W. Bill Czolgosz

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So, Rick James died in August. He's the guy who sang Superfreak in the 80's. Me and Chamo talked about it a bit. Chamo had all sorts of nasty things to say about Mr. James, and it wouldn't be appropriate to record them here. Suffice to say, the man had enough bad press in his lifetime to warrant the discussion. None of it mattered anyway. We were killing time, waiting for 3:00, waiting to see...

Chamo ordered two beers, plus a side of spicy clam/tomato juice. He assured me that everything would be fine and then offered me a cigarette. Goddamn Chamo! Any time he ever said something would turn out fine, it never did. His whole life was a trail of unfortunate gut instincts.

"Al Gore in 2000!" he told me in October of that year. "He's a shoo-in. I feel it in my bones. I've got $1800 riding on it." Maybe that's a bad example. Anyway, Chamo lost a lot of money that year.

After 9-11-01, Chamo said that the chore of rounding up the terrorists would be quick and merciless. He said he dreamed it. "I got a vision of Bin Laden in chains, no later than Christmas." In May of 2004, as the USA was slowly gearing up to pull out of Iraq, I reminded him that his dreams were shit. "Don't ever trust your instincts," I told him. "You are the least intuitive man in all of human history."

"The CALGARY FLAMES will trounce FLORIDA in the sixth and take the Stanley Cup. If you have children, wager them."

And so it goes.

I wasn't a gambling man, but if I was, I could have made a lot of cash by betting against Chamo. I never did. He should have thanked me for that. Any less a friend would have taken him for everything.

At 3:00, the world was supposed to end. That wasn't Chamo's call, unfortunately, but NASA's. They made the announcement back in February that a rock the size of Detroit would blindside the Earth from space on August 10. A Tuesday, of all days.

I hate Tuesdays. Most people hate Mondays, but I think of Tuesday as MONDAY PART TWO, and we all know that sequels invariably suck more than the original. What a shitty day for the world to end. Why couldn't it be Friday at 11:59 PM? That would be perfect.

"Rick James doesn't have to worry," Chamo said, "because he's already dead. Smug bastard." He paused and took a long, slow drag of his cigarette. "Anyway, at 3:01, we're all going to see that it's just a big hoax. Business as usual tomorrow, mark my words."

Most joints were closed. The malls and gas stations were locked up tight. People were running for the countryside in droves, though I don't see what that was supposed to accomplish. The meteorite was scheduled to hit the southern tip of Madagascar and plunge the world into a ten-year winter. Why anyone on this side of the globe thought that running into the forest would be beneficial in any way is frankly beyond me.

But MOKEY'S was open for business and that was cool. Sam Mokey, the owner, was a devout Atheist. He didn't believe in God or spirits or anything. He didn't even believe in NASA, even though their cool logo flashed over the TV screen every four minutes. He didn't think there was any big deal. "We either die or we don't. It's that simple. What the fuck do we do about it?"

So the drinks weren't free, which is sad. Sam's waitresses made certain they were paid, in cash, for every round of drinks. Just so no one could die with a tab owing. Nice guy, that Sam.

Chamo said it was just as well. "It's all cool, buddy. That asteroid is going to swing by and hardly nick the outer atmosphere. I looked it up on the internet. NASA has miscalculated. It's all tickety-boo."

"NASA doesn't miscalculate," I said.

"Sure they do," Chamo retorted. "What about the Hubble telescope? What about the Mars Observer? Call it what you will, but a technical fuck-up is the same as a miscalculation, in my book."

He cited the website, WWW.LIESPEOPLETELL.COM, as his chief source material for refuting the space agency's doomsday claim. "NASA lies in order to get attention, to get more government funding. They're the biggest liars of all. It's a financial conspiracy. You can go on the web and look it up for yourself."

But even if I wanted to, I couldn't have logged onto the net. The communication systems of the world had already been shut down to the public, since Sunday morning. Chamo was talking out of his ass again. I doubted very much that LIESPEOPLETELL even existed.

