Songs for the End of the World

by Saleema Nawaz

  “Hello?” A warm baritone.

  “Mr. Grant?”

  “Yes?” The word seemed inflected with an air of indulgent patience, as though she had already begun to waste his time.

  “Hi. My name is Sarah Bailey.”

  “Hello, Sarah. I’m Owen.”

  “I…I know.” Was Owen Grant giving her a lesson on proper phone etiquette? As she hunched into the back of the couch, her thigh pressed against something hard and oblong wedged into the cushion. The television blared to life.

  “Fuck me,” she said. It was the goddamn news, with the volume on max. Every night, the same thing: the investigators in hazmat suits; the masked nurses of the mobile ARAMIS clinics; the eyes of the newscaster growing wider and wider as she announced another 10,000 people had been diagnosed in New York City alone, bringing the global tally of confirmed cases to nearly 300,000. Sarah thought it was reckless to show that much panic on television. She fumbled for the remote, tucking the phone up to her chest as she did so to dampen the sound. Once the TV was off, she returned the phone to her ear.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “What was that?”

  “Oh, the news. You know, horror and mayhem. I don’t like to watch it anymore.”

  “But you should.” His voice had the weight of authority. Owen Grant was giving her some free advice. It was what all of his readers wanted. She ought to be taking notes.

  “Why’s that?”

  “To stay informed. Stay alive.”

  “Right.” In spite of herself, Sarah felt a lonely feeling unsettle her stomach and quicken her pulse. She recognized it as fear.

  “Sarah Bailey,” said Owen. “I’m looking at a picture of you now. I see you work for my publisher.” If he remembered her from Lansdowne, he gave no sign of it.

  “You’re googling me?” She tried not to feel flattered, and failed. “Yes, I’m from Shillelagh. We have lots of things lined up for you. Interviews, appearances. Bigger than anything you’ve done yet, and it’s going to be huge for the book.”

  She heard him sigh.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “I’m not going to be doing anything.”

  “But why not? Mr. Grant, I’m sure we can come up with a publicity plan that will be to your satisfaction. It doesn’t have to be everything they want.” They. She wasn’t strategically trying to distance herself from the publishing house—it just came out that way. Probably subconsciously linked to her imminent firing when she couldn’t deliver. “Please, we’ll do everything your way.”

  “Because, Sarah. Sarah, because.” Though she could see her job security slipping away, she couldn’t help smiling at how tenderly he repeated her name. As an undergrad, she probably would have been swooning by now. “Because it’s a matter of life and death.”

  * * *

  Sarah thought about their exchange in her cubicle the next day, as she picked up her phone and debated calling Dory to confess she’d failed. Owen Grant had condescended to her and refused to meet her in person. He had urged her to quit her job and stop going outside. And between warning her against taking the subway and flying on commercial airlines, he had also refused to do any media appearances whatsoever.

  She hung up the receiver once she realized she would only be putting herself out of work. And she had almost nothing saved in the event of a layoff. Rent, food, daycare, health insurance—very few of her expenses were luxuries. Somehow, she had to convince Owen Grant to listen to her.

  She studied the juddering jacket art of his latest novel. It had a striking typographic design with bold red and yellow chevrons radiating outwards from the title. If you squinted, the colours almost seemed to be moving, flashing in high alert. Sarah had seen the cover of the new paperback edition, which was black, subdued. A novel in disguise as a survival guide.

  She picked up the book but was reluctant to open it. Office osmosis had revealed so much of the plot she could write the back cover copy herself. When a mysterious virus strikes an elite Manhattan private school, lovelorn science teacher David Gellar works to stay one step ahead of a pandemic that infects most of the city’s children. She reminded herself that it was just the book’s title and the eerie similarities between the novel’s pandemic and the current ARAMIS crisis that had made it seem relevant to a terrified public. That and the fact that there were children getting sick. But that was normal, too—children were always more susceptible to viruses. Just because nearly all the children in the book died did not mean that would happen with ARAMIS.

  She put the book down and called her brother to ask for his advice.

  “Aren’t you at work?” Elliot said, right after “hello.”

  “Yes, you know I am.” Her brother still treated Call Display as a novelty, and he flagrantly abused the feature when it came to fielding calls from their parents.

  “So this is when you’re catching up on your messages?” His voice sounded faint and windblown alongside the roar and rush of passing cars.

  Sarah ignored him, as she knew his teasing was more of a reflex than a barb. “Where are you? Can you talk?”

  “We’re on food delivery duty today, if you can believe it. In between active calls.” The street sounds quieted and Sarah could hear Elliot’s partner Bryce talking to someone over an intercom. “A hell of a lot more people in quarantine now.”

  Sarah felt the usual queasiness in picturing her brother on duty, in harm’s way. “I guess it’s a nice change of pace from patrol?”

  “Nothing nice about it.” In the background, a sardonic laugh of agreement from Bryce. “There’s a lot of panic out there. People can’t afford to get sick anymore. Some seem more worried about losing paycheques to a Q-notice than they are about catching the virus. Anyway…” Elliot seemed to want to change the subject. “I’d like to see Noah tonight.”

