Proto frowned. “Ah. Thanks.”
“No, seriously!” she said. “I mean, no one in the world would call you slick, Mister I-Hit-Seventeen-and-Decided-to-Stop-There.” She waved at his high-school tracksuit. “But that’s okay, rockers are like that too. I like you as you are. I’ve got band T-shirts you can borrow.”
“Size girls’ XL?” he asked.
“No, size ‘girlfriend who borrowed her boyfriend’s T-shirts to sleep in and kept them for ten years cause they’re big and smell good,’” she replied.
“Ah.” He started to smile, then furrowed his brow. “Wait, you have those here? Were they in your car? Were you planning a Goodwill run?”
“It’s important to have a well-stocked trunk,” she mumbled. At his chortle of disbelief, she sighed. “Welp! Hope you enjoyed Softie while she lasted. I just hit my quota for the year. I’m like a Guns ‘n Roses album, and that was my Patience. Now, I’m all outta Patience.”
“Back to Black now?” he said.
“Yeah, Back to Black, or maybe Back in Black. Little bit of both!” she answered. “Anyway, as I was saying, you’re looking better than I’d expected. Last I heard, you were a frozen pile of bone bits.”
“Sheesh!” he muttered.
“Don’t say sheesh, Moo. You sound like my mom, and my niece. At the same time,” she chastised.
“Sorry, my frozen and shattered mind was struggling to find words amid all the bone bits,” he said.
“Hey, no bone bits anymore, as far as I can tell.” She waved at his limber frame. “I haven’t seen something come back to life so quickly, after being destroyed so thoroughly and for so long, since rock came back in the year 2001.”
“I’ll try to live up to that comparison,” said Proto.
“Good luck, High School Tracksuit Man.” She patted his shoulder. “Anyway, yeah, 2001. What a year. The Strokes! The Shins! Arcade Fire! The Libertines! All at once! Like the late Gen X children of the best bands ever got together and said to the 80s and 90s, ‘F you and all you stand for!’”
“Didn’t you say Muse brought rock back to life in 1999, Muse Concert Girl?” he questioned.
“Nope! They were ahead of the times!” she corrected. “They got there before rock did.”
“And you were right there with them?” said Proto.
“Sure was. No one ever accused me of not getting places quickly enough,” she replied. “Which is good, because no one’s ever gonna call you slow either, I promise you that.”
Proto started to answer, then tilted his head and peered at her.
“Yeah, to confirm, I’m not talking about your 5k times,” added Black.
“Thanks. Thanks for confirming,” replied the bronze medalist.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m cool with it! Lesson #1 of rock: Faster can be better.” Her hazel eyes glimmered. “Of course, rock did get better when average playtimes increased from three to five minutes . . . ”
“Oh-kay, thank you!” groused Proto.
“Point being that speed and duration can come together!” she continued.
“Yep, yep, I’m getting the point!” he confirmed. “‘Come together,’ yep, I’m right there with you!”
“Good, cause I’m hoping to get something too!” she admonished. “Together. For at least five minutes.”
“Sheesh!” he exclaimed.
“Stop saying that!” frowned Black. “You make me feel like I’m talking dirty to my mom.”
“You know my favorite part about Stairway to Heaven?” replied Proto.
Black blinked. “What’s that? The part about the May Queen getting it on in the hedgerow?”
“The fact that it starts out slowly and builds up speed before hitting the climax!” he answered. “That’s how it stays so good for eight minutes!”
“Ooh. That’s more like it. Goodbye Mom, welcome back Moo.” Black’s eyes sparkled. “Point taken: Duration and gradually growing speed can come together. I hope!”
“Takes two to make a band,” shrugged Proto.
“You drum, I’ll sing,” she instantly replied.
“Sheesh!” said Proto.
“Stop spoiling my best lines, Mom!” complained Black.
“Anyway, speaking of me making music.” She unzipped a black purse and took out a Walkman with speakers, followed by two cassette tapes—one labeled Moo, the other Moo 2. “How about some background sound?”
“You brought the mixtapes you made me?” marveled Proto. “Nice, Softie.”
“I know, right? Softie’s showing up more and more. It’s cause I’m almost thirty,” sighed Black. “Anyway, take your pick. Teenage Karen or late-twenties Black.” She waved the two cassettes.
