We All Looked Up (17 page)

“I used to sing in that closet over there,” she said.

“Good acoustics?”

“Thick walls.” She walked to the closet and shut herself inside. “Fuck you, Mom!” she shouted.

Andy said something in response, but Anita couldn't make out the words. She looked around the little room, pinched the hem of a red velvet dress she'd grown out of years before. “Good-bye, closet,” she whispered.

Back in the bedroom, Andy was looking over her music collection. She threw a last pair of shoes in the duffel bag and zipped it up. “Let's get out of here.”

Her mother was still mopping when they came back down.

“I'll meet you outside,” she said to Andy, passing him the bag.

“All right. Nice to meet you, Mrs. Graves.”

Anita's mother didn't say anything until Andy had shut the front door behind him. “What are you and that disgusting boy getting up to?” she asked, fire in her voice.

Anita wanted to shout back, but she checked herself. Who knew when she and her mother would see each other again? Maybe never. She didn't want to leave on bad terms.

“We're just friends,” she said.

Her mother scoffed. “Friends?”

“Yeah. But it's none of your business anyway.”

Her mother threw the mop onto the floor. “The Bible says to respect your elders, Anita! Maybe that doesn't mean anything to you, but it meant something to me and your father when we were kids. We had respect then. Not like this. Running away from home. Shacking up with some boy who looks like a drug addict.”

“Doesn't the Bible say something about supporting your children? About loving them unconditionally?”

“The commandment is honor thy mother and father. Not the other way around.”

“Then the Bible is fucked!” Anita said.

A terrible shroud of detachment seemed to fall across her ­mother's face—a cloud passing over the sun. Her voice went flat as a gravestone. “I don't think you understand what's going on out there, young lady. This is the final reckoning. They may not discuss it that way at that school of yours, but those of us who are right with God know what's going on. It's the separation of the saved and the damned. So you go, if that's what you want to do. You go and damn yourself.”

Anita felt the tears coming again, and it seemed one and the same with holding them back to march deeper into the house, into her father's office. He rose from behind his desk, silent as a monument, as Anita went straight to the polished metal palace in which he kept Bernoulli, the world's saddest hyacinth macaw, and opened the hatch. She expected a fluttering flush of blue to erupt into the room, but the bird didn't move. Bernoulli had no idea what to do with freedom; even the desire for flight had been bred or beaten out of him.

“Get out of there!” she screamed. “Are you stupid?”

Bernoulli tilted his head, squawked once.

“Where would he go?” Anita's father asked.

It was true, Anita realized, and her mind reeled with the weight of that truth. Even if the bird escaped his cage, he'd just be stuck in the office. And if he got out of the office, he'd just be stuck in the house. And if he got out of the house, then where could he go to be safe? He'd be every bit as trapped outside the cage as he'd been trapped inside it. And Anita was afraid it would be the same for her. All the world was a cage.

“Fine,” she said, and stormed back out of the office. Somewhere along the line, the dam had burst again; tears streamed down her face. One drop fell onto the polished marble floor of the foyer, a salt stain Anita knew her mother would mop away before it even had time to dry.

E
liza

“WAIT, WHAT'S THIS GUY'S NAME?”
Anita asked.

Eliza checked the printout again. “He calls himself ‘Chad Eye.'”

“Eye? Like an eyeball?”

“Yep.”

“Sounds like hippie nonsense.”

“I think it's badass,” Andy said. “Like Sid Vicious or something.”

“Well, he can call himself the reincarnation of Tupac, as long as he's got something for us,” Anita said.

They'd posted requests everywhere—from actual flyers on the Hamilton bulletin board to Craigslist's “community activity” forum—but when the offer finally came, it came through
Apocalypse Already
. Eliza put out the word that they were seeking a venue for the Party at the End of the World, and within a few hours, she got the e-mail from Chad. He said he had a proposition for them but wanted to meet in person to discuss it. They were told to come by his house at five thirty on Thursday morning, and also “to abstain from heavy foods or sexual activity for the previous twelve to twenty-four hours.” In other words, the guy was certifiably crazypants. But a Zillow search of his address—just on the other side of the 520 bridge—turned up a house valued at four million dollars. So here they all were.

The ride turned out to be oddly uncomfortable. Eliza was getting a distinct passive-aggressive vibe off Anita, and she had no idea why. It wasn't as if they were competing or something. Neither of them were interested in Andy, and Eliza was as bad at singing as Anita probably was at taking photos. Maybe it was inevitable—one of those rivalries that so often sprout up between girls, like mushrooms in the crevices of a forest, craning up toward whatever attention filters down through the canopy.

“The pictures you put up on the blog yesterday were wicked,” Andy said. “How long did it take for that place to burn down?”

“Well, the fire department got there after an hour, so it didn't really burn down. But I doubt anybody's going to be living there anytime soon.”

“Couldn't you have helped out somehow?” Anita asked. “Instead of standing around taking pictures?”

“What was I supposed to do, run inside and start carrying people out?”

