“I didn’t mean anything by that,” she told him. “I might’ve asked you to tell me what’s in it. I don’t want to look at it.”
“It has nothing to do with me. If you don’t want to read it, simply throw it away.” He bowed, smiled emptily, and moved off.
Dear Lady,
You will have to believe me that I am a gentleman. I have decided to remove myself from your vicinity as it is clear that something is between us now that you are very conflicted and still enraging about. I must not allow us further contact for this reason. As you know, I have just ended my relationship with my wife. I am not ready for the society of others and I have a great anger in me that you saw last night, and for which I am deeply apologizing now. I am sorry if in any way I made you uncomfortable and I do admit that I had more to drink after our first pleasant moments on the beach smoking and I did some other things and I was so mixed up I must say that there is much that I do not remember. It was very good for me to spend our time together, and I am sorry if I blacked out, as I must have done. I do wish you well. Podría haber amado.
Nicholas Duego
Podría haber amado. She wrote it down on a corner of the envelope and then with shaking hands tore the rest of the envelope and the note into many pieces and dropped them into her purse. Grace brought her coffee.
“Do you speak Spanish?” she asked Grace.
“Yes.”
“What does this mean?” She held the piece of the envelope toward her.
Grace stared at it for a few seconds and then looked at her. “Who wrote this? It looks like a note in school.”
“Tell me what it says,” Natasha demanded.
“It says, ‘I could have loved you.’ ”
She crumpled the piece of paper and dropped it in her purse, then picked up her coffee and blew across the surface of it, feeling the tremor under her heart of the wrath that had seized her. I do not take what has not been given. “Thank you,” she said to Grace, who gave a little shrug and walked away.
Outside, Constance had stood and was stretching her arms into the sun. Constance. The reason for being here at all. Natasha finished the coffee quickly and went out, across the lobby, heading back up to her room. She saw as she passed that the television was on, playing to no one. Talking heads. She stopped, absorbed in spite of herself. The details of the attack were being discussed and analyzed and argued over. There was a scroll now at the bottom of the screen with further information. One of the hijackers had evidently lost heart and gotten on a train to the Midwest, no doubt meaning to lose himself in the vastness of the country. The discussion went on. The airlines losing tremendous amounts of money. The economic damage. Still many people missing, the search going on in the rubble. She couldn’t watch it anymore.
In her room, she took the pieces of the letter and envelope out of her purse and put them in the trash can. Then she went out into the hall to the ice-and-vending space and emptied the trash can into a larger bin there. She returned the can with its sand-filled ashtray to its place, next to the elevator. Back in the room, she lay down with her hands folded over her chest and waited in vain for sleep. She heard Constance in the next room, and then saw the other woman’s shadow out on the balcony.
“You asleep?” Constance called to her.
“No.”
“Want to talk?”
“No.”
“Not even a little?”
“What would we talk about?”
Constance sighed. “Anything.”
Natasha sat around on the edge of the bed facing the window.
“Maybe go down to the beach,” Constance said.
“I don’t want to.”
“We could swim and cool off.”
“You go.”
She came to the opening and looked in. “I’m sorry about before.”
Natasha waited a little. “Forget it.”
“It’s none of my business what you do.”
“Nothing happened, Constance.”
The older woman came into the room and sat at the dressing table opposite the bed. Her gaze trailed down the wall, to the spatter of sand on the rug near the door, where the ashtray trash can had been. “Is that from the beach?”
Natasha hadn’t seen it. “I don’t know,” she said.
“Well,” said her friend. “It’s nothing.”
“Nothing is right.”
“But you can’t blame me for thinking it. I mean you were lying there on the sand together and he was on his back and you were leaning over him with your mouth on his. You were going at it like a couple of teenagers.”
She could barely find the breath to speak. “I kissed him, and then he passed out. You should’ve stayed and spied a little more.”
“I wasn’t spying.”
“And what exactly were you doing on the beach all day drunk?”
“Okay, let’s just drop it.”
