The Path Of All That Falls

by Franz Neumann

  “Have you ever been to Bulgaria?”

  “No. Have you?”

  “No,” Chase said.

  The Roman road gave way to a dirt path that wove between growths of broom, thick with yellow flowers. The air was heavy and sweet, making the climb seem steeper. The two of them stopped in the middle of the path to catch their breath and take in the fragrance. The air was warm. A white cat crossed their path and disappeared.

  Chase wondered what to do with the contentment he felt, of the words that might be exchanged, of the evening ahead, of the face that he could not remember and, turning to look at Jade, could. What was he to do with all of this when there was Wrest and Regi to think about, when there was the crime, when there was the loss that had, however incidentally, brought her here? He had felt himself falling in love before, but falling in love with a woman and knowing she had a house near a beach far from everything else in his life—this felt twice as good. His only unease was not knowing whether it was Jade who was making him smile, or the chance change, with new currency, new vistas. He knew there was a bit of the honest and a bit of the devious combined in his attraction, but he hoped Jade proved such a fantastic woman that both his good and base instincts could lie together like lion and lamb.

  The top of the hill stretched away from the town in a dry pine expanse of empty park. They followed the top edge of the hill, walking through ruins of Roman buildings, arches, steps, walls enveloped by weed. Emerging at a vista point under the gaze of a statue of the Virgin Mary, they were rewarded with a clear view of the opera within the Théatre Antique. From the overlook, Chase could see not only the whole stage, but nearly the entire audience. He sat down against the trunk of a tree and Jade sat down in front of him and leaned her back against him. Through the strands of her hair, Chase could see the opera singers on the stage. He liked the smell of Jade’s hair. She leaned her head back and he kissed her through an entire aria. He had worked his hands inside her sweater and held her breasts when he noticed silhouettes approaching them through the brush. Military police.

  “The hill’s closed during performances,” said one of them. He had a flashlight and waved it across their faces.

  Jade asked for a translation and Chase gave it as they stood up. The policeman shined his flashlight at the ground and waved it into the distance, lighting the path he wanted them to take.

  “We only want to watch it for a little while,” Chase said. “And she’d like to stay,” he said, placing a hand on Jade’s shoulder.

  “If I let you, I’d have to let everybody,” he said. Chase almost expected dozens of couples to emerge from the darkness, hands in each others pockets, sweaters askew, yearning. “Sorry.”

  The two military policeman escorted them from the overview. They both wore pistols on their belts, and the one who hadn’t spoken donned headphones from which Chase could hear the thump-thump of music.

  “Fascists,” Chase whispered, and led a Jade down into the utter darkness, her hand in his. She thought the situation was funny and laughed as they stumbled down the path. Only when Chase smelled the flowers on the growth of broom did he fully know where they were. It was rather ludicrous to be kicked out of watching Don Giovanni and sent downhill in the dark. Was it to keep them from a free show, or had previous years been marred by stone-throwing incidents? Dangerous anti-Mozart factions, perhaps? He told her this and she laughed again. He had thought the hill would be the perfect place, watching the opera, the orchestra, the crowd, alone with Jade in so much darkness. There was only a few feet of fragrance left. He stopped and reached to find her face. He felt her lips and the warm stream of her breath.

  “Wait,” she said.

  He heard a noise and saw the familiar silhouette of a military policeman, a new one, standing on an outcropping above the path. He waved them along with his flashlight.

  “They’re everywhere,” Jade said, laughing. “I’m having a blast.”

  Finally, the dirt beneath their feet gave way to the Roman road. The town lights came back into view.

  “Jade.”

  “Yes?” she asked. She stood in front of him, surveying the rooftops. The city hall’s bell tower was lit like a torch.

  “How did you get that name. You promised to tell me.”

  “My hair. Except my mother was thinking of onyx, not jade. She was out of it, groggy from labor, but the name stuck. What about you?” she asked. “How’d you get yours?”

