Man V. Nature: Stories

by Cook, Diane

  My window friend is gone.

  At bingo I search for him. I want to explain my absence, tell him I was moved, while discreetly slipping the letter into his pocket. I can’t find him. Another man follows me around, trying to grab my hand; he whispers that he has hidden riches no one knows about. Finally a guard from the men’s shelter intervenes, takes the man by the arm. I ask about my friend, and it turns out he was chosen. The guard says he left a few days ago. I ask how many exactly. “Just two,” he says, a little sheepishly. I’m destroyed. I say, “Two is not a few,” and return to my room. It is painted a buzzing shade of yellow, and I hate it. The desk is even bigger and emptier now that I’ve stopped pretending to read. The floodlights from the pen have been left on. They blaze through my window all night.

  The next day I slog to lunch, but I can’t eat. I play with my food until the cafeteria empties. Then my Case Manager calls me in. Her eyebrows are raised, imploring. She opens a file, and in it is the letter I wrote to my window friend. I had hidden it under my mattress. I can’t even muster surprise. Of course they would find it.

  “I wasn’t really going to run,” I say. “It was just a fantasy.”

  “I know.”

  She pushes the letter to me.

  I read it. My handwriting is looped and sleepy. The pages are worn. I wrote a lot, and reread it obsessively to make sure it was right. Reading it now makes me blush. In the letter, I am begging. My tone near hysterics. I promise that we’ll find a house, unoccupied in the woods, abandoned years ago. That we’ll forage for our food, but that eventually we’ll find work, even though all the jobs are spoken for. I insist we’ll be the lucky ones. We’ll have a family, a house with a yard. He’ll have a nice car, and I’ll have nice things. We’ll have friends over to dinner. We’ll take a vacation each year even if it’s a simple one. We’ll never put off something we really want to do, or something we want now, like children. We’ll never fight over silly things. I won’t hold a grudge, and he’ll say what he’s feeling instead of shrugging it away. I won’t be irresponsible. I won’t buy bedding we can’t afford. And I’ll be more fun. I’ll be game. I won’t insist he tell me where we’re going when all he wants is to surprise me. I’ll never cook him things he doesn’t like because I think he should like them. I won’t forget to do the small things like pick up the dry cleaning or rake the leaves in our yard.

  Of course, I’m writing to my husband.

  It reads as if we’re fighting and he’s stormed out, is spending nights on a friend’s couch. Here is my love letter, my apology: please come home.

  I look up.

  “Be sensible,” my Case Manager says, not without some kindness. “I can’t put your name on any list until you’ve shown you’re moving on.”

  “But when do I grieve?”

  “Now,” she says, as though I have asked what day it is.

  I think of the man from across the road, my window friend. But I can’t even remember what he looks like. I try to picture him in his room, but all I see is my husband, waiting, in his plaid pajamas and woolly slippers. He shakes a ghostly little wave. I can tell from his shoulders he is sad enough for the both of us.

  For a couple of weeks I allow myself a little moment. I scrape other women’s leftovers onto my plate. I eat the treats my old floor still sends, even though I don’t like them. I barter for snacks with some rougher women who somehow had it in them to set up a secret supply business. Now my pants don’t fit. My Case Manager finally intervenes. She says even though we live in a progressive time, it’s probably not a good idea to let myself go. She gives me some handouts and a new exercise to do that is, literally, exercise. “Get that heart rate up,” she says, pinching the flesh above my hip.

  I know she’s right. We are all dealing with our situation differently. At night, some women cry. Other women bully. Others bake. Some live one life while dreaming of another. And some women run.

  Each night a new alarm sounds, the dogs, the lights. In the morning I’ll see who looks ragged, as if she spent a futile few hours flying across the barren tract to the forest, only to be recaptured. I’ll also look to see if anyone is missing. I still secretly hope she, whoever she was, made it, and I feel twinges of curiosity at the thought of such a life. But they’re just twinges. Not motivation. I have nothing to run to. What I want, I can’t have. My husband is gone. But while I work to let him go, there are other ways to feel happy. I read that in the manual. I’m willing to try them out. My Case Manager says this is healthy.

