Householders by Kate Cayley

Author:Kate Cayley [Cayley, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Biblioasis
Published: 2021-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

A Beautiful Bare Room

THE SCREEN, FRAMED LIKE A WINDOW, SHOWED SEPIA wheat and a grey sky. The wheat was beaded with rain. The screen was thoughtfully curated. Sometimes what she saw was real, the actual field above their heads, and sometimes not: a painting, a picture of a landscape. She hadn’t asked if the switch was automated or if a person, somewhere above, was conscripted to observe what was going on outside and decide when the sight (a child with an empty face, dark rain) was too much to bear.

It seemed bearable today. Ordinary rain. Wheat fields.

Liza had not thought of herself as a person who would end up in the bunker. She hadn’t known places like the bunker existed, though she’d imagined, when she thought of it, that the super-rich had made provisions for the shit hitting the fan. But she was so far away from making escape plans, living with Erin in their tiny rooms, working their small jobs. There was no point thinking about it. Erin was good at not thinking about it. A real pea souper, Erin would say in a terrible approximation of a British accent (she’d liked old Sherlock Holmes movies, the murky, villainous streets), waving her hand at the window on days when the smog was so thick they couldn’t see the building opposite. Erin, with her horsey laugh and scabs on her arms from scratching and her lapsed fundamentalism, which she retained as an almost perverse cheerfulness, an insistence that everything would be fine, even if Jesus wasn’t coming. Standing in the doorway making faces at Liza. Eating cereal together moistened with water when milk was no longer available, both of them hunched over the bowls in their underwear at the card table in the kitchen. The water ran yellow out of the tap. And even that, apparently, could not keep Erin from hopefulness. My one and only, Liza thought, because Erin used to call her that when she texted to say she’d be late from the bar. My one and only. Sometimes my best and only. Erin knew that the way to get through was to make everything a joke. She used to put her hand on the back of Liza’s neck, saying just checking, just checking, pretending she was feeling for the raised rash that was the first symptom, when the government finally admitted that yes, this was happening, it was not a rumour, these were the signs. Erin’s fingers spread on her neck. Erin was probably dead now, in the ruins of Palo Alto. Unless it wasn’t ruined. Unless Liza should have stayed. She had lost track of how long she had been in the bunker. Two months? Four? Six? Lulled by the bland affluence around her, the steady stream of comforts. And they were so deep underground.

She’d arrived with Neal in a car after more than five hours on the road. She was bad at gauging direction, and some of the lights on the highway had burned out.

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