“Well, I’m sure it’s your business entirely, of course. But you were out there with the notorious Mr. Skinner. The cheater with all the health problems. Did you cheat with Mr. Skinner? You said you’d been down to the beach with several men. What went on, Constance? Or is it that you’re the grown-up and don’t have to explain yourself?”
“Stop this. Right now. Before we say things we can’t take back. And you know nothing happened with that poor browbeaten toad. Or anyone else, either.”
“Well, you say that, but what about those others? The way you told us about going down to the beach with several men was pretty suggestive. So, really, what happened with them?”
“Now you cut this out. Nothing happened.”
“Okay,” Natasha said. “Right. Are we really going to do this?”
“Look. I wasn’t—I wasn’t spying.”
“What was it, then? What do you call it?”
“Okay. I believe you. All right? I’m sorry.”
She was close to screaming at the other, close to saying at the top of her voice what had happened later. She felt the hot urge to do so in the nerves of her throat.
“Really,” Constance said. “It’s none of my business anyway, like I said.”
“You had sand on your back,” said Natasha. “I saw it.”
“Okay, okay. Really. Let’s just stop this, now. Please.”
They were quiet for a long time.
Presently, Constance said, “What will we do today?”
“I don’t want to do anything but sleep. And be away from you.”
“No, now, come on, sweetie.”
Natasha said nothing.
“I said I’m sorry. I am sorry.”
“I’m staying here.”
“All day? You have an extra day. Maybe more.”
“I don’t feel like doing anything else. You do what you want.”
There was another pause. At last, Constance rose and went around into her own room. Natasha drifted on the edge of sleep and woke with a start and then drifted some more. She wanted very badly to be down in sleep. When she stirred, there was silence, no sound from the other side of the wall.
She got out of the bed and moved to the entrance of the balcony, pausing there. She saw the different nuances of blue at the horizon. There were no clouds, no hint of them anywhere. People were sunning themselves and playing in the shallows or sitting in the pockets of shade, picnicking, talking quietly. Two dark men were standing over a lit barbecue, waiting for the flames to die down. The life of the island was proceeding. Life elsewhere was going on. Her native country would honor the dead. The president would make another speech, visiting the ruins, the wreckage of so many assumptions about the world. It was too far away to imagine. She stepped out into the peace of this afternoon in Jamaica, with the sun shining in jade light through the palm fronds, and the air stirring softly, warm tropical breezes that carried the low repeating roar of the sea.
3
During the long train ride to Memphis, Faulk tried to sleep. There was no comfort to be had. Late in the night he made his way to the dining
car and asked for a brandy. They had nothing but beer. He drank three beers in iced glasses, though the good clear taste disappeared after the first. He ordered a fourth but didn’t finish it. A young couple entered and took seats at the bar, nodding at him. He paid for the beer and wobbled slowly back to his compartment and lay down. The bed was narrow as a plank, the mattress so thin that he could feel the bands of metal supporting it.
He slept fitfully, the whole compartment pitching back and forth with the motion of the train, town lights gliding past the windows, other trains, seeming impossibly near, flashing by in a speeding instant, bells and blinking red lights at the crossings. The windows were black for a long time. And then they were full of sun, which made it stifling hot in that tight space. He’d lost track of time. He got up and went out and down to the dining car. There were no empty seats. A porter approached him and asked if he wanted to wait. But looking at the packed car with its faces showing the strain of the last two days, he decided that he wasn’t hungry. To be here felt too much like the bad journey down to Washington from New York. A quality of exhaustion hung in the air, the other passengers looking out at the rushing countryside. As he started out of the car a seat opened up near the door. He took it, realizing how tired he was. It was almost as if he collapsed into it. No, he told the porter, he had not decided what he wanted to eat. He asked for black coffee. Gazing out the windows at the countryside south of Cincinnati, he reflected on the fact that he had spent more time on trains now, just in the last two days, than he had spent on any other form of public transportation in his life. And he did not feel safe. And he wanted company. Something of the shock of those burning and collapsing buildings was only now beginning to weigh on him. He looked over at the thickset man across the aisle from him.
