Author's Note: I read the same articles that the screenwriters of Deep Impact and Armageddon did, but I write much more slowly than they do. (The money or lack of it might have something to do with that.) I managed to write up to the second last scene in the story (just beginning here), except I messed up something in the characterization and I just can't seem to make Gino do what he needs to do. So he languishes until I can figure it out.

JS

With a Bang Not a Whimper

Copyright © 1998,1999 Jordan Shelbourne

The world was due to end in hours, and Gino was looking for a woman.

He hadn't planned it this way. By now, he and Ellen should have been happily humping on her king-size bed, but Ellen had decided to check herself out overnight, leaving Gino alone. He had left her body there, in the tub, and now he was cruising the city, looking for a woman before the asteroids hit.

He spotted a tavern that had its lights on. (Most of the utilities still worked; there were enough people who had nothing but their jobs that a lot of services were still performed. Hell, Gino had seen a cop only two days ago, directing traffic. Or at least a guy in a cop uniform.) He left the Cherokee's engine running as he ran inside; if someone took it, he'd just hotwire another one.

It was quiet inside -- it looked like a bunch of regulars who had decided to toast the world good-bye. The TV had the channel 6 Meteor Clock on; only six hours until the first fragments were supposed to hit. It was still daylight, but Gino couldn't remember if the first fragments would hit this side of the earth first or the night side.

The bartender had a shotgun pointed at Gino before he got two steps in. "If you want a drink," the bartender said, "that's fine. Won't charge you. If you want trouble, bye-bye."

Gino put his hands up. "No trouble. Just looking for a woman."

"What's she look like?"

"Any woman. I figure on going out fucking."

The bartender snorted. "To each his own. If any woman here wants to go with you, she's welcome to." He raised his voice. "Any of you ladies wanna fuck this guy?" To Gino he added, "You have to go someplace else. I don't allow fucking in my bar. Disturbs the regulars."

Gino nodded, very aware of the shotgun. It was the fifth time he'd had a gun pointed at him since things started to fall apart.

A woman at the end of the bar lifted her head. "Is he cute?" Her voice was thick and glacier-slow. In the dim light of the bar she looked pretty good. Her sleeve had pressed wrinkle lines into her face.

"Put on your glasses and check, Trudy," said the bartender.

She fumbled for a minute to unfold the arms and failed; finally she held them up to her face folded, like a pince-nez. She peered at him. "Y'r hairy."

Gino shrugged. There wasn't much he could do about it.

"S'okay," she grumbled. "I hope your cock isn't too big. Really big ones hurt."

Gino shrugged again. There wasn't much he could do about that, either.

Trudy grabbed for her purse, missed, grabbed again, got it and then slid off her stool onto the ground with a loud thump.

By the time Gino got around the end of the bar, she was snoring, a soft contralto rumble.

The bar was silent except for the TV commentator talking about the failed attempt to blow up the asteroid. "--instead creating a swarm of asteroids with an uncertain arrival--"

"Sorry," said the bartender, "she's been drinking for two or three days. We can wake her up. She did say she would--"

"Thanks but no thanks," said Gino. "I'm not into rape or necrophilia."

"We're all dead," said the bartender. "You do it with anybody, it's necrophilia." He laughed at his own joke. Trudy slept on.

After that, Gino figured that pretty much anyone he'd find in a bar by this point would be equally pickled. He sat in the Cherokee in a deserted McDonalds parking lot. (The fast food places had folded first; who cared about doing a good job there?)

Where do people meet, he asked himself. Where would they gather? He'd met his wife Wendy in church, 'way back when. No; he couldn't bring himself to say "fuck" in a church, even if he hadn't gone in fifteen years. Think -- think! he told himself. You've only got six hours. He pulled out of the parking lot and headed downtown. Not the financial district; the people with money had left early.

The streets were empty; everyone was inside, waiting to die. Gino wished he had taken a car with a bullhorn. Except that, even now, he would feel silly driving the streets announcing his intention to get laid.

