Jovie

PlunkBurger

Central Food Court – Main Level

Sometime After

If you liked to know what the world sounds like when it’s ending, I’ll tell you.

            It sounds like nothing. 

            Yes, there’s the screaming and the shouting, voices choked, forced, thinned, the sound of feet and bodies, running, tripping, falling, but that’s not actually the sound of the world ending.  That’s what people sound like when the world is ending because shit is falling from the sky and the ground is cracking open. The actual sound of the world shutting itself down, if you block out all the people, is like a long, never-ending pause.  

            There’s a reason that I didn’t run toward the emergency exit by The Pretzel Pirate when the never-ending pause started.  Aside from the fact that I caught site of who else was headed in that direction –the hairdresser from Mirabella, the one who complained to my manager that I wasn’t being warm and friendly enough when I rang up her Cha-Cha Chili-Cheese Fries that one time, and the guy who runs the cell phone repair kiosk outside of Macy’s who looks like he might have a collection of heads in his freezer.  I’m rather particular about who I die with.  Not that it really matters at this point, I guess.  I’m not really here.  Haven’t been for some time now. This would just be the fine print.  The crossing of all the T’s and the dotting of all the I’s.  The tying up of loose ends.

            The light someone accidentally left on finally being switched off. 

            That’s why I didn’t run.  I heard a low growl, right before the floor arced under my feet and sent me backwards into the soda fountain, and all I could think was, “It’s about time.  It’s about damn time.”    

            There was something, though, watching people run for the emergency exit while I knelt amongst sleeves of cups and boxes of straws.  There were women racing toward the door, some of them carrying all of their children in their arm, forfeiting their lattes and machiattos and sprouting spontaneous super-human strength.  A twinge in that spot in my chest where my heart used to be.  The boy in the blue and red coat reminded me of Jacob.  Then I pictured my mom with an equal amount of spontaneous strength, racing out of the front door, dodging pieces of the sky and leaping over newly formed gorges in the yard, just to get across the street, to get the elementary school, even though it was probably leveled and nothing but a pile of rubble.  She’d run into it, sure she’d find him.  Determined.  Because he was worth saving.

            Then I pictured Jacob hiding beneath his rickety metal desk, just as he’d done in all the emergency drills.  His bright little face peeking out, only slightly damped by the shaking and the dimmed lights and the screams of his fellow classmates, the coolness factor winning over fear.  He’d analyze all the bits and pieces of the building falling around him, that one looks a huge crane, that one looks like a shark, that one looks like the Millennium Falcon!  And in his adorable, hopeful, unbroken little six year-old brain, he’d sit and name each shape, like they were clouds in the sky on a lazy summer afternoon, waiting for it to be over and for the grown-ups to show up and help them. Because nothing bad happens to kids.  Ever.  It’s what we pound into their heads from day one.  You’re safe.  You’re sound. Nothing bad will ever happen.  And maybe it’s true, sometimes. 

            As long as I’m not around. 

            I didn’t run.  I sat in an ocean of cups and scattered napkins, plastic lids and to-go boxes.  It was time.  And I realized, just as the lights above crackled and ignited and sent a shower of sparks down onto Plunkburger, that I was ready.