by Roy Kesey
Within a year they were both back in New York: adjacent law schools, his public and fair, hers private and snazzy. Reoriented was the word Lauren preferred. They got jobs at firms a ten-minute walk apart, hers a bit better than his, and moved in together, and moved out, and moved back in.
Lauren was offered an advisory gig with the Intellectual Property Court of China, exactly the kind of mess she lived for, and that seemed like an end until Ernie found out that the Beijing branch of his firm needed someone to handle water rights. Things were great at first, the dumplings and temples and parks. A month later Ernie’s branch relocated to Kunming; he bailed, and things went bad and worse, the bickering and smog and smells, not to mention that their car had conked out, something about fuel injectors, and now he was home watching Monkey King reruns every day except when interviewing for jobs he didn’t want, and no it wasn’t working at all, but it had to work, had to be made to work or he’d have nothing, would be nowhere, square one or square zero or somewhere even worse, so a gesture was needed, something big, something that would back Lauren off and bring her back hard. The next time they were half past drunk, he brought out the ring. As far as he could tell she said yes out of pure surprise.
Just below the fourth tower they stop to look back. Postcard Lady points out a hawk arcing past them. Then she points out the sun reflecting off the far river, and the wall climbing the other side of the canyon, on and on until it’s lost in the haze.
They nod and turn and head up an iron ladder. The air inside the tower is cold and damp and smells of must and urine. They hold their breath and admire the vaulted windows, the gaps for boiling oil and slits for arrows, and for the first time Ernie takes a second to imagine it: the hordes on horseback below, the screaming, the hope that things will hold.
The following stretch has no parapets, just the walk itself, steeper and steeper, slick with ice. On and up and Ernie’s legs throb hot from the climb. Lauren tucks her hat into her backpack, says they should stop for lunch at the next tower, and so they do, a tablecloth spread on the stone, fancy cheese and imported salami, mostly-whole crackers, a salad Ernie made of lychees and loquats and pears.
Other tourists glance and edge past, each group followed by an old Chinese woman bearing wares. To thank Postcard Lady for showing them the hawk, Ernie offers her a hard-boiled egg. She calls to her colleagues, holds it up like jade, mocks them for not having eggs of their own.
The fifth anniversary of the night they met in Livingston, and everything was in place—a table reserved at The Courtyard, new cologne, bouquet in hand—but as Ernie came walking into Lauren’s firm’s new headquarters to pick her up, his cell phone rang. Caught in a meeting, she said. Half an hour at least. She apologized, and Ernie said it didn’t matter, he’d find a bar nearby to wait it out. He hung up, tucked his chin into his coat and surged back out into the frigid night.
He walked down Dongsishitiao headed nowhere in particular, just trying to keep moving as he called the restaurant. Sorry, said the woman, now or never, we’re packed. We can’t come and stand in line? he asked. No point, she said. So never, he said. Hung up. Looked around for somewhere warm to plot Plan B.
This wasn’t a neighborhood he knew very well. The first few places he tried were too shiny for his taste, with glass panels that slid open as he approached, stainless steel chairs, and McStruggle art on the walls. He headed south into the hutongs, and on the first corner he found a bar that would work, warm and dark, the music almost quiet enough. He texted the name and address to Lauren and then his battery died.
He tucked the phone away, picked a table, set down the bouquet and took off his coat. It appeared that tonight was Ladies’ Night—there were two for every guy at the bar. Most of them looked Chinese except for two tall beautiful white girls chatting on the far side. Ernie watched their mouths move, figured they might be Russian, searched the room for a waiter.
It turned out there weren’t any waiters, just the two sharp-edged bartenders working the group of Westerners on the stools. Ernie tapped his foot to the blues from the speakers overhead until he realized he was doing it. The maybe-Russians were sexy as hell but in a glossy way he’d never really gone for. He stared at the table, thought about the sadness like water in the air, which made him like the place even more.