“You're listening to KUBE 93,” said the radio DJ. “Let's keep this best of the eighties countdown rolling with ‘Lucky Star' by Madonna!”

Anita turned down the volume. “Gross. At least the end of the world means no more eighties music.”

“You don't like Madonna?” Eliza asked, then immediately regretted it. Of course Anita didn't like Madonna; that would be way too mainstream and predictable.

“Girl, Madonna is nothing but an old shoe.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“She's got no
soul
,” Andy said, and both he and Anita cracked up.

Eliza snorted. “That's stupid.”

“
Madonna
is what's stupid,” Anita said.

Eliza was preparing a less civil rejoinder when she was interrupted by the voice of the unflappable GPS lady.

“You have reached your destination.”

They parked on the shoulder of a wide suburban street, surrounded by vaguely Germanic mini-mansions and mailboxes shaped like vaguely Germanic mini-mansions. It was all pretty cookie-cutter, except for the house directly across the street, which just happened to be where they were going.

Chad's house had been built in the style of a Japanese temple, all terraced spires and bloodred wood inlaid with bronze. The yard wasn't dirt or lawn, but raked gravel and smooth rocks, littered with trees that looked like giant bonsai. At the far end of the garden, a couple sat cross-legged in a small pagoda, facing each other. The path from the street led across a short, steeply curved bridge, arcing over a pond in which the moonlight caught an occasional flicker of a fin or glittering plane of scales. There was no doorbell or knocker at the front door, only a small gong with a mallet attached to its base by a length of leather cord.

“Is this a joke?” Andy asked.

Eliza grabbed the mallet. “Only one way to find out.”

The shimmer of the gong crescendoed and died out, like a coppery koi swimming up from deep water and then descending again. A few moments later the door opened.

Standing on the threshold was a monk holding a beagle.

Or maybe not quite a monk, Eliza thought, never having seen one in the flesh before. He wore saffron-yellow robes, his head was totally shaved, and he wore a couple of necklaces made out of huge wooden beads. What he resembled most of all was one of those guys who hang around in airports handing out flyers that say things like
Experience Love!
or
Happiness Can Be Yours!
The beagle stared out at the new guests with an inscrutable calmness, both canine and Buddhist at once.

“You made it,” Chad said, making eye contact with each of them in turn. “Come in, please.”

They followed him into the house, through an atrium with nothing in it but a small pyramidal fountain trickling water through a pile of rocks. The living room was equally spare—one low table on a thin tatami mat, and in each corner, a massive ceramic urn supporting a bouquet of curling bamboo shoots. Above them, a skylight displayed a black square of firmament, prickled with stars. A girl walked in carrying a gray cast-iron pot and four porcelain cups in a wobbly column. She was in her twenties, dressed entirely in off-white hemp, with natty blond dreadlocks and a pound of sterling silver perforating each ear.

“Steeped and ready for takeoff,” she said.

Chad accepted the pot and the cups. “Thank you, Sunny. Would you mind taking Sid?”

“Of course not!” Sunny reached down and picked up the beagle, who immediately took one of her dreadlocks into his mouth. “You kids are in for a
tree-eat
,” she half sang on her way out of the room.

They all sat down around the table as Chad poured the tea. He set a cup in front of each of them, giving a little bow as he did so. When Eliza returned the gesture, her hair fell down around her face. She felt a hand reach over and tuck it back behind her ear.

“It was gonna get in your cup,” Andy explained.

Warning lights went off in her head. She might even have said something—a brief reminder of their definitive platonic status—only at that moment, she got a whiff of the steam off the tea and nearly gagged.

“What the hell is this?”

Chad smiled. “A very weak brew of hallucinogenic mushrooms.”

That was all the recommendation Andy needed. He tossed back his portion, fought to keep it down, then grimaced. “Yum.”

“Is this safe?” Anita asked.

“Completely,” Chad said. “At this level of dilution, it may have no effect at all. But hopefully, it'll cause you to see things in a slightly different light. Of course, you're free to abstain.”

Eliza looked down into her cup. The liquid was reddish brown, the same color as English Breakfast. This was crazy. They'd just come into a total stranger's house, and now they were going to get high with him? Hadn't she watched about a million videos in elementary school whose only purpose had been to convince her not to do exactly this?

Eliza saw Anita hesitate at the rim of her own cup, like a diver suddenly realizing exactly how high up the board was.

“Hey, Anita,” Andy said. “Whatever it is, it's not worth it.”

Anita smiled. “Screw it,” she said, then drank. “Woo! That is foul.”

Eliza had no choice now; she wasn't about to be shown up by Anita Graves, of all people. The concoction tasted like rotten vegetables steeped in mud.

Chad drank last. “It'll be a while before it kicks in,” he said, “but I'll get right to the point. You're looking for a location for this party of yours. You have no money and hardly any ideas. Right so far?”

No one disagreed.

“Now, allow me to tell you a bit about myself. Once upon a time, many lives ago, I worked for a little company called Boeing. I made a lot of money there, before I realized I didn't believe in what we were doing.”

