I suppose that I should have known more about the issues; Middle Eastern Country A pissed off Middle Eastern Country B, and Israel was all het up about defending itself. It’s been a nightmare over there since ever. I guess Pakistan and India took the opportunity to put their fingers back on the trigger, and China and the Koreas are trading threats back and forth. And good ol’ freedom-lovin’ America. We have missiles pointed everywhere at everyone.
I care more about making my sales targets and staying away from the wrath of the Sales Director. I’m an overworked, underpaid college graduate with an English degree trying to sell replacement insurance to suckers who’ve bought a new vehicle. What they never pay attention to is the fine print. At least I just sell the policies. The Claims Agents never last more than two or three months. The burnout from people screaming at them when their claim is inevitably declined is incredible. One guy even came down to the office and started smashing the windows in on the first floor with the bumper off of his wrecked car while yelling about modern day piracy or something. I dunno. I guess he didn’t notice that the first floor is the building’s lobby and coffee shop. The barista was laughing hysterically and filming the whole thing on her phone. Someone must’ve called the cops, because eventually they came and hauled him away, weeping and red-faced. They handcuffed him and dumped him into the cop car. Hilarious.
Add the cost of ten new European sedans together and it might amount to the same amount of student debt I have. Lately the suckers aren’t being sucked into buying our crappy policies and it’s eating into my bank account. I don’t know what’s worse: the negative bank balance and calls from the student loan people or Harvey the Sales Director screaming hustle, hustle hustle! at us from his corner office. Either way I got ‘em both. Lucky me.
As the week slouched on the news can only focus on The Bomb (as if there was one megalithic device that threatened us all) and the negotiations that they couched as peace talks that seemed to be going nowhere. The President’s face grew more lined and drawn every day. I couldn’t escape talk of The Bomb. Co-workers, customers, cashiers, everyone had a thought that they had to spill. Conspiracies, theories, plans…I was sick of it all. Deep down everyone has to know that we’re fucked. We live in a major city. Fuckin’ Los Angeles. If you were serious about The Bomb and survival you’d already be out of here. But no one wants to give the threat too much weight as if that was a way to prevent it from happening. Me, I’m tired of hearing about The Bomb, who has it, and how to protect ourselves from it. My grandpa used to practice duck-and-cover when he was in school; what did they think that was going to do? Like, seriously at least go out trying to do something useful. I guess they still can’t tell the god-fearing American public to kiss it’s ass goodbye if the missiles fly. That won’t win you votes. Or keep people from rioting in the streets.I figure if they’re gonna launch them there isn’t much anyone can do about it, and we’re all gonna end up destroyed in the blast. At least that’s what I tell myself. I don’t have enough money to stockpile cans of food or anything else that’s recommended to have on hand. The stores are running low on decent canned food. Last time I was there all I saw were lima beans and yellow wax beans. I have a lot of instant ramen noodles; they’re about the only thing I can afford to eat. I figure they should do me through the end of the world.
I used to have insomnia from my mounting debt. I haven’t been able to pay more than the interest fees on my student loans for the past six months and the calls from the collection agency eat at me. Now I have nightmares of fireballs and radiation. I see the flash of The Bomb outlining bones with x rays and eyeballs weeping like melting wax. Flesh flayed from bones as the firestorm swirled around the city. I wake up in a cold sweat, sometimes jerked out of the dream by the testing of the air-raid sirens like this morning. I laid in bed willing my heart rate to slow down as the pre-dawn grey lightened to a respectable time to get up.
If you knew beyond a doubt that today would be your last day on earth would you get up and go into work like any other day? Live it up and do as many bucket list things as you could cram into the time you had left? Almost everyone I know has entertained the thought. Some people are quitting work and going off to take care of their bucket lists, although the State and Federal governments are asking people to continue to go to work like normal. I used to daydream about what I’d do, but I realized that I’d run out of money before any bombs started flying. Then what would I do? Crawl back to my boss on my hands and knees begging for my job back? I started making a list of the people I should make amends with. The list was depressing. I crumpled it up. Stupid. What good will it do, anyways? With nothing better to do I just keep going through the motions.
