Читать книгу The End Specialist - Drew Magary, Drew Magary - Страница 16

“I Never Thought I Had The Luxury Of Time—Now It’s All I’m Gonna Have”

Katy demanded I go with her to her cure consultation. I explained to her that there was no waiting room in Dr. X’s apartment, and that I thought he probably preferred that everyone come alone. I made a compromise of walking her to the building, waiting outside for her, and grabbing some drinks with her after she got her blood drawn. “You’ll get drunk even faster, since you’ll have less blood in your system,” I explained. She liked the idea.

When we got off the subway and walked east, we could hear the protesters outside the UN. Their numbers have continued to swell. I’m not sure they even take bathroom breaks anymore. The avenue has been barricaded much farther uptown than when I was last caught in the middle of it, as if there’s a permanent weekend street fair. I was tempted to see if any vendors had set up shop among the throngs, selling paper plates of greasy pad thai for two bucks. I resisted.

We stopped at a bagel shop and grabbed a quick lunch before her appointment. Again, Katy brought up every cure-related scenario that came to her mind, both the good and the horrific. Mostly the horrific. She let her guard down a bit as we ate. My best friend is not the world’s most introspective person. But she took a moment to stop being so damn bubbly.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do after this,” she said. “Suddenly, I’m all worried about the future.”

“That’s what Dr. X said. No one he sees thinks about it until they get it done.”

“Am I doing the right thing here? My grandma’s got pancreatic cancer. Is it fair she has to go through that and I get to sidestep it?”

“You could still get cancer. You think your grandma would wish it on you?”

“No, I guess not. I don’t know. I never really thought about my life before. I knew it was short, and I knew I should have a good time before it’s over. That was about it. I never thought I had the luxury of time—now it’s all I’m gonna have. I feel like I should probably do something more substantial with it.”

“You’ve always had the luxury of time. You’re twenty-seven. Cure or no cure, that’s still plenty of time up ahead. It’s yours to do with as you please. You’re not obligated to be Mother Teresa now. This just means you have more time to do what you enjoy, or find what you enjoy, I guess.”

“Well, you know what I enjoy.”

“I do indeed.”

She grew alarmed. “What if we run out of booze three hundred years from now?

“Oh, I think measures will be taken to prevent that sort of thing. We don’t need glaciers. But vodka? They won’t let the vodka dry up.”

“Thank God.”

We got up to leave and approached the doctor’s building. We got to the southwest corner of the intersection on First. The doctor’s building was across the avenue, on the southeast corner. The light turned for us to cross. Out of my peripheral vision, on the northwest corner, I saw a tall figure outside a candy shop. Blonde. An impossible body. She didn’t have to turn for me to instantly recognize her. In fact, I had memorized the back of her quite capably. I stopped and held Katy back.

“That’s the blonde! That’s the blonde!”

Katy looked at her. “Oh, she is hot.”

“I have to go talk to her. I’ll meet you out front when you’re finished.”

I broke from Katy to cross the street. Katy hurried into the doctor’s building. As I got to the opposite corner, the blonde turned and looked in my direction. I gave a tentative wave, trying to ascertain if she recognized me or not. She appeared unnerved, turned away from me, and began walking up the avenue. I crossed the street in hopes that she was simply walking away and not walking away from me. She gave another look back, saw me approaching, and quickened her gait. I took the hint and stopped outside the candy store, dejected. She blazed down the avenue, only pausing once to look back at the doctor’s apartment building. I turned to do the same.

And that’s when the doctor’s apartment blew up.

Before I could see anything, I heard a gigantic BOOM! Then a quarter of an instant later the corner of the eighth floor blew out onto First Avenue in a single lash of flame. Right where the doctor’s office once was. A makeshift hailstorm of pulverized white brick pummeled the traffic below. Hot black smoke began quickly scaling the outside of the building. A Freidrich air-conditioning unit—one of those heavy, old-school units—crashed into the sidewalk below. If anyone had been underneath it, it would have destroyed them.

Everything, everyone, everywhere, froze to turn. What the fuck just happened? I looked to the doorway but couldn’t see Katy. She was in there. She was on her way to the eighth floor, or she was there already. I didn’t move. I stood still and hoped everything would suddenly reset and be put back in its proper place, because nothing about this felt possible. It felt absurd, like some kind of prank. The building was on fire and I knew I needed to run in but didn’t know how to run or speak or breathe at the moment. Horrible thoughts about Katy dying circled around my consciousness, like strange footsteps you hear outside your window in the dead of night. I heard the sirens blasting and growing louder and more intense, as if they were meant to echo the cries of those suffering inside.

