We All Looked Up

by Tommy Wallach

  “Is this a joke?” Andy asked.

  Eliza grabbed the mallet. “Only one way to find out.”

  The shimmer of the gong crescendoed and died out, like a coppery koi swimming up from deep water and then descending again. A few moments later the door opened.

  Standing on the threshold was a monk holding a beagle.

  Or maybe not quite a monk, Eliza thought, never having seen one in the flesh before. He wore saffron-yellow robes, his head was totally shaved, and he wore a couple of necklaces made out of huge wooden beads. What he resembled most of all was one of those guys who hang around in airports handing out flyers that say things like Experience Love! or Happiness Can Be Yours! The beagle stared out at the new guests with an inscrutable calmness, both canine and Buddhist at once.

  “You made it,” Chad said, making eye contact with each of them in turn. “Come in, please.”

  They followed him into the house, through an atrium with nothing in it but a small pyramidal fountain trickling water through a pile of rocks. The living room was equally spare—one low table on a thin tatami mat, and in each corner, a massive ceramic urn supporting a bouquet of curling bamboo shoots. Above them, a skylight displayed a black square of firmament, prickled with stars. A girl walked in carrying a gray cast-iron pot and four porcelain cups in a wobbly column. She was in her twenties, dressed entirely in off-white hemp, with natty blond dreadlocks and a pound of sterling silver perforating each ear.

  “Steeped and ready for takeoff,” she said.

  Chad accepted the pot and the cups. “Thank you, Sunny. Would you mind taking Sid?”

  “Of course not!” Sunny reached down and picked up the beagle, who immediately took one of her dreadlocks into his mouth. “You kids are in for a tree-eat,” she half sang on her way out of the room.

  They all sat down around the table as Chad poured the tea. He set a cup in front of each of them, giving a little bow as he did so. When Eliza returned the gesture, her hair fell down around her face. She felt a hand reach over and tuck it back behind her ear.

  “It was gonna get in your cup,” Andy explained.

  Warning lights went off in her head. She might even have said something—a brief reminder of their definitive platonic status—only at that moment, she got a whiff of the steam off the tea and nearly gagged.

  “What the hell is this?”

  Chad smiled. “A very weak brew of hallucinogenic mushrooms.”

  That was all the recommendation Andy needed. He tossed back his portion, fought to keep it down, then grimaced. “Yum.”

  “Is this safe?” Anita asked.

  “Completely,” Chad said. “At this level of dilution, it may have no effect at all. But hopefully, it’ll cause you to see things in a slightly different light. Of course, you’re free to abstain.”

  Eliza looked down into her cup. The liquid was reddish brown, the same color as English Breakfast. This was crazy. They’d just come into a total stranger’s house, and now they were going to get high with him? Hadn’t she watched about a million videos in elementary school whose only purpose had been to convince her not to do exactly this?

  Eliza saw Anita hesitate at the rim of her own cup, like a diver suddenly realizing exactly how high up the board was.

  “Hey, Anita,” Andy said. “Whatever it is, it’s not worth it.”

  Anita smiled. “Screw it,” she said, then drank. “Woo! That is foul.”

  Eliza had no choice now; she wasn’t about to be shown up by Anita Graves, of all people. The concoction tasted like rotten vegetables steeped in mud.

  Chad drank last. “It’ll be a while before it kicks in,” he said, “but I’ll get right to the point. You’re looking for a location for this party of yours. You have no money and hardly any ideas. Right so far?”

  No one disagreed.

  “Now, allow me to tell you a bit about myself. Once upon a time, many lives ago, I worked for a little company called Boeing. I made a lot of money there, before I realized I didn’t believe in what we were doing.”

  “Building airplanes?” Andy said.