The shitty thing about your last day is you don’t know The End is rushing towards you until it’s over. How fucking sad would it be if all of us get snuffed out here on the freeway trying to get into work? I guess without a nuclear crisis no one knows when the end’s gonna come, though. It’s just that now we’re all going to share the same one.
It’s a predictable Tuesday morning in the LA sunshine. Traffic on the freeway sucked as usual. Someone took the last of the coffee without brewing more, the printer was out of both paper and toner, and the world stood at the brink of war. My desk faces the entranceway to our ridiculous open concept office and my back is to the window. It allows me to look productive when I’m really mindlessly surfing Twitter or checking on the situation with the peace talks. Today Russia has backed Iran against Israel and the US and suddenly everyone seems like a kid with a new cap gun just itching to hear it go bang. India and Pakistan have started hurtling rockets and mortars across their border. Just conventional weapons so far. I mean, what the hell is a conventional weapon? If your house is blown apart with you and your family inside does it matter if it was a rock, a missile, or a nuclear bomb? Jesus.
I see Harvey come barrelling out of his office, no doubt primed for another rah-rah speech about hustling and making those dollars. It’s pretty hard to convince anyone to buy any kind of insurance these days. No one has any doubt that if war does break out there will be anyone left to make good on the policies. As he holds forth on how the economy isn’t that bad, it’s that we’re just not trying hard enough I remember the dream I had last night:
I saw the flash and the fire. Harvey had been standing before me, facing the window. His eyeballs have melted like soft-serve vanilla ice cream and run down his face. His mouth is open in a perfectly formed circle of surprise as he swayed before me, crowned with broken glass and flames. I turned to look at the others, and I saw more melted marshmallow eyes and bodies sliced by shards of glass. A shockwave of air and heat hits us. I cover my face with my arms. When I look to see the damage I see my charred skeleton fingers and arm bones. My clothes and hair are burning, and I wonder why I can’t smell anything. It should smell like a terrible polyester and flesh barbeque in here. I’m surrounded by my charred co-workers. Those who had been facing the window are grinning skeletons. Those who had been facing away have faces like burnt matchsticks. The heat causes their tendons to contract and they dance. The carpet and all the paper in the office was burning and consuming the breathable air. The firestorm outside was sucking more oxygen out. The dancing skeletons are tiring and starting to fall down. I put my boney hands to my face and feel my own eyeballs running down my cheeks.
I jolt out of my daydream. Harvey is still going on, but I’ve lost his train of thought. He’s staring at me. Shit. “Evans,” he barks and I snap my eyes up to his. His face is red and sweaty.
“Uh…” I scramble to think of what he wants me to say. “Hustle….more?” Fuck. Could I sound any less confident?
“Hustle MORE!” he bellowed. “MAKE YOUR LIFE ABOUT HUSTLING!” God, now I’m picturing all of us out on the street hawking our stupid policies like prostitutes in long coats and fishnets. I start to giggle and I clap my hands over my mouth. I can’t stop, and tears are running down my face. I know everyone’s staring at me, but goddamn it I can’t stop. I try to gulp air and make a loud whoop as a giggle tries to come out as the air rushes in.
A mournful wail rises, falls and repeats. Holy shit, it’s the air-raid siren! The lights and computer monitors wink out. The power has been shut off. Suddenly everyone is scrambling and wondering what to do.
“Head for the underground parking!”
“No, get under your desks!”
“Away from the windows!”
A rush of adrenaline fills me as everyone around me starts frantically running around. Ben, the guy who sits beside me and texts his girlfriend all day is clutching a file against his chest. It looks like he might even be hyperventilating!
The wailing is abruptly cut off; ending on a note like a choking sob. Everyone freezes, waiting. Cringing. Some people have covered their eyes and a lot of them are under desks doing the good old duck and cover.
Nothing happens. Heads start popping up like gophers one after the other. The lights come back on and the receptionist gives a little shriek. I can hear Ben’s phone vibrate; incoming text message. He reads it, and I can see the relief drop onto his face. He holds his phone out to us. “False alarm! They were doing some work and accidentally tripped a wire that set off the siren. They cut the power to try to turn it off.” He’s beaming, a big dopey grin. I sigh and drop back into my chair.