  “My mother was part Australian,” Chase said. “She worked at the embassy in Paris. She was always having to chase me. I collided with three cars before I was eleven.”

  “Were you hurt?”

  “Yes. No. Nothing that’s stayed with me. We’re the product of our mistakes, right? I had another name, but I’ve always been called Chase.”

  “And now you look both ways when you cross?”

  “Now I look both ways.” Or not at all, he said to himself. He moved to her and kissed her neck.

  The hotel room was cold as winter. Chase managed to find both the light switch and the air conditioner settings without parting from Jade’s lips. The surface of her tongue tasted milk-ish, something from her coffee, while the warm underside was faintly spicy, like cumin.

  He broke away from her to open the window, letting in the warm night air. Below, in the dark, he could see the narrow Meyne river running light and fast past the hotel. Chase could still hear the opera, even from such a distance. Below him, at the dank sports bar across the narrow street, he could see an empty table and chair and the two Dobermans lying just inside on the tile floor, wearing coats darker than shadow.

  The hotel room lights went out.

  “Come here,” Jade said, moving from the light switch to the edge of the bed.

  He grinned in the foolish way he grinned at women who would soon be naked. Her short black hair was so dark he only saw her face. He stood beside her as they undid each other’s clothing. She, his shirt, his belt, sliding his pants and underwear down past his knees. He pulled her sweater over her head and arms. She undid her blouse and bra. He cupped his hands on the sweaty undersides of the breasts he had held but not yet seen. Her nipples were dark. But as he moved down to kiss them, he felt the wrong kind of pressure inside him and he broke away wearing a weak grin, hating that of all things he should now feel competition from his bladder. He shuffled absurdly toward the bathroom, cursing internally at how all the evening’s drinks were playing master.

  “I’ll be back in a moment,” he said.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she said. He moved backwards so he could see everything, the clothes on the floor, her face, the breasts she covered with one hand as she undid, with the other, the buttons running down the side of her short skirt. Even the shape of her shoulder blade made it difficult for him to turn around and close the bathroom door behind him.

  He looked at the fool in the mirror. At one end, no clothes on save black shoes half-covered by bunched up slacks; at the other, badly combed hair. And between the two, half-hard desire which he took in hand and waited to subside. Eventually his bladder realized it was being given permission and he stood there peeing for what seemed an eternity. He heard the clink of glass from the other room. Things were quite different now compared to the last time he’d heard the sound of glass from the other side of a door. After his dream, just hours old, Chase felt nights alone would now be unbearable.

  He knew what it was he was feeling because he had never really felt such a thing before. It was the feeling that made him want to possess his dream, the things in it which he felt he couldn’t live without, now. Companionship, a child. It excited him to think he had begun to think of these mature petals of love.

  As the toilet flushed, Chase untied his laces and removed his shoes and slacks. He turned out the light and opened the bathroom door. Jade had turned on a dim desk lamp and in the light he could see her grinning.

  “Take off those socks,” she said.

  He stiffened as he reached down and obliged
her, and he moved quickly to sit beside her under the covers of the bed. She held a plastic cup quarter-filled with wine, its edge wet from her drinking. She took a large swallow and left enough in her cup for one more. “Here,” she said.

  “Thank you.” He took the cup and sipped the wine, swirling it in his mouth. He’d never tried this wine. He reached for the bottle on the nightstand closest to him.

  “Different,” he said, examining a label showing a tangle of branches sprouting leaves that appeared shiny and hard, like they had budded from thorns. “Where did you buy this?”

  “It’s yours. The bottle you had sitting there.”

  On the stand, a hotel room corkscrew lay speared with the cork. At the edge of the stand lay a folded piece of paper. Chase opened it. I found a couple of these at Wrest’s farmhouse. Lucky! Now we just need to test them. I’ll be in the neighborhood for a few days. —Bombay.

