MIDNIGHT
By Midnight in Hawaii, just about everyone on Earth had died. Any survivors on the East Coast would have failed to see
dawn approach. Storms of
state-sized meteors crashed into our planet, the first few plummeting into the
Pacific and radiating concentric circles of tidal waves larger than
skyscrapers. The final rocks demolished mountain ranges; dust scorched the
skies where light shone never again.
It
could have been nuclear war, the end to all ends, but it wasn’t. It could have
been global warming floods, or a bacterial pandemic, or societal collapse
following the national debt, but it wasn’t. It was meteors.
Researchers
from Chile, Colorado, Switzerland all teleconferenced into the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii. There the first meteors were spotted, and soon enough
the scientists concurred that the cloud of rocks were on a trajectory toward
Earth. They sent out a unified press release to world leaders, then most of
them promptly told their boss to go fuck themselves.
The
president did nothing. It was 2am EST when he heard. He asked his aides if
impact was certain, and it was, so he went back to bed.
For
all the military there was no assurance of force nor direction from the entire
hierarchy of commanding officers. All
their protocols, drills, practiced raids, evacuations, emergency biochemical
procedures proved useless. General
Arnold Wolfe was at home by the fireplace, reading to his children from a
storybook.
American
military bases were eased open in South Korea, Iraq, and Panama. Locals were
invited to share the soldiers’ excess provisions for the first time in decades. Their supplies were refitted to support
a pan-national end of the world celebration. Their satellite radio connections
were used top play ACDC.
Various
car fires had already been started and quelled in downtown Honolulu. Auburn
streetlights lit roads browned by blood. Gunplay scattered in the alleyways and
the streets and the suburbs all-alike. Few children, orphaned or otherwise,
were out, and the front glass windows of nearly every bar had been shattered.
Mark
Hoffman died alone in his bathtub, almost ready.
Kai
Longman, he died too, at the top of Puʻukeahiakahoe Mountain, when a butterfly
landed on his thigh.
Those
two humans had met exactly once before the end of the world. Earlier that day
Kai’s hipbone cracked the windshield of Hoffman’s BTC Bentley Continental. Hoffman
could afford the car because he worked for Globosyn, Inc, an incredibly
profitable and morally ambiguous energy company. Very many knew that Globosyn
was one of the wealthiest corporations in America, and very few knew that the
reason for this was that it reported profits off of next year’s projected
earnings as fact; it fictionalized charities and subsidiaries; and its founders
embezzled roughly a billion dollars since 2008.
Hoffman
was Chief Accountant and in running to become a junior partner for their
Pacific branch. Until that day he had worked tirelessly to maintain and
perpetuate the contrived illusion of Globosyn’s success and profitability for
investors. That day, however, Hoffman came to the realization his work merely
had helped build the highest house of cards ever stacked by man.
Kai
could afford to throw around his body because it was riddled mad with a methamphetamine addiction. He was
already a little woozy from the heroin he had taken earlier, and banked on its
effects blunting the pain of their collision. He watched Hoffman enter the car,
saw the look of despair on his face, and understood intuitively, almost
immediately, the moneymaking potential in a feigned vehicular manslaughter.
Hoffman
cradled Kai, gently guiding him into the passenger seat. He offered to take Kai
to the hospital, which Kai entertained but ended up opting for cash instead. Kai
explained his innocence, and Hoffman his guilt. Then it rained. The two men sat
together in the car for a long, long time.
NINE O’ CLOCK
It is a long,
hard day. The clawfoot bathtub in Hoffman’s top-floor penthouse suite is
running. Its
claws are crafted of smooth Corinthian alabaster, which droops a sculpted
weeping leaf. Steam pampers in
high corners of the 22-foot bathroom mirror. There sits a suicide note, one
page in length, with each side folded neatly across the horizontal. Hot water pours its weight and
exhaustion against the bottom of the tub.
There is also a toaster. All its corners are curved comfortably.
