“This is why I never learned to tap dance,” Merv told the woman with her finger up his ass. His former physical therapist had been movie star gorgeous, but this new one was pretty rough.

“Tap dance?” She did each session with an unlit cigarette dangling. “Gotta ration,” she told him when he asked.

“When I was ten,” Merv said, “my sister wanted lessons. My ma signed up both of us. My sister got it, no problem. Me, I’d be fine till I started thinking about what I was doing. After that, it all fell apart.”

“Let’s try it one more time anyway.” Somehow Lisa’s cigarette never got damp and disgusting. Probably cause everyone’s lips were cracked and dry.

“You’re the boss.” Merv exhaled. He tried to imagine his rectum softening, the necessary first step in the chain reaction, but every part of him stayed tense from the cold.

Used to be the beds at Freedom Physical Therapy were heated, each room stocked with crisp white sheets, and wipes you could use after to clean yourself up. Now, the protein bars and mineral powders the skinny receptionist once sold had been ransacked. Months back, Lisa had depleted the last box of latex gloves.

“I need you to relax for me.” With her finger inside him, Lisa was probably spreading three kinds of diseases. What choice did he have though? He needed the treatment. Besides, she seemed clean. Like back in the nineties, when safe sex meant choosing girls you thought were too pretty to have AIDS.

“Easy for you to say,” Merv said. While Lisa was giving him privacy to take his pants off, he’d pried up the last of the carpet tacks. Now, in his vest pocket, they bit into his side.

“Think of your pelvic floor dropping. Your sphincter widening and softening. Opening and relaxing. Now exhale and try to push my fingers out.”

When he didn’t have to look at her hairy chin and dangling cigarette, Lisa’s voice was soothing. Like they weren’t really in this bombed out shell of a strip mall. Like, if he walked outside, he wouldn’t see people hoarding cardboard to build shelters, the constant white dust thick on their hands and faces, as if they’d grown themselves a new kind of skin.

 

“What does Jordy have planned for New Year’s Eve?”

“He’ll watch the ball drop in Times Square while his wife makes her famous hash brown jalapeno poppers.”

“What does Karl have planned for New Year’s Eve?”

“He’ll get bottle service and check out Afrojack spin at the club.”

“What does Kate have planned for New Year’s Eve?”

“Goop by Juice Beauty Instant Facial, Green Smoothie, Candlelight yoga. Early to bed, then SoulCycle, and Mimosa brunch with the girls.”

By now, the holiday game was essential. Their nameless group waxed and waned with each season—Nora was doing sex-work now, at the Outskirts, and Craig had hiked off toward The Bend—so their chanting was what united the remainders. Just like The Hassids beyond The Plaza had their religion, and the Trader Joe’s workers still wore their Hawaiian shirts.

“Where’s the pie from?” Merv asked when their call and response had faded. He stomped the ash and dirt from his boots.

“One of the DOGOs.”

“She had like, four Bouncers.”

“Those thick suede boots. Big fur head-wrap. She made this kid she had with her knock.”

“She pokes the kid, and the kid whispers, ‘it’s for you, you’re less fortunate.’”

“The Bouncers go, ‘keep your hands where we can see them,’ and the kid puts the pie at our feet.”

Merv wiped his hand on his pant leg. When he dug in his fingers, the crust crumbled, and juice slipped in rivulets down his wrist.

“It’s real butter, isn’t it?” Kate watched from her usual perch on the counter. “Their compound must still have orchards.”

Chewing, Merv nodded. He imagined the pie landing soft on top of the tower of foodstuffs that probably stretched from his anus to his throat.

 

“It’s not Donald Trump’s fault I can’t go to the bathroom,” Merv told Kate later, “but that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t pay.”