  With horror, Chase recalled the label, an endless row of them in the kitchen of Regi’s former apartment. Chase dropped the bottle onto the covers and rushed to the bathroom, spitting into the sink until his tongue clung to the roof of his mouth from dryness. He paced back to the bed, his tongue searching out the faintest narcotic trace from the small sip he’d been studying. He couldn’t taste anything suspect, but he had only tried a little and was too afraid, now, to let his tongue test the remainder in the cup. He took in the sight of the bed and the wine he’d spilled. The sheets were stained and Jade followed his gaze. He could detect nothing on her face but complete puzzlement.

  “How do you feel?” he asked. “Tell me, do you feel anything?”

  “Well, I’m hoping it’s the wine you don’t like, not me,” she said. “Look, I’ve never made love to a Frenchman. I don’t know if I should expect something different.”

  Chase laughed, unexpectedly, nervously. She was fine. “I’ve never made love to a Frenchman, either,” he said. She laughed. Looking at her, his fear lost its insistence. He wondered what to do, whether he should make her ingest milk, coffee, whether he should perhaps call a doctor. Or do nothing at all.

  “Come here, then,” she said.

  Perhaps this was just a plain bottle of wine, he told himself. An example of the same vineyard’s vintage. He began to believe this more and more as he watched her walk toward him, her breasts bared, her hands on his thighs, her mouth teasing him back into the bed again with a quick kiss on his penis. He sighed with relief as he lay beside her, jumping slightly as he felt the sudden touch of the wet sheets upon his back.

  “‘I’ve never made love to a Frenchman,’” she repeated, smiling. “I like you. You’ve got a sense of humor. You’re funny.”

  “Funny.”

  “Ha-ha funny.”

  “What’s that?”

  “An expression.” She kissed his chest.

  He ran his hand under the covers, down her arm, traced over her breasts, down to where he could feel her underwear and, through it, the dry weave of hair teased with moisture. He held her stomach and felt relieved that she was unaffected. He couldn’t imagine what he would have done had the wine been laced, if the woman who he was beginning to think he was in love with—was sure it was only her he needed to convince now—had been harmed by dissolved cocaine. He would never have forgiven himself.

  Chase moved the covers aside and grabbed the lip of her underwear in his teeth and pulled it to her ankles, and off, smelling her on the way down. She had perfumed her pubic hair with the fragrance of rose, her thighs smelled smooth and even, like soap, and her feet, earthy. She had stopped smiling and stared at him with the seriousness that he loved to evoke in women, a stillness before motion. He moved to kiss her, but she pushed him onto his back and climbed on top of him, putting herself above him, dry becoming half-dry, then wet, wet, wet. He tried to think of other things, then concentrated only on her and forgot the moment of stillness before. The room no longer felt cool, but warm, fragrant, humid. There was applause from the amphitheater and they both heard it and smiled at each other and moved more quickly.

  The emotion of the dream returned to him yet again, changing even his sense of the act. For the first time in his life, this act was not the least bit colored by even a fleeting thought of prevention or protection. It was about fertility, it was about change. About loving someone enough to start a life with, a life where even the inconceivable, children, had a right to be conceived. He wondered if this was perhaps fatherhood—not when the child emerges, but when the possibility of such a picture emerges in a man’s mind.

  She drew close, breathing heavily, her sighs loud and with such an exuberance of pleasure that he held back, waited for her, just so he could continue listening. She placed her hands on his chest and leaned upwards and he watched her face change from a constancy of pleasure to a sudden loosening as she climaxed. Unlike her sighs, she came completely in silence, her lips forming the sounds that seemed choked in her throat. He watched her as he continued, his hips grinding into her, her mouth opening with the slack of exhaustion, her face gripped by a kind of new pleasure that seemed nearly painful. As he came, wonderfully, her hands fell outward from his chest to the sheets. She collapsed the weight of herself onto him, and he hugged her and felt more content than he had in years. Then he felt a sudden heat douse his shoulder and chest.

