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It went like this: 3 years passed. Every morning, Carol would ravenously read a book on electrostatic energy, or drive to an academic laboratory, and her and Manousos would update her whiteboard. It had grown so large that there became multiple whiteboards, one for every room, and sometimes Carol would wake up gasping in her empty bed and stare at the things she knew.
Electro-static tweezers, AC/DC (not the band) currents, Zosia could not love her, pDEP forces, not like she wanted anyway, theta wave hypnosis, reconstitution of original brain waves, she would give anything for blissful ignorance of all of this again, neurostatic oscillations.
When things were worse, she turned to Wycaro. It was funny, in a fucked up way: it had taken the end of the world to kill her writer’s block.
Most days, nothing happened. They worked all day and then sat on the concrete floor in front of the couch, sipping scotch and then whiskey and then water as they gradually ran out of bottles. They dropped the pretense of translation, then: whenever they spoke about anything other than the task at hand, they used their native languages and pretended the other wasn’t growing increasingly fluent.
They would’ve never been friends, not before all of this. They were both vastly too stubborn, too hard-headed to be anything but angry at one another. Now, in the end times, Carol understood. They had matching souls, somehow. They loved the same. Violently.
Manousos would always have a blade in his hand, and Carol would always have a grenade in hers.
They’d settled into a rhythm. Carol began to privately suspect that the whole thing was not that much different to what she had done with… her. Them. They were playing house, except they were playing scientist and researcher and hero. Things they would never be.
But then there was a knock at the door at 3:14 AM. Carol had already been awake, of course, but she put up the pretense of anger anyway.
“These are quiet hours, Manny,” she said, swinging open the door. But then she saw his face. Serious. Lighter, somehow, than she’d ever seen it.
“I think I have it,” he said. “I think we have… a something.”
They stared at the whiteboard for hours in silence.
“Well, shit,” Carol croaked out.
—
Just like that, the apocalypse was cancelled. Called off. Go home, everybody: sorry about the animals which have taken up residence in your kitchens. Sorry about the O’Keefe, yes I’ll be returning that. To be fair, you all really did this to yourselves.
She didn’t know what she had wanted from the whole thing. It would’ve horrified her to be named a Nobel prize winner or some shit like that, for a crowd to applaud and tell her “Thank you, Carol!” It would’ve been worse, maybe, to be hated for it.
It seemed like it had been more like a dream. A good dream – hazy at the edges, the kind where gravity’s been reversed and you can float through the world like you’re swimming. People retained most of the memories of their own individual bodies in that dream-like way. Some people became obsessed with trying out new drugs to find something comparable to the feeling. But it seemed like most were content to get back to their lives.
Carol wondered if the other survivors still talked weekly. If they hated her for the whole thing. She half-expected every call she got to be Laxmi, cursing her out. But the first month had been silent.
She called Diabate one night.
“Do they hate you,” she said, quietly, “for what you did?”
There was silence on the other end, then a laugh. She envied his ability to find joy in every situation.
“No, of course not,” he said. “I was kind to them, Carol. I tried to be, at least. Some of them have thanked me for being unviolent.”
The call was cordial. Afterwards, Carol promptly threw up.
—
There had been interviews. 60 Minutes, the whole thing. There had been government sit-downs. There had been letters to her old P.O. box, angry about the whole millions dead thing. There had been million dollar book deals for her tell-all.
But then time had passed and there was nothing at all. Sometimes people looked at her like they might just recognize her. Carol had left her Sprouts in a hurry once, as a man followed her around like a hunter stalking his prey. He walked up to her car door, and Carol put the car in drive, and then-
“I love your books,” he said, smiling.
Time had passed, and with the world off pause once more, Carol was due for another Wycaro.
She’d sent the manuscript off to Val with no pretense. Usually, her Wycaro novels came with several-page documents justifying her choices, and then hours of phone calls of clarifying answers and reassurance-seeking questions.
She prayed, this time, for no scrutiny.
“It’s your best,” Val said, on the phone a few days later.
Carol frowned. She knew she would say that.
—
And then there was another book tour. Another hat from Moira. Another sea of purple-haired, purple-dressed women.
She was surprised to find that she had missed them desperately.
Of course, many of them were mad about the new developments for Raban. Many of them stopped coming and started boycott hashtags and lasered off their tattoos.