"Tomorrow, after the asteroid has passed us by, NASA will go to the White House and say, 'Whew! Close call! Can we have a trillion dollars to upgrade our program?' And the government will give it to them too, because they're stupid like that."

I went Hmmmm, only because I had nothing to comment.

Mokey's jukebox was playing songs from the 80s and 90s. I thought Superfreak was starting and I was just about to mention how coincidental that was, given that we had just been chatting about Rick James, but the song turned out to be an MC Hammer one. Still, I had the Superfreak chorus going in my head, even while Hammer was repeatedly asserting, "You can't touch this."

God, how I hated that song.

The clock said 2:55 and I wondered if Bruce Willis and Robert Duvall were up in space, scrambling on double overtime to destroy the evil meteoroid. NASA had said there was nothing they could do to thwart the impact, but maybe they were just trying to keep our hopes low. Maybe there was a secret battalion of nuclear-equipped starfighters just waiting for the rock to enter Earth's orbit, and then they'd give it Hell.Yeah. That would have been cool.

Chamo was close to drunk. I had a slight buzz on too. It was just like any other day for us. Half-pissed by 3:00. I struggled to think of all the things I'd miss about the world, but all I came up with was beer. Pussy didn't even cross my mind. I hadn't had a woman in so long, I think I was technically a virgin again.

"Good things," Chamo said, fighting to keep his eyes open. A yawn. "It's all good things. I got a good feeling about this one."

He had the same feeling about meat-flavored soda in 2003. He managed to convince me to invest $2000 in patent searches and lawyer fees. He said, "People are tired of fruit and gingko biloba. What they really want is beef. Something like a carbonated lite-gravy drink." I lost all that money, of course. It was a very bad idea whose time had not yet come, and I can only blame myself for buying into it.What was I thinking?

Two minutes to impact. Maybe Mokey's clock was fast. Maybe it was slow. Maybe the world had already ended. I wondered, How will we know?

"How long before the blast wave hits?" I asked.

"There won't be a blast wave because there won't be an impact."

"OK. But theoretically... if there was an impact..?"

"I'd say 10 minutes. Maybe 12."

So if Chamo guessed 10 or 12 minutes, that meant either 3 minutes or a half an hour, because his guesses were never even ballpark close. Goddamn Chamo! My life was nearing its end and his face may well have been the last human face I'd ever see.

He's the guy who talked me into quitting high school, back in grade 11. He's also the one who convinced me that my relationship with Mary-Anne Fassbinder would ultimately go nowhere and therefore wasn't worth pursuing. And why the hell had I stopped going to work in order to drink with him?

"Go on unemployment benefits," he'd said. "Working is a sucker's game. You go to work for 6 months, then collect for a year. That's how to beat the system. You'll work 66% less than all these other fools, but you'll make just as much money and your quality of life will be higher."

In June, my benefits ran out and I wasn't successful in finding new work. My employment record was less than impressive. Much less. Even McDonald's had no interest in hiring me.

"Fuck it. Let's just drink," Chamo said.

The waitress brought another two beer, plus a side of clam/tomato juice. Chamo loved clam/tomato. I think that's where he got the idea for meat soda.

At 3:01, nothing was different. Sam Mokey was counting cash from the till and chainsmoking cigarettes, which is what he always did at this time of day.

"We're not dead yet," Chamo said. "See?"

He said the same thing at 3:38.

"We're still not dead. Everything is great."

"What a relief," I said.

For once, Chamo's gut feeling was right. NASA had miscalculated.

The asteroid did not hit Madagascar until 5:16, our time, nearly two hours late. But by that time, I was already passed out, drunk, and dreaming. I didn't even hardly know what hit me.

And this is true: the last song that played on Mokey's jukebox was Private Eyes, by Hall & Oates. That may not seem relevant to you, but I once had a mixed tape, back in grade 10, and that song came right before Superfreak. I swear to God.

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