Oh man, so this is a treat–obviously just for me, but a treat nonetheless: I found an old story I wrote back around my early college years.  I totally geeked out tonight and revised it.  It’s still rough, and I don’t think I ironed out all of the wrinkles either from my dumbass 18-year-old self (how about this for a pompous, masturbatory original title: Angel Apophenia.  What the fuck, younger me) or from the new additions.  But if you’re reading, as always, drop a line and let me know how I’m doing; oh, and feel free to enjoy, too. 

The car skidded to a stop, tired sucked deep into the mud, and Elvis sat there with his hands gripping the steering wheel, his head whipping back and forth, eyes darting to figure out what the hell just happened.

Jesus Christ—Jesus Christ repeated through his mind as Elvis slowly withdrew one hand from the steering wheel, sliding the shift into Park. Christmas music crackled inside the car, and a pine tree swung gently from the rearview mirror. Elvis stared at the mirror, out the back of his car, looking at the road behind him.
There was a little girl in the middle of the road. Under the headlights, she looked a sickly shade of white and tawny yellow, with matted down hair and big, round eyes. She was young, maybe six, seven years old, but when the lights splashed against her face, there was something immediately wrong—like the girl’s face looked strange, a rubber mask stretched thin, weathered and ancient and—and dead.
She was smiling, and the skin pinched at the edges of her lips.
“Shit,” Elvis exhaled, as she had just appeared out of nowhere. The car screeched as he pulled hard on the wheel. The tires spun on the slick road. Elvis felt his stomach turn, flip, as the car fish-tailed and veered off the road, narrowly avoiding the girl. The car dug into the muddy field on the side of the road, and when Elvis realized he wasn’t dead, he held down the urge to vomit, and put the car in Park, and stared out the back window, and whispered to no one in particular, “Holy fuck.”
Large, lazy flakes glided down onto the asphalt, illuminated by the car’s lights. Each white flake melted away into the ground, into nothing. Elvis slammed the door, and stood in the crisp wintry setting. The grass crackled under his feet as he ambled away from his car, holding down the nausea. A numbing breeze crossed the empty road, blowing over the barren corn fields. There was nothing. He shook his head. He freaked out over nothing, but still—what he saw, what happened—it chilled him. He fixed the wool cap over his ears, his mind slowly at work, the gears in his head lethargic but constantly in motion. He stood there for a moment, and then lurched over, spewing hot vomit into the mud and grass. When he was done he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, took a step back, opened the door of his car and sat down in it, hunched over. He spat between his legs.
“And that was ‘Santa Baby’, perhaps one of the creepiest holiday ditties ever written,” came a young voice over the college radio station, “Up next is another merry tune—‘Zat You, Santa Claus?’”
Elvis dug into his coat pocket, pulled out a cigarette and a lighter.
“After that Miss Kitty Lee is taking the hot seat—still have a three hour drive back home ahead of me. To all of you wonderful winter bums left in town, this is Alex White, wishing you a very merry White Christmas, ha, ha.”
“Merry Christmas,” Elvis muttered in response, and Louis Armstrong’s voice carried into the night.

Normally Izzy’s was full of college kids, drunk boys leaning in to smell the sweet drunk breath of college girls. The place was a dump, covered in a thin layer of dry booze and the stink of cigarettes that lingered years after smoking was banned. A flat screen TV hung on the wall, almost anachronistic against the fading posters of half-naked women pushing cans of delicious Blatz and Shlitz. Normally Izzy’s was packed, and the place didn’t look so bad. But the college was on winter break, and the campus was empty, and so the bar was as well, save a few stragglers quietly guzzling cheap beers, hunched over at the bar or in one of the ripped pleather booths, wishing to be ignored.
Elvis checked his watch. 11:47. He swirled his drink in his open hand like so many movie stars did, and took a gulp, and watched as Linas said, “Lights please” and proselytized the meaning of Christmas to his blockheaded friend, Charlie Brown. Elvis took another drink, and rubbed his eyes. He was getting drunk, and it was getting late. The bartender sat at the other end of the bar, leaned over, talking in hushed, pleasant tones to her boyfriend. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the bartender put her arm on the man’s shoulder. He could see her lean in and give him a quick, but sensual, kiss just below his cheek.
The bar door swung open, but nobody bothered to look. Elvis glanced to see how much was left in his beer. He was working slowly. He could sense someone staring at him, he could hear the drunk, slumping walk of the man as the newcomer came towards the bar, pulled up a stool, sat down, and watched. He could see from the corner of his eye the bartender raise up, trot over to the man.
“Coors,” the man growled. Elvis took another sip of beer.

