NOIR, LA GARE.
By Lindz McLeod.
After the news broke this morning, people went crazy. I’d found Eli in the store room at work, surrounded by boxes of paper towels and coffee filters. Around the barrel of the gun in his mouth he said a polite hello, but his eyes were wide and rabbit-wild. I’d told him he didn’t have to do that because we were all going to die anyway when the meteor hit, and when his finger inched towards the trigger I knew I’d said the wrong thing again, so I blurted out the only thing I could think of.
“I like that your desk is always clean and you never get mad at the photocopier when it runs out of ink.”
The barrel sagged, a thin line of saliva still linking it to his lips. “The photocopier isn’t vindictive, Harrison,” he said. “It’s not doing it on purpose. It’s just a machine.”
“Like the meteor.”
“Huh. I never thought of it that way.” His eyes were still rabbity, but maybe less like a rabbit looking at a fox, and more like a rabbit looking at another rabbit. “Why didn’t you leave?”
“It’s not 5pm yet.”
Somehow, he found that hysterical. He laughed until he cried, bent double, hands on his knees. At some point, the laughs turned into sobs. I patted him on the back and offered paper towels until he’d dried up.
He straightened his tie. “Come home with me. I give you full permission to leave early today.”
I’d never left work before my allotted time before. The wide streets were full of screaming people and bodies. We did our best to make interesting and diverting small talk around the corpses, although I struggled to hear him over the sharp shattering of shop windows. We stood for a moment on the corner of Valor and Brown, watching a street preacher crow about God’s wrath, before Eli tossed him some pocket change and we moved on. Smoke and burning metal permeated the air. The streets were browned with blood, as if they’d been sautéed too long.
Eli lived near the train station on the east side of town, which had always been my favourite. Regular signs hung high above, labelled with neat little black arrows to assist you to your destination. The shops were all labelled clearly; Baker, Bookshop, Beverages, with no brand names. Even the benches had letters on the legs which spelled out b-e-n-c-h and every seat had a big sticker on it saying sit here. At each platform, an electronic sign blinked with a number, the correct time—set to the clock at Greenwich, of course—and the details of each arriving or departing train. I understood the train station. I felt comfortable in the train station. I didn’t know how I felt in Eli's apartment.
Nothing here was labelled. He had canvas frames on his wall—scribbled colours zigzagging this way and that—and no artist name to accompany it, no little plaques with educational information. I thought it was a shame nobody had cared enough to develop an app to identify art. It would have been helpful to create jumping-off points for interesting and diverting small talk. Now, nobody would ever have the chance to do so—although in six hours there would be no more art, so the problem would be neatly, if not satisfactorily, solved.
Eli had a comfortable-looking blue couch, but I didn’t know whether I was allowed to sit on it. After he took my coat, he disappeared into the kitchen and I stood at the fringed edge of the rug, uncertain about direction. There were no neat black arrows arrows here.
“You can sit down,” he called.
I hesitated. He’d said you can, not please do, so we’d both agreed I had the ability to sit down. Either way, I wasn’t sure yet whether I should. I hadn’t had time to research the protocol for these kinds of social occasions. Perhaps the host should be seated first.
“Wine?” he asked, popping his head around the door, and I nodded, because yes, wine existed.
He disappeared again. I was so far out of my depth that I might as well have been doggy-paddling over the Mariana Trench, which is the deepest oceanic trench on Earth and is also crescent-shaped. I wondered if that qualified as interesting and diverting small talk. I slid one foot across the teal rug and wondered if it really was teal or whether it was maybe aquamarine and the lighting simply wasn’t optimal to identify the shade, and whether Eli had a paint chart handy so I could check the precise colour match. It might have made me feel better, being able to ascertain whether it was really teal, confirming whether wine was really wine, knowing whether or not this was, in fact, a date at the end of the world.
He brought back two high-stemmed glasses and a bottle. Over the pleasant glug-glug-glug of the wine, a man screamed high and long in the street below,. The sound was cut off by a wet thud. A woman laughed. Further away, several dogs barked, presumably holding interesting and diverting small talk. “I could put some music on, if you like?” He handed me a glass.
“I don’t mind this. I think we need to face the truth, even if it hurts.” He didn’t reply, but his fingers brushed mine. Our hands interlaced. “Did you know that if you put Mount Everest in the Mariana Trench, the peak would still be over 2 kilometres below the surface of the sea?”
“Is that so?” His lips were stained red.
“That’s over 1.2 miles.” I could see my own reflection in his dilated pupils.
“If we were in the Mariana Trench right now, do you think we’d still die when the meteor hits?”
A low rumble over our heads signalled the descent. I gripped his hand harder.
He kissed me anyway.
Lindz McLeod is a queer, working-class, Scottish writer who dabbles in the surreal. Her prose has been published by the New Guard, Cossmass Infinities, and Wrongdoing Magazine. She is a member of the SFWA and is represented by Headwater Literary Management.