The Bewildered

by Peter Rock

  “Sorry,” Steven said. He felt Ross’s cold snout against his hand; the dog was under the table.

  “Don’t be sorry.” Heather smiled, then shifted to a more neutral expression; he knew that this was because she could not see his expression, and that the two of them were still too unfamiliar to read each other. Her lips were dark red, her wide-set eyes shadowed with pale blue as she took off her dark glasses, her eyelids lined precisely. Her eyes themselves were cloudy, half open, the pupils wandering and searching.

  “Is it ‘The Waterlily,’” she said, “or just ‘Waterlily’?”

  “It’s actually ‘Waterlelie,’ L-E-L-I-E,” he said. “The guy I rent it from is Dutch.”

  “Lelie,” Heather said, testing the sound.

  “I’m so happy you’re finally here,” he said. “That you made it, I mean. I really could have picked you up, though.”

  “Of course not,” she said, “it’s good to practice with Ross on the bus—though it’s going to be a while before he’s properly trained. If ever.”

  Steven sliced more cheese, then slid the plate closer to Heather. He enjoyed watching her eat, always with her hands, searching, identifying, slowly finding a cracker. There were crumbs on her chin, all down the front of her shirt. Watching her, he could always look anywhere he wanted. Into the top of her purse, for instance; the white cane was visible—it telescoped to almost five feet long, from only twelve inches. He liked to watch her shake it out straight so it opened instantly, like a magician’s trick.

  “So what did you do on your day off?” Heather said.

  “Nothing really,” he said. “I could’ve worked today.”

  “Even volunteers need days off.” Heather smiled again. “Especially volunteers.”

  “I cleaned the boat,” he said. “Went shopping, over at Fred Meyer.”

  “Find some bargains?”

  “Actually,” he said, “no, but a kind of strange thing happened. I ran into someone I used to work with, back in San Jose, someone I didn’t know was here. It surprised me.”

  “How so?” Heather said.

  “Not that I knew her that well or anything—it wasn’t anything like that,” he said. “She was an acquaintance.”

  “It wasn’t anything like what?” Heather said, laughing. “She must have been some kind of acquaintance, the way you’re talking. What happened?”

  “Something,” he said. “She just kind of disappeared. An accident, I heard, though it was always sort of unclear, people talking. Everyone thought she’d come back, she just never did.”

  “And you talked to her?”

  “I talked to her a lot of times,” he said.

  “At Fred Meyer,” Heather said. “Today. That’s what I meant.”

  “Oh,” Steven said. “Today. Well, I was kind of startled, and a little unsure if it was really her. I almost did, and then I didn’t, and then I missed the chance.”

  The table shifted as the dog stood up beneath it. His nails slipped on the deck; he barked.

  “Ross!” Heather said, and instantly the dog sat down, an ashamed expression on his face.

  “It’s a cat,” Steven said.

  “On shore?”

  “No, right here on the boat.”

  “Yours?”

  “A stowaway,” he said. “She lives on the dock.”

  The cat stood on the roof of the cabin, overhead. Black and white, she arched her bony spine, fur rising there, her tail thick and straight as she stared down at Ross.

  “Still,” Heather said, reaching under the table to pat the dog. “No excuse for that behavior.”

  Beneath the sound of the engine, a silence began to settle. Steven watched the cat disappear around the deck, toward the stern. Slowly, the boat plowed through the dark water, slipping along the west side of Ross Island. Heather tilted her head at the sound of the cars on the bridge overhead. Steven looked across the starboard side, past the green lights shining on the boat’s bow. The Marquam and Hawthorne Bridges spanned the river ahead; soon he’d see the lights of the other bridges: the Morrison, Burnside, Steel, Broadway.

  “I think you should call information,” Heather said. “See if she has a phone number.”

  “What?” Steven said.

  “The woman you think you saw. Let’s try it now.”

  “Why?”

  “Why not?”

  “Why are you so interested?”

