St. Izzy of F Street: Chapters 1-2
A Pre-Apocalyptic Novel: Installment 1 of 28
Welcome to St. Izzy of F Street, a contemporary suspense novel with a dash of magical realism.
Cover design by Kris Norris; main photo by Alonso Reyes
Today starts with chapter 1, page 1, so dive in! I hope you enjoy, and feel free to comment.
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Back cover description
An autistic journalist in Washington, DC, befriends a homeless woman who wields an “End is Near” sign and proclaims the coming destruction of the world. Sonny remains skeptical of Izzy’s prophecies, even as they come true with increasingly dire results — natural disasters, wars, and the loss of his career. One message catches the FBI’s attention, which sends Sonny into depression and panic attacks. He can ignore Izzy as delusional or help spread the word, but he needs a sign before it’s too late.
Chapter 1
“Today will be the best day of the rest of your life.”
She stood at Fourteenth and F Streets, in front of the entrance to the National Press Building, right where I needed to go, shaking a tambourine and holding a sign that read:
I’d never seen her before. Apparently, she liked exclamation points.
My wallet only held a couple of twenties. Not giving her one of those. I ducked into the building for my usual routine before she could spot me. Every day started at the food court for a cup of coffee and fifteen minutes to sit and sip and think before heading upstairs to the office.
Ordering two cups of coffee would give me a hot drink and a dollar to donate to the end-is-near cause. Even if the apocalypse was imminent, she might appreciate something to help stay warm while she waited.
The two coffees came to $9.83. It didn’t register until I was outside that I still didn’t have a dollar bill. I could either give her a ten, which seemed extravagant, or seventeen cents, which seemed miserly and insulting.
I offered her a cup. “I hope you like black.”
“Look at me,” she said, setting her tambourine down to take the coffee. “Of course I like black. As hot as the fire that burns within my bosom.”
I held out the ten-dollar bill.
She looked at her sign in one hand and the coffee in the other, then to me for some help. I took the coffee back so she could stuff the bill into her well-worn red cardigan with giant holes in the sleeves and one torn shoulder. Not a lot of warmth for a bitter, overcast January day in DC.
I pointed to her sign and said, “If I have another day like yesterday, I’ll welcome the end.”
“Today will be the best day of the rest of your life.” She leaned her sign against the building and picked up her tambourine, shaking it to attract more converts. Converting dollars from their pockets to hers. Her marketing approach needed some work, but then again, it had worked on me.
“Excuse me.” I thought about tapping her shoulder to get her attention again, but that might startle her. She seemed a bit jumpy. If the end was near, that could make folks, well, of heightened sensitivity. Meth could do that too. Besides, that cardigan that had obviously been slept in, probably for months, outside on urine-covered sidewalks. At least it was too cold for bugs.
“Excuse me,” I said a little louder to be heard over the tambourine.
She turned my way with a look that asked, ‘You’re still here?’ She flipped one dreadlock braid out of her face. Her face looked far too young for gray hair. Maybe it was just dirty. It looked like she’d powdered it for a Halloween costume. The dreads had matted into gray, dusty ropes.
She stopped the rattling. “What do you want?”
“If the end is near, why do you need money?”
“You want your dollar back?” She pulled a bill from her pocket and held it out. A one, not the ten I’d forked over.
Not touching it. I’d never take back a gift. Plus, it had been in that cardigan. “No, just curious.”
“Girl’s gotta eat. I didn’t say the end was coming in the next five minutes. But soon. Sooner than you think.”
“I’m Sonny.” Not sure why I found a formal introduction appropriate.
She stared at me a moment before her dark brown eyes softened. “Is he.”
“Is who what?”
“Izzy. My name. I’m Izzy.”
“You have a good day, Izzy.” I waved goodbye. Not sure why a wave was appropriate either. Probably the same reason a socially awkward teenager decided to go into journalism.
“Today,” she said with a grin that exposed a full set of impossibly white, perfectly straight teeth right out of a toothpaste ad, “will be the best day of the rest of my life too.”
I hesitated. “Maybe you can go in there and get some food when you take a break.”
“You seriously think they’d let the looks of me in there? A naive one, ain’t ya?”
The “ain’t” sounded out of place. Put on for show. Her voice carried an educated tone, maybe a lilt created from growing up in a gospel church.
I offered to go in and buy her a breakfast sandwich.
“No meat. I’m vegetarian.” She didn’t offer back the ten to pay for it.
“Eggs?”
“Eggs are fine. I’m not one of those vegan freaks. Cheese would be delightful too.”
When I came back with the sandwich, Izzy was gone. I looked both ways then walked around the corner. Checked across the street. Lots of people at Fourteenth and F on their way to and fro with no clue the end was near.
But no Izzy.
A homeless man passed by, staring straight ahead. He saw no one and talked gibberish to the air. No one saw him either.
I dodged a suit with a briefcase, who stared straight ahead, seeing no one, especially not me, talking gibberish to the air. At least he had a Bluetooth earpiece to look respectable and sane, even if he was neither. He thought he was doing something important. Being someone important.
