by Tom Perrotta
She began to dream at once, but later she could not remember it as clearly as she had hoped. She did recall that in this dream she was standing in a hotel bar, drinking a glass of port. Rain was falling outside, and behind her there seemed to be a roaring fire. When she turned to look at it, she felt the fire’s heat touch her face, and the piercing red beam of the machine inside the goggles flooded her consciousness with its color. Unused to this intrusion, she awoke immediately and tore off the goggles.
The first thing she heard was the frogs. The moon had moved position and shone directly into the room, touching the foot of the bed. She was drenched in sweat. She got up and went to the screened window. Nightjars sang in the papayas. She felt intensely awake and therefore restless. She put on her flip-flops and a sarong and climbed down the steps of her cabana into the long, wet grass. At the end of the lawn shone the pool, wreathed with steam from the all-night Jacuzzi. She made her way to the hot tub, tiny frogs popping out of the grass around her feet, and when she reached the pool she disrobed again and sank into the water, naked. Tall palms stood around the pool. The moon shone between them.
As she floated on her back, she could feel that something in this idyllic scene was not quite right. It was too serene. Then, from far off, she heard a wild whoop of male voices. She sat up. A group of naked men ran down the lawn toward her. They approached in a line, their erections flapping about, and they headed straight for the pool. Startled, she leapt out of the water, grabbed her sarong, and darted into the dripping papaya trees on the far side of the footpath. The men, oblivious to her presence, jumped en masse into the pool and filled it with phalli and noise. She reached out and touched the rough bark of one of the trees, and as she did she found herself back in her bed, the goggles still fixed to her head. Rain was pouring down outside the window.
She tore off the goggles, gasping, her body drenched with sweat. The rain was so heavy that the frogs had fallen silent, and all she could hear was the mechanical dripping from the edge of the window frame and the rustle beyond, in the forest. She got up a second time, and her bewilderment made her reach out and touch the insect screen to see if it was real. She wrote down her dream straightaway.
In the morning, the sun returned, but there was a taste of burned wood on the air, born from afar, and a reddish dust that seemed to linger over the tree line. In the cafeteria, the group was eagerly discussing the eruption of the volcano during the night—one of a series of eruptions, it seemed.
“It kept me up all night,” the London broker said, eyeing Martha up and down. “Didn’t you hear it?”
“Nothing,” Martha said. “Did it rain all night?”
“It rained, but there was one hour when it was pure moonlight, peaceful as can be. I went down to the pool.” The broker lowered her voice. “Unfortunately, it was occupied. Men are strange, don’t you think?”
The woman had bossy, aggressive green eyes that possessed a knack for mentally undressing other women.
“I slept badly,” Martha admitted, rubbing her eyes. “The rain woke me up.”
“Personally, the galantamine does nothing for me. You?”
Martha shrugged. “I have nothing to compare it to.”
During the day, they listened to DuBois lecture in one of the rotunda meeting halls, and Martha dozed in a corner, feeling that she had not enjoyed enough sleep. It was a hot day, and after lunch she went for a walk by herself along the coast road, where the woods were thicker. She walked for miles, until she came to a gray beach under the cliffs, where sundry hippies and half-stoned locals sat drinking kava and smoking reefers. Beyond the beach lay flats of black lava that reached out into the sea. She went down onto the beach and lay in the roasting sun for a while. Her grief welled up inside her until tears flowed down her face. No one could see them there. She emptied herself out and breathed heavily until her body was reoxygenated.
Later that night, she walked down to the lava again with some of the other dream women. One of them was a mosaic artist from Missoula, Montana, and another sold hot tubs for a living. Makeshift kava cafés made of driftwood had been set up on the rock shelves, and wild travelers on motorbikes appeared out of nowhere, racing across the lava with their lights blazing. The women drank kava and seaweed honey out of small paper cups and watched the red glow of the volcano in the distance; three divorced women, two of them long into middle age, waiting for improbable turns of events. Aging European hippies in feather earrings, with names like Firewind and Crystal Eye, tried to pick them up. Martha felt supremely detached from everyone. She didn’t want to talk about the love lives of the other women. Everyone’s love life, she thought, was more or less the same, and to be disgusted one only had to remember that seventy million women were saying exactly the same things to their friends at that very same moment.
