Disasters in the First World

by Olivia Clare

I dislike sleep, he told the girl, matches keep me awake. He blew out the flame. On the toe of his boot, he lit a second match; he brought the flame to his face, then teased the stubble on his chin with the flame. The drivers were outside—“stretching my legs,” one of them said. She could hear them unwrapping food and popping cans and talking on phones. The drivers were paid, said the man with the crutch and the flame near his face, a considerable price. Those men are costly.

  The truck’s hold, a small, dim cube, had a wall of boxed microwaves between the passengers and the loading port. The girl imagined being pulled by horses over pitted roads. One white with spots. It liked to eat apples at stops. Closing her eyes, passing through the screen of her inner lids, she entered Somewhere Else, where a horse eats roses from a dusty bush. Inside a rose, a line of ants circles around the same path. The rose is thirsty.

  She woke to the lantern swinging on its hook. The man with the crutch on his knees was whistling, only breath, no resonance. She decided it was very late; the other two men on the plank were asleep. She decided they were cousins, or brothers. She decided there was such a thing as brother-cousins. They had on jeans and long-sleeved shirts, one man’s shirt was ripped at the armpit. The matchman was the oldest. Eyelids thin as folding paper. On the knee of his jeans, he struck two flames at once and whistled.

  I’m damn tired, he said. I’ve got meanness in my dreams.

  He blew out the match and lit another and whistled again, through the gap where a tooth was not. Mine woke, and so did their mother; she pushed her skirt down.

  You hear that? said the man. Hear it now? He had the match to his ear.

  The girl asked her mother how matches made flames.

  They’re cursed things, her mother said and looked at the man.

  Mine had taken off his sneakers and was crawling on the truck floor, the bottoms of his white socks dark from dirt, and every now and then he scratched his heel. Smaller than he should be, everyone told her mother that. In the corner, next to the rip-shirted man’s work boot, Mine found a length of wire, faded metal, kinked in one place, and he threw it up and caught it, each time with a surprised laugh.

  Give it, said their mother. This minute. She fanned herself with an advertisement she’d folded into an accordion. The lantern shone on the sweat in the V-shaped creases at the corners of her eyes.

  Mine threw the wire down the length of the truck. It shimmered as it flew. The man with the crutch reached down with difficulty and took up the wire, and Mine reached the man, and the man dangled the wire over Mine’s face.

  Mine, said the man.

  Mine grabbed for it. The man tick-tocked the wire, click-tocking his tongue.

  Mine.

  Mine was on his knees, holding up his hands, waiting should the wire drop.

  Mine’s a kitten, said the girl.

  The matchman was awake but seemed to be dreaming. He bent over, paused in the air, saying a few things she could hear, a few she couldn’t, the sound of the words, not the sense. He sat up and leaned out to touch a thing not there. Then he woke and yielded and brought his hand back.

  Got something, the man said.

  He took a clear ball from his pocket and bounced it and caught it. His crutch rocked on his knees.

  Do you know what this is?

  He bounced the ball, softly enough not to wake anyone, not her mother, not even Mine in her mother’s lap.

  You know what this is? Fortune-teller ball. Tell me what you want.

  I don’t know, the girl said.

  This ball knows. It will tell you. In Los Angeles you will have a lipstick. In Los Angeles you will have a kitten.

  He bounced the ball and let it roll to the end of the truck by the microwave boxes and took a match from his pocket. He lit it on his teeth. A vertical wrinkle split his face from forehead to lips, which leaked a little orb of spit. He dashed his finger over the flame.

  He said, Look, I’m a clown.

  He blew out the match. He repeated his trick—this match took five strikes on his teeth.

  Try, he said. He held it to her. No?

  I don’t know.

  Come here. I’ll teach you.

  He pointed to the little space between himself and the rip-shirted man, still asleep.

  Come, he said.

  She squeezed herself into that space. The matchman’s gut fell over his belt; his breath was bitter oranges. His eyes had no lashes. She was staring.

  Fortune abandoned me, he told her.

  He took out another match and let her look at it. Very quickly, he flicked it on the denim on her knee. It didn’t light.