  Eight months into my stay at the shelter for widows and other unwanteds, I am chosen. My Case Manager is proud of me.

  “That’s a respectable amount of time,” she insists.

  I blush at the compliment.

  “The knitting helped,” she notes, taking quiet credit for suggesting it.

  I nod. However it happened, I’m just glad to have a home.

  My new husband’s name is Charlie and he lives in Tucson and the first thing he bought with the dowry was a new flat-screen TV. But the second thing he bought was a watch for me, with a thin silver cuff and a small diamond in place of the twelve.

  My Placement Team takes me to a diner on the outskirts of town, where Charlie waits in front of a plate of pancakes. He has girlish hands but otherwise he is fine. The Team introduces us and, after some papers are signed, leaves. Charlie greets me with a light hug. He is wearing my husband’s cologne. I’m sure it is a coincidence.

  I am his second wife. His first wife is in a shelter on a road that leads to the interstate outside Tucson. He tells me not to worry. He didn’t cause their broken marriage. She did. I nod, and wish I had a piece of paper so I could take notes.

  He asks me how I feel about kids, something he certainly has already read in my file. I answer that I’ve always wanted them. “We’d been planning,” I say. There is an awkward silence. I have broken a rule already. I apologize. He’s embarrassed but says it’s fine. He adds, “It’s natural, right?” and smiles. He seems concerned that I not think badly of him, and I appreciate that. I clear my throat and say, “I’d like kids.” He looks glad to hear it. He calls the waitress over and says, “Get my new wife anything she wants.” There’s something in his eagerness I think I can find charming.

  I am not ready for this. But I’ve been told that someday I’ll barely remember that I ever knew my first husband. I’ll picture him standing a long way down a crowded beach. Everyone will look happy to be on the beach. Something about him will catch my eye, but it won’t be his wave, or his smile, or the particular curl of his hair. It will be something I wouldn’t associate with him. It will be the pattern on his bathing shorts; bright stripes, red floral or maybe plaid. I’ll think something like, “What a nice color for bathing shorts. How bright they look against the beige sand.” And then I’ll turn my attention to the crashing waves or to some children building a sand castle, and I’ll never think of him again. I’m not looking forward to this day. But I won’t turn my back on it. As the manual often states, this is my future. And it’s the only one I get.

  THE WAY THE END OF DAYS SHOULD BE

  A dead man twists around one of my Doric columns. I chose these columns for their plainness, their strength. I liked imagining people looking up at my home, its smoky leaded windows reflecting their city back at them, the classic Greek proportions held up by simple, democratic design. Tasteful. No frills. I loathe Ionic columns. I don’t even acknowledge Corinthians.

  The dead man’s arm trembles oddly in the water, out of rhythm with the rest of his body. It’s most likely dislocated. Perhaps more than dislocated, but I won’t investigate. A brown gull does a number on his eye socket.

  The man doesn’t look familiar, so I don’t believe him to be one I’ve already turned away.

  When the world first flooded, the men who came to my door asking for handouts respectfully left when I said no. They’d survived once before and would do it again. There were other options still. Colonies remained above water with home
s to take refuge in. They speckled the rising sea. Now those colonies are underwater, most of the inhabitants drowned. Any survivors are desperate.

  The other day a man in what looked to have once been a pretty fine suit knocked on my door. The suit was now in ruins, the arms shredded like party streamers from his shoulders. Sea salt ghosted his face. Some sand, or maybe a barnacle, clung to his neck. A blue crab scuttled under his hand-stitched lapel. But I mostly noticed his loosened tie because it was definitely designer—it was a kind of damask pattern, but nontraditional. Of course, only designers change designs. It’s why we used to pay so much for them. We paid for innovation.

  This man in the nice suit asked for food and water, then tried to strangle me, choked back tears, apologized, asked to be let in, and when I refused, tried to strangle me again. When I managed to close the door on him, he sat on my veranda and cried.

