Mixtape for the Apocalypse Read online

  “Hey, guys, sorry I’m late,” she cooed. Lucas relaxed behind her, grabbed a new stool for himself, and sat down beside her. “Whatcha talkin’ about?”

  Lucas’s eyes didn’t leave the pert swell of her chest, nicely exposed under her tight camouflage-patterned T-shirt. Boom, boom. She’d put on eyeliner and red lipstick, even. I looked at them both and said, “Nothing you’d be interested in. I don’t feel like rehashing it; I just want to drink.”

  So we drank, and Lise and Lucas talked about Star Wars and the Beastie Boys, and I smiled and nodded at the appropriate pauses. I loved both of those subjects, but tonight, they were unimportant and annoying, the exact same thing that everybody talked about all the time. It was tiresome. I had real feelings, real experiences to talk about.

  At around midnight, Lise and I got a taxi home. I spit on my hands, rubbed them together, and wiped the ink and pencil-lead off my hands onto my jeans. They really needed to be washed. I wasn’t looking at Lise. She was too sexy and evil and I didn’t trust her right then. She smelled delicious, the combination of the smell of the musk shampoo and patchouli lotion, sweat, girl pheromones, twining together into a witch’s brew. “What’s the matter, honeycakes?” she chirped, cheerful and tipsy.

  “Work bullshit,” I mumbled.

  She hugged my arm. “You okay, Bronwynn?”

  “Why do you ask.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “You just seem so down all the time. I mean, I’m used to your moods. I’ve known you for how long? I know you’re basically a gloom-meister . . . but for some reason it has a different quality now. I’m not the only one who’s noticed.”

  “Who else?” I demanded.

  She blinked. “Who? Well, shit, I mean, I dunno. Just folks. You seem mad a lot more these days. It’s just weird. It’s probably my imagination—if anyone’s got a right to be pissed off, it’s you.”

  “Yep,” I agreed, and managed a laugh.

  “Let’s just go home and get high. I just got some really nice herb. It’s happy pot.”

  “There’s no such thing as happy pot. That’s an illusion. Somebody told you it was happy pot, and you smoked it, and afterwards you felt happy. It’s just metaprogramming.”

  She sighed a little and rolled her eyes. “Well, I don’t care how I got that way; goddamn it, I’m happy. I’ve got a gorgeous boyfriend, I’ve got a great stash of weed, I just got paid, and damn it, I have a gorgeous boyfriend.”

  “Who? Tell me who it is, so I can go beat him up.” Miraculously, my head and chest actually did feel lighter. The feel of her soft cheek against my forearm, the warm blast of air from her lungs, the crunchy-silk spikes of her hair—hard to think about how unjust my workplace was with that sensuous treat on my skin. I bent my head down and kissed her forehead.

  “Michael Squire, when are you going to get it through your head that you are a beautiful boy? I mean . . . you think your father’s a good looking fellow, don’t you?”

  “Well, yeah, he was.”

  “You look a lot like him. And your mom, a little bit. You have her mouth. You got the most beautiful features of both of your parents. I think your mother is beautiful. Just because you’re not six-four and don’t have, like, massive greasy Conan muscles doesn’t mean you’re not cute. Think Syd Barrett. Think Mick Jagger.”

  “Oh, God, no.”

  “The young Mick Jagger.”

  30 September, ten to midnight

  At Squirrell. Taking a break from sketching. My heart’s not in it. I can’t keep myself together.

  Thoughts which have consumed me today:

  1) How much I hate this charade that I still have anything to do with this comic book. How I should just go do something on my own again and start from scratch. How Squirrell and Lucas and Cockblock Kaplan are strangling me and how I’m sick from lack of air. Why am I even still here?

  2) How glad I am that Lise doesn’t shave. There is little that’s as pleasurable as rubbing my freshly shaved face (what I do shave, anyway—only the goatee and the neck and fine hair on my upper lip and the tufts that would be sideburns if I let them grow) against Lise’s furry armpits and the delicate hairs on her legs. She thinks it’s pervy, which turns her on. I want her. I should go home and make her horny.

  3) My most peculiar childhood.

