“I told you,” she says. “Don’t you worry about him for now.” She lies down upon the bed.
He pours himself some wine. He asks whether she wants. She doesn’t, no, not any more.
She takes off her clothes, it doesn’t take her long, she is ready. He takes his off too. Seeing his naked body for the first time in ages, she still feels a rush of the over-familiar. There’s nothing new to be gleaned here. Well, she thinks, that’s Max’s genes right there.
He says, “I’ve missed you. Look. I wasn’t prepared. I haven’t brought any protection? Do you have any protection?”
“Oh, come on, Tom,” she says. “You think I can still get pregnant at my age?”
“I don’t know,” he says.
“I’m still on the pill. Of course I’m still on the pill. Hurry up, and get inside me. I’ve missed you so much.”
He’s on top of her, he’s excited, it doesn’t take long.
He rolls off her. “Thank you,” he says.
“That’s perfectly all right.”
“I love you.”
They lie there for a bit. She wonders, if she says nothing at all, whether that will make him get up sooner. She starts to count the seconds go by in her head. It’s the like the Drowning Game. How long till Tom gives up and breaks to the surface?
He gets up. He drains his glass of wine. She watches him, he’s so sweaty and limp. “Listen,” he says. “Listen.” She raises her eyebrows, just to show that she’s listening. “That was… I don’t know what that was. But I should tell you. I’m with someone. It’s early days, but I like her.” So, the moustache was for a girl, what funny taste she must have. “And I don’t know. I mean, is this just a thing? Or is this something?”
It’s almost amusing. She says, “It’s just a thing, Tom.”
“Right. Because it doesn’t have to be.”
“No.”
“I mean, I’d break up with her. If you’d like.”
“No,” she says. “That really won’t be necessary.”
“Right,” he says. “Right.” And he puts on his clothes.
She actually feels sorry for him. Up to the point where, now dressed, he stoops over her awkwardly, and tries to give her a kiss. She turns her head away.
“I’ll go and find Max then,” he says. “He’s in his room? I’ll go and find him.” And he tries to give her a sort of smile, and then thinks better of it, and he leaves.
Now he’s gone, at last he’s gone. She can put up her hand to her belly, she can stroke it and nuzzle it, and she likes to think how soon—please God, soon—the belly might grow, it’ll warp and distend. She gives her body a playful little shake, and she fancies she can hear new life sloshing around inside. And she listens out to hear what sort of scream will come from Max’s bedroom.
The Long Fade Into Evening
Steve Rasnic Tem
Simon had nowhere to live until his cousin offered him a house in a run-down development on the outer edge of town. All he had to do was stay there to discourage vandalism. The development was almost empty, scheduled to be torn down.
“You’re not suicidal are you?” Will asked as he handed him the key.
“Angela left me years ago. I haven’t been successful in years. Why would I kill myself now?”
Will, pretending to shuffle papers, didn’t look up. “I know it’s been rough, and you’re not getting any younger. It’s just that a few of the families that are left have kids, teenagers. I’d hate for them to find…”
“Old fellows like me, we don’t have the energy to kill ourselves. We usually just fade away.”
Will stared at him. “I see. Do you need directions?”
“I lived in the neighborhood when I was a kid, in one of those old Victorians before they built this awful thing. Now here it’s a wreck as well.”
“I’ve read about that. There was some trouble wasn’t there? Overcrowding, and some violence? Something about a fire?”
“What didn’t burn they bulldozed. Everybody scattered, went their ways. Now here I am with nowhere else to go.”
“I’ve arranged for someone to drop off a sleeping bag and supplies. I’m working on a bed.”
“I’m deeply grateful,” Simon replied. And he was. He’d just never understood who decided what goes, what stays, and where people got to live.
“By the way, we’ve had a problem with cats. Feral cats, running all over the place. Best not let one of them scratch you.”
Simon examined the keys as if reconsidering. “I hate cats,” he said.
On moving day he rushed to finish his final shift at the corner store and get his belongings—everything stuffed into a cardboard suitcase and a patched laundry bag—from behind the counter to the bus stop. Most of the shelves were empty. As ordered, he kept rearranging what remained from the “Going out of Business” sale for more appeal, while restlessly waiting for his replacement to arrive. Julie, always out on a date with no consideration for anyone. By now he’d lost everything of importance, but at least Simon held on to his manners.
A pack of twittering girls burst through the door and raced each other for the drink machine. He used to tell the teens to slow down but the way even the young ones would turn on you these days he no longer dared. Further evidence of how the new world was eating the old. “The girls are worse than the boys,” someone he worked with once said. The sexism embarrassed him, but he worried it might be true. All he needed was a broken arm, or a deep scratch from a dirty fingernail.
He watched as they poked their phones, took pictures, and mixed different sodas at random into a single cup. Apparently they would share. They all appeared to have too many fingers, different colors on too many nails. The new world was raising them strange. Perhaps if he had a child of his own… but Angela always feared he would drop or lose it.
One caught him staring and flashed her tiny tit. The others screamed madly. He blushed and turned away, looking down at his things. He prayed the gigglers would be gone before he tried to haul it all to the bus stop. He hated when he had to pretend to ignore their catcalls.
His possible future caretakers ran out the door without paying. He was relieved not to have to ring them up. Julie came in after, smiling knowingly and smelling of booze. Simon gathered up his life and stumbled for the door.
The bus contained a few more broken types like him, an older woman in a nice dress, and a figure bundled in its oversized coat. Its head, wrapped in a scarf and topped with a watchman’s cap, appeared too small for its torso. Its eyes were buried. The bus sped down the block passing the girls with their surplus of fingers, their writhing clump of shadow hungry and hideous on the greasy brick wall.
The bus struggled up the hill past bars spilling their last patrons, who hailed and cursed the driver who was too wise to stop. At the peak where the lanes grew wider he sped past abandoned storefronts, lots jammed with ancient equipment, the iron skeletons of dead buildings, the rows of silent warehouses with rusted doors flush to the road. There was the rare bus stop, the random passenger standing with one arm waving, but the driver never slowed. Simon believed this part of the city need never exist.
The route would not take Simon all the way to the development. The bus dropped him at a darkened stop to stand beside a crumbling, heavily graffitied bench. Some words were almost recognizable, but lay obscured beneath mindless exhortation. The ground rose steeply before him, and somewhere beyond that rise of shadow the aging development began. Smoky grayness drifted down from the low clouds and seeped out from the overgrown embankment. The hill’s silhouette was deceptive, suggesting primeval forest more than cultivated landscape.