  “Defense,” Chad answered, putting air quotes around the word. “Which is actually a polite way of saying ‘offense.’ So I quit my job and started wandering. I built a boat and sailed it between Australia and New Zealand. I lived in a yurt in Costa Rica. I studied at a monastery in Tibet. And at the end of it all, I found myself in a strange position—loads of money, and no real need of it. I considered giving it all away and disappearing to some tiny cabin in the woods, but I decided I could do better than that. I wanted to set an example of responsible, community-based living. And that’s what I’ve done.” He uncrossed his legs and stood up. “Let’s take a little tour.”

  They followed him through the spacious halls of his gigantic house. Most of the many rooms were occupied, and the occupants, each of whom Chad introduced by name, ranged from college-age to nursing-­home-age. All of them were undaunted, if not downright excited, by the prospect of hugging a few strangers.

  “How many people live here?” Eliza asked.

  “About twenty, usually.”

  “And this is what you spent your money on?”

  “Actually, living like this is relatively cheap. We grow a lot of our food in a garden plot a couple miles away, and I own the house outright.”

  They finished their tour and returned to the tearoom. Chad looked up at the skylight. “It’s almost time,” he said. A sliding door opened onto a wooden balcony overlooking the water. They sat down in cushioned deck chairs, facing out toward the lake.

  “I’m up at this hour every morning now,” Chad said. “I find the juxtaposition of sunrise and the asteroid so beautiful. Alpha and omega. Beginning and end.”

  Eliza looked up. Logically, she knew that the sky was the same as ever, but her perception was shifting. The tiny gradient of blue just visible at the bottom of the mountain range suddenly contained within it the full spectrum of color—pinks and greens and yellows and silvers and the infinite legion of nameless shades in between, all blending together like the watery rainbow of an opal. And now, ever so slowly, the sun began to lift itself over the chalk outline of the Cascades. It was like some sort of exercise, a single quick pull-up, that the heavy sphere did every day purely as a favor to the inhabitants of Earth. That was its purpose, to rise and shine, just as every person it shone down on had a purpose. Eliza felt as if her heart were a prism, refracting that magic light into Andy and Anita and Chad’s hearts, into the hearts of everyone who was watching this harlequin sky, and then onward, to every human being and every animal and every object that had ever existed. Even Ardor—a white freckle on the blushing face of the heavens—was deserving of her love, because the asteroid was doing nothing worse than what it was meant to do. Time passed. When the sun was safely pinned to the lapel of the horizon, Chad spoke again.

  “The best thing we can give people is a moment of true connection before the end. And I’d like to help you do that. I have friends who specialize in bringing people together in temporary communities. They’d like to create a celebration for the coming of the asteroid. I’ve also spoken with my old boss, and he’s volunteered Boeing Field as a venue. It covers ninety-two acres, roughly one-sixth the area provided at Woodstock.”

  “Andy and I want to perform,” Anita said. Her voice was somehow dreamy and resolute at once.

  “I’d have to hear you first,” Chad said. “I’ve got a piano inside.”

  “I’m not sure I could find the notes,” Andy said, and giggled.

  “You’d be surprised what you can do on shrooms.”

  Chad led them back through the house, into a large, low-ceilinged room with a grand piano standing like some proud, sable-skinned animal in the corner. Andy sat down on the bench and launched right into a song.

  “I’m not warmed up,” Anita said.

  �
��You’re always warmed up, Lady Day.”

  The notes of the piano rang out louder and fuller and more present than any music Eliza had ever heard. Anita sang, and her voice was everything Andy had said it would be, full of bite and ache and despair. For a while, Eliza floated along with just the sound, until a few of the lyrics clarified in her conscious mind—something about the number of lovers someone would get in a lifetime, followed by a countdown: Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one—and you’re on your own. Eliza realized that Andy had written this song for her, for the way she’d started seeing the world in terms of countdowns. He loved her and she didn’t love him back. And before the world ended, he’d learn that.

  Eliza was crying, at the song and the drug and the sunrise and the inevitable future she’d predicted.

  “He’ll hate me,” she whispered to no one.

  Chad put a warm hand on her shoulder. “Hate is only a temporary failure to perceive our absolute interdependence. It’s not real.”