The rest of the group had bedded down in their corners; behind the bar, inside the mop closet, or in the back room. In summer, when everyone fought over the cafe area, Merv always got a good, bitter chuckle. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same. Used to be customers got surly over the wall outlets. Back then, he’d come, two, three times a week to file his stories. Once or twice, he and Kate had shared a table, when things got crazy with tourists and journalists and government types. The last time, she’d borrowed his charger. Her family, she said, was in Lake Como. She’d stayed behind to work on her brand. Merv had been mesmerized by her hair in the sunlight. How it flared red just before the shock of hot air and debris. Now, of course, the outlets were meaningless, but the cafe had those South-facing windows, and in the summer, that area still caught some meager sun.

“What’s one thing got to do with the other?” Now, Kate lay on her side on the floor doing core work. Merv had propped a shard of mirror against the wall. Another thing Merv had salvaged was a strip of green rubber. The physical therapists used it to help patients recover from normal problems—strokes and car accidents. People who didn’t get shuffled off to private rooms with beds and attached bathrooms; lucky suckers, who knew nothing about bio-feedback or anal probes. Now, aside from Merv and Lisa and sometimes the Russian lady with the knee problem, the clinic sat empty. Probably, some tragic family without a strip mall shelter deserved that green rubber, but Merv was happy watching Kate loop it around her meatless thighs.

“That’s just it,” he said. “They’d never suspect me. I’m just some guy who’s too miserable to live.”

“Don’t say that.” Legs at a ninety degree angle, Kate touched her big toes together, then pried apart her knees like the shell of a clam.

“The great thing about the apocalypse is you can’t be accused of hyperbole.”

“This isn’t the apocalypse. Things have been bad before.” Kate made a light grunt of exertion.

Kate was one of a type Merv had grown to recognize. After all the wild fires and mud slides and hurricanes, and the Bomb Cyclone that took out Brooklyn Heights. After the stand-off with North Korea, and the whole Pakistan/China/Russia alliance. After the thing with Isis, and then the other thing with Isis, and then the other other thing with Isis, when the president tweeted their democracy couldn’t survive the tumult of an election, not under these chaotic circumstances, and everyone voted that for the safety of the country, he should simply extend his term. That was when Merv started noticing them, folks who hadn’t gotten the dystopia memo. Who kept separate bags for recycling. Who still checked their dead iPhones. Who argued over gender pronouns when women and children were told to evacuate first.

“Anyway,” Kate said, “next time they come through, we might get to go to the compounds.”

“You need a special talent. I can’t even get my pelvic floor to drop. What’s wrong?” Merv clocked the twitch of Kate’s eyebrows. She’d started Botox at twenty, so the movement was slight.

“You’re forgetting,” she said, “I’m connected.” She smoothed the Starbucks apron she used as a mat.

“My mistake.”

Kate knew as well as he did, her connections didn’t matter. Not with her rich family gone silent in Italy. A whole cold sea between them. Dead or not, Kate had no way to know.

“You should try Pilates.” She pointed her top knee toward the ceiling. She counted each dip to the floor.

Merv stoked the fire. Tomorrow he’d head to the railway, see if he could siphon more diesel. The twigs and scraps hardly rated. He missed the UPS Store’s padded envelopes. He should have hoarded them, like Lisa and her cigarettes. None remained of what had once seemed an endless supply.

*

The day Merv stopped having bowel movements, had been like any other. Bernie Sanders was still refusing to concede the nomination, and Merv had raced from press conference to rally, to Starbucks to file his story. He’d eaten some popcorn and a shitty cheese sandwich. God knows how much coffee he’d downed. In his studio that evening, he’d felt the urge like clockwork. Seven p.m. Time for his usual dump. That was when the day got different. Nothing he’d tried before served him. He strained and sweated for two hours, while the television droned about that day’s worst shooting spree in history, and outside, a light rain fell. As weeks passed, Merv tried Miralax and Milk of Magnesia, and suppositories and enemas. He missed whole news cycles, afraid to leave his bathroom. But no matter what he shoved in or ingested, on the cusp of deliverance, his body shut down. By the time Merv called in the big guns, Trump and Clinton were facing off, Anderson Cooper presiding. Merv watched the debate from his toilet. Each time the urge swelled, he’d hope, clench, and push. When his colonoscopy revealed nothing, he was devastated. Not that he’d been rooting for cancer, but maybe a nice juicy polyp, or fecal impaction; something physical a real doctor could remove. Instead, he’d been shuffled off to the crackpot end of the healthcare continuum: Acupuncture and herbal tinctures. Petite blonds with mala beads and flowing tunics. They touted visualization and the mind/body connection. Meanwhile, all Merv wanted was a white-coated God to carve him open. He wanted beeping monitors and anesthetic like syrup in his veins.

