The New Order Read online

  So now he can’t let it lie or let it pass. And he opts for the go-to, the baseline insult for a bro to call a girl.

  “The fuck you say, c——nt?”

  So, as indicated, there’s a kind of logic and geometry to all this, and, theoretically, if I were able to just swallow the c-word and move on without a response, we could get away with no more than a bit of mocking laughter at our backs. But, hey.

  I turn around. “Did I stutter, bitch? Let me repeat myself. A dickless piece of shit in an ugly jacket his mama patches for him when she’s not blowing truckers.”

  So there’s a frozen moment here when it could go either way. Basically there’s a does-not-compute kind of situation going on with the dudes, because, in theory, they’re not allowed to fight girls. No, for them, presumably, it’s only okay to hit their girlfriends. So we still might get away unscathed, except—

  Rab seems to think that he has to play the chivalry card and defend my honor, which is sweet and everything, but it’s not like I’m defenseless. It’s nice of him, I guess, to say, “Don’t call her that,” over Soph’s urgent, “Don’t.”

  Which doesn’t really make any sense, since they’ve already called me “that,” so what does he want, an official retraction? I can tell that Rab doesn’t exactly know what he’s doing; he’s nervous as hell, probably knowing that he’s going to get his ass handed to him any moment now. Which makes me appreciate his gesture even more, since his mouth is writing checks his body can’t cash.

  Everything starts proceeding along predictable lines. The townie dudes do some throwing away of beer cans—throwing stuff away seems to be the really macho thing to do these days—and an as-yet-unheard-from genius says, “What did you say, Paki?”

  Not exactly eloquent, that reuse of the old “what did you say?” trope. And I think Paki is kind of like saying the n-word except directed at Indian people. Let’s leave aside for the moment the fact that Pakistan is an entirely different country last time I checked.

  They’re coming toward us now, and probably the best thing to do in this situation would be to run, but for one thing, I’m not sure Michael is exactly in shape for running, so leave no man behind and all that jazz, and for another thing, fuck that noise.

  So I walk up to the guys, saying, hands up and palms empty, in as soothing a voice as I can, “Hey, guys, look. I’m sorry about what I said. We don’t want to fight. Let me buy you a drink.”

  This sort of scrambles their brains for a moment, because (a) since these guys have a totally Neanderthal mind-set, they don’t realize that girls can fight, too, so they’re not even concentrating on me, and (b) somewhere in even the angriest dude’s mind is the thought that they might maybe just maybe get laid.

  So one of them, presumably the group’s theoretical Romeo, takes his beady eyes off Rab and turns to me, with a sort of amorous look. “’Smore like it, love,” he says, cocking his head back.

  Which suits me just fine, since it makes it easy to punch him as hard as I can in the neck. The Adam’s apple, to be precise. Hit somebody hard enough there, they won’t be doing or saying much anytime soon. It’s kind of tough to pull off in a world where people are walking around with guns, even in a situation where somebody expects that you’ll be fighting them. Fortunately for me, this moron was thinking he might get some action. So there’s a ripe sort of crunch, and he staggers back, holding his throat, spitting up blood and wheezing.

  A sudden storm of expletives from both sides as everybody realizes what just went down. Then the guy’s buddy, at least one of the ones who isn’t helping him to the ground, takes a swing at me. Now, this isn’t an action movie or anything, so I don’t dodge it, but I am at least a little ready, so it sort of bounces off my shoulder.

  The guy’s now right on me, which would be a problem except for the knife I bought in the market square the other day. I’ve already unsheathed it from its spot on my hip, and now I jam it as hard as I can into his knee.

  He screams in pain—I can’t really blame him—and stumbles backward, almost taking the knife with him, but I yank it out, ready for the next guy. Except, the two unscathed dudes have made a very quick estimate of their prospects and have decided to pursue the path of nonviolence. One of them takes off down the street like a little bitch, and the other, to his credit, drags Mr. Adam’s Apple away as the dude with the now-bisected kneecap staggers after them. There’s no “you’ll pay for this!” or anything like that. These guys are, after all, just some drunk shitheads, not the feral tribesmen I’m used to.