  Before she could ask him what he meant, the song had ended. Chad was applauding. “Absolutely wonderful! You’re hired. Now your only job is to convince people to come to the party.”

  “Eliza can manage that,” Andy said, fixing her with a huge smile. “She’s famous now.”

  “So it’s real then?” Eliza asked. “We’re really doing this?”

  “I’d like to think so. Of course, no one can say for sure what’s going to happen in the next few weeks. We might lose touch.”

  “So then how will we know the party’s still on?”

  Chad shrugged. “You won’t. You can’t. Just like I can’t ever know for certain if Sid will come when I call him.” He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Sid!” After a moment, the beagle sauntered into the room. His attitude wasn’t that of a dog responding to a call so much as one who’d coincidentally decided to come of his own volition at just the right moment. He pooled himself on top of Chad’s bare feet.

  “That,” Chad said, “is what faith is for.”

  Andy

  IT WAS A 1965 GIBSON ES-175D in a sunburst finish. hollow-body, with a trapeze tailpiece, Tune-O-Matic bridge, and vintage humbuckers. Usually only jazz guys went in for that kind of sound, but Andy had played the guitar a few times in the store and convinced himself that it had just the right tone for the songs he was writing with Anita—fat and rich and crunchy (when played through an original-issue Fender Twin Reverb and an OCD overdrive pedal, natch). The only problem was that it cost seven grand.

  Though all of Seattle’s print newspapers had stopped their presses, the website for the alternative weekly The Stranger was still running. It was there that Kevin learned about the closing of Bellevue Mall. The manager cited “asteroid sickness”—a combination of not enough customers and not enough employees. What he should have said was, “Come and get it, gentlemen.”

  Bobo, Kevin, Misery, and Jess had all come along for the ride, so the station wagon was fully loaded. Andy had told Anita he’d be spending the afternoon skating with Bobo, to avoid the inevitable hour-long ethics lecture. It wasn’t as if he felt great about looting, but it would be a tragedy for an instrument of such quality to go unplayed for a whole month. Besides, he could always bring the guitar back in the event of non-apocalypse.

  They drove up to the top level of the mall’s huge spiraling parking garage. Andy had expected the place to be empty, but there were a few other cars already parked in the lot.

  “What do you think they’re doing here?” Kevin asked.

  “Same as us, probably,” Andy said.

  “Or they could be security. We sure this is a good idea? The cops are arresting everything that moves these days.”

  Bobo slapped Kevin on the back of the head. “Nut up, man. And Andy, pop the trunk for me.”

  Bobo withdrew the sledgehammer he’d brought along like Excali­bur from the stone, then gave it a few whooshing practice swings. Misery and Kevin sat in the backseat, strapping on roller skates. The rest of them had brought their skateboards, so everyone could be mobile in the case of an emergency.

  It wasn’t going to be a very subtle break-in. Their many squeaking wheels, echoing through the parking garage, would have served any nearby security guards about as well as a homing beacon. Just behind Macy’s, they found a pair of double doors at the bottom of a long ramp marked EMPLOYEE ENTRANCE. A chain was wrapped around the handles, with a busted padlock still dangling off one of the links.

  “Goddamn it,” Bobo said. “I wanted to break something.”

  Misery massaged his shoulder. “There’ll still be things to break, baby.”

  “Whoever’s in there could be, like, real criminals,” Kevin said.

  Bobo slammed the head of the sledgehammer into the door, denting the metal. “We’re the real criminals, yo! Whoever’s in there should be afraid of us!”

  The lights on the other side of the door switched on as they entered, cued to proximity sensors. A sad employee lounge and a busted soft-drink machine later, they found themselves in the home furnishings department of Macy’s. Andy threw down his board and took off, weaving between old-lady couches and patio furniture and tables set for some Mormon-scale family dinner. A clangor erupted behind him, as Bobo knocked one shelf of kitchenware into another.

