Love in the Time of Global Warming Read online

  “Ez did something. I don’t know what.” Hex reaches into the front seat and grasps Ez’s shoulder, in a way he’s never done before. A solid touch, a touch of equals. “I don’t know if I thanked you, homey.”

  In the rearview mirror I see Ez’s smile spreading. “You just did.”

  I rub my eyes when he and Hex bump fists; did I really just see that? It’s not Hex’s usual style. “What happened? Ez?”

  “I grabbed him when I saw the wall falling and I prayed really hard?”

  “But it was more than that,” says Hex. “The part of the building where we were just sort of separated from the rest of it after he lifted you out of there. It was like some kind of magic shit.”

  I remember holding up my hand to the wave when the Earth Shaker hit. Did I stop that wave? Did I save myself? Was there magic at work then?

  Some kind of wickedy magic that has preserved us in this hell, without our loved ones. But we have one another and Hex, our intrepid leader, has told me not to look back.

  13

  ASH

  THE GIANT CABAZON T-REX and Apatosaurus are a roadside attraction on the way to the desert, and I can’t believe they’re still standing after practically everything else has been flattened. But stand they do, perfect symbols of our extinct, monstrously swollen world, and the right size for the Giants who inhabit it. Even so, we’re a ways out of L.A., there aren’t any Giants visible around here, and there isn’t much place for them to hide, so Hex thinks it’s safe to go scavenging for food. We park and sunscreen up and walk under a large sign that cruelly reads: “EAT.” (Cruel in two ways—because we’re hungry and we don’t want to be any beast’s dinner.)

  While Hex stands guard with his sword, Ez and I explore the gift store inside the three-story T-Rex. Maybe there will be some candy or soda. I don’t hesitate because I saw an orange butterfly flash by me at the entrance.

  We hear singing, ethereal, as if from a cathedral. Ez spots the young man first, wandering in a daze down the empty aisles. He has dark skin and the face (and voice) of a Byzantine angel and he says his name is Ash.

  “There used to be food,” he muses, full lips parting to reveal small, perfect teeth. “Have you seen any food lately?”

  Ez says gently, as if trying not to make him bolt at the news, “I don’t think there’s much food here anymore.”

  “Oh, yeah, I guess,” says Ash. “Do you think we can get some macaroni and cheese? I really like that.”

  “I know.” Ez speaks just to him. “Food is good.” His voice sounds wistful and dreamy, the way it sounded when he spoke about cake a week ago. I wonder if I should step away and let them talk privately.

  Ash is staring at Ez with his long, green eyes in a way that makes me uncomfortable, as if I’ve walked in on something.

  “There’s no more food?” Ash asks. His bottom lip pouts but I think that’s just how it’s formed.

  “Are you alone?” Ez asks him. “Are you with anyone?”

  Ash shakes his head no. “I was on a photo shoot here when it happened.”

  I notice a few small silk tassels hiding in the mass of his dusty-looking brown dreadlocks. His body is delicate, long and awkward in the expensively shrunken but filthy green sharkskin suit he wears. I used to wonder at the awkwardness of the best models in Moira’s magazines and online, their ungainly legs and arms, their oddly shaped noses, wide-spaced eyes, and long necks. Moira could have modeled; we always told her that. Noey said I could have, too, but I would never have wanted to; I preferred to be invisible. It’s hard to think of a world where there was a profession involving attractive people dressing up in expensive clothes to have their pictures taken.

  “You should come with us,” Ez says. “We have a van. We have some food.”

  I try to catch his eye; what the hell is he doing? We don’t have food to share. Hex will kill him. I can see him through the window, pacing around in the dust with his sword, shoulders tight with worry. I want to knead them with my fingers.

  How can we take Ash? We need to get moving. I’ve already waited too long to get to Las Vegas. It might even be too late, if my family was ever there at all. But how can we leave Ash here all alone? I remember Ez crying in my arms.

  I was always trying to find someone to fall in love with.… It’s never happened. The world’s ended, and it’s never going to happen.

  If the world has ended, what else do we have but these last feeble dreams? Plus, Ash is tall and looks strong in spite of his willowiness, and I think we could use another member in our tribe. Another pair of eyes and hands—he could drive the van and we’d have more time to rest and gather our strength. And Ash can sing. Hex hasn’t yet heard that voice.