My body finally unlocked and I began running to the building as the fire truck pulled up alongside it. When I was in the middle of the intersection, I looked down the street and saw two more towers of smoke climbing up and up at points farther to the west, towards the Hudson: one less than half a block away, another much farther across town.

An elderly woman came running out of the building. She carried a small black Scottie with her and wore a gypsy’s head wrap. I stepped in front of her to get her to stop. She stared at me, confused by it all.

“What just happened?” she asked.

I pointed inside. “Did you see anyone else on your way out?”

“No.”

“Are you certain? I’m looking for a brunette woman. In her twenties. You saw her. Tell me you saw her coming out.”

I held her shoulders tight, begging her for a response.

“I didn’t see anything!”

She wrested away from my grip and fled. A small number of tenants came out of the emergency stairwell and ran up First. I held the door open for them, let them pass, and then began flying up the stairs. The flow of tenants petered out as I climbed higher. I got to the eighth floor and came out into a lightly smoky corridor. There was a door to a freight elevator room at the end of the hall and beyond that a door to a second hallway where the doctor’s apartment was. I ran to the end of the corridor and saw the door of the freight elevator room come open. I hoped to see Katy and the doctor hand in hand, making their way out safely. It was a fireman. He stopped me and turned me around.

“My friend is in there!” I screamed.

“I can’t let you go. You have to get downstairs right now. Go. Go!”

“Is anyone alive? I’m looking for Katy Johannson.”

“Get the fuck out of here!”

I relented and walked back to the stairwell. The fireman turned and reentered the freight elevator room and I immediately doubled back to go find Katy. The fireman was still on the other side of the door, now clearly angry I had defied him. He raised a fist and sent me back where I came from. I heard a huge crash, like a ceiling caving in and I pictured my best friend pressed and flattened and desperate for air. The door to the stairwell came open and a wave of firemen filed by at top speed and pushed me to the side. Heavier smoke began to fill the hallway and I began to swoon and feel as if the walls and floors of the building were molten and elastic. I retreated to the stairwell like a pathetic child and listened to the firemen shouting orders at one another from the other side of the door. I sat there trying to absorb every sound and sight because it was all I could do. I wasn’t remotely qualified to take any sort of bold action. All I could seize was proximity. I felt the urge to run to the doctor’s apartment and sit down in the blaze. I hoped for Katy to pass me by or call me but instead there was a big deafening nothing. So I sat on the gray concrete steps in the sickly fluorescent lighting, waiting. I don’t know how long I was there. No one passed by. Eventually, another fireman opened the door to the hall and ordered me down to the ground level.

I walked down the stairs and out into the street. I smelled my sleeves and they reeked of smoke, of things burned that should never be burned. Up First, I could see one more plume of smoke. Down First, I heard the swarm of protesters yelling and screaming. People were running up the avenue, some to the bridge, instinctively, as a sort of automatic 9/11-type gut response. Many seemed to have the palpable urge to get off the island, to get as far away from the center of the imaginary bull’s-eye as humanly possible.

I stayed where I was, as close to Katy as the FDNY would allow. I checked my phone and saw the EXPLOSIONS ROCKING MANHATTAN headline. The cops and firefighters continued shuttling in and out, saying nothing to me because saying nothing is what they have to do. I checked Katy’s status updates. There was nothing since the last one she posted three minutes before the explosion. She must have posted it while she was in the elevator.

DrinksOnKatyJ: U FOLKS BETTER GET USED TO THE IDEA OF ME

STICKING AROUND HERE A LONG, LONG TIME! 12:13PM

That was the last thought going through her mind. She was ready to welcome another thousand years of joy and happiness, and I had promised it to her. I had brought her to this place. I had planted that thought in her mind. I could’ve stayed strong and never told her a goddamn thing, but I barely put up a fight. Deep down, I wanted her to know it all. I wanted the cheap thrill of being her little cure matchmaker.

And now she’s gone. No hospital admitted her. No one saw her leave. There’s nothing left of her. All the extra plans and hopes and dreams she had for herself will remain just that, forever.

I can’t move.

Date Modified: 7/3/2019, 4:08PM