  I don’t consciously remember my father’s death—I was far too young, and no human being is very good at remembering anything to do with intense physical pain—but it certainly affected me. My mom has told me about it enough times that it’s taken on a holographic quality. But I do remember the emergency room. It’s almost worse than really remembering it because it’s only fragments interspersed with memories of being in so much pain and seeing my daddy so scared. And that’s all I really remember of him.

  My favorite things when I was a child were Archie comics, the largest possible boxes of crayons, yo-yos, and the medical section at the public library. I rapidly got sick of children’s books (though I never did get over my obsession with Winnie the Pooh) and found all kinds of amusement in the 610s. My mother never really knew what I was reading—I only checked out and brought home books on art, Greek myth storybooks, and the like—and she encouraged me to go to the library as much as possible so she could have some time to herself (and her semi-sleazy boyfriends). When I was seven I came down with a crippling headache and a high fever; they rushed me to the hospital and administered tests, sure that I had meningitis. They found nothing the matter with me—I’d just been reading about meningitis and other related inflammations of membranes. After that I had a different hysterical illness about once a week, once every two weeks—I could wrench myself into fever in a matter of minutes; I broke out in spots, hives, rashes; my liver hurt, my spleen hurt, my heartbeat was irregular; I had false tonsillitis so many times my mother finally humored me, and let me have them surgically removed. After that, the hysterical sicknesses disappeared like so much bed-wetting.

  I have to commend my mother; she dealt with all of this with aplomb, grace, and humor; I guess my dad prepared her for that. If I had a dollar for every time I got beat up in elementary, junior high, and high school, I’d be a wealthy man. I never bothered to bring lunch or lunch money; Mom just paid for all my school lunches at the beginning of the year, or I didn’t bother to eat. She would, without comment, ice my black eyes, put cool washcloths on my Indian burns, wipe the blood off my chin, and then we’d go play skee-ball, walk along the train tracks, or see a film or an art exhibition. For a long time I just accepted my place in the world, in the pecking order, as the Victim. It’s not that I wouldn’t fight back—I always would. I would initiate fights, sometimes, indiscriminately, with boys, girls, the bullies, and the meek. I always wanted to know people’s breaking points. It became something of an obsession when I was in eighth grade and nearly got me expelled, especially since I tried to bait the school principal into hitting me. He got a clue and instead skipped me a grade up to high school, thus complimenting my intellect and getting me the hell away from him at the same time. A superior tactitian, that Mr. Wise.

  I can’t sit still anymore.

  On the evening of October first, after bailing out of Link-Up, I got coffee before heading to Squirrell. I wanted to be able to work like crazy that night, come up with some new ideas, maybe some new sketches to show to Cock Kaplan. I wasn’t sleeping much anyway; I figured I might as well work. Maybe I could get a new book at the only publisher I’d ever known. It was the devil I knew.

  The day had been chilly, the first really chilly day of fall, and I’d started wearing a ratty old cardigan over my worn T-shirts and jeans. Any pretenses of a “corporate image” were completely out the window—while all the other support techs at Link-Up had started wearing clean clothes, no logos, (sometimes the women even wore pantyhose), I clipped my overgrown hair out of my eyes with cheap plastic barrettes, and washed my clothes only when Lise did laundry. My hands were black and blue with ink stains. I liked it; my hands looked ancient and gn
arled, as if I had stolen them from someone three times my age.

  The Squirrell reception area was quiet and deserted. “Hello?” I called, going through the hallway to the studios and offices in the back. “Hey, Lucas?”

  “Squire, come in here a minute,” came Cock Kaplan’s voice, disembodied, in the hall.

  He and Lucas Listener were sitting in his office with shots of brown liquor in front of them on Kaplan’s black lacquer desk. I always hated Kaplan’s office—that kind of studied yuppie hipness, big framed Lichtenstein print, black lacquer, brushed steel.

  “Sit down, Squire,” said Kaplan. He edged a shot glass at me with his little finger and filled it brimful of Johnny Walker Red.

  1 October, some fucking time

  So that’s it. That’s just it. All there is to it.

  My lifelong dream, crushed out as casually as I put out a cigarette. It’s as if my degree, my experience, my refreshing line drawings, were just a joke, a lure to get me to lay my head upon the chopping block.