  Me, I’m going to have a nasty contusion on my ear and a sore shoulder, but right now I’m too juiced with adrenaline and endorphins and whatnot to notice. I daresay I’m downright ecstatic, albeit also on the edge of tears, because it isn’t very nice to punch and stab people, and at heart I’m a nice girl.

  If this were a Wachowski movie or something, I’d probably be all coiled up in a balletically badass pose, but, in fact, I’m on my knees, having fallen forward when I pulled my knife out of the guy’s cartilage. So I pick myself up and turn to the others, pretty sure that they’re going to be gaping at me in sheer horror and disgust.

  I’ve had a kind of epiphany in the short moment of turning around, which is about fighting and violence. I used to think that the reason I was scared of fighting was that I was scared of getting hurt. Which I was. But beyond that, the reason I was scared of getting hurt was that I knew I was less willing to inflict hurt than the other person. Like, part of winning a fight, beyond the obvious fact of being better at it than someone else, is getting over all the societal conditioning that tells you it’s wrong to hurt people. That, and the fact that it’s kind of intensely intimate as well, an extremely emotional sort of connection with the person whose ass you’re kicking.

  As far as violence is concerned, I lost my innocence and my fear long ago. And those fools currently dragging their bleeding asses along the street had thought they were dealing with a virgin.

  So when I turn back to the others, I feel like they’re going to see the, like, pox-addled face of someone so debauched with violence that she’s barely even human anymore. And I’m already mourning the friendships that might have been.

  But instead, they erupt into applause. Like, somehow they’ve been anesthetized with the same drug that made it possible for me to do the things I just did. Maybe it’s just surprise. Maybe it’s a hitherto unrecognized sadism. They’re all “whoaaaa!” and “wickeeeed!” and “I don’t believe it!” and “that was so badass!” They come up and hug me and slap me on the back and shake their heads in amazement, and the only sign that it’s incredibly weird is that Michael leans over and vomits.

  Alone back in L6 Nevile’s Court, I ride the swell of adrenaline down to where it bottoms out in exhaustion and shame. I think of the guy with a reorganized windpipe and the guy with a permanently fucked knee and wonder if the moral equation wouldn’t have balanced out better with them intact and me humiliated instead. I try to breathe through it. This isn’t me—this is more like Jeff, like he’s always watching me from somewhere and I’m influenced by him as an audience, even though he’s gone. Or is he, really? I feel like I feel him. Jefferson was a Buddhist, and he was always all, like, we’re just bits of the universe who mistakenly think we’re separate entities. Maybe some of his atoms are floating around me, or he’s looking for a baby to incarnate.

  Enough of that. I’m getting sick of my own company, so I give my phone a little rub.

  Charlie: “Hi!”

  It’s a childish little voice, the voice of a five-year-old boy. As close to my little brother Charlie’s voice as I could manage.

  Me: “Hi, monkey.”

  Charlie: “What time is it?”

  The little boy voice sounds sleepy. Some programmer worked hard on this.

  Me: “Dude, you know that. You’re a cell phone.”

  A tiny delay.

  Charlie: “No, I’m not. I’m software.”

  He—it—pronounces it “
softwayew,” with a lisp just like Charlie’s. A deep hit of nostalgia and love and pain.

  Me: “That’s right, you’re softwayew.”

  Charlie: “Wow—it’s after midnight! What did you do tonight, Donna?”

  The seams between its coded bursts of manufactured speech are almost impossible to hear.

  Me: “I met some people.”

  Charlie: “You met some people?”

  He often operates by paraphrasing language cues or parroting them back.

  Me: “Yeah. Nice people.”

  Charlie: “That’s good.”

  Me: “Yeah. But I’m glad to be back here alone. With you.”

  Charlie: “Me too.”

  Then, after a silence—

  Charlie: “Donna, I love you.”

  Me: “I love you, too, Charlie.”

  And I cry some and fall asleep.

  IT’S LIKE THIS. I’M NOT A SIDEKICK, I just play one in life.

  People want to categorize other people, they want to label, they want to simplify so that they can deal with them more efficiently. Appreciating nuance is not a big priority, and bandwidth is limited. So to most folks, I’m the gay best friend, or the gay black guy, or just the gay dude. Safely marginalized.

