Nibiru
BY TYLER WOMACK
When Nibiru arrived, the sky above New York City blazed an iridescent aquamarine. A warm rain fell from a cloudless sky and everywhere it touched — whether cracked black asphalt, speckled gray sidewalk, or the muddy patches under big city elms — wriggling green shoots appeared. People left their homes, left their jobs, walked out shoeless and gormless to stare at the unfathomable shadow of an itinerant planet hanging in the Northwestern sky. But I didn't care about any of that, because when Nibiru arrived, Cassie returned.
Fluctuations in the energy grid led to rolling blackouts followed by waves of piercing light, and if you listened — if you blocked out the distant sounds of people screaming or intermittent car crashes — you could hear the cable TV wires and electric lines and cell phone towers, singing out in rapturous joy. To me, it sounded like a fuzzy theremin rendition of "La Vie en Rose.” Which is what I heard playing when I turned and saw her there on the sidewalk, outside my apartment.
Like many others at that particular moment in time, I was barefoot. Cassie had on her baby blue Chuck Taylors. And a rolling suitcase at hand. She'd packed her things at her apartment in Williamsburg and walked over, skirting the edge of an eerily quiet Bed-Stuy and into Clinton Hill. I looked up to see that small, knowing smile on her round face. Her cinnamon skin was glowing, and the swooshes of eyeliner next to her eyes made her look mysterious and altogether lovely.
She came and wrapped her arms around me. I felt the soft parts of her warm body through her thin cotton dress. I smelled the lavender-and-citrus smell of her clean black hair. In a moment of inspiration, I picked her up and spun her around, the balls of my bare feet grinding wet crescents into the dancing green shoots below.
“What changed your mind?” I asked, leading her up the stoop and into my building.
“I just woke up today and I realized that you were the missing piece.”
I assumed we were going to have sex, like that time when we fought at Union Square about her not wanting to talk on the phone, and she sent me home and then came by two hours later to apologize. I thought it was going to be like that, but the first thing on Cassie’s mind was cleaning up the place. She grabbed a trash bag and started collecting my empty takeaway boxes and paper cups. She made two stacks of comic books, one from the coffee table and one from the bedroom. She tapped their sides to make them even, and then stood them on the shelf. She grinned and rolled her eyes at me as she was stripping the bed, silently saying “Here we go again.” I took her cue: I put on my yellow rubber gloves and started doing the dishes.
After the cleaning was done, we drew open all the windows and let the fresh breeze blow in. I lit a cigarette, and she shared it with me, holding it between her thumb and forefinger like some New Wave dilettante. I had missed that about her.
Up in the iridescent sky, a flock of ten thousand pigeons was making a circuit of the City: a big gray Rorschach test of swooping and diving birds. Here it looked like a panther. Now, a corvette. Now, the Ace of Spades. Now the flock resembled the round, furrowed face of Nibiru itself.
“You forget sometimes that they’re doves,” said Cassie, exhaling a cloud of smoke. “Fat, dirty doves. But doves nonetheless.”
“I’ve never forgotten,” I said, looking at her with my best smoldering eyes.
The bed sheets were crisp and dry, like loose leaf paper. I’d forgotten what clean sheets felt like. Cassie’s skin was covered in goose flesh from the cold air coming in the window, but she didn’t complain. I remembered all at once how phenomenal the communion of skin on skin could feel. There was a slow rhythm like the falling of waves on the ocean. Cassie kept kissing the side of my neck. I wrapped my arm around her back, and I stared into her eyes while the world gasped and shimmered.
Afterwards, we smoked another cigarette and listened to NPR on my little maroon emergency radio. Nobody knew where the government was: There was no president, no cabinet, no Senate or House. They had either been teleported bodily to the face of Nibiru, where they were in congress with the angelic Annunaki, or else they were hiding out in a secret bunker in Colorado. Cassie and I bet on the latter, because we believed the government were spineless worms who would desert us at a moment’s notice.
Later, we went to Mr. Melon, the Chinese-run grocery on Fulton Street, where we bought ground turkey and tortillas and cheese and vegetables. We bought eggs and strawberries and chocolate-covered pretzels and two bottles of wine, and we treated ourselves to a smoothie. The credit card machines were down, but I had a hundred-dollar bill which I’d been saving for an emergency, and I paid the smiling old woman at the register.
“Let today be a blessing,” she said.
“It already is,” I replied. I was feeling pretty good about myself.
A few blocks from the apartment, we heard voices, singing. We turned a corner to find a group of kids from the neighborhood and a stately old preacher with tears in his eyes. They were singing Christian songs from a hymnal, and I stopped, alongside my fellow gentrifiers, to listen to their voices. Not a one of us could sing like that. Cassie put her chin on my shoulder, and leaned against me, and we threaded our fingers together. And just let the song roll over us.
When we got back to the stoop and I was fishing for my keys, she asked me if I was still an atheist.
“I’d like to say yes,” I said. “But then again —” and I nodded upwards.
We both stared at the craggy, unfathomable surface of the Babylonian twelfth planet, hanging overhead. We shivered and laughed nervously. I turned the key in the lock.
“Are you still Catholic?”
“I don’t know anymore,” she said, frowning a little. “I look up and I think maybe it’s all irrelevant.”
“Maybe so,” I said. Maybe it’s always been that way.
Upstairs, Cassie made us tacos. We ate and then drank wine and read to each other from the Decameron, which she had brought with her. The book had all these young Florentines hiding out from the plague, keeping each other entertained with stories. It sounded about right for us. We drank until Cassie’s teeth were red and we were both beaming and stumbling through the words.
We’d just finished the story about the old man who’s made fun of for falling in love, when the lights started flashing. They burned bright for a spell, flickered dimly and then went out altogether. We slid closer together, our eyes adjusting to the darkness. It was quiet for the space of a dozen deep breaths, and then we heard it. The refrigerator, oscillating. The cable lines and electric wires, humming. Our cell phones and laptop computers, whistling. It sounded like a muted, synthesizer rendition of “Wild Horses.” Which is what I heard playing when Cassie and I made love again for the second time.
Afterward, clad only in blankets, we opened the window and stared out at Nibiru, unmoving and undeniable. Its august shape blotted out what few stars you could normally see above the jagged purple skyline of old tenements and new construction. The electric wires had stopped humming, and from the window we could hear the neighborhood kids, singing their hymns. The songs were louder now: More voices had joined in. Cassie traced a finger across my bare chest, and her eyes with their swooshes looked thoughtful and distant.
I wanted to pry. To confess. I felt like I should ask her about the last seven months, about the heartless way she’d ended things. Apologize for the unkind emails I’d sent. Explain the sorry state of my apartment, and the extra pounds I’d added around my middle. I wanted to tell her that, although I’d intended to become a better person, I had not succeeded. Had maybe even slid backward in my loneliness and despair. The end result being that I did not deserve her now, much as I hadn’t deserved her before. And I would understand if she changed her mind about staying here with me while the world came undone.
I wanted to tell her everything, but the day had just been too perfect. So instead, I guided her to bed, and we went to sleep: Skin once more touching skin. Just before I drifted off, I realized that what she’d been tracing on my chest was the sign of the cross.
I’d thought that Cassie was an apparition when she’d arrived: A miracle. A gift of the ancient Babylonians. But maybe she was just scared. Returning to the last person she’d loved. In that time of great uncertainty, we needed every blessing we could get. Cassie was my benediction. And for as long as she still needed me, I would be hers.