A silver mirror envelops every surface save the bottom and where the slits burn
bread. It costs $89. The toaster
is understood as something Hoffman would never sell. He thinks if there was a fire, he will take it before
exiting. He links its power cord into an outlet beside the bathtub. Soaking his
brown leather Ferragamo shoes and grey Armani suit and tie, he sits in the tub
holding the toaster before him. He
gazes in its reflection at himself indifferently.
Kai clunks up
the final steps of Puʻukeahiakahoe Moutain. Also
known as
Stairway to Heaven, the trail up Puʻukeahiakahoe
leads to a
cement and iron a radio tower that sits on the crust where the mountain peaks.
Its history is in
WWII, when they used the peak to broadcast signals as far as
Tokyo. Its peak is more than a half-mile in height. The vista holds Honolulu
and
Pearl Harbor, as well as the hillsides bubbling with methamphetamines,
trailers of users and chemists and people like Kai, and, as always, the
terrifying ocean beyond. How the
sand stretches out from the beaches impossibly.
Kai
feels funny at the top of the mountain, like his soul is changing colors. He
looks down at the metal steps as his knotted boiled feet bring him to the
zenith. His tan skin is scabbed and dark hair thinned. His tongue flickers in
his mouth where teeth decayed into small nubby squares, yellow and detached. He
is a different man than when he first tried meth as a nineteen-year-old still
living with his mom on The Big Island, six years ago. He looks like he had aged
three decades. No one knows how he has survived this long.
Not
knowing what exactly he expected at the peak, perhaps helicopters and army
personnel evacuating people in suits, or frightened tourists huddling for their
lives, Kai is surprised to find that he is alone. Not even KG, his oldest
friend, is waiting at the top, laughing at him and geeking up for the big show.
He stands at a vantage point where the trees had been felled for the sake of a
breathtaking view, which by Hawaiian standards is exceptionally plain. The city
of Honolulu is squalid and dully lit by tiny windowed buildings and cars.
Houses in the hillside poke light sporadically into the black mountains as tiny
candles in a dying samurai’s den. It all seems distanced and miniscule, like some
child’s elaborate play set. Kai hears the occasional patter of machine guns all
around.
He
turns inward, toward the concrete edifice, and into himself. He faces the
clarity of memory, of childhood hikes along the Hawaiian cliffs, clutching at
something once deep in his heart. A soul composed of more than just the need to
survive. A dignity. A pride. A self. A voice that says No. Not that it matters,
but Kai chooses to never smoke meth again. He knows he will never smoke,
inject, swallow or snort another drug in his life. The earth literally trembles as Kai crouches in the bunker
and prepares for withdrawal. He can
already see the wave.
Hoffman thinks,
“This is it.” Then he realizes he
is hungry. He considers eating, and ultimately decides against it. He remembers
that the bowels evacuate. His toes feel funny in wet leather shoes. He
reconsiders his method—and confirms that the power outage will save money. The
water crashes down, cringing at the corners, twisting itself, faster, cascading
doubly, folding inward, rushing, and outward and upward. The shades of the flat
are drawn. The water rises. The
television, which incessantly ran CNN for six years, has not even been turned
on. The water envelops, takes, then retakes. The man knows not of the outside world. “Everything floods,”
he thinks. “This is how it ends.”
Kai grips the
concrete edifice, his teeth chattering viciously. He grips the rusted iron rails, hugs
them with his arms. All around the island of
O’ahu, people are climbing
mountains, trying to escape. They hear the tidal wave approach, and Kai sees it
crash. Even at that height the tidal wave menaces. Kai’s feet are thrown into
the air as water pours into the bunker and takes control of his body and flips
it upside down and his head scrapes the concrete but the wave does not take
him. Some breath reserved in his lungs, he holds on tighter. The tendons in his
arm rip. Kai does not let go.
As quickly as it came, the water empties out the bunker and splashes
down the mountainside. Kai falls backwards, stumbling and plops against the far
back wall, gasping and coughing. He vomits a half-gallon of saltwater. Slowly lifting his head, gulping at the
air, he slouches over his lifeless arms. In his torn rags all drenched and
blackened by burnt matches and dirt and sewage he looks like some baptized chimpanzee, beaten and incredulous and wide-eyed.
