The Mars Room

by Rachel Kushner

  We swooped left and right up and around hairpin turns. He drank from his soda. Belched.

  “I got a lot of plans. I want to get into real estate. You know what they say?”

  He was waiting for me to answer.

  “No.”

  “If you can flip an ounce, you can flip a house. That’s pretty cool, right? Just ’cause no one’s hiring, doesn’t mean you can’t find a hustle. You got to know what opportunity looks like. Have you seen those posters, We Buy Ugly Houses Dot Com? Those guys are raking in bank, turning a bad situation to their advantage, right? Here’s another one: a man who thinks outside the box, stays outside the box. That’s deep.

  “And: tell me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are. I don’t fraternize with losers. I’m on the program. Hey, I got to take a leak.”

  He slowed to a stop on the shoulder, put the car in park. He did not step out. The motor was running. He stared at me.

  “You like to party?”

  “No.”

  “You might party with me, though.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You asked me for a ride and all.”

  “Because I needed one.”

  “Well then, we can make it win-win.”

  “You take me up to the mountains, and we’ll see what happens.”

  “All right then. That’s cool. Okay.” He got out, walked to the road’s edge, and unzipped his fly. He had finished about half his gallon-sized Thirst Destroyer.

  I slid into the driver’s seat while he pissed into the underbrush. I put his truck in gear and drove.

  31

  One night Kurt Kennedy followed Vanessa as she left the Mars Room. He wasn’t any kind of creep. He was just so attached to this girl that he needed to be sure she was getting home safe. He watched as she got in a Luxor cab, and he followed that Luxor cab, on his motorcycle, to a residential hotel on Taylor Street. It was on the upper edge of the Tenderloin, at Nob Hill, the Tenderknob, a skeezier building than he would have pictured but it was where she lived. He watched her go in that night. And some other nights. A lot of other nights.

  There were times she went to some scumbag’s house, an apartment in North Beach, instead of her own. Guy seemed a likely homosexual from Kurt’s point of view, and she didn’t go over there often enough for things to be serious.

  He felt it was his job to watch out for her. It was a responsibility. He parked near her building some mornings, around the corner, on O’Farrell, with a good view of the entrance. Sometimes all day Sundays, since the Mars Room was closed. If she came out, he put his face shield down, circled on his bike, and was able to follow if she got on the Geary Street bus. Or if she got in a Luxor cab. Why did she only ride in Luxor cabs? He was worried the driver was another boyfriend or some guy trying to get in her pants, but he confirmed, through this work he was doing, that they were random, different drivers.

  If she walked someplace instead of taking a cab, he circled, and kept up by going slow. Sometimes she emerged from the building with a little boy. Holding his hand. Isn’t that sweet. Like a mom, except he was sure she wasn’t the boy’s mother. It didn’t fit. Maybe the kid lived in the building. Once, she was with the kid and another woman and two other kids; Kurt thought it was a good bet all three kids were the other woman’s, it explained things. It bothered him that aspects of Vanessa’s life were walled off from him, even as he trailed her and knew exactly what she did, where she went, on a given day. As long as he could watch her leave the building, see where she was going, and know when she returned, he had not entirely lost the thread.

  Keeping the line there, keeping track, staying focused on her, that was what he did, and wanted.

  At first she had no idea. It was cleaner then. Those were the early days. But he encountered a period of time where she didn’t show up to the Mars Room, so he naturally wanted to talk to her. Was that so bad? It seemed like a small thing to him. He just wanted to say hello. He could not see her at the Mars Room, so he orbited closer to her home. Found her nearby. She acted like he was doing something illegal by shopping in her shitty little corner market. A store is public. Anyone can go to a store.

  After she saw him in the store and got huffy and left, when she was finally back at work and he did his whistle thing in the Mars Room, his pssst, to get her to come sit, she ignored him, went down the aisle of the theater and sat with some other guy. Every day, same thing. No company. His money was suddenly not good enough. He kept showing up, kept trying. Waiting by the stage for her to dance.

  Boy did he miss her. He really missed her. He tried to tell her. All he could do was keep trying. He sat with Angelique, gave her sweaty dollar bills, not even fives.

  * * *

  The way he got Vanessa’s number was by going through her trash, which was in an open dumpster next to the building. It was on the sidewalk, basically public. He’d seen her put a sack in that dumpster. He took the whole sack home, bungeed it to the bike. Sorted, and felt purposeful and happy. Her discarded utility bills were in there. He knew her name now, too, but he didn’t think of her by it. He felt it was a commitment she’d made, to him, or to somebody, a bigger thing, that she’d said, “I’m Vanessa.” He was sticking with it. It was an agreement and he wasn’t going to let her just back out of it like it was nothing.

  The phone number was printed on the top of the telephone bill. He called it. She answered. He hung up. What choice did he have? If he said, “It’s Kurt,” she’d hang up on him. He knew this because when she saw him outside the Mars Room, or outside her building, or near her building, in her store, anywhere that he found a way to stage a manner of running into her, she ignored him. So when he called, he had only a moment to hear her voice, and then he hung up before she did, or would. He called, she answered, he hung up. He called, she answered, he hung up.

