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Chapter 14: Temperance

Julia was the first to react. She rose from her chair, gracefully, and she stood up. Whatever emotions she was feeling, at that moment, she kept them hidden. Inscrutable Julia, the slender Greyhound. Without a word, she left the pub. Through the large window, we could see her, standing alone on the sidewalk, with her arms folded. She turned her head and looked down the street.

“I should -” Rex stopped, mid-sentence. He stood up, nearly knocking his chair over, and he quickly went to the door. Soon, he was outside, on the sidewalk, talking with Julia.

The rest of us looked at each other.

“I’m sorry,” Nat said, setting her empty bottle down. “But I’m exhausted. Not to be rude, but I need to get some sleep.” She looked out the window. “Late afternoon, too early for bed, but I don’t care.” She smiled, sort of, a fleeting and tired smile.

We understood, of course, and we vocalized our understanding. We said the usual things, Of course, and Don’t worry about it, and I’d be exhausted, too.

“I’ve been staying in the apartment upstairs,” Selene said. “There are two bedrooms, and I - well - I kept one of the beds waiting, in case you showed up.”

The two sisters stood, and they began making their way to the back of the pub, where a door marked Private led to a spiral staircase. Nat, I later learned, was eight years younger than Selene, who was twenty-nine. Nat, a willowy Fox with a confidant air, closely resembled her sister.

It made sense, of course, that Nat was so tired. She’d just traveled from Florida, for one thing. For another, she’d seen the ruins of the Capital buildings in Philadelphia. She had just finished telling us that, apparently, everyone - or nearly everyone - involved in the government had died in the terrorist attacks back in January. If anyone had survived, they most likely had fled - not even attempting to keep the government going.

It was a lot for us to take in.

“Well . . .” Ramses cleared his throat.

Somehow, I had known that he would be the first to speak.

“That was tough to hear.”

The middle-aged Wolf looked shaken. He started to say something else, but before he could -

“Anyone want to get drunk?” Gunnar asked.

Ario and I both raised a hand.

I tried to figure out what it would mean, our country without a government. At first, I thought about safety and security, which was probably typical for me. Where was the army? Was there no one to give them orders? And if no one was around to give them orders, why hadn’t a general, somewhere, or some other high-ranking officer, taken charge?

“It’s almost funny,” Ario said, quietly. “We were just talking about how much everything’s changed, since the bombs went off.”

“Yeah.” Gunnar finished his beer, and he rubbed the back of his head with his hand.

“Guess now we know,” Ario said. “The changes are permanent.”

“Well, unless we rebuild everything,” I replied. “Or someone else does.”

“It was fun to talk about,” Ario said. He looked at Ramses. “You were saying we could build something new, and it was - it was fun to talk about, because it didn’t feel like we were talking about something real. You know? In the back of my mind, I kept thinking, at some point things will return to the way they were. But now we know - they won’t. Now we know, we’re talking about something real.” He shook his head.

At that moment, Selene returned.

“Nat’s already asleep,” she said. “And I hate to be rude, but I want to be upstairs when she wakes up.”

“That’s not being rude at all,” I protested.

Ramses and Ario rushed to say similar things, hurrying to reassure Selene. Much the same way we’d rushed to reassure Nat earlier.

“Would you like some company?” Ramses offered.

In reply, Selene smiled, and said she’d like that very much.

I will admit, I liked the friendship Ramses had with Selene. I was curious, too - when and how had it started? Ramses was gay, and he was at least ten years older. However, the two of them did seem to have a lot in common. And, it was obvious that they had a great deal of affection for one another.

Ario, Gunnar, and I stood, and Selene hugged us, one by one. She thanked us for coming over with Ramses.

“We’ll have to talk, at some point,” Ramses said. “About - well - everything. And we’ll have to start telling other folks what Nat told us. And all of us, everyone who’s in the city, we’ll have to -”

Selene rolled her eyes.

“Not now,” she said, interrupting her friend, her tone light and clearly amused. “We can discuss all of that later. Much later. Yes?”

She walked with us, to the door. Rex came in, just before we got to it.

“Hey,” he said. “Um . . . Julia’s going home. And - um - she asked me to go with her.”

That was a surprise. After all, Julia hadn’t even told us where she’d been staying. For whatever reason, she’d been keeping that a closely-held secret. On the other hand, it wasn’t a surprise - she and Rex had finally, it seemed, been able to talk with each other about their feelings.

We stepped outside. Selene waved a see you later at us, and then she locked the door behind us.

“Julia’s really upset,” Rex said, simply.

“Of course you should go with her,” Ario assured him.

Gunnar patted his shoulder.

Rex looked at me.

“You don’t mind?” he asked.

“Go with her,” I replied. “Be with her. It’s okay.”

Julia was already walking slowly down the sidewalk, without looking back. Rex hurried to catch up with her. The tall, slender Great Dane and I had formed an instant friendship months ago. And, in a way, he’d become the brother I never had. I think we’d spent nearly every moment together since we’d met - so it would be a little unusual, not having him around for the rest of the day.