Thirty minutes later he sat in another parking lot, the engine off. He began to suspect he was going to die jerking off rather than fucking. Where was everybody?

He smacked his palm against the steering wheel and fought the tears. God damn it. God damn it. Then his eyes felt hot and liquid and he squeezed them shut in shame; he hadn't cried since his mom died, not even when Wendy left him, and he wasn't going to cry now.

Eventually the threat passed, though his lashes felt damp and his eyes were gritty. He became aware that the silence was not complete. Something distant was murmuring, punctuated by the occasional squeal. He started the engine and began to drive.

There was a big crowd at the city center. Somebody had set up the big New Years globe and tower, and they had a clock counting down: 273 minutes now. People were dressed in tuxes and gowns, jeans and jackets. One guy was naked except for running shoes, which had to be a bit cold in October. Nearly everyone wore a party hat or blew a noisemaker.

Gino parked as close as he could, then waded into the crowd, asking women as he passed them, "Want to fuck? Want to go out fucking? Want to fuck?" He had to shout over the noise of the crowd. Short, fat, young, tall, thin, old -- he asked them all. They ignored him or shook their heads. One woman blew her noisemaker at him.

That was okay. That was their choice.

He headed towards a delicious blonde, tapped her on the shoulder, gave her his invitation. She nodded; he liked her overbite. He took her slim sweaty hand and threaded her out of the crowd.

Once they were free, he took a good look at her. She was gorgeous in her evening gown: tiny waist, small firm tits up high, a round hard ass. The slit skirt showed long slim thighs, trim calves, even pretty feet.

"You're gorgeous," he told her.

She nodded and giggled.

"Do you have a place you want to go to-- you know?" Suddenly he couldn't say "fuck" to her. She was a goddess, after all.

She nodded and giggled again.

Suddenly suspicious, he asked her, "How do you feel about ABS plumbing versus copper?"

She nodded and giggled again. Her pupils were big as dinner plates.

"Aw, shit," said Gino.

Something behind him roared, grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. Gino had a momentary glimpse of something huge and then he was lying on the ground. A big hulk of a guy was leading the blonde away, and Gino was becoming aware that his jaw and his ass and his elbows hurt. A lot.

Shit, thought Gino as he lay and ached. He closed his eyes for a moment. All I want to do is die in the saddle. Is that too much to ask for?

A nun in full habit knelt over him. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah, sister," Gino lied. He wiggled his jaw experimentally and winced. A couple of teeth felt loose. He felt stupid. He hadn't been in a fight since high school. "I'm fine."

"No, you're not," she decided and helped him up. She brushed him off. His pants were torn where his ass had slid across the pavement.

"Thanks," he said.

They looked at each other for a moment. She was tall, nearly his height, and maybe in her forties by what he could see of her through her wimple. She pursed her lips and looked at him. He remembered this look from the Sisters of Mercy back in grade school.

"He hit me first," Gino said feebly.

She laughed, and then he laughed, and he figured she was probably nicer than the Sisters of Mercy.

"Let's find some water to clean that scrape." They were silent on the walk to his Cherokee. As she climbed into the cab, she said, "By the way, I'm interested."

"What?" he said.

"I'd like to fuck," said the nun.

"Uh," said Gino, slack-jawed with surprise.

* * *

She directed him to an apartment in the Westmount area. (Gino didn't want to go back to Ellen's place, not with Ellen still there in the tub.) The ride was quiet; she didn't talk and Gino didn't feel like it.

The thing was, Gino wasn't sure if he could do a nun. Weren't they supposed to be brides of Christ? Gino had always avoided married women. Not to mention the hours of knuckle-rapping he'd received in school from nuns. The black and white habit was not a sexy uniform to Gino. But it had been ground into him that you do not disagree with a nun. So if she wanted to have sex with Gino, then Gino would try, no matter how unpleasant or uncomfortable it was.

She was just sitting there, down the seat from him, smiling at him. No, not smiling -- more like grinning. After the second time he sneaked a look at her, she asked him, "How did you come to this?"

