Hopeful New Century
by Jeff Kozzi

December 31st, 2000: the age of information, the age of equality, the crescendo of our world, a night to party with American/New Yorker grandeur, surpassed only by last year's Y2K bash. Not that I really cared, especially since I wasn't in New York, never had an intention of going to New York, and didn't give half a squat about New Years' balls, big apples, or impeachments.

I didn't give a squat about much anything. I worked at Providence, Rhode Island's seediest hotel, by reputation in part maintained by memories of the sordid past and in part by the continued occupation of the attached go-go club. I had offered to work José's four-to-midnight shift. He'd worked Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, holidays too important for the displayed unity of my dysfunctional family to be missed, so I figured he could go have a good time on Drunken Moron Day. I also wanted to avoid the pomp and circumstance of drunken idiots who, against all common sense, felt the need to party hardier and drink more because last year they had celebrated the "hopeful new century" a year early.

We'd booked out by eight p.m, with more than a few of our gorged-fat-with-January's-disability-check regulars and year-round career drunks like me who consider New Years' Eve amateur night. I'd spent the night recounting the till to make sure I didn't get docked for any shortages, getting drenched by a loosened toilet pipe, and chasing a twenty-person, drum-and-cymbal banging, green-sequined parade out of the foyer before they could get into the club and compete with the dancers, some of whom had johns lined up for the end of the night and would try to slip out among the parade for an early jump on their evening dates. The jolly fat lady with the cymbals kept wishing me a Happy New Year. When "Bah Humbug" solicited more "Happy New Year! Happy New Century!" instead of pushing her out the door, I told her just what part of my body she could make happy and started giving her instructions how before she retreated out the bulletproof glass doors.

To my great astonishment, Vito relieved me on time, fifteen before midnight, giving me a jump on the night's commute home before the roads got jammed with too many other drunks. To my even greater surprise, the '80 Chevette started right up despite the cold, humming and burping with eagerness to carry me away. The voice on the radio started saying something about the ball about to drop, so I quickly pushed the waiting cassette into its slot. I'd ejected it on side two of the greatest hits last time. The harmonies of Little River Band's Lonesome Loser taunted me. I thought of Molly, imagining what she might be doing, who might be receiving her first kiss of the new year, who she might be spilling her champagne on. I turned the song up and sang along, loudly and out of key.

The fireworks started as I pulled onto I-95. The first one, a big white fountain, flared above me as the Chevette, as if suddenly frightened, coughed and staggered with hesitation to snap into fourth. I jumped in the seat, jerking my head to the magnesium brilliance before I realized what was happening. Smoke drifted southeast over the city as another rocket burst higher and northeastward from the first. Double sprays of red and green lit the maze of clover-leaf ramps around me, overpowering the lights of the new mall. The burst had scared me; I wondered how some of the drunken Nam vets that composed the bulk of our regular business coped with this gaudy civilian warfare.

The surge of terror that the first flare had punched from my gut passed quickly. I don't know exactly what came over me. I had left work wanting to do nothing else but get home and mix some Captain Morgan's and Goldschläger's with the last of the eggnog before it soured in the fridge. I didn't care about ringing in the last year of the twentieth century with anyone, except, possibly, Captain Morgan. As if things hadn't been so tensely deteriorating with Molly enough, she hadn't been happy about me working "with the hookers" on New Year's Eve. She barely stopped in before hitting the clubs, more, I think, to let me know she was hitting the clubs without me than to spread genuine cheer. I'd had no intention of searching for her, or anyone. Beyond that, I hated fireworks in general. I wanted no part of mobs gathered to gawk and 'ooh' and 'ah' like they were all passing gas in unison, complete with loud booms and rips and whistles as the next rocket soared.

Yellow and blue streamers burst overhead as I suddenly cut the car back into the right lane on which I'd entered the highway. The transmission shifted into fourth. Once I passed over the boundary bumps the ride smoothed. I followed the Route 146 onramp from the ramp from the city, pulled the hazards on and stopped on the bridge that passed over 95. Another fountain burst overhead, the first in a succession of chemically colored blasts, each off-center and higher than the previous. The thickening smoke glowed in eerie brilliance as it drifted into the city, clinging to the mall and the Westin. Occasional cars zipped below me as I crossed the empty two lanes and clung to the wire fence with my gloved fingers.

I must have been seventeen or eighteen the last time I watched a firework display, a Fourth of July volley, so much warmer than this January morning, so much more uncomfortable as the crowd elbowed around me, gasping and moaning. Back then I was just starting to realize--or just starting to admit to myself--that I was as mean and people hating as my boss kidded me about being.

A streaming rocket blasted from the industrial zones or somewhere beyond, wobbling upwards on a growing, burning charcoal-and-strontium platform of crimson with a sparking tail. It blasted into a cascade of whites, reds, and greens, then another bomb burst behind it, shooting lances that contorted and expanded to a Christmas tree with shiny red balls and a glowing gold star. A menorah burst behind it in all political correctness.

My smile broadened. I lit a cigarette as Lonesome Loser faded and Take it Easy on Me rose through the vented window. I sobered in an odd wave of contentment as the pyrotechnics washed the smoky sky with the thundering booms of Roman candles. Traffic below me ceased as the artificial thunder echoed over the north end of the network of five adjoining highways. I was too far off from downtown to hear the 'ooh's and 'ah's or the whining of tired, cold, and frightened children. My smile broadened as the world exploded around me in glorious brilliance and increasing crescendo.