A girl walked over, sat down at his table, said she was from Ulaanbaatar and her English name was Baggy, and as she said her name she pumped her arms in the air, like, Baggy the Party Girl!
Ernie said that it was nice to meet her but that he was waiting for someone.
–Beautiful flowers! For me?
It was kind of fun, this attention. He hadn’t been out by himself in months. Still though, Lauren, the anniversary. He said it again a little louder:
–Waiting! For someone!
She nodded, grinned, asked his name. She was very cute, so what the hell, and they chatted for a bit—her Cultural Development degree from an institute back home, tourist work in Shanghai, following a friend to Beijing. The money was better down south, she said, but she couldn’t stand the humidity!
Ernie checked his watch. It had been forty minutes, and this girl was quite possibly insane, so when she asked if he wanted to dance, he said no a bit louder than necessary, actually kind of shouted it. Baggy said no problem like she didn’t at all mean it, told him he had plum sauce on his shirt, flounced away. Ernie looked down, and there it was, small but very dark. He sat a little longer, stared at the closest bartender until the man looked up. Ernie waved, called for a beer, and the bartender turned away.
So.
Ernie walked to the bathroom and scrubbed at the stain until it was much larger but not quite as dark. Back out, and off to the right there was a smaller room with a pool table, four girls drilling one long shot after another. Ernie nodded in appreciation, but when the prettiest of the four turned to look at him he bolted for the bar, and just then he saw Lauren come in. He hurried to his table, saw that someone had stolen the bouquet and goddamnit, but nothing he could do so he trotted over, leaned in for a kiss, and Lauren pushed him away.
–For our anniversary you bring me to a hooker bar?
–This isn’t—
Ernie looked around.
Goddamnit.
Up this high there is more ice on the walk and more snow in the crevices. There are fewer trees down below, and fewer tourists alongside. The sky has started to darken. Lauren says they’ve gone far enough.
–One more tower, says Ernie.
–They’re all the same.
–One more and then we’ll stop.
She drops a bit behind, and this stretch is the steepest so far. Finally he arrives, catches his breath, heads back down to take Lauren’s backpack. He helps her up the iron ladder and into the tower, and here is another ladder, homemade, two long poles joined with wire and twine.
Ernie looks at Lauren, at the tour group on their heels, and starts climbing: the top-of-the-tower gambit.
–What are you doing?
–I want to see what it looks like from up there.
–Exactly like it looks from down here, only thirty feet farther away.
–Come on, Lauren. This is what we’re here for.
He keeps climbing, and the ladder is just steady enough. He gets to the top, and Lauren was more or less right, but still it’s beautiful—the crumbling battlements, the far reach of blue-gray space. A breeze rises, and now there’s noise behind him. Lauren’s face appears, not smiling but not angry, so the gambit worked, and he laughs and stretches out his hand, except it didn’t work, because climbing up behind her is Postcard Lady, and behind Postcard Lady is the tour group.
Ernie leads Lauren to the farthest corner and they sit on the edge of the tower. He puts his arm around her. She leans into him. The others tourists laugh and call and goose each other in Spanish. Ernie waits for them to leave so he can start the conversation, and they don’t.
He stands, helps Lauren to her feet, turns, hears a grinding of stone
on stone and her rushed intake of breath, whirls back and reaches and catches the front of her jacket. She’s out over the edge and the fallen stone crashes into the brush below but he’s got her, holds her, feels his own strength, draws her slowly to him but then she loses her toehold, screams, he’s off balance and slipping, strains and they tilt and are falling as someone grabs the hood of his sweatshirt and drags them both back onto the tower sprawled and gasping.
They’ve been saved, it turns out, by a fat statistician from Calatayud. It takes ten minutes to get everything done—the catching of breath, the fervent thanks. Ernie and Lauren climb carefully down the ladders, walk back along the wall with their legs trembly and their arms held out for balance. Postcard Lady will not stop chattering, grabbing Ernie’s wrist, holding up the same goddamn postcards over and over until he takes her by the shoulders and says that she needs to leave them alone. She starts up again and now he yells it. She blinks. He lets go, apologizes, turns and walks and Lauren is well below him. Through one tower and another, ignores the pattering behind him, pushes down through the throng of men and mules to the bridge, past the kiosks selling t-shirts and hats and tiny ceramic Great Walls into the parking lot.
