Before, During, After

by Richard Bausch

  In her peripheral sight she saw a stirring nearby, a startling sudden movement that turned out to be a shape stumbling in the uneven pockets of sand toward the water.

  Nicholas Duego.

  And he had just seen her, veering in her direction. He stopped and fumbled with something in his shirt pocket. A cigarette. She watched him light it and then come on. “Hello,” he said. “I wondered where you went.”

  “If you don’t mind I’d rather be alone.”

  He seemed not to have heard. He sat down about three feet from her, elbows resting on knees, saying nothing, and not looking at her but at the moonlight on the water. After drawing on the cigarette, he offered it.

  “I don’t smoke.”

  “It is not tobacco.”

  She stared at him a moment, then took it, drew deeply on it, and handed it back.

  “It is the only thing that relaxes me,” he said. “When I want to relax. Sometimes I would rather not relax. For that I have other things.”

  She blew the smoke out and briefly had to fight the need to cough. Sitting back and looking at him, she said, “Really.”

  He smiled. “You are not used to the smoke.”

  She had the feeling that he was trying to impress her. She almost laughed. “I guess you’re a bad character.”

  He offered the joint.

  “Right,” she said.

  “I am not bad, no. I am a good man.”

  “That’s nice to know.”

  They smoked for a few minutes in silence, passing the roach back and forth. She wasn’t thinking about anything but relief from the whiskey-dimmed funk she was in, and it came to her that in its way this was similar to those passes in the bars and clubs of Washington when there was just the blankness of herself in the instant, just the time and place, no history or thought of a future, either, but only the counterfeit brightness of the exact present. The sky shifted before them, the clouds moving, and she could not think of the clouds as anything but emptily pretty things that did not apply to her. There was only this very minute itself: a squall out at sea, water lifting and settling, night with its terrors beyond the line of the horizon, far away.

  “I have more,” Duego said, holding out a little plastic bag. “Should I roll us another one?”

  She watched him do it, saying nothing, and kept the one he’d given her, taking another hit from it, holding it between her thumb and forefinger, the coal burning very close to her flesh now. It was almost gone.

  During

  Islands

  1

  He offered her more, and she took it, gazing at the slowly vanishing lunar radiance on the water. You could still see small glimmering traces of it on the shifting surface, thousands of white wings. Marijuana after alcohol made her woozy, as if she had just awakened from a long sleep. But her vision seemed sharper, and her senses, her nerve endings, were tingling. She thought idly of the phrase having a buzz on.

  He was talking, going on about something.

  Food, she realized.

  “I like things cooked dark. Crisp and brown.”

  She looked at the side of his face, a handsome Latin face, with a sharp nose and high cheekbones, and coal-black hair. She felt nothing. Yet when she handed him back the joint, and he rested his other hand on her shoulder, she did not remove herself. The moonlight was dying, shrouded in folds of cloud. She put her knees up and rested her head on them.

  The other took a hit and said, “I did not speak English until I was ten years old.”

  She sniffled. “You told us that. Please leave me alone.”

  “I think if you talk to me you will feel better.”

  She did not speak.

  He went on smoking, holding it in, then letting go, blowing the smoke. He held the joint out to her. “I am a dancer.”

  “You told us.”

  “I never liked it as a child.”

  “Dancing.” She took another toke and handed it back.

  “I did not like America. In my country there was a very strong official hatred of it. But my father felt differently. He worked for Americans before the revolution. My mother was Canadian. He wanted to go be an American or a Canadian. But I was a boy and I had friends. I did not want to leave my friends. In the house, when I was small, as long as I can remember, he talked about going to North America, and I have memories of them fighting about it. And then my mother died. I did not know when we went to Canada to visit her family that it was to go to America to live. A friend in America helped him.”

  She could think of nothing in response. And then she simply dismissed the worry about it. Mentally, she dismissed him. “Do you still hate America?” Her voice was flatly automatic.

  He appeared momentarily affronted. “I am a citizen.”

  “Ever heard the phrase America, love it or leave it?”

  He laughed. “I could have made that up. It could have been me. Because I love America. It gave me the chance to be a dancer.”

  “What kind of dance? Ballet?”

  He shook his head. “Modern dance.”

  “Yes, well, I had ballet in school.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “Not especially, I’m sorry to say. I wasn’t any good at it.”

  They were quiet.

  Presently, he said, “It’s hard to be good at something you do not like.”

  “Well, I wasn’t very good.”

  “I was not good in school. My wife helped me study and do better and now she is gone. The woman she is with—I thought this woman was my friend.”

  “I’m sorry.” The dope was not making her feel anything. She had no sense of well-being or of the jollity it usually occasioned and, looking out at the seascape before her, she wished for solitude while lacking the will to do anything to achieve it. She sat quite still, her distress having shaded into this drowsy gloom, this sour observing.

  “Where are you from?” he asked. “Your voice is different.”

  She told him.

  “That is in Shelby County.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “I had a friend I visited in Memphis. The second day terrible thunderstorms came and they kept saying the counties and we listened because it was a tornado and the storm hit Bartlett in Shelby County. I remember that. Because I thought of pears. We watched it on the television. It knocked down trees. I went to Graceland.”