Then it arrives in its simple beauty. One of God’s majestic living
beings dances before him in the moonlight, elegantly floating through the
observation deck. The creature, blue and red and yellow, lands softly on the
space where the man’s pants are torn. The butterfly nuzzles itself against his
hairy thigh. Kai regards it, and in return the butterfly gives him a kiss. Then
the second tsunami hits.
SIX O’CLOCK
Kai
is saying, “King God I know the world is ending but we had a deal!” He swipes
at KG’s backyard with his foot. They stand between blotches of dead brown
grass. KG has a habit of burying whatever failed chemical concoctions. In
between those dirt-torn patches that linger eerily on the grounds like kiddy
pools for orphaned ghosts, the grass blades prick up straight as needles. It is
certainly greener on the other side of the chain-link fence that reads
"CATS KEEP OUT.” A warning to the critters that mistake the smell of meth
for their phantom brothers.
KG says, “Kai, bruddha, what do you
want me to do? There was tweakers on my doorstep minutes after they announced
the meteors. Money’s useless now, they would have torn me apart if I didn’t
give them my whole stack.”
Kai grips the air and holds his fist in
front of KG, who is not so fat as he is wide and intimidating. “I called you KG! I said I had 200 bucks
and you’d wait for me. That’s a—a—oral contract!”
“Chill out, man.”
“No! A deal’s a deal. I don’t care the
circumstances. This is an injustice. YOU are
an injustice!”
“Okay, okay.” KG says. He pulls a cell
phone from the front pocket of his orange XXL Hawaiian shirt. “I’ll call my
guy. But who knows. I mean it’s the fucking apocalypse.” KG tells Kai to wait
inside the trailer, with Veronica.
It rains, outside, briefly for a minute, and then not rains. Always. The
weather betrays dependably.
Inside the trailer reeks of KG’s makeshift laboratory. In
title it belongs to Veronica but KG has defiled both that nineteen-year-old and
her squalid living quarters. Luckily the trailer is near the bottom of Puʻukeahiakahoe, far enough away from
tax-paying residences to dissuade attention. Kai is enveloped into the folds of
a beige leather couch that rots monochromatically with the tooth-decay wallpaper.
Veronica
lies facedown on a dehydrated mattress in the corner. Her
tattooed arm hangs over the side and drips onto the floor. Kai has never seen
her talk but once, when one of KG’s failed experiments in the kitchen and
nearly blew the trailer half to shit.
The girl screamed at him in Vietnamese, but still lets KG use her
trailer to deal out of.
Kai doesn’t trust her, what she does or
does not hear. Maybe she meets with corrupt feds who make her spell out all the
terrible crimes she witnesses Kai and KG get into. Kai always suspects this.
The cops make meticulous notes and she has to suck dick for her freedom.
Always, then it's raining again. The clouds and rainbows hover constantly like
the police are listening like his bones are itching.
Kai
only trusts KG, and does so vaguely. Its their history. The two are shells of
their boyhood friendship, when they first got high at Kai’s house and they
geeked for hours that were suddenly days, boxing and laughing belligerent joy.
The young men had been friends in high school when they started using hard
because, in their words, there was nothing else to do. Since then KG has remained close to Kai
and steadily sold to him as often as humanly possible. Only Kai knows that KG originally stood
for “King God.”
Veronica
slogs herself up from the mattress and looks at Kai. She asks him what he’s
doing there. Kai murmurs and interrupts himself and lies in such a way to
explain he’s waiting for KG. Veronica giggles, and tells Kai to come closer.
She peers into his face and takes his hand, rubbing it over her soft thighs and
waist. He crouches motionless
before her. Her large eyes widen. The nymph bursts into laughter, spewing her
amusement at Kai’s face.
“He’s
fucking you,” she says. “No one came by. KG’s just keeping it all for himself.
And me. And me me me me.” Veronica rolls on her back, giggling and gazing up
into the heavens.
