Songs for the End of the World - Saleema Nawaz Page 0,1
home to bed. He was feeling a tad reckless and impatient to get back to the world. He had three days off before a stretch of day shifts, when he would be able to work out again, get together with his buddies, even try to go on a date if any reasonable prospects materialized.
Socialization was something new on Elliot’s radar, prompted less by a desire to go out than by an urgent need to remedy the hollowed-out feeling he’d been walking around with since his wife left him. Only after his divorce did he realize that Dory had been the one organizing and maintaining their entire social life. Finding himself friendless at thirty-five had felt not only lonely but careless. He’d met Dory while following up on a break-in at the publishing company where she worked, and she’d drawn him into her eclectic network of literati, DUMBO mixed-media artists, and PR specialists, who had welcomed him readily enough at the time but who had doubtless congratulated her on her shift to a more suitable partner. But thanks to his kung fu classes, Elliot had stumbled into a complete social circle, which gave him no less joy than he remembered from his very first friendships in grade school.
He parked and climbed up to the second-floor studio, where he was surprised to find the door locked and a sign taped up that read CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. He peered inside, but all was dark. Odd that there was no explanation, nor any forewarning. In the four years he had been coming to the club, the gym had only been closed twice: once when the masters had gone to China, and another time when a water pipe had burst in the unit above. Elliot returned to his car and, leaning against the driver’s-side door, took out his phone and scrolled through his contacts, enjoying the slow sidling-up of a comfortable sleepiness as the sun warmed his face. He texted his friend Jejo, then Lucas, then Cameron, and everyone else he knew from the gym. He finally received a response from Jejo’s cousin, Mina, who was studying for her grey belt.
Jejo’s dead. So are Cam and Lucas and the master. Teresa, Declan, Felix, and Paloma are in the hospital. It’s that bad flu that’s on the news. Sorry for telling you like this but I can’t talk now and it’s better that you know.
Elliot drove home on autopilot, imagining himself as a robot, as though he could will away his too-susceptible flesh, and counted back through the days that had passed since he’d last seen them all. It had been during an evening shift at the end of July, just before this last block of nights. He’d heard something at the precinct about a bad virus going around, but he hadn’t paid much attention. How long it took to get sick, he had no idea. There was a layer of sweat between the steering wheel and his pale, clenched hands, which already felt like they belonged to somebody else.
At home, Elliot turned on his computer and looked up the latest news on the outbreak. The virus was being described as potentially more infectious and deadly than swine flu. New York health authorities working with the CDC had begun reconstructing the movements of the first people to contract the illness and had released the name of a restaurant linked to their exposure: cipolla. The same restaurant that had been firebombed and the last place, he was sure now, where he had seen Jejo and the others. Torched, Elliot guessed, for fear of contagion, or by some relative of the dead in a futile railing against God. At the bottom of the news piece was a hotline number: If you suspect you have been exposed, please stay home and contact the Department of Health.
His phone rang. It was his sister, but he silenced the call, unsure of how to articulate the staggering extent of his loss or the danger he himself now posed. His grief was choked out by an overwhelming sense of unreality, as though he were watching a montage of his own suffering: Elliot staring at a wall, Elliot burying his face in his hands, Elliot slapping himself for acting like a prisoner of cliché during one of life’s most serious moments—though, staring at his terrible, thin-lipped grin in the bathroom mirror, it occurred to him that the moment belonged rightfully to death. As the morning wore on, he tried to find information