  “Almost everyone who visits Memphis goes there. A lot go there because of Graceland.”

  He wrote in the sand. “That is my address in Orlando, Florida.”

  “Please. I’m really not up for talking.”

  “It feels good to carve it in the sand, after today. My place on earth. And I mark it here. Like a sign for everyone to see.”

  “People will walk on it.” The idea struck her as funny. She laughed softly.

  “Here.” He offered her another hit.

  “Okay.”

  They smoked. Somewhere behind them was the sound of a steel drum. It went on awhile and then died away. A girl laughed, and a man laughed, too. They spoke in German, and after a few moments you couldn’t hear them anymore.

  “Write yours,” he said.

  “At present, I have no address.”

  He stared.

  “All right. Here’s where my grandmother lives.” And as she scrawled the number and the name of the street, she did feel strangely as if she were claiming something in defiance. The idea made her pause. Then she swept her hand across all of it. “This is what happens, isn’t it.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Because I’m not superstitious.”

  He wrote his name and wiped it away. “Neither am I.”

  A moment later, he said, “Why do you have no home?”

  She told him about leaving the job in Washington and was surprised to find that she felt friendly toward him; something in her nerves, below the level of thinking, was actually responding to the cool night breezes and the quiet talk.

  “I have never been to
Washington and I would love to see it,” he said.

  “You should go.”

  “But you are leaving it.”

  “I’ve left it. When I get out of here, I’m going back to Memphis. A small truck with all my belongings in it is headed there as we speak. To Twenty-Three Bilders Street, Memphis.”

  “It sounds like a number of workers. Twenty-three builders.”

  “It does. We have twenty-three builders waiting to build this building on this street lined with buildings.”

  He laughed, and it went on. It was the reasonless laughter of dope.

  “Lot of buildings,” she said. “Count them.”

  “Twenty-three,” he said, and his laugh went off at the night sky.

  “It doesn’t have a u in it. Bilders. It’s a man’s name.” She sputtered, nearly choking with her own laugh. “I think he was a banker. So my belongings are headed to this street with a little house on it built by builders, and the whole street has buildings on it now, probably built by this banker named Building. No, Bilders. Off High Point Terrace.”

  He paused, wiping his eyes and his mouth with a handkerchief, which he crushed in his fist and jammed into his shirt pocket. “Do you believe in fate?”

  It seemed that she couldn’t move the muscles around her mouth. “Explain.”

  “That everything was leading to this.”

  “And what is this, exactly?”

  “We two, here, on this beach.”

  “I don’t believe in fate,” she said to him. “So, no. But hey, thanks anyway.”

  “I feel something led me here. Something in a past life.”

  She flicked the roach off into the sand, and he got to his knees to retrieve it. “It’s done,” she told him. “There’s just the ash left. We’re done. All the fun’s gone out of it.”

  He sat back and rolled another and lit it while she watched. The little residue of pleasant feeling had dissolved inside her.

  “Do you feel it, too?” he said.

  She sighed. “I feel dizzy and full of anxiety. And I don’t want to be with anyone. Please.”

  “I only want to help you. And be helped.”

  “Let’s talk about something other than ‘fate’ then.”

  Behind them someone was crying, and someone else was singing. It struck her all over and yet as if for the first time that she was thousands of miles from home. “Your wife is a dancer, you said.”

  “Yes.” He looked absurd sitting there hugging his knees, talking about fate, his dancer wife gone off with another woman. “I cannot help this feeling that I have,” he told her. “That the universe brought you to me.”

  She had to suppress an urge to laugh again. She watched him breathe out the smoke. When he offered her still another hit, she accepted.

  “I guess it is stupid,” he said.

  She took the hit, handed the roach to him, and leaned back on her hands. The clouds over the moon were darker but still quite thin, moving faster than she thought clouds ever moved. The world was spinning. Everything was dissolving, going off.

  “I believe the universe intends changes for us all,” he said.

  “All us builders?” She giggled, and it took hold and grew deeper.

  “I am serious now,” he said. “Hey, I am. I am serious.”

  “Sorry. Strikes me funny.”

  “I do believe the universe intends changes.” And now he laughed, too.

  “This isn’t the best time to talk about the universe, is it. Or maybe it’s the only time to talk about it. Right? Isn’t that it? You get stoned and you talk about the universe? Only I don’t want to talk about the universe, man. Truthfully, I am so fucking averse to talking about the fucking universe.” This brought still another laugh out of her, and she looked at the fact of it, like marking the date.

  “I am only trying to divert you,” he said. “I do not like such language.”

  “Oh, God. Forgive me. I fucking didn’t mean to say averse. That was very fuckingly rude and vulgar of me. Pure fuckery and I do apologize.”

  “I am not prudish.”

  “Oh—well, thank you for the smoke.”

  “That is helping?”

  She saw the anxiety in his face. He was quite good to look at. “Listen, I don’t want to hurt your feelings. Really. I’m sorry, okay? I’m drunk and stoned and sick and panicky and I hope you don’t take it personally but I really don’t want company anymore. So why don’t you leave.”