Kai
rises and storms out the trailer. KG begins to say, “I couldn’t get a hold of
him,” but sees the look in Kai’s eyes. Kai slams the screen door. To leave him
with that zombie of a girlfriend? And on today of all days? The bastard.
He knows how badly Kai is itching. How dare he. He won’t get away with this. He
is making an enemy he can’t afford.
KG immediately takes a step back, then
rushes out the backyard into the dense canopy beyond. Kai chases him. This is
on principle. They had a deal.
It’s business. Kai vows to set things straight, to follow KG to the ends
of the earth if that’s what justice took.
Kai quickly loses KG through the brush, and scampers along the forest
lost. He stumbles upon a trailhead leading up the mountain. Stairway to Heaven.
Just one more hit. Up top, there’s where KG has to be going. That’s
where he’d light up for the last time. Up there away from all the stingy tourists
and stuck-up businessmen and advertisements that screamed “NOT EVEN ONCE!” But
once more for KG, and once more for Kai, who is chasing him. Chasing it. Who is
heaven bound, tightening his fists and begins his journey upwards.
Hoffman paces
back and forth across his spacious apartment before concluding he has no family
photo albums. At least, nothing tangible. There’s just some digital photos of
him and his ex-wife from a Christmas party eight years back, but that will be
cleared along with the company’s hard drives. Wasted space.
She
never calls except to ask for money. His son never calls at all. Hoffman weighs
his responsibility for those people who happen to share his blood. He decides
he has given them enough. He moves to the kitchen and pours himself a drink out
of an unopened bottle of fine scotch. He sits down to pen a suicide note. It
reads:
To the Staff of Al’Awaki
Apartments,
I’m sorry. My body is floating in the
bathtub. I didn’t want you to have
to cut down my corpse, or to leave a bloody mess of my brains on the carpet.
If you’re the one finding this note, we
probably do not know each other, even though you’ve been cleaning my apartment
for years. There should be at least four thousand dollars in cash in the second
drawer of my office bureau. Take it. It’s yours. You deserve it.
See to it that my wealth is distributed
amongst the charities of the staff’s choice. If more funds become necessary,
contact Bunny Hodgins with this note. See to it you all take enough money for
your own families as well. Whoever wants the yacht can have it. Keys are on the
kitchen counter.
I’ve determined that my death shall be,
like my life had been, purely economic. If it shuts off the power for my
apartment, keep it off. I don’t want the bill to run up.
I can no longer support the market I’ve
long been a part of. Please, you are my only family, the people I have slept
near all along. Take my things. The Rolex in my bedside is worth $6,500, don’t
let a pawnshop tell you otherwise. Take it, please.
I’m
so sorry.
~Mark
Hoffman
He
finishes his drink and is woozy. He cannot remember the last time he drank. He
stands and strolls to the floor-to-ceiling windows of his suite. The skyline is
the immense playground of high-rises and city lights, his ruined, faulty
kingdom. He remembers all the people he will put out of work. He is getting
ready.
If
he looks down all those stories, he sees the chaos in the street. The people
seem to be going insane. They bear bad news. They are hungry. They have vast
access to drugs and guns and run wild, raping and killing with vigor. Like
everyone is in on it except Hoffman, and nobody does a thing.
But
Hoffman doesn’t peer down into the microcosm of apocalyptic chaos on his
street. Perhaps because he knows not that the meteors are coming and his hours
are numbered. Or perhaps because if he does look down, he fears everything
might look to him as it does normally.
Kai
hears the same gunfire dissimilarly, and yet it is a familiar sound. He
realizes what people are liable to do now, so close to the end. Down below, wherever
he is coming from, is not safe. He knows the people like him looting and
killing on the street in a time of no consequences. He can see it in his mind,
in the streets, on the beaches. On the most beautiful place on earth.
Kai
clanks up mountain’s side, some scraggly dog mad with fleas.
Sauntering and crisscrossing the darkened dirt path he shivers and feels along
the path as nightfall drops warm and starless. His bare feet break blood upon
small rocks and knotted tree roots along the path. He thinks that not so long
ago he had it all: money, drugs, friendship. Long forgotten are the relics of
his family, or else they have burned up in the torch beneath the glass bowl. Or
sold for anything that would make him feel like he did that one first time.