  Stop, she said.

  So? You want to try?

  She did. I don’t know, she said. She didn’t.

  He flicked another on her skirt.

  Tell this match the things you want, he said.

  He took a match and put it next to her mouth.

  Stop, she said.

  He flicked it on her teeth, no flame.

  Don’t!

  He flicked it on his own, it lit. He held it to her face.

  See? he said. Very easy.

  She decided it was dawn. Only Mine was awake. The matchman’s hat brim sloped down over his eyes. The man whose shirt was whole snored and then snorted in his sleep like her horse eating roses. Roses from the dusty bush. Eating ants in the roses from the dusty bush. In the narrow space between the men’s boots and the little drawstring bag her mother held between her feet, the children sat, drawing invisible pictures with their fingers on the corrugated floor. Mine’s finger, drawing a broad arc, found a match. He held it in the beam of lamplight.

  Give it to me, the girl said. She took it from Mine and held it to her mouth. Look, I’m a clown. Look, she said again, with a deep voice. I’m a clown. What’s your fortune?

  She meant to scare him. Mine cried his name and swiped the match. He held it to his own mouth like a moustache.

  Careful now, she said. It’ll break.

  He opened his mouth, a few tiny teeth, and put the black tip in.

  Don’t, she said. Don’t do it. You’ll die.

  She took the match away, and he cried his name. She thought their mother would wake.

  See? she said. Look. Look at me now.

  She flicked the black tip against her top teeth, splitting the match as it flicked, one half flying away.

  Dead! Mine said.

  As he crawled toward the match, the truck jerked him onto his back, and he stuttered the beginning of a curse word he’d heard their mother say. The truck slowed, stopped, and the drivers’ radio was turned off. Their mother and all of the men were awake. The matchman steadied his crutch.

  Shut Mine up, said the rip-shirted man. He dropped from the plank to his knees and pressed his hand across Mine’s mouth.

  Give him here, the mother whispered.

  She held him, pressing her hand across his mouth. He twisted and tried to scream. The other brother-cousin turned off the lantern.

  For many minutes stopped in the dark the girl stayed on the floor. Nothing would happen, her mother had told her yesterday. Just be quiet if we stop. The girl rubbed her feet together and felt the rubber soles of her shoes. She imagined they were in an upside-down barnacled ship, sunk to the ocean’s bottom. She can breathe underwater. In her head, she makes words and drawings—her own name, in cursive, the way she learned it, the loops in the letters becoming malformed animals—she gives six arms to a hippo M . . . she puts a tortoise head on a dolphin P. The animals swim above her. Her horse with its head in the water and its mouth full of rose lipstick.

  The truck finally moved. The matchman turned on the lantern, and their mother let Mine go. He gave a resentful push against her chest and squirmed to the floor. There was a plastic water jug; the two cousin-brothers passed it back and forth while Mine looked for
wires and matches. The matchman asked for a drink.

  She’d been asleep for hours and woke in the lamplight to the rip-shirted brother grinning and sputtering in his sleep. Maybe he was in a dream. Maybe he was in a TV show dream. A game show. Maybe he was answering questions, winning prizes.

  She’d been on the floor a long time, drawing with her finger a zoo of impossible animals in aquariums and cages, shark teeth in the mouths of giraffes. The truck stopped.

  Jesus.

  What the hell, the drivers yelled, and other muffled things.

  The drivers left the truck, slamming doors, leaving the engine and radio on. Her mother had woken and covered Mine’s mouth, this time with the child gone limp without complaint. The cousin-brothers had their ears against the metal wall. One put up his arm and shrugged, as if to say he heard nothing.

  The girl waited.

  The matchman looked as if he might sneeze. It’s very bad when adults are scared.

  There was a great bang at one end—the truck was being opened, without the signal they’d agreed on with the drivers. Someone turned off the lamp.

  Come on out.

  You all be quiet, whispered the matchman. Stay and say nothing.

  Come on out, said one of the drivers. It’s all right, we arrived miles ago. He’d lifted up the door of the truck and was taking apart the wall of microwave boxes.

