It was on a bleak October day, after the world had begun to fade away, that Samuel had decided to move to New York. It was an act of sheer masochism on his part, of course. But he had nowhere else to go, and nothing for him to look back to. On the day he moved into the city with a sedan stuffed full of boxes, the sky had been a pale grey that blanketed the world. The fact that he crossed five states without being able to look out of his back window was a small miracle in itself; the futon he had somehow squeezed into the trunk was the second miracle. The brownstone apartments on his street already had a sallow pallor to them that he knew would only grow worse with the passing months. Some fools couldn’t help themselves.
Even almost a year later, the city was still in a tumult from the news that had shaken it to the foundation. Stories of landmarks that seemed fainter in the daytime sun and disappearing mirrors were regarded as mere whispers and urban legends at first. Only conspiracists spoke of it with any seriousness, of a great fog of sight that would soon come to choke the whole world in its grasp. They were laughed at, of course. But even conspiracists stumble into the truth sometimes, like a child stumbling on toys left over from a day’s play. By the time the news channels had picked up the story, it was hardly a surprise to half the world. Anything observed for too long would begin to fade, they said, as if wreathed in dense smoke. People claimed that cameras were the worst of all. The world’s most photographed monuments were already starting to disappear entirely (the experts on the matter called it a total ablation of reality). On the news the Eiffel Tower had looked like half a ghost, towering pale and wraith-like above Paris.
Time passed fast in Samuel’s first few weeks in the new city. He took a job in a café where the prices always seemed too high and the serving sizes always too small, and yet where the clientele were faithful as worshipers in attendance. A hundred faces passed through the shop each shift. But in his mind’s eye there was room for but a single face, which flickered like a candle flame in his thoughts as he tried in vain to dispel it. His nights were spent doing nothing, a task which he devoted the fullness of his concentration to. But nothing was a tedious affair, especially to do alone, so when he grew bored of that he took to long walks. One time he went all the way to Times Square. The sky, he noted, was black as ink, as if someone had forgotten to add in the stars. Whole sections of the plaza seemed empty, veiled behind the same dreary fog of ablation that the pessimists claimed would soon envelop the world. Businesses had shuttered all over the city, but it was the worst in Times Square, where — even now — tourists lined up to take photos by the busload. All over the world vendors sold hand-mirrors like hotcakes, to use and throw after taking photos obliquely, but even so, the shopkeepers dared not chance the rogue tourist who decided they were the one too good for rules and mirrors. Only the fools were left behind in Manhattan. The fools, the opportunists, and him.
Weeks passed. Soon the grey fall had given way to weighty snows — not the kind from the movies, but the sort of snow that turned wet and dirty-brown by the next morning, and welcomed itself uninvited into the crevices of one’s shoes. Samuel’s work at the café passed along unremarkably. He thought of quitting, but he might as well have thought of flying into the sky for all the good the thought did him. Besides, where would he go?
When the woman with the rosy cheeks came into the café during his shift for the third time that week, Samuel thought nothing of it.
“I’ll have my usual,” she had said, with a careless flick of her hand that seemed too rehearsed to be true.
He pulled out his notepad. “Your usual. That would be?”
She frowned. “You don’t remember me?”
He shrugged. “My memory fades easy,” he said, lying.
“Hm,” she noted. She had bright dancing eyes, he noticed, and her face was round and long like a grape. “I’ll have the cracked matcha latte and a cinnamon cookie. My regular.” Her voice was a jab, but somehow, seeing her crooked half-smile, he did not mind.
“And your name?”
“Rosey,” said she, so quick he thought that she had coughed.
“Rosey,” he repeated. “I’ll remember that.”
On the news the world was getting bleaker. The Colosseum was the first structure to have vanished away totally, ablated out of reality, instead of simply growing more pale by the day. That had inspired a small panic. The local government had rounded up some tourists it accused of surreptitiously taking photos despite the warnings, but the damage had already been done. Reports had come out that the faces of celebrities had begun to smudge and fade, and many went out in public masked. Protestors resisting the construction of an oil pipeline had taken pictures of the people responsible until they looked no more than a blot in reality, in an act the news anchors had dubbed “photo-bombing.” Samuel ignored the news these days. He had taken to frequenting hole-in-the-wall restaurants around the city, places even the locals had forgotten about. Dive bars were his haunts by night, and bodegas by day. He was so used to being alone by now that he no longer thought about the void he felt by his right shoulder like a ghost, like the threat of a memory about to resurface. But he dared not recall those days. He feared the salt of his fingertips would corrode his own memories if he dared touch them. It was no use revisiting those thoughts, as long as he knew they were there.