It
rains, again, and Kai stops. He forgets what he is doing; why he is running up
a mountain. All he knows is that it is all very useless. He remembers his
mother, safe and softly aging somewhere peaceful on the Big Island. He looks
around for his only friend, but realizes there’s no possible way KG has come
this far. He reaches into his sweatpants pocket and removes four fifty-dollar
bills. He hopes that KG somehow gets them, and knows that even though they’re
not OK, they’re OK.
He
releases the money into the leeward wind, forgetting and remembering,
continuing his trek upward anew.
THREE O’ CLOCK
The table is as long as history itself. A shining mahogany monolith. The chairs running parallel are accustomed to sitting armies of
executives, ghost investors, hoards of boards of directors; their presence
always felt but never seen. Except by men like Bunny Hodgins, who sits at the
end the boardroom table, with the lights off, waiting for Hoffman.
Bunny
is short and hardy, rarely seen standing up. Thick hair wraps around his
polished bald head like Caesar’s wreath. He taps his pen, reducing once again
in his mind the settlement figure, and scribbles it down on his business card.
The pen shines its golden brilliance in one single ray of sunlight the shaded
windows allow. Bunny is 59, and nostalgic for the days when they hired kids
like Mark Hoffman. The boy just crunches the numbers, but he has a gift at it.
Bunny has figured this meeting would come, but not this late.
Hoffman
opens the door and swipes his hair and quickly sits down at the far end of the
table. “I appreciate you meeting me so quickly.”
Bunny
does not detect sarcasm. “I know,” he says. He lets Hoffman get away with the
whole demonstration. Hoffman sets aside a laptop out and sets up his cell
phone, the newest model available. With it he can project three panels of high
definition graphs. “This came knocking on my door a little after noontime
today,” Hoffman says, “in the form of my most exceptional employee.”
“Okay.”
“A
young guy. Damn smart. Reminds me of myself a little, I mean, he’s sharp. But
you? Me? Him? All of us are in trouble here if we don’t do something. He went
digging when some numbers didn’t add up.”
The
presentation begins. First, the faintest glimmers of doubt of Globosyn’s
legitimacy, from the darkest desks of academia. Anyone who used Hodgins name
anywhere near the noun Enron. He points out how easy it is to reveal nonpersons
running the forged charities and subsidiaries. Then the numbers, and the graphs
barred and running downward red.
Bunny
smiles. He knows Hoffman puts on this jig because you have to give him credit.
The guy’s hoping for junior partner after all, and sure he can read between the
numbers. He just wants to tell Bunny to stop over-screwing the pooch. Slow
down. Isn’t enough enough? He’s liable to testify when this all goes bad, and
he’s too smart to be let loose. Hoffman may be in the right, but Bunny is CEO
because he can sit in a room where both men know he is a fraud, and smile.
Bunny
walks down the table.
“Boss,”
says Hoffman. “There’s a lot of money
missing.” His face pours downward shadowed in the afternoon heat.
Bunny
is sitting right next to him, his suit unbuttoned and relaxed. Somehow he is
both on the table, sitting so his leg dangles like a camp counselor’s, but also
with one foot firmly grounded. He nearly touches Hoffman with his fat fingers.
“You
hungry? Let’s get lunch.”
Kai awakes in
the park. The shadow has moved, he is now toasting in the sun and sweating. A
tabby cat, or mutt breed thereof, is licking his face. He swipes the tabby with
his arm and it flies a clean five feet across the grass. His friend
JC and the
heroin have worn off or are just lingering. Kai consoles a wiry blue vein that
runs up his neck and across his left cheek. He reflects on the day’s
improvement. Better than waking beneath the bridge. Too many damn humans and
cats under
Queen Liliuokalani Freeway. At nights it’s near pitch black. Cats
and humans, not sure who’s eating who.
Kai considers vomiting, and stares a while at the ground. It looks like
it will rain, and it might as well. He stands up, and begins to walk the earth.