  The worst part was that shitty little smile on Lucas’s face while Kaplan dropped his bomb. I can’t believe that shit. He knew all along. Why would he lie? Trying to protect my feelings? Bullshit. He’s just the same as everyone else. He just wanted to soften me up so that Cockblocker could plunge the spear in deeper. I could just grind that smile off his face.

  Whatever. I told them to shove it. Shove the whole publishing empire up their anal trenches. I might have knocked something over, or maybe just fantasized about it. Guess I’ll just walk now. Wired on coffee and rage. Not a fucking chance of getting to sleep this night. I don’t even want to sleep. I don’t want comfort. I could go home and snuggle with Lise, get stoned, blah blah blah. It would just be postponing the inevitable, wasting my life some more, as if my life is a valuable resource in the first place. No, it’s a joke, a bad one, and nobody’s laughing.

  I’m actually scared. Scared enough to admit it.

  That night, I walked home from Squirrell, listening to tapes on my Walkman. Only three miles or so, less than two hours, what with waiting for red lights. It wasn’t as long as I wanted it to be, but it wore me out anyway. I cut through the cemetery and sang out loud as I went through, and by the time I got to the front gate, I felt better. Lise was already asleep when I got in. I didn’t wake her. I drank what was left in the bottle of gin, lay beside her, and drifted off for an hour or two until it was time to get up and go to the other job.

  I walked there, too. I didn’t want to make any contact with another human being, even accidentally. I didn’t want anybody to smile at me. I could pretend to be a singing ghost, tramping along the side streets and train tracks and bridges, an invisible chorus of English rhymes.

  I should have been incredibly early—the sun was coming up on my walk—but I was four minutes late by the clock in the reception area. Hours had just slid by without my notice, and I was late again.

  I went and sat at my desk, clocked in electronically, and stared at the call queue on my phone’s readout. Five. I had to check my email first, though, just in case.

  “Squire, could I see you in the hall for a minute?”

  I looked over my shoulder at Beth. I didn’t even have my headset on. I was staring blankly at an open e-mail window on my computer monitor, an e-mail from Juba, and I had no idea how long I’d been sitting there. “Sure,” I said, and followed her out of the room into the hallway. She didn’t have an office, just a cubicle with the rest of us. But she wasn’t “the rest of us.” She was middle management.

  “You’ve barely even pretended to work today,” she sighed. She folded her arms and looked at the floor.

  I looked at the floor too. It was pretty boring. “Sorry,” was all I could think of.

  “What do you mean, ‘sorry’? Squire. For Christ’s sake, is there something you need to tell me? I mean, geez, what’s the matter?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “For one thing, there’s not a dress code per se, but it is supposed to be ‘business casual.’ That means no jeans. And if they are, at least you can have them be clean.”

  “They’re the cleanest pair I have right now,” I said. “At least they’re black, right?”

  “You’ve gotten paid since you moved. You could have bought some clothes.”

  “With what time? I have—I had—a whole ‘nother job.” I winced. “Besides, I don’t really like shopping. It makes me uncomfortable. Besides, what’s it matter what I look like? I’m on the phone. My voice sounds perfectly professional.”

  She made an astonished, impatient sound. “Look. I’m not your mom; I’m not your therapist. I’m barely even your acquaintance anymore. But didn’t we used to kind of be friends? At least a little? I don’t want to come down hard on you, but I’m having a really hard time covering for your fuckups. Everyone else in the department is taking the calls that you won’t do. You don’t even pretend to care half the time. This is a business, Squire, not a preschool.”

  “I’m pretty sure I saw Dave eating paste earlier,” I quipped.

  “This isn’t funny,” Beth sighed. “Shape up. Now. Or else. This is a genuine chance to turn this shit around before it’s too late. Take some fucking calls.”

  “Okay,” I said. I wanted her off my back. Her voice made my head throb. “I have to go to the bathroom; is that all right?”

  “You’re not on drugs, are you? I mean, you can tell me if you are. We can get you some help—”

  “No,” I replied, waving as I walked down the hall to the men’s room. “I don’t take drugs anymore. They affect my clarity.”