  You’re taking this all down? said the second driver. You’ll just have to put it back together.

  We don’t need to put it back, now that we’re here.

  Daylight through a hole in the wall—the girl shut her eyes. A grainy breeze against her face.

  Come out, now, said the driver. You have to see this.

  The second driver helped the first with the boxes. More and more daylight, at the very top and then through scattered gaps in the wall. Then a door-shaped hole in the wall. Most of the boxes were open and scattered on the ground now; so many had been empty.

  You have to see, said the first driver, holding out his hand to the rip-shirted brother, who looked away. No?

  The driver looked at the girl. You want to come see?

  She couldn’t see his face in the hard sunlight. She took his hand and stepped out, her mother, holding Mine, behind her. They’d parked the truck on the side of the road. There were no other cars. Flies zigzagged in her face. A flock of birds scavenged a gutted suitcase.

  You all need to see this, the driver said to the men in the truck. You only see this maybe one time in your life. There’s nobody out here, okay? I promise. Nobody.

  The men came to the door-shaped hole.

  What’s going on?

  Small steps, old man. No falling.

  The drivers led everyone beyond the road, into a plain of dirt. A place without trees or green. Mine tried to free himself from his mother’s arms so he could walk. They were going toward a strange, raised ring of dust, a small crater in the earth.

  It’s a hell of a welcome, said one of the drivers.

  Wait till you see it, said the other, wiping his nose with his hand. We saw it come down.

  They came closer to the little crater in the dirt. Smoke rose from its rim, where the dirt had rutted and turned rust-colored and black. Pungent smell of underground, of turned-up earth. Earthworms curled in the soil. Inside the crater was a foot-long piece of charred, rocky metal.

  The drivers and the cousin-brothers surrounded it, and the matchman stood back. The girl’s mother let Mine down to the ground, though she held him. He wanted to touch the rocky metal. He shrieked his name. One of the drivers paced around the crater several times, watching the thing inside as though it might move. Grooves and holes in it in a random pattern. A little metal moon.

  The matchman sat in the dust a few feet from the moon. He looked as though he wanted to sleep, but he watched the brothers, who took his crutch and poked at the moon with the crutch’s tip. A driver came back with gloves on and an oily cloth. He crouched and picked up the metal thing, still smoking, and blew on it.

  Goddamn, he said.

  The girl went to him. She looked at the moon-thing, scabbed and pitted and smoking, that had fallen so near without her knowing. A few ants moved beside her shoe. Maybe looking for water.

  Eye of Water

  A minute of rain then none of it. The desert again itself. As if I should thank life for a bit of rain, and I don’t.

  Desert, Isaac tells me, is what the sea became. Here is what the desert once was: wet and ivory-green and all we lack. It’s something we talk about before doing other things, like TV, room service, sex. He sleeps. We’re in a hotel on the Strip, though we both live in apartments a few miles away—we want to feel we’ve had a night out in our own town. We’re tired of the bed in my apartment.

  I take a picture with my phone of the skyline pinking to black, Tropicana Avenue, east-west. Inside all this: magicians, aerialists, waiters, dealers, comedians, acrobats, and women and men throwing their chips in small caves at green felt tables.

  Isaac’s snoring. His stomach, warm bear-pudge, rises and falls; his blue jacket is on the floor. His socks I’ve taken off, and plaid boxers, jeans, T-shirt with the name of a band I don’t know. His thin glasses are on the table. He’s my age, thirty-one, though we’ve said neither of us feels it. I go to the bathroom, big as the bedroom in my apartment, and wash my face. A luxury. Hotels on the Strip give you water; it’s all recycled, but you pay for it. Hotel soaps wrapped in printed paper, big as medallions, are free, but for water you pay.

  I’m alive in a desert, having once driven in, not yet come out. Cactus and tufts and mounds of weeds. An expanse long as the notes of warblers in the West, Cash and Presley. I sing, too. Opera once. I traveled anywhere, if they’d have me—Gilda in Rigoletto in Milwaukee, Norina in Don Pasquale in St. Louis. I moved to Vegas to sing in a club. They need me, I think. I’m that good here. When all the water goes, so will this music that greens my life.

