While she sat there, waiting for a reversal, Skylar’s mind floated away, across the country, across the ocean. How different the old world had been! How luxurious. Like her extremely modern marriage to Roark. They would never have bothered with a legal union if not for a shared commitment to avoid the typical Hollywood relationship mistakes. Instead of expecting pure fidelity, Skylar suggested an open sexual relationship with one restriction: No affairs with costars, and nightly phone calls when shooting at a distant and exotic location. Like for instance Reykjavik, Iceland. Because the most dangerous threat she could imagine was not some random sexual encounter but rather Roark in close quarters with another actress for fifteen hours a day, and then being sequestered in the same hotel every night. So it wasn’t a shock when a friend emailed Skylar blurry pictures of Anne Roberts and her husband kissing on the rugged coast of the fjord Hvalfjörður, not when he had failed to call her the three previous nights.
It hurt to know Roark had violated their agreement, but what she could not accept, what angered her still, was how predictably their breakup had unfolded. She guessed the tabloid headlines before they were written, because she’d read them so many times before. And when she finally asked why he slept with Anne (as if it mattered) Roark’s lame answers only angered her more.
It’s time to go our separate ways, he’d said. We’re never in the same place. We’re never together. We’re still so young.
So young? It’s not like you’re under lock and key. You can fuck almost anyone you want.
Maybe that’s not what I want. Maybe I want to be faithful. Maybe I want to give myself to someone.
Just not to me.
I guess not, Roark said.
Send her my love, then. I hope you two become soulmates on the set of Iceman 2.
Whatever, Skylar. You may have the world fooled with this snobby attitude, but I know better. I know why you refuse to love someone.
Refuse to love? I loved you!
You loved the idea of us. You wanted the world to love the idea of us. You wore me like an expensive dress.
Roark—
I can’t be married to someone who doesn’t want to have a child.
Then he had hung up. Or she had hung up. It was hard to remember. She’d knocked back two Lortabs with a glass of wine and had gone to sleep for what seemed like days. Later she flew to New York in a prescription fog and camped in her old room like a teenaged girl. Her mom brought her soup. Her dad sat on the edge of the bed and squeezed her ankles. And by the way her parents were dying. Her lovely parents were dying and now Skylar was in the process of dying and she was never, ever going to hold a baby in her arms. She was never going to inhale her baby’s smell or feel the grasp of her baby’s fingers or feel the bite of her baby’s gums on her breast or—
“Hello,” said a voice.
Skylar looked up and saw a man standing over her, smiling a creepy smile.
“Oh,” she said. “Larry.”
“You must have been deep in thought. I called to you before I walked over here.”
“I was thinking about my parents.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “As bad as it is here, I can’t imagine what Manhattan must be like.”
Skylar didn’t bother to ask how he knew where her parents lived. She could tell from his unpleasant manner that Larry was the kind of guy who enjoyed a running fantasy behind his creepy black eyes, even while he was looking you in the face and carrying on a conversation. At public events these men were always present, a row or two behind the screaming teenaged girls, observing Skylar with a certain pompous removal, as if they were above the adoration that had brought them to see her in the first place. She imagined Larry had saved every copy of Us Weekly he’d ever received in the mail, indexed by date, that he paid for premium digital subscriptions to People.com and TMZ and the Daily Mail, that he towered over Reddit as an expert on all things Skylar Stover or Scarlett Johannsson or whatever famous actress was the object of his current fantasies. His obsession was smeared all over his oily face.
“The whole world is shit,” she said. “Doesn’t matter where you are.”
“What do you mean? Did you guys run out of curry?”
Skylar smiled. Larry’s genuine personality, the jealous and hateful side of him, lay so close to the surface he could hardly contain it.
“We’ve run out of everything,” she said. “We’re going to starve just like you.”
Larry appeared to think about this, as if the obvious outcome might not be so obvious.
“Maybe not.”
“Really? Did the power come back on while I was daydreaming?”
“No,” said Larry. “But I have a friend who knows where all the food is.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“His name is Blaise. If we help him carry weapons, he’ll take us to the warehouse.”
“What warehouse?”
And when he explained the plan to her, Skylar smiled again. Smiled widely.
“So it finally came,” she said.
“What finally came?”
“The next scene in the film. The reversal.”
Larry stared at her for a minute, curiously, and when she imagined how a celebrity-obsessed creep like him would behave when he realized he was trapped inside a genuine Hollywood production, Skylar laughed out loud.
“What are you talking about?” Larry finally asked.
“Does any of this strike you as authentic? Mass extinction by way of supernova? Sounds more like something Thomas might write, don’t you think?”
Larry’s brow furrowed, either in concentration or anger.
“You’re making fun of me, aren’t you?”
“Don’t be so arrogant,” Skylar answered. “Why would everyone in the world be out to get you?”
THIRTY-THREE
When Seth opened his eyes to the slope of Natalie’s naked shoulder, his first thought should have been pleasant. Should have been relief. His wife hadn’t uttered a word in something like two (or three?) days, and then last night, unexpectedly, she had come to him. She asked Seth to make love to her and seemed to enjoy him in a way he hadn’t known in years.
But instead of relief he felt dread. His body resonated with guilt, as if he’d done something terrible. His left side hurt, his tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth, and every cell in his body seemed to have been drained of water.
Gradually, memories began to surface. Like Natalie sitting against the headboard, writing something in the journal she refused to share with him. Seth had wondered what was going through her mind but didn’t want to jeopardize their newfound harmony, so he stared at the flickering candle and didn’t feel harmonious at all. Really, he had wanted to rip the pages from her hands and read them aloud, or maybe dip them into the candle flame and watch them burn.
Seth didn’t believe he would do either of those things, but his memory of the evening was broken, and pieces were missing.
Carefully, so he didn’t wake Natalie, Seth turned over. Looming before him in the morning light was a bottle of whiskey. An open bottle that was at least half gone. Next to the bottle sat a key.
The key.