“OK,” said Kenji softly.
“Only way I can get thru this is if you’re here & now with me.” & yeah, I said that already. Won’t be the last time either.
“I’m here, Nikkou.” My Love.
So with his knee touching my knee, Kenji’s hand in one of mine, I opened my book in my lap. I found the page where she showed up with our Yellow Pages ad.
“OK but 1st you have to kiss me, kiss me so it’ll be all we remember,” I blurted out.
I’d wrapped him in a beach blanket. Kenji wrapped me in it too & looked at me with love & sorrow. & then he closed his eyes.
His breath, his love & sorrow, the warmth in his body filled up the whole moment. I could hear his heart or maybe it was my heart or the rhythm of the tide all around us, all I want is more of it. I nearly cried when Kenji drew back hesitantly, & it had been some time already, I know cuz the fire had grown up & become light. It got into his eyes & revealed the deep young star that was quickening his breath.
I tore the page out of my book. Kenji took it from my hand before I could change my mind. He said, “Don’t look, Nikkou.”
He put it on the fire. A piece of my book. Straight out of its delicate insides.
The shadows are hungry, the shadows are burning: Seabird, “Aetna Simmons,” nights in shadows with dark wings. The smoke is making Kenji sick, he keeps clearing his throat & swallowing. But he won’t take his eyes off the fire except now & then to peek at me. Like he’s forcing himself to look at the fire, like it’s punishment.
I peek at the boat. If one or the other of us falls asleep, neither gonna be fast enough to catch Ethelberta if the tide comes up too strong & sudden. Soon as we left Harbour Road, we were marooned, that’s one way to see it, but I can’t look at it that way. This acegirl gotta make sure we’re fast enough for Ethelberta cuz I’m the fraidy cat who’s gotta be the harbor now. That’s why I wrote all day & night. I’m having trouble stopping, I’m too used to my book, I write stuff as it’s happening just cuz I can’t stop. So it’s no “document,” it’s not a memory, it won’t survive. That means my book isn’t a book anymore, it’s something else now. A shadow on the sand? A reflection in water?
“You doing OK, Baby?” (A little while ago.)
Kenji shook his head. “Don’t look, Nikkou.” He put another couple pages on the fire. Stuff to do with bank-hacking & HD shredders. Kenji takes what I’ve done & feeds it to the fire. & it hurts like heartburn: what happens in our chests when we don’t get enough to eat. At one point Kenji put some bits of my book on the fire, then he crawled to the ocean & vomited. I went to him & brought him back to the fire.
My Love’s face is the scene of the battle between Hell & Heaven. The night & firelight & shadows thrown out by the firelight attack each other, leaping, crashing, & falling right there on Kenji’s face & inside him.
“Lean on me, my Love, come on.”
“When you’re done writing.” Baby turned aside to cough. & I realized I’m doing it again, fiddle-faddling!! But the limbo is death & always was. Focus, acegirl. Make it true, what you said to him: We’re safe! True so Kenji believes it.
I tore out some more pages. “All right, Baby, let’s do this.”
Kenji took the pages. He read by firelight. “You sure? This stuff’s from years ago. We only need to burn stuff that mentions—”
“I think we should do it all. It makes things look one-sided when they weren’t.”
Shadow & gleam fight over Kenji. History & future, breath & time, fire & water.
I rubbed his shoulder. “Just get me a new book, Baby, get us matching ones.”
I tore out the pages with Martin & the drill. Kenji read them twice, I think. He cleared his throat a couple times. Then something occurred to me.
“Let me do those ones, Baby.”
I took the pages back, I took them to the flames with my own hands.
I groped for Kenji’s hands. Kenji put his arms around me. I kissed him where the light fell on his face, I kissed him where the shadows fell down into him. We watched pages become ruins become ashes, then they weren’t there anymore. How do we build a harbor out of ashes?
Kenji whispered, “The crew of the Ethelberta.”
He said it like he’d never seen that phrase before, like he didn’t write it himself. Baby was the 1st to write it, I just shared it, but he looked at what’s left of my book like he’d forgotten! (This was a couple mins ago, the past comes on so quickly!)
“I like that,” said Kenji.
Me (no more crying, acegirl): “Somebody should see about the anchor in that case, innit.”
The faint sound Kenji made was laughter or the opposite. I’ve been extra attentive to sounds ever since. All kinds of sounds, water against the boat, water against the beach, fire against the air. & nobody stood up to get the anchor. We kissed while I tore out the page Kenji was looking at.
“Don’t look, my Love.”
“You neither, Nabi.” Kenji put the paper on the fire, & then I turned him from the fire, we kissed & sank into the breath passing between us.
The leather cover of my book won’t burn. That’s why we’re ripping pages out a couple at a time. Nobody feels like looking for the emergency knife we feel sure Ethelberta has. The whole crew is too emotional to remember where we keep it. So we can’t cut the binding or slash all the pages out at once. & anyway it’s too painful to think about being violent with my book, worse than trying to do it gently. Baby & I didn’t have to talk about that to agree on it. I have a feeling something will happen to my book’s black mask & red ribbons while I’m driving Ethelberta home.
Kenji curled up on his side on the sand. He laid his head down on my knee.
“Hear the whistling frogs, Baby?” I caressed his complex cloud of curls.
“I hear you. I see you, Nikkou, everywhere. Don’t let me fall asleep.”
My book will notice one more thing. Then it’s going to stop, & I’ll just take care of Kenji. In the dark & in the light.
Maybe it’s cuz of the water or the frogs, but I notice that the pages make a weird sound when they burn. It’s almost like no sound at all.
I wonder what to call you.
You spirit, you disembodied creature, you dear, sweet, tantalizing phantom. You’re not just whatever designated word, whatever fleshless prefab vision is bound to fail you, even though all words are as enthralling and slippery as specters. As for me, everything in me amounts to the great void of the question we failed to ask; everything I am is falling in that chasm as if through the unrelenting emptiness of distant space that defies all knowledge. I am the question, and I am falling through it: the question of what we are. If you were always already gone and ghostly, can it be that everything you said is true? What strange gravity set us in the same orbit and moved us against each other?
Drafts of a Suicide Note Page 47