“Americans are too focused on medical intervention,” Merv’s former physical therapist told him. He’d been referred by some friend’s yoga teacher or some yoga teacher’s friend. She said no one looked into themselves for answers. Men demanded Cialis. Women were taught to rely on Depends. But Merv’s dick was fine, he assured her.

“Because your pelvic floor isn’t weak, it’s hypertonic.”

“I thought only women had pelvic floors,” Merv had said.

*

“Think of your pelvic floor dropping. Your sphincter widening and softening. Opening and relaxing. Now exhale and try to push my fingers out.”

“Did I do it?” Merv asked over his shoulder.

“Not this time.” Lisa’s cigarette made her ’S’ lispy.

“Yeah. I could feel myself clench there at the end.”

“Used to be you couldn’t tell the difference.”

“Is that progress?”

“You move your bowels today?” Lisa shifted her weight on the table. Merv thought he’d seen the wheels from her old chair on a cart pushed by one of the Hassids.

“The tiniest blob, this morning.”

“What consistency?” Her questions were rote, her voice bored.

Merv’s former physical therapist took notes at each session. She had blond hair that smelled like gingerbread, and when she pressed her hands to his abdomen, he swore he felt his tissues unwind. He missed her calm competence and detailed explanations. After the last uprising, he’d told himself she was too good for this world.

“Relaxing is important,” Lisa recited.

“I couldn’t even relax when the tiles on my bathroom floor were heated. Now I go in a bucket in a parking lot behind Total Discount Liquors.”

“You been working on your visualization?”

“Not exactly.” Merv pictured a sky full of fireworks; bursting red rockets midair. “How long till I can coordinate my muscles?”

“What am I, psychic?” Lisa came around in front of him. “You can get dressed.”

His former physical therapist would have promised him relief was coming. But Lisa didn’t believe in false hope.

 

As he was leaving, Merv handed over a can of Italian Wedding Soup and three tampons. The first from some DOGO drop-off, the other he’d found when he was stealing a half bag of fertilizer from one of the derelict lots.

“I gotta cancel for next week,” he said.

“Consistency is important.” Lisa pulled a screw driver from behind the cracked reception desk. She used the rusted tip to puncture the soup’s lid.

“Why do you even do this?” Merv’s gesture took in the abandoned lobby.

“I’m too gay for sex work. Besides, all I got now is time.”

“You ever hear what happened to the lady helped me out before you?” Merv pulled on his jacket.

“Sure.” Lisa slurped soup from the rough opening. “They picked her off in the last uprising. She’s on some compound, working for Chrissy Teigen now, I hear.”

 

“What does Jordy have planned for New Year’s Eve?”

“He’ll watch the ball drop in Times Square while his wife makes her famous hash brown jalapeno poppers.”

“What does Kate have planned for New Year’s Eve?”

“Goop by Juice Beauty Instant Facial, Green Smoothie, Candlelight yoga. Early to bed, then SoulCycle, and Mimosas brunch with the girls.”

“What does Craig have planned for New Year’s Eve?”

“Drinking bawls and raiding Emerald Nightmare.”

“What does Liam have planned for New Year’s Eve?”

“He’ll meet up with some of his old Peace Corps friends.”

“What does Madison have planned for New Year’s Eve?”

“Just me—sorry, just Madison—and her sweetie, getting their Hygge on, on the couch with a bottle of red.”