  And truth to tell? I’ve been content to play the part. I mean, just that little pocket of air in the drowning pool that is society has been enough at times. For the boy who grew up different, knocked down, beat up, at times it was enough just to have any place at all. I had my thing. I knew the job description.

  Yeah, you could call it a niche position. I mean, do you know how rare it is for a brother like me to see himself represented on TV or in the movies or whatnot? Like, probably, when you read these words and hear this voice in your head, which is your voice but not your voice, both me and you in that weird way that you do when you’re reading? Probably you think to yourself, as I/you describe my life, That’s not me. Maybe you’re even put off, like, concerned whether my voice is going to say something that your voice doesn’t want to say, anything supergay, that will refer to doing or feeling things that you’re not comfortable doing or feeling. It’s the same way with me every time I read the story where the guy gets the girl. Or even the girl gets the guy. Still not me. I want to be the guy who gets the guy.

  But don’t worry. That voice in your head can’t change you, not for real. All it can do is help you see what it’s like to be another person. Maybe.

  For a while, down at Stonewall High School, life was better. Stonewall was founded for the gay kids, the trans kids, the non-cisgendered kids. Everybody thought they were a special snowflake. I had a life out of the shadows and the closet, I had friends, I had boyfriends, I had room to breathe, the whole nine.

  Of course, there was one relationship people weren’t exactly copacetic with, which was me and my homeboy Jesus. They said the Bible says homosexuality’s a sin. I said Leviticus says eating crustaceans is a sin, too, and ending your marriage is a sin, which makes any divorced guy eating a lobster exponentially worse than me. Besides, JC came to change all that anyways. Call that cafeteria Christianity? Picking and choosing what I like? Well, I call bullshit. Cafeteria Christianity is what the Evangelicals went in for. They chose the God-Jesus of the Book of John, not the person-Jesus of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. I say the majority wins.

  Anyhow, it was okay, me and the other queers and Jesus. We were cool. Then the Sickness comes and tears everything up. Lot of the kids head home to their dying folks. Some of us don’t have much of a home to head back to, so we hang out. Most of us get knocked off in the ensuing land grab/ethnic cleanse/tribal Harry-Potter-sorting-hat massacre that follows.

  Me, I end up inside the walls of Washington Square along with some other Stonewall survivors and the Catholic kids from Holy Cross and Wash’s bunch from the Learning Outpost or whatever they called that crunchy granola school they were from. Me and Wash and his little brother, Jefferson, we were cool, though Wash was tough enough about any other kids joining up after he figured out the carrying capacity of the land and the local scavenging grounds. Hence the whole gated medieval fortress thing.

  It was there I met Donna. I can’t say that I was in the market for a fag hag or anything—it was never my thing—but I liked her right away. That’s not how it was anyhow. I mean, living off the fat of the land before It Happened, sure, a girl had all sorts of leisure for things like Accessory Friends. After, friendship was for real, not some style thing. I had that bitch’s back, which is why I made the damn fool decision to go with her that day she and Jefferson were heading up to the public library. It was only supposed to take an hour or two. Worst time estimate since Gilligan’s motherfucking Island.

  Anyhoo.

  I miss her. I do. I think about her lying out on a beach in Hawaii, a tan, buff waiter bringing her a mai tai or whatnot. I hope she’s out there enjoying herself for the rest of us. Because me, I have returned from the fire to the original frying pan.

  Except it’s all okay. ’Cause I’m mainlining a drug called Love.

  Okay, maybe a drug cocktail of love and lust.

  I know what you’re thinking—wasn’t I in love with Theo? Well, okay, maybe I did find the whole Strong Silent Brother thing kind of intriguing. But Theo turned out to be 100 Percent Grade-A Straight and, contrary to stereotype, not every gay man is trying to seduce straight boys like they were some kind of video game achievement to unlock or whatever. Never wanted to go to a party where I wasn’t invited. It was enough to make me want to take my gaydar into the shop for repairs, but it didn’t break my heart or anything.

