You were drunk as usual, but charming as some dark, dreamy-eyed drunks go. You asked me if I had any precognition at all, about the end of the world, catastrophes, the end of love, or androids in haute couture stewarding strange trains to a particular year and no particular place and a certain state of mind. You know, you said, like that film by Wong Kar Wai. When I said that I hadn't an ounce of precognition in my body enough to light a trail to somebody's smelly ass, you said hey, no need no to be crass. Then you cracked up because ass rhymed with crass and you were particularly juvenile that way.

It was like that: between bottles of beer and a plate of greasy peanuts and cigarette smoke and you said I'm glad you don't care that I'm stinking up your hair. I said I didn't. My hair stinks anyway, but thank you for caring about me not caring about your cigarettes stinking up my hair.

You're a little strange, do you know that? you said.

Oh yeah?

Yeah.

Oh well, I said.

You see?

What?

You don't even care that I think you're strange.

What you think is none of my business.

You laughed. You went back to nursing your bottle, your fingers running through the length of it . Damndest thing happened today, you said. You told me how you were plastering a ceiling in Kent for an elderly couple. You said the ceiling broke through a crack and how when it did, you got rained on by pellets of rat shit. They were pellet-y, all right, you said, like kibble. You said you had to tear down the ceiling after all because I suppose it was kibble shit-ridden, though the rats had since long been gone after they brought in a cat. Cute kitty, looks a little bit like you, you said.

You smiled, and I knew you were probably humoring me and what the fuck did that mean: that I had whiskers and a furry tongue? But I smiled back and tilted the bottle down. The beer was warm and tasted good.

You smoked your cigarette, taking long drags with your cheeks sucked in. You exhaled streams of smoke, not any particularly romantic long streams, but diffuse like feathery nebulae. You smelled of soap, cinnamon, leather and sweat. I touched your arm, hirsute, rough and thought about the end of the world. I wondered about how violent it would be, or how quiet, about how my consciousness of anything would get torn apart from form, from these beer empties, from these tidbits of sound: the club warbler singing a Portishead song, the bartender telling the guy in cornrows that yes, the peanuts were free. How my consciousness would get torn away from you, here, looking at me, notwithstanding that the hint of desire in your eyes was alcohol-glazed? It probably didn't matter.

Will you sleep with me if tonight were the end of the world? I asked.

Why not? you asked. It is, after all 2012.

There were more trip-hoppy songs and black coffee and then more beer and a plate of greasy peanuts. The sky burned. Then we had breakfast at a Denny's.