  “You cannot even bring yourself to say my name.”

  “Oh, shut up!” She kept laughing.

  “Say it, then.”

  “Please leave me alone.”

  He took another pull, inhaled it deeply, held it in, then sighed it out, offering her yet another hit. She took it. “Okay. Now. Please leave me alone. Nicholas.”

  “You were not enjoying this?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “It is only a little kindness between friends.”

  “I’m sorry. You’re right.”

  “We were laughing beautifully.”

  “Right. Okay, sure. And I fuckishly said averse. And you forgave me.”

  “I do not know what you mean, now. I wish you would not use that language. It is impolite and unladylike. Not worthy of you.”

  “Hey, fuck you, sarge.”

  “Sarge.”

  “Forget it.”

  He leaned over and lightly kissed the side of her face, then moved a little farther away. “I mean nothing unfriendly. I have some other things to take.”

  “No,” she said.

  “Do you know about Special K?”

  “The cereal?”

  He smiled. “It is called that. Is there a cereal? I have it in pill form.”

  “The cereal?”

  “Ketamine. It makes things happen.”

  “No,” she said.

  They went on smoking. She felt the drug moving through her, numbness running along the nerves of her face. Time seemed to grow elongated and strange. She let him talk, and he was very willing to describe for her everything he was going through. It occurred to her that he was just an insecure, nervous boy.

  In a little while they were talking about the day, the trauma of it, and the way everyone seemed to tumble off some private deep end. “I do not even drink,” he said. “I like other things. But now I think I am drunk.”

  “You keep talking about your big drug habits. Are you trying to impress me? Because it’s not working.”

  “I was not trying to impress you. Only to help relieve your worry.”

  “That’s sweet. Thank you for it. But I really just want to sit here by myself.”

  He was silent. Perhaps a full minute went by.

  “It has felt a little less awful,” she told him.

  “I’m glad.”

  Another pause.

  “Suppose we are on a deserted island,” he said. “From a shipwreck.”

  This seemed very amusing. There was a bleak something in the laughter now, and the fact that the laughter itself felt so mirthless made it all that much deeper. “Deserted desert island, right?” she said. “Oh, that’s perfect. That’s rich.”

  “Not a desert, no.”

  “That’s hilarious. Not a deserted desert island?”

  “The dope is making you hysterical,” he said.

  “Yeah, perfect. Hysterical.” She saw moving light on the water. The clouds were opening again.

  “I think we should be as if no one else will ever come here. This is the first place. Adam and Eve’s garden.”

  “Adam and Eve’s deserted desert island.”

  “I am drawn to you. Very much. You are very beautiful. May I simply touch your face?”

  She watched his hand come up to her cheek. The touch was tentative and gentle, and she felt a little sorry for him. He let his fingers move carefully, slowly down to her chin, and under her chin. He turned her face up and leaned down to kiss her. She let him and then watched him sit back and regard her. The world was com
ing to an end. And then once more everything shifted: there was not the sense of this being anything but a small, desolate pass, one of the nights of her life before. She had no sense of a self, of herself, as more than a set of floating impressions. She wanted sleep. The effects of the alcohol and dope she had ingested seemed to be growing more profound. She lay back, and he was leaning over her, supporting himself on one elbow. I am not the type, she thought. What type. Why is it a type? The words went through her mind. You are, she thought. You are, now. You were, then. What were you? She thought of Faulk. She saw him riding home on the train. He was probably all right. All her irrational fear was leaching out of her as the night cooled.

  “Michael,” she murmured.

  “What?” the other said.

  “They don’t let people in before nine-thirty. That’s the hours. You wouldn’t stay and wait for an hour. Not in New York.”

  “I do not understand you,” Duego said, gazing down at her.

  “Please leave me alone now.”

  “One kiss?”

  She let him, opened her mouth with the tactile pleasure of it. “There,” she told him. It was as though Faulk, so far away, were a child, and she belonged to the world of adults.

  Duego put his mouth on hers, caressing her breasts, and then her lower abdomen, moving his hand down. His touch was insistent, and there was something hurried about it, as though he expected to be stopped or was afraid he would be. She was dizzy, eyes wide open, looking at him. His breath smelled of the dope and what he’d had to drink, and there was the thinnest displeasing redolence of fruit in it, too. She had a sensation of sudden clarity: this was actually happening. It was as though what had begun to unfold had just now become visible to her. She pushed on his shoulders as he got over on top of her.

  “No,” she said. “Get off.”

  His weight was stopping her breath. She protested with as much force as she could muster, and he rolled off, making a sound she thought at first was more laughter. He was crying.

  “Don’t cry,” she said, and patted his arm. The little smoldering roach lay between them. She threw it off into the night, then leaned down and kissed him. The kiss lasted a long time, and he put his hands on her lower back, pulling her closer. She was falling through some field of being that was far from herself, spiraling down, a darkness born of the waste of everything that this day had been. Some part of her—off in space, despairing—watched it all, believing that she was alone, that Michael Faulk was gone, that everything was gone.