“They’re really not that different,” noted Proto.
“Hey!” She raised a finger. “Hey, I’ll have you know, late-twenties Black has totally come around on ELO. They’re Tier 1, not Tier 1.5. They didn’t just rewrite the same song over and over, and they’re not just like Boston and Chicago and Kansas, and all those American-place-bands. I was confused. They paint the full range of human emotions! They just always use dreamy pastels to do it.”
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“That’s—very eloquent,” observed Proto.
“Also,” she added, “John Cougar Mellencamp and Hall & Oates don’t suck.”
“That too,” he said.
Black made a clicking noise and flashed a peace sign at Proto. “By the way, that was a peace sign, not a V. You’ll have to wait on the V.”
“It’s been ten years, I’ll survive a bit longer,” he replied.
“Ten years since what? Since you lost your V to my V?” she asked.
Proto eyed her sidelong.
Black teeheed crazily. “Oh, I don’t teehee often, but I earned it there, didn’t I?”
Proto cleared his throat. “Speaking of things being done for the first time—”
She teeheed again.
“—I finished making you that mixtape. You know, the one I started ten years ago?” he said. “Sadly, judging by what you told me earlier, I think it’s been annihilated by flame.”
“Well, shit, I hope not. After all the trouble I went to.” She pulled a cassette out of her purse, labeled Karen / Black, and handed it to him. “Nope, no annihilation here.”
“That’s . . . not possible.” Proto squinted at the cassette. The label’s handwriting was his. “And wait, those other two cassettes.” He studied the handwriting on the Moo and Moo 2 mixtapes. “Those aren’t copies. Those are the ones you gave me! But how . . . ?”
“‘Not possible’ is awfully strong, don’t you think?” noted Black, idly spinning the reel on the cassette. “For example, it’s possible someone would guess you left a spare key to your house under that brick by the rosemary bush up front. Especially if she knew that, ten years ago, his parents did exactly the same thing at their house. And if she had a key, and she were wondering why he’d totally stopped answering her calls, she of course might go in his house and check up on him. You know, make sure he wasn’t the special at the Worms and Flies Buffet.”
“Sheesh!” exclaimed Proto.
“You know,” she cheerily continued, “make sure he hadn’t croaked like a frog in a fry pan. And, if she happened to have been his girl ten years ago, of course she would check if he still had the mixtape she’d given him back then, in that cassette rack he’d bought at Ikea back then. Right next to the new mixtape she’d given him a few days ago, as it turned out. And, if it just so happened he had another tape next to those, labeled with her name, I bet she’d be feelin’ the feels! Maybe even a little dewy-eyed! So when she found out what’d actually happened to him—he was in a car accident, by the way—she went back and took them all as mementos!”
“Just saying, you know. Since you said ‘not possible’; but technically, that’s a possibility,” concluded Black.
“Sheesh!” repeated Proto.
“Stop sheeshing me! I’m neither a mom nor a child, it’s inappropriate,” chastised Black.
“Well, you do wear size girls’ XL,” he pointed out.
“You like my shirts!” She tugged her shirt’s bottom up and down a couple inches above her belly button. “Don’t you poison them for me by using them to justify your sheeshing!”
“Speaking of which, now that there’s no social media to randomly poison the connotations of perfectly good words,” said Proto, “you probably could go back to being Karen.”
“Would you like me to?” Black asked sweetly.
“Um. Not really,” he answered.
“Good. Because F you if you think I’m going back,” she said. “I’m Black. Never been Blacker! Even in my gothy black Hot Topic clothes in high school with my gothy black hair!”
“On that subject,” he replied, “I’m impressed you’ve kept your hair dyed red, even with the world in ruins. Even the roots!”
“‘Even the roots,’” she scoffed. “Stop brownnosing. Rednosing? Blacknosing? Bottom line is, the only ‘roots’ you’re allowed to talk about are The Grass Roots. Who, like my hair color, were both inauthentic and perfect.”
“Anyway, yeah, an abandoned shop near me has lots of bleach and red dye,” she went on. “Enough to get me through a few years, while I figure out some more permanent red-hair solution.”
“Nice to see that commercial transactions have continued in the postapocalyptic world,” said Proto.
“I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a ‘commercial transaction,’” she admitted.
Proto inclined a brow. “Are you a looter, Black?”
