What Happens at Night

by Peter Cameron

  I don’t, said the man. Although he did. He always carried with him a Waterman fountain pen that had belonged to his grandfather. Every couple of years he took it to the fountain pen hospital in New York and had it cleaned and the bladder replaced. It was one of his most prized possessions.

  It’s all coming back to me, said the businessman. I think we met at that bar that’s way up on top of that building with all the flags. What’s it called?

  I don’t know, said the man. I don’t believe we met. Something made him raise his hand and touch his chest, feeling for the pen inside his coat pocket. It was there.

  The businessman laughed. How terribly humbling, he said. Apparently I didn’t make much of an impression on you. Well, in any case, please sit down.

  I’ve got to get back up to my room, the man said. My wife is ill.

  I’m sure she’s sleeping. Sit, please, for a just a moment. There’s something I’d like to ask you.

  I’m sorry. It’s late. I really should get back to my wife.

  Oh, let sleeping wives lie. Like dogs, you know. Or would you rather we went up to my room? Would you feel less jumpy there?

  Listen, said the man. You’ve really mistaken me for someone else. This is ridiculous. Good night.

  Excuse me, but I’m not ridiculous.

  I didn’t mean you. I meant this, this situation. This misunderstanding between us.

  You think it’s ridiculous?

  Yes. I’m sorry, but it seems that way to me. I’m tired.

  It’s a shame you think that way. I was only trying to help. You looked as if you needed a friend.

  I don’t need a friend. I need to get back upstairs to my wife.

  Oh, I get it, said the businessman. You’re on the DL.

  The what?

  The down low. Don’t worry. My middle name is discretion.

  I don’t know what you’re talking about, said the man. Please excuse me.

  Ha! said the businessman. I remember now. You were good. Very, very fine. We enjoyed each other, didn’t we?

  I’m sorry, but you’ve mistaken me for someone else.

  Yes, said the businessman. I’ve mistaken you for your real self. A nice hot fuck. But I get it, baby. Go play house with wifey. We’ll catch up later.

  The man entered the dark room quietly and carefully so as not to wake his wife. He intuited his way through the darkness into the bathroom, where he undressed, without turning on the light. He walked to the far side of the bed and slunk silently beneath the covers. He lay still for a moment, trying to forget everything that crowded and clung to him, wanting only to fall into the gorgeous annihilating embrace of sleep, but at the periphery of himself he felt a void, not a chill but a lack of warmth, and he reached out his hand across the sheet to touch his wife but touched nothing.

  He turned on the little lamp beside the bed and saw that he was alone. The bedclothes on the side of the bed the woman had been sleeping on were neatly turned back, as if they had been carefully readied for a sleeper, rather than disgorged one. He looked about the room but she was not in it. Could she have been in the dark bathroom? He got out of bed and opened the door and felt the wall for the switch and once again found nothing, and then saw the string hanging from the neon tube coiled at the center of the ceiling, and pulled it. The suddenly bright and alarmingly pink bathroom did not contain his wife.

  The elevator did not respond to the call of the button no matter how often or determinedly the man pushed it. It hung sullenly at the bottom of the caged shaft five floors below, as if it, too, were exhausted and had had enough for the day. The man began to walk down the winding staircase. Perhaps the electricity had gone off, for the hotel seemed completely dark and silent. But as he approached the ground floor he saw the glow of lights reaching up the stairway and could hear someone crying. He knew it was his wife.

  She was sitting in one of the club chairs, bent forward, her face cradled in her hands, weeping. Four identical chairs surrounded the little low table at their center, and in the chair directly across from his wife sat Livia Pinheiro-Rima. She was sunk back comfortably into the chair, a bare arm elegantly displayed on each armrest, her legs crossed so that one foot hung in the air, dangling a little velvet slipper. It was a discordant picture: his wife leaning forward, weeping, and Livia Pinheiro-Rima almost reclining, dangling her shoe.