  I’ve gotten used to these interruptions, of course. Though the strangling is new.

  I don’t blame them. If I’d been one of the unprepared, I’d be desperate too. They come to my door, see that I am clean, are dazzled by the generator-fed lights. They sense I have rooms full of provisions, that my maid’s quarters are filled with bottled water, cords of wood in the exercise annex, and gas in the garage. They ogle my well-fed gut. I am dry. They are embarrassed, filthy, smell of fish. They get back on their driftwood, or whatever they use to keep their heads above water, and paddle next door to my neighbor’s. If I were them, I would overtake someone standing dry in the doorway of a fine home. I wouldn’t give up so easily. But these men are not me. For starters, they’re awfully weak due to not eating. But still. I don’t like the change. I miss the old days when, though they happened to be begging, they were still gentlemen who understood that hard work was their ticket to success. I’ll need to carry a knife to the door next time.

  It was happening just like they said it would. Things never happen like they say they will. That I was living to see it felt kind of special, truth be told. Like a headline. HISTORY IN THE MAKING!

  My neighbor’s house still stands, and across a new tiny sea roiling from trapped fish and unprepared people, one additional cluster of houses remains, perhaps four in all. Day and night, people hang out the windows waving flags of white bedsheets and shouting. What kind of message is that? Surrender? To whom? I’ll bet they have no food and water. My neighbor’s house shakes from the extra people crammed inside. Each of the ten bedrooms probably holds a small village of newly homeless vagrants he’s rescued. I told him to prepare. “I know this sounds crazy,” I said. We haven’t always gotten along, but I thought it the neighborly thing to do. You’d think he’d be grateful. But instead he just crowds our last parcel of heavenly land with bums. If I open the windows I will smell the house, its burdened toilets and piss-soaked corners. The shallow but rising sea moat between our homes is rank with sewage. The tide takes it away, but more always comes.

  In the old days, I would have left a letter in his mailbox about this or that neighborly issue. One time, the mail carrier warned me that it was illegal for non–mail carriers to put things into mailboxes. “It’s just a note,” I reasoned when she tried to give it back to me. “See how overgrown his hedges are?” She stared unbudgeably hard, held the letter steady between us. “Why can’t you just leave it there for him?” I snarled. I slammed the door in her face, and the next morning I found it stuffed in with my own mail, in my own mailbox. On it she had scrawled petulantly, Only I can put this in the mailbox and I won’t do it!

  Through my great-room window, I can see that his grand staircase, with its audacious pineapple-carved finials, is littered with men, women, and children. The way they lie about, it looks as though there’s one whole family to a stair. A boy dangles from a dusty crystal chandelier. I watch an old woman topple over a railing while maneuvering through the immense spiral shantytown. What a shame. But you can’t let everyone in. There would be no end to it.

  I run a finger over the great-room mantel. Dead skin, infiltrated ash. Too bad the housekeeper has most likely perished.

  Someone knocks on my door—insistent and angry rather than timid and begging. I grab that kitchen knife.

  On my veranda stands a man holding himself up by the door knocker, his wiry muscles about to tense themselves off his bones. His face is unshaven, neglected. He has the skinny corpse and fat face of a drunk, and when I pull the door open he attempts to keep hold of the knocker and falls in, face-plants on my entryway Oriental.

  “Whiskey,” he moans, reaching for some imaginary tumbler.

  I think about swiping his open palm with my blade, but there is something about him that I like. His request is original. At least he’s trying.

  Where my driveway used to curve into a grand circular turnaround, the waves are mincing: they hiss, churn up crud and fish parts. But the ones in the distance are large and smooth; they conceal the city I used to look out at. They roll long like bedsheets drying in the wind, and I can feel their break.

  I didn’t think I could tire of the sound of crashing waves, but it never ends. It holds your attention like someone who can’t stop coughing. It grates. It might be nice to listen to something else for a change. Plus, I’m tired of my music.

