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Lois opened a can of beans. She poured it onto a clean plate and carried it to the little table in the back yard where she had placed her wood box lined with tin foil. It was her home made version of a solar oven. It worked perfectly, warming up all of her meals. She placed the bowl inside a clear plastic bag which held the heat and lowered it inside her little food heater. In a few hours it would be piping hot.
Lois made sure she was wearing her gloves, then walked out into the street. She heard birds in the trees. It was very peaceful here now. No one seemed to be moving anywhere in the city. No horns, no lawn mowers. All of the lawns and gardens had lost their prettiness. Things were simply browned off and drab now. No dogs barked. She figured all of them had either died or been eaten by starving people. The chipmunks didn’t seem to be around either. They may have died of thirst. No water was coming through the taps. Whatever water Lois had was from rain. They had started collecting it from their down spouts and those of their neighbors’ homes. There were three fifty gallon drums in the backyard. A half-inch of rain on a roof was enough water to fill all three and then some. So far, that had worked. They kept several ten gallon jars of water in the house. It was only for drinking. Once a week they tried a sponge bath. They only used a cup for each of them for the bath. Water was a scarce commodity these days.
Cars were mostly parked in driveways up and down the block. People had been careful to park their cars correctly every night in case they got sick. That had kept the roads open. Unfortunately, no one came out of their homes and started their cars anymore. Lois was still thankful that the streets were clear. They were no longer clean. They contained pieces of paper and plant matter here and there. There was a lot of fluff that was blown off the cottonwood trees by the wind and carried for miles. Right now, that wasn’t a problem, but in the future that fluff would begin to decay and leave a layer of rough soil atop all of the roadways. She figured the way it would play out would be that weeds would eventually grow in the mass of dead leaves, seeds, and dust that would clutter the roads and produce a shallow soil suitable for grasses to grow there. Vines would creep through the houses and crawl across the roads where they would bind to it, then crawl up the cars and entwine them until they, too, looked like tiny Aztec ruins.
Lois walked several blocks listening to the birds. She collected a few figs and dates that fell from the palm trees that lined the L.A. streets. She knew they were safe to eat. No one could have touched them before they fell. She also picked a few oranges, limes, and lemons growing from the citrus trees in back yards. These desert trees survived perfectly without irrigation. The wind was pleasant. Los Angeles still had its appeal. Should the population ever restore itself, life here would return to normal, and things would be good again.
She was careful not to touch anything other than fruit for fear of infection. The fruit was fresh. No one had ever touched them. She knew it was perfectly safe. Then she returned home, felt the hot bowl of beans and the unopened can of potted meat resting in the sunlight beside it. They were hot and ready to open. She went into the kitchen. The radio was on again, and the gruesome announcer was giving a report. Lois found the man almost hilarious. She was not sure why, but his talks had a certain gallows humor about about them. He was very French Revolution and quite bubonic plague in his persistently aggravating droll. After what she had just seen on her walk she knew she could hike through all of Los Angeles and never find him. If the man died, they’d both feel even more alone in L.A.
She opened the cans and gave them to Robert along with the single family spoon. They shared a few utensils. They ate from the cans and pots. They no longer used plates much, because there was not enough rain water to wash them.
“It’s beans and some potted ham,” she said.
He looked at them suspiciously.
“Don’t be that way,” she said. “I worked my hands to the bone cooking them.”
Robert chuckled. “Soon we will all be bones. You and me.”
“I suppose that’s our future,” she said. “We both understand what the end game is going to be. At least we are still alive. That’s more than most of them out there were dealt.”
Robert ate some of the beans. They were plain pinto beans, but to his increasing hunger and his skinny frame, they were delicious. He was careful to restrain himself. He left half for her. Next, he ate some of the deviled ham. The can was tiny, so there wasn’t a lot there. He ate half and gave both cans to Lois.
“There you are, my dear.”
Lois ate the rest of the meal in silence. She loved the way both of them shared the little food and water they had to sustain themselves. She figured it took a lot of restraint on his part to not club her to death and have all of the shit for himself. The only reason he hadn’t was that he loved her. He had considered it many times, but he was a good person. When it came to wasting totally away down to skin and bone, they’d do it with dignity. There was absolutely no reason to treat it as though a hidden alternative was hanging around like a vile specter inside their messy closets just waiting to save them. That wasn’t going to happen.
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