  Livia Pinheiro-Rima saw him first, as her chair was facing the stairway. She motioned for him to stop where he was, at the bottom of the stairs, and rose up from her chair and came toward him. The woman took no notice of either his arrival or her companion’s departure, and continued weeping.

  Livia Pinheiro-Rima gave him a tight smile as she approached and put her finger to her lips, although he had made no attempt to speak.

  We’re very upset, she said. Hysterical, perhaps. Certainly terribly overwrought. We woke up and couldn’t find you. Ran out into the cold in nothing but our skivvies. Lost . . . I went out after her and brought her inside. She won’t stop weeping.

  Thank you, the man said.

  Can she have a brandy or a schnapps or something? It might calm her. I’ve tried to give her some but she won’t take it. I’d let her just cry it out but she seems very weak. I’m afraid she may injure herself.

  She doesn’t drink, the man said. She can’t have alcohol.

  Well, you must stop her crying somehow. I’d slap her if I thought she could stand it.

  Oh no, said the man. I shouldn’t have left her alone.

  Apparently not, said Livia Pinheiro-Rima.

  The man walked across the lobby and knelt beside his wife. He reached out and tried to hold her, but she shrugged his arms off her without even looking at him.

  Darling, he said. It’s me. Everything’s okay. I’m here. You aren’t alone. Please stop crying.

  He touched her lightly on her shoulder. She was wearing a full-length fur coat over her silk underwear. He assumed it belonged to Livia Pinheiro-Rima. She did not shirk from his touch, but he wasn’t sure she could feel it through the thick glossy pelt. He gently petted the fur. It felt marvelous. The coat seemed more vital and alive than its inhabitant. He placed his other hand on her forehead and stroked her messy damp hair off her face. Her ponytail had come lose and strands of her hair were pasted to her moist skin. She jerked her head, displacing his hand, but when he returned it and repeated the gesture she did not respond. She continued sobbing.

  Ssssshhhhhhh, darling, he said. Please stop crying. Just stop. Everything is okay now.

  He looked over to see that Livia Pinheiro-Rima had returned to her facing seat. She leaned forward and reached into her little sequined bag that lay on the table and pulled out her cigarette case. Might a cigarette calm her? she asked.

  The man shook his head no.

  How about you?

  No, thank you, he said.

  Livia Pinheiro-Rima shrugged and lit a cigarette for herself. She exhaled and then leaned back into her chair and watched the man try to comfort his wife. I still think a schnookerful of schnapps would do her a world of good.

  The man was unnerved by the almost amused way that Livia Pinheiro-Rima observed them and saw an opportunity to send her away. Perhaps you’re right, he said. Is the bar still open? Could you get her one?

  The bar is always open, said Livia Pinheiro-Rima. She stood up and leaned over the table so that her face was level with the woman’s, balancing herself on her arms. I’m going to get you a schnapps, she said, enunciating each word as if she were speaking to an imbecile. So stop your crying. As she stood she lost her balance and teetered a moment, and then steadied herself by leaning forward over the table again. She looked past the man, into the far distance, and softly belched. The man realized, for the first time, how very drunk she must be.

  After a moment she stood up again, and when her tall body was unwaveringly perpendicular she patted her hair and set off toward the bar.

  She’s gone, the man whispered to his wife, as if it were the presence of Livia Pin
heiro-Rima that had upset her. He leaned closer and kissed the tip of her ear, which a part in her hair revealed. I’m sorry, he whispered into it. Please stop crying. He gently pushed her back into the chair and removed her hands from her face. He looked around for something to wipe her tear-stained face with but found nothing, so used his own hands. The touch of his hands on her face seemed to calm her. She laid her own hands on top of his so that they were both holding her face, and she closed her eyes and rocked herself back and forth and trembled with hiccupping breaths. After a moment she was still and quiet. She removed her hands from his and he lowered his, in a way that seemed choreographed and ritualistic, like the unmasking of the blind.

  She looked straight ahead, at the empty chair were Livia Pinheiro-Rima had sat.

  I woke up, she said, and I didn’t know where I was. You weren’t there. I was all alone. I thought I was dead.