The bartender brought the newcomer a beer, and he handed her a wad of money, told her to “Keep it”. And the whole time Elvis could feel the man’s glossed-over eyes staring right at him. The man raised the bottle, and drained it. The slid the empty bottle across the bar, and stood up, and walked over to Elvis. Elvis took another swing, and bit his lip.
The man put his heavy hand on Elvis’ shoulder, and swung him around.
“You goddamn prick.”
Elvis stared at the man, swallowed a burp. The man was tall, lean, obviously drunk, his wild blue eyes bulging at the corners of his face. He wore a perpetual scowl, and he looked rough, ran through the trash, his slight beard spotty, unkempt. The man had a big scar stitched across his forehead, a wound from years ago.
“You heard me, you sumbitch.” The man wiped his wet, bloodshot eyes with his forearm, taking a step back to size Elvis up (this was nothing new, even when they were on good terms) and he gave a wry smile, before lashing forward, grabbing Elvis’ face with one of his sweaty, calloused hands.
“You goddamn prick,” he hissed, his fingers digging into Elvis’ pudgy cheeks. Elvis looked on, dazed. He said nothing, which perplexed the drunk, who swayed in place. After a few awkward moments, the drunk let go, cocking his head and staring at Elvis, examining him. The drunk raised his head, his angular chin high, his eyes deep in their purple sockets. Then he let go, and shoved him once against the bar, and stumbled back out through the door, caught on a cold breeze. The bartender now slowly moved back over to Elvis, who just stood and watched as the newcomer drunk slipped away into the night. She asked, “Are you all right, hun?” And Elvis nodded.
“I’m going to cash out,” he said.
“Who was that?” She asked.
“Oh,” he said, “Nobody. He was gonna be my brother-in-law.”

*
Clyde Harrington was like a Ghost of Christmas Past, and Elvis sat in the car, in the mud, listening to Miss Kitty Lee drolly talk about Paul McCartney, still feeling sick to his stomach, wondering why that drunk bastard had chosen that night, of all nights, to comb clawing back into his life, that the guilt, the anger, the desperation themselves was tearing through his intestines like some jagged rip of metal.
They had a similar face. Angie had Clyde’s eyes. They were only half-brothers, but raised to know blood didn’t matter. They both had the same smile, and they both had the same laugh, and they both had always taken to drink, though it seemed ever since Clyde had found a new low.
Only a year ago things were so different.

Angie was pregnant, and things were already falling apart. Shit, they had only been officially together for eight months, and when she found out she swore to him that the baby was his, only his, and he said he believed her and they found an apartment off-campus, away from those loud kids, and they moved in together. They promised to each other that someday they would get married. You know, they said, after all of this is carried out. And he held his hand firmly against her waist as though he could feel the heartbeat then, and he knew he couldn’t, but they both imagined he could.
Her name would be Grace. It was a nice name. A Christian name, and maybe it might bring the baby closer to God than either of them had ever managed to.
They met at a bar on campus. Elvis had been going to school and working when he could at his uncle’s car shop, next town over, and Angie was from a couple years older, already graduated and working full time as a secretary at the school. Angie had just broken up with her last boyfriend, an angry drunk Elvis had seen around town, a red-headed, lemon-faced brute named Sullivan. Elvis always craved the slightly broken. He ached to prove to some girl he was better than the cut cloth of the rest, even though he knew he sometimes saw the world through drunk, hateful eyes. And Angie couldn’t help but be taken by Elvis’ simple ways, a man who worked with his hands and humbly made himself stupider than he actually was, a man who, when you saw through the façade of car and sports talk, knew a thing or two about literature, history, politics. They both pretended like they wanted something more than the quiet country life, at the fringe of the passionate, aching hearts of the collegiate that swamped the town for ten months a year. But the nine months ahead would be long, and fraught with arguments, and confusion, and the unknown hang in the creaks of each and every one of Elvis’ bones, and he slept little. And though she smiled, he knew Angie felt the same, and when he touched her stomach, praying to feel for that heartbeat, he knew it wasn’t there.

