Imperfections (25 page)

After the Heavenly Show or, more accurately, after that phone call from Leonard, I had vowed to make a difference and I believe I did. In the past year, all of my free time and considerable funds had been put to good use. I found meaning by living for others and had done so to the fullest. I had been so devoted that, on this night, the night of my death, with mere hours left to live, I could honestly say that I had reached peace with the fact that my life would soon be over. I had selflessly devoted myself to my cause.

“I've been working hard,” I said, “to set up the NIC and I'm pleased to announce we've been successful in establishing the foundation of an independent homeland.”

The microphone wavered.

“The Nunavut Independence Coalition,” I said.

“The struggle for an independent Inuit country,” I said.

“Northern Canada, Arctic Circle,” I said.

Shit, I said it: Canada. Doug would kill me if this made it to print.

The microphone moved slowly away from my face.

Fucking Kosovo, I thought. I sink my fortune and my last year of life and everyone would know it if it wasn't for fucking Kosovo on the news all the time.

As the reporter backed away, Stella came through the curtain from the runway. She looked radiant in her neo-turn-of-the-last-century gown. She was plump and pushed up in all the right places and cinched and squeezed tight in all the other right places. Stella made her way to a mirror ringed with lights. I wove my way through the crowd and took a chair by her side.

“Stella, I'm done here tonight,” I said. “I just wanted to pop over, say Happy New Year and thank you.”

“Give me a kiss. Good tidings on the last night of the millennium aren't enough,” she said and leaned toward me. “It's the end of time after all.”

I kissed her proffered cheek.

Stella smiled. “I feel so honoured to have known you. But here we are,” she checked a clock, “just under an hour until planes fall from the sky and every computer thinks it's a hundred years ago and decides to plunge us into a barbarian's darkness. It was only a matter of time, I guess. We had a good run though, didn't we? While it lasted?”

“You don't believe that,” I said.

“No, not really.” She gazed into the mirror.

“You sound disappointed.”

Stella's reflection glanced at me, its smile tired. “When you have endured as many crises as I have… My career has been up and down. My bank account has been full and empty. My cancer has bloomed and wilted. My lovers have come and gone and, after everything, the only constant is that I'm still here.” She brushed an eyelash from her cheek. “The next fifty-seven minutes won't make a difference. We'll still be here. We survive. We always seem to and no computer error is going to change that. Nothing will,” she said. “But, sometimes, I wish it would. Just for a change.”

I nodded. “Well, I just wanted to say it was wonderful to have known you. You are a truly singular woman.”

“It's not quite the feat you make it out to be in such a mediocre world,” she said. “Now give me one more kiss before you go into the darkness.”

I stood and placed my lips to Stella's cheek. She put a hand on the back of my head and held me there. With her skin, soft and warm and alive against my lips, I hoped she didn't feel the tear that escaped the dam of my eyelids. That tear, drying on Stella's cheek, would get to touch her for minutes longer than I would. It's residue, dried to an imperceptible salt on her skin, would likely outlast me, I thought.
 

I glanced at the clock. With fifty-five minutes to midnight, I left Stella; her scent lingered on my lips.

I waited for Father and Donna on the street in front of the Public Library. Before the show, we had agreed to meet there and make the walk to Mother and Dr. Sloane's apartment together, in time to watch the ball drop in Times Square on the television. And from there, according to Leonard's prediction, I would die.

I flinched when an old car I was standing near backfired to life. The midget from the show passed by and clambered into the rear seat. The rusty door squeaked and slammed shut. It wasn't until the driver's window rolled down that my memory clicked. A gangly arm with knob-knuckled fingers tapped on the door as the Monte Carlo drove away. Between those knuckles, gnarled with pink-ringed, cloudy scabs, was held a rusty nail.
 

I had seen the midget before. He was the Mighty Mite.

“Richard,” Father called from up the street. “Let's go.” His arm was around Donna's waist. He sparked his lighter and lit a cigarette, his face glowing momentarily in the flickering orange flame. “Probably can't get a cab tonight. Traffic's all snarled anyway. We should walk. If we go now, we can still make it before midnight.”

I stood for a moment, mouth agape.

“You creeping on the midget?” Donna called. “You should have seen the wolf-man. That show was transendational.”

“Esteban,” I said as I approached them.

“What?” Donna asked.

“The wolf-man. His name is Esteban. He's from Sonora.”

“Oh.” Donna blinked. “That's south of Canal Street, right?”

We embarked.
 

About ten blocks up Sixth, Donna piped up that she needed cigarettes. She popped into a convenience store with a red-on-white backlit sign above the door. Father and I waited on the sidewalk. Father shuffled his feet. I watched him from where I stood near the store window. His face was etched by shadows.

“You looked good tonight, Richard,” Father said, his eyes following his feet. “You did good.”

Traffic jolted up Sixth in fits and starts, engines roared and then idled. Exhaust billowed, flashing in the dichromatic strobe of passing headlights and tail lights.

Then I thought I heard Father say, “I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I'm proud of you.”

He may not have said that. It's what I thought he said, anyway. His voice was lost in the traffic noise and he may have actually said, “I don't like the ice all over the floor. It's loud here, too.”

I blinked against the night, trying to process what I heard. Either phrase would have been just as unlikely as the other. As the awkwardness grew between us with each second, I began leaning toward the former. I felt warmth spread from deep within my chest. It was the first time Father might have said that he was proud of me.

“I have to ask you something,” I said.

Father looked relieved that I spoke.