The world celebrated, and I could still celebrate with it without forsaking my solitude. Surely people with their deafening noisemakers could have their fun, if they left me out of it instead of clanging their cymbals in my nose and ears. There, perched above the cold, empty expressway, I couldn't ever remember feeling so happy.

That isolated, southeast-situated vantage let me see the Grand Finale maybe full minutes before anyone else. Amid the bursting brilliance grew an encompassing dark shadow of a glowing ball of smoke, so immense it coated the twinkling horizon from further off than I could have guessed. The thunder that ripped across the hills beyond Providence deafened me as a distinct mushroom cloud took shape, maybe from New York, but probably someplace closer, like General Dynamics in Groton or Quonsett, or the naval base in Newport. It hovered in the sky. I wasn't sure then that it even touched the ground. I hoped not. I couldn't follow I-95 straight down to know the precise direction. It doesn't run straight north-south anywhere in the state, but on an angled northeast-southwest, with massive twists and turns that I couldn't visualize in the new shock and spectacle of the moment.

The fireworks hadn't ended. Flares erupted in the sky, beyond the city, but well foreground to the obscene squat cloud. A smaller explosion glowed, no Roman candle or American Armageddon, but definitive fire, balling into the air in a spreading burst, carrying destruction of something on its outer edges. I couldn't guess how far away it was, but I knew it wasn't far enough. The sky boomed. I shivered. For the first time, the tooting of noisemakers within the city registered in my mind.

Three planes soared from the multiple detonations. I wish I could say what kind they were, but aviation hasn't been my thing since they banned smoking on domestic flights. They weren't 747's from Greene, I can say that much. 747's don't shoot missiles at each other the way the two identical planes shot at the third.

The twins burst in continued flight, closer in my direction as the third plane exploded. The engines drowned out the miserable celebration in the city below me. Those stupid people, not even knowing what was going on in the world while they drank and shouted, kissed and hooted. I was like that almost every other night of the year, but tonight, I witnessed this. I don't think I've ever heard of more unfairness.

As the two supersonic jets passed over my head and cut northeast, I saw all I needed to know to identify them: American flags on the wings.

I vaguely remembered news warnings to travelers last year, and wondered if this raid had been planned against us then. It would have been better if it had been; with all the empty Y2K warnings against crashes and catastrophes, no plane would have gotten through our heightened defenses.

The wind tore the cigarette from my lips. I swore, still not sure whether I cursed the loss of the butt or the world. I ran for the car. I'd watched the fireworks display long enough for the tape to have flipped over. It's a Long Way There ended as I slammed the door shut and slapped at the shift lever. Help is on its Way hissed over the speakers as I sped up the northwest inclination of 146.

During the five-minute drive, I forgot the eggnog. I slunk into my basement apartment and French kissed Captain Morgan's glass lip. I heard my neighbors upstairs, creaking their floorboards in announcement of their dietary excesses. To think I'd considered finding a top floor apartment, to get away from the reminders of other peoples' existence. All those stupid people looking for biblical catastrophe at the true end of the century would probably take this as a sign that the mathematical statisticians were right about when the new century really began.

The basement could save my life, whether or not it had a retro "Fallout Shelter" sign. I knew nothing about nukes or radiation, other than the fact that people were supposed to flee to the basement if they didn't have a school desk to hide beneath. I made sure the door was locked. Would the fallout make me grow an extra eye, or fingers? Would it make my skin rubberize or grow thick like rock or burst me into flame or turn me invisible? I hoped for the latter because that would be the least of a change.

I hugged the bottle close to my heart and fumbled in the darkness with the remote. The old TV hissed nothing but static, reminding me that either the satellites and lines were dead with the rest of the world or I hadn't paid the cable bill again. I couldn't remember which, so I switched the set off, casting the two rooms back into darkness broken only by streetlight flooding through cracks in the dusty curtains.

How much radiation would get through those drafty old windows? Did it travel with light, or could it get through anyway, to reach the smelling bag of trash in the corner and set it to growing into some hybrid beast of chicken bones, cigarette butts, ash, bottles, and pizza crust?

I thought of Molly, for the first time since leaving the hotel. I contemplated, looking between Captain Morgan and the phone. I set the bottle down and stretched for the handset. My fingers shook so much I had to dial the number three times. The stranger at the other end of the first connection wished me "Happy New Year! Happy New Century!" when I whispered "Sorry. Wrong number." The woman's voice at the second connection said, in the reproving tone I heard every time I dialed that particular wrong number, "John, this isn't Molly's number." I'd talked with her for ten minutes once last summer, before she realized I wasn't her boyfriend, which was ten minutes sooner than I realized she wasn't my girl. Molly's voice greeted me through the answering machine on the third call. I paused. The vox-activated machine threatened to hang up in the face of my silence. I said, "Molly." I waited, as if she'd be home to pick up. I finally whispered, "Be careful," and hung up.

I wondered if I should unlock the door, in case she came by. Her third-floor place wouldn't save her like my buried abode would save me. I think I got up to unlock it, despite the risk that other people would barge in and kick me out, but my foot stubbed the free-standing bottle and that proved enough to distract me. I eased back on the futon, hugging my friend closer, forgetting the door and the t.v. and the soon-to-be irradiated garbage with the Captain's next swig.

I always had hoped to die in my sleep.

Jeff Kozzi is working on a science fiction novel A Woman of Distinction and is in search of a literary agent.