“I left him only six months ago,” one of the women was saying, as if they had all known each other for years. “He never gave me cunnilingus either. I know he was sleeping around—”
“They’re all sleeping around.”
“Does a fling every two years count as sleeping around?”
“Maybe we could fuck one of those filthy hippies. Firewind is quite sexy.”
They drank the kava and became more stoned.
“Mine never gave me cunnilingus either. They get lazy after a while. No one stays with anyone, ever, unless they’re Christians.”
“I wouldn’t sleep with Firewind. He has blue fingernails.”
“You wouldn’t notice in the dark.”
“Yes, but feather earrings?”
To Martha, the red glow in the night sky was more compelling than the conversation. It seemed incomprehensible that a volcano was active so close to them and yet there was no outward concern. The more distant molten lava must be moving down to the sea. The scene must be one of terror and grandeur, yet no one saw it. She thought about it as they licked salty seaweed honey off their fingers.
She dreamed of her husband that night. She was cutting his toenails in a sea of poppies, and his toes were bleeding onto her scissors. He laughed and writhed as she ripped his toes with the blades. The galantamine made her remember it vividly. In the morning, she skipped the dream seminar, which no longer held much interest for her, and rented a motorbike from the front desk. She took a night bag and some money and decided to play the day by ear. She drove to Pahoa and on through Kurtistown until she reached Route 11, which turned west toward Volcanoes National Park. Soon she was rising through the Ola’a Forest.
At the top of the rising road stood the strange little town of Volcano. It was a cluster of houses on the edge of one of the craters, lush with rain forest. She parked by a large hotel and walked into a wonderful old lobby with a fireplace and oil paintings of volcanic eruptions on the walls. There was no one there. She wandered around the room for a while, admiring the native Hawaiian artifacts, then noticed a spacious bar on the far side of the reception desk. She went in.
Enormous windows wrapped around the room. Through them, the entire crater could be seen. It was a pale charcoal color, a vast field of uneven rock scored with ridges from which glittering steam rose hundreds of feet into the air. A pair of antlers hung above the bar itself, next to a “volcano warning meter,” a mocking toy with a red arrow that pointed to various states of imminent catastrophe.
At the bar sat an elderly gentleman in a flat-cloth cap, dipping his pinky into a dry martini. He looked up at her with watery, slightly bloodshot eyes in which there was a faint trace of lechery. He wore a windowpane jacket of surpassing ugliness and a dark brown tie with a gold pin in it. The barman was the same age, a sprightly sixty or so, and his eyes contained the same sardonic and predatory glint of sexual interest in a forty-six-year-old woman entering their domain unexpectedly.
“Aloha,” the barman said, and the solitary drinker repeated it. She echoed the word and, not knowing what to do, sat down at the bar as well.
“Going down to the crater?” the capped man asked.
&n
bsp; “Yes. I just wanted a stiff drink first.”
“A good idea. I recommend the house cocktail. The Crater.”
“What is it?”
“White rum, pineapple juice, cane sugar, Angostura bitters, a grapefruit segment, a dash of Cointreau, a cherry, dark rum, a sprig of mint, an egg white, and a hint of kava,” said the barman.
“I’ll have a glass of white wine.”
“The Crater’ll set you up better.”
She looked at the volcano paintings, the flickering fire, the inferno landscape smoldering beyond the windows, and finally she noticed that the man in the cap was halfway through a Crater. Oh, why the fuck not?
“Okay,” she said, “I’ll have one.”
They all laughed.
