I watched my cat, Lizzy, stretch her jaw into a tall yawn. That house cats are related to lions became so blatantly obvious in that moment that I found myself mumbling congratulations: “Atta guy, Darwin. Charles. Chuck.” Lizzy’s calico fur was outlined by the early morning, navy light sifting through the reading room window behind her. Lizzy stalked a few steps across the desk to my glass of beer from last night, a few unwanted ounces sitting lukewarm at the bottom, and began lapping it up.
People in my orbit have begun hitting the big red button. By that I mean they’re panicking, though their behaviors are mundane or normal enough the reality would be easy to miss. I think they’re anxious. Rafi keeps calling me around 8pm every night to report on the bread-making he’s taken up. “I think it’s the flour,” he said last night, troubleshooting to himself over the phone with me. I could have set the phone in another room and left it on speaker; Rafi wouldn’t have noticed. “It’s cheap flour from Sam’s Club. I think I need to buy good stuff from a health store or something. Lively stuff.” I asked him if he’s been cleaning the kitchen as he goes, if the flour had begun to accumulate in snowdrifts.
“Oh, goodness,” he said, chuckling. “I have to shovel my way to the toaster every morning.”
Daysia is all over the city. She keeps going on dates. It’s at a point where she’ll go on a date with just about anyone, which is cool and all; her pansexuality isn’t new. But I mean anyone — flat, straight-laced bores and tanned-to-carrots jocks included. It’s hard to tell if she’s really looking for anything at all. “It’s a vibe problem,” she said last week when we went for dumplings over the lunch hour, soy sauce dripping off our chopsticks and splotching the flaky laminate tabletop. “Everyone I meet feels like a guitar with a string missing.” I asked her if giving people a second date, or even a third, might change anything. “I’m twenty-four, Mo. I don’t have the luxury of time anymore.” This confused me, because Daysia didn’t grow up in a small town.
“My timeline is crunched,” she clarified. “I’ve been driving out into the country and mapping stars, and it’s become clear to me I won’t live past sixty. So I’m making adjustments.”
Ben-Jo has begun narrating old Batman comics live over Instagram. An average of two viewers tune in. I’m one of them, just to make him feel better.
And we won’t even get into Dr. Falweather, my family doctor. The sports betting has found its way into our appointments, the iPad propped up on the extra stool in the exam room, the screen splayed with flickering box scores. Two weeks ago a die-cast figurine of Jimmy Butler appeared by the computer. Our conversations aren’t very intimate anymore.
There is something cosmic in all this mess. I’m not convinced the stars have much to do with Daysia’s life expectancy. But I could be convinced that a collective anxiety, like an endless spool of fishing line, has hooked all of my friends like suckers and been hung off the waning stages of the moon. Is that inconsistent on my part?
Last night I had a dream: a barbed fish hook had grown large and terrifying, dangling above me while I laid in bed, paralyzed. Dr. Falweather was the one holding the pole. When I woke up, untouched and clammy, Lizzy was just sitting on her haunches to my right, flipping her tail and yawning that lion’s yawn. Jerk.
I’m worried about my friends. I don’t see how this has all come about. The city just resurfaced the main road through town; it’s really nice! Wildflowers have begun peeking up from the grass, a few colorful mushrooms clung to the rotting stumps around them. The price of eggs has come back down. We all went to a concert together last weekend. The stage lights cast off warm oranges and blues; an odor of American Spirit clung to the walls, and everyone got to kiss somebody beautiful. What’s not to love? Some rando gestured to Rafi to hold out his hand; this person, with the air of a phantom, put a pair of rose gold earrings in his palm and folded his fingers closed.
“Better put them on before the world ends,” they said, then walked away. Rafi melted. The next evening he called me at 8pm.
“This loaf is for the phantom,” he said. “Do you think if I put garlic powder in it, they’ll be repulsed?”
“I think that’s a vampire thing,” I told him and hung up.
Lizzy finished lapping up the beer and looked up and at me, licking her lips. The light outside shifted to a pale, sun-up yellow; there was a sound of crunching metal and glass. A few minutes later a firetruck, probably from the station half a mile east, threw on its sirens. I went to make some coffee.
