8 mn 20 s

By Zara Thustra

“This is it,” Natalia says as she stares at two tickets on her kitchen table. Stencilled on them, in brown and sandy letters, is World Chess Championship – Lincoln Center – Sat, July 9, 2039 2:00 PM. “I’m doing it today. No more getting cold feet.”

Last Friday at the coffee house, Natalia overheard David (read eavesdropped, for her ears were always like two radar dishes eager to pick up snippets of information about his life) say that he was keen to grab tickets to the Championship, but the event sold out within an hour three months ago. Since she knew the organiser, getting hold of extra tickets at the last minute was easy as pie. It’s a no-brainer she won’t share any of this with David; instead, she’ll say the tickets are a birthday present from her landlady.

Natalia rubs a hard ice pack on her flushed cheeks. In the living room, the air cooler is fighting a losing battle against the one hundred four degrees battering the closed windows of her apartment in Queens.

“Please say yes, David. Put me out of my misery. And in eight days from now, we –”

Natalia’s cell phone plays the first two bars of Vivaldi’s Spring Concerto; a national alert notification appears on the screen: SUN HAS JUST EXPLODED – CLICK ON LINK FOR LIVE EMERGENCY BROADCAST.

“Huh?” Natalia looks out through the kitchen window at the bright sky. “Of course it did. This must be a hoax.” She steps into the living room, the ice pack pressed against her nape. “DIANSHI on,” she says, and the wall-mounted screen switches on.

“I repeat, this is not a hoax,” the news anchor says on the live broadcast. “Without early warning signs, the sun exploded a moment ago. Scientists are at a loss as to how the sun could have gone ‘supernova’ –”

“Is it the same broadcast on the other channels?” Natalia says.

“Yes,” the TV voice answers, “it is the same national emergency broadcast on all five hundred and thirteen channels, including the one hundred and twenty-five radio channels.”

Natalia returns her attention to the broadcast.

“– relatively young star,” the anchor continues, “and still had another five billion years to burn. Here are the last images received from the Helios Space Observatory…”

The satellite’s animated imagery shows a grayscale close-up of the sun, a white ball in dark space. Fountains of gas spout from it, left and right, and loop around like ballet dancers. The sun goes boom, a flash of light fills up Natalia’s TV screen. The white image freezes. Natalia drops into the couch, dumbstruck.

“Who could have predicted,” the anchor resumes and re-appears, “that three years after faster-than-light communication was finally achieved, it would be the herald of our own –” The ashen-faced anchor draws breath. “It grieves me to tell you this: no one can survive the massive radiation about to hit Earth’s atmosphere, not to mention… Friends, whoever you are, wherever you are, you have now just under seven minutes to say your final goodbyes –”

A ten-alarm ignites inside Natalia’s head, and she jumps up from the couch. “I have to tell David how I feel about him. How though? Won’t he think I’m a creep if I go all warm and fuzzy on him? For goodness’ sake, nervous Nelly, stop wasting your time worrying and get to the coffee house as quickly as possible. If I run, it’ll take me less than five minutes.” Natalia runs out of her apartment.

Three hundred and sixty-four days ago, one Friday afternoon at Sirocco, the newly open coffee house, she got hooked on David the second she laid eyes on him. Luck has it that the following Friday she ‘overheard’ him say how devastated he was that his girlfriend of three years had just called it quits, but it felt wrong to go up to him and – wham! – kind of put the moves on him. So she waited.

Barefoot, Natalia is scurrying down two flights of stairs in her apartment building.

Then it was her Polish accent. Even after all these years, it was still noticeable; yet, she considered it part of her charm. Now, however, every time she said ‘hi’ to David and ordered a qahwah with Moroccan pastries, she sunk into the swamp of embarrassment; was her English pronunciation right? (He probably thought she sounded dumb.) So she waited. Finally, on another Friday afternoon, no sooner she started towards the cash register, where David was folding up paper napkins, than she made a U-turn to retreat to her table, and then buried her face in her first edition of Anna Karenina; what if she scrambled her words and made a fool of herself? So she waited.

Fifty-two Fridays in total when she could have asked David out, or fifty-two chances she pissed away. It felt wrong, her Polish accent, word scrambling, what if this, and what if that. Natalia shakes her head: “Phoney excuses.” In reality, she suffered from a classic case of the heebie-jeebies.

A gun goes off in an apartment on the first floor of the building. It sounded as though it came from Joshua’s. Nice guy, and a piano virtuoso as well.

“Joshua…” Natalia says, reaching the front entrance of the building.

Tick – tick – tick – tick – tick.

Natalia leaps over the five steps and lands on Steinway Street, not amidst a chorus of blaring car horns, which would be usual for a Friday noon, but silence as in a graveyard. The traffic on both sides has ground to a halt and clogs up the street from top to bottom. Inside the car parked in front of Natalia, a family of four are huddled together in a tight embrace. A naked man is standing on the roof of a pick-up truck, drinking rays from the sun, a still-sparkling diamond in its blue setting.