“Why Donna?” I asked.

Father chewed on his lower lip and watched the spastic traffic go by.

“It's because she tries. She always tries,” he said. “She tries at life even though her enthusiasm is sometimes misdirected. She may not always be right, and she sometimes makes mistakes, but she has something. She never gives up. She doesn't let the bad get to her and she's always there for me.” Father paused. “I still love your mother, too, but for so many years she gave up. She disappeared. I'm glad she found Mike and got her spark back. I know you and Mike don't get along but he's not that bad you know…”

That bastard Mike, Dr. Sloane, stripped me of the universe at an early age, I thought. He stole my family, stole Mother, and derailed my youth.

“…but even those last years, when she was still in the house, she was already gone. You were young. I was alone. Donna will never give up like that.”

I didn't say anything so Father continued.

“I've seen a lot of that energy in you in the past year, Richard. You've built a good career. You've got a good group of friends and for all our fuck-ups, you've kept your family near…”

Donna erupted from the door, two packs of smokes in her hand.

“…and you're doing wonderful things with those Eskimos.”

“Yep,” Donna said, “Richard and his Eskimos. And I'm doing wonders selling those little African kids to people.”

Father laughed and gave her a squeeze. “Donna, honey, the work you do with Orphan Care International is great as well. If this is how my life turned out,” Father said, “then I'm a very lucky man. Now let's go, there's only forty minutes to midnight.”

Father and Donna walked in lockstep, arm in arm. I followed a short distance behind with my hands buried deep in my coat pockets and my shoulders shrugged to my ears to ward off the cold.

A light, low cloud settled over Manhattan. It reflected the city lights back to the ground in a muted glow. We hit Central Park Street, trudging through slush. The glow of the streetlamps created a vision of sepia tones that softened the edges of the towering patchwork of buildings on our left.

It had snowed recently. The city had worked extended shifts to clear Times Square, getting it ready for revellers who wanted to be in the brightest spot in the world for the turn of the millennium. Everywhere, people wandered the streets. Everyone, waiting for it all to end. It was the cusp of the new millennium, thirty-five minutes to midnight and the city teemed with residents, each expecting that it would come to an abrupt halt once the clock ground past twelve. Thirty-five minutes until a computerized time warp threw us back one hundred years. Crashing computers, sick with a binary hangover, would cause planes to fall from the sky. The world would be forced to revert to horse and buggy, back to a time when buildings were built using simple carpentry, no power tools, no skyscraping towers.
 

We passed a 24-hour market packed with people. Through the windows, we saw line-ups that stretched back from the tills into the aisles.

“Look at them,” Father said. “Topping up their stockpiles.”

People with tired expressions held baskets full of batteries. Others pushed trollies of bottled water and toilet paper, first aid kits and multivitamins, coffee and blankets, tampons and canned beets, all in preparation for imminent doom. The expectation that it would all be over hung on their faces. Spectators of doom, they had a common, tired resignation and a complacent want for it to be over.
 

Thirty-three minutes to midnight.

We passed a crowd huddled near a bank machine, waiting for it to spew out its contents. People roamed the streets, some drunk, others terrified, all waiting for the sweeping tidal wave of blackouts as generators failed. The city would be plunged into the soft, flickering glow of candlelight. The high-rise towers would emit a wavering light, like giant candles themselves. From a space shuttle, the wave of blackness that swept over this dark half of the planet would leave the blackest night in a hundred years in its wake. It was as if the night had been waiting patiently for this.

Would the light from so many candles flicker strongly enough to be seen from space?
I wondered.

My cellphone rang. Savage Garden's “Truly, Madly, Deeply” chiming a muffled ringtone from my coat pocket. I fished it out, listened to a line of the song and then hunched against the cold.

“Richard?”

“Hey, Leonard,” I said. “Happy new year.”

“Rachel's pregnant,” Leonard blurted. “We're going to have a baby. We just found out a few hours ago. Three pregnancy tests say that we're going to have a baby.”
 

“That's great Leonard, congratulations.”

“I just wanted to call,” Leonard said after a moment. “You know, to see if you're all right?”

“So far, so good.”

I slowed my pace and dropped farther behind Father and Donna.

There was a pause before Leonard said, “I'm not really sure what to say here. I'm not calling to see if you had died or anything. Well, I guess that's partly it. Not that I want you to…”

“Leonard, it's okay,” I said. “I'm glad you called. I wanted to say thanks. I don't know if I took the chance before but this past year was the best of my life, thanks to you. I did something I'm proud of. I've had a chance to get to know my family and friends better and…” I paused. “It's weird, but knowing I'm going to die tonight has brought me such peace that I can hardly put it into words.”

“I've been wrong before…”

I thought I heard him choke on a sob.

“I know. Even if you're wrong and I see the sunrise, imagine what a beautiful morning it will be.”

“But if you don't make it, Richard…”

“If I don't, well, this evening's sunset was the most beautiful I've ever seen. Either way, without you, I wouldn't have even noticed. The funny thing is, I should have always lived the way I have over the past year.”

The phone line was quiet. I glanced ahead, squinting through a cloud of my breath. Father smiled, waved at me and pointed at his watch. I glanced at mine.
 

Breitling didn't matter anymore. The hands told that it was twenty-nine minutes to midnight.

“Leonard, I can feel it coming,” I said to the silence on the other end of the line. “It took me years to acknowledge it, and now there's only minutes to come to grips with my role in the world. Leonard, thanks for being my best friend.”