  Ash won’t take his eyes off of Ez, who looks over at me, and it really is like a light went on inside of him. The dull, glazed look is entirely burned through, gone. “Is it okay if Ash comes, Pen? Oh, this is Pen. I’m Ezra. Ez.”

  Ash doesn’t even glance at me; he’s still staring at Ez, the three of us in the belly of a T-Rex in the middle of nowhere. He’s the one in a daze now.

  “It’s funny how you meet people,” Ash says.

  14

  LOVE IN THE TIME OF GLOBAL WARMING

  HEX IS ANGRY, OF COURSE. “What the hell, homes?”

  I like it better when he calls me sparkle princess. But I get why he’s mad. Another stabbingly hungry belly, another fearful psyche to drive around.

  He and I are standing by the van while Ez and Ash talk, heads close together, under the shadow of the dinosaurs.

  “Ez needs him,” I say. “Look at them.”

  “Ez needs him? Ez needs food, and water. And so do we.”

  “But we have…” I was going to say each other. As important as food and water but I can’t acknowledge that to him yet. “There was an orange butterfly.”

  “A what?” The tendons strain in his neck, under the tattoo.

  “When I met you. And Ez. And now Ash. Orange butterflies. They keep appearing.” I haven’t mentioned them before, afraid he’d think I was crazy. Maybe I am. “Forget it.”

  I turn away from him but he grabs my wrist and pulls me back.

  A flash of heat passes between us, like something wet dropped in a scalding pan.

  “I remember that one at the hotel. And when we met Ez. You think they’re some kind of sign?”

  Yes. “My mom loved them. She had butterfly tattoos and made collages with butterfly wings. I know I sound insane.”

  Ash and Ez approach us and Hex kicks at the dirt; dust rises up, making me cough.

  Ash takes a canteen out of his pocket and hands it to me. “Water?” he says. “I found a supply in the casino but it’s almost out.”

  I thank him and tell him we have our own. He insists and the dust is hurting my throat so I take one small sip.

  * * *

  There’s a boy playing piano. The piano takes up the whole room. The boy’s eyes are closed. He plays faster and louder, as if to drown out the sound of glass breaking in the kitchen. Tears run down his face and into his mouth but he doesn’t wipe them away.

  * * *

  This is Ash, I realize, Ash as a child. Another vision, like what I saw of Hex and Ez. With each one it’s as if I’m finding some missing puzzle piece. Or just another confirmation of the madness that is overtaking me. But what is madness in such a world? My eyes meet Hex’s. Please.

  “I know where there is more water, I think,” Ash says. “I can smell it on the wind.” He closes his eyes and breathes in like a noble dog leaning its head out the window of a moving car (Argos, I remember you, I have not forgotten), and points into the distance. “If there was fresh water anywhere it would be there. The Oasis in Twentynine Palms. But I don’t have a car.”

  Please, Hex. Ez’s wish is so loud I can almost hear it.

  “I know that place,” Hex says. He turns to me. “He may be right. And it’s on the way.”

  To confirm, an orange butterfly appears, as if an invisible ma
gician snapped his fingers in the air, and lands on Ash’s dreadlocks like a colorful barrette. Hex catches my eye, throws the key to Ash. “We’re wiped. You can drive, dude.”

  Ez grabs my hand and squeezes. He thanks Hex, who shrugs.

  “I owed you—whatever magic you did back there in the museum.… Now we’re even.”

  Without thinking about it, I lean over and kiss his cheek. It’s so soft and smooth, like a child’s.

  “Come on,” he says, not looking at me, turning, flinging up his hands. “What are you all waiting for? The end of the world?”

  * * *

  We’ve spent the last day driving and talking. Mostly we talked about food, music, art, books, the things we miss about Then. Sometimes Hex read to us from The Odyssey, although it frightens me after all the parallels. We avoided talk of the Earth Shaker as we drove through the pass where the windmills used to be. Most of them are broken now, and lie in heaps as if a huge child had become infuriated with his toys.

