Moths
The parking area is the colour of ash. We park a block away, anticipating the turmoil. You walk in front of me, head lowered, straight black hair tied in a ponytail, snow-white skin shiny with sweat. You glance at the cars, at the drivers shouting, at the sky, but you keep walking at a steady pace, towards the trolleys usually arranged in rows but now in total disarray. I know you’re relieved to see there are some left. I know I am.
It’s worse than during the last January sale when I didn’t want to come but you insisted. It must have been a punishment for that dinner with my parents. Without turning back, you slightly wave your hand, as you always do, to tell me to grab a trolley. People are swarming around, as noisy and disorderly as during that sale, but the despair in their eyes has a new layer. We stop in front of the automatic door and it opens.
The inside of the supermarket is a cacophony, sound bouncing off its corrugated roof: the raised voices betraying neither age nor gender, the shuffling of feet, the rustle of plastic bags, an occasional heavy thump. At least it gives temporary relief from the unceasing heat.
We should have made a list. We always used to. That is, you always told me to and then, in the supermarket, you would keep giving me orders: ‘take this’, ‘that way’, ‘dairy first’, scolding me for choosing the wrong kind of blue cheese. I can’t believe how happy I was. It’s funny how we can tell happiness only by contrast, appreciate it only when it’s gone.
Now it seems you don’t have any plan. You look clueless wandering around the vegetable department, avoiding cabbage heads rolling on the floor, surrounded by almost bare shelves still holding a few wilted carrots, some Brussels sprouts, by the restless crowd. ‘How many potatoes will we need? How many onions?’ you seem to be asking. Later, when you put bread into the trolley, your eyes look as tired as when you said you were leaving, bloodshot and helpless.
The dairy aisle. We revel in the chill from the refrigerators, our bodies bathed in the bluish glow. You no longer seem to care about the kind of cheese. Not that there’s much choice. Some corporate-looking woman in her thirties is saying prayers while filling her trolley with camemberts and bries. We look at each other and let out a nervous laugh.
When you told me, everything became distant, as if miles away. You said you were exhausted, said it wasn’t working, said you couldn’t handle it any longer, said you were sorry. You told me to move out by the end of the month. That was yesterday. This morning we heard the news.
We used to joke we’d start drinking again only in the last days of Earth. It goes without saying that now we’ll drink ourselves to death, so as we approach the shelves once full of beers, the only thing we’re concerned about is how many cans per person per day. We arrive at twelve. I add five bottles of white wine, just in case. Funny, I thought that if we’d recovered from the drinking, we could recover from anything.
The ceaseless beeping of the tills makes me think of Morse code signals. I wonder why the cashiers are still working. Is it shock? Habit? Or maybe they were threatened? Before we stand in one of the winding, noisy queues, we take a detour to the pharmacy department and grab three bottles of sleeping pills.
Then there are screams, quarrels, there is waiting, me looking at your white back covered with small moles, at the slight shaking of your hand when you take out your wallet. When we finally walk out into the orange light, we raise our heads, as if on command.
The Moth, that’s what we called it, because of its brownish tint and clouds forming patterns reminiscent of a moth’s wings, and the fact it is drawn to us like a moth to a flame. Or maybe it’s just that the name picked up by the media, Nibiru, is too much of a cliché. Now it’s just a pale reddish dot hanging low above the roofs, barely visible in the twilight sky. We would surely miss it if it weren’t for all the fuss.
As we’re leaving the parking area, unnoticed, with the trolley packed to the brim, I can’t help but think that the name isn’t accurate after all. Soon it’s going to be the other way round: in a few days it will be us that will succumb to its gravitational pull, leaving the well-trodden path of our orbit, faster and faster, to finally plunge into the depths of those grey and brown clouds.
The streets are strangely calm. They smell of hot asphalt. Slowly, we reach our car, open the boot and begin to fill it with bread, cheese, vegetables, beer. We do what we’d never do in different circumstances: leave the trolley on the side of the street. Before you push it down to the ditch, you give me a mischievous smile. We get into the car and drive away.
Originally published in Lighthouse Issue 10 (2015)