Craig was back and he’d brought a couple millennials. Caked with white dust, they looked masked and timeless, but you could tell they were younger from their names. One or both had been headed for the Georgetown Compound. Rumor was they were short on stuntmen and baristas. That’s where you went if you had good looks and made a mean flat white.

“Woulda been back sooner.” Craig fist-bumped Merv when the chanting faded. “But we ran into one of the pop-ups.”

“They still have those?” Merv shed his coat, but kept on his thick vest.

“Are you kidding? Without CNN, that fucker’s desperate for attention.”

“Who’s left to show up though?” Kate had squeezed into the circle beside Craig. She offered him the last stale crumbs of pie.

“I hear they’re paid.”

“That’s a rumor.”

“No, like, a friend of Madison’s is a seat-filler—”

“You don’t have to use third person once the holiday chant’s over.”

“Oh.”

“There’s no Bouncers though, ‘cause they all get paid better at the compounds, and half the time the metal detectors don’t work.”

“That reminds me.” Craig stretched his long legs out. “I found a whole bottle of Tylenol. Travel size, but still.”

“Well, look who’s a hero.” This was Kate’s stuck up rich girl way of saying thanks.

“He still do impromptus?” Merv shoved his hands in his pockets. Across the circle, he saw Kate edge closer to Craig.

“Sly, Mervie.” Craig leaned toward the millennials. “Whenever someone new shows up, he’s gotta brag on hisself. Merv here did a couple sit downs. At Trump’s golf club ain’t that right?”

“Yeah.” Merv glanced at Kate. “And Trump International in Vegas.”

“Hey, tell us again about your Free Press trophy, or the time you embedded with the IRA.”

“What’s the IRA?”

“Don’t they like, manage your retirement?”

“Course now he’s just like the rest of us. Armageddon’s a real equalizer, right buddy? Don’t matter who lived in their mama’s basement, and who was a big news guy, now.” Craig winked at Kate, and Merv watched her hollow cheeks flush.

In the old days Merv might have fought for her. It wasn’t that he was weak from hunger or that he couldn’t get hard still, but who wanted to fuck when they were full of shit? The whole ‘not in the mood thing,’ he never used to grok that. Even in the first year of his disorder, there were times he’d almost enjoyed the sensation. His former physical therapist took notes and said maybe all that bloat was stimulating his prostate. They’d keep an eye on it and see. Back then, he’d overheard a woman in Freedom Physical Therapy’s waiting room, complaining about her prolapse.

“I feel like there’s a tampon hanging half out of me,” she’d said to the Russian with the sprained knee. “Who wants to make love that way? But try telling my husband that. He says, ‘Mind over matter. How you feel shouldn’t get in the way of sex.’”

At the time, Merv had been annoyed. Screechy voice. Airing her business. He’d cranked the volume on the TV—they were talking about the net neutrality repeal, and the new changes with social media.

“According to the president,” Hoda said, “the US must present a united front.”

“Uh oh! What does that mean for all the Snapchatters?” Kathie Lee asked her.

“We’re told the internet will be ‘read-only,’ but his Cabinet will have open platform access to post.”

The sprained knee woman sipped coffee and scanned her cell phone. The old southern guy across from Merv blew his nose.

“Are you people hearing this?” Prolapsed Vagina Lady pointed at the television. “That’s fucking censorship.”

The skinny receptionist raked through her Zen Sandbox. “But like, we voted for him to make our decisions, so it can’t really be censorship, right?”

 

“Scuse me.” The group was retiring to their corners now, and one of the millennials tapped Merv’s arm.

“Hey.” Merv turned fast, stepping backward.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I’m alert. There’s a difference.” Merv smoothed his vest. “Lemme ask you, what was your plan once you got there?”

“Georgetown? Figured I’d wait tables at the WayStation. They come through sometimes, to do shoots or sightsee. It would only be a matter of time.”

“How old are you?”

“Harrison Ford didn’t get famous till he was forty.”

“I guess I admire your confidence.” Merv’s full gut pressed up into his solar plexus. His lungs had no room to fully inflate.

“I starred in all the plays back in high school. Senior year, they voted me best actor.”

