Fragile Days in the Great Dominion
What could be wrong?
Maida drove home later than usual, just as the sun was descending over the gap in the hills that led to her little refuge, her - no, she corrected herself, their - hard-won place of solace and serenity.
Work had been brutal today. The firing of a whole group of underperforming drivers, which she had to sign off on so the termination notices could be sent through the app. Then there was the onboarding of a new group of drivers, which had run into a snag when she found out that the app hadn't been updated and was offering the old conditions, and so they had to scramble to revise the conditions to reflect the new market environment. Some of the new drivers quit instantly out of spite. But it wasn't Maida's fault.
Now, reaching the turnoff to the lane that led to her - their - refuge in the forest, her cellphone buzzed again. She reached over to the passenger seat and put it on mute. She deserved a little break right now. She could check all the texts and all the emails and all the app notifications after supper. After checking on home, breathing in home air, picking a plum or two from the ripe tree in the yard.
Doesn't a person deserve a little Me-Time after a busy stressful day?
Hershel wasn't himself again, burbling something he'd heard on the radio while he worked on his sculpture in the old barn. It had cost Maida - cost them - a small fortune to do the conversion so the old barn was a presentable artist's studio, and yet Hershel's output of actual finished work was lamentable, really a very poor showing for all the capital invested in it.
The way she'd had to juggle all the carpenters hired on one app and make them work with electricians coming in from another app. Nightmare. And then the way Hershel had needed all the lighting and tools arranged just so. And still only a half-finished tree-trunk with bits hacked out of it for all that effort. And now, today, some angsty performance about some NPR nonsense. Why didn't he just listen to Brahms or Procul Harum like that Ed Harris in the film?
"I'm sorry hun, it just struck me, you know? The way we're doing all we do, and it all could just end tomorrow. It's just... kinda..." Hershel trembled and fell silent.
"Why do you listen to that stuff? Perfectly good classical music station on AM. Classic Rock on W-RAX. Nice Country tunes on W-OBL. It just distracts you from your thing, your flow, all this egghead anxiety on the radio. And me, I gotta-" Maida caught herself. She'd vowed to herself - and to Herschel - that she wouldn't lay her woes on him. He was dealing with his own issues and didn't need more laid on him right now.
"But you know, the thing. 'The problem of dying while resilient.' Said just like that. So brutally.” He was taking this radio business pretty hard. “They go: 'The topic of today's program is the problem of dying while resilient'. And then this, look I copied it down: 'Death is ontologically coupled with state security practice.'"
"What does that even mean, Herschel?"
"It means that all this...” He gestured around at the beautiful home she'd built - they'd built - "... all this ... safety. It means nothing when there's just death… just death, just sorta waiting to draw us in."
"I need a drink. You want a nice juice, Hershel?" His ongoing treatment, his conditions, and his heart pressure wouldn't allow her to offer him the stiff martini she was about to make herself. He was fidgeting with a scrap of paper, almost waving it in her face.
"But Maida, listen, there's more: 'Security responds to and functions to displace the anxiety of mortality – which would otherwise disrupt the performance of sovereignty.' That's what she said. Mortality disrupts sovereignty. You see?"
"All I see is someone getting het up over some fancy-ass words on the public radio. What we need is to sit on the porch and take in the sunset and have a nice drink together. Eat some of the ripe plums from the tree."
Even then, settling down on their favorite rocking swing on the verandah, taking in the sunset, Hershel would not be still. Maida remembered her cellphone, which she'd left out in the car. Get it in a minute. She sipped her martini. Hershel's fresh-squeezed orange with a twist of lime sat untouched on the little table.
"The flowers aren't right," said Hershel. "Somebody moved them. Did you move the flowers?"
He stared at the vase of wilted flowers on the table in front of them. Delicate crystal glass, present from his mother. Geraniums and something, maybe? Maida wasn't too up on flowers, that was his kind of thing.
"No, I didn't move the flowers," said Maida. "I swear, Hershel Vayle, you get all worked up over the strangest things. Can't you just relax now, take pleasure in the moment?"
But there was no stopping Hershel's nervous jitters. She could feel them jumping off from him as he sat jiggling the swing with his spasmodic leg twitch. She was glad when he stood up and swept up the flowers from the vase. He went off to the garden at the north end of the house to pick some more, dumping the wilted ones in the composting bin.
"Must have been the coyotes then," he mumbled as if to himself as he turned the corner.
Hershel had it bad this evening. Coyotes rearranging flowers in a crystal vase. Mortality disrupts whatever.
Still, at least now Maida was alone with her martini and the sunset. All apps muted. A little Me-Time, well deserved. There was a strange cracking sound off to the south, then an echo bouncing between the hills, diminishing, not unpleasant. Then again.
Hershel came back with an armful of flowers. Hydrangeas or something, plus carnations. Maida knew those ones. Pink and red.
He started fussing over the vase. The glass of OJ rolled over to the planking, juice leaking through the cracks, but the glass didn't break. The empty glass rolled around quietly as the planks shook with Hershel's movements and Maida's soft oscillations of the swing. He didn't notice all this, seemingly focused so intently on his - their - flower arrangement that nothing around him could break through that concentration.
He looked up to Maida now, about to say something, then -
Another crackling boom, slightly closer now. Resounding echoes. The crystal flower vase seemed to shatter at Hershel's touch. Tiny fragments and fingernail-sized shards fell and scattered all over the porch.
He looked round at the shattered object, the shredded flowers, then looked back at her with vacant horror in his eyes, and wailed out like a lost child.
There was the sound of angry voices yelling, approaching from down the lane.
Nothing could be seen yet.
NOTE
The quotes about resilience, mortality, state security ontology and sovereignty are from Charlotte Heath-Kelly’s incredible book, Death and Security: Memory and Mortality at the Bombsite (2016). This work is part of a welcome trend in strategic studies considering actual death and extinction as driving factors in international relations, which have for a very long time been ignored in favour of a very bloodless abstract discussion about international institutions. You might call it neo-Hobbesian.
In comments I said that I ran with this story idea from a dreamt scene to a published post in an hour flat. That’s true, but I also had those quotes ready to roll, as I’d copied them out ready to be reincorporated in something just such as this.
Them coyotes. Wiley, I tell ya.
Very unsettling, feels lime another Haneke short.
Oh, the solace of shattered things. It lets us finally chill out.