By the time he had plucked up the courage to ask Rosey if she was interested in watching the new Tarantino movie that had come out, the season had turned to balmy spring. “They say,” he whispered, leaning in conspiratorially while balancing a plate of lattes in one hand and pastries in the other, “that the lead actor spent so much time behind the lens that he doesn’t even have a face anymore.”
“A movie,” Rosey repeated. Her eyes were bright and dancing still, but there was something catching in her voice.
“I get off work at six on Friday, and I can drive over and pick you up from there,” he said glibly.
“I — I don’t—” she began.
“You don’t?”
“No.”
“Now, or ever?”
“Both, really.”
“Wonderful. Don’t what, exactly?”
“I don’t remember anymore,” she said vaguely. Whatever doubt had been in her voice had left. “I’d love to go.”
***
Now it was late summer, and his evenings were spent in watching dreary old shows with Rosey, and avoiding her dog Scruffy that always nipped at his ankles. They had moved in together, after a few months more of cracked matcha latte and a cinnamon cookie at the café. That evening they had decided to go to the park, and see the setting sun. A calmness stole over the westering sky. The sun shone bright against the band of thin clouds upon the sky, until the clouds bled silver. The treetops were stained orange with the dying light. Somehow — Samuel didn’t know the science — the sun had escaped ablation, as if it were too large to be bothered by human affairs. He was glad of that.
They sat upon a picnic blanket, the two of them and Rosey’s yipping dog, their hands less than a handspan apart. “Did you know anyone else, Sam?” Rosey asked. “Before me.”
“Oh,” Samuel said glibly, “lots of people. I knew the mailman. The grocers. Mr. and Mrs. Dalliard. My fourth grade teacher. My fifth grade teacher. My sixth gr—”
“I mean,” Rosey began again, “did you know anyone the way we know each other now?”
Samuel grimaced. Even now, the memory was too strong to bear. “Once,” he said eventually.
“What was her name?”
“Lenora Lee. Don’t ask me her coffee order, I don’t know it.” The sun was kissing the horizon now. In a minute it would be dark.
“Was she the reason you moved to New York?” He glanced up sharply at her. Her eyes were fixed on him, full and bright and dancing still. She is quicker than I thought. “How did you know?”
“I’ve been in this city most of my life. People don’t just move here. They either come because there’s something waiting here for them, or…” Her glance dropped to the floor. “They come here because they’re running away from somewhere else.”
He fixed his jaw. “I see.” He glanced around. The city had become a land of ghosts. Despite the photo bans, the sheer act of being seen by so many eyes was enough to begin the ablation of entire buildings and streets. If the city had been loved less, perhaps it would have been better preserved. He thought of Lenora. If I had loved her less, I might have thought of her more. What was ablation, if not proof of being seen, proof of being loved?
Rosey rested her head on his shoulder. “My ghost was named Jin Yannis.” He turned, surprised. She smiled at him. “I have my own past too, you know. You remind me of him sometimes.”
“And you remind me of her.” He bit his lip, uncertain if he wanted to continue his thought. But the world was bright, and the grass whispered empty susurrations, and he was half-drunk on the cool air breeze. “It was my fault that she left. I held onto her too close — and she slipped from my hands. I thought that if I left her behind I could forget her.”
“But that’s not how it goes,” Rosey finished for him. “I know the story well enough.”
“I don’t want to make that mistake again. With you, I mean.”
She looked into his eyes. “Oh hush,” she said, “and just watch the sunset with me.”
And so they watched the sun dip over the horizon together. It might have been a perfect movement, save for the intervention of Scruffy who had found this to be a perfect occasion to crawl, drooling, into his lap.
***
Two years passed, in the way that two years do. Sam awoke from his groggy sleep one morning to find that Rosey had already gone to work. In the bathroom mirror, his eyes looked bleary and crusted. He squinted at his face, which looked pale in the reflection. He would have to get a new one soon. This one had outlasted its use, and had begun to ablate away. He brushed; he shaved. As he washed his face, he still could not shake the feeling that his face bore an unusual pallor.
It was not the mirror, he realized. His face was starting to fade away.
Strangely, Sam began to smile.