Natalia squeezes through the human statues rooted to the sidewalk and staring ahead with slacked jaws. Death had always held a gun to the head of human civilisation and every time the trigger had been pulled, it had always recovered from its brain trauma. But not this time, for the golden bullet that fired off some minutes ago, and is now travelling at light speed towards the tiny blue planet, has “End of Days” engraved on it.

“Excuse me… Sorry… Coming through…” Jeez, this is going to take Natalia more than five minutes, and the blacktop, a bed of hot coals, makes her progress even harder. “Sorry, I need to get through,” she says to a motionless man. “Sir?”

He creaks back to life: “Oh. I. Am. Sorry.” He grinds aside. Natalia scrapes past the man before catatonia grips him again.

Natalia scrunches up her face every time her feet touch the baking ground. Her slow pace deadens. She flops down into a bench, in the shade of a tree. What she wouldn’t give for mint ice cream, followed by a glass of chilled lemonade. The two mannequins beside her are sitting ramrod straight; their arms are raised to their mouths, with onion rings held between thumbs and forefingers and poised on the lips.

Natalia allows the scarlet underside of her feet to cool down for ten seconds, and herself by the same token. Then off she goes again. She slogs on and on through the crowd when, through an arrow slit, she glimpses shoes on a rack fifteen yards away.

Hidden from sight is the shoe storeowner, who is sitting on the front step of the store. He takes a long drag on his last cigarette ever, holding the smoke in (and he thought lung cancer would get him). He puffs out a cloud of smoke and watches it swirl up. The nicotine gives him a slight buzz: he fancies himself a blade of grass floating down a river, at which point Natalia turns up in front of the men’s shoe store, without noticing him.

She tries tasselled loafers from the rack. Too big. “I’m going to get there on time.” She snatches another pair at random. Tries it. Way too big. “He is going to know what my feelings are for him.” She chucks the leather loafers aside.

The storeowner springs to his feet. “What size do you take?”

“Oh, hello there. Five.”

The storeowner rushes inside the store… The human statues up and down Steinway Street break out of their suspended animation. Most of them troop into the apartment buildings or shops. Those foolhardy enough remain outdoors in the hope of seeing a show more spectacular than on the 4^th of July.

Fourteen precious seconds later, the storeowner rushes back out with suede boat shoes. “Mind you, it is a man’s size five, but they’ll do the job.”

Natalia slips them on. Good enough. “I’m sorry, I’ve no money – please believe me, I’ve a good reason for needing them.”

“What are you talking about? Go, go, go, go.”

Natalia bolts out of the starting gate. The sidewalk is now thin with bystanders. Natalia’s heart pounds against her ribcage like mad, her soaking-wet tank top weighs a ton, and her throat is bone-dry, but Natalia keeps pumping those tiny arms and legs of hers, determined to steal two minutes or so back from time. She skirts around a circle of people holding hands and praying; incidentally, one of them is wearing a crop of brown hair exactly like David’s. At last, the palm tree sign of Sirocco comes into view on the opposite side, thirty yards down. Natalia crosses the wide street, threading around the stationary cars.

Many times, she has fantasized about running a hand through David’s brown curls – they must be soft as sheep’s wool. And don’t get her started on his caramel skin. Right now, she is taking a bite out of it, letting it melt in her mouth, and swallowing the sugary –

“AH!” Natalia’s scream rings out throughout Queens when her foot catches in a freaking chuckhole; she pitches forward, her anklebone snaps, and she crashes against the trunk of a lime green taxi. Only twenty yards stands between Natalia and Sirocco. Blink an eye and you’re there, that is, if you don’t sustain a broken ankle and it feels as though hundreds of tiny needles are pricking under its skin.

Natalia smashes her fist down on the taxi’s trunk. “KURVA MASH,” she says.

A strong ebony man swings out of the driver’s seat of the taxi. “Yuh arite?” he says in a Jamaican accent.

“My…” Natalia is panting. “My ankle…”

“Tek it easy.” The Jamaican man presses his thumb onto the sensor of the taxi’s trunk. After it has opened up, he fishes a small water pod out of his backpack. He gives it to Natalia. She pops it into her mouth, chews it, and swallows the water.

“My ankle is broken. I must get to that coffee house over there, before it’s too late. Can you –”

“Say nuh more.” The Jamaican man crouches down with his back to Natalia. “Climb on, mi luv.” She does. Then he guns off like a rocket, down the sidewalk, shoving pockets of bystanders out of his way, and with Natalia jouncing on his back…

20 yards – 10 yards – 5 yards – they’re in.

“Thank you—”

“De name’s Richard. And yuh welcome.”

The patrons at the tables are video chatting with their mums and dads, husbands or wives, children, friends. The conversations are mundane; what matters is seeing the faces and hearing the voices of loved ones.