  I went into a stall, enjoying the quiet, tracing the rough grout lining the wall’s tiles with my fingertip, listening to the soothing music of the water pumps. When I got back to my desk, an hour had gone by. Nobody said anything. I put my headset on and grabbed a new pad of Post-Its. I don’t remember any of the rest of that day or the next one; I didn’t write anything down.

  3 October, 2:18 a.m.

  I can’t sleep at night. C’mon and hold me tight.

  It was a very bad evening. I must keep telling myself that it’s a whole other day; it’s now the third of the month; all that is behind me. I’ve been sick. I got the night out of my body, and replaced the taste of bile in my mouth with the chalky purity of toothpaste. Lise stood over me while I was being sick and rubbed my back, gently, repetitively. I sent her to bed, telling her I needed a shower. I took the shower and I feel a little better. No, that’s a lie. I’ll never feel better.

  Lise and I went to Gentson’s for some brandy. She tried to get me stoned first, but I didn’t really feel like it. I’m glad now that I didn’t. Lise looked wonderful. The black satin dress that makes her look like a jazz-age tap dancer; hair slicked and curling at the neck and temples; bright red lipstick. I wore some of her clothes—a black silk shirt and red pants of some kind. We looked pretty groovy and I managed to forget, for an hour or so, about what happened at work today with Beth, about Squirrell, about the ridiculous travesty my life has become. We sat at the bar and listened to piano music and felt ourselves very tasteful, elegant, and happy.

  Then Lucas Listener and his girlfriend came in. She’s a real looker in the classic sense—tall like Lucas, thin, graceful, with a horsey smile and blonde hair full of bounce, body, and sheen. I felt Lise get tense, and her smile calcified on her face. She turned back to the bar.

  I couldn’t take my eyes away, though. I stared the bastard down. He walked up to me and said “Hey, Squire. This is my girlfriend, Amanda.” Of all the things she could be named, her name is Amanda. I said “Let me guess; you’re twenty-three,” and she squeaked something in the affirmative. Lise was muttering at me to stop right there, but I just couldn’t. I felt a rush like I was on a rollercoaster. I finished my glass of bourbon and stood up to Lucas and told him to his face what a sneaky bastard I thought he was. So he punched me in the mouth. It wasn’t very hard, I realize now—he could probably have pulped my face with those hands
of his, huge and stone-hard from all his drawing. It still hurt, though. Startling. I didn’t fall down. I just shook my head and then calmly sat on the bar stool again. I ordered another glass of brandy. They wouldn’t give it to me; in fact, they kicked Lise and me out. So we stood in the cold, waiting for a bus for half an hour, shivering in our cute going-out clothes. Lise didn’t talk to me while we were waiting, but on the bus, she put her arms around me and kissed my hair. She told me she loved me. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. I can’t now. I want to do something. can’t even do nothing. I’m just hanging on, wondering when it’s time to scream.

  6 October, 11:14 a.m.

  To the logical limit.

  So that’s it, part deux.

  I’m free.

  And I have to admit, it feels good. At last I can finally do what I fucking want. Right now I’m on the bus going back home, where I am going to get high and go back to sleep.

  I got the shaft from Link-Up. Oh, I guess I should be heading to the unemployment office, but guess what? I have plenty of time!!! And it’s not like I’m going to get unemployment. Fired with cause. Really serious cause. Oh, fuck the world.

  Trace did it himself. I came in, on time, jeans freshly washed, hair slicked back with gel from my eyes, ready to get to work. Slept last night and everything, even if it took the last six of the PMs in the bottle. My desk was cleared, all my stuff in a box (mug, pens, postcards, Rubik’s Cube) on top. The Post-It gallery was just gone. I stood there staring at it, and then Trace emerged from the hall and said, “Squire. My office. Now.”

  Cold, cold water all over me, I could feel it soaking in. Adrenaline. My brain becoming sharp.

  He made me sit down, and told me flatly that I was immediately “terminated” (I envisioned an enraged Schwarznegger pumping me full of lead) and that I was to take my stuff and leave the premises immediately. He slapped a paycheck envelope on the desk. “What’s the cause, if there is one?” I asked reasonably, downright pleasantly.