  Sometimes, on a tough day, a day of boredom and excruciating knee pain and a feeling like the world he knew, lived in, was scratch paper some god had crumpled and tossed toward a wastebasket, crumpled, tossed, and missed, he was helpless not to call. He called twenty, thirty times, before she disconnected the phone, he guessed, pulled the little plastic thing from the box on the baseboard, and it rang and rang but was not ringing any longer inside her apartment. At which point, he had no choice but to go over there and park and wait for her to come out. He knew from process serving that it took vigilance to track someone down. He had done it plenty of times. People could not fool Kurt. He was a professional, even if he could no longer work.

  He was more or less on twenty-four-hour surveillance when this trip he’d planned to Cancún came up. Cheap package thing he’d booked months earlier, before he met Vanessa. He used to like to travel, and it was sad how reluctant he was to go. But he figured it would be good to get a break from thinking about her. He would not get the money back if he postponed his trip. He’d prepaid so he had to go. He didn’t really get a break. He thought about her every moment he was in Cancún, trying not to think about her.

  * * *

  Since she wasn’t at the Mars Room after his return, he had to go to her building.

  At first, he waited out front. But then he went in. There was a booth at the entrance, an old man in it with greasy gray hair that looked yellowish.

  “Five dollars,” the man said.

  What?

  “Five bucks to go up,” the old man shouted at Kurt, as if that clarified. It was a racket. A building where drug dealers lived, and management wanted a cut. The old man snatched Kurt’s five. His hands had long fingernails that looked burnt at the tips, like melted plastic.

  People were on the second-floor landing and there was no other word for it: they were milling. Acting shifty, talking in low voices, doors opening and closing. Kurt tried to be casual. Said he was looking for a friend of his.

  White girl, huh? You looking for her? Door eight, my man.

  Door eight.

  Two guys on the landing started arguing. A woman emerged from another r
oom and yelled at one of the men. Kurt knocked on number eight while these people shouted. There was no answer.

  Three days, he staked out her building. She did not come or go so far as he knew.

  He went to all the usual places. The deli where he’d seen her get sandwiches on break from the Mars Room. The corner market near her flophouse building.

  One day he recognized one of the guys from the landing outside, on Taylor, leaning between two cars, selling or buying drugs or whatever he was doing, and the guy said to Kurt, “Your girl moved out.”

  He went into the building to speak to the greasy old doorman. Explained he was looking for someone, a tenant.

  “Tenants move in and out all the time. Practically every day.”

  This girl lived here for a while, Kurt explained. Brown hair. Pretty girl. Nice legs. Nice everything. Know what I mean?

  The old guy shook his head. Just no. No to every question you are planning to ask.

  “I’m an investigator,” Kurt said obliquely, thinking he’d pretend he was a cop. He’d done it plenty of times, in order to serve papers. It didn’t work.

  “Get a warrant, asshole, then you can look at the rent roll.”

  * * *

  His knee operation had failed and he was going to have to get another. He was in pain all the time and had settled into a new routine of breakfast beer and six-hour naps. When he could, he went over to the Mars Room and hobbled in with the cane he was now forced to use, but she was not there. Angelique told him she had definitely stopped working there, but he suspected Angelique pretended to have information so she could bilk money from Kurt.

  * * *

  And then it was suddenly Easter, for no reason. He went to the Mars Room and won the Easter egg hunt.

  The doorman, big bearded guy, said, “You’re looking for Vanessa, right? She left a message for you, said to give you her address.”

  She had moved to Los Angeles. Why did the guy give him her address? He did and didn’t believe that Vanessa wanted him to have it. The doorman had a shit-eating grin. Kurt didn’t see what was funny. He didn’t know if the guy was bullshitting him, or if this was for real, but he had to investigate. He went home, packed a couple things, got on his bike and rode all the way to Los Angeles, stopping only for gas, power bars, and Red Bull to wash down his medication.

  * * *

  By the time he arrived at the address, his cycle fairing was green with insect guts. The knuckles of his gloves, too. He was in terrific pain. His knee felt like a thing made of brittle plaster that someone had been repeatedly bashing with a ball-peen hammer. It made a crunching noise when he walked. He’d had to use that leg to shift gears all the way down the 5. He wasn’t supposed to be riding at all. He was not supposed to be up and around, not even walking. When he did walk, he had to use two canes, one in each hand.

  He found her house and parked. Made it up the three stairs with a lot of effort, and knocked. No one answered. He could have guessed that no one was home. It was a duplex with a glass door and he could see into the place. It had an unoccupied look. It was late afternoon, and hot. There was a porch. It was in the shade, and it had a chair. He sat down in the chair, took two more pain pills. He would rest, and wait for her. He had time. He was not in a hurry.

  * * *

  He woke to voices. It was dark, he’d slept right into night, and he was confused for a minute, forgot where he was.

  There were footsteps on the stairs.

  After all this time, here she was. With that kid, who he had decided long ago was not hers, but someone else’s.

  “Vanessa,” he said.

  His knee was so swollen that if he tried to stand on it he’d fall over. He needed his canes. They had both slipped to the ground, out of reaching distance.

