Free Notes From the Internet Apocalypse by Wayne Gladstone

the government is empowered to commandeer private property for the purposes of interrogation.”
    Rowsdower left the door open behind him. I was free to go, but I was alone.

 
    6.
    DAYS 29–31. DETOX
    I stumbled out from the interrogation, searching for the closest landmark, but New York looked strange without my friends. And, of course, the world was still changing. Many businesses were closed and the streets were half-empty. Still, mailboxes overflowed with letters, and newsstands were overrun with porn. And not half-obscured brown-paper-bag-covered porn, but big stacking piles beside the gossip mags.
    I hadn’t bought a dirty magazine in over fifteen years, but I felt compelled to flip through a Hustler in front of a newsstand by Water and Wall Street. I remembered the feel of high gloss beneath my fingers and the smell of ugly maroon inserts reeking of colognes I’d never wear. But now the girls looked like girls. No longer the dark and dangerous sex creatures I’d hoped to meet as a man, but the kind of lost young women I wanted to save. And I felt bad because that didn’t stop me from thinking of them exactly in the way I was supposed to. I put the magazine down and headed for the hotel.
    *   *   *
    Rowsdower had me thinking about Romaya. I held her behind the locked bathroom door, and tried to stay calm and strong while she hovered over the toilet and pissed on a pregnancy test. My law school suitemates were oblivious in the living room, and on this side of the door we weren’t discussing anything that didn’t need to be discussed until we knew what two weeks late meant. I fidgeted in the shower, and then it was there: two blue lines against a background of white.
    “That means pregnant, right?” she asked, checking the box.
    We hadn’t decided what to do. No point in making decisions without all the facts, but now there were facts.
    “Marry me,” I said.
    “Shut up.”
    “Marry me.”
    “You want to marry me?”
    “Since the night we got drunk and turned Clue into a drinking game.”
    “That was our second date.”
    “I love you.”
    I surprised even myself with how sure I was, but I was sure. Marrying Romaya felt right. It felt real. Law school was a delay from actual living. And if I kept going, in two more years I’d be a lawyer, and then what?
    *   *   *
    Tobey and Oz weren’t at the hotel when I arrived. That didn’t worry me at first. After all, Tobey probably didn’t want to return to his last known address with agents after him. I was more concerned about Oz. What if she were still detained? Deported? I wanted to go back to the interrogation office, to Park51, to Central Park, to anywhere I’d ever seen her. But even with the population leaving in droves, this was still New York City. How do you find just one person? I sat on the bed drinking, and trying to think of a plan. Occasionally, I’d flip the pages of the Hustler I didn’t remember buying and wonder why the twenty-first century seemed to prefer ass to the omnipresent tits of my youth.
    And that’s when I realized Rowsdower had drugged my Scotch. I couldn’t think of a reason the government would do that, but I also couldn’t believe I bought a porno mag without remembering it. Maybe they wanted to follow me. See if I led them to clues in my compromised state. Guide them to Tobey or the Internet. I didn’t know. All I knew was that suddenly the room was too big, even when I pulled the covers and grabbed the pillows.
    *   *   *
    I’ve spent the last three days in my hotel room. Too anxious to write. Too anxious to do anything other than take comfort in the Hustler that speeds my heart and then slows it with release. There’s a girl on page forty-two with a dolphin tattoo beside her absurdly coifed pubic hair who particularly excels at that. But then the fear returns, and I remember I still don’t know where Tobey and Oz are or what to do without them. All I know is that if the government were hoping to