She had all three wishes written neatly on a sheet of paper torn out of the notebook, and Richard Wolf scrutinized it a couple times, scratching his ear. “That’s it?” he said at last. “You do realize that I can make anything real. Right? You could create a world of giant snails and tiny people. You could make The Facts of Life the most popular TV show in the world for the next thousand years—which would, incidentally, ensure the survival of the human race, since there would have to be somebody to keep watching The Facts of Life. You could do anything.”
Marisol shook her head. “The only way to make sure we don’t end up back here again is to keep it simple.” And then, before she lost her nerve, she picked up the sheet of paper where she’d written down her three wishes, and she read them aloud.
Everything went cheaply glittery around Marisol, and the panic room reshaped into The Infinite Ristretto, a trendy café that just happened to be roughly the same size and shape as the panic room. The blue-leather walls turned to brown brick, with brass fixtures and posters for the legendary all-nude productions of Mamet’s Oleanna and Marsha Norman’s ’night, Mother.
All around Marisol, friends whose names she’d forgotten were hunched over their laptops, publicly toiling over their confrontational one-woman shows and chamber pieces. Her best friend Julia was in the middle of yelling at her, freckles almost washed out by her reddening face.
“Fuck doctors,” Julia was shouting, loud enough to disrupt the whole room.
“Theatre is a direct intervention. It’s like a cultural ambulance. Actors are like paramedics. Playwrights are surgeons, man.”
Marisol was still wearing Burton’s stained business shirt and sweatpants, but somehow she’d gotten a pair of flip-flops. The green bottle sat on the rickety white table nearby. Queen was playing on the stereo, and the scent of overpriced coffee was like the armpit of God.
Julia’s harangue choked off in the middle, because Marisol was giving her the biggest stage hug in the universe, crying into Julia’s green-streaked hair and thanking all her stars that they were here together. By now, everyone was staring at them, but Marisol didn’t care. Something fluttery and heavy fell out of the waistband of her sweatpants. A notebook.
“I have something amazing to tell you, Jools,” Marisol breathed in Julia’s ear. She wanted to ask if Obama was still president and the Cold War was still over and stuff, but she would find out soon enough and this was more important. “Jools, I wrote a new play. It’s all done. And it’s going to change everything.” Hyperbole was how Marisol and Julia and all their friends communicated. “Do you want to read it?”
“Are you seriously high?” Julia pulled away, then saw the notebook on the floor between their feet. Curiosity took over, and she picked it up and started to read.
Marisol borrowed five bucks and got herself a pour-over while Julia sat, knees in her face, reading the play. Every few minutes, Julia glanced up and said, “Well, okay,” in a grudging tone, as if Marisol might not be past saving after all.
ONE DAY ONLY
TANANARIVE DUE
Tananarive Due is an author, screenwriter, and educator who is a leading voice in black speculative fiction. Her short fiction has appeared in magazines such as The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Lightspeed, and in many anthologies, such as A People’s Future of the United States, all three volumes of The Apocalypse Triptych, and many best-of-the-year volumes. Her first short-story collection, Ghost Summer, won a British Fantasy Award. Due teaches Afrofuturism and Black Horror at UCLA and in the creative writing MFA program at Antioch University Los Angeles. A recipient of the American Book Award and NAACP Image Award, Due is the author/ co-author of twelve novels and a civil-rights memoir, Freedom in the Family. Due frequently collaborates with her husband, Steven Barnes, including on their YA zombie novels Devil’s Wake and Domino Falls. She lives in Southern California with Barnes and their son, Jason. Learn more at tananarivedue.com and @TananariveDue.
A sound like thunder—if thunder were an army—boomed beneath Nayima’s floorboards, and her living room trembled.
Spray lashed the deck outside her glass door. Then the swell of sound retreated across drenched sand below, sucking back the roar as the tide pulled away to marshal its strength.
It was high tide, and a storm might be coming, somewhere beyond the hidden rim of the darkening Pacific she could glimpse through the sheer parted curtains. The ocean swelled beneath her faster than she’d expected, and again the floor tremored. It was like living in a cruise ship, she thought—a ship that never moved or rocked. Rooted.
This apartment was the best place Nayima had ever lived. The best place she ever would live, came the silent correction. Maybe the best place, period, now or ever, for anyone. Two years ago, this beachfront apartment might have cost a couple million dollars. She had found it empty and undisturbed, the key not so cleverly hidden beneath a flower pot beside the door at the top of the wooden beach house steps.
No bodies inside. (Hallelujah!) No rotten food anywhere—or not much, anyway. Maybe the owners had been vegan, because only rice, vegetables, and fruit had gone bad in grocery store packages in the freezer. The fridge had been empty except for a pitcher of water and a six-pack of Corona.
The owners clearly had left Malibu in an orderly fashion. The apartment’s furniture was simple and mostly disposable, any metal near the windows rusting slightly from the salt water air. It must have been a vacation rental, because she’d found a laminated sheet of instructions explaining the electrical wiring, how to work the huge television’s remote, and where to find the towels. Of course, no one in Malibu had electricity or working televisions anymore, but the towels in the linen closet were still there and smelled like that fabric softener with the smiling teddy bear. True hospitality.
The waves crashed the boulders and sea wall beneath the apartment again.
“Jesus!” Karen complained from the bedroom. “How do you sleep with that racket?”
Nayima closed her eyes. The sound of the ocean might be keeping her alive, making her relish her aliveness. “How do you stay awake?” Nayima called back.
Other people’s tastes were a burden. Nayima had invited Karen to move in only two days ago, and already it felt like a mistake. Nayima had spent weeks, sometimes months, craving conversation with another person who would not try to kill or rob her—or report her to the marshals—but after knowing Karen for less than a week, Nayima was tired of her.
Her complaints. Her pessimism.
Her in general.
Nayima asked herself if she would have tried to like Karen more if Karen were a man, or if she herself was a man, but the question felt trite. True, she’d never been in bed with a woman before Karen, but her body liked Karen’s warm skin and gentle touch just fine. Karen’s sudden kiss was the only reason she’d invited her to move in; otherwise, they might have just kept running into each other on the beach from time to time while they fished and looked for crabs.
To her shock, Karen said she’d never had the vaccine. Another NI—Naturally Immune—was something, anyway. Nayima knew she would have died ten times over by now if she hadn’t been immune to the flu, and the same was true of Karen, or probably so for many of the others still finding their way to Malibu. Still, for someone to stride up to you and ask for a kiss was bold, and Nayima had liked the kiss in every way.