  You’re fine, he said. I’m here. I had just come down to the—

  No, she said. Listen. For a moment she said nothing. She continued to stare straight ahead. I wasn’t alone, she finally said. There was someone in the room with me. She came out of the closet and stood by the bed. I could see her. She just stood there, looking at me. And when I spoke to her, she disappeared.

  You were dreaming, he said. It was only a bad dream.

  You don’t understand, she said. I saw her. And I saw her disappear.

  We’ve had a terrible journey, he said. You’re exhausted. Tomorrow we’ll go to the orphanage and something new will begin. And you can forget all this.

  I want to go now, she said.

  Where?

  To the orphanage! she said. I need to go now. I’ve got to see the baby now.

  It’s the middle of the night, he said. There’s no way to get there. We’ll go in the morning. Let’s go back to bed.

  She stood up and looked wildly around the lobby, as if a sign with directions to the orphanage might be posted somewhere. I’m going now, she said. I won’t go back to that room. You’re always—you never—you always abjure. You hesitate! You’re never, never impetuous!

  The beaded curtains made a shivering sound as Livia Pinheiro-Rima passed through them. With both hands she carried a small silver salver on which sat three little glasses of schnapps. She walked toward them very slowly, her head lowered, watching the silver coin of schnapps jiggle in each glass. There was something ceremonial about her approach, something that could be witnessed but not interrupted, and so both the man and the woman stood silently and watched her cross the lobby.

  She set the tray down on the exact center of the table and one by one positioned the glasses at the hours of three, six, and twelve. There, she said. Not a single drop spilt. She sat down in the chair she had vacated and lifted one of the glasses off the table. Sit down, she said to them both.

  We’re very tired, said the man. We’re going to bed.

  No! said the woman.

  The man realized that her energy, her fury, had reached its peak and was subsiding. He sensed that Livia Pinheiro-Rima realized this too and looked at her. She had once again leaned back into the chair and was dangling her slipper, but now she held the glass of schnapps in her hand about a foot in front her, her naked arm curved, as if she were in an advertisement for that good, high life we all seek.

  You’ve stopped crying, Livia Pinheiro-Rima said to the woman. Good for you.

  I want to go to the orphanage, the woman said.

  In the morning, said the man. Now we are going to bed.

  I am going to the orphanage now, she said, but she just stood there, defeated, exhausted.

  Livia Pinheiro-Rima sat with her little glass of schnapps still raised before her. She had not drunk from it, and her manner indicated she would not until the hysterical woman had resumed her seat. Sit down, she said again.

  Sit, said the man, and gently pushed his wife down onto her chair. He sat in the one beside her and picked up the little glass before him. His wife sat but did not touch or acknowledge her glass of schnapps. She wore a vacant, defeated look. It was a look the man had seen on her face once before, many years ago, when they were first married and had invited some of her friends and some of his friends to a dinner party, their first dinner party in their new apartment, and it had not gone well, in fact it had gone horribly wrong: it was a miserably hot summer night and they had no air-conditioning, the food was badly cooked, and the guests—her friends and his friends—immediately assumed some weird hostility, and said unfortunate things to one another, and as the dinner progressed it became more and more palpably disagreeable, and the man had looked up from the table after the plates from the main course—a whole fish exotically baked in salt that was almost inedible—had been cleared to see his wife standing in the kitchen, gently tossing the salad, in a huge olive-wood bowl, a wedding present from her Italian grandmother, stoically lifting and turning the mess of leaves over and over again, and she had worn then a similarly stricken expression, as if she were tossing salad at the end of the world.

  I think we should drink to miracles, said Livia Pinheiro-Rima. They happen. They have happened to me. She raised her glass a little higher in the air.

  The man picked up his glass and held it out. The woman continued to stare vacantly in front of her. She was somewhere else, he could tell. She was gone.

  Yes, he said, to miracles. He touched his glass to Livia Pinheiro-Rima’s and then swallowed the schnapps. Then he put his glass down on the silver tray and moved the woman’s glass beside it. Livia Pinheiro-Rima still held her glass in the air.