“Share and share alike! Live and let live! Lake Shore Drive!” she cried, as Proto chortled.
“Anyway, yeah, plenty of red dye,” she said. “My prescription might’ve run out, but my hair dye sure won’t! Good ol’ consumer capitalism.”
“What?” asked Proto.
“Never mind. Not your concern.” She scrunched a smile out. “V-things.”
“What?” he repeated.
“Just stare at my nice hair and nice roots and smile dumbly!”
Proto obliged.
“There we go.” She patted his hand.
They continued awhile along the craggy and tree-lined street, eventually reaching the main road down the mountain. It looked more worn and cracked than Proto remembered it.
“So, Moo,” bantered Black. “You think it’s about your turn to carry the conversation? Share a bit about your thoughts? Now that I’ve told you all about my last two years?”
“Wait, what? Did I miss this?” asked Proto. “You had a dream, you broke into my house, and . . . something something, two years?”
“Hey, that’s more than I’ve gotten from you!” she pointed out.
“I’ve been frozen!” he protested.
“Fair point.” Her lips quirked up. “So, maybe tell me what you’ve been thinking, not what you’ve been doing. Tell me about yourself.”
Proto eyed his once-and-future girlfriend. “About myself?”
“You know,” she waved. “Like, ‘Hi, I’m Boring. I enjoy long walks on the beach. I like pina coladas and getting caught in suburban grocery aisles and midlife crises.’ Your turn.”
Proto continued to eye her sidelong.
“Here, I’ll help you start: ‘Hi, I’m Moo,’” she spoke in a yokel voice. “Your turn.”
He shrugged. “Hi. I’m Moo. I enjoy long walks down unmaintained postapocalyptic roads. I like eighty-year old armagnacs and getting caught in car accidents and blocks of ice.”
Black nodded grimly and glanced at him. “I take it back. You’re many things, Moo. All of them dubious, but none of them boring.”
“What, you didn’t figure that out during our last week together?” he said.
“Fair point,” she repeated. “What were you doing that week, anyway? I mean, when you weren’t drinking at my bar, walking with me to the vadoctor’s office, and going to a concert with me? And going to whisky tastings and whatnot! Is that just how you roll? Or was there something special about that week?”
Proto considered how to explain this.
Then, he thought better of it. “Just a busy week, I guess,” he shrugged.
“With what?” she asked. “Besides drinking whisky and going on long walks down suburban streets?”
“Um. A/B testing, I guess,” he answered. That sort of summarized it all, didn’t it?
“Oh, marketing shit. Right,” said Black. “Right, I heard you went into statistics and got boring after we broke up. But just how boring did you get, before you reunited with me and reawakened your inner awesomeness for a week?”
“So boring I once read a book about a guy who did A/B testing. For fun,” he replied.
“Sounds like a real page-turner,” she mused. “Yep, sure is a good thing you spent the prime of your youth A/B testing your way up the corporate ladder! You’ll reach the top any day now!” She waved at the end-of-the-world all around them.
Proto pondered his A/B testing—all the things he’d done and places he’d gone, and all the futures that could’ve been, for him and the world, and the future that would be—and then met Black’s ironic gaze with a winning smile. “You know, believe it or not, I think things played out exactly as they should.”
Black blinked. “Well, I can’t argue with the outcome,” she mumbled after a moment.
His lips quirked up at her.
“What?!” She blushed. “Yeah, Softie’s back already. Twice in one day! It’s cause I’m twenty-nine. Or 29.25, as you’d put it.”
Their journey lasted for several hilly and rocky hours. It’d be quite a walk for anyone—even a recent bronze medalist, let alone a patient who’d just emerged from cryogenic hibernation. He made a note to thank Dievas for fixing him up so well.
Thank Somnus for his millennial parties! boomed a kingly voice in his head.
The sun was halfway-hidden behind the western mountains by the time they halted. But they weren’t at Belladrengr. Before them stood a gigantic white barn, big enough to be a warehouse.
Proto eyed Black askance. “Fancy a roll in the hay?”
“Well, I was here for whisky. But you know me,” she answered. “Always ready and rarin’ for a barn romp. Pining for some pitchforking! Some hokey-pokey in the hayloft!”
From within the huge barn emerged a bushy-bearded man in flannel. “Ah, my best and least favorite customer!”
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