  I leave Isaac asleep in the morning, buy coffee at a donut place in the casino, pick up my car from the valet, and drive home. I pay too much for my downtown apartment. There’s a cactus in a clay pot by my bed. Clark County doesn’t allow plants, except cacti. I say, take water from gamblers, don’t starve living things, but I don’t run a city. I have two glasses of water a day while sitting in my yard of rock. Not gravel—rock, brown and dun and dim white. I sit in a cushioned chair, stained with the bright urine of a neighbor’s dehydrated tabby tom. He is bloated, his fur withered. Part wild, he eats the rodents that forage our Dumpsters.

  My ex-husband lives in Venice with a woman named Marisol. Venice. Once when I was drunk I told him I’d go there when the water’s gone. The Mojave is the driest desert in North America. Lake Mead is drying up, and the project they’d been hoping would bring more water was abandoned a year ago.

  In my bathroom, I drink whiskey and line my eyes Klimt-gold. I draw a star on my forehead. A feather boa around my neck. I’m no pigeon, but a starry peacock. A peahen. A carnivorous, whiskeyed peahen.

  I go to work at the club at four. It’s late November and dark so soon and cold for our desert. I don’t hate the club, I’m used to it, and peahens with whiskey neats in their hands can be Earth’s happiest creatures. To the house beat, my hips are alive, devoted. Hip, hip, all of you on the spotlit dance floor, light parading atop your skulls. You forget the city’s drying up. In the bathroom—the toilet costs five dollars to flush—you insert tokens purchased from a bartender into a meter installed on the flush lever. Of course, most people don’t flush. There have been many overflowing toilets. There’s a hundred-dollar fine for that.

  I’ve put an ad in the classifieds for a roommate. The math works out that you have more water with two people. Not very much more, but I have a two-bedroom; the second room I don’t use. Tonight I’m meeting someone who called me with a deep voice, as if ash inside, welled up from the che
st. Willa. Some life in her voice, the weight of it.

  I sing in a lounge behind the club, a square room gilded on all four sides to make drunk VIPs conjure palace ceilings of Versailles, and I the court musician, singing dry, my neck long and taut for thee.

  I told Manny to let her in, and there she is at the bar. Willa, with a glass of water. That’s ten dollars.

  “Some guy bought it for me,” she says. “This place is like things used to be.”

  What I notice first is her jewelry—she wears too much. Several necklaces. Bangles up her wrist and stackable rings. All of it chintzy, flimsy. She immediately puts her hair up in one motion, a glossy dark-blonde twist, fastening it with a clip she unclips from her bra. Her face reminds me of a statue in Rome, from which the hands had fallen. I had voice lessons there one summer. Hers—Willa’s—is a perfectly rounded nose. Eyes a bit close together.

  “You work here?” says Willa. “Or what? You do what here,” she says, blinking twice.

  “I sing,” I say. I’m a peahen in a gold room with a few regulars who wait for me. Who imagine all kinds of things when they watch me sing, maybe their pert cocks in my mouth.

  I do not want to think of Willa as a bird, but do. Think of one that’s fallen to the sidewalk, perched, alive but rumpled, not quite what she was before. There’s a scarred gash along one side of her neck with a layer of concealer on top.

  “I like this,” says Willa, holding up her water. “This is good. It’s real.”

  Sometimes in bars and casinos they dilute water with gin, a little cheaper, which no one complains about.

  “You want some?” she says.

  I take the smallest sip and hand back the Communion cup.

  I decide I want her with me and tell her so. I lower the rent by seventy-five dollars before she says anything, and she says it’s a deal, her voice higher suddenly. I order a whiskey. We clink. She says she’ll move in this week.

  There’s a band onstage, five of us. I’m at the mike in front of Jon on the drums. I’m better than usual, and loud, singing for my new friend Willa in that gold room. I’m the Distractor: no one’s thinking about water now, or dry lips. After the first two Irving Berlin numbers, she’s gone from her barstool. Goodyman sits in the front row. Biting his cheek. Thumbing his smartphone. Watching me.