He was out drinking with his friends one afternoon, and was stumbling home when he passed St. Peter’s Catholic Church, and he looked at a sign that said that he should take the time to speak to a priest and repent his sins, and so he said “Fuck it,” and stumbled on in. The church was empty, except for the priest who was watering the plants. He craned his head and watched as Elvis swayed gently in place. The priest looked at the boy with a mix of pity and bemusement, and quietly asked, “What can I do for you boy?”
So Elvis spilled the beans.
The priest was an inquisitive fellow, with soft, open eyes that practically listened, absorbing with their sight everything about a person, a story. His name was Father John Petras, and he was one of the last vestiges of an eastern-European country, a man with a soft voice and a broken posture. He led Elvis into his office, where Elvis slumped down in one chair, and the priest simply listened, his elbows resting on his desk and his fingers steepled in front of him. Elvis explained he was done with school, and he was looking for a job that, well, paid, and he was working at his uncle’s shop still, but the money wasn’t always there, and he just needed something extra for right now, just anything, because goddamnit—he excused himself to the priest—there was a baby on the way. When Elvis mentioned Grace, Father John Petras nodded, and unlike the priests he grew up knowing, he passed no judgment about their lack of marriage or the baby—with no stern frown or furrow of the brow. The priest stayed quiet until Elvis was well done talking, before taking a deep breath.
“I will be more than happy to pay you, my friend,” he said in his soft, pleasant voice, “We just lost our last janitor. I’m happy to oblige.” And Elvis knew it was a stupid idea, but he shook the old man’s hand anyway, and when he sobered up, he still thought it was a stupid idea, and confessed it all to Angie, and Elvis lied and said he just couldn’t do wrong to a priest and not show up, and Angie nodded and understood.
It was a Catholic church, and although Sable Brook was a small town, it looked hefty and grandiose. There were majestic paintings on both sides of the church between clear glass windows. Each painting, in order, described the last march of Jesus Christ. The church was built from smooth white stone and wood, and it created an ominous feeling, Elvis mused: like inside St. Peter’s, time was slow, almost void, like a gateway to Eternity, or quite possibly to nothing at all, but the empty place all conscious thought goes when the body is decomposing underground.
Elvis liked that. It was simple, and his mind could wander, and not obsess over the growing child, or the anger and resentment he felt as his girlfriend, or the fact she was coming home from work later and later, or the fact that Clyde was hanging around their apartment more often each week, sleeping off his hangovers on their couch.
One day, Elvis was dusting the altar, marveling at its sheer size, and thinking how the church would look if it were full of people sitting in front of him, the music and prayer echoing across. Father John Petras was in the first pew, praying quietly to himself, his head low under a giant wooden sculpture of Jesus nailed to a cross. There was a sense of lingering peace as the sunset’s dark orange washed over the church in small waves.
“It’s getting late.” The Father’s voice cut through the sterile air. Elvis looked up and saw Father John Petras sitting in the pew, his right leg crossed over his left, his arms folded on top. His face, in the waning light, looked sunken. His scraggly beard poked out like thistles.
“Yeah,” Elvis quietly replied, going back to his work. But the Father beckoned him to stop. He looked very faint in the dying light.
“You can quit early,” he said, “if you don’t mind that I tell you a story.”
Elvis shrugged. “I guess not.”
The Father smiled, his lips pushed together, his eyes growing wide. “I just have much on my mind, and it helps.”
Elvis shuffled over to the pew, sat next to him. The Father turned, and stared long at Elvis’ face, construing his words properly in his mind, like he always did.
“It’s during this season,” the old man started, “I have recollections, of a time so long ago, when I was young.”
“Like me,” Elvis interrupted, knowing where this was going.
“No, younger, younger,” the Father mused, “when the War was going on. Back then, I—I never dreamed of sitting here—as a priest, that is—and I never really dreamed much of anything but the calm and certainty that came with youth.
“Blessings, truly, but even blessings go sour, and before I even knew it, great bombs streaked across the sky and soldiers shattered that very notion of certainty. We were forced to leave our homeland.” He slowly slid a limp hand through the air.
“When I should have been dreaming of girls, I was sleeping in the morgues with corpses in Germany, hiding from the thunderstorm of fire and death outside,” he said, swallowing hard.
“We had to, we were on the run, and we had nowhere to go. No, not back home, where my father was, where my father lay. Our family splintered, and I, once one of thirteen brothers and sisters…
“I’m the last one,” he said definitively. He raised his hands, clicking off his fingers, rattling off names.
“Shot dead, drowned, deported to freeze and starve in Siberia,” he muttered. Elvis looked at him blankly, and the priest turned his head, lowering his hands. He chuckled. “Melodramatic, I’m sure.”
He bent his head down low. “One time,” he said, “during the war, I saw a starving dog. He was huddled together in the cold down a small alley, and you could tell he was starving. His skin sagged. His face dripped, his eyes screamed with wild agony. You could tell that dog was on death’s doorstep, and he saw me as I walked past, and I saw him, and he knew I—I had a package in my hand. Some bread. A bit of meat. A family friend knew someone with connections. A person of importance that had written us a letter to leave Lithuania, to have a chance to survive. That letter also gave us food, so we would not starve. But I stop and I stare at that dog, and he knows what I have in my hands, and what that means.” He took a deep breath. “And I left him.” The priest blinked, wiped a tear forming at the corner of his eye.
They sat there for a few moments, silent.
“It wasn’t just a dog, was it,” Elvis quietly asked.
“No,” the priest responded eventually.
Father John Petras turned his head back towards the altar and the crucifixion. With his head of thorns, the King of King’s face was sallow, his eyes closed wooden curves, his expression strangely absent. Lifeless. The Father took a brittle, narrow finger, and pointed at the sculpture.
“He, when He died,” he said, “there was a purpose.”
The priest coughed as he rose to his feet, ready to lock up.
“Sometimes I wonder what mine is, and what my dead siblings were, and what it all adds up to be.”
Elvis shook his head. He knew the priest had tried to console him, as always, but with those words, Elvis felt the windows of the sanctuary crack open, burst; the waters of his troubled mind flooded in.
The old man smiled, and Elvis smiled back, and said, “Goodnight, Father,” and then he thought to himself, goddamn I need a drink.