“Building airplanes?” Andy said.

“Defense,” Chad answered, putting air quotes around the word. “Which is actually a polite way of saying ‘offense.' So I quit my job and started wandering. I built a boat and sailed it between Australia and New Zealand. I lived in a yurt in Costa Rica. I studied at a monastery in Tibet. And at the end of it all, I found myself in a strange position—loads of money, and no real need of it. I considered giving it all away and disappearing to some tiny cabin in the woods, but I decided I could do better than that. I wanted to set an example of responsible, community-based living. And that's what I've done.” He uncrossed his legs and stood up. “Let's take a little tour.”

They followed him through the spacious halls of his gigantic house. Most of the many rooms were occupied, and the occupants, each of whom Chad introduced by name, ranged from college-age to nursing-­home-age. All of them were undaunted, if not downright excited, by the prospect of hugging a few strangers.

“How many people live here?” Eliza asked.

“About twenty, usually.”

“And this is what you spent your money on?”

“Actually, living like this is relatively cheap. We grow a lot of our food in a garden plot a couple miles away, and I own the house outright.”

They finished their tour and returned to the tearoom. Chad looked up at the skylight. “It's almost time,” he said. A sliding door opened onto a wooden balcony overlooking the water. They sat down in cushioned deck chairs, facing out toward the lake.

“I'm up at this hour every morning now,” Chad said. “I find the juxtaposition of sunrise and the asteroid so beautiful. Alpha and omega. Beginning and end.”

Eliza looked up. Logically, she knew that the sky was the same as ever, but her perception was shifting. The tiny gradient of blue just visible at the bottom of the mountain range suddenly contained within it the full spectrum of color—pinks and greens and yellows and silvers and the infinite legion of nameless shades in between, all blending together like the watery rainbow of an opal. And now, ever so slowly, the sun began to lift itself over the chalk outline of the Cascades. It was like some sort of exercise, a single quick pull-up, that the heavy sphere did every day purely as a favor to the inhabitants of Earth. That was its purpose, to rise and shine, just as every person it shone down on had a purpose. Eliza felt as if her heart were a prism, refracting that magic light into Andy and Anita and Chad's hearts, into the hearts of everyone who was watching this harlequin sky, and then onward, to every human being and every animal and every object that had ever existed. Even Ardor—a white freckle on the blushing face of the heavens—was deserving of her love, because the asteroid was doing nothing worse than what it was meant to do. Time passed. When the sun was safely pinned to the lapel of the horizon, Chad spoke again.

“The best thing we can give people is a moment of true connection before the end. And I'd like to help you do that. I have friends who specialize in bringing people together in temporary communities. They'd like to create a celebration for the coming of the asteroid. I've also spoken with my old boss, and he's volunteered Boeing Field as a venue. It covers ninety-two acres, roughly one-sixth the area provided at Woodstock.”

“Andy and I want to perform,” Anita said. Her voice was somehow dreamy and resolute at once.

“I'd have to hear you first,” Chad said. “I've got a piano inside.”

“I'm not sure I could find the notes,” Andy said, and giggled.

“You'd be surprised what you can do on shrooms.”

Chad led them back through the house, into a large, low-ceilinged room with a grand piano standing like some proud, sable-skinned animal in the corner. Andy sat down on the bench and launched right into a song.

“I'm not warmed up,” Anita said.

“You're always warmed up, Lady Day.”

The notes of the piano rang out louder and fuller and more present than any music Eliza had ever heard. Anita sang, and her voice was everything Andy had said it would be, full of bite and ache and despair. For a while, Eliza floated along with just the sound, until a few of the lyrics clarified in her conscious mind—something about the number of lovers someone would get in a lifetime, followed by a countdown:
Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one—and you're on your own
. Eliza realized that Andy had written this song for her, for the way she'd started seeing the world in terms of countdowns. He loved her and she didn't love him back. And before the world ended, he'd learn that.

Eliza was crying, at the song and the drug and the sunrise and the inevitable future she'd predicted.

“He'll hate me,” she whispered to no one.

Chad put a warm hand on her shoulder. “Hate is only a temporary failure to perceive our absolute interdependence. It's not real.”

Before she could ask him what he meant, the song had ended. Chad was applauding. “Absolutely wonderful! You're hired. Now your only job is to convince people to come to the party.”

“Eliza can manage that,” Andy said, fixing her with a huge smile. “She's famous now.”

“So it's real then?” Eliza asked. “We're really doing this?”

“I'd like to think so. Of course, no one can say for sure what's going to happen in the next few weeks. We might lose touch.”

“So then how will we know the party's still on?”

Chad shrugged. “You won't. You can't. Just like I can't ever know for certain if Sid will come when I call him.” He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Sid!” After a moment, the beagle sauntered into the room. His attitude wasn't that of a dog responding to a call so much as one who'd coincidentally decided to come of his own volition at just the right moment. He pooled himself on top of Chad's bare feet.