Peaceable Kingdom

by Jack Ketchum

  “Please!” he said. “That guy back there . . . his goddamn wife . . . Jesus!”

  Lenny smiled. “I got it.”

  He glanced at the American flag on his dashboard and thought, I love this fucking town.

  The beefy citizen was nearly on them, coming down off the curb just a couple steps away.

  Lenny floored it.

  They slid uptown through time-coordinated greens like a knife through warm butter.

  “Where to?”

  “Take it up to Amsterdam and 98th, okay?”

  “Sure. No problem.” He looked at the guy through the rear-view, the guy still breathing hard and sweating. Glancing back out the window, still worried about shirtsleeves. Like his ladyfriend’s irate hubby had found some other cab and was hot on his tail. It only happened in the movies.

  “So what’s the story, you don’t mind my asking? You mean you didn’t know?”

  “Hell, no, I didn’t know. It was a pickup in a bar. She’s got her hand on my leg for godsakes. It’s going great. Then this guy shows up. Says he’s gonna push my face in! Jesus, I never even paid the bar-tab! I just got the hell out of there. Thank God for you, man!”

  Lenny reflected that nobody had ever thanked God for him before. Not that he could remember. It was a first.

  Your Good Deed for the Day, he thought. From the look of the shirtsleeves, maybe for the month.

  “So you go back, you pay your tab another time. No problem.”

  “I don’t even know the name of the place. I just wandered in.”

  “Corner of 58th and 10th? That would be the Landmark Grill.”

  The guy nodded. He saw it in the rearview mirror.

  And there was something in the guy’s face right then he didn’t like. Something nasty all of a sudden. Like the guy had gone away somewhere and left a different guy sitting in the back seat who only looked like him.

  Ah, the guy’s had a hard night, he thought.

  No babe. No pickup. Almost got his ass kicked for his trouble. You might be feeling nasty too.

  They drove in silence after that until Lenny dropped him at Amsterdam and 98th, northeast corner. The guy said thanks and left him exactly fifteen per cent over the meter. Not bad but not exactly great either, considering. The next fare took him to the East Side and the next four down to the Village and then Soho and Alphabet City and then to the Village again. He never did get back to Tenth or even to Hell’s Kitchen for that matter.

  So it was only when he returned to the lot at the end of his shift that he learned from his dispatcher that the Landmark Grill had been robbed at gunpoint by a tallish thin sandy-haired man in a parka. Who got away in a cab, for chrissake. Everybody was buzzing about it because he’d used a goddamn cab as getaway. Thought it was pretty funny.

  That and the fact that the bartender had been crazy enough to chase him.

  A guy with a gun. You had to be nuts to risk it.

  Or maybe you had to be bleeding from the head where the guy had used the butt end of his gun on you. Lenny hadn’t managed to catch that little detail in the rear-view.

  There was never any question in his mind about calling the cops. If they didn’t have his medallion number then so be it. You didn’t want to get involved in something like this unless you had to. But Lenny thought about his fifteen per cent over the meter and wondered what the take was like.

  No good deed ever goes unpunished his mother used to say.

  He hated to admit it but as in most things, he supposed his mom was right.

  TWO

  At first Elise was embarrassed by them. No—for them.

  First embarrassed. Then fascinated.

  And then she couldn’t look away.

  The train was real late—she’d wondered if it was another bomb scare somewhere up the line, it would be just her luck to miss her dance class entirely and it was the only class she could care about at all—so that the platform was crowded and getting more so, mostly kids like her just out of school for the day and thank God it was over, nobody but Elise seeming to care if the train was late or not, the noise level enormous with the echo of kids shouting, laughing, arguing, whatever.

  For sure these two over by the pillar there didn’t care.

  She doubted they even noticed the kids swarming around them. Much less the lateness of the train.

  She had never seen a pair of adults so . . . into one another.

  But it wasn’t a good thing.

  It was terrible. And it was going on and on.

  They were probably in their thirties, forties—Elise couldn’t tell but she thought they were younger than her mother—and the woman was a little taller than the man who was almost as cute, for an old guy, as she was pretty. Or they would have been cute and pretty if their faces didn’t keep . . . crumbling all the time.

  They kept hugging and pulling apart and staring at each other as though trying to memorize one another’s faces and then hugging again so hard she thought it must have hurt sometimes, she could see the man’s fingers digging deep into the back of her blouse. And both of them were crying, tears just pouring down their cheeks and they didn’t even bother to try to wipe them away half the time, they mostly just let them come.