The
southern
bluefin tuna is endangered. Between Hoffman’s small glass of water and Bunny’s
German beer and one plate of bluefin tuna sushi rolls, there was hardly any room
on the table. Hoffman sidles his arms to his thighs insecurely. The Japanese
restaurant is near empty. Hoffman’s Bentley and Bunny’s Jaguar rest adjacent in
the parking lot.
Bunny
leans back and pats his stomach. “Mmm,” he says, “go on. You have to eat more.”
Hoffman
has one more sushi roll. He does not stop staring at Bunny.
Bunny
flatters, telling Hoffman what a rising star he is at Globosyn. A natural gift.
He looks down at his plate and tosses his eyebrows when he tells Hoffman to
fire that employee who’s sniffing around too much. “He’s young.” Bunny thinks
out loud. “He’ll bounce back.”
Hoffman
stares blankly at the window.
“Those
numbers you work,” says Bunny, “they must keep growing. And they will. Everyone
has to keep smiling. Good news must flow. This is what our investors chase.
This is what we offer them.”
Hoffman
begins to explain that he can’t fire such a valuable young mind, but Bunny cuts
him off. He explains that whatever
was uncovered, what they both know, may or may not exist, may or may not be provable,
may or may not even be true. “There are those who dwell in doubt,” Bunny says
confidently. Some have faith in the law, Bunny has faith in lawyers.
“This
cannot last,” Hoffman protests, and Bunny gives him that. He gives Globosyn,
say, nine months before the feds got a whiff of the insider trading. And Bunny doesn’t
fear the feds half as much as the press. And he doesn’t fear Hoffman hardly at
all.
“You
are an artist,” says Bunny. “You make
money. It is an act of creation. You should be proud of this, boy. Some people
bus tables. Some clean toilets. They maintain the world we have created for
them. And everyday you come into our building and you help us create money out
of nothing. Out of speculation, rumor, good will, faith.”
Hoffman
wants to leave, but Bunny grips his wrist with a firm clutch. “You have a
family, don’t you?”
“Somewhere,”
Hoffman says.
Bunny
pulls out his business card. On it he writes a number. It has seven zeroes. He
hands the bribe to Hoffman. “Realize
that these are our secrets now, and what it means to hold them. We will have to
fight the truth one day, but when we do, we will do it together.” Bunny lets go
of Hoffman.
Hoffman
looks down at the card.
Bunny
eats another sushi roll. “You will keep your company car, your benefits, all
that. You will take the day off early, of that I’m sure.” He is silent for a moment, not asking
for gratitude, not even asking Hoffman to buy something nice for his ex-wife
and kid. “People,” he says, “tend to do as little as they possible can. Have a
couple off days if you need. Your job has been radically simplified.”
Hoffman
puts the card in his front pocket. He says, “OK,” and leaves alone.
In
the parking lot, Hoffman is trying to convince himself of hope. He tells
himself Bunny and other fat cats will act differently now. He persuades himself
that they get the message. Stepping into his Bentley, he wants to believe they
are not all plagued by the sensation of more.
As Hoffman pulls out of the parking lot, his windshield is broken by the hip of
a homeless man.
Kai thinks:
“
Jackpot!” The guy is clearly loaded, and looks like he’s on the verge of
tears. Kai waddles into the passenger seat, feigning possibly permanent
injuries. He almost feels better,
actually, jostled out a fog of solidarity. The suit keeps apologizing and
talking about driving him to the hospital and Kai just stares at the dashboard.
The
interior is an enormous lounge of leather, colored of clubbed baby seals.
Everything shines. Everything works. Kai takes his time with this one.
He
begins by lying about his name, age, and occupation. He doesn’t lie about being
a local, and hones in out the businessman’s white haole guilt. Then he works
the family angle, talking about his sick mother on the windward side and how
bad her lung is and how it used to be just one lung but now it’s both and the
doctors, well, he says, you know how doctors are, they just want money. He goes
on and on, fabricating his past and present and future, at points so wrapped in
his own story he forgets if the driver is even listening.
