Unraveling

by Owen Thomas

  Hollis started. He had been dimly conscious of the water stopping, but he had not expected such a rapid or silent re-emergence. In an instant he was irrationally concerned that his body – and its little sleeping bird – was exposed. He clutched self-consciously at the sheet, losing his grip on the remote control, which bounced off his leg onto the carpet.

  “Mmm? Oh, nothing. Just looking around. I don’t even know what this is,” he said, gesturing casually.

  Bethany stepped further into the room and craned her head around to see the screen, pressing and rolling her hair into the towel. The robe fell open as she leaned. Hollis could see her breast, like a mound of fresh snow, and when she straightened, he saw that soft lanuginous patch of flesh that he had seen in his dreams. Like magic, he felt the sleeping baby bird open its single eye and stir and stretch.

  “Oh, that’s Charlie Rose,” she said. “He’s pretty good.”

  “I don’t really…” he gestured hopelessly at the television.

  “He’s an interviewer, silly. And that’s…who is that? Oh, that’s, oh, what’s his name… Gene Hackman.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Thanks for waiting. Oh my god that felt good.” She disappeared around the corner into the bathroom. “If I don’t have access to a hot shower I don’t feel human.”

  The lights went out and Bethany reappeared without the towel or the robe. Hollis gazed dumbly. Her body was lit in a glowing blue nimbus, suspended as if floating in the light from the silent television. She had a mermaid quality to her, as though he was peering into an aquarium of myth and dream. She stood in place, watching him unselfconsciously, her limbs moving slowly, brushing her palms lightly over the swell of her breasts. It seemed to Hollis that he had stopped breathing or, rather, that he was breathing now only through his eyes.

  Elsewhere, recrudescence was swift and smooth and the sheet began to move. Seeing this, Bethany allowed a smile to crawl sideways across her face and then she herself crawled, feline, over the end of the bed, pulling her body over his like he was a fallen tree, laying on top of him, still damp, separated from him by a cheap cotton sheet. She smelled clean and floral and feminine. She kissed him softly, on one lip, then the other, her breath like a new sprig of mint. She found his hand and placed it on her right flank. It was warm and smooth under his palm and he followed suit on his own accord with his other hand.

  Bethany slowly blanketed his face and neck and shoulders and the tips of his ears, touching her mouth to his skin as though she were a butterfly, her lips as light and delicate as diaphanous wings, and the tip of her tongue the weightless body, alighting again and again and again. Simultaneously, she began a slow, circular grind of her mid-section over his, as though intending to physically stir him down in his depths, pulling all of the abandoned sediment and the forgotten flavors up into the moment. If there had ever been any doubt about his ability to perform – and he was not prepared to concede to himself that there had been any real doubt – those doubts were now long gone. He was full and firm and ready, bordering on being too ready.

  Gone too, suddenly, was any notion that her deception, her insincerity, if indeed she was insincere in her affections, necessarily voided this long-awaited moment. If she was using him for some unknown gambit, well then there was nothing wrong in making it mutual. She was whoever she was. Let her be an enigma with an unknown agenda. Was life any different? Was that any reason not to participate? Was deprivation really the answer? No. A thousand times, no.

  Bethany inch-wormed her way backwards, naked haunch in the air, working her way down his chest, making playful bites through the sheet as she moved. She stepped off the back of the bed, pulling her fingertips along his thighs, and then stood.

  “Let’s not throw all caution to the wind, shall we? I think I have a little friend around here somewhere that will fit you like a glove. You just stay right where you are.”

  Bethany walked over to the chair in the corner, dropped to her knees, and began rummaging through the clothes. In the bluish dark she resembled something cold and marmoreal, some frozen pale perfection, like an angel guarding a tomb.

  The television caught his attention, flashing from Charlie Rose to Gene Hackman and back again. Hollis had an impulse to look around for the remote control and to turn the thing off but the image changed again before he could move. Hackman was suddenly in a different place and time, sitting on the edge of a rickety, disheveled bed in a small wooden cabin. He wore long white underwear marked with rusty, kidney shaped tobacco stains. He was rising to his feet awkwardly but quickly, shock and anger on his face. Behind him, a young stick of a woman with dark hair and a Mexican complexion grabbed for bedding to cover herself, cowering backwards towards the wall. Hackman gestured angrily to places off screen, his back to the woman as if to protect her, but the fear on his face kept him by the edge of the bed.