  “I like the intrigue of it,” she said. “And I want to find out why it makes you so nervous.”

  She had him find his cell phone in the cabin, and then—once he’d found Natalie’s number—convinced him to call.

  “You have to,” she said. “You’ll always wonder, otherwise.”

  He dialed the number. It rang only twice before being answered, and he wasn’t certain, at first, if it was Natalie’s voice. He had a difficult time explaining to her who he was, and he felt uncomfortable, awkward with Heather right there, listening.

  “This was in San Jose?” Natalie said, the phone line crackling around her words. “Holy crow. California?”

  “I’m here,” he said. “Here in Portland.”

  “How did you find me?” she said. “Did you follow me here?”

  “What?” he said. “No, nothing like that—” As he spoke, he turned to check the bow, the water ahead. The cat appeared, running along the gunwale, and was gone again; when Steven turned back, he saw how intently Heather was listening, her ear tilted toward him as she leaned forward to pet Ross’s head.

  “Accident?” Natalie was saying. “I’m not sure I believe in such a thing.”

  It startled him, the ease with which he’d found her, and yet the tone of her voice sounded even less familiar than when he’d first met her. Standing, he walked away from the table, back into the cabin.

  “There were all kinds of stories,” he said. “You never came back, so no one knew what was true.”

  “Why are you so curious?” she said. “Is this any of your business?”

  “Because we were friends,” he said. “We are friends. I thought we were. I was just calling because I saw you, and I was curious. I don’t mean to impose—”

  “I must admit,” Natalie said, interrupting him. “I have no idea what you’re getting at. Did you want to see me?”

  “Sure,” he said. “I guess so. That’d be great. Just to get together and talk. Name a time and place, and I’ll be there. Or come by the boat; I’ll take you out on the river.”

  “So you’re down there by the Riverside Corral?” she said, sounding more familiar again, less contentious.

  “I guess so. That’s near the river, right? Isn’t that a strip bar?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Wait, hold on.”

  The line went silent; Steven tried, but could not hear her breathing.

  “Is there a problem?”

  “I thought maybe someone was outside,” she said. “How about you come over next Wednesday evening? For a drink or something. I’ll try to tell you how to get here.”

  Steven listened to Natalie’s directions and wrote them down. “I’d better go,” he said. “I’m really happy to have found you. I’ll see you then. Great.”

  Both Heather and Ross looked up as Steven returned to the table.

  “Weird,” he said. “A voice from the past.”

  “That sounded like someone who was more than an acquaintance,” she said. “‘I’m so happy to have found you—’”

  “I guess.” Steven was uncertain what to say. “I mean, I spent a little time with her, together, but before we really got to know each other she kind of disappeared.”

  “Did you find her attractive?”

  “I don’t know.” He tried to picture Natalie, then laughed.

  “What?”

  “I was just thinking of something they used to say about her. I guess she was attractive—short, energetic, with dark hair. A lot of drive. Energy.”

  “You already said energetic. So what did they say about her?”<
br />
  “It’s a little crass,” Steven said. “Forget it. The thing is, she and I struck up a conversation in a hallway, by chance, and then we hung out a few times. She wasn’t, isn’t much older than me, but she was an executive, you know, more or less one of the founders of the company.”

  The cups and pans, hanging from ceiling hooks in the cabin, rang lightly together as a stray, angling wake gently stirred the boat.

  “And?” Heather said. “You’re making me impatient.”

  “The guys used to joke that she was the kind of woman who probably didn’t have nipples or pubic hair—that she was cold.”

  “Did you find out differently?” Heather said, teasing.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, not specifically, not those things. Not that I thought she was cold, exactly. Just businesslike.”

  “And she simply disappeared. And now you’ve found her, and you’re going to get together. Very interesting. Promising.”

  Steven poured more wine, and they both sipped at their glasses, leaning back in their chairs as if in contemplation. Heather’s hair hung down in front of her eyes and he kept expecting her to brush it away; he wanted to reach out and do it for her. Her leg rested against his, under the table, and he wondered if it were accidental.