Ernie sat up in bed, watched the end of Lauren’s session on the elliptical, wished he still smoked. A week since their mess of an anniversary, and he still couldn’t believe how things had gone: Lauren insisting they stay at the bar, ordering round after round, making him dance with the pros, inviting them to sit down at the table and join in discussions about what a shit he was for fucking up their evening. At one point he’d said that it wasn’t even a real anniversary, and that it was her fault they’d lost the reservation, at which point she yelled You call that moral equivalence?
Not long after that, she started making out with Baggy just to get him lit. She asked the girls how much for a three-way, how much for a four-way, then turned and told Ernie that he wouldn’t be one of the ways. It took most of an hour to get her out of the bar and into a taxi home.
The next morning the mechanic called to say the car was ready, and that afternoon Ernie took a job faking expertise on the liabilities involved in smelting tungsten, but none of this had helped: still Lauren worked late, was silent as she climbed into bed, silent again at breakfast. He’d taken to calling her from payphones at odd times during the day, and now he watched her feet, around and around, faster and faster.
–We need to get out of the city, he said.
Lauren slowed, checked her pulse, toweled the sweat off her neck.
–I’ve got meetings all next week and I’m nowhere near ready.
–So just a day trip, Saturday or Sunday.
She checked the odometer, jotted in her notebook and shrugged.
–Well. Where?
He thought, and nothing good came; he realized he was staring at the wall, and this is what gave him the idea.
Lauren shook her head, said, We’ve already been to the Wall.
–We’ve been to the dumb part. Let’s go to one of the cool parts.
She walked into the bathroom, and he followed to the doorway.
–Badaling wasn’t dumb, she said as she turned on the shower. We had a good time. Didn’t you have a good time?
–No, sorry, not dumb, and yes, a really great time. But remember how it was all kind of, you know, rebuilt? And crowded? Let’s go somewhere not so rebuilt and crowded.
And she nodded. She kicked off her shoes, came and kissed him, pushed him gently and closed the door, and Ernie wondered if things had bottomed out.
It’s dark and cold and getting darker and colder fast. Lauren is waiting by the car, no expression on her face. Ernie unlocks the doors, and hears the familiar voice behind him. He stares at the woman for a moment, digs for his wallet and buys everything she has. She thanks him and he nods, gets in, turns the key, and nothing happens.
–Fuck.
–I thought you said the mechanic—
–He told me he fixed it.
–Fixed what?
–I don’t know, Lauren. Whatever was wrong.
She keeps talking but he isn’t listening. He tries the ignition once more, then looks and oh jesusfuckingchrist he left the headlights on. He opens the hood and glares at the battery. The breeze turns into wind. Ernie circles the parking lot, and everyone’s happy to help but no one has jumper cables. He returns to the car where Lauren sits and shivers and pretends to ignore the dozens of hawkers who have gathered to offer suggestions and giggle. A taxi driver says that for two hundred yuan he’ll take Ernie into town, where there might or might not be an auto shop open at this hour on a Sunday.
A charter bus arrives to pick up its load, and Ernie sprints, asks, and yes says the driver, and yes. They aren’t actual cables, just two loose lengths of what looks like phone line, but somehow they work, draw sparks from a taxi that’s pulled up close, and now more thanks, and a good amount of waving.
Ernie puts a CD in as they pull out of the parking lot. Lauren turns it down, and he clears his throat.
–Fast as—
–Turtles, I know.
The shapes to either side of the road—trees, rocks, buildings—have gone sordid and strange in the dark. Ernie squints at the vague lights ahead, turns and studies the set of Lauren’s mouth, the line of her neck. It’s a terrible time for the conversation, and as good as any.