All
the while Kai speaks he is smiling pretty at the front of his mind. He is
calculating how long it will take to reach KG, first calling him then riding
the Number 8 Bus and then finally again geeking up on some sweet ice. His story
is heartbreaking and human; he takes immense pleasure in the ruse. Finally
the businessman breaks, and reaches for his wallet.
Kai
is already grinning and thanking the man, who hands him $200 in cash for
injuries. Kai swears he’ll be fine.
The money is folded into his sweatpants pocket and never seen again. Kai
steps out of the car and just can’t help himself. He turns around, smirking,
and leans down to look at the man one last time. He rewards himself with a shred
of honesty, a cherry on top of his unusually successful scheme. Leaning in the
window, he smiles and says, “Seriously, thanks bruddha. Now I’m going to buy
drugs with this.”
As
the radio announces the end of the world, Hoffman is driving around in his 2010
Continental Bentley GTC.
XM radio comes standard, but Hoffman chooses to ignore it, opting to block himself off
from the outside world. He reaches into the center council for a CD. “80s Love
Ballads,” some preassembled mix packaged and distributed and sold for $14.99 by
professionals. Hoffman turns the music up, and weeps.
It starts raining. The car whooshes and
blurs and kicks up grime from the puddles it itself has helped create. There is
no place for either of them, Hoffman or his luxury vehicle, on a beautiful
tropical island in the center of the Pacific Ocean. Hoffman is haole, a white
man, despite however many generations his family had lived in paradise (though
he actually grew up in New England). Block after block he flies above black tar
sizzling and cemented. Paved roads. He passes edifices of colonial history,
drilled deep into the land until the blood of the natives was used up in
painting all those Marriott Hotels.
Havn't there been enough cars on the Mainland? Enough roads that lead to little hamburger joints on the beach?
Enough pollutant skyscrapers, those phallic manifestations of capitalism?
Enough cranes to dig from the ocean enough grains of sand to fill the beaches
and keep the tourists coming? Enough exploitation and homelessness and stark
inequalities? And the drugs? Hoffman's vision blurs.
He crashes into the back of a parked
taxicab, no more than two blocks away from his home. His hood bends into a
perfect isosceles triangle, covering the smoking engine. Hoffman wipes his eyes
and grabs his wallet and steps out to see a fat, dark Hawaiian standing with
his hands on his hips observing the damage. The local taxi driver kicks his
back bumper, which clanks onto the ground without a fight.
"Oh my god," Hoffman says.
"I'm so sorry. I didn't see you. Shit." The driver scans the road
left and right, silently indicating the clear absence of traffic or possible
distractions. He is not so fat but big, his heavy arms inscribed with tribal
tattoos. Save for the bumper the cab is not too damaged. The man emits a
resigned sigh, turns, and re-enters his cab.
Hoffman rushes to his window, tripping
over himself and his apologies. "Really, it was completely my fault. Let
me-- I have a great insurance policy-- you'll probably get a brand new cab--I
am so sorry."
But the driver just looks straight
ahead. Finally he regards Hoffman. "You need a ride now?"
Hoffman stops talking, and requires the
driver to repeat his question once more. "Um, no" Hoffman says.
"I'm actually just two blocks away from my home." The driver shrugs
his eyebrows, and puts the car into gear. "Wait, wait, wait, what are you
doing?" says Hoffman. He grips the roof as if to keep the car in place.
"Let me at least give you some cash for the bumper. I feel awful about
this. Can't be more than a couple hundred, here."
The driver slams the cab into park and
glares at the haole. "Stop apologizing. What are you doing? Get away from
my cab."
Hoffman steps back.
"If you do not want a ride then
fine. But this is mine, my job. I love to drive. Do not try to keep me from
that."
"OK. OK." says Hoffman. He takes
his hand off the cab but keeps the other hand extended out. "Here."
He shakes some twenty-dollar bills in the driver's face, almost pleading.