  “We’d love that,” said Sarah. “Now, tell me what you think about something.”

  “Can’t we talk when I come over?” Elliot’s breathing became laboured, as though he was climbing stairs.

  “No.” Once Elliot was anywhere near Noah, Sarah might as well be invisible. Her father Frank said they got along like peas and carrots, but it went well beyond side dishes as far as Sarah was concerned: they were each the other’s favourite person in the world. It didn’t hurt her to acknowledge their bond, because they were both her favourite people, too, and she loved how much they loved one another. But she wanted Elliot’s attention while she had a hope of holding it.

  “I need advice on how to handle someone.” She quickly told him about Owen Grant, and Elliot listened without interrupting. He and Noah were the only members of their family with that particular gift. “If I can’t get him on board, I think I’m out of a job.”

  “Tell him that,” said Elliot. “Show him his actions affect other people.”

  “No thanks. I already feel pathetic enough.”

  “Suit yourself. But it’s a lot easier to get what you want if you just ask for it.”

  Sarah heard someone clearing their throat, and when she looked over her shoulder, Dory was standing there and frowning at her in a pair of red-rimmed glasses. Owen’s book fell out of her lap and clattered to the floor.

  “Gotta go,” she said quickly to Elliot, then she hung up and spun around. “Dory! I wasn’t expecting you.” Her boss was rarely spotted in cubicle territory.

  Dory unfolded her arms, seeming amused. “Did you get Owen on the phone?”

  “Yes.” Sarah nodded, more emphatically than necessary. “We had a great chat last night.”

  “Really? That’s wonderful.” Dory sounded surprised but willing to take Sarah’s success in stride. “You know, Colleen is convinced he’s pulling a Salinger or something. Becoming a total recluse,” she said, already walking away.

  “Not at all,” said Sarah, raising her voice as Dory retreate
d. “He’s actually working with me on a plan I think you’re really going to like.”

  When Dory was out of earshot, Sarah dialled Owen from her cellphone, sure he would recognize the number and pick up. But this time the phone just rang and rang.

  * * *

  —

  After Elliot left that night, Sarah tried Owen again, but her calls continued to ring into the void. She put Noah to bed with a sinking feeling that if she couldn’t make Owen talk to her, she was doomed to forfeit the little sliver of life she had built for herself and her son. She pictured herself handing out resumés, screwing up job interviews, her bank balance racing ever faster towards zero. Then: packing up their tiny apartment, moving back to Lansdowne, living with her parents. Becoming known as the single mom who ordered takeout three nights a week. What she valued about the city was its protection of her solitude. The only people privy to her decisions were the ones she’d chosen as friends. Back in her hometown, she would always be her parents’ disappointing daughter. The feeble-minded Bolivian-brainwashing victim.

  She held open Noah’s book, turning the pages automatically, only half listening as he lisped out the words. The women at the daycare always wanted to talk to Sarah about Noah’s development, as if they couldn’t quite believe that she might already understand his special gifts. Or as if they couldn’t believe she was his mother, period.

  “Mommy, the story’s over.” Like his reading, Noah’s conversation was precocious, but his occasionally lisping pronunciation made it hard for others to understand him. He tapped on her wrist until she picked up the next book, which she opened with a long, slow exhalation that failed to release the tension in her chest. Even a tender moment such as this one was being overshadowed by her anxiety over Owen, her job, and the virus.

  By the time Noah was asleep, Sarah was ready for bed herself, exhausted by her panicked imaginings.

  As she drifted off, she had a single buoyant thought about Owen: their mutual interest in one another when their paths had crossed years earlier. Maybe if she could meet him in person, she would have more leverage. Just last week she had read something online about pheromones, how they functioned on a microscopic level to affect people’s brains and bodies, leading to attraction or repulsion according to nature’s unerring plan for genetic diversity. Given the chance to play a role, Sarah thought, maybe nature would lend a hand.

  * * *

  On Monday morning, recharged by caffeine into a less fatalistic estimation of her prospects, she called the office for the mailing address they had on file for Owen Grant, then grabbed her purse and caught the train out to Bushwick.

  Owen’s address brought her to a slim, modern building in grey and white, a steel-and-glass anomaly rising above the mostly two- and three-storey brownstones and turn-of-the-century houses Sarah passed on her walk from the subway. She stepped into an entryway with floor-to-ceiling windows and dialled the apartment number she had written down in her notebook.

  “Yes?”

  “Mr. Grant, it’s Sarah Bailey from Shillelagh Press. Can you buzz me up? I’d like to talk to you in person about the publicity plan. I’ve worked out a proposal for the next few weeks.”

  “Sarah,” he said. “I’m sorry, but as I mentioned the other night, I’m too busy to do any promotion right now.”

  “It won’t be time-consuming. Or onerous in any way. We can be strategic.”

  “Strategic,” he repeated. “Yes. That’s right. I’m being strategic about what’s really important.”

  “Owen.” She had counted on seeing him face-to-face, within pheromone-firing distance, and now she’d forgotten everything she planned to say. All she wanted was to delay any finality of a refusal. She noticed a camera mounted in an upper corner of the lobby. “Can you see me? Do you have a screen?”

