Randolph Jasper Rivington Jr. had given up even pretending to work. He slumped in his high-backed executive throne, playing “Vegas Super Blackjack” on his computer and glancing at CNN with the sound off, trying to put off his first drink for as long as he could. He knew it wasn't much, but it was the closest approximation of self-control that he could muster. The video gambling wasn’t as bad as drinking, he figured—since he had started with the Blackjack, he could wait until after lunch for bourbon.
He could do whatever he wanted—it was his office. Hell, it was his company: a freighted inheritance from the company’s founder and patriarch, his recently (if not dearly) departed father. It was hard not to see the gift of the company as a typically extravagant gesture on his father’s part, an attempt to compensate for the long years of estrangement dating back to the death of RJR Jr.’s mother, when he was 11 years old. The office was extravagant, too—75th floor of the Hancock Tower, second tallest building in Chicago, plush grey carpet, eggshell white walls, and a properly stocked wet bar set into the glossy black modular furniture to his left.
Of course, the most extravagant thing about the office was the commanding view of Chicago, over the city that appeared a miniature carved from bone, out so far to the horizon that Rivington was sure he could discern the curve of the Earth. A God’s eye view, he thought, where the lees of a punishing Midwestern winter lay in patches of tan, stripes of black and stretches of grey and white snow, illuminated in brilliant sunshine.
He liked the idea of the celestial view, but today the sunlight poured in, magnified by the reflective surfaces in his airy office, hurting his eyes. This was the first really sunny day since one back in January, when the aftermath of a savage snowstorm made the world seem clean and empty as a blank canvas. At the time, he thought it was like God saying, “Behold! I can wipe the slate anytime I want.”
Rivington knew better today, though. He knew that far below, people were walking in the sun, rejoicing in its appearance after so long, even though it probably still wasn’t that warm. From here, up in his executive perch, the thawing sprawl of creation could almost seem beautiful, or at least redeemable.
What if today was The End, he wondered. “This is the day the Lord has made, let us now prepare for the cleansing fire!”
Throughout his childhood and adolescence, Rivington had fantasized about the imminent nightmare of nuclear holocaust. Growing up in Las Vegas, he tingled with stories of nuke tests in the deserts not too far from his home, juxtaposing newsreel kitsch with passages from the bible, particularly Revelation and the destruction of the cities on the plain. It didn’t hurt that Las Vegas was seen by so many as the modern version of Sodom, or maybe just Gomorrah (though he always presumed Gomorrah was the Reno or Atlantic City of Genesis).
A nightmare, to be sure, but one he relished, for he took comfort in the promise of obliteration, a release from suffering, particularly after his mother died. After that, forests of mushroom clouds sprouted in his dreams, and his main anxiety about the Cold War was that the inferno was too long in coming.
“His mercy endures forever—let the congregation prepare for the conflagration!”
Rivington had outgrown these juvenile fantasies, though he still found solace in them from time to time. And so, why not today? Why shouldn't this suddenly sunny day, in the middle of March, 1994, be humanity’s last day on Earth? It was pretty enough, and Rivington was sure he could sense the millions of hearts full of hope and love down there in creation, in the model city that seemed built to await destruction.
He liked very much the idea that The End wouldn't be a perfect day, at least not where he was. Though insulated in his office, he knew the sunshine only brought marginal warmth, not the solace it pretended to be. After the warmth of Vegas and California, the Chicago winter had been a brutal punishment, though it only seemed like an insult because it was overshadowed by the larger injury of his father’s death. Had it not been for that, winter would have been a whole thing unto itself.
So it would be, The End would come with a phony, or imperfect, benediction. Billions snuffed out just at the moment when spring seemed possible—not here yet, but sure to come. Of course, Rivington would enjoy it just because it was The End, but also because it would be a disappointment to so many sunny weather enthusiasts. He hated sunny days, on the whole—everyone took them as celestial prompts to be cheerful, the common consensus, the New Year’s Eve of weather.
And maybe, he thought, having The End on a day like today would be a gift to the cynics, to the depressed, to those who were tired and angry and sad, and those who imagined the apocalypse on sunny afternoons.
“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the pulling of the plug,” he muttered. He stood and moved toward the wet bar. “All this thinking is making me thirsty.”
RJR Jr. rode out most days with the TV on in the background, letting the familiar rhythm of programming and ads consume the hours. He kept CNN on all the time because he needed to be a witness. It seemed the world, or history, deserved it—someone ought to pay attention. He usually kept the sound off, listening to Steely Dan or Emerson, Lake & Palmer (“Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends!”) instead. It had a narcotic effect, and allowed him to believe the world would not do anything too crazy or disturbing as long as he kept his eye on it. Twenty-four hour news—a watchful eye and a nervous system for the world so we could catch the early signs of Apocalypse, though of course we should be ready all the time.
This revelation came during the Gulf War in ’91, at his friend Frank’s apartment. Frank was a pal of some kind from college, who had great weed and a reliable coke hookup, some guy known only as Doctor Senegal. So Rivington came by and partook of some potent creeper weed that kept him cemented to the couch while they waited, stoned and gaping at the news. The war such as it was had gone on long enough that nobody paid much attention to “BREAKING NEWS” alerts, but this one got him, maybe because Wolf Blitzer intoned, “Possible Iraqi SCUD Attack on Israel.” The TV screen was full of a night sky over the Mediterranean, with an orange-rust meniscus of ambient city light along the bottom edge and sides. He could make out a tiny yellowish dot in the upper right quadrant of the screen, slowly drifting down and center.