  “Stink bomb!” Jess shouted. He was riding at top speed toward the perfume department. Shifting his weight backward, he kicked the deck up and javelined it into a display case of heart-shaped bottles, smashing them to pieces. The room filled with the same smell you got off that one table in the lunchroom, where all the girls had curly burned hair and press-on nails and velour pants with writing on the ass. Andy dodged the broken glass and pulled up at the spot where the white tile of Macy’s gave onto the red tile of the mall. From somewhere far away came a wavecrash of shattering glass. They definitely weren’t alone.

  “I’m gonna go upstairs and upgrade my wardrobe,” Misery said. “Can you boys live without me?”

  “I’ll hang back with you, Miz,” Kevin said.

  Bobo pulled up next to Andy. “Good call. Jess, you stick around too.”

  “Me? Why?” Jess got majorly offended whenever anyone hinted that he might still be a girl in anything but rank biology.

  “Because if shit gets real, I don’t want Miz to be alone with a pussy like Kevin.”

  “Hey!” Kevin said, but Jess seemed content with the explanation.

  “Aw, you’re worried about me?” Misery skated over and kissed Bobo on the cheek. “Go find me something nice and sparkly.” A smooth glide toward the escalator was followed by an awkward roller-­skate ascent. Jess and Kevin followed her up and out of sight.

  “Race you to the other end of the mall,” Bobo said.

  Their decks hit the ground at the exact same moment. Then they were rushing over the ribbed tile, past the airy whiteness of the Apple store and the iridescent blue of Tiffany’s and the brownish check of Burberry. The floor sloped downward toward the food court, lending them extra speed. Orange Julius was just an orange blur. There was some movement inside a Champs Sports—a few kids picking out sneakers and baseball caps. They glanced out as Bobo and Andy blazed past. The floor began to angle upward again. Momentum gave out, and Andy had to kick hard to keep moving. By the time they reached the Nordstrom at the other end of the mall, neither of them even noticed who’d won the race. Andy collapsed onto a metal bench across from an LCD screen displaying the mall directory. Two seconds later Bobo transformed it into a spiderweb of cracks and a couple of spastic pixels. He left the sledgehammer wedged there, wobbling like an arrow just sunk into a bull’s-eye.

  “You got a cig?” Andy asked.

  “I got something better than that.” Bobo pulled a joint from behind his ear.

  “Hot damn. Is that why you got rid of everybody?”

  “I hate sharing. Anyway, you better enjoy this—sup
ply’s mad low. I’ve doubled prices out on the street, and people are still paying. That’s the end of the world for you.”

  “Golden’s hooking you up?”

  “He fucking loves me. I could talk to him if you want, get you a little product to sell.”

  “Thanks, but Anita and I are practicing twenty-four/seven these days. I’m booked solid.”

  “Whatever. But you better be at the rally tomorrow.”

  “No doubt.”

  “I’m serious. I mean, it’s cool that you’ve finally got some girls in your life, but if you’re not even gonna get laid—”

  “I will.”

  “So you say.”

  “I have to, yo. It’s my quest. If I can’t get Eliza, I might as well not even be alive.”

  “I’ll smoke to that,” Bobo said.

  The sound of shoes slapping on tile, then two guys sprinted past the bench. They were black, maybe in their mid-twenties, and carried so much jewelry that their whole bodies seemed to glitter. A chunky security guard in a gray uniform chased after them, losing ground with every step.

  “Look at Humpty Dumpty go!” Bobo said.

  The guard turned around, still jogging backward as he did so. “You kids get out of here!”

  “We totes will,” Andy said.

  “Looting is a criminal offense. You’ll end up in jail.”

  “Go get the bad guys, Humpty!” Bobo shouted.

  The security guard disappeared around the corner of a Gap Kids. Andy actually felt a little bad for him.

  They finished the joint, then headed up the paralyzed escalator to Kennelly Keys. A metal curtain, padlocked to a loop in the floor, was the only security the shop had. They traded off sledgehammer blows, like convicts on a chain gang, while spitting game at the lock.

  “You like how I do it?” Bobo asked.

  “You like it like yo mama like it?”