  “I can see you.”

  She glanced up at the camera and waved. Then she addressed it directly. “Look, can I get you anything? While I’m here?”

  There was a moment of silence. “I wouldn’t mind a coffee.” He seemed to hesitate. “A cappuccino. There’s a place around the corner.”

  Jolted by the promise of success, she raced down the street and spotted the café, slipping ahead of two people hovering in the doorway. While she waited in line, she smoothed her hair and double-checked that her voice recorder app was working. She was back in Owen’s entryway within ten minutes.

  “One cappuccino coming up!” she said when he answered. She had a hand on the inner door, ready to pull it open when he buzzed her inside.

  “Great.” Owen sounded distant. “You can leave it there on the table.”

  Sarah’s hand dropped from the door. Her pulse thundering in her ears, she stepped over to a narrow table and set down the cup next to a vase holding a bouquet of convincing fake orchids. She turned with slow deliberation to make one more plea to the camera. “Please, Owen. Mr. Grant. I just want to help. Please, please call me if you change your mind.”

  “Thank you for coming, Sarah,” he said. “I appreciate it. But don’t come back.”

  The casual authority of his tone spurred her natural defiance as she stalked out of the building. No, she wouldn’t come back, but neither would she leave. Retreating to a bench a few paces down the sidewalk, Sarah pulled out from her bag a magazine emblazoned with the now-ubiquitous ARAMIS Girl photo, and in an all-too-earnest impersonation of a bad private eye, kept watch on the lobby from behind it. If nothing else, it would be a story to make Elliot laugh—probably while he loaded her things into a rental van and tried in his laconic way to convince her that moving back in with their parents was not a defeat or even a disappointment, but merely sensible planning on the part of any single mom who wanted the best for her son.

  Fifteen minutes later, a man emerged from the elevator, garbed in a floor-length hooded rain slicker, gloves, and a face mask—though not, Sarah noted, one of the promotional sets from Shillelagh. In spite of all the gear, she recognized him at once. Head lowered, Owen pushed open the inner door, claimed the coffee in one thickly gloved hand, and was back through the elevator doors just in time to be swallowed up by them.

  Sarah was stunned. Owen no longer seemed like a celebrity jealous of his privacy or an artist too consumed by his craft for the trifling racket of peddling books. He seemed like a man who was mentally ill.

  She remained on the bench for the duration of the day, puzzling about Owen and flipping through his novel. There was an outside possibility he knew she was still waiting for him, that the slicker costume had been nothing but an act to make her go away. He could be watching her even now, if his windows faced front. But somehow she didn’t think it was an act. Sarah imagined him inside, bleaching his shoes, pouring his coffee into a clean cup, looking up infection data. Possibly writing, if he wasn’t too bonkers. Jerking off. And if he really was as afraid as he seemed, she felt for him. She knew what it meant to be paralyzed by doubt and indecision, and the terror that could lead a person to seek refuge indoors. She briefly considered calling Elliot before deciding to trust herself and stay the course, vague as it was.

  It wasn’t until she noticed the bustle of impending rush hour and her stomach began to spasm from hunger that she rose from the bench with a strange feeling of accomplishment, simply from not having given up.

  She buzzed Owen’s apartment again. This time it took longer for him to pick up.

  “You’re back.” He sounded tired, and possibly, as Sarah dared to hope, resigned.

  “I never left.” It was starting to feel natural, talking to him through the intercom. “You’re frightened,” she said. “That’s why you won’t see me. You’re scared to leave your house.”

  “What?” said Owen. “No. Look, I did a lot of research for the book. You might say it made me paranoid enough to assume things will get worse before they get better.”

  “So you’re not afraid—you’re careful.”


  “Exactly.” There was a pause. “It doesn’t help that everything that happened in my novel seems to be coming true. You know, the virus from China, the aerosol transmission, the kids getting sick…”

  “Do you really think things are going to become as desperate as in the book?”

  “Sometimes,” he said. “Sometimes not.”

  Sarah waited to see if he would go on, but when he didn’t, she continued. “Okay, well, I’ve been thinking about what you said, about what’s important.”

  “One always should.”

  “So hear me out. Your book is full of good advice,” she said. “And so are you. Since talking to you and reading your novel, I’ve caught the earliest and latest trains, to avoid crowds. I’ve taken my temperature twice a day, and most of all, I feel…I don’t know…less paralyzed. You’ve helped me feel capable of protecting myself. And I think you could help other people, too.” She was fudging some of the details, but not the spirit of the thing. He had changed her way of thinking, just by forcing her to consider whether he was a genius or a crackpot.

  There was another long pause. Two people exited the building separately, giving her curious glances as she stood in the entryway, waiting to find out if she was still talking to Owen. Finally, the intercom crackled to life again.

  “If you call me tonight, I’ll answer the phone,” he said. “I promise.”

  * * *

  —

  Once Sarah had him on the line that evening, she wasted no time in getting down to a list of prepared questions. “These are all things I really want to know,” she said. “Both as a reader and as a person who wants to survive.”