“Reports are unconfirmed, but it appears that what you are seeing could be a missile heading for Tel Aviv, which would of course mark a new front opening in this war that has already surpassed predictions and conventional expectations. No word on what kind of payload this missile may be carrying—a chemical, biological or even nuclear weapon may be involved here. We will bring you word as soon as we know more.”
Frank was on the phone with Doctor Senegal and didn’t seem to notice, but Rivington was transfixed. A war, perhaps even a nuke, on Israel—this could be The Big One. For real. And he was watching it on live TV. Like a sickening existential wave, the significance and meaninglessness of his whole life came rushing through his mind and body. The End was going to come, it had snuck up on him, and here he was stupidly watching it on the couch. And yet—what else could he do? Not like he was going to join the army at 43, or that they’d take him. (Hell, they'd give him a piss test and throw him in jail!)
The bomb, what they all thought was a bomb at least, continued its lazy drift from the skies. After about 20 minutes of panicked reactions from the Pentagon, the reporters in Israel, and various anchors in Atlanta, New York and L.A., word came down that it was just a defunct satellite falling, in a crazy coincidence, into the latest little war zone on the planet’s surface. Practically a joke—though not as funny as if all sides had gotten further involved and really gone ahead and blown up the whole shebang.
That’s when Rivington had his revelation: in a dazed and petrified panic on Frank's couch, he saw The End. It was all over, the world had finally fulfilled his childhood fantasies—even somehow if it didn’t actually happen, he accepted and believed that it could. The world would end and it would be a ridiculous disappointment, a pointless misunderstanding.
And it was the following day when he got the call that his father was in the hospital.
Looking back, that was the starting gun for all of it—the reunion, the mad scramble toward reconciliation, his father’s awkward mix of nostalgia and morbidity, splitting time between the office and stints in the hospital, until the company had moved to Chicago and the old man was dead.
By Rivington’s estimation, they’d had only one or two moments of real honesty in that entire blurry, distracted time. The last one was when the company had made the move, and they visited the new office for the first time.
The glare from the floor-to-ceiling window had illuminated the old man’s whole figure: still tall and straight, but looking tattered. He was gray, from his hair to his face to his suit, and the paleness of the light didn't help—only his eyes, red-rimmed and wet, and his thin lips gave him any color at all. “This will be your office when I’m gone. That’s some view, huh?” Like the city outside, he seemed to be made of ash and bone, desiccated and defeated.
But he knocked at the glass and let out a little laugh. “Wouldn’t make it if you jumped from here,” he said. “Long way down. Tempting, though.” The old man’s expression was a mixture of sadness, wonder, fear and a splash of envy. Senior loved his emotional cocktails.
The expression morphed into a full-on smile when he looked at Rivington and said, “Did I ever tell you about the guy, some CEO, a lunatic”—the smile grew wider—“who had a super-shiny high-perched office like this. Bland, spacious, Bauhaus—a lot of expensive emptiness, in New York or maybe Atlanta. Anyway, he decides to end it all, he’s sick of it, and he’s going to take a flying leap, right through the window.” He fell into a coughing fit, punctuated by a couple of hard thumps against the glass. The coughing calmed and turned into a chuckle.
“Heh heh, so anyway, he gets a running start, smashes through the glass and next thing he knows—wham! He’s back in the office, laid out on the rug.” The old man pointed to a spot on the gray carpet about 10 feet back from the window. “Turns out the air—a gust of wind, or maybe an updraft, whaddyacallem, thermals—the way it is, this high up, it blew him right back into the building. Just goes to show you, you can’t always get what you want.” The old man went into another spasm of coughing laughter.
“No, dad, you never told me that one.”
“Yeah, I don’t remember where I heard it. Maybe it was a dream.”
It was pretty soon after that when his dad went into the hospital for the last time.
Rivington glanced at CNN—some emergency was happening somewhere, a yellow flashing siren on top of some foreign cop car. He could tell, just by the words around the picture, that it was nothing too serious. He fixed himself another drink and swiveled in his chair to look at the growing dark. It was different of course, but the quality of the dusk, the post-sunset wintry horizon, with a haze of burnt orange and soot, was enough like the Gulf War revelation to make him smile. And here it was, a panoramic view! Like one of those huge-screen movies they have in museums. The world, the sky, it was all so immense, and the bourbon in his system warmed him, reminded him of the palm trees and palpable warmth at the edge of his Tel Aviv nightmare.
Then, out in the night, fairly high off in the right half of his field of vision, a moving light—probably a plane catching the glowing gold of the departed sun—drifted across the sky like a wild ember, sinking gradually toward the horizon, past the edge of his window. He felt a strange reassurance, like a gust of warm moist air, pass over and through him. Maybe, he thought, everything was going to be okay.
At that moment, Randolph Jasper Rivington Jr. was startled by a familiar voice, rasping from the office behind him.
“Hello, son.”
