loped in and sat down at the desk beside him.