He shrugged. "Well, I guess we started believing it was real about the same time most people did. My wife Wendy, she had an old boyfriend who'd made a ton of money and he'd bought one of the old missile bases out west. Made it into a survivalist camp. It was in a paper. She figured she could convince him to let her in. She was gonna, you know, trade favours." Gino blushed.

"You didn't object?"

"I yelled like hel-- like heck. But she left anyways. I tried a couple of survivalist places but lots of other people had thought of that before me. Eventually I had to, you know, make my peace with God."

"It didn't look peaceful to me," she asked. She had that sly secret smile.

"I met a woman named Ellen, she had always wanted to write a book, her husband had left her. We were gonna stay together until the end, but she finished her book yesterday and last night-- Well, she didn't wait."

The nun touched the box on the seat between them. "Is this it?"

"Uh-huh. I thought it wasn't really a book unless somebody read it. I haven't finished it yet. It's a romance. It's kind of sappy."

"Do you mind?" she asked, lifting the lid off the box.

"No. I guess Ellen'd be glad."

Gino had never seen anybody read that fast. She had read nearly fifty pages by the time he turned into the parking garage of the apartment building.

She brought the box with her into the elevator. "Romance novels make me horny," she explained.

Gino nodded, not sure he could look a horny nun in the eyes.

The apartment was on the sixth floor. It was clean and elegant. Gino spotted a portrait of the nun out of the habit. She had brown hair. "Is this your place?"

She nodded. "I'm not really a nun." Gino sighed with relief. She pulled off the headpiece and shook her head, then combed her hair with her fingers as she walked into the kitchen. "Though I think every Catholic girl spends some of her life thinking of becoming a nun. don't you?" She pulled a bottle of white wine out of the fridge and then asked him, "Wine?" He nodded. She took two glasses from the rack above the sink and set them on the table. "I was serious about it right up to University -- but then I decided I'd rather marry Larry Trowbridge instead of Jesus Christ." She handed him the bottle and a corkscrew. "I'm talking too much, aren't I?"

"No," he started and then stopped because she'd walked out of the room.

"Okay," she called. He poured the wine. His hands were shaking. She kept talking from down the hall. "I think it's because Larry was better in bed than Jesus. Though I guess Jesus saves himself for marriage, doesn't he? Except he's already married. Anyway, I nearly got raped in the riots early on, and I wanted a disguise. So I thought of being a nun."

She walked back in, wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt. "I hope you don't mind I changed. That habit weighs a ton. What's your name?" He told her. "And I'm Angela. Cheers."

"Cheers," he said, glad to get a word in. They clinked glasses. He still couldn't tell what her body was like, but she had nice hazel eyes and a wide smile. Like Wendy's.

That made his throat catch and he coughed into his wineglass, spilling wine all over himself.

"You okay?" she asked.

He nodded. "Something in my throat."

"Uh-huh," she said. "Lot of that going around." She handed him a towel and he cleaned himself off as best he could.

"What about you?" he asked. "You're not married now?"

She laughed. "Not for years. Larry was probably better in bed than Jesus but he wasn't so good out of bed." She crossed the kitchen and opened a drawer. legs. "Go ahead, make yourself comfortable. I'll get the first aid kit."

"What?"

"For your scratches," she said over her shoulder.

"Thanks." Empty of conversation, he watched her rummage in her junk drawer. "So. Uh. So, what did you do?"

"I was a programmer with one of the insurance companies." She grinned. "I programmed Cobol. I had no pride."

He could tell it was a joke. "Uh-huh."

"What about you?"

"Mechanic. For the city. Buses."

"Steady work."

"Yeah. I did body work mostly; there wasn't a week went by that somebody didn't plow the door off a car." Suddenly he felt terribly unreal. In his imagination, this had been sex and only sex, a last time to try out everything and anything. Small talk wasn't really part of the picture. Not even with Ellen. She had been focused on finishing her book; his turn was supposed to come later, and he hadn't minded waiting. Except that Ellen had left him, and Wendy had left him, and there wasn't any time left, was there?

