Page 160 of The End of the World As We Know It
Timed with the period in her sentence, the creaky basement door swung halfway open.
Now listen, I had unlatched the door earlier that morning when Art was still asleep. And yeah, I was eavesdropping on their conversation, and I swung the door halfway open. No evil power opening the door here, just me. I’m not saying there’s no such thing as evil power, and maybe one of the words in that phrase is redundant. I’d been staying in Art’s basement for a few weeks by that point, and without him knowing. I know that sounds weird and creepy, and it’s a long and kind of sad story, and maybe I’ll tell it to you at another campfire. What you need to know about Art and me is that we were best friends and then we had a calamitous falling-out the summer before. Mistakes were made. Things were said, including Art saying that I was always dragging him down, that I was an energy vampire, metaphorically speaking, of course. Can you believe that? It was such a mean thing to say, especially when I was always just trying to help him out. At the time, him calling me an energy vampire was unforgivable. Seems silly now, I know. Even with the world mostly dead, I couldn’t bring myself to ask Art to say sorry to me, or for me to say sorry to him for whatever my transgressions were. Regardless, I was still worried about him and I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go and hole up, so yeah, I camped out in his basement, figuring we’d talk it out eventually.
Hey, forget about the me-in-the-basement part for now. Okay?
Just know the reason why I opened the door at that moment was to make sure Art knew who he was fucking with, that there was a truly bad someone out there capable of doing some heavy, scary shit. Or I should saysomeones. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that one person, even this Walkin Dude guy, is powerless by themselves; they have to be given power or take it from others. By the sound of it, Art had already made the right choice, but I wanted to give him a creepy-door-opening, a faux-supernatural nudge that made sure he stayed true to what he’d decided.
As Hilly kept on telling Art all the terrible things that would happen to him—hell of a recruitment pitch, right?—he stared at the basement door, or rather at the dark space the open door exposed. He imagined—or did he?—Hilly’s merry band of fellow travelers crouched on the basement stairs, hackles up, their heads low, long faces growing longer, grinning their vulpine grins in the dark. Oh, what big eyes and teeth they had.
Hilly cut short her death-pain-madness stream-of-consciousness rant and repeatedly said Art’s name until he turned to face her. Then she asked, weaponizing her sweet, motherly delivery, “Are you afraid, Art? You should be. We can do the worst things you can possibly imagine.”
“Worst things?” Art said, and he laughed, the kind that was afuck you. Then he told Hilly the story of his mom and dad. In the dwindling number of days before the superflu outbreak, his parents’ formerly icy détente had deteriorated into an aggressive campaign of scorched-earth not-speaking. If one entered a room, the other would storm off into another room, or leave the house entirely. If Mom was out, Dad sat on the couch, muttering that he could watch TV in his house if he wanted, imagining himself as the not-so-righteously aggrieved, but he had a child’sHow did any of this happen?look on his face. If Dad was out, Mom sat in the kitchen smoking cigarettes, angrily, ashes flinging and crumbling everywhere. The smoke was steam emanating directlyfrom her head. When the superflu went national, the only area in which those two could coexist was the TV room. There, they watched the twenty-four-hour cable news network from opposite ends of the couch, wordlessly clutching their recriminations as though they were life jackets, even as the world had suddenly become both too big and too small. A thousand pages would not be enough for Art to describe the horror of what happened next. He didn’t remember which parent was sick first. Perhaps they both fell ill at the same time. The greedy virus ravaged them quickly. Dad remained on the couch on the first floor and Mom stayed upstairs in their bedroom. For two nights, his parents coughed their glass-filled coughs and cried and muttered gibberish in their fevered sleeps, oblivious to the distant conversation they were having with one another. Art alternated attending to one parent and then the other, wiping their foreheads with cold cloths and turning them over onto their sides so they could breathe better, and when one was shouting or crying, he told them one of their favorite stories about Art from when he was little. One tale featured a two-year-old Art somehow scaling more than halfway up the length of a curtain. Another detailed Art’s brief phase of barging into the bathroom when either one of his parents were using the toilet, and he would point and laugh-shout, “Pew!” while doing a special bathroom dance. Art wished he could remember those stories from the point of view of toddler-Art, but he only remembered what his parents had told him. When his parents died, would those foundational stories of who Art once was die, too? On the third day after his parents first presented superflu symptoms, an exhausted and overwhelmed Art fell asleep sitting at the kitchen table. He woke to a quiet, still house, and he knew his parents were both gone. He eventually wandered into the living room, but Dad wasn’t on the couch. Art found him upstairs, his body slumped and pressed against the closed bedroom door. The door wasn’t locked, but Art had to force it open, as Mom wasn’t in her bed, either. Her body had similarly pooled against the other side of the door.
