After Things Fell Apart
“What radio?” said Joe.
I’m sitting on an overturned newspaper rack in the doorway of a railway terminal watching it rain. I like the rain. When it rains the holograms can’t get through so you know that everything you see is real, except, of course, for hallucinations. Today the rain is falling up.
A ghostly woman has been standing square in front of me for the last several hours. I’ve never seen her before but she has this funny look like she knows me. She’s wearing some sort of scarlet and periwinkle cocktail gown and a fortune in pearls. She shakes her finger at me.
Joe was right, of course. There was no radio in Abdul. When we pulled up to a stop light, a cream convertible full of blond nurses pulled up next to us, “White Rabbit” blasting from their stereo. “Jeez,” Joe said, “that’s spooky. Do it again.”
The part of my brain that was time-slipping slipped a little farther. So I told him: “In about five minutes we’re going to get stopped by a cop.” I started eating reefers.
“The hell we will.” As soon as the light changed Joe fish-tailed off into a bowling alley’s parking lot and got out. “They got coffee in here don’t they?”
The ghost lady sits down next to me. She’s reading aloud from a bright blue pamphlet, but I’ve heard it all before.
As we walked toward the bowling alley we were stopped and searched and Joe was arrested for unpaid parking tickets. As they led him away he scowled daggers at me. All I could do was shrug.
I’m sitting on a bus bench in front of a busy railway station watching it rain. The people are acting strange. They pause to scowl at me and shake their fingers. I hate the rain. Especially this rain. I stand and walk out into it but it doesn’t make me wet. I hold out my hand and the drops seem to fall right up through it. Some lady in a red Macintosh comes over to me and tries to give me a pamphlet of some sort. “No thank you,” I say. “But I can tell you this: the next song that comes on the radio will be ‘White Rabbit.’”
“What radio?” she asks.
A football sun crawls higher into the ruddy sky spraying the world with beneficence and wonder. I’m kicking an empty tin can down Columbia Boulevard right past the old train station. The building has crumbled badly since the War; its dark vacant stare terrifies me. I wouldn’t go near the place, not on a bet. My tin can tumbles into an odd crater about the size of a Chevy and shaped like a fleur de lys.
After a while I give up searching for the can and look up again. I see what appears to be a small woman lurking behind a rotted Datsun. She’s dressed in colorful rags and carries a huge pump shotgun. When she sees that I have noticed her she begins to edge backwards into the shadows. “Hey, come here,” I say. “I won’t hurt you. Really.”
She doesn’t say anything but she stops backing up.
“Don’t be afraid.” I take a friendly step in her direction. “I won’t hurt you.”
“Sure,” she says. “I’ve heard that before. Just keep your distance.” She raises the weapon, points it at me. She seems very comfortable with the thing.
“Okay, okay.” I raise both hands. I realize it’s a trite gesture but it seems like the thing to do. “Just talk to me for Christ’s sake. I haven’t seen an actual living soul in weeks. It’s lonely as death around here.”
“Well,” she says and raises the gun’s barrel a few inches. “Maybe for a little while. Just remember this is loaded and I know how to use it.”
I lower my hands and sit on my heels. “Right. Don’t doubt it. What’s your name? I’m John.” Of course I have no way of knowing that for sure but it seems to fit.
“My name is Alice. Let’s pretend I made that up. I’m sure it beats my old one.”
“Nice to meet you Alice. Really.” Today, the Universe seems unusually stable. I wonder why that surprises me. “So. I haven’t seen you around here; where you from?”
“Babylon.” She keeps a watchful eye on everything around her. A muscle in her neck stands tense, alert. “Up the coast a ways. I’ve been wandering around ever since the War. No place to go really.”