  She saw them stop and smile at each other and the smiles were worse than the tears. My God, they’re so sad. And smiling seemed to bring the tears on again, like they were one and the same, coming from the very same place. It was like they couldn’t stop. Like she was watching two hearts breaking for ever and ever.

  She was already ten or fifteen feet away from them but she found herself stepping back without even knowing at first she was doing it. It was as though there were some kind of magnetic field around them that repelled instead of pulling, as though they were pushing out at empty space, in order to give them space, all the space they needed to perform this horrible dance.

  I meant what I said, you know that, right? she heard the woman tell him and he nodded and took her in his arms again and she missed what the woman said after that but then they were crying again though real silently this time and then she heard the woman say I just can’t anymore and then they were crying hard again, really sobbing, clutching each other and their shoulders shaking and she wanted to look away because what if they noticed her staring at them but somehow she knew that they weren’t going to notice, they weren’t going to notice anything but each other.

  They were splitting up, she knew now. At first she’d thought maybe they had a kid who’d died or something. I just can’t anymore. The woman was dumping him but she didn’t want to because they still loved each other. And they loved each other so much—she’d never seen two people that much in love. She wasn’t even sure she’d ever seen it in the movies.

  So how could you do that? How could you just break up if you felt that way? How was it even possible?

  She noticed that some of the other kids were watching too and would go silent for a while. Not as intently as Elise was watching and mostly the girls but there on the platform you could feel it pouring out of these people and it was getting to some of the other kids as well. Something was happening to them that she had the feeling only adults knew about, something secret played out right out there in the open. Something she sensed was important. And a little scary.

  If this was what being an adult was all about she wanted no part of it.

  And yet she did.

  To be in love that much? God! So much in love that nothing and nobody matters but the two of you standing together right where you’re standing, oblivious to everybody, just holding tight and feeling something, somebody, so much and deep. It must be wonderful.

  It must be awful.

  It must be both together.

  How could that be?

  So that as the train roared in and kids crowded into the car, Elise behind them, wiping at her own tears which only served to confuse her more now, the woman stepped on a little behind her to the side and turned to the window, hands pressed to the dirty cloudy glas
s to watch him standing there alone on the platform and somehow smaller-looking without her and Elise looked from one to the other and back again and saw their shattered smiles.

  THREE

  She put down the paper and washed her hands in the sink. As usual the Sunday Times was filthy with printer’s ink. She went back to her easel in the living room. Her lunch-break was over. The pastel was coming along.

  She had that much, anyway. The work.

  What did you expect? she thought. When things got bad they were probably bound to get worse. If only for a little while.

  She hoped it was only for a little while.

  Because she was seriously doubting, for the very first time ever, her actual survival here.

  Everybody in the city was fragile, she guessed. No matter where you were or who you were World Trade had touched you somehow. Even if you’d lost nobody close to you, you’d still lost something. She knew that was part of it.

  She could look at a cat in a window and start to cry.

  And breaking off with David would have been bad enough under any circumstances—correction, still was bad enough. Because he wouldn’t quite let go and neither could she exactly. Lonely late-night e-mails still were all too common between them.

  I understand you can’t see me, I understand it hurts too much to keep seeing me and I’m sorry. But I miss just talking to you too. We always talked, even through the worst of it. E-mails just don’t work. I feel like I’ve lost not only my lover but my friend. Please—call me sometime, okay? I want my friend back. I want her bad. Love, David.

  I can’t call. Not yet. Someday maybe but not now. I’d call and we’d talk and the next step would be seeing you and you know that. Why do you want to make me go through this again, David? Jesus! You say you understand but you don’t seem to. You’re not going to leave her and that’s that. And I need somebody who’ll be there for me all the time, not just a couple nights a week. I miss you too but you’re not that person, David. You can’t be. And I can’t simply wish that away. So please, for awhile, just please leave me be. Love, Claire.

  She knew he was hurting and she hated that because there was so much good between them and the love was still there. She hated hurting him. But she was alone and he wasn’t. So she also knew who was hurting the worst. She was. She was tired of crying herself to sleep every night he wouldn’t be there next to her or every morning when he’d leave. It had to stop.

  He’d never stop it. It was up to her.

  She’d been alone most of her life but that was always basically okay. She liked her own company. She’d always been a loner.

  But she’d never felt this lonely.

  What was that Bob Dylan line? I’m sick of love.

  She knew exactly how he felt when he wrote it.

  Fuck it, she thought, get to work. You’re an artist. So make art.

  The piece was one of a series, a still-life, an apple core surrounded by chains. A padlock lay open, gleaming, embracing one of the links of chain.

  She studied it.