  I know I probably shouldn’t, but I kick his feet toward an ornamental umbrella stand, get him full-bodied into the house, and close and lock the door. He wants whiskey? I don’t care for it, and I have too much as it is. Besides, I’ve always liked having drinkers around. They often surprise.

  The man—he grumbles that his name is Gary—doesn’t even take the stack of crackers I offer him. He flings them like dice and messily pours another glass.

  “Ice,” he slurs.

  I shake my head. The fridge is dormant. My food is canned. And the kind of whiskey I keep should be enjoyed sans ice.

  He’s so at ease in his stupor. Though he arrived sopping, if he asked me what’s with all this water, I wouldn’t be the least surprised.

  Now he wears one of my bespoke suits, bespoken on a trip abroad, in fact. He wears it like he’s a metal hanger, but it’s a bit tight on me. I’m not ashamed. I live a good life.

  I make a list of chores for him, written out like a contract.

  “If you’re going to live here, you’re going to work,” I say, and slide it over for him to sign. He does so without reading. Irresponsible.

  So I read it to him. “The contract states that in exchange for room and board, Gary will guard the house and take care of any beggars or intruders. He will refill the flush buckets with seawater so we can flush our toilets like civilized people. He will throw our empty cans, bottles, and uneaten food out the back door each night to avoid smells. He will help the owner with weekly cleanings of the house. He will perform all other duties the owner asks.”

  There are plenty of extra bedrooms for him to stay in, but it’s my house. So for the first night, I set him up on the study love seat with some fine sheets and a goose down pillow. He scrunches into it, keeping one eye open as he sleeps, one foot up on the coffee table and the other leg bent, perfectly right-angled, foot flat on the floor, ready. For what? To run? Though the water is creeping closer to the house, I’m not sure that’s it.

  The far stand of houses is gone. Where there should be rickety multifamilies, I see water flat like a prairie, occasional whale spouts blurring the horizon line. The glare off all that water is like looking right at the sun.

  I see my neighbor padding around the sleeping bodies in his halfway home for derelicts. He is dressed in a tattered robe, his beard long and unkempt. I can practically smell him.

  I catch his eye across the moat and mime a drowned body, limbs, head, and tongue hung and bobbing, and then point to where the houses had stood. He looks, rubs his eyes, and drops to his knees. Some of the criminals he’s invited into his home take this opportunity to rob him. Their hands work him over, dig in his bathrobe pockets, his hair, while he shudders with grief. Something is yanked from under his arm, and they d
isperse so quickly it’s like they were never there. I shiver. My neighbor is taller than I am, and stronger. What would become of me if I had hundreds of people crammed into my house? I’d have no food left. I’d be bullied out of my master suite. I might even lose my life. I am once again grateful for Gary. He wants nothing from me except my whiskey, and has the build of a welterweight or a thief: small and wiry, someone who can put you in a headlock before you feel his touch.

  As my neighbor wipes his tears, I shrug in commiseration. But he just shakes his head at me with disappointment, like I’m the one who just robbed him; I’m the water that tore those houses down.

  And here I thought I was being neighborly.

  Unless he’s sneaking into the pantry late at night, I doubt Gary has eaten a morsel since his arrival. I notice no dent in my supplies, except the whiskey, which is already half gone. I’ve always known liquor to be the stuff of preservation, so I’m only a little surprised. The other night, I crumbled some crackers into a half-full bottle to see if he would take to the sustenance, and he roared, smashed the bottle against the marble table where we dine. The noise was exhilarating. Normally the only sound is the constant murmur of the sea around us. Some nights I hear displaced loons call out to find their mates, or human calls from the boats of survivors looking for land, shelter. Their voices travel low across the water and get trapped within the walls of my bedroom. Sometimes I hear music from my neighbor’s house. Not often. Usually it’s dreary, but on occasion a piano is tuned, accompanied by some squeaky string instrument. People stomp feet and call out. It’s rustic. One night I heard a wavering wedding march and imagined a bride, in a dress of pinned white towels, making her way through the mob to stand with her groom. Two people desperate to have what they think is love before the big end—it was hard not to feel something.