  “Where are we?” she said, her voice startling him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, where are we, how far have we gone?”

  “We’ve passed under the Burnside Bridge,” he said, uncertain how detailed to make his description. Ross watched him from under the table, looking on as if daring him to exaggerate or stray. “The whole city’s on our left,” Steven continued, “downtown, all the buildings lit up, the lights of the houses on the hill behind it. You can see a lot from the water. We could come back in a few weeks, for the Fourth of July fireworks—”

  “I’d like that,” she said. “I like the sounds, imagining them against the sky. Last year was the first time I couldn’t see them at all.” She bent her neck as if looking up into the sky. “You find me attractive,” she said. It was not a question. “Would you be attracted to me if I were gaining vision, instead of losing it?”

  “I don’t know what you want me to say,” he said.

  “What you feel.”

  “Well,” he said. “That’s pretty hypothetical. Maybe not—you are the way you are.”

  “Fair enough,” she said.

  Steven couldn’t tell where she was going, if she was making fun of him; he couldn’t read her tone.

  “You think blond women resent the gentlemen who prefer them?” she said. “Or big breasted women hate their followers?”

  “Maybe they do,” he said. “That’s different, that’s not inside.”

  “Are you sure it’s so different?”

  Steven reached out and took hold of Heather’s hand, across the table. Her fingers were sticky with cheese.

  “You find me attractive,” he said, but it sounded more like a question than he’d meant it to.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “What do you look like?”

  “I could describe myself,” he said.

  “No,” she said. “Don’t.”

  She took back her hand and hit a button on her watch; a tiny, robotic voice said that it was nine twenty-eight. They would have to turn around soon.

  “I read in this book,” Steven said, “where a guy divided his friends into those he’d known before he lost his sight, who had faces in his memory, and those—”

  “This is not about books,” she said. “This is about you and me. I have my own idea of what you look like; that’s enough.”

  “And how do I look?”

  “It’s funny,” she said, “but you look a lot like me. Shorter hair, but dark and thick, with eyebrows you should probably tweeze. Your breasts are smaller than mine, of course. You sometimes wear a mustache, in the winter.”

  “You want to know if you’re close?”

  “I do know some things,” she said. “I can make out shapes, sometimes, in bright light. I know the way you arch your back when you laugh, for instance. Your posture worries me a little, the tentative way you move, but I might forget that. I’ll believe it will change. The main thing is that the dogs like you, they trust you; they don’t lie.”

  Dogs had always liked him, had always been eager to be near him. This was true, and it embarrassed him, and he mistrusted it even as he was willing to take credit for whatever their devotion suggested. And his appearance, he knew, was far from how Heather had imagined it. When she touched him, if she touched him—it would not be tonight, he could tell, he would be patient—she would realize that his reddish hair was thinning, that he was skinny, not strong. He wasn’t proud of his body, all the pale skin, covered in freckles. He’d been told they’d grow lighter as he aged, but they hadn’t. Perhaps he would tell her about them; perhaps she’d be able to feel them.

  “Forest Park,” he said, looking across the water, to the west.

  “Largest urban wilderness in America,” Heather said, intoning the phrase. “Wolves, bears, all kinds of danger.”

  “Still?” he said.

  “I used to hike all through there,” she said.

  “Even in the darkness,” he said, “you can see the different shades of green, the distances and heights, the different kinds of trees.”

  7.

  TWO SETS OF HEADPHONES were attached to Kayla’s walkman —she’d spliced the wires—and she and Chris walked close together, listening to Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. They hurried through the last neighborhood, up the hill of Thurman Street, toward the entrance of Forest Park, where the trees rose solid and green, awaiting them. The day was hot, but the sky was dark, the clouds low.

