With a Whimper...

"One heart is not connected to another through harmony alone. They are, instead, linked deeply through their wounds. Pain linked to pain, fragility to fragility. There is no silence without a cry of grief, no forgiveness without bloodshed, no acceptance without a passage through acute loss. That is what lies at the root of true harmony."

-Haruki Murakami

Crosby Marling was hungry for Japanese cuisine. Not just anyplace, but Sanraku over on Sutton, one of the best sushi restaurants in San Francisco. She and her fiance, Aiden, had dined there after he proposed to her by the waterfront on that late October afternoon last year. Perhaps it was just the context of the memories but she still thought of it as the greatest dinner of her life. Aiden was gone but Sanraku was still there, at least for now.

Securing a reservation was always a herculean task that typically required four to six weeks without the right connections, but Crosby wasn’t surprised when she walked up at the peak of the usual dinner rush and found the restaurant less than half full. People weren’t dining out much anymore. She had passed by many shuttered restaurants and stores and office buildings on her way there, most covered with angry graffiti. The sidewalks were littered with garbage and people were huddled up in tents and sleeping bags wherever they could find some shelter from the rain, fast food debris and cheap liquor bottles and small plastic baggies coated with powder residue and used IV needles and human excrement strewn all about.

When she arrived at the restaurant, Crosby smiled at the hostess who barely smiled back. She had worn her finest clothes and jewelry that night and spent considerable time on her hair and makeup. The hostess seated her at a table for one and she ordered a bottle of her favorite chardonnay and reviewed the menu. The couple at the table next to her got up to leave and she noticed that they just left their Visa card on top of the signed check.

Back when it all started the news media reported that it first began with some bank failures in Zurich, which quickly spread to Vienna, Berlin, Brussels, London and Rome. Spain and Greece failed almost immediately and then it rippled all over the world. The New York Stock Exchange ceased trading within a week and never resumed. There were riots in Hong Kong and Sao Paolo and Mumbai and many other places. Martial law was first declared in Beijing and Washington D.C. and the images of people being shot in the streets were broadcast all over the world. The fires burned everywhere with no one to put them out.

The menu at Sanraku was still the same but a number of items were now crossed out in thick black ink. Fortunately they were still serving the Jade Dragon roll that Crosby had ordered that night last year, which she ate with sumptuous joy while discreetly shooting exhilarating glances at the new diamond on her finger each time she brought the chop sticks up to her lips. That ring was easily the most prized possession of her life - because of what it represented, not simply because of what it was - and she loved Aiden from the bottom of her heart. He was perfect.

Well, almost perfect.

A little too driven. A little too self-demanding. A little too concerned about what others thought about him and other things that don’t really matter so much in the end. When his venture capital firm went under he took a walk out to the Golden Gate Bridge about a week later and never came back. Crosby had been alone and picking up the pieces ever since, or trying to anyway. It wasn't getting any easier.

She smiled when they brought out her meal. In addition to the Jade Dragon roll she ordered a side salad, miso soup and gyoza. It was disappointing. The ingredients were not fresh. In hindsight, Crosby realized that she probably should have done this three or four weeks ago when the grocery stores all started shutting down and the Amazon website was only operating off and on, but she wasn’t entirely sure about things back then and still held onto some small level of hope until the mail stopped arriving earlier that week. Even Google went 404 on her earlier that afternoon. The writing was on the wall and it had been there for a while. She simply didn’t want to read it. Most people didn’t.

Crosby tried to enjoy her meal. The wine was good and so was the soup, but the ambience of the restaurant was much different than she had pictured. The wait staff were all looking at their phones with dark faces and an older couple at a nearby table were speaking softly to one another and holding hands as they both began to cry. The lights flickered out for a few seconds and then came back. Several patrons got up and put on their coats, making their way toward the door in silence.

After she finished her meal, or some of it anyway, Crosby smiled and called her waiter over and asked to see the dessert menu but, sadly, she was informed that dessert was not being served that night. Several members of the wait staff and kitchen staff walked out of the restaurant quietly a few minutes later and when she looked at her phone to check on the time she saw that there was no cellular service.

Her waiter returned a short time later and informed her that they would be closing early that night, so she finished her wine as she waited for the check. The total was $140 and she paid in cash, adding a $40 tip. She wasn’t sure if this even mattered anymore but she wanted to at least try to do the right thing. She had gone to the ATM down the block that morning and withdrawn the remaining funds from her checking account, which came to $780. If she needed more she didn’t know where she might find it, but it seemed unlikely that this would matter.

As she walked home, clutching Aiden's old compact .32 semi-automatic in her pocket, Crosby watched as the lights of the city rapidly began to fail block by block and soon there was only darkness and the uproar of scared voices and screams rising up from all around. She walked quickly and used the light on her iPhone and when she arrived back at her apartment she removed the pistol from her jacket and stared at it for a while, then she set it down and stared out of her living room into the darkness of the city and wondered what the world would look like when she awoke the following morning.

The brief Post-It note that her fiance had left behind for her was still there right where he had tossed it, carelessly, at an off-angle near the edge of the coffee table just before he walked out to the bridge that day. She had not touched it once in the eight months since he left and she didn't ever plan to.

It simply read:

Dear Crosby,

I'm sorry.

You deserve so much more.

- Aiden

THE END