“That was for a different future.”

“So what if the world turned out different? I’m still me.”

“Fair enough.” Merv’s turned. “Wait, why’d you tap me?”

“Craig said you’re the guy to ask where’s the john.”

 

The next morning, Merv squatted over the bucket in the parking lot. He couldn’t play Words With Friends or swipe right on anyone, so he’d gotten to know the squirrels who hung out in the adjacent field. Only the compounds had Wi-Fi now. At first there were internet viewing stations, mostly in Rust Belt states. Craig said the one in Fredericksburg still worked sometimes: “But now we ain’t vote no more, there’s no sense reaching out to the poor.”

Merv’s favorite squirrel had one normal eye and a pure white one. Sightless, still, he was a fast motherfucker, always dashing up and down the bare trees. Sometimes Merv talked to One Eye, but this morning the field looked vacant. Tousled grass like a restive sleeper’s hair. Merv’s leg cramped, and he shifted to take some weight off. No doubt his quads rivaled Kate’s by now. Last night she’d missed her workout. Alone in their corner, Merv had rolled up in a pile of aprons to sleep.

Merv exhaled. He thought of his pelvic floor dropping. His sphincter widening and softening. Opening and relaxing. Somewhere in his sorry depths, a flutter. He imagined his ileocecal valve opening, the tight curve of his sigmoid colon going slack. Inside, an expansion, a pressure. He envisioned his rectum filling, but his anus clenched as the pressure grew. Exhale and loosen. Open and soften. Again, the urge mounted. But what was the order of operations? Was it “widen and release” or shuffle ball change? Merv exhaled and imagined Lisa’s voice and how she sucked soup around her cigarette, he imagined the soft scent of his former physical therapist, but just like always, when need reached its apex, inside him, something (his anus?) slammed shut.

Back indoors, Merv found he had nothing to carry. He’d envisioned packs full of food and supplies for a journey, rousing goodbyes from the group. But then, he’d never announced his own plans for New Year’s. And supplies were unnecessary; his destination only a day’s walk away. Merv buttoned his vest. One of the millennials snored near the impotent outlets. Behind the counter, murmurs and Craig’s laughter. The sound Kate made when she lifted and spread her legs.

 

Merv heard the president’s voice before he saw him. Speakers? No, just a megaphone. This became clear as Merv turned onto Pennsylvania Ave.

“One point five million revelers. What a massive crowd. What a sea of people.”

The president’s voice sounded like an ancient record. It sounded like old rooms, unoccupied. Like someone trapped under six feet of dirt. Even if the attendees were spread across the Mall’s acres, there couldn’t have been more than a few hundred. They were clean too, no dust on them. So probably, like the millennials said, they’d been paid.

“We all share the same home, the same dreams and the same hopes for a better future.”

As he passed the ruins of the Department of Justice, Merv spotted the president. On foot, with his megaphone, one bored Bouncer a few feet behind. This appearance was foolhardy, obviously. But Trump missed his audience. How else to explain the tiny pop-up rallies, the club dates announced last minute via flier drops and word of mouth?

“We are backed one hundred percent by our military. We are backed by everybody.”

Trump crossed 6th Street. Too far off still, to recognize Merv. Poor guy. Now Twitter was read-only, he’d probably stopped believing in his own existence, with no one to mirror back or respond. It was awkward, Merv thought, to hear him, mouthing his old rhetoric. Like Kate, still refusing refined sugar, or how this one time, when Merv was pilfering a seven-eleven, he’d found some scratch-off lotto tickets and pocketed them, half-thinking he’d win.

At eleven fifty-nine, Merv and the president drew even with the Navy Archives. Merv watched Trump flare with recognition. He watched him wave off his Bouncer and beckon. Back at the strip mall, the group would be chanting. Aspirational and antiquated. All of them saying things were some way they just weren’t. Merv exhaled. He imagined Kate and the remainders. They closed their eyes and formed their circle, their words precise and liturgical. Meanwhile, in the wider world, Merv opened his arms.