Gunnar, Ario, and I started walking home.

It was like we’d formed little groups. Nat, Selene, and Ramses - together in the apartment above the pub. Rex and Julia, off to whichever mysterious place Julia had been living in. The three of us - Gunnar, the big Pit Bull; Ario, the Wolf who’d been a college student; plus myself, headed for home and a meal and - perhaps - conversation about what we’d just learned. It felt good. Our little groups. Our individual selves, together forming a balanced and greater whole.

The air outside was, as usual, still and silent. And hot. The summer heat filled the air, and it seemed to bounce off the tall buildings, the cracked sidewalks, the faded streets, as well as the mail boxes and trash cans and phone booths and newspaper kiosks that lined the sidewalks like sentinels, or signposts.

I was tired, and dehydrated, and numb from all the alcohol. And I still could not wrap my head around the fact that the government was - apparently - just gone. I looked around. There was no one around, except for the three of us. Julia and Rex, far ahead, had turned a corner, and were out of sight. It was easy to feel like we were the only folks in the city. We weren’t, of course. But no one else was out, at that moment.

It was easy to feel like we were on our own, and we’d have to find ways to survive, on our own. Our little group. I thought of what Ramses had said, about building something new. Well, our little group - individual parts formed into a balanced, greater whole - was, in a way, something new.

We were friends, yes, and friendship has probably been around as long as humans and anthros have been around. That is not something new.

But, as well, we’d already been surviving together. By living together, by finding food together. By keeping each other sane and steady in a world of uncertainty. That, for us, was new.

A few hours later, Ario fell asleep on the couch.His feet were off the edge, so Gunnar picked them up and set them on the couch. I placed a pillow under Ario’s head.

More than Gunnar and myself, Ario had been able to process and - eventually - accept the news we’d heard from Nat. Because of that, he was able to come up with ideas on what we should do next.

When we got back from Selene’s pub, we opened up two huge cans of chili. Normally not something one would eat on a hot summer day, it nonetheless sounded good. We were able to cook, and crank up the air conditioning, because of the generator, and I was almost able to avoid thinking of how fragile that suddenly seemed - how long would we be able to keep this going?

As we ate, and drank bottled water, Ario talked. If we were going to stay in the city, he said, we’d have to get together with other folks who’d stayed. We’d have to make plans, and stick with them. So far, we’d been filling our days with distractions - watching movies, swimming, going for walks in the morning. Things like that. Possible, we’d just been waiting - we hadn’t talked about it, but possibly we’d all just been waiting for things to go back to normal.

Well, now we knew that things were not going to return to normal.

“We have to start growing food,” Ario said, ticking off items. “Which means - who, where, when. When do crops get planted? What time of year? I have no idea at all. And, we have to figure out what to do about the gangs. Most folks are scared to go out at night because of those assholes. Also, how many of us are here? And where is everyone? Should we all live near each other, or is it okay if we’re spread out all over the place?”

He looked at Gunnar, then at me.

“Someone should go around the city, see who’s out there. There are probably folks who are already doing things like growing food. Right? I’m pretty sure there has to be someone who already has their shit together. Maybe several someones. For all we know, there might be little communities of folks, growing food, keeping each other safe, hidden away here and there.”

“We don’t know what’s going on in the rest of the country,” I pointed out. “I’m not an optimist, or anything like that, but - there have to be folks out there who have their shit together, right? I’m picturing those - how did you put it, Ario? - those little communities. They’re probably everywhere. Folks who got together and are surviving together.” I considered my earlier thoughts. Individual selves forming a greater whole. Then I continued. “And with the government gone - you ever hear that old saying, Nature abhors a vacuum? Without leaders, without someone in charge, someone must’ve stepped up, right? In all those little communities - if they exist - and they probably do - someone must have stepped up and taken charge. That’s what we need, here in the city.”

Ario nodded.

“Yep. The city - it’s just chaos. Well, it was always chaos, but now, everyone’s just doing whatever they want to do.” Ario shook his head. “If we have those little communities here, they’re pretty hidden.” He smiled, suddenly. “They’d be like us - off on their own, taking care of each other, avoiding other folks who stayed in the city.”

After, we opened bottles of Arcadium, a dark and mellow ale.

“We better not run out of beer,” Gunnar said. “Maybe I should start hoarding. Maybe I should hoard wine, too.”

“And don’t forget things like rum, vodka, whiskey . . .” I pointed out.

“Yeah.” Gunnar nodded. “But those are all things I need mixers for.”

We got comfortable, grouped around the television. Ario sat on the couch, eventually stretching out. Gunnar leaned back in the plush armchair, his feet on a stack of magazines. I sat cross-legged on a cushion, on the floor. We drank, and talked of this and that, and we enjoyed each other’s company, as we always did.

