Kaiju Preservation Society(3)

“Don’t firebomb the place,” Brent said to me, his voice lowered so Laertes wouldn’t hear.

“I’m not going to,” I promised. “But it’s tempting.”

“So you’re looking for something else now?”

“I am, but it’s not looking great,” I said. “All of New York is in a state of emergency. Everything’s closing up. No one’s hiring for anything, and what jobs there are won’t pay for this.” I motioned to our crappy fourth-floor walk-up. “I mean, the good news, if you want to call it that, is that my severance payment from füdmüd will pay my share of the rent here for a few months. I might starve, but I won’t be homeless at least until August.”

Brent looked uncomfortable at that. “What?” I said.

He reached over to the pile of mail on the kitchen table we were sitting at, and picked up a plain envelope. “I assume you didn’t see this, then.”

I took it and opened it. Inside were ten one-hundred-dollar bills, and a note which read, in its entirety, Fuck this plague town I am out—R.

I looked over to where Reba’s room was. “She’s gone?”

“To the extent she was ever here, yes.”

“She’s a ghost with an ATM card,” Laertes yelled, from the other room.

“Well, this is great,” I said. “At least she left her last month’s rent.” I dropped the envelope, the note, and the money on the table, and put my head in my hands. “This is what I get for not putting any of the rest of you on the lease. Don’t you two leave, okay?”

“So,” Brent said. “About that.”

I glanced at him through my fingers. “No.”

“Look, Jai—”

“No.”

Brent held up his hands. “Look, here’s the thing—”

“Noooooooo,” I whined, and dropped my head on the table, thunking it nice and hard as I did so.

“Drama won’t help,” Laertes said, from the bedroom.

“You want to firebomb everything,” I yelled back at him.

“That’s not drama, that’s revolution,” was his response.

I looked back over to Brent. “Please tell me you’re not abandoning me,” I said.

“We work in the theater,” Brent said. “And it’s like you said, everything’s shutting down. I don’t have any savings, and you know Laertes doesn’t either.”

“I am hilariously broke,” Laertes confirmed.

Brent winced at that, then continued. “If things get bad, and they’re going to get bad, we can’t afford to stay.”

“Where will you go?” I asked. As far as I knew, Brent had no family to speak of.

“We can stay with Laertes’s parents in Boulder.”

“My old room is just the way I left it,” Laertes said. “Until I firebomb it.”

“No firebombing,” Brent said, but his heart wasn’t in it. Laertes’s parents were the sort of outwardly very nice conservative people who wouldn’t miss an opportunity to call Laertes by his deadname, and that shit will wear you down over time.

“You’re staying,” I said.

“We’re staying for now, yes,” Brent agreed. “But if we run out of—”

“You’re staying,” I said, more firmly.

“Jamie, I can’t ask you to do that,” Brent said.

“I can,” Laertes said, from the bedroom. “Fuck Boulder.”

“It’s settled, then.” I got up from the table.

“Jamie—”

“We’ll make it work.” I smiled at Brent and then went to my room, which was the size of a postage stamp, but at least it was drafty and the floor creaked.

I sat on my shitty twin bed, sighed, then lay down and stared at the ceiling for a good hour. Then I sighed again, sat up, and pulled out my phone. I turned it on.

The füdmüd app was waiting for me on the screen.

I sighed a third time and opened it.

As promised, my deliverator account was signed in and ready to go.





CHAPTER

2




“Hello and thank you for ordering from füdmüd,” I said to the dude who opened the door to the ridiculously nice condo in the brand-new building that the doorman let me into because he knew I was an expected delivery person and not, probably, a robber. “I am your deliverator, Jamie. It is my passion to bring you your”—and here I looked at my phone—“seven-spice chicken and vegan egg rolls.” I thrust the bag forward for the dude to take.

“They make you say that?” he said, taking the bag.

“They really do,” I confirmed.

“Delivering isn’t actually your passion, is it?”

“It’s really not.”

“I understand. It will be our little secret.”

“Thank you.” I turned to go.

“Hope you find your samurai swords.”

I stopped turning. “What?”

“Sorry, inside joke,” the dude said. “You know ‘deliverator’ is from Snow Crash, right? The Neal Stephenson book? Anyway, the protagonist of the book is a delivery guy who has samurai swords. I forget the hero’s name.”