The driver sighs and looks at the money. "You.....You
haven’t heard, have you? You don't even know what that means now, do you?"
he says. The rain clears up, as suddenly as it came. The taxicab leaves Hoffman
in the sinking humidity. It drives further into the night, seeking pedestrians
with its vacancy light on. He’s right, Hoffman thinks. He stands in the street
holding the cash, not knowing what it is for.
On the bus Kai
bounces up and down like he when was a little kid back in school. He is that
giddy. The sun’s mothering rays draw
themselves out of the way and hide behind a mountain. Kai gazes from the back
of the bus, whose lights turn on as
dusk creeps forward. The bus rises and falls
through the mountains on its long drive to the windward side of the island. The
cabin lights of the bus are soft yellow and Kai feels again and again his
sweatpants pockets. He hasn’t even
spent money on food. He is too hungry.
So now it rains, in his throat and
shriveling fingers, but not for long. Soon KG, his good friend, his best
brudda, will spark his wire, get him out of the gate. Hell, Kai thinks, I’ll
probably buy out his whole stash. KG always takes care of him, and KG always takes
him back. No matter if they have had troubles in their past, it wouldn’t be
like that today. There was just too much money involved, and Kai is in a
position to barter. Kai likes that idea, likes the power behind negotiation.
Kai likes to dream and hope and work.
Just like them, he thinks, scanning the civilians in the other rows. The nurse
that smokes. The drunk priest. The lazy schoolteacher. Hard workers like
myself, Kai thinks. He is the exception that proves the rule, he thinks. When
he was a kid he loved riding the school bus not just for the images passing by
the window, but for the unity of souls on its journey. They are all being taken
along through the mountain and its ever-darkening passages. They whisper, and
begin to shout about apocalyptic nothings. Kai leans back, content. The passengers
turn into a chorus of worry, but he knows that nothing, no words ever spoken by
a man, could ever rip those varying creeds apart.
NOON
By noon the
last day on Earth, everything will feel the same.
There
will lighters beneath the glass spheres. Thumbs will press upon syringes. The
numbers will be pushed into keyboards, stitched into their dependent computer
screens. All material things will collide, mashing and punching and churning
lies out of antimatter.
Through it all the wallpaper in
Veronica’s trailer will crumble. The ties in Hoffman’s closet will
wrinkle. The projected profits will continue to grow. There will be the one who thinks success equals progress.
The one that mistakes friends for assets. The one who wakes beneath the bypass
and sniffs the Hawaiian air, and will scheme.
Mark
Hoffman will have his second coffee. He will sit at his desk and work hard and
be well rewarded for it. He will glance at the framed picture of his son that sits
on his desk. The boy will turn 13 next month. He will reflect on what he gives his son: a role model, a bar
set high, and a financial safety net. He will look proudly at the boy, seeing
himself in his face.
He
will suspect the bubble bursting. He will dread the day when someone smarter
than him walks in the office and announces that it all must eventually turn to
shit. He will nod, pretending not to know the true extent of fraud. He will
move to the window. He will gaze and he will consider and he will remain proud
of his contribution to his company, country, and century. He will reflect on
his species’ bold magnitude, what they have brought to that island rock,
surrounded by thousands of miles of ocean. But while things are good, he will relish his spacious
office alone. He will lock the door and move to his desk. He will unbuckle his
trousers and let his pants fall to the floor. He will turn away the picture of
his son, for the sake of humanity.
He
will sit proudly in the top floor of Globosyn, Inc and Kai Longman will be down
below in its shadow.
He
will do whatever it takes to get the money to get high. He will rob and hurt.
He will lie almost constantly. He will walk hundreds of thousands of miles,
cross deserts, fight holy wars, mercilessly force oil into the throats of his
enemies.
He
will walk down to Waikiki and meet his friend JC and pay $20 for a capsule of
heroin and take it to the park to shoot up. He will lie down in the shade of
what he thinks to be a tree but is in fact the edifice, Globosyn. Inc.
They
will lean back and whisper to themselves about the way of the world and the
rightness of their doings. They will coo themselves softly before finishing,
forgiving their perpetual nature, moving their flesh and souls to orgasm.