  When the image next changed, Hollis was staring into the accusing green eyes of his own daughter. He had the sensation of a sharp backfiring in the hollow of his chest; a large pocket of air exploding out of a burning tree. Tilly’s face filled the entire screen; the top of her forehead and the tip of her chin were off camera along with the back half of each ear until the shot widened and then changed again, framing all of her in the open doorway of the cabin. Behind her the daylight was failing and the dust was blowing hard in clouds of brown and gray. A mottled horse, hers presumably, could be seen bending its head into the wind. Tilly wore leather chaps and boots and a dirty white shirt with a smear of blood down one sleeve. Her hair was roped together with a leather thong into a single blonde thatch that draped over her shoulder. A smear of grime darkened her jaw line. She held two pistols, both drawn and pointed at the old man by the bed.

  Hollis looked at her in amazement. He knew this to be Katie Finn; an entirely fictional character in a freshly celebrated cinematic yarn called Peppermint Grove. He had not, of course, seen the film, even after the all of the accolades and the excitement that had prompted Susan to throw a celebration in Tilly’s absence. His had been a principled decision born of experience. After The Geisha of 82nd Street, he had vowed never to see his daughter on screen again, lest he inadvertently concede his standing objection to just about every decision she had made since leaving home, chief among them, the decision to demean herself by pandering to the Hollywood flesh trade. But it had not been possible for him to escape the publicity photos. Susan knew better than to force them on him, but she was also all too free about leaving them lying around.

  So he had seen the character Katie Finn. And yet, it was not now Katie Finn glaring into this hotel room; pointing her guns at him. It was his daughter. It was Tilly. And not just Tilly, but quintessential Tilly. Iconic Tilly. This was the expression in his dreams that faded like ghosts into the windy night by the time he was up and brushing his teeth in the morning. But his subconscious, in all of its cursed eidetic precision, knew this expression, this medusan stare, like he knew his own face.

  He gaped, aghast, and there was another backfiring in his chest. She did not blink. She was well past the point of boiling rage. There would be no angry words; no screaming; no tears. Her jaw was set. Her eyes were fixed. Her mind was settled. He knew that expression. Only one thing ever remained.

  Tilly pulled back the hammers and nudged her head sideways. Taking the instruction, the woman on the bed scrambled out of the sheets ran naked past her out of the cabin and into the wind. Gene Hackman looked around furtively and then grew still. He wiped his hands slowly, nervously, on his stained shirt, said something, and then hung his head. He knew, just as Hollis knew, that there was no escaping her judgment. She had him dead to rights, whatever he had done. She had seen things. He had tried to cover his tracks. Lied to her. Abused her trust. Tried to convince her that she should not believe her own eyes. But he had lost his way and she had seen things and her memory was as clear as those cold green eyes.

  And now it was judgment day. And there was no escaping.

 
The gun muzzles exploded into the camera, bullets spiraling forward in slow motion, white smoke rising to frame Tilly’s expression of steely determination; an expression that, for Hollis, could not begin to mask the devastation of a betrayal that he knew, suddenly, like a sharp slap across the face, had defined her entire life.

  The room grew dark, as if he and the television were suddenly inside of a long narrow tunnel. And then the television was gone and there was only parts of Tilly’s face at the other end of the tunnel; her eyes, her lips.

  Now look at yourself, said the lips.

  “Hollis? Hollis, what’s wrong?” Bethany was standing at the edge of the bed, condom packet in hand, sounding a long ways away. “Are you okay?”

  “What?” He looked up at her, uncertain.

  “You’re white as that sheet. Are you … is your heart…”

  “Uh, no, no. I’m… I’m fine. I just… I just… I’m sorry…” He pushed himself up in the bed. Gene Hackman was trying to say something but the words kept coming out in little bloody bubbles. “I just… I just… I’m…”

  “You just what, Hollis? You’re scaring me.” Bethany turned on the bedside lamp and then found the remote control and turned off the television. She sat down next to him and rubbed his back with the flat of her hand. “You’re soaked. Baby, what happened? Why are you crying?”

