Prospero's Half-Life by Trevor Zaple

Author:Trevor Zaple
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: adventure, apocalypse, cults, plague, postapocalypse, fever, ebola

EIGHT

They stayed at the tower for three days, just long enough to have been plausibly on a expedition. During that time Richard read voraciously; he discovered any number of books that people had recommended to him over the years that he had set aside from lack of time. Chris mentioned at one point on the second day that Richard reminded him of the man from the old episode of the Twilight Zone, where the end of the world meant that he finally had the time to read everything he wanted.

“Except that, instead of losing your glasses, you could be formally hung from a nearby tree,” Chris delivered with a straight face. Richard wasn’t sure what to think about that.

He made his way through three Vonnegut novels in a row before he even realized what he was doing, and his combo was only broken by virtue of Carolyn putting an omnibus of Philip K Dick in his hands. That particularly thick, unnaturally heavy book had paper that felt slicker and glossier than the others, and it left him feeling like he needed to touch solid objects to prove their veracity. One of the other women, a weathered old social worker named Veronica, pointed out the Bret Easton Ellis novels; Richard read through The Rules of Attraction and wound up feeling sorry for everyone in the novel.

When he wasn’t reading he was talking with Carolyn. Sometimes this was just a euphemism, and they would be rutting behind closed doors, feeding off of each other in positions of increasing complexity. Most of the time, however, they were actually talking; as it turned out, she was an absolute joy to talk to. He was able to see past her simple indicators of bravery and sexuality and see an actual, complicated human. He felt a connection to her that he had rarely felt with friends and lovers.

She had been a corporate trainer, in that long ago time before the plague. She had worked for a telecommunications company and had split her time between their head office in Toronto and upper-scale hotels in Edmonton, Vancouver, Calgary, and Halifax. She had an excellent sense of timing and could make dry subject matter come alive with the spark she had in her voice. She conceded that the fact that she looked stunning in business wear might have helped quite a bit as well. The job had had its pros and cons, although she weighted it more towards pros. She liked travelling, especially the feeling that she got when staying in nice rooms in glitzy urban centers. Some nights she would go out, see the town, have some drinks; on a lot of another nights, she would curl up into those cool, fresh sheets, sip at something light and watch old movies on demand.

“Really?” Richard asked upon learning this. “I love older cinema. What’s your favourite, quick. No stopping to think”.

“The Apartment,” she said without hesitation. “Jack Lemmon. Something about him just gets me, every time”.

“I know exactly what you mean,” Richard replied, and meant it.

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