The Year of Broken Glass by Joe Denham

earth’s oxygen goes thin. When the heat comes and the famine. When those grandchildren can’t properly breathe, haven’t enough to eat—when the world’s emptied of everything but us. But by then it will be too late.”
    â€œBut there are options Fairwin’. Radical ideas and possibilities for rejuvenation,” I contest.
    â€œYes, ideas and possibilities,” he counters. “And then there are probabilities. Which aren’t easy, at this point, to live with, because they’re awful and unthinkable and might mean you’d have to give up that fancy car of yours, hybrid or not, because regardless it’s still made of metals mined and intensely machined, and plastics that poison those seas you so love. Our technologies are mind-boggling Miriam, I’ll concede that. They’re of the greatest complexity and accomplishment, but they’re mostly damaging, and we’ve lost sight of what it means to live without them. We’ve lost the wherewithal to live in the world, with the weather, and the desire’s not there now to learn.”
    A quizzical look comes over his face and it appears as though he’s going to burst into laughter. “Can I use your phone for a second?” he asks. I’m taken aback, it being an odd request at the end of such a diatribe. I reach into my pant pocket, turn on my cell and hand it to Fairwin’. He promptly hurls it from our perch to the forest below. As it lands with a crack somewhere beyond sight, he hoists my oysters onto the rock and resumes his brisk pace up the trail.
    â€œWhat the hell?” I call at his back, but he doesn’t turn as he hollers his reply.
    â€œI just saved a bee colony. You’ll thank me next time you drink your tea with honey.”
    I scurry up the rock, grab my two buckets, and hurry behind him, not quite incensed, but agitated by his arrogance, his impenetrable certainty. I catch up with him just as we come to what I suppose you’d think of as his yard, the space around the base of his fort, a circumference delineated by the fishing float strands hanging down from the fort’s underside. Fairwin’ drops his buckets by a fire pit to the outside of the perimeter, a heaping pile of shucked shells already forming a midden beside it.
    â€œWhat the hell was the point in that?” I ask him, indignant. “I might’ve needed that in the near future. We did just have a major fucking earthquake Fairwin’. My home was buried under ten fathoms of water yesterday, and that phone is one of the only things I’ve got right now.”
    â€œAnd you won’t make do without it?” he asks, and I can see by the cheek in his eyes that he’s enjoying this now, my dander being up as it is.
    â€œThat’s not the fucking point, you asshole,” I say, raising my voice considerably, and I realize that I’m enjoying this too. A good row. I also realize that this is what it was like the other night, us having sex, two lonely hermits taking it all out on each other. So I decide to dig in deeper. “You wouldn’t have done that if we hadn’t screwed the other night.”
    â€œPerhaps not. But we did, didn’t we?”
    â€œMuch to my displeasure, believe me.” I’m stomping up the winding staircase behind him now, raising my voice in congruence with the climb.
    â€œThat wasn’t my idea was it, Mrs. Maynard?” He looks back at me from the top of the stairs, grinning.
    â€œWell don’t worry, it’s not a mistake I’ll make twice,” I bellow at him. “I’d rather service myself, thank you very much, than have your hairy heap of grunting sweat on top of me again.” I climb through the door as I say this and before me is Svend, presently bursting into hysterics, and behind him Ferris, laughing in a less gregarious manner, the Sohqui float cradled and glimmering in his arms.

 
    The Eve of, or