  Hollis felt his face in surprise and wiped his eyes, his presence of mind returning, the tunnel around him fracturing and falling away. He sniffed wetly and patted her naked thigh and pulled back the sheet. His legs were covered in sweat and he was breathing as if he had just climbed a long flight of stairs. He saw that the baby bird was fast asleep and found that he did not care. Hollis, swung his feet over the floor and stood up.

  “Hollis…”

  He went to the chair in the corner and put on his clothes. She watched in silence. His pants felt strange and he explored them with his fingers.

  “My wallet goes in the back pocket,” he said softly, not looking at her. “Not the front.” He opened the wallet, extracted a fifty-dollar bill, and stuffed the wallet into his back pocket. Unzipping the little yellow purse, he slipped the fifty inside next to the other one that she had taken.

  “What are you… Hollis, I don’t want your money.” Her voice was thin and brittle. “I’m not some hooker.”

  Hollis sat and put on his shoes.

  “Hollis, talk to me.” Tears now. “Please. What is happening?”

  “I have to go,” he said. “I’m sorry. I have to go.”

  “Now? Out of the blue? Where? Where do you have to go?”

  He walked to the bed and placed his hand on her naked shoulder, applying gentle pressure until she was fully reclined. He pulled the sheet over the pale glow of her body and then kissed her on the forehead.

  “Good luck, Lynnette,” he said.

  “Hollis… wait. It’s not what you think. I’m sorry. I’m… what are going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where are you going?” The question was desperate and came with enough force to flatten itself up against the door. He opened it anyway.

  “Hollywood.”

  CHAPTER 62 – Susan

  “David? Are you home? Guess not. It’s Mom. You must be out someplace. Back at school I hope. I’m calling because I have not been able to get up with your father. No one answered at the house and his cell phone goes straight to voice mail. I didn’t leave any messages. I’m sure everything is fine. You know me. Anyway, … what? No, I’ll sign it. And I’ll do the interview. Here, get this to Meredith. Press conference at three. No, three. Because I changed it. Sorry, things are crazy over here. We’ll have lots to talk about when I get back. Anyway, if you get the chance David, could you drive over to the house tonight? You can take Mae with you if she is around. Just check in on them for me. Don’t say I put you up to it. You know how that will go over. Just go over and take the temperature. And tell Benny that I love him. I feel like I’ve been gone a lifetime. Thanks Sweetie. Gotta go. Love you.”

  CHAPTER 63 – Hollis

  Hollis kicked his silver Civic along Interstate 10 like a rented mule.

  The surest way out of the desert, out of that flat desolation, was along the old scabrous seam; that migratory scar over the hide of the Earth, running from sand to sea, from mirage to oasis, from exposure to absolution, from the xeric necropolis of oceans past to a place where the breeze carries the Pacific in its arms like a child.

  He was not used to such automotive impotence, nor the tailpipe perspective that had been his for the past two hours. He found himself distressingly at the mercy of the convoys of semis that ruled the night road like packs of giant wolves.

  Fleetingly, in his rather anti-climatic retreat from the Westin to his own hotel, he had considered flying to Los Angeles. But while flying would certainly have shortened the trip, it would also have required spending the long hours of the night waiting, biding his time in a small Phoenix hotel room with carnivorous thoughts and nothing to do.

  Over the past one hundred and nineteen miles, Hollis had come to realize that waiting for a plane would have actually been the better option, for he found that his thoughts were no less savage and destructive for having been packed into a tiny car. The hotel room that had felt so impossibly claustrophobic as he stuffed his clothes and toiletries back into his carry-on, now, as he shifted his weight from one buttock to another, courting deep-vein thrombosis mile after mile, seemed palatial.

  Moreover, had he stayed the night in Phoenix, he might have been able to sleep.

  But two hours ago, the world had been a different place. Two hours ago, as he had discarded the unused condoms and packed up his belongings, the last thing he had thought was possible was sleep. Two hours ago, he could barely stand still waiting to check out of the hotel. Two hours ago, his life had been sharply defined by the singular need to speak to his daughter, immediately, to hold her, to kiss her on the crown of her perfect head as he had in the birthing room when her ice blue skin had warmed to pink and it was clear that she was not dead after all, to tell her how sorry he was, to beg for absolution, to demonstrate the sincerity of his remorse, all before he devoured himself with self-loathing. Two hours ago, sleep had been unthinkable.