But enough of them stayed. That was maybe the worst part, the lingering thought that she could’ve been doing this the whole time.
Once again, there was fan mail.
This time, she took the time to read it.
A lot of the stories were incredibly sad. People had woken up one day and found their loved ones gone without a trace (did I do that?) and were happy to find that in Wycaro, nothing had really changed. No apocalypse in their purple sand heaven. People had found themselves with a new and desperate loneliness, one unlike anything they’d ever felt before.
Me too, sister, Carol thought to herself.
Many privately expressed condolences for Helen. Many of them had known her: not really, of course, never like Carol did, but she had become a fixture of Carol’s book tours. The kind woman who shuffled them through the line to meet Carol and told them not to be nervous, that Carol didn’t bite. Helen had always been a good liar like that. It was Helen who took their pictures, who told Carol she had time to sign just one more book.
And then there was the letter from Poland. Stamped all over, crumpled by customs. She shoved it in the bills and assorted cables drawer and tried not to think about it.
But then it was 3am again, and there were no discoveries left to have, no whiteboards to write them down on.
She crept down the stairs like she might disturb something and stared at the letter some more.
Gdansk. Mangos. The taste of salt. She closed her eyes hard and tried to imagine a place she’d never been.
Why hadn’t she asked her to take her there? They could’ve gone anywhere. They had travelled the world together at the end. Why had she been so scared to learn more about Zosia? Now, all she had was all she’d ever have.
She opened the letter.
“Hi, Carol,
I was very disappointed by your decision to make Raban a woman in the latest Wycaro. Raban meant a lot to many of your female readers, most of whom are heterosexual women, and-”
She ripped the whole thing up.
—
There was contentment to be found in this life. She had saved the world, after all, whether they were thankful for it or not, and now was the time to rest. There would always be another Golden Girls to re-watch, and she could always drive out into the city and see the faces of everyone around her and feel a little better. She loved people watching, now, loved to watch people fight and break up and make out outside the bars. You’re welcome, she thought.
It was easy to watch from outside the bars now. Manousos had helped her, maybe unknowingly, to finally put the bottle down.
“No time for that,” he’d say, sharply, when Carol reached for a glass mid-day. He didn’t stop her in the nights, but he would drink his share too, doing his part to dwindle the supply. When they ran out, there was no one to bring them new bottles, not anymore.
“Es lo mejor. Se te ponen tristes los ojos cuando tomas trago, Carolsturka.” Always the first and last name. Like he never wanted to get too familiar.
It hadn’t been her choice, not really, but she knew it was better this way. She wanted to believe Helen would’ve been proud of her. But maybe it had been too late for any of that with them.
Besides, the liquor always made her reminisce. The liquor made her want a cigarette and a brown eyed girl in her bed.
—
She was pretty sure that there wouldn’t be anyone else. She looked out at Helen’s grave each morning and thought “we had a good run.” It had been a good run. Even when it was hard, even when Carol was shitty: it had been a good run.
But part of her was waiting for Zosia. Part of her expected her in their bed, her thumb rubbing circles into her spine, the way her tongue had grown sharp at the end - just the way Carol liked it.
Part of her still expected to turn around and see her holding that shovel. Maybe this time it would be for her.
In equal measure, she longed for Helen. She would’ve been proud, Carol thinks: she saved the world. Set things right, and wrote a new Wycaro while she was at it. Carol tries not to think about what she would’ve thought of the Zosia days. She would’ve found it funny, maybe. Proud, haughty Raban. Nearly 3 weeks of hedonism, and the O’Keefe in their living room.
On the flight home from Montana, she had stared at Zosia the whole time, trying to commit her to memory. She wished Zosia was not such a perfect pilot so that she might crash the plane. Take them down in a messy blaze, and Carol could crawl to her arms in the wreckage and die there easy feeling loved.
It was easier to try not to think about it, about the girl in her yard or the girl in… wherever she was now. The girl she didn’t know at all.
But she did.
—
When she was 16, there had been a girl. Lacey, the first brown-eyed girl, the one with the birthmark like a kiss on her cheek. Carol had loved her ferociously. She’d really thought, in that stupid teenage way, that it would be forever.
She had felt like the luckiest girl in the world when Lacey leaned forward and kissed her. There was too much tongue, but Carol was hungry for it all the same.
She remembered the last night before they had sent her away, meeting with her at dawn.