“Try walking across that crater after one of those,” the drinker said. “The name’s Alan Pitchfork. No, it’s not my real name, but hey, we’re at the Volcano Hotel in Volcano, so who the hell cares?”
She took off her scarf and sunglasses.
“I’m Martha Prickhater. That is my real name.”
“Oh, is it now?”
Alan leaned over to touch her glass with his. Her eyes strayed up to the ancient clock underneath the antlers, and she was surprised to see that it was already 2 P.M.
“Are you a local?” she asked politely.
“Moved here from Nebraska in 1989. Never looked back. Retired geologist.”
“How nice. Did you come here with your wife?”
“Died in Nebraska, 1989.”
“Ah, I see. I’m sorry.”
“Long time ago, not to worry.”
“Well, cheers.”
She sipped the amazing brew. It tasted like the effluent from a chewing gum factory.
“Cheers,” the man said, and did nothing.
“Staying at the hotel?” he went on, eyeing her. “Nice rooms here. Traditional style. African antiques in some of them. Views over the volcanoes.”
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
“Well, you should think about it. You get a good night’s sleep up here in Volcano, if a good night’s sleep is what you want.”
“I’ll bear it in mind,” she said testily.
“You should. Bear it in mind, I mean. There’s no better spot for watching the sunset.”
She finished her drink, said her farewells, and went back into the sunlight of the parking lot, where her bike stood, the only vehicle there. She drove down the lonely road to the trails that led to the crater. She chained up the bike and wandered down, through the rain forest dripping with water from a shower she apparently had not noticed. The trail led to the edge of the lava crater, which smelled of sulfur. She walked out into the middle of the stone plain.
In the sun, the wreaths of rising steam looked paler, more ethereal. She lay down and basked, taking off her shoes and pushing her soles into the slightly warm rock. Looking up, she could not see the hotel at all. To the south, the sky was hazed by the continuing eruption of the neighboring crater and soon, she could tell, that haze would reach the sun and eclipse it. She was tipsy and slow and her body ached for something. A man’s touch, maybe. The touch of a rogue.
It was early evening when she got back to the hotel. The fire was roaring high and yet there was still no sign of other guests. She hesitated, because she was not quite sure why she had come back at all. The barman was on a ladder, dusting one of the oil paintings. He stepped down to welcome her back.
“Want a room?” he said hopefully.
“Not exactly.”
“I can give you thirty percent off.”
It was clear the place was empty.
“Dinner?” he tried, stepping gingerly around her. “A drink at the bar? Two for one?”
She peered into the bar and saw that the same drinker was still there, a little the worse for wear but still upright on his seat, another Crater in front of him. He caught her eye and winked. Behind him, the windows had dimmed, and only the outline of the crater could still be made out, illumined by the red glow that never seemed to diminish. The men told her the hotel’s clientele had vanished after the volcano warnings had been issued two nights earlier.
“Volcano warnings?” she said, sitting down again at the bar.
“Red alert.” Alan smiled, raising his glass.
The barman began to prepare a Crater without her asking for it.
“Yeah,” he drawled. “They run like ants as soon as there’s a red alert. But Alan here and I know better. We’ve seen a hundred red alerts, haven’t we, Alan?”
“A thousand.”
“See?” The barman garnished her drink with a yellow paper parasol. “It’s perfectly safe to stay the night if you so wish.”
“I wasn’t thinking of it.”
“It’s a long ride back to Kalani,” the geologist remarked. “In the dark, I mean.”
She let it go.
I can do it, she thought.
They turned and watched the fireworks display outside for a while. The eruption had intensified, and it was easy to imagine the flows of lava dripping into the sea only a few miles away. The glow cast itself against the walls of the bar, turning the room a dark red. She gripped her drink and tilted it into her mouth, watching the geologist drum his fingers on the bar. Who was he and where did he live? He never seemed to leave the hotel bar. He asked her how she had found the crater, and he added that he had watched her cross it from this same window.