  But now, left to the company of his thoughts and without the benefit of any distraction that might temporarily lull the lightening storm in his head, he had now come to the point of wearing himself out. Each darkened mile that slipped beneath his wheels had increased the weight of his exhaustion, as if each mile was not a thing left behind but a thing for which he was ultimately accountable; a thing that slipped under the wheels and curled back in through the window, draping itself over his shoulders. Past two o’clock in the morning the darkness around the freeway felt close and thick and heavy. All four cylinders of his tiny “economy unit” rental seemed to have to work all the harder just to push through the black velvet maw of night.

  Hollis felt like he was sitting on a block of concrete that became less forgiving with every mile. He tried to roll himself sideways, repositioning his weight over onto his left side. When that did not work, he used his idle left foot to push himself firmly against the back of the seat, walking his shoulder blades up towards the tiny headrest, inching himself upwards until he could feel his hair brushing against the car ceiling and he was suspended a good half an inch off the seat. He shook his bottom slightly, coaxing gravity to do its work, jostling himself as though refluffing a gluteal pillow that had gone flat.

  In a few short seconds, his left leg buckled under the strain and he collapsed back down into – onto – the concrete seat. He considered pulling over and opening up his carry-on bag and digging out some clothes that he could sit on. It was not a new idea. In fact, it was increasingly one of the most reliable thoughts in his head whenever, in those few nanosecond cracks of time, he was able to stop thinking about everything else.

  But he rejected the idea. Again. He did not want to stop. He did not want t
o slow down. Too many years had already passed. For the first time in a very long time, he was moving forward. He had been moving forward ever since alighting from that bed in Phoenix and he did not want to stop or slow down for anything.

  Lynnette Moss had not pursued him along the hallway of the seventh floor of the Taliesin Westin, and for that he had been truly grateful. The hotel room door had opened behind him just as quickly as it had closed and Lynnette had stepped out onto the carpet of dancing Kokpellis, as naked as the day she was born, holding the door open with her fingertips, pleading for him to come back. But Hollis had said nothing more and had not stopped moving. An older man and his wife had rounded the corner out of the elevator bay, pulling luggage. Hollis had heard them stop abruptly in the hallway with a gasp, had heard Lynnette telling them to mind their own fucking business, and then had heard the door of Lynnette’s room slamming behind her.

  Thoughts of Lynnette had certainly occurred to him since that moment, but not often or unbidden. If anything, he tended to invoke her in moments of desperation as a distraction – a lesser and entirely collateral regret – to occupy his mind when he thought that he could not continue to see Tilly’s scornful face. For over a hundred miles, on-coming headlights were nothing less than his daughter’s judgment, her eyes burning into him through the decades. He felt the flaring of taillights in his chest, always the muzzle flashes of his reckoning.

  He pushed West. Out of Phoenix like a shot, through Avondale, bouncing off of Buckeye, heading Northwest on the Papago Freeway aiming for the Sawtooth Mountains like a flaming arrow destined for the Pacific. The hours passed in their own time. As the hours passed, the years came back to him, returning one after another, like the broken white lines splitting the road, dividing it from itself.

  He had been a good and generous father, like he had been a good and generous husband. He knew this to be true like he knew his own name. And yet, the thing he knew was not true. It was… not… true. Not … true. The thing he knew was a mosaic of truths, each perfectly shaped and shaded, that he had collected every day of his life, fitting and grouping them together, shaving and shaping and gluing and painting until the truths, admired subjectively, had formed a glorious conceit that he had taken as himself. But what of the pieces never used? The pieces conveniently forgotten. The irregular shape. The garish color. The disproportionate size. What of them? What of Tilly in the basement all of those years ago? That piece was not lost at all. Tilly had that piece. It belonged to her. It was lodged in her brain like errant shrapnel. She carried it in her pocket and traced its contours in the dark like a talisman. She had claimed what he had not. She had, he now realized, built her life around the shape of that piece.