  Now, Chapel—that’s a different matter. Homey is going in on stealth mode and shit. I don’t know if the Very Large Array telescope of gaydar would register him as so much as a blip. So when I catch him a few times eyeballing me like I’m some piece of modern art he’s trying to figure out the meaning of, I figure he’s just doing some fifth-column, French Resistance, special-forces threat-assessment thing. Trust no one and all.

  Well, turns out he has taken a shine to yours truly. And I shine right back at him. And damn if it isn’t a lot like being alive.

  Consider if you will how difficult it is to be a little gay black kid. Consider not having the choice to be a little straight black kid. Consider that the life you want to have, which is so much like the life everybody else wants to have except for this one tiny difference, is, because of this difference, seen as an abomination or a joke or a tragedy. And then, just when things start to look up, like, we can get married and hold hands in the street and all kinds of stuff that boring people do, the apocalypse hits.

  Definitely thins out the dating pool.

  But here’s Chapel, all purpose and commitment and sacrifice and hot.

  And all mine. Maybe.

  Oh, it’s not like he’s got a boyfriend or anything. I think I’m pretty much his only option at the moment, which is kind of encouraging. And he seems to like me. Like, lots. It’s just that he’s all mission. Setting up this thing at the UN, getting the Cure out, is all he thinks about. Well, almost all. Honestly, I never thought I’d meet anybody more idealistic than Jefferson. But Chapel actually chose to risk his life to save people he doesn’t even know. I don’t get it.

  But I’m not complaining.

  We’re still maintaining the bullshit story that he’s some random we met on Plum Island. And I have to sit on the biggest piece of gossip in human history. But I get it. Shit would get real pretty quick if everybody knew they were missing out on the Lush Life out there beyond the ocean. Chapel says the truth will be told eventually. I’m not looking forward to the lynch mob when they find out we’ve been neglecting to mention a few teeny, tiny little things like the survival of human civilization, but for now, everybody’s buying it.

  Apart from Carolyn, there’s not a whole lot of guilt-tripping about our disappearance. Actually, most everybody thought we were dead, so we’re kind of instant celebrities. Which is funny. Donna always said I just wanted to be famou
s. Now I am.

  And Jefferson is a superstar. It’s not just that he was the leader of the expedition that led to the Cure. It’s something more, because the serum or whatever is made from his blood.

  We use the big Moroccan tent to administer the doses, since Donna’s infirmary is nothing but a pile of bricks now. And damned if it doesn’t look a little familiar to me, the crowd of waiting supplicants, the solemn administering of the precious gift. You Catholic kids will know what I mean. It’s a religious happening, a medical Mass. Brainbox may as well be saying, “The blood of Jefferson,” as he drops the Cure onto their tongues. As each of the kids walks away, savoring the nothing-taste in his mouth, he makes sure to find Jefferson and embrace him. Tears of gratitude. Worship. Some serious first-commandment-breaking in the offing: I am a jealous God. Thou shalt put no other gods above me.

  In a dark corner of the tent, Chapel looks on, smiling. “That’s my boy.”

  “I thought I was your boy,” I say.

  “Oh, you are,” he says, and flashes the blinding beam of his smile into my eyes. “But I think I just realized. We’ve got our new king.”

  “Jefferson?” I say. “I think you’ve got the wrong guy. Jefferson’s all Occupy Apocalypse. Like truth, justice, and the democratic way.”

  “We’ll see,” says Chapel, and gives me a don’t-worry-your-pretty-little-head kind of wink.

  Jefferson does have a Big Plan, of course. It’s typically pie-in-the-sky. The idea is to call a Gathering of the Tribes at the UN. Unite all the survivors in Manhattan and form a sort of supertribe. Stop fighting over limited resources and help one another.

  Leaving aside the possibility that the UN may first have to be cleared of spree-killing cannibals for all we know, the idea is cockamamie for a bunch of reasons. Not the least is that everybody hates one another. And with good reason. There’s not a grocery store on the whole island where you won’t find the skeleton of some kid murdered by some other kid over the last bag of Kibbles ’n Bits. And the Uptowners? Man, how am I supposed to make peace with those fascist, misogynist, homophobic crackers? And by the way, what did they do to the girls?