Art ended his story with “And I won’t even bore you with the vicious fucking joke that was me trying to burn their bodies and almost burning down the garage and myself, while, somehow, barely burning them, so I gave up and buried their unburnt parts. In the long list of worst-things, the failed pyre might not even be top five. You know what is top five? Finding Mom’s handprints and Dad’s handprints on either side of their bedroom door, outlined in blood and mucus. I’m sure you and your guy can scare and hurt me, but you can’t do the worst to me. Sorry, that already happened. Now get the fuck out of my house before I bash your head in with my Flying V guitar while playing a power chord.”
The shadows lifted from Hilly, and she was diminished. Perhaps she was moved by what Art had shared. Perhaps she was alone, cosmically alone, and afraid of what might happen to her if she failed the recruiting mission. She said, “You have until tonight to change your mind. And I hope you do. You do seem like such a nice boy. I’ll show myself out.” And she did.
Art shut and latched the basement door before I could. Now, I wish I’d called out his name, and let him know I was there. Maybe things would be different if I had. Instead, I stayed silent. He lingered at the door, contemplating the mysteries of the craven universe in which a creepy basement door opened by itself, and then he went back to his Walkman and guitar. Without the fuzz of distortion, it took me a few trips through the verse to figure out he was playing “Something I Learned Today,” by Hüsker Dü.
Do you know the song? Ugh. Who do you listen to? Wait, don’t tell me. Let me pretend you’re cool.
If I could sing, I would sing it to you, as it might be the better way to tell Art’s story, to tell the story of us, or some of us.
I know you’re thinking how can songs and stories mean something now, right? How can a song be worth anything while we’re sitting on a giant pile of the bones of the dead, metaphorically speaking? Not that we haven’t always been sitting on that bone pile, especiallyin America. But also, that song is worth everything. If you don’t get that, you don’t have a heart. Not a delicious one, anyway.
I’m going to try to forget you told me that nauseating one-hit wonder is your favorite song. Jesus.
Let’s get back to Art.
There was a second knock on his door less than hour after Hilly left.
A man called out, “Hello? Anybody home? I have Girl Scout cookies,” and then he laughed to let his audience, both intended and not intended, know he was a jokester. “None of the Thin Mints, though. Man, I’d give my left arm for a box of those.”
Was he supposed to be charming? Jaunty? Nonthreatening? Art feared the Las Vegas enthusiasts were sending the next wave. Still, and as annoyed as Ebenezer Scrooge at his visitations, Art opened the door.
“You’re Art, yeah? Hey, my name is Henry. It’s very nice to meet you.” The dripping-wet, medium-sized white man held up his empty hands. “Nothing up my sleeves but rain, I promise.” Could you trust anyone making promises within the first thirty seconds of meeting them? It took all my self-control to keep from yelling out to Art, to tell him to shut the door in this dude’s face.
“I already told Hilly my answer,” Art said.
Henry tilted his head like the good dog he was, then smiled a bright white smile that launched a ship or two. “Good. I have no idea who Hilly is,” he said. “She’s not with us. So she must be with them.” Could you trust anybody talking aboutusandthem? What you should know about Art is that, as a fellow punk music devotee, he judged people as being in one of those twousorthemcategories, but it was never a binding moral judgment or purity test. Do you know the difference? Art was way more forgiving or naive—you choose—than I was.
Remember that showFamily Ties, with Michael J. Fox? This Henry guy was the grown-up, full yuppie version of Alex P. Keaton. He wore a yellow, short-sleeved polo shirt and jeans, and he was tenor so years older than Art. His skin was unblemished. Art noticed because his own skin was always threatening volcanic acne eruption.
“Hey, um, is it all right if I come in?” Henry asked. “I’m sopping wet.”
Art let him in. It’s worth repeating Art should’ve known better than to invite a stranger into his house. The world is full of all kinds of vampires, blah blah blah.
Nah, don’t worry. You letting me sit by the fire isn’t the same thing as inviting me into your house. I promise.
Art told Henry to stay by the door and he’d get him a towel, but Henry followed him into the mess of a living room. Henry said he liked Art’s place and it reminded him of his fraternity house (of course) and after spying the Flying V he said, “Hey, cool axe. Can you play that ‘Dig Your Man’ song?” and Art died a little inside.
The more Henry rambled on, the more I wanted to throw myself down the basement stairs, or bury myself in the dirt floor and go to sleep for a year, or a decade or two. But Art, he played along and answered questions about music and his age and where we went to school. What you need to know about Art is that he liked to be liked, more than most. I think he cut Henry some slack, too, because the dude was clearly nervous.
After he gave Henry a towel, there was a lull in their conversation, a heavy one. Henry thanked Art and said, “I’d been staying up in Gloucester with some people, but we’re, um, migrating. Do you know why I’m here? Or how I know your name?”
“You want to start a band?” Art said.
Okay, fine, Art didn’t say that. I would’ve said that. Instead, Art did his mumble-answer thing that was not really an answer.
