Songs for the End of the World - Saleema Nawaz Page 0,53

door, he considers pressing the issue but worries that if he angers the man, something bad will happen. Paranoia pulses around his every decision now. Owen puts his hand on the doorknob, almost as unnerved by the irrationality of his own thought process as by the thoughts themselves.

“Thank you,” he says. “I’ll do that.” He will do that. Owen thinks about the firework exploding in New York City. How long might he have before one of its sparks rains down to touch him with its tongue of fire?

He walks away, longing to check his phone again but afraid of seeing the latest virus update. Afraid that if he looks, he knows what he’ll find. Afraid that if he thinks it, it will happen.

“No,” he says aloud. He’s just being spun around by too much information. Running his fingers through his hair, he forces himself to breathe slowly and sort through what he knows. He is not overreacting—he is reacting appropriately, given the facts. Also, he is not thinking magically. He is thinking rationally. Though he isn’t entirely put at ease by his own assertions.

He continues along the boardwalk, which has been repaired since the hurricane. The storm came and battered the shore, destroying buildings and livelihoods. But the storm was forecast, and people who were sensible and had the resources to leave the city planned accordingly and left. There was nothing magical about reading the signs in that case.

With the water at his back, Owen heads away from the beach, keeping an eye open for any familiar landmarks he might recognize from that day with Rachel. The bench where they kissed, scandalizing a group of tourists, or the neighbourhood bar where Rachel was thrilled by the tiny piña coladas in Styrofoam to-go cups.

He hopes Rachel is happy now. Of the two of them, she was always better at being happy, though he had perhaps benefitted from lower expectations. He knows that happiness is not a state of being. It is a knack. It is like hitting a baseball or skating backwards; there are certain tricks to it that some people can never master. A Buddhist he had sex with once told him that “desire is suffering,” but Owen has considered it and is sure she was wrong. Desire is electric. It is what keeps him alive.

What else is there? Only denial, which is death.

A few blocks inland, set between a surf boutique and a taco hut, he comes upon a squat concrete building painted turquoise that seems like some contractor’s idea of what he could get away with. A neon hand glows pink in the window, above a crystal ball next to a hand-lettered sign that says Sister Francesca’s Cosmic Consultations. A magic shop. It strikes him as a fitting rebuke for his own irrationality. As he pauses in front of the door, a woman opens it and emerges from inside.

“You look lost,” she says.

“Oh,” says Owen. “No.” He turns his hands over in a vague motion to acknowledge that he does appear lost, tarrying there and staring off into the distance. The people waiting in line at the taco hut are talking and laughing in a way that seems incongruous with an impending pandemic. “Just trying to decide what to do next.”

“Do you want to come in and get your bearings?” The woman is leaning up against the doorframe. She is wearing tight black jeans and a black leather motorcycle jacket crisscrossed with silver zippers.

“Are you Sister Francesca?”

She makes a dismissive gesture, either implying that she is Francesca or that it is absurd that he should think so.

“I’m Owen,” he says. She rolls her eyes at him and disappears inside the shack.

He estimates the chances are at least even that something might happen between them, and this surge of confidence feels normal, much more normal than anything else he has been thinking all week. Keen to endorse that version of reality, he follows her inside.

When the door swings shut behind him, it is so dark that it takes his eyes a moment to adjust to the candlelight. The whole place is not much larger than a garage, and the walls are draped with red velvet curtains. Then the woman steps towards him and her hands, strong and cool, are on his wrists, pressing him into a seat. She sits down in a chair opposite him, across a small wooden table. She is wearing long earrings now and her hair is covered with a scarf. Her eyebrows are thick, pointed,