“They know about us,” she’d said, outside the convenience store. “But we can leave, we can run. You and me, we don’t need any of this. Come with me.” Lacey had wrapped her arms tightly around herself. It was too warm to be shivering, but she was.
“I can’t,” she said, quiet. “I’m not like that.”
The betrayal had crushed her at the time. Now, in a way, she understood.
She hadn’t given Zosia the option. She could’ve said it – I need the bomb and I need you. I’ll work with Manousos all day on a cure and I know you won’t help but I know you won’t stop me, and I can come home to you. I will be good to you. Run away with me, baby, you and me.
She could’ve done it, too, and kept Zosia as her hostage. Get near either of us and I’ll blow it all up. Maybe they would’ve let her. They had to know she would never hurt Zosia, not now. Not like that. They had to know.
Did they know?
Maybe she was dangerous too.
Maybe she would’ve taken her home and fallen asleep and woken up to her gone. Maybe Carol would’ve held her too tight for her to ever get away.
But she hadn’t given her the option, hadn’t given her the choice. She knew what the answer would be, anyway, and she didn’t regret it.
Most of the time.
—
She was in Toledo when she met with Laxmi. It was the only time their schedules had lined up. Also, Carol privately thought that Laxmi didn’t want either of them to have home field advantage.
It seemed fair.
Laxmi looked younger at the coffee shop, nursing her black coffee. Eyes softer, warmer. Ravi sat beside her. Older. Playing a game on his phone, eyes not even looking up to greet Carol. Teenagers. Carol’s heart swelled a little at the joy of the miracle: a rude teenager. Laxmi’s eyes flitted over Carol, assessing.
She stood to greet her, like they might hug. Carol shuffled over, unprepared.
“Carol,” Laxmi said, almost warm, holding out a hand. Carol shook it tentatively.
“Laxmi,” she huffed, catching her breath. “I’m sorry I’m late, I was-” and Laxmi waved a dismissing hand.
“No matter,” she said. “You’re a big famous author.” Carol laughed dryly. Laxmi smiled, almost conspiratorial.
“I read your book, you know,” she declared. Carol didn’t dare to ask which one, and instead grimaced. She felt horribly exposed by the idea of Laxmi reading the new one, seeing the cover with the dark-haired Raban’s face buried in the crook of Lucasia’s neck.
“It’s not bad,” she said, sipping her coffee, “not for me, but not bad.” It was the highest praise she’d get from Laxmi, probably.
“You read it on the plane, didn’t you?” Carol laughed. Laxmi shrugged.
“Isn’t that what your books are meant for?” Touché, Carol thought.
“You’re not wrong,” she said. Laxmi was smiling at her. Totally foreign. “You said you had… something to say?” Laxmi nods, more serious.
“I wanted to thank you,” she said, quiet. She looked at Ravi for a long moment, something impossible in her eyes. Carol didn’t really regret not going through with IVF, really only regretted freezing her eggs in the first place, but in the moment, Carol wondered if she had missed out on some great cosmic love. “I was cruel to you. You were cruel to me, too,” she asserted, “but I was wrong. I wanted to thank you for giving me my son back. My life back.” Carol looked down at her hands, the ones that had somehow performed a miracle.
“I’m sorry about the other stuff,” she admitted, honest. Ravi looked up at her then, and Carol cringed at the thought of their gynecology discussion. She hoped all that was a blur to him. He went back to his game. Laxmi nodded, then stood.
“Let bygones be bygones,” she murmured. She yanked Ravi up by the sleeve. The simple, loving gesture made Carol ache all over for something she’d never have – or something she’d never had. “We should be going,” she said. Kind but brief about it. All this way, to fucking Toledo, just to thank her. It made sense, somehow: Carol got the sense that Laxmi had the kind of strong morality in her that she’d never had.
In another world, one where her loss had been greater, Laxmi would have been the hero. If Carol hadn’t lost Helen, she probably would’ve been happy in her denial. They were similar, at the end of the day. Her and Laxmi and Manousos and Koumba, too. Maybe all of them. Maybe that was the impossible link, the thing none of them ever quite figured out.
“Thank you for coming all this way,” Carol said, unsure. Laxmi hesitated, then leaned forward and hugged her tightly. She smelled like citrus.
“I was terribly lonely,” Laxmi whispered into her shoulder. “I’m sorry you are, now. I hope one day you have love in your life again.” Carol’s eyes felt hot, and for a moment, she was terrified that she might cry in front of Laxmi.
