In Love in the Time of Global Warming , Francesca Lia Block does an off - kilter spin on Homer ’s Odyssey , set in a post - apocalyptic populace . Pen , a 17 - class - old girl , searches through the ruin of Los Angeles for her miss family . We ’ve receive an sole selection right here !
I drive as fast as I can away from the store from hell . I am stocked up with supplies I managed to dump into the back of the caravan before I shoot down by from the blinded Giant . bother scorch when I move a certain path , and there is dry blood on my hands and on my thermal shirt . “ We do n’t ask any more line of descent on our hands , ” the adult male had say . I would rather be dead than part of a world like this . I keep imagine I ’m going to throw up again , and my hands wo n’t stop shaking no matter how firmly I grip the guidance wheel ; it ’s like I have a violent fever that ’s essay to burn away the sickness of what I ’ve seen and what I will become . I blinded someone . Something . I poke him . It . I pull in over and afford the door and vomit cute nutrient into the street .
Parts of the streets around the hotel are flooded with murky , mucked- up water . Who have it away what lies under there ? It hie past me , black and frenetic . In the distance random fire , the only anxious light , incinerate among piles of garbage .
I stay on the higher parts of the road . It ’s hard to know where I am because so much is go . But I agnize the oddly shaped angular brick construction put up like a Giant ’s cut of bar above the mire . An orange butterfl y swoops past my windscreen . I park and get out and wilted after it toward the hotel .
My ma took us to the Culver Hotel to see the vestibule with the milk - field glass light reparation and dark Grant Wood paneling , the velvet sofa piled with brocade pillow . The thespian who toy the Munchkins stay there when they filmed The Wizard of Oz . They swing from the pendent and fire escapes , my mom had said . Those crazy , drunken Munchkins . And we express joy . My mom loved this place . I can see her beat frantic about an old-hat death chair , a glass lampshade , as if she ’d discover some uncommon artifact . For her love of this piazza alone , I ’ll go inside ; I ’ll brave whatever dangers . For what if she ’s somewhere here ?
I put the van headstone around my neck and plan of attack slowly now , hitch , bruised from my fall . There will be blood- black wildflowers on my skin shortly . My brawn feel like flayed meat wrapping my bones . It ’s drear . candle flame reflects , flickering in the tall , curved leaded chalk windows . Though I can no longer see the butterfly I walk toward this berth . As if the orange offstage have run me here . As if I ’ll somehow find my momma deep down .
I take the air through the door .
The first affair I think when I enter is that the mass lie around on the couches in the candlelight have survived the Earth Shaker and do not have rakehell on their hand , at least as far as I can see . Me , that ’s a different story ; I require a thousand showers to get this nasty , crust blood off of my tegument and erase what I did .
The kids seem high , straw out , half- nude , laughing . Some of them are cry , but in a luxuriant , striking room , as if from corking felicity . No blood , but they are all smutty . insensate malarkey rushes through some fracked glass panes carrying the scent of mildew and mud , with something else — something sweet — woven in ; the lounge are inebriate with rainwater . The tall bookshelves are empty . On one wall of the hotel is a huge paint mural of a half - naked unseasoned woman sitting fussy - legged on a Indian lotus flush . She is brilliant red , burn ruby - ish , with with child grey eyes . Gray like my female parent ’s , like my buddy ’s . I recognize her from my studies of mythology and religious belief as Tara , the Tibetan goddess of emptiness , action , and compassion . She was abide of the binge of empathy from the eye of a bodhisattva . When she was a human princess the monks told her she could be reborn as a man but she chose the eubstance of a woman as her vehicle of healing . The god Tara come in many colors but Red Tara is the magnetizer of all good things , though I ’m not sure I believe that anything sound exists .
“ Hello , beautiful , ” someone says .
I twist and see a immature serviceman in dim clothing . He has a electric shock of black hair’s-breadth and smoky green eye . His body is slender and small-scale but his shoulders are broad . There ’s a tattoo on his neck , ink-black writing I ca n’t make out . I do n’t feel fear when I see him , only backup man . He squinch into my face .
“ How ’d you get here ? ”
“ Where ’s here ? ”
“ The Lotus Hotel , ” he says . “ See ? ” He points at something grow out of cracks in the marble floor . orotund ruby flowers with layers of pointed petals shoot like gage everywhere . They ’re the first turn thing I ’ve seen since the Earth Shaker . “ Wo n’t you have some , sparkle princess ? ”
He hands me a trash fill with red-faced liquid .
I sniff . “ What is it ? ”
“ Punch ! ” He express mirth . “ I do n’t get laid . Something unassailable . We involve something fucking strong , do n’t you think ? The world in reality ended . As in the apocalypse ? We better have something strong . ”
“ What occur ? ” I say . “ It was n’t just an earthquake and a flood . Why is everyone get going ? ”
He shrugs . “ Not everyone . Not us . ”
Why not us ? I inquire . Why did I go and why did he ?
“ And not the really big I , ” he adds .
“ What does that stand for ? ” I think of the Giant with its poison white jellyfish eye .
“ There are hearsay about someone named Kronen who was doing this crazed top - secret genetical qualifying biowarfare in a ware house downtown and some of his creations got released . They cracked the plate of the world or some dogshit like that . They use up almost everyone . ”
“ What ? ” I say , still seeing in my idea the jellylike stuff seep out of the Giant ’s socket . “ He made them ? You do n’t just make monsters . ”
“ Who knows ? You ever hear of that sheep they cloned ? ”
I nod ; I had . My scientist father had prove me a video once . They took a cell from the mammary glands of one sheep , get rid of the nucleus and replaced it with the nucleus from another creature ’s cell , then implanted the hybrid prison cell in a third sheep that extradite it to terminal figure . Somatic cellular phone nuclear transfer .
My father . I need to line up him , I retrieve , and almost say it out loud , but all of a sudden I ’m so banal . And thirsty .
“ What if someone cloned shank cadre from a human who ’d been genetically modified somehow ? ” The young man raise his glass to me and grin . “ But do n’t interest yourself about that now . We ’re dependable in here . Drink up . ”
He go like a charming madman but “ charming ” is the surgical password and how long has it been since I ’ve felt charm ? Plus I ’m so , so thirsty . I can tell him about my family later . So I touch my lips to the liquid state , the first smart thing I ’ve had in sixty- eight days . It sting a little , tightens and numbs like pomegranate semen or persimmons or too much prickly-seeded spinach . Already the slap pain in my bones seems to minify . And then I think , This is all I want . All I want is to forget what just take place with the Giant , forget what fall out before that , stay on here . To stay here getting high-pitched until I snuff it . Free lotus potion and precious son and girl sprawled around . All of it so well-off , just for the pickings . So what if it ’s a fiddling cold ; I have a thermal shirt and sweatpants . The dried blood on them does n’t count any longer .
“ Come on . ” He demand my bridge player — his is surprisingly minor and I can finger the bones like twigs encased in flesh and we ladder through the lobby and up the staircase that swirl to hallways flanked by rows of elbow room . The doors are all capable and people are inside sleeping or overcharge up , survivors like us . Broken bottles and wearable litter the hallways . A girl is crunched up into a clod , hugging her human knee and whistling , luff at the white bulwark . Another is suppress red flowers so the juice drips into her mouth ; some spills down her neck in rivulets . The untried man take me to a room with charred disastrous curtains and a swoon sting olfactory modality still in the air . The windowpane overlooks the flooded streets below . It ’s so dark ; any star are mask in smoke and swarm .
“ I roll in the hay you , ” my new admirer says . “ What ’s your name ? ”
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