  He rolled her on her side as he eased from beneath her. Her face, the sheets, his shoulder were caked wetly in a pungent froth. She had a look of fear in her eyes, like her spirit had gone someplace horrible and far away, and was back now, with terrible knowledge. He felt as he once had at the scene of a bad accident: shaky, out-of-body, life abruptly robbed without the promise of a return to normalcy. He had grown tougher over the years he’d worked at the paper, but base fear returned, fear for the horrible mistake he had made.

  “Oh my God,” Jade said. She closed her eyes. She said it again, but only her lips moved. Slowly, she sat up and heaved herself from the bed in the direction of the bathroom. “I’m so sorry.”

  Chase placed his arm around her, even as his own strength seemed to leave him, helping little. His own heart pounded more heavily than he could ever remember. She collapsed downward to the floor from his grasp and he went down with her as she vomited again, onto the carpet.

  “Good,” he said, though it sounded so wrong. “More. All you can. All you can.”

  But she did not seem to hear him, even when she had finished. She was not a grown woman but a feverish child, curled tightly in a fetal position, her breasts hidden beneath her arms, her forehead glistening with sweat. Her eyes darted beneath her eyelids like insects.

  Quickly, Chase wiped her clean with a bathroom towel, her face passive to his touch, her lips offering no resistance to the passage of the towel over them. He felt doomed by uncertainty, betrayed by misfortune. The room spun slightly. He opened the door to the hallway and ran toward the stairwell.

  “Call an ambulance!” he shouted. “An ambulance!”

  Two old women passing his room stared and backed closer to the wall. They paused as they caught a glimpse inside.

  “What did you do?” asked one, more to her companion than to Chase.

  “Nothing,” he said. His voice winced.

  “Is she okay?”

  “I don’t know,” Chase said, rushing back into the room. “Poison,” was all he could say to them. Though nothing in the room had changed, seeing Jade there on the floor at the foot of the bed made him curse himself for not having acted when he’d first found her drinking the wine.

  “You need an ambulance,” the other woman said. They had not entered the room.

  “Ambulance!” Chase shouted. He heard the two women run softly down the hall, heard them echo his call in their more timid voices.

  “Monsieur! Ambulance! Ambulance!” they said.

  Chase knelt beside Jade, placed his ear to her mouth and felt a faint, lukewarm air emerge. Her skin was rough with goose bumps. He wanted to clothe her and looked at their clothes, strewn everywhere. Impossible di
stances. He reached for the bed covers with his free hand and dragged the sheets to the floor. He tried his best to cover her without moving her body from where he’d gathered it against his own. One of her feet stuck out like pale marble where he’d failed to cover her. He could imagine what the medics would say when they entered the room, picturing them staring at her foot and giving up all hope. He felt he would lose her if one toe remained exposed. The room began to spin.

  He tried again, throwing the weightless white sheet against the draft from the window’s square of darkness. He heard the shriek of swallows, the barking of shadows below. He tried again.

  Chapter 18

  Chase grit his teeth to keep them from rattling. He stood in the hotel shower letting the coldest water he’d ever felt freeze him. His back was already numb to the flagellation of the frigid water. A woman at the front desk had warned him about the temperature when he entered the hotel from the hospital. Sometime in the night, the hot water boiler had burst, flooding the hotel basement.

  Chase had left Gaudin and Bianca at the hospital, where Jade was recuperating. Her stomach had been pumped, but not until this morning had she begun to seem a trace of herself again. He’d wanted to lie on the hospital bed beside her, beg her forgiveness, but Gaudin and Bianca were in the room and seemed intent on remaining there until Jade’s release the next day.

  The night had seemed interminable. The ordeal of watching Jade, wondering if he would lose her, then the hours in the hospital waiting for word, Gaudin and Bianca arriving, their accusations, the police appearing that morning to question him and accompany him back to the hotel room to give them the remains of the wine for testing. And there, seeing the mess on the hotel floor, the clothes, the wreck of all that he’d hoped would go so well, he cried. When the police left, he stepped into the shower. He was so cold now, he could not remember how long ago that was. Part of him wanted the water to be even colder, to turn gritty with ice.