*
He caught her with Sullivan, one night when he had told her he was going to the bar but came home early instead, and she bawled and Elvis tried to put up a fight but Sullivan pulled out a knife and said, “Try and touch me,” and spit on Elvis’ shoes as he walked out the front door.
Elvis bit his lip, feeling the alcohol in his system start to boil. He slowly raised his hands and wiped his face. Angie began to blubber, her body shaking, and tears strolled down her tears, her lips still wet from her sexual indiscretion, her belly round with child, and Elvis stood there, feeling his buzz turn into a boil. She stood up and slowly moved toward him.
That’s when he slapped her across the face. She staggered back, her eyes blinking, her body reeling in terror. Elvis lunged toward her, grabbing her by her upper arms, tears streaming down his own face. He grabbed her and his nails dug into her body and she was bawling now as she tried to shake out of his grip. Elvis bit his lip, and flung her into the couch, and stood over her, but he didn’t say a word. He could feel a trickle of blood coming from his bottom lip. He marched past her and into the kitchen, where he found an extra pack of smokes and a plastic handle of cheap whiskey. He marched back out and headed toward the door. But before he reached it, she shrieked out, “Fuck you, you asshole!”
He slowly turned around. She began to sob again, deflated.
“No,” she said, “Wait. I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” she said, “Why don’t you love me?” She said, “Don’t go, come here…”
He stared at her. “No,” he said.
“But…but Grace…the baby…”
“I don’t fucking care.”
“I…I don’t know what to say, I don’t know what to do…”
“Fuck you,” said Elvis, “I hope that baby fucking dies.”