After Ario fell asleep, and Gunnar and I made him comfortable, I yawned and stretched. I announced that I was going to bed.

“Know what we should do?” Gunnar hesitated, then he forged ahead. “We should find the sleeping bags - I don’t know where they are - and sleep next to the pool.”

“So we can roll over in the middle of the night and fall in the water?”

“Maybe.” Gunnar shrugged, casually. Then he teased me. “So you were brave enough to join the army and go fight Insurgents, but you’re afraid of falling in the pool?”

“Falling in when I’m asleep, yeah.”

“C’mon.” Gunnar’s smile lit up his face. “Your training would kick in, and you’d turn into - I dunno - some kind of underwater ninja, and you’d just swim up to the surface like nothing was wrong.”

“Underwater ninja?”

“We’ll get as far back as we can - and we’ll sleep with our feet facing the pool. If you roll around, you won’t roll towards the water.”

“We could do that,” I replied. “I know where the sleeping bags are.”

We went and got them, and we laid them down side by side - as far from the edge as we could. After we collected our pillows, we went around the apartment, making sure the lights were off and everything was as it should be.

“Are you cool with this?” Gunnar asked.

“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I - um -” Gunnar set his pillow down, then he nudged it with his foot. “I just don’t wanna be alone tonight.” He blushed, embarrassed. “Wow. I was not gonna admit that. And I know, I know - if I slept in my own bed, I’d be, like, six feet from the couch, where Ario is right now, all passed out. And you’d be in the next room. I wouldn’t be alone, I know, it’s stupid, this is stupid, but I just figured, you know, if we crashed here . . .”

“It’s not stupid,” I said, unsure of what else to say.

The beefy Pit Bull took a deep breath, collecting himself.

“I don’t like admitting when something’s bothering me. You know? Bothering me, or freaking me out. I wasn’t bothered, or freaked out, by what Nat told us. Or maybe I was? ‘Cause when we were eating, and Ario was talking about what we should do, it just hit me. That there’s no going back. That - you know - this is how things are now. I just felt, suddenly, so fucking . . . overwhelmed, I guess. I started thinking about how everything is just gone. Which is dumb. Everything’s been gone, for months. Right? But, thinking about it, I felt so freaked out.”

“We’re all freaked out,” I said, with a slight smile. “That’s nothing to be embarrassed about. We found out that the world is even more fucked up than we thought it was.”

“Yeah. It’s just hard for me to admit, if I feel down, or upset by something, I just hide it. I always do that.”

For a moment, I tried to see the world through Gunnar’s eyes. I’d seen things while I was in the army, terrible things, things I couldn’t even imagine telling anyone about - not even Rex. But Gunnar, Ario, and Rex (and Julia, as far as I knew) hadn’t seen or experienced those kinds of things.

“You know,” I offered, “We can stay up. Drink some more beer, talk about stuff.”

“Nah.” Gunnar shook his head. “I’m not really a talking-about-feelings kinda male. What I just said - that was as close as I get, I guess.” He yawned. “And now that I got all that stuff out, I’m exhausted.”

After we’d turned out the lights, Gunnar had used a flashlight to illuminate our path to the sleeping bags. He switched it off, then we both lay down and got ourselves comfortable. Soon, Gunnar rolled to his right, and fell asleep. I rolled to my left, and did likewise. Back to back, with only a few feet of space between us, we slept.

At some point, however, I woke up - because Gunnar had rolled over and flung an arm over me. He was close, too close. His chest was less than an inch from my back. My first instinct was to push him back, even though he was sleeping and I would not want to wake him.

Every time I saw Selene, she gave me a brief hug, even though she knew I was not a hugger by nature. It did not bother me.

But this - this was the sort of physical contact I hadn’t allowed to happen in ages. I had not been able to allow something like this to happen, not in ages. I had grown up into someone who was, as I just noted, not a hugger. True. During my time in the army, however, my aversion to touch had - for whatever reason - grown. Or, perhaps it developed and grew during my brief captivity. Or, perhaps it developed and grew because that was just who I was.

In the army, everyone in my unit needed comfort, because of all the crazy, traumatic shit we either witnessed or made happen. For some, comfort came from brief moments of contact - fist bumps, say, or high fives, or a pat on the shoulder. For others, it came from more prolonged contact - hugs, or sitting close together. Things like that. For others, like myself, it came from just being together - talking, teasing, being around one another. It required words, not contact.

Startled, I swam all the way up from the depths of sleep.

Again, I fought back the urge to push Gunnar away.

He mumbled something, in his sleep.

I forced myself to chill out. I reminded myself that it was Gunnar, and we were all friends here. Our little group, we’d created a friendship. It was almost like a family. It was our something new. And I reminded myself that Gunnar had wanted to be not alone. And I wondered - what about me? What did I want? Did I want to be alone? Part of a group, yes, but a part that could not let himself be touched, or held?

I closed my eyes, I let Gunnar stay where he was, I let his arm stay where it was, and I waited for sleep to return.