Soon she was tipsy again. Something inside her told her that a motorbike ride back to Kalani at this hour would be suicidal. That “something” was simultaneously a desire to cave in, to book a room upstairs with African antiques and a view of the eruption. But it seemed, at the same time, inexpressibly vulgar to do so. To be alone in a hotel like this with two decrepit old men. She tossed back the dregs of her disgusting drink and ordered another.
“That’s the spirit,” the barman said. “It’s on me.”
Alan disputed the right to buy the drink and soon she was obliged to thank him.
“Shall we go sit by the fire?” he said.
In the main room, where the fire crackled and hissed, the Hawaiian masks had taken on a lurid uniqueness. They stared down at the odd couple sinking into the horsehair armchairs. The geologist put his drink down on a leather-surfaced side table and told her a long story about the last major eruption, when he had spent a week alone in Volcano, smoking cigars at the bar and enjoying the view. People were cowards.
“Personally, I’m not afraid of lava. It’s a quick death, as good as any other, if not better.”
“That’s philosophical of you.”
“I’m a geologist. You have beautiful legs, by the way. If I may say.”
She started with surprise and displeasure and instinctively pulled her skirt down an inch or so.
“No, don’t cross them,” he went on. “Don’t feel awkward.”
Instead of feeling awkward, she felt warm and insulted. Her face began to flush hot and she wanted to throw her drink in his face. She controlled herself, however, and tried to smile it off.
“Thank you, if that’s a compliment.”
He said it was, and he wasn’t going to apologize for it. His scaly, wrinkled skin seemed to shine under the equally antiquated lamps. After a while, she heard a quiet but insistent pitter-patter against the windows that was not rain. The man smiled. It was ash falling.
“Sometimes,” Alan said, “I swear it’s like the last days of Pompeii.”
As the evening wore on, it became obvious that she would have to stay overnight. The barman told her that she could have the Serengeti Suite at half price. She agreed. He served them sandwiches with Hawaiian relishes, and more Craters. Martha began to see double. Eventually, she decided to go up to her room and lock the door. It was safer that way. She got up and staggered to the stairwell, while the geologist sat back and watched her radiant legs take her there. They said good night, or at least she thought he did, and she pulled herself up the squeaky stairs with a pounding hea
d.
The suite was cold, and she left the main light off while she lit the glassed-in gas fire. Then she opened the curtains and let the red glow invade the rooms. On the horizon, beyond the extinct crater’s rim, globs of white light seemed to shine behind a frazzled line of trees. She lay on the damp bed and kicked off her shoes. There were Zulu shields on the walls and pictures of Masai spearing black-maned lions under the suns of long ago. The chairs looked like something from a luxury safari lodge. She lay there and grew subtly bored, discontented with her solitude. She wondered what they would be doing at Kalani right then. Dancing in skirts to the volcano goddess, sitting around a fire and drinking their kava with marshmallow, or doing Personhood Square Dancing in the woods, with paper hats. She lay there for an hour, fidgeting and feeling her emptiness and loneliness well up within her, then got up again and went to the bathroom to rebrush her hair. The antagonizing red light filled her with restless anxiety, but also an itching desire not to be alone. She looked at herself in the mirror and saw, for once, what was actually there: a lean, pale, frightened-looking little girl of forty-six. She put some salve on her lips and dusted her face with powder.
The hotel creaked like an old ship. Wind sang through empty rooms. She went out into the corridor with its thick, red carpet and felt her way along the hallway, listening carefully. She could hear a man singing to himself in one of the rooms, no doubt the repulsive geologist. She thought of his slack gray skin and his leering eyes, and she felt a moment’s quickening lust-disgust. What was arousing to her was that she was alone and no one could ever discover what she was doing. She ran her finger along each door as she passed. As if responding to her telepathic signal, one of them finally opened and the familiar face, with its leprechaun eyes, popped out.