He was just another useless cog in the machine that would soon end.
Maybe I should tell him. Nah, leave that to Izzy.
At my cubicle in the third-floor, open-plan office, I synced my laptop to two large monitors, full-size keyboard, and mouse, and ate Izzy’s sandwich. I stared at the framed picture of Roni on my desk — the only photo I kept at work. The love of my life. She looked like she wanted a bite.
This would be much tastier with a sausage patty.
~ ~ ~
Last night’s leftover General Tso’s chicken emerged from the breakroom microwave a bit soggy and spongy, but it served the purpose. I headed out for my daily after-lunch walk since it wasn’t raining or snowing. Chilly weather didn’t deter me any more than the summer swamp. Not much sunlight today, but still better than the office, which had exactly zero windows.
Mom always insisted on a little exercise and fresh air after lunch to ward off drowsiness. “Stretch the legs, get the blood flowing, rejuvenate the mind,” she’d tell me. Every single day.
Stretch. Flow. Rejuve.
Where to today? Maybe the National Mall or the White House or the Washington Monument. I had gazed at the architecture for five years. Still awed. Stared at the tourists and bureaucrats. Still bewildered.
I stepped through the double doors to the sidewalk and looked both directions. No Izzy. Maybe she’d moved to a better street. Or the police had picked her up and taken her to a shelter or an aunt’s house. Maybe the end had come for her, although I hoped in a good way.
More likely she’d taken the ten dollars to her favorite vendor and was off in la-la land in some basement apartment squalor. What if my donation had purchased her final passage?
Not my problem.
On my return from a brisk jaunt to the Lincoln Memorial, my conscience breathed a sigh of relief when she stood in her previous spot.
“Good afternoon, Izzy.”
She eyed me curiously, like she wondered how I knew her name. “What’s good about it?”
“For starters, the world hasn’t ended yet, so we’re all still here.”
“Why would you think that’s a good thing?”
Chapter 2
“It’s the first sign.”
Assignment requests from thirty-three newspapers and eighteen television stations across the country filled my inbox. My dad had been duly impressed when I told him I landed the position as Washington bureau chief for MidAmerica Media, where I would cover Congress for a chain of small-market Midwestern news outlets.
I didn’t tell him it was mostly agricultural committee meetings. Usually subcommittees, or sub-subcommittees, debating some obscure policy of interest only to farmers in Nebraska or Kansas.
Not exactly fascinating stuff, but it was a paycheck. A good starting job five years ago, just out of journalism school.
Career stepping stones weren’t supposed to last this long.
Repeated applications to the Washington Post and the Associated Press had gone ignored. I’d been offered star reporter jobs with some of MidAmerica’s smaller, more remote community papers, where ‘star reporter’ meant ‘only reporter.’ I wouldn’t have considered Iowa or North Dakota in any case. DC was as cold as this southern Missouri boy could tolerate.
A dozen journalists from a dozen different media companies filtered in from their lunches or assignments, stuffing themselves inside a dozen cubicles. All new faces. Most stayed a year or less before getting promoted, landing a job in public relations, joining the communications staff for some congressman, or fleeing to a new career like selling insurance or professional skateboarding.
The nation’s capital held all the action for journalists. Just not for me. There had to be something better than this. No clue what it would be and when — or if — it would show up. While Izzy waited for the end, I still waited for the beginning.
I returned a few phone calls, replied to more emails, and organized my calendar with meetings and events I’d cover over the next few days. Then off to the food court for my afternoon break, down three flights of stairs for a coffee to get me to the end of the day.
Stretch, flow, rejuve hadn’t exactly done the trick today.
Izzy sat in the almost empty food court, two hours after the lunch crowd had disappeared. She sat at a table for two, her “!!!END IS NEAR!!!” placard in the chair across from her.
I grabbed a coffee and walked over. “They let you in, I see.”
“Security guard went for a piss, so I slipped in. That guy,” she pointed to the server behind the pizza counter, “doesn’t care as long as I got money.”
“Good thing you’ve got money. Can I sit?”
“Help yourself,” she said, then crammed an extra-large bite of pepperoni-sausage thick crust in her face.
“I thought you were vegetarian.”
“Sometimes,” she said around a mouthful.
I moved the sign to the floor and sat. “What’s your story?”
A journalism professor had taught that line. She’d said everyone has a story and they’re all just waiting for someone to ask. She recommended it as the best opening line when you’re meeting a possible source for an article you’re working on.
She also said it was a great line in social situations for those who had trouble starting a conversation with someone they’ve just met. She’d looked right at me when she said that.
I’d used it a few hundred times since then. Mostly, it worked. Sometimes, people just stared at me like I was a bit off-kilter.
Izzy gave me that look.
As the professor had also taught us, I remained silent. Let the silence hang until it gets uncomfortable, and the other person will eventually fill the gap.
A verbal game of blink.
Izzy blinked first.
“Which story?” She somehow turned the game table back to me.
“How many stories you got?”