  It was dark on the porch. He could not see her well, but from her voice she sounded mad. She said he had to leave.

  “Vanessa, sweetheart. Vanessa, I just want to talk to you.” He reached out. He missed her so much. He needed so badly to touch her. To feel the heat of her skin. She reared back, hastily unlocked the door. She put the kid inside and came back out.

  All he wanted was to talk to her. He just needed to talk to her. He said that, again.

  “Get out,” she said. “Get the fuck out of here.”

  He could not stand up. He had a hammer-bashed sack of dust where there was supposed to be a knee and he was unable to put weight on it.

  He reached for his cane, the closer one. She went toward it, like she was going to hand him the cane. She picked up something else, looked like a crowbar. It made a heavy clink on the concrete as she lifted the thing, whatever it was. It was too dark for him to see much.

  “I told you to go. To leave me alone.”

  “Hey!”

  She had whacked him with it. She did it again.

  Checkers, he saw. A black and white pattern. Patterns. He heard a loud buzzing in his ears. Pain flooded over his head. The concrete floor of the porch slammed up at him. Blows came again from this heavy iron bar.

  Stop! He screamed. Stop!

  32

  There were no towns, just dense woods I carved into with the truck’s headlights. I was in the high mountains when I reached a crossroads. Locked metal gates blocked both directions. Closed for the winter, the signs said. If I turned around and went back down toward the valley, cops might have the road blocked by now.

  I took the lid off his drink and finished it. The ice cubes hurt my throat as I drank them. I left his truck on the road and walked into the woods.

  The air was colder up here. Cold and dry, thin in my lungs. The moon was out. A half moon and it shed light enough to see the path I was on. I was surrounded by trees. I heard only the soft crumble of pine needles and branches popping underfoot as I walked.

  * * *

  By dawn, fog had settled in. It clung low, a vapor lurking among tree limbs. I had veered off the path. I stepped over logs, edged sideways along a ridge, dipped down and across a hillside, where I came upon a tree whose trunk was the width of about ten trees. Or twelve. Or twenty. It was the size of a small house, with huge gnarled roots, like lions’ paws, that spread out at its base. Thick vertical lines of red bark wrapped up its trunk like strips of velvet. Mist was caught in its branches, which started high above me, halfway up the tree. Most of the tree was limbless bark, and way up there, in what could have been sky, a city of branches. I made my way around the base. On the other side was an opening. This giant tree was hollow inside. There was another giant-sized tree across from it. They had grown here, together.

  I could see other huge trees as the fog lifted and thinned, and a brightness showed through, the forest revealing itself in day. Now that I knew the scale, that such a tree was possible, I spotted other giant trees on this hillside. I had walked right past them, and not known. They had been camouflaging themselves by their hugeness. So many times wider than any other tree. Secrets in plain sight.

  I stepped into the tree’s cavern. It was tall inside, with a roof where the tree closed itself, up above me, out of reach. The inside walls had dripping washes of black sap running downward, shiny and thick. I touched the sap, expecting it to be sticky. It was smooth and cool as glass. There was red sap, too, also glasslike. And yellow sap. Sometimes a redhead is considered a blond. They called him Güero and told me it meant blondie but Jackson’s hair is light brown.

  The floor inside the cave was covered with tiny pinecones. This huge tree made baby cones. I needed water and food. My leg hurt. Maybe I had a fever. I didn’t feel right. They were surely after me. I had left the truck at the split. Walked all night. I lay down and slept.

  * * *

  I woke to a humming. Not far, but close.

  I got up and stepped out of the tree. The humming was louder, but near the trunk, like the tree itself was making this noise. The sun was up, its beams painting the upper part of the tree gold-yellow. The sound was bees. I saw them, like dust motes, floating in and out of the sun’s rays,
which flooded the high branches. They lived up there. Their sound was traveling down the trunk, making everything hum, even the ground.

  From inside the trunk, the bee’s hum was the tree’s hum.

  The tree’s sound was silent, so the bees spoke for it. Their sound was its sound, the one it had me hear.

  I heard another sound, a clip-clip. A family of birds scuttled past on the ground. The little ones poured over a steep embankment like Ping-Pong balls, following the large ones. They ran under a bush and stayed there.

  Both trees had charred areas around their trunks, inside and out, wood burned black and dry, fractured into a geometry of crackles. Probably the trees had been hit by lightning. Whole forest burning up around them, and they had lived on because they lived on. Because they could. Maybe they were a thousand years old. Two thousand years old.

  To the tree, that might not be so long. Just life. Like life to a human is life-length. There were other scales of life. The tree was so tall I could not see up it, only to the baby arms, the small branches that began high, sky-height, tall enough that this tree stretched to another world, or to the end of this one.

  The future lasts forever. Who said that and what did it mean. The tree arrowed upward, to the time when Jackson would be a man, and beyond that, well beyond it. Would have his own child. Die.

  I heard a new noise. A drilling sound, quick, short. Are they here? What are they doing? Then again that sound, a drill. It was a woodpecker doing its lonely work. They were not here yet.

  * * *