McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales - Michael Chabon [77]
When I remembered the guy I bought the machine from, though, I wanted to speak to him. He’d seen the static too; that’s what that conversation in his shop had been all about, except I didn’t know it. He realized why I’d come as soon as I walked in. I didn’t even say anything. He just saw it in my face.
“Oh, man,” he said after a little while. “Oh, man. I never even started my novel.” Which I couldn’t believe. I mean, Jesus. What else did this guy need to help him understand that time is running out? He’d seen the end of the fucking world on live TV, and he still hadn’t gotten off his stoned ass. Although maybe he’d figured he wasn’t going to find a publisher in time. And he certainly wasn’t going to get too many readers.
“Maybe we’re both crazy,” I said. “Maybe we’re getting it all wrong.”
“You think network TV would stop for any other reason? Like, to encourage us to get more exercise or something?”
“Maybe the thing just stopped working.”
“Yeah, and all those people were going into the subway with their kids because they couldn’t find any child care. No, we’re fucked, man. I never voted for that bitch, and now she’s killed me. Shit.”
At least you’ve had a life, I wanted to say. I haven’t done anything yet. And that was when I decided to ask Martha out.
OK. That was the weird middle. Now I’m going to give you the happy ending: the story of how I got to sleep with the hottest girl in the Little Berkeley Big Band, even though I’m only fifteen, and even though she doesn’t look like the sort of girl who gives it up for anybody.)
One thing about knowing the world is going to end: It makes you a lot less nervous about the whole dating thing. So that’s a plus. And she made it easy, anyway. We were talking in her dad’s car about movies we’d seen, and movies we wanted to see, and it turned out we both wanted to see this Vin Diesel movie about a guy who can turn himself into like a bacteria anytime he feels like it and hang out in people and kill them if necessary. (Although to tell you the truth, I used to want to see it more than I do now. There are a lot of things I used to want to do more than I do now. Like, I don’t know, buying stuff. It sounds kind of dumb, I guess, but if you see a cool T-shirt, you’re thinking about the future, aren’t you? You’re thinking, Hey, I could wear that to Sarah Steiner’s party. There are so many things connected to the future—school, eating vegetables, cleaning your teeth. . . . In my position, it’d be pretty easy to let things slide.) So it seemed like the logical next step to say, Hey, why don’t we go together?
The movie was OK. And afterward we went to get a pizza, and we talked about what it would be like to be a bacteria, and about the band, and about her school and my school. And then she told me that one of the reasons she liked me was that I seemed sad.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Does that sound dumb?”
“No.” Because a) nothing she says sounds dumb; b) even if it did, it would be dumb to tell her; c) I’m sad. With good reason. So I’m not surprised I look it.
“Most guys our age don’t look sad. They’re always laughing about nothing.”
I laughed—a little—because what she said was so true, and I hadn’t even noticed it before.
“So are you really sad? Or is that just the way your face is?”
“I guess . . . I don’t know. I guess I’m sad sometimes.”
“Me too.”
“Yeah? Why?”
“You first.”
Oh, man. I’ve seen enough movies and soaps to know that the sad guy is supposed to be the quiet, sensitive, poetic one, and I’m not sure that’s me. I wasn’t sad before I knew there was going to be a terrible catastrophe and we’re all in trouble; suddenly, I went from like NBA fan to tortured genius-style dude. I think she’s got the wrong impression. If PJ Rogers, who’s this really really stupid trombonist kid in the orchestra, the kind of jerk whose wittiest joke is a loud fart, had seen what I’d seen, he’d be a tortured genius too.
“There’s some stuff I’m worried about. That’s