*

Two weeks later, Christmas Eve, the college newspaper covered a grizzly story about a woman who had drowned herself in a bathtub after a night of heavy drinking. There was an empty prescription bottle of Attivan in the bedroom prescribed to an Elvis Almand. Almand had been taken into custody under suspicion of foul play, but was released. The woman, the newspaper, was expecting a child. The baby could not be saved.
Elvis left town not soon after that.

*
His uncle’s funeral was what brought him back. He had died shoveling snow, the wake was held on Christmas Eve, in town. After the wake he went alone to Izzy’s. He had come back home late, and found his mother sitting in her chair, looking out the front window.
“Looks slippery out there,” she said.
“It is,” Elvis replied.

Outside of town was St. Augustine’s cemetery, and Elvis pulled his muddy car past the rusty great gates. His Aunt sat in the passenger seat, her son quietly looking out the window in the backseat. Elvis’ mother sat behind him, a frail woman that watched her own son with careful eyes. The funeral was small—Elvis’ family clustered around the modest coffin, and a few of his Uncle’s rougher friends, barflies, mechanics, formed a perimeter. A new priest, Father Marcus O’Shan, presided—Father John Petras was bedridden, sick. The weather was much colder than the night before, and the patrons rubbed their hands together and huddled against the chill. The body was lowered into the ground, and the small group broke off into even smaller groups, quietly speaking as they moved back to their cars. Elvis broke off from his family when he swore he saw something from the corner of his eye. He could have sworn he had seen a little girl.
He moved amongst the tombstones, as if drawn. And then suddenly, he stopped.
It was roughly five feet tall, intricately carved, and in the dark the light grey words looked illuminated. Elvis stopped and stared at the stone he’d only seen once before.
“Angie and Grace, Taken,” it said, and Elvis squatted, dusting off the slight bit of snow around the tombstone.
Someone had planted flowers at their grave recently, and Elvis plucked a silver Lily. He twirled the flower in his hands.
“Were you mine?” Elvis asked quietly to the ground.
“Angie,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”

But of course, there was no one to respond.

He dropped off his family, and then drove his Aunt back to her home. He opened the passenger door for him, then held her arm and led her into the house. She sat down in the living-room, quiet, and he asked her if she would like him to stay, but she just shook her head and said no. She said, but thank you Elvis. She said come back and visit soon. She said, you always were a good boy.

Andrius Obelis had a strange tendency to pat his gentle gut when he was nervous, and did so as he waited in the aggressively off-white colored office lounge. He was patting to the tune of “Mary Had a Little Lamb”, but had no idea, as his mind was elsewhere. Andrius Obelis had been waiting for almost an hour now, and every once in a while, a secretary would pop her head out of the door at the far end of the lounge and say, “Just another ten minutes, Mr. Obelis, and the Senator will be with you,” and the door would shut again. Andrius Obelis would just smile and nod, and start patting once his gut once more.

The letter he received in the mail was still fresh in his mind, as he had held the damn thing for so many days, fingering it’s edges, creasing it and tucking it away in his desk at home, or bringing it to work and awkwardly, if not a bit bemusedly, showing it off to his co-workers. Andrius had never realized how dire the whole situation was. He knew he was a rare breed, but didn’t understand how rare. He thought it was a joke.

But there, stamped with the seal of the United States, was a Senator telling him he was one of the last of the Lithuanians. And that Andrius needed to reproduce.
“I thought you were Catholic,” one of his co-workers said as he apathetically looked over the letter. “Does this mean they’ll pay you to have sex?” Andrius Obelis shrugged. He wasn’t sure.
Sitting in the lounge of the Senator—now the Head of Endangered Nationals Affairs Commission (HENAC)—Andrius could feel his armpits getting sweaty. Maybe he’d ask the Senator if that was a genetically Lithuanian thing, the sweaty armpits. His brother always complained about it. He could kind of remember his father complaining of it, too. But that was all so long ago. And now the both of them were dead. Which left Andrius Obelis, and god knows who else? The door at the far end of the lounge opened, and the secretary popped her head out.
“The Senator is ready to see you know, Mister Obelis,” she said with a toothy grin. Andrius Obelis raised himself from his seat, and ambled through the door.
The Senator and Head of Endangered Nationals Affairs Commission was a fat man, like the ancient cartoon fat cats of Washington old. He had bushy eyebrows and breathed heavily, like a pug on a humid summer day. His nose was big and bulbous, and he proudly wore the fat brown birthmark on his squared-off chin. His eyes wrinkled when he smiled, and he smiled wide as Andrius came through the door.