  We are going to bed now, said the man. You have been very kind to us both. Thank you.

  He stood and helped his wife stand. He reached behind and lifted the fur coat off her shoulders, and she let herself be slid out of it. It was the heaviest coat he had ever encountered, so heavy that it seemed to surpass the category of coat. This is yours, I assume, he said to Livia Pinheiro-Rima. He carefully laid it across the seat.

  The woman held her arms across her chest and shivered.

  As much as it is anyone’s it is mine, said Livia Pinheiro-Rima. She put her glass of schnapps down on the table and reclined back into the hollow of her chair. How sad everything is, finally.

  Sad? asked the man.

  Yes: sad. Everyone goes to bed eventually, don’t they? It’s what happens at night. People disappear. Or they’re not even there in the first place. Life is so wicked. So cruel. And not only the weather. Not even the weather. She was looking not at them, but at some point past them, high above them, in the dim upper netherworld of the lobby.

  The man did not know what to say. He was sure that the most necessary thing he had to do was to take his wife upstairs and put her in bed, and get in bed beside her, and hold her until they were both warm and asleep and continue holding her while they slept.

  Livia Pinheiro-Rima sat forward, reached out, and stroked the fur coat.

  This is bear, you know, she said. Russian bear. Oh God, how I love this coat! I bought it off a White Russian in Trieste in 1938. She wept when she was parted with it. It had been her mother’s, and maybe her mother’s mother’s. God only knows how old it is. Fur lasts, if you take care of it. Your own skin doesn’t, but fur does. I gave her twice what she asked for it, but it was still a crime. If I could find her, I’d give it back to her. The poor dear dead thing. Not the bear, the White Russian. The bear too, I suppose. But you can’t give back to the dead, can you?

  Good night, said the man.

  Livia Pinheiro-Rima ignored him. She fell down out of her chair, onto her knees, and collapsed forward, weeping, on top of the coat.

  He picked up his wife and carried her through the lobby, toward the elevator, but he could not see how he could open the gate and fit himself inside it, holding his wife, and operate it—all this assuming it worked—so he carried her up the five flights of stairs and into their room, which was once again freezing. He laid her gently in the bed and covered her with the sheets and blankets and the gold qu
ilt and then went and crouched beside the radiator and twisted it open, allowing the heat to once again hiss into the room, and then he undressed and got in bed and turned out the lamp and held his wife close to him and eventually she stopped shivering and grew warm and fell asleep and still he held her, he did not let her go.

  TWO

  When the woman woke up in the morning she felt rested and calm, as if a storm had passed. She heard her husband gently snoring in the darkness. She turned on the bedside lamp and saw that he was sleeping, cocooned, the gold coverlet pulled up over his head. She watched him for a moment and then carefully slipped out of the bed.

  In the bathroom she dressed in the clothes she had taken off the night before—because they needed to bring so many things for the baby, they had themselves packed lightly. When she emerged from the bathroom her husband was still sleeping. It was a few minutes before six o’clock and though she wanted to, she did not wake him. Now that they were here she wanted to get to the orphanage as soon as possible. How could they not? How could they wait? How could he sleep?

  It was warm in the room. She lifted one of the heavy drapes away from a window but there was nothing to see: just her strange face peering back at her from the darkness. She dragged a chair across the awful carpet close to the bed so that the glow from the bedside light pooled on it, then sat in the chair and began reading The Dark Forest.

  As a bookmark she had been using a photograph they had been sent of their child. In it he appeared to be quite beautiful, almost angelic, but the woman was skeptical, because it appeared to be a rather old photograph, like the ones found in photograph albums, the thick paper curling and a bit yellowed around the scalloped edges. Perhaps it was a photograph they sent to all adopting parents as a sort of lure, and their baby would look nothing like the one in the photograph. She had unwisely mentioned this possibility to her husband, who had told her she was crazy. You always expect the worst possible thing to happen, he had said. Yes, he was right about that, but how could she not? And that did not mean she was crazy. It meant she was wise.