“What a stupid question,” she said and shoved a huge bite into her mouth. She chewed slowly and held my gaze. She knew how to use the uncomfortable silence ploy too, and with a mouth overflowing with strings of cheese, she’d cornered me into speaking.
“Two stories, actually,” I said. “Something about you doesn’t strike me as the usual street person. How’d you wind up in this situation?”
She swallowed and took a sip of her bottled water. “What about me doesn’t strike you as the usual?”
“You don’t seem mentally ill or intoxicated, at least not when I’ve seen you. You sound educated. Middle class or better. Something about the way you speak and carry yourself. And your teeth.”
That caught her attention.
“What about my teeth? Something in them?” She closed her mouth and ran her tongue around the inside of her lips, sucking on her teeth to clean any bits of pepperoni that might have stuck.
“No, nothing like that. I meant... I shouldn’t have said...” Intimidated by a homeless woman. “I just mean… your teeth are perfect. Like you’ve had good dental care your whole life and you’re still brushing on a regular basis. Not something you generally see among folks living on the streets.”
“What’s the other?”
No idea what she was talking about. Maybe I’d spoken too quickly about mental illness. “The other what?”
“The other story. I hope it has nothing to do with my teeth.”
“Oh, that. What’s the story with the sign? The end of the world. Or is that just an attention-getter to draw donations?”
Izzy’s eyes never left mine as she took another long drink of water. “Who said anything about the end of the world?”
“Well, your sign, to start with.”
“Just says the end. Doesn’t say the end of what.”
Now she wanted to play word games. Semantics. That was a game where I could hold my own. This was my chosen profession.
“What end is near then?”
“The end of days.”
“The end of days?” Another tip from the professor that I’d committed to my repertoire. Repeat the last thing the person said as a question back to them.
“The end of this age. The world will continue, despite our best efforts. But this age shall pass.”
“What age is this? Like, do you mean how the Dark Ages passed, and the Renaissance, and the Industrial Revolution? Space age, information age.”
“This is the Age of Man. It will end soon.”
“What age comes next?”
“What will it matter? Are you really this dense?” She shook her head like there was no more hope for me than for the Age of Man.
That hurt. I’d never been called dense before. A little too smart for my own good sometimes, which paired with a lack of social skills that could make me seem, well, a bit dense at times.
She pulled a newspaper out of her sweater and waved it in front of me, an abrupt shift to excitement. Agitation. Bubbly, maybe. The paper had been crumpled and then straightened out. A food stain — I hoped it was food — covered the lead photo on the page she shoved in my face.
“Did you see this? It happened. It’s happening.”
“What are you talking about?”
She pointed to which headline had her downright giddy.
An earthquake in Northern California, a moderate temblor of 5.1 on the Richter scale, centered in a rural farming area between Redding and Chico. No injuries, no serious damage. Held no interest for me since MidAmerica had no media properties in that market.
“Yeah. Why are you so excited?”
“I prophesied this. It’s the first sign.”
And... she’s off her meds.
“You predicted there would be an earthquake in California? That’s not too tough, ya know.”
“Don’t you know anything? This is four hundred miles from the fault line. And the prophecy predicted this specifically. It’s real. It’s happening.”
She bounced up and down in her seat, like a child waking up on Christmas morning. Glee on her face. Not the reaction I’d expect if the end was near.
I nodded goodbye and started to head upstairs but couldn’t restrain myself.
“What exactly did you predict?”
“That there would be an earthquake with no injuries.”
I couldn’t let it go. “Did you tell someone your prophecy? Or write it down or something?”
Her face morphed into the child who found a lump of coal in her stocking, but she didn’t respond.
“And if the end is near, why would it start with a mild quake in an unpopulated area? That doesn’t sound very apocalyptic to me.” Not sure why I felt like digging in. Her addled mind couldn’t comprehend my logic. Would she turn angry, even violent, if her delusions were pierced?
“It was an early warning,” she said. “A shot across the bow, so to speak. I’ve been given the truth, and that’s all that matters.”
An uncomfortable feeling washed over me in nearly visible waves. What emotion was this? Guilt. That’s what it was. Not sure why. Punching down maybe. Picking on someone at the lowest point in her life, maybe through no fault of her own.
I tapped her on the wrist before she stood to leave. Right on that cardigan. I’d hit the hand sanitizer station at the elevators, hopefully before I touched my face.
“Maybe you should write these things down,” I said. “That way, you’ve got a record of it. Otherwise, no one will ever believe you.”
“Oh, that’s a great idea.” Her tone of voice matched the roll of her eyes. “I’ll run right down to Office Depot for some pencils and notepads. Or maybe an iPad.”
She stared at me until I had to break eye contact. I looked down at the earthquake headline.
“Why do you think this age is going to end?”
Izzy swallowed the last bite of her pizza, finished her water, and grabbed her sign before answering. “He’s tired of it.”
“Who is?”
She stood and tugged her cardigan together to brace against the cold. “He Who Is.”
Also by Robb Grindstaff
Enjoying this.
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