“Mr. Obelis, welcome, welcome!” his voice was deep, powerful. A perfect politician. The Senator extended his hand, which enveloped Andrius’. Andrius was relieved, however, at the fact that the Senator’s hand was sweaty too. The Senator sat down, and beckoned Andrius to follow suit. Andrius sunk in the expensive leather chair set before him.
“I’m happy you returned my letter,” the Senator said, huffing out his words. “There are only some of your kind left.”
“I was surprised to hear that.”

The Senator raised his eyebrow. “You haven’t been following the news?” He wiped his forehead with a hankerchief as he continued talking. “The Estonians are all gone. The Czechs, once such a…flourishing people—are down to their last survivor, who just happens to be a homosexual cancer patient. And then with the Lithuanians—“ he paused for effect—“The Lithuanians are on the brink of extinction, and the posterity of their legacy must remain intact.” He placed the hankerchief on his desk. “It would be an absolute shame to see your society be destroyed, and our commission will be damned if we don’t at least give it a shot.”

“Um,” Andrius said.
“There’s five of you left,” the Senator said. “Three of you are men, one is an old grandma, and the last is a young woman.”
“Um,” Andrius said.
“The President is verr-y interested in making sure that the rich tapestry of the Lithuanian people is upheld.”
“That’s great.”
“I know,” the Senator said, “It really is. It really, truly is.”
“But I don’t know if I can do this.”
The Senator raised his eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know the first thing about Lithuanian,” Andrius replies, “I have a hard enough time knowing how to be human.”
“Oh, well, if it’s the culture you’re worried about,” The Senator said, “the old woman has a trunk full of reading materials you’ll find quite interesting.” Andrius didn’t say anything, so the Senator continued, “You know, cook books and printed off web pages and such.”
“Wow,” Andrius said. “I guess I never realized the history was so…dead.”
“No, no,” The Senator said, raising his finger in the air, “History is now!”
And Andrius just nodded.

Sure enough, the front pages were suddenly filled with the news that Andrius Obelis, 38, would be flying out to Chicago to meet Marija Slyva, 40, a mousy brown-haired bespectacled font designer living on the south side of Chicago. Upon arrival at Midway, Andrius was caught in a calvalcade of flashing lights and shouting reporters, and his eyes had yet to adjust to the constant bursting bulbs of the media. As such, the newspapers always showed him looking scared and frumpy, his hands curled up into little balls, his mouth cut into a hard upper-case “I” below his nose.

Even the cab driver, when Andrius crawled into the backseat for a moment of silence, was excited to see his passenger. “Ey, Leetowany boy, you come to make the hoopy-boopy, ya?” The taxi driver raised both of his hands, making an “o” with one and poking his other ring finger through it. Andrius just blinked and asked the taxi driver to drive.
The media had a field day as they tried to capture the exact moment the two star-crossed Lithuanians first met. A Secret Service detail was stationed at the apartment complex doors, and once more at the door of Marija’s apartment, so when he knocked and she opened they were able to only get a few snapshots and a moment’s worth of video before Andrius dove into the apartment and the door snapped shut. The Secret Service says, “run along now,” half-heartedly. But the din died down, and the media crews, well-wishers and secret servicemen themselves all tried to listen for what they could from the eastern-european lovers.

Marija was short, thin, and known as Mary to all of her friends, co-workers and neighbors. She looked like she wanted to dress up for the occasion and tried, in vain, for several minutes to find the right outfit, but couldn’t, and resigned to what she would always wear on a Wednesday. And Andrius had to admit, she did look pretty, the type of pretty that didn’t require a ton of work, but rather, a simple elegance that comes with the right type of girl. And Marija, that is, Mary, though that, save losing a few pounds, Andrius Obelis wasn’t that half bad looking of a guy. But they still stood there awkwardly, trying to fumble around the right things to say, as though they had marbles in their mouths.
Marija was the first to speak. “I made coffee, if you want some.”

