Page 15 of The Last Man on Earth
“Here,” I say, draping my blanket over her. Luckily, I grabbed four of them bitches off the plane, still unused and tied up in ribbons. These shits are luxurious as hell. It’s a waste, having to use them in this strange, dirty place.
She gives me a small smile before curling into it. I grab another and toss it toward Ariana. She takes it without a word, her eyes reflecting the glow of the fire.
On the outside, I’m steady. And high. On the inside, there’s a voice that keeps nagging at me. I ain’t seen or heard nary a plane. No helicopter. No boat. Nothing. Just the wind rustling the trees, the ocean, and insects chirping.
I guess that’s all better than a roar. I’m lowkey waiting for a wild animal to come devour us all.
Maybe that would be for the best.
“Ain’t nobody else hungry?” I ask for the fourth time in I don’t know how long. Ms. Kgottaeat, because she needs to take her meds. Ariana, though, I don’t know where her head is at. She just looks lost.
“I could eat,” she says softly. “We might as well feast. All the perishables are gonna go bad anyway.”
Makes sense to me. I rifle through the food pile and come up with lobster rolls, black truffle pasta, wild mushroom risotto, and cheesecake with strawberries on top. Funny thing for me to notice under the circumstances, but all this shit is in plastic packaging with a label on top. Which means it was probably frozen. So now I’m thinking, is that what my money bought? Some frozen shit Ariana was gonna heat up in the microwave and call it gourmet?
But yeah, stupid thing to worry about at this point.
I unwrap each package and hand the food over, serving the ladies first. Once they’re straight, I inhale the lobster roll, then the risotto, eating sloppy with my fingers like a wild animal. I’m halfway through my pasta when I realize they’re both staring at me.
“What?”
Ariana smiles. “Nothing. It’s good, right?”
“Can’t you tell?” I finish, wipe my hands, and hand over bottles of water. I make sure Ms. K takes her pills, then I retreat deeper into the trees to take a leak. When I get back, Ms. K’s eyelids are drooping.
“You need anything else?” I ask her.
She blinks slowly. “You know what I was just thinking about?”
“What’s up?”
She smiles. “That first week after you hired me.”
I smile, too, remembering it well. “The trip to Tokyo.”
She laughs, grimacing from the pain. “You looked like a little boy seeing snow for the first time. All the lights. Eating that…what was it that you kept going back for?”
“Yakitori.”
“That’s the one. I was so embarrassed by all your carrying on.”
“Ain’t never had chicken that good, Ms. K.”
“Mm hm. Then you made me take a hundred pictures of you under the neon signs. You kept calling it futuristic.” Her laugh is soft, but weary. “Then you hopped that fence to pet that stray cat and almost broke your ankle.”
I grin at the memory. “That damn cat followed me for three days. He loved me.”
Ms. K’s face softens in the firelight. She looks years younger. Like she’s back in Tokyo. Or anywhere other than here. “You were so…free then. Remember?”
I nod.
“Before the world started pulling at you from every side. Before you forgot how to just…be.”
The words land heavy and press deeper than I want them too. This shit is already heavy enough.
I open my mouth, then shut it, my throat tight.
“I wish you could go back to that,” she says. “But I’m glad I got to see you that way. I’ll never forget it.”
