Songs for the End of the World - Saleema Nawaz Page 0,109

of himself. Only the gun on his hip registered, like a lead weight tethering him to Earth. “Ma’am,” he said, “this isn’t about what I believe.” Although he understood that, in some way, of course it was. “It’s about the two of you putting down those knives you’ve got.” He wondered if the boy really was desperate to flee the city or if it was only an excuse to get away from his mother. It was an interesting question, whether the world ought to belong to the young or the old. The young seemed to feel they were owed something—a life. But…well. Maybe it wasn’t a question for the childless. He remembered that someone once said youth was wasted on the young, and when he saw the terrified expression on the face of that scared, snarling teen, it certainly seemed to be true.

A call squawked through on his radio. There was a request for backup at a brawl on Courtlandt Avenue. The 911 caller had reported gunshots.

Elliot felt the emptiness of his patrol car outside on the street. The force was bleeding officers who’d taken ill or left town. His own partner, Russ, had gone on indefinite leave after his youngest child was hospitalized at Methodist Morningside just a week after the end of their posting there. Most beats were run solo these days. The usual arrest targets had fallen away. The order of the day was avoiding martial law. As the chief of police had said, “For God’s sake, just try to keep the peace, or else we’ll end up kowtowing to the National Guard.” His salt-and-pepper beard had snowed over since the start of the outbreak.

“He’s taking all the money I have,” the woman said. Elliot detected a note of satisfaction mingled with the outrage. She waved her knife towards a pile of dirty clothes on the floor. “He’s stolen it right out of my drawer. I want you to arrest him for robbery.”

An impatience flickered within Elliot, along with a powerful urge to strike them both, burn the money, and leave them to figure out their own mess—or arrest them for wasting his time. “Nobody’s getting arrested,” he found himself saying. “We’re going to resolve this together.” Even as he renounced the idea of it, he was reminded of the extra weight brutality could lend to authority. The boy and his mother just stared at him, her lip curling up in what Elliot interpreted as disappointment. But he could tell the boy was used to being bossed. He was only tired of being bossed by his mother.

“Give it here, son.” It was a butterfly knife the boy was holding, with a filigreed handle. “Just the money,” said Elliot, as the boy tightened his grip on the blade and came closer.

Elliot held out his hand, and into the centre of his dry palm the boy deposited the wad of crumpled bills. With his thumb, Elliot separated out seven twenties—why seven? who knows? fairness was a feeling: it came from the gut—and handed these back to the son.

“If you want to leave, leave.”

It took nothing more than a curt nod in the direction of the door for the boy to pocket the cash and flee. The flush of pride Elliot experienced then reminded him of how he’d felt after his very first calls as a rookie.

But the mother was not as grateful as expected. She entered into a maudlin howling. “I’d have given him all the money,” she wailed, “to stay.”

Elliot’s sympathy curdled. He sensed the limits of the temperament that made him, most of the time, one of the good ones. “You called the police,” he said. “You get what you pay for.”

* * *

After his shift, Elliot returned to the converted industrial building where he and the other students continued to practise kung fu. He waited a moment in his parked car before going in. Two weeks ago, in early November, a grey belt student named Cassie had stopped coming and had gone silent on the group chat. Nobody knew if it meant she had caught the virus or not. Then, last week, there were three more absent, though two logged into the chat to say they’d quarantined themselves as a precautionary measure only: they were afraid Cassie was sick and they’d all been exposed. A general discussion began about whether they ought to disband the weekly gathering, and just last night Elliot had weighed in before he could stop himself: I don’t know what I’ll