  We were trying to distract ourselves from the danger of being this out in the open. The road through the desert wasn’t really any less safe than the city roads, but the lack of rubble (only some fallen billboards and deserted shells of cars) made us feel more vulnerable.

  “I grew up on junk food,” Hex admitted after we had left an old fast food place, ransacked except for the rancid vegetable oil cans that we took for fuel. (Hex stuck his sword into the ground and raised his hands with triumph when we found the oil and I whispered, “Maybe this guy is good luck,” meaning Ash. Hex said, “I wouldn’t go that far.”)

  “The worst crap,” Hex said. “Cheeseburgers, fries, whatever, garbage. Sometimes I dream I’m holding this giant cheeseburger with the pink sauce stuff spilling out the side and I wake up crying. I swear I can smell the grease.”

  “My parents never let us eat junk food,” I said. Then I asked, “What about yours?” I realized we’d never talked about them before.

  He laughed but it sounded more like a cough, dusty and dry in his throat. “They were gone most of the time. At work, at parties. I was alone in this big house with a load of cash and a fake ID. So I bought whiskey and drugs and junk food. It was awesome. Good times.” His eyes went hard when he said it.

  “My mom didn’t care either,” said Ash, unconsciously pulling at a dreadlock with elongated fingers. “She was at work so I made frozen pizza or cold cereal for dinner every night. When I started working I spent all my money at restaurants.”

  Ez said he liked raw and vegan. “Millet, mung beans, coconut oil, flax seeds, acai berries.”

  We passed another mountainous stack of cleanly gnawed bones but none of us commented on it. Maybe it was perverse to talk food but somehow it made the carnage seem less real.

  “Did you ever try those raw desserts?” Ez asked, almost defiantly, I thought, in the face of the bones. “The cashew ice cream? It was insane. I made it, too. It was even better. Coconut milk, dates…”

  “Stop, I’m getting hungry,” I said. “Pen thinks it sounds blissiant,” Hex teased, and I punched him. Not hard.

  “Raw cacao truffles?” Ez went on. “Ever try one?”

  “If you could have any meal you want for dinner tonight, what would it be?” Ash asked.

  “I’d like to say quinoa…”

  “What? How do you even spell that?”

  “It’s a supergrain, Hex. Let me finish. Kale cooked in coconut oil, butternut squash soup, brown rice avocado sushi rolls.” Ez paused. “But really? Chocolate layer cake, vanilla cake with strawberry whipped cream filling, mocha fudge swirl. Cake for days. No healthy raw desserts for me right now. Not if we’re fantasizing. Lemon meringue cake.”

  I wasn’t surprised about the cake, remembering Beatrix. That witch knew his weaknesses. Luckily, Hex knew hers was sexy young men. I still don’t know what happened between them but I can guess and sometimes it makes my heart beat so fast that I can’t breathe.

  “Pie,” Hex corrected Ez. “It was lemon meringue pie.”

  “No, it was cake, too. I had it once from a bakery called Angel something. The filling was like clouds. It was serious insanity.”

  “I’d want a cheeseburger and fries and a chocolate cookie milkshake,” Hex said. “And a diet soda.”

  “Diet soda?” I squeaked. “That’s the worst thing for you. And why diet? Look at you!” I pinched his ribs and he batted my hand away, grinning. “It tastes like chemicals and rotten fish.”

  “What? You’re concerned about my imaginary diet soda? Really? I guess you won’t let me have any imaginary cigarettes either?”

  I stuck my tongue out at him and he winked at me.

  “It’s better than the shit I used to put in my body, believe me.”

  “I’d even settle for frozen pizza and cold cereal at this point,” Ash said.

  “What about you, Pen?”

  I thought of my mom’s dinners, each dish infused with love. There was a shiitake mushroom spinach quiche she made, with a buttery crust, a lentil soup served with homemade corn bread, tomato-ey ratatouille with pine nuts, smoked baba ghanoush, wild salmon croquettes with honey wasabi dipping sauce. My stomach hurt—fiercely—and I shook my head.