“Sure,” Andrius said, “thanks.”
She went and grabbed a coffee cup and poured some, then passed the cup over, then slowly walked into the living room to sit on the puffy purple couch. Andrius followed suit.
“So,” Andrius said.
“Yup,” Marija said.
“We’re the last ones, I guess,” Andrius said.
“So they say.”
“Messed up.”
“I guess so.”
“Yes,” Andrius said. “Yes indeed.”
Andrius looked around the room, and stared for a few moments at Marija’s bookshelf. “Oh,” he said. “Kurt Vonnegut.”
“Yup,” Marija said.
“So it goes,” Andrius said. And Marija gave an awkward smile. Andrius looked down into his coffee cup.
“This kind of makes no sense,” he said. Somewhere from beyond the door, a disgruntled cameraman coughed.
“Not at all,” Marija said. She looked down at her hands. “How did it get to this point?”
“I guess the same way it always does,” Andrius slowly answered. “Baby steps.”
“And we’re really the last ones?” Marija asked.
“There’s an old lady that lives in Baltimore,” Andrius said. “She has books.”
“It’s worthless,” Marija said. “They want us to have a kid—and then what?”
“Tour the country for ten bucks a ticket,” Andrius smiled. Marija smiled too, and brushed her hair back, revealing her dazzling hazel eyes.
“Tell me,” she said, “was your grandma always late for everything, too?”
“Yes,” Andrius said. “God yes.”
“That’s funny,” Marija said. “I guess the apple don’t fall too far from the tree!”
“Agreed.” Andrius smiled. “And she always complained, too.”
“Ugh, I hated that,” Marija said, slapping her knees. “Even though I kind of miss it, too.”
“Yeah,” Andrius said.

Andrius woke up in the middle of night, and for a moment, he thought he was back home, but he quickly realized he was not, and that he was still in the south side of Chicago, and his neck hurt from how he had slumped over on the couch. The two had talked for hours, even as the camera men and Secret Service banged on the door asking them to please hurry up with the sex already, but they ignored them. Andrius looked all around, his eyes adjusting to the dark of the apartment, the grumble of the air conditioning unit, the slight thock thock of the ceiling fan above them, the shadows that cascaded in this woman’s apartment. Then Andrius looked down, and Marija was slouched awkwardly underneath his arm, digging her head into his armpit, and as he looked down on her he could smell her hair—a faint scent of cheap Target brand conditioner—and several half-thoughts passed his mind, but none of them fully formed, for he was barely awake, and soon nodded back into sleep.

The minute hand soldiered on gently, and the room of scientists all sat excited in their chairs, adjusting themselves and wiping their sweaty palms on their pants and lab coats.  Their eyes flitted from the screen to each other to the clock and back to the screen, and they could hardly speak, and barely whisper, and so they seemed to cluck away in strange tones to themselves that if anyone was watching they would surely scoff, “This isn’t so much the greatest minds of our time but a roost of chickens.”  But there wasn’t, and so they couldn’t, so the scientists sat sweaty and poultry-like as the minute hand moved once again.

A few of the scientists were still bitter, and sat in the corners of the room with their arms folded, or, like Gustav VanBlanche, sat at home swilling expensive bourbon and wondering what could have been, but mostly the anger and disappointment of not being picked had subsided and each eagerly awaited the dawning of a new world.  Many of them kept wadded up pieces of paper in their pockets, a memento of what could have been, and these wadded papers now melted into gobs of sweat and ink as worried hands folded, tore, crumpled, folded, tore.

“Just a few more minutes,” said the pretty announcer’s voice from the screen, and the scientists all babbled “just a few more, yes, a few more,” to themselves in response.  And on the screen the camera was perpetually focused on a ten year old boy, who kept on trying to smile, but looked like he had a laser sight pointed right at the bridge of his nose between the eyes.  And it didn’t take the world’s smartest scientists to build a machine that could tell what was on his mind, even as that very machine was being set up behind him, and in a few moments, and a few attached nodes, that boy’s thoughts would be heard by all.