  She knew exactly what it meant. Most people didn’t. That was fine, so long as they felt it.

  And bought one now and then.

  Which hadn’t happened in a while now.

  Concentrate, she thought. Focus. Work the blacks. Work the shadows.

  But that was the other thing. Money. Cold hard cash. Financially her life was a mess too. She’d only just started painting again—David was the main one who’d encouraged her, dammit!—had only sold a few pieces for good but not terrific money, and the New York restaurant business, which she’d always counted on as backup, had been hit hard by the Bush economy even before World Trade Center. Tourism was down to a fraction of what it was this time last year and the natives were paranoid about going out to dinner. In the past three months she’d been laid off as a bartender, hired as a waitress, laid off as a waitress, hired as a manager—a job she’d always loathed—and then laid off as a manager too.

  She was always assured it was a matter of cutbacks, not her performance. Last hired, first fired. Simple as that.

  She’d been making the rounds. Nobody was hiring. So that at the moment she was jobless, with two months’ rent and utilities in the bank and if she didn’t find something soon she was going to have to eat this apple core off the canvas.

  It’s Sunday, she thought. You can’t do a damn thing about it now.

  So make the art. Later, call your mother.

  Get on with it. All of it.

  She drew a line, smudged it lightly with her finger. A link of chain sprung suddenly into focus on the canvas. She drew another.

  FOUR

  What the hell are you doing? he thought.

  It was two in the morning. He was standing outside across the street from her apartment. He could see the light burning through the second-floor living room window. Either she was still awake or she’d fallen asleep and left it on but to leave it on was very unlike her.

  She was awake.

  He could walk up the steps, ring the bell.

  No he couldn’t.

  He had no right to. It would be tantamount to harrassment.

  And standing out here was tantamount to stalking.

  So what the hell are you doing, David?

  A glimpse, he thought. That’s all. A glimpse of somebody you love through a brownstone window. What the hell is wrong with that?

  Everything. It’s crazy, desperate. It’s pathetic. You’re not Romeo and she’s not Juliet. Go the hell home.

  Don’t want to.

  Your wife is waiting.

  By now she’ll be fast asleep.

  You’ve had too much to drink again.

  So? What else is new?

  Go home.

  A cab cruised past him going west. Northwest was the direction of his apartment. The cab’s sign was lit. He could have flagged it down. A simple wave of the hand. He didn’t.

  He needed something. He wanted to feel something.

  Now what the hell does that mean?

  59th was quiet. No breeze. Nobody on the street but him. There was traffic heading south on 9th half a block away but not here and even on 9th the traffic was light, he could barely hear it hissing by.

  So here he was, alone. Staring up at a living-room window and afraid to look away or even to blink for fear that if he did it would be exactly that moment she’d choose to appear and not any other moment and not again, afraid of the perversity of incident and chance, perhaps because it was precisely incident and chance that had got him here in the first place. She a new bartender, he a regular. Quickly becoming friends, far more slowly becoming lovers—two years before that happened—not until a casual date that left them alone in a crowded noisy new dance club they found not to their liking at all, waiting for two other friends to return from the bar so they could get the hell out of there, a single slightly boozy hug turning to a surprisingly lovely kiss and then more and more and before they knew it two more years had gone by and love had trapped them as surely incident and chance could trap anyone.

  The window blurred over.

  He wiped his eyes.

  He was aware of sirens in the distance, somewhere around Times Square.

  The window blurred again.

  Were the sirens doing this? some fucking ambulance making him cry? Somebody else’s distress? Some stranger’s? It was possible. These days anything was.

  But that was too damn ridiculous even for him and no, he saw what it was now, literally saw it in that way that the mind imposes an image it chooses over the eyes so that what the eyes see in the natural world disappears for a moment, unable to compete, utterly sterile compared to the image the brain mandates. He saw it, vividly, sobbed once because he knew that in the natural world he might never see it again and certainly not the way he did now, directed so wholly at him—her open happy smile—and turned and started home.

  FIVE

  The composite on the nightly news was not great.

  They’d got the nos
e right and the chin mostly but the forehead was way too high and the eyes were completely wrong because the eyes in the composite were bland, they held nothing, while his were full of. . . .

  . . . what?

  Something. He didn’t bother trying to go there.

  They were off on the numbers too. They had him down for around fifteen, twenty jobs this year. He had to laugh. The number was more like thirty, thirty-five. Roughly one every week and a half. He figured that by the end of his own personal fiscal year which began and ended on his birthday just before Christmas he’d take in fifty, maybe sixty grand. Not as much as if you were robbing banks but bars were a whole lot safer. Bars were vulnerable.