Dystopia is scary enough without politics

A couple of weeks back, I finally got around to turning a birthday gift card into books. I came home with Fleishman Is In Trouble, by Taffy Brodesser-Akner; Anxious People, by Fredrik Backman; and Lights Out In Lincolnwood, by Geoff Rodkey. All three were table finds, books that caught my eye enough to pick up and read the back and maybe test drive the first few pages. The first two I'd heard of before. Lights Out was new to me. Turns out it was new to everyone, as it was only released earlier this month.

Having slowed to a crawl on the book I was reading (Major Pettigrew's Last Stand), I was open to starting something new. Lights Out leapt to the top of the pile and sucked me right in. The premise, a suburban family of four--dad, mom, two high schoolers--is going about their day in typical suburban fashion, when suddenly the power goes out. All the way out. Not just electricity, but cars, trains, airplanes. Everything stops in its place and/or falls from the sky.

Dan Altman, the dad, has to walk eight miles home from where his commuter train into NYC stopped. Chloe and Max drift away from school once their teachers realize the lights aren't about to flick back on. And Jen, the mom, hits the vodka, which is pretty much what she would have been doing anyway.

Over the course of four days, their upscale New Jersey suburb descends into chaos, as water service is cut to all homes. The Altmans survive on peanut butter and tuna fish, and the cookouts staged by their next-door neighbors, the Stankovics, who they don't actually like. Chloe falls in love, Max searches for a nicotine substitute, Jen drinks herself into oblivion, and Dan wonders why the newly formed town militia won't recruit him.

It's a fun and fast read (even at 529 pages long), but it also sort of scared the hell out of me. I can see too many of my neighbors wanting to sign on for that militia. The cosplay soldiers who could finally feel free to roam the streets with their assault rifles and pretend to be the good guys. Rodkey notes that when he started writing the book he never imagined a pandemic and a disputed election would bring his dystopia so close to real life. But here we are, and the thought of having to line up for rations doled out by heavily armed jackwagons has me wondering how many cans of soup I can stack in my basement.

I don't tend to include politics in my fiction writing. For one, I spend way too much time thinking about stuff like that in real life. A novel should be a place to escape it. In fact, one of my first considerations these days when I contemplate a new story is when to set it. Because if you want to even pretend to be realistic, you almost have to avoid 2019-21. Maybe anything since 2016. I don't want to divide my characters up into Trump fans and sensible folk. I'd rather they populate a world in which he never came to power. Just because I can't live there anymore doesn't mean they shouldn't get the chance.

Lights Out In Lincolnwood never brings up any politician or cult leader by name. We might all be able to guess who Eddie Stankovic voted for, but Rodkey leaves that bit out. Dystopia is frightening enough without it.

The last game on earth

Four weeks ago tonight I was at an Arizona State University basketball game. Well, the second half, anyway. I traveled to Arizona for my niece's wedding. She's a graduate student in Tucson. Stopped off for a few days first up in Tempe, where my nephew, by a different sister, attends ASU. I flew in Wednesday, more than mildly concerned by the news of the virus stretching across the globe. This was early March, a lifetime ago, and while it was enough to keep me staring at the ceiling at night as the trip approached, I went anyway.

Thursday morning I wandered around the ASU campus, hooked up with my nephew, and picked up my sister at the airport. We did lunch, met up with some of his schoolmates, who humored us olds, went to dinner, tossed back a few beverages as if the world weren't about to spin off its axis, and wandered over to the arena in time to watch ASU blow a lead to the Washington Huskies.

Friday morning we slept late, went for coffee, settled on a target for a Cactus League spring training game, and drove up to Scottsdale, where we found a Red Robin in an open-air shopping center that could have, by the names on the fronts of the stores, been anywhere in America. Ate lunch, drove a short distance to the line to get into the parking lot at Salt River Fields. Half an hour later we had the pleasure of paying $10 to park on a parched lawn. Fifteen minutes after that I had the pleasure of paying $240 for three tickets behind home plate. We wanted shade. They wanted half my liquid assets. We arrived in our seats in the bottom of the second and stayed until the end of the ninth, when the game ended, tied 6-6. There are no winners in spring training, just 12,000+ who lose a shit ton of cash watching two teams practice. At least I had the pleasure of seeing Ryan McMahon bomb one out to deep center.

Then again, if we'd known it was to be one of the very last games played all spring (all season?), maybe the price wouldn't have seen so exorbitant. We couldn't have known that then. Well, there were hints. We ignored them, went to the aquarium up the road, which was pretty incredible considering we were in the middle of the desert, then drove back to Tempe and went to dinner at a place that struck me as a hot spot for academics and out-of-town parents with just enough money to spend they won't miss the price of a fancy meal. El vino did flow, as David Brent might put it. It was a top night.

Saturday we made the nearly two-hour drive to Tuscon, which was nothing like I remembered it from when I drove the same stretch in 1990. There wasn't any traffic back then. Nothing like the pickup-truck brigade we endured the entire stretch this time around. Met my mom and oldest sister at their motel, drove to the bridal shower, hung out, then finally arrived at our Airbnb rental house in the hills. Beautiful house. Beautiful neighborhood. Which made it unlike most of the rest of Tucson we saw, which was ... not so nice.

Saturday night came the rehearsal dinner and a chance to catch up with family and meet new folks. And finally, Sunday morning, a chance to relax. The first of the entire trip. We had all morning and part of the afternoon to chill until it was time to get dressed up. The wedding was lovely, in a park in the desert (where else is there?). The reception could only have been more pleasant if the first thing on everyone's mind wasn't the impending pandemic.

But it was, and by Monday morning I wanted home so badly I was up before the sun. Watched it rise between the cacti beyond our backyard. Got to the airport plenty early, eager to go home, afraid to return and spread whatever it was I might have contracted. And that fear was driven deeper when I arrived at O'Hare for my connecting flight. Even more people in masks than there were on the way out. Fear on every face. The closest I'd ever been to Dystopia.

Until the day after, and the day after that. And the week after that, when there was no toilet paper in the grocery store and I tossed anything reasonable into my shopping cart. And the following Monday when my director ordered us all to work from home and not come back to the office. And the next two weeks, as I counted off the days of my incubation period, freaking out every time I coughed, or sniffled, or ached, or felt a temp even slightly over 98.6 that I had brought it home to risk my wife and son.

Arizona was less than four weeks ago. Restaurants, games, shops, bars. A world away from where we are now. We venture out now only to stock up at the grocery store, as infrequently as possible. With gloves. I'd wear a mask if I had some handy.

Arizona lingers in my mind as the stark end of the "before." Everything since is the after. Or the during. I guess that's to be determined.