*

Nobody knows how the idea started, but it most likely was a drunken parlor game by people either smarter or drunker than normal people, and had a crazy idea: what if, they slurred, what if the entire world had to stop and hear one thought at the same time?  It was crazy!  They all responded at first—impossible!  But what if…?  So, like plenty of horrible ideas, it stuck, and it bred more insane ideas, and before the world knew it, the smartest scientists in the world were being paid in dollars and Euros and rupees and slabs of gold to make it happen.  Philosophers mulled over the existential implications while world leaders slathered over such awesome capabilities, and common men in Estonia and Australia and Nebraska got drunk and laughed about it with their bar friends.  The scientists clicked away at their computers and smacked metal with hammers and poured their brains into mind-bending concepts and went “wow!  Never done anything like that before!”  Late night talk show hosts made jokes about it during their opening monologue and mid-day talk show hosts pulled scientists onto their show to awkwardly dumb down what they were doing and English teachers wrote on their dry erase boards: “Journal: what would you say to the entire world?” and a homeless man muttered to passerby that what he’d say was simple: “I’m fucking hungry, goddamnit!”

And it kind of went this way for years, until Horton Hornell woke up in a frenzy and switched one symbol in the formula for another and the other scientists just stood with their mouths agape and slowly began to clap.  He’d done it.  The goddamn, no good sonofabitch had done it.

*

They decided it should be the choice of one of them to usher in this new product into the world, so they drew straws and Albert Finkle drew the short one, and he smiled in such a way a man smiles when he is given such a great responsibility.  He went home and told his wife and child over dinner.  Little Alex Finkle’s mouth stayed agape for hours on end as he looked on at his dad in awe.  And in Alex’s face Albert saw something he couldn’t put into words, it was so perfect and beautiful in the moment.  So he took his son on his lap and gave him the straw and said, “I think you’ll say something just fine.”

Some of the scientists thought it was a great gesture, doing that, a real swell dad, and others were bitter, and thought it was a waste to use such technology on a stupid child.  But they all respected the agreement and prepared the machine to do what it would do: transmit the boy’s words to the brains of every single living creature on earth.

*

Nobody needed the crowd to be quiet, they all just hushed up and sat on the edge of their seats, but the silence was almost as loud as a thousand jets blasting their engines as the tension was electric.  The boy was standing at the tip of the ledge, fidgeting on the balls of his feet, the cords of the machine dangling like little blue and purple tentacles coming out of his brain, chest and heels.  The time had come.  The boy looked over to his shoulder, and Alex Finkle, wiping tears of joy and sadness and excitement and fear gave his son the thumbs up.  The machine was ready to go.  It would do as it was told.  It would tell the world.

The boy looked back around at the crowd, and saw the eager faces, and then he closed his eyes and imagined all the millions of other faces, and he said what he had to say.  When he finished saying it, he turned around and sat back down.

*

The cab driver in D.C. slowed down to a red light, turning the radio off to see if he could hear anymore.  A Chinese farmer picked his head up and looked over his shoulder.  A little girl in Russia ran crying into her mother’s arms from fear of a ghost in the house, whispering in her ear, and the mother consoled her child, but wondered all the same.  The writers around the world parsed out each letter, and the journalist editors laid out headlines that repeated the boy.  The President leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers as his staff nervously observed his reaction.  A baby didn’t even bother to listen and a teenager scoffed “faggot” before turning his music player back up loud.  The crowd that had paid thousands of dollars to witness this event sat stunned and confused, knowing they had seen—and heard—something important, even though what the boy said was not important at all.  Artie Finkel came out and hugged his boy in the astounding silence, pulling off the remaining tentacle and leading him off stage.  The scientists, sitting in their control room, didn’t waste a second longer.  They had buttons to push, and they pushed them, and as they did, the machine that broadcast a message to the whole wide world began to fizzle and spark and smoke.  The buttons the scientists pushed over-heated its insides, made gears spring and springs melt, and the machine sputtered and moaned and sparked and then simply fell apart, like flaps of a cardboard box.

And the crowd snapped out of its reverie.