A quick scan of the coffee house tells Natalia that David doesn’t seem to be here. At the cash register, the supervisor Myriam is stuffing fig maamouls into her mouth; her teardrops are pattering on the lapis lazuli ceramic countertop. With Richard’s help, and keeping her weight off her broken ankle, Natalia hops over to Myriam.

“Hi,” Natalia says, “I’m really sorry to bother you like this, and please don’t think I’m being insensitive, but may I ask you a question?”

Myriam gulps down the chunks of maamouls. “I s’ppose.”

“Is David around?”

“David? Hic–hic.” A fit of the hiccups overtakes Myriam. “One – hic, hic – second”. From the pitcher behind her, she swigs water down; the food is dislodged from her oesophagus. She traipses around in zombie fashion, shoulders hunched, back to Natalia. “Er… What did you ask me again?”

“Where’s David?”

“He called in sick this morning.”

“Ah, did he? OK… Can I get his number?” Natalia reaches for her back pocket. “Kurva. I forgot my phone at home.”

“You can use mine,” Myriam says. Then she speaks into her phone: “Bring up David Suleyman’s phone number, Sirocco’s Manager…”

“Richard,” Natalia says, “this may be a stupid idea, but shouldn’t you find some kind of shelter?”

“Mi taxi’s fine. Lawd blessed mi wid a whole heap of good tings. I accept his will.” He squeezes her shoulder with affection. “Goodbye.”

Natalia watches Richard go: he, she, all these people – it’s unfair. No one deserves the horror about to unfold. For the first time in her life, she is glad her parents aren’t around anymore.

“Here,” Myriam says, handing out her phone to Natalia.

Natalia presses the green call button. Ringing… David’s swarthy face pops up on the screen; Natalia’s ocean blue eyes sparkle.

“Are you all right Myri– oh, Natalia.” David’s voice is like an oasis to somebody who has been wandering across the Sahara for weeks without anything to drink.

“Yeah, I’m calling from Sicorro. I mean Sirocco. I-I didn’t expect you’d be, you know – gosh, what’s the word – OFF, that’s it.”

Endeared by Natalia’s awkwardness, David flashes a smile. “Would you know it, I got the flu. And in the middle of summer too.”

“How are you feeling?” Natalia rolls her eyes. He has seen the news as well. What do you think, Natty? “Don’t answer, that was a dumb question.”

“No, it wasn’t. I’m actually happy to see you.”

“Really?” Natalia’s china white face flushes pink.

“More than you can imagine. You see, I gotta make a confession. I like you. A lot. For weeks, I’d been meaning to invite you to lunch. I just didn’t think a girl as cute as you would wanna go out with somebody like me.”

“Are you kidding me – you’re gorgeous. Sorry. I didn’t mean to say that, I mean I did – never mind. I have a confession to make, too…” Natalia braces herself for the swan dive. Come on, Natty. She jumps off the cliff. “I want you to know that I’m in –”

David’s face pops out of sight; the phone line goes dead. At this exact moment, the sun goes off in the sky like a giant camera flash, and white light floods Steinway Street, all the apartment buildings and shops, including the coffee house. In another moment, the phone in Natalia’s hand sparks and bursts into flames; Natalia lets it drop. The pervasive and bright white light burns Natalia’s eyes like a welding torch held at point-blank range. Natalia shields her face with her tank top. Then, with her right hand, she drags herself under the pastry counter. Too little, too late, for the damage to her retinae has already been done, and there is no escape from the boiling heat that now tightens its vice-like grip around her head.

Another domino falls when the panoramic window of Sirocco shatters, sending glass flying in every direction. The people inside have no time to duck for cover under the tables. A hail of shards tears into their faces and chests. A razor-sharp piece slices through Myriam’s throat; she chokes… to death; her body topples over behind the pastry counter.

On Steinway Street, people are keening louder than swarms of bats, clawing at blistering and blackening arms and faces. The cars, alarms blaring out of their own accord, are spitting out electric arcs at the trees; they burst ablaze; the street turns into a furnace of sanguine flames.

Back inside Sirocco, lying flat under the pastry counter, Natalia makes out through her watering eyes a woman – she shouted she was a surgeon – who rushes from person to person, to sort them by the severity of their wounds. She draws a bloody letter on each forehead (X for Deceased, U for Urgent, and M for Minor). Her act of selflessness is cut short when she throws up. She passes out.

Natalia’s sight is going fast. As pain stabs at her chest, Natalia clings to the consolation that at least David likes her a lot, and he now knows she thinks he is gorgeous. And maybe he has figured out she loves him. The final curtain rolls down her eyes. Darkness.

Originally from Queens, NYC, Zara Thustra is an English teacher who lives in Cornwall, England, with his wife and two young daughters. He loves Italian food and is a Knicks fan.