  The symphony swooped, rose and fell. Chris looked down, at the frayed cuffs of Kayla’s black Dickies, the pants’ legs cut off above the ankles. He knew that she was listening for the flute parts; he waited for the clarinets. It all sounded eerie, like the music from a haunted house; he knew it was supposed to be about looking at different paintings, to capture that in music, and as he listened the scene around him—the houses painted blue and green, the bright red of a parked car—also seemed to fit the swell of sound. He sucked on a butterscotch, walking, listening closely. There, the clarinets. Chris looked ahead again, to the dark green of the trees above, then behind them. He wondered if they should have waited longer, if Leon would have shown at the meeting place, if perhaps he was there now.

  The music stopped. Kayla’s finger rested on the button. She pulled her headphones down around her neck, then reached out for his, then wound up the cords and put the whole thing in her pack. She looked up, into Chris’s face.

  “He completely forgot,” she said. “Or he’s doing something else.”

  “I don’t know what it is,” Chris said. “What his deal is, lately.”

  “A zombie,” Kayla said. “It’s got to be puberty or something. He’s bound to come to life. Leon. He’ll just get a look at himself, and then he’ll get straight.”

  They weren’t carrying their instruments, not even skateboards. This was a simple mission, a responsibility they’d put off too long. It was the money, which was now in Kayla’s pack, and which they would now deposit. Not in a bank, since they all agreed a bank would suspect them, having so much money, but in their hiding place, high in Forest Park. The money always came to Kayla—cash in the mail, inside a security envelope. Never a check, never a note, never a return envelope. Just as Kayla had to be the one to call Natalie, she always received the payment. There could be no variation.

  Chris held the butterscotch between his teeth for a moment, and Kayla snatched the candy in her fingers. She popped it in her own mouth, laughing, then spit it into her hand and put it back in his mouth. It tasted slightly different to him, the warm sweet stickiness now more slippery and rich.

  It was only early afternoon; maybe they’d catch up with Leon, later. They had reached the end of the road, the parki
ng lot before the trail. A Volkswagen van was parked there; it looked like it had not moved in quite some time. Orange, with dirty yellow curtains pulled across the windows, the roof popped up. A bumper sticker read, BEER: HELPING WHITE PEOPLE DANCE FOR 2,000 YEARS.

  “Hippies,” Chris said.

  “Pathetic,” said Kayla.

  On the trees all around the lot, lost dog signs were tacked. Xeroxed photos of terriers, mutts, collies and labs, all pictured in their domesticated days—sitting on couches, in trucks, sometimes with children, or in knit sweaters, their tongues hanging out, their names (BUTCH, RANGER, SERENA, SHAGGY) written underneath. Every time there were more dogs, different ones. Leon’s theory was that Forest Park was full of these dogs, gone feral, running together, mixing with wolves and mountain lions.

  “The pack grows,” Kayla said.

  “You’d think, seeing all these dogs already lost, that people wouldn’t bring theirs here,” Chris said, “or they’d bring a leash or something.”

  Far off to one side, closer to the path, was a different poster. A photograph. A man with deep-set eyes and a narrow face stared out at them. His black beard ended in a sharp point, his chin like a dagger. The words stretched down the left hand side of the poster:

  Victor Elias MACHADO

  Legal Status:

  On Post Prison Supervision for Attempted

  Sex Abuse I – Expires 03/08/03

  SPECIAL CONDITIONS:

  Machado shall have no contact with minor males or females nor frequent any place where minors are likely to congregate (e.g. playgrounds, school grounds, arcades, public parks). Shall submit to random polygraph testing. Shall have no contact with victim or victim’s family. Shall not use intoxicating beverages. Shall not own/operate motor vehicles.

  TARGET VICTIMS:

  Minor Males or females, known or unknown to him.

  REPORT ANY MISCONDUCT OR VIOLATION TO: MULTNOMAH COUNTY COMMUNITY CORRECTIONS

  “Victor Machado,” Chris said. “Sketchy. He looks kind of familiar.”

  “I guess that’s not his van,” Kayla said.