Page 2 of The Life of Chuck

He said, “It’s interesting to me that the parents who did show up seemed more concerned about the Internet than the California quakes. I suppose because the state’s breadbasket regions are still there.”

“But for how long? I heard a scientist on NPR say that California is peeling away like old wallpaper. And another Japanese reactor got inundated this afternoon. They’re saying it was shut down, all’s well, but I don’t think I believe that.”

“Cynic.”

“We’re living in cynical times, Marty.” She hesitated. “Some people think we’re living in the Last Times. Not just the religious crazies, either. Not anymore. You heard that from a member in good standing of the City General Suicide Squad. We lost six today, true, but there were eighteen more we dragged back. Most with the help of Naloxone. But…” She lowered her voice again. “… supplies of that are getting very thin. I heard the head pharmacist saying we might be completely out by the end of the month.”

“That sucks,” Marty said, eyeing his briefcase. All those papers waiting to be processed. All those spelling errors waiting to be corrected. All those dangling subordinate clauses and vague conclusions waiting to be red-inked. Computer crutches like Spellcheck and apps like Grammar Alert didn’t seem to help. Just thinking of it made him tired. “Listen, Fel, I ought togo. I have tests to grade and essays on ‘Mending Wall’ to correct.” The thought of the stacked vapidities in those waiting essays made him feel old.

“All right,” Felicia said. “Just… you know, touching base.”

“Roger that.” Marty opened the cupboard and took down the bourbon. He would wait until she was off the phone to pour it, lest she hear the glugging and know what he was doing. Wives had intuition; ex-wives seemed to develop high-def radar.

“Could I say I love you?” she asked.

“Only if I can say it right back,” Marty replied, running his finger over the label on the bottle: Early Times. A very good brand, he thought, for these later times.

“I love you, Marty.”

“And I love you.”

A good place to end, but she was still there. “Marty?”

“What, hon?”

“The world is going down the drain, and all we can say is ‘that sucks.’ So maybe we’re going down the drain, too.”

“Maybe we are,” he said, “but Chuck Krantz is retiring, so I guess there’s a gleam of light in the darkness.”

“Thirty-nine great years,” she responded, and it was her turn to laugh.

He put the milk down. “You saw the billboard?”

“No, it was an ad on the radio. That NPR show I was telling you about.”

“If they’re running ads on NPR, it really is the end of the world,” Marty said. She laughed again, and the sound made him glad. “Tell me, how does Chuck Krantz rate this kind of coverage? He looks like an accountant, and I never heard of him.”

“No idea. The world is full of mysteries. No hard stuff, Marty. I know you’re thinking of it. Have a beer, instead.”

He didn’t laugh as he ended the call, but he smiled. Ex-wife radar. High-def. He put the Early Times back in the cupboard and grabbed a beer instead. He plopped a couple of hotdogs into water and went into his little study to see if the Internet was up while he waited for the water to boil.

It was, and seemed to be running at slightly betterthan its usual slow crawl. He went to Netflix, thinking he might re-watch an episode ofBreaking BadorThe Wirewhile he ate his dogs. The welcome screen came up, showing selections that hadn’t changed since last evening (and the stuff on Netflix used to change just about every day, not so long ago), but before he could decide on which bad guy he wanted to watch, Walter White or Stringer Bell, the welcome screen disappeared. SEARCHING appeared, and the little worry circle.

“Fuck,” Marty said. “Gone for the ni—”

Then the worry circle disappeared and the screen came back. Only it wasn’t the Netflix welcome screen; it was Charles Krantz, sitting at his paper-strewn desk, smiling with his pen in his scarred hand. CHARLES KRANTZ above him; 39 GREAT YEARS! THANKS, CHUCK! below.

“Who the fuck are you, Chuckie?” Marty asked. “How do you rate?” And then, as if his breath had blown out the Internet like a birthday candle, the picture disappeared and the words on the screen were CONNECTION LOST.

It did not come back that night. Like half ofCalifornia (soon to be three-quarters), the Internet had vanished.

The first thing Marty noticed the next day as he backed his car out of the garage was the sky. How long had it been since he had seen that clear unblemished blue? A month? Six weeks? The clouds and the rain (sometimes a drizzle, sometimes a torrent) were almost constant now, and on days when the clouds cleared, the sky usually remained bleary from the smoke of fires in the Midwest. They had blackened most of Iowa and Nebraska, and were moving on to Kansas, driven by gale-force winds.

The second thing he noticed was Gus Wilfong trudging up the street with his oversized lunchbox banging against his thigh. Gus was wearing khakis, but with a tie. He was a supervisor at the city’s public works department. Although it was only quarter past seven, he looked tired and out of sorts, as if at the end of a long day instead of just starting one. And if he was just starting one, why was he walking toward his house next door to Marty’s? Also…

Marty powered down his window. “Where’s your car?”

Gus’s short laugh was humorless. “Parked on the sidewalk halfway down Main Street Hill, along with about a hundred others.” He blew out his breath. “Whoo, I can’t remember the last time I walked three miles. Which probably says more about me than you want to know. If you’re going to school, buddy, you’re going to have to go all the way out Route 11 and then hook back on Route 19. Twenty miles, at least, and there’ll be plenty of traffic there, too. You might arrive in time for lunch, but I wouldn’t count on it.”

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