They broke their embrace. Laxmi left for god knows where. Carol got ready for Columbus.
Love in her life. She felt so far from that now.
—
There was Columbus, and then there was Nashville, and then there was Austin and Dallas and Denver and the next thing she knew, Carol was back in Albuquerque.
It wasn’t easy doing it without Helen. It was extraordinarily hard. Everything was, doing it the first time without her, but it got less and less hard every time. She knew, deep down, that it would never be easy.
But the thought of being back home was terrifying.
It was nice to be in another city, once it stopped being sad for a moment. When she couldn’t sleep, she could watch the street go to sleep and wake up again. On the bad nights, she’d cry herself to sleep.
On the worst nights, she put her hand between her legs and stifled the name on her tongue, terrified at what it might be. She’d come until her whole body cramped, and then she’d pass out asleep.
She’d settled into a rhythm. But it was better than the drinking.
The cul de sac, though, was lonely. It was returning to a bed that had been theirs. Her fortress of solitude, where she could see the whole city beneath her, but couldn’t make out any people. An empty liquor cabinet and a defunct motion sensor.
She’d move, but then there was the matter of the grave in her yard. And of course, no matter how much she thought about it, she knew she never would.
—
“Raban stood before Lucasia, and she thought she’d never seen her more beautiful. Not on the ship, not in the caves, but in their final parting: standing there, hair flowing in the wind, her skirt hitched up at her ankles, she was beautiful. It only felt fitting that this was how they had to part. She wished for a photographic memory, or the gift of a painter’s hand – anything to capture this image for herself. Her heart clenched around the sudden emptiness.
‘I love you,’ Raban said, and Lucasia knew she meant it, but she also knew the terrible truth that it could never be in the way she wished. She didn’t have to say it back. She knew that Raban knew.”
Carol closed the book and looked out at the sea of readers. She felt more vulnerable than she ever had, looking out at the regulars: Moira, Lynette, Denise, the ones who had been there since day 1. The ones who had stayed. The new ones, too: her growing audience of teenage lesbians since the great Raban reveal. Younger than her audience had ever been, and Carol sometimes felt a great responsibility to protect them, to tell them they weren’t wrong or crazy or damned. She hoped the writing did the trick. Looking at them now, she felt as though her pounding heart might be visible through her chest. She smiled out at them anyways.
“Thank you for coming,” she said. The crowd clapped. The last reading of the tour. She had done it, without ever crying or falling apart on the floor in front of them. Somehow. Thank god.
“The signing will now commence in the romance wing,” Val announced. As Val ushered her away, she ached for Helen’s palm on the small of her back.
—
Soon, the line had dwindled and Carol was packing up the purple sharpies with a wave to the ever-patient staff. She’d insisted to Val upon driving herself home in their shared rental car: she’d return it the next day after their usual tour post-mortem coffee. Carol had stayed late signing, and now it was just her and the college students. For the first time in a long time, she thought about the diner. Was it still standing now, after they’d rebuilt it just for her? Had Bri found her way back to Florida?
The end of a tour was always bittersweet, this one worst of all. She’d miss it, she really would. Who knew that it would be easier to tell the truth over telling a lie? We did it, she thought to herself, knowing that we was only I this time.
She knew, deep down, that there would be another tour. Another Wycaro. Right now, she couldn’t fathom what it would be, but she knew it would come. It always did.
The wind nipped at her face as she made her way to the car. She couldn’t wait to get these heels off. She heard the sound of another set of footsteps behind her, and smiled at the feeling of having a stranger’s company.
“Excuse me,” the voice said with a gentle, accented lilt. It was almost familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it, and she assumed it wasn’t for her, but then- “I missed the signing. I was wondering if I could-”
Carol briefly internally debated. Before everything, she would’ve pretended she hadn’t heard anything. “I’m off the clock,” she’d probably call out, or make up a lame excuse of her Sharpie running dry. But something in her heart tugged at her to turn around, and there she was.
Her dark hair was short, cropped to her ears, and she was wearing a loose tee and jeans. Ordinary, a little rumpled, undone. But that smile – Carol would know that smile her whole life. It was the smile that haunted her every dream, every memory. It was her. She was beautiful.
“Hi, Carol,” she said, and the affect wasn’t quite right, but she knew. She knew.
☻