Songs for the End of the World - Saleema Nawaz Page 0,95

eyes and he’d felt that shameful uptick of pride that he had actually made someone love him. “I don’t know how exactly, but I did.”

“I’ll bet it was easy,” he said.

“Probably,” agreed Keisha, but there was a smile in her eyes. “Okay, I’ve got to go. Tell the press I’ll be down later.”

“I will,” said Elliot. “Thanks.”

He turned and headed back down the staircase. When he got outside, he waved at the journalists as though he was actually the one they’d been waiting for, and a few of them laughed. The sun glinted off the roofs of passing cars, and Elliot felt restored and exhilarated, as though Keisha herself had examined him with her strong, practical hands and given him a clean bill of health.

* * *

That evening, Elliot drove over to the unmarked building where the surviving students from his kung fu school had continued to gather on their own. Graham, a real estate broker, had found the place: an unrented loft space in a converted industrial building where renovations had been completed shortly before the outbreak.

Elliot waved a greeting to the others and stayed in his corner. After class, people would go online to talk and exchange news via group chat or private message. But for now, they maintained the unplanned silence with which their meetings had begun, as well as a vast distance from one another—more than was strictly necessary for doing the forms, but still in clear contravention of the new social distancing ordinances that forbade non-essential gatherings outside of a family milieu. Tonight’s secret assembly included sixteen men and women of all levels, though most were kung fu students of long standing whose practice had knit into their identity. The weekly session was only a fraction of the regular training regimen that many of them were used to. Of his core group of friends from the school, Elliot was the only survivor, but of the cohort just behind them were Mina, Tariq, Jason, Sahir, Nalin, Hannah, and Brett. The rest he was getting to know little by little over the group chat.

One of the black belt students moved to the front and led them through a brief warm-up before the group moved through the forms in loose synchronization. Crane, snake, tiger. Resilience, speed, and strength. They’d shortened a standard two-hour class to about forty-five minutes, dispensing with sparring and all of the usual interaction that ARAMIS had rendered dangerous. The point of the gathering was to carry forward their practice, to remember their friends, the master, and all they’d learned. At the end of the session, the leader always read out a roll call of their lost members. But even before their names were spoken aloud, Elliot was thinking of Jejo, Cam, Lucas, Declan, Teresa, Paloma, Felix. The master and his wife. And he knew he wasn’t the only one.

Afterwards, everyone shrugged their sweaty shoulders back into their coats where they’d dropped them, and held up gloved hands in farewell.

Outside, the city looked like it had been cleared for a film shoot. Most of the other cars on the road were police cruisers or ambulances. Elliot had heard from his friends on the evening shift that enforcing the new curfew was surprisingly easy. People wanted to stay inside after dark just as much as the authorities wanted them off the streets.

With two minutes to spare before nine, Elliot let himself into his building. Even with the makeshift decorating he’d carried out during his quarantine, his apartment had a spare, provisional feel, eased only by its slight messiness. One corner was full of boxes from Sarah’s apartment that she’d sent over before leaving on her trip in mid-October. She’d packed in a mad rush. A few boxes were labelled MISC., STUFF, and ODDS ’N’ ENDS. Right up until he’d seen her off at the marina, both of them putting on a brave face for Noah, he was sure she was going to change her mind. After all, the last time they’d ducked into a restaurant without first checking the online reviews, she’d been nearly too agitated to sit down. And when she’d considered switching mobile providers, they’d discussed it on and off for weeks before she announced she’d rather just keep her old phone and contract. It had been a long time since his sister had made such a big decision on her own. The step forward made him feel proud, uneasy, and a little bereft.

He opened a beer just before his parents called. In the