–Guatemala, he says.
–What?
–We have to get back to Guatemala.
–What the hell are you talking about?
–Things just keep going wrong. That night with Baggy, if you’d—
–Who?
He looks at her again.
–Baggy. We—
–Who the fuck is Baggy?
He opens his mouth, closes it, looks back at the road as a rough sea of white flows out in front of them. He slams on the brakes, torques the wheel, and it looks like they’ll stop in time but there’s a light bump as they come to rest, and they’re surrounded by sheep, crazed sheep climbing on top of each other, clumping and scattering and flowing away, and the man standing in the road before them is maybe seven feet tall, dressed in rags, his long gray hair gone wild in the wind. He stares in at them. He lifts his staff and roars.
–Oh my god oh my god oh my god.
–Easy, says Ernie.
–He’s going to kill us.
–No he isn’t.
–He is, and this is what happens, this is exactly what happens. I told you this is what happens but you wouldn’t listen.
Which isn’t true and makes no sense but Ernie knows what she means, and now the guy slams his staff down onto the hood of the car. It leaves a dent three inches deep and Lauren screams.
–We must have hit one of his sheep, Ernie says.
–Ernie, he’s going to fucking kill us, will you please—
–No, I really think—
–Ernie, go!
And he cuts the wheel and floors it, misses the man by half a foot, the man swings and the rear window shatters and they’re past and flying. Lauren looks back, slumps in her seat. Ernie checks his side mirror, slows down as he watches the man kneel, cradle something white, stand back up.
–I knew it, he says. We killed his sheep.
–A sheep for a window. Do you have any idea how much this is going to cost?
He doesn’t. He tries to imagine. Then he knows and is free, brings the car to a stop, slams the gearshift into reverse, rises up.
Levee
I HAVE WATCHED my father rise in a handstand, his white chest scarred and full, his legs bending at the knees, his feet out like spars as he made his way across our back yard and up the side of the levee, slowing as it steepened. One hand forward, a rest, another hand forward, veins thick as night-crawlers rising from his neck, his face the color of blood itself. Another hand forward, another, quivering slightly, the levee so steep that simple walking turns to a scramble. He fought for one last handhold and then he was at the crest, the sunset sky fiery behi
nd him, the roiling hush of the Mississippi, and my father, lowering his legs gently, standing upright, chest heaving, and he smiled, waved, and now I could breathe again.
He wasn’t showing off for me alone. I turned, and there was my mother, and she was waving too. My mother, beautiful woman, I knew this even as a boy. She was the one who taught me and Beverly to swim—freestyle, backstroke, butterfly. She took us down to the battures once the river let up a bit late each summer, and we did our best for her, diving contests and races, and she beamed no matter who won.
There was a great happiness to her in the water, but it never lasted all the way back to the house. She’d dry herself there on the bank, her long arms and legs, and the happiness got soaked up in the towel, or brushed away like grit. My father loved her deeply if not well, is what I think most days. All this was back when Harahan was still called New Orleans 23. I was born without thumbs, so I never climbed the levee the way my father could, never even managed a handstand, and my mother has been gone for forty years.
Bev and I are twins, but we’re not identical, or even all that similar. She was born perfect as far as I can tell, though she complained, complains even now, fifty-four years old and still complaining that her breasts are too big, that she catches people staring and her eye begins to twitch. As soon as they notice the twitching they glance away, but they always turn back for one more look. These days she lives in Dallas and says it’s just the same.
It took me years to learn new ways of getting ahold of things. School started hard each September, the looks and the names, but it was nothing you couldn’t fight your way past. Harder was family. For my seventh birthday an old uncle got me a jar opener. He meant no harm, I know. And when my cousins were small they used to come up behind me and slap at my hands. They didn’t mean anything by it either. I sat them down, made them look, made them touch. One of them grabbed at the joint where a thumb should have started, pinched it as hard as he could, asked me if it hurt.