He looked around. What furniture he could see looked nice, not new but well cared-for. There were some pictures in the kitchen -- a pair of girls, from maybe seven or eight into their teenage years.

She had found a white plastic box with a red cross. "Here, sit still," she said. He winced as she cleaned the patches on his elbows. "Do you want that to get infected?" she asked him.

"Does it matter?"

"Of course it does."

He pointed at one picture of the teenage girls. "These your kids?"

She smiled again. "No, my sister's. They're great kids."

Gino didn't ask where they were now. They were gone, that was all. "You look good," he said. "I mean, those are nice clothes. Not that I'm surprised you look good."

He expected her to tease him about that, but she simply said, "Thank you. Would you like a sandwich? I'm starving."

"Yes, please."

"Two roast beef sandwiches coming up." She took a square loaf of bread out of the breadbox. Gino admired the way she cut straight slices off the fresh loaf. His slices always came out bowed or worse, doorstop-shaped.

They ate in silence. She gave her whole attention to the sandwich and she ate as though she liked it. That made him think of Wendy again: Wendy had been paranoid about getting fat and was always on a diet. It worked: Wendy still looked like she was twenty-two. Angela did not look like she was twenty-two, but Gino didn't see anything wrong with that. He didn't know how to tell her without sounding shallower than he already did.

Gino didn't think he was hungry but he finished his sandwich before she finished his.

"Do you want another?" she asked.

"No, thanks. I feel kind of dirty, though."

"Oh, sure!" She left her sandwich to get him towels and a robe. "Shower as long as you want. There's plenty of hot water."

The bathroom was tiny, tidy, and blindingly white. It smelled of perfumed soaps: a basket of pink and magenta soap seashells on a shelf in the corner. He undressed awkwardly and slipped under the spray, wincing as he slid the door shut. He soaped himself carefully, then rinsed off, half-expecting her to come in, half-hoping she wouldn't. She didn't.

The big white robe had "His (Just Visiting)" embroidered on it. He wrapped himself up and went searching for her. She wasn't in the kitchen any more nor the living room. She was lying in the bedroom, reading Ellen's manuscript. He watched her. She lay on the bed, propped up on her elbows, her shoulders hunched, and her feet were in the air, left foot idly scratching her right ankle. After a few minutes she turned the last page, sighed, and carefully set the pages back in the box.

"Is it any good?" he asked softly.

She jumped; the bed sloshed as it settled back to stillness. "Geez! Um, no. It's pretty bad, actually, right at the end. But bad in a fun way."

"I asked her if she thought it would be a good book, you know? She said that finishing it was what was important; the rest was just gravy."

"Exactly," said Angela. She looked him up and down. "You clean up pretty good."

"Thanks. I guess." He perched on the edge of the bed. "So."

She pushed herself up so she was sitting cross-legged, deep in the waterbed. "So."

He felt helpless. Stupid. Impotent. "How long have we got?"

She shrugged. "Does it matter?"

"Of course it does." She struggled to get up and get out of the bed, and he said, "No. It doesn't matter. Not really." He looked down at his hands. He'd worked hard last night to get his hands finally thoroughly clean, because Wendy never liked him to come to bed with grease on his hands, and now he saw a spot he'd missed. He looked back up at Angela and he said, "Can I... Can I kiss you?"

She chuckled. "Yes. Yes, you can." She didn't make it sound as if she were laughing at him, which helped.

As he leaned forward gingerly, his hand sank deep into the waterbed, and he kissed her once. Her mouth was warm and soft against his. They kissed again, and his arms trembled to hold his delicate balance on the edge of the bed, without pressing too much of his weight against her. He could feel her response, though, and his cock stirred in faint echo.

When she opened her mouth, he shifted and their teeth clacked together; he drew back, she drew back, and he fell beside her. She giggled.

He blushed; he didn't think it was funny. He stopped himself before he snapped at her. Maybe it was funny to her. What did he know about her, anyway?

---And it ended here---

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