  Later, Hex read aloud to us:

  “‘But leave me now to eat my dinner, for all my sorrow, for there is no other thing so shameless as to be set over the belly, but she rather uses constraint and makes me think of her, even when sadly worn, when in my heart I have sorrow as now I have sorrow in my heart, yet still forever she tells me to eat and drink and forces me to forgetfulness of all I have suffered, and still she is urgent that I must fill her.’”

  “No more belly talk, please,” I begged, even though what I really meant was home talk.

  So Hex brought up music. “It was invented so man could speak to God,” he said.

  “Do you believe in God?” Ash asked. It was the first time any one of us had mentioned the subject.

  Hex paused, only briefly. “I believe in music. It’s in our genetics. There’s even a gene for it. Like songbirds have.”

  And, like songbirds, we spent the rest of the day singing, for one another, our favorite tunes. Hex knows the lyrics to them all. They sound exotic, magical and strange, these popular songs about love, where all that was at stake was your heart.

  Ash’s voice is mellifluous; when we asked what his favorite music was, he said, “I like the Four Seasons by Vivaldi.” Hex and Ez looked at him, surprised. Not me, so much; I’d had that vision of him playing the piano.…

  “What?” he said, defensive.

  “You just don’t seem like the classical type,” said Hex. “I would have guessed indie, art, emo.”

  Ash shrugged and tapped long brown fingers on the dashboard. “Do you think we’ll ever hear a concerto again?”

  As if in answer something went dark—the sun had suddenly set or a rain cloud had moved in?—but when we looked, we saw it was a hulking figure looming on the horizon, still as stone, eyes closed as if asleep.

  * * *

  Now we’re parked behind an outcropping of rock. Usually we keep going, one person at the wheel while the others sleep, but sometimes we need to just stop for a while and feel the ground motionless under us as we rest. I want to get out of the stuffy, sweaty van and smell the sand and desert air but I remember how we can’t risk being without the little protection we have in case anything comes, in case the Giant on the now-distant hill wakes. Also, when it’s as cold as this your fingers feel like they’re so swollen and burning with pain that they’ll fall off if you rub them together to warm them. As if he’s heard my thoughts, Hex takes my hands and holds them in his lap so I can feel the thick denim of his jeans.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. You?”

  “You’re not okay,” he says.

  I want him to kiss me. I want to tell him that sometimes I imagine him and Beatrix together in a bed made of branches. I’m grateful to him for freeing us but I don’t like the idea of him at the me
rcy of Beatrix’s lips with their pornographic swell, the dark intoxstasy of her hair.

  I glance back at Ez and Ash asleep in each other’s arms, Ez’s head tucked under Ash’s chin.

  “Thank you for letting Ash come,” I say.

  “I don’t like that twee suit he wears.”

  “He was modeling it. And there aren’t exactly a lot of clothing options anymore.”

  Hex winks, so fast I’m not sure I saw it. “But it wasn’t up to me, anyway. Outvoted.”

  “Yes, but you are the strongest of us, Prince Charming.”

  “What did you just call me?”

  “If you can call me sparkle princess—I just mean, you could have made the final call.”

  He shrugs. “You’re stronger than you know. And there were those butterflies, after all.”

  Without looking at him I smile, grateful he understands. “Ez was wrong about love,” I say. “Miracles of love still do occur, I guess.”

  Hex nods. His voice is serious now, almost grave. “Of course, Pen. Had you given up?”

  I look out at some shrubs shaking in the wind. “I’ve given up on everything.”

  “Even me?”

  “Sometimes I think about what happened with Beatrix.”

  “You’re jealous?” Hex is smiling and I can see the flash of his vampiric incisors. The tip of his nose is perfectly sculpted with a little flare of bone above either nostril.

  “Not jealous, I just…”

  “It was battle,” he says. “Strategy, nothing else.” He slumps in the seat and runs his hands down the length of his thighs.

  “Okay.”

  “I did what I had to do. It was dark.” He pauses, patting his pockets like he’s trying to find a cigarette. “Pen, I’m not exactly the person you think I am.”

  “What does that mean?” I’ve had enough surprises. I want everything to remain as much the same as possible within the confines of this van, where we’ve finally established some safety.

  “I’ve been with a lot of people, since I was really young.”

  “Okay,” I say. “I kind of figured that out. Pretty girls and everything…”