“We had the Renaissance,” the man said to him, “and then we had the Enlightenment, and they’ve always hated us for that.”
Faulk did not want to talk about it. “Awful,” he said to the man, hoping to leave it there.
The man was traveling with two young girls, the taller of whom pushed past his heavy knees and out into the aisle. She stood before Faulk. “My name is Sheila.”
“Sheila,” the man said. “Come here.”
“That’s all right,” Faulk told him. “Hello, Sheila.”
“How old are you?” Sheila asked him. Her eyes were the color of clear water in sunlight.
“I’m very old. How about you?”
“I’m going to be seven. We saw a catastrophe. We were on vacation in Washington, D.C., and we saw a catastrophe. Have you ever seen one of those?”
“Sheila, don’t bother the gentleman.”
“No, it’s fine,” Faulk said. “Really.”
“Have you ever seen a catastrophe?” the girl persisted.
“Well, yes.”
“Did you see what we saw?”
“No, ma’am. I wasn’t there.”
“Don’t you think it’s elegant that I know the word catastrophe?”
“It certainly is.” Faulk smiled at her and then at her father. “I think it’s elegant that you know the word elegant.”
“I know a lot of words.”
“That’s wonderful. You can never know too many words.”
“I know the word fanatical, too. And theocracy. Do you know those words?”
“I do. But I’m so old. It’s excellent that you know them.”
“I just learned those two. My father said them and I learned them.”
“Sheila,” the girl’s father said.
“We were there at the catastrophe,” Sheila said. “We were going to the airport, and we saw a building on fire and smoke going way up in the sky. Way, way up. Way farther than anything we ever saw. So far. Smoke can be a catastrophe, can’t it.”
Faulk nodded at her and kept the smile.
“It scared me. Are you scared?” Sheila looked like she might begin to cry now.
“Sheila,” her father said. “Come here, honey.”
Faulk looked at him. “I was in New York.”
“Our flight home was canceled.”
“We live in Chicago,” Sheila said, sniffling. “We’re taking the train from Memphis.”
“Come up,” the man said, and pulled her onto his knee. The girl on the other side of him, probably four or five, said, “Daddy, I’m hungry.”
The girl named Sheila said, “You always whine when you have nothing to whine about.”
“Sheila.”
“She has nothing to whine about. We didn’t get a catastrophe.”
“Be still.” The man looked over at Faulk. “Tough to explain.”
“Yes.”
“You live in Memphis?”
“Yes.”
“New York on business?”
“A wedding that got canceled.”
“Yeah. Cancellations.”
The girls went on arguing, and the man murmured to them. Faulk got up from his seat and nodded at the man, then went to the entrance of the car and out, to the vestibule. Another man was standing there smoking a cigarette. The man wore a uniform—a dark blue coat and pants. Faulk pushed open the door into the next car and strode carefully in the rocking motion of the train to his compartment. Out the window there was a farmhouse and wide fields, rows of corn. He sat on the thin fold-up bed thinking about his country as he never had before. His own sighs came back to him from the walls, even with the rush and roar of the train, and he let the tears come.
4
Most of the day, Natasha kept to the room, and in the night she made herself walk out alone, along the shoreline. Just at the edge of the bath of light from the resort, she found a piece of driftwood a little smaller than a baseball bat lying in the sand and dry weeds. She carried it with her, tight in her fist. The night was peaceful and clear, and she watched the lights of a passing ship at the farthest line of the horizon. When she returned to the resort, she sat for a little while in one of the chairs on the veranda while the night breezes went over her. The susurration and clicking of the palms soothed her a little, though the whole scene also seemed to increase her sense of the uselessness of everything.
No one spoke to her.
Back in the room, she tried to sleep and couldn’t. She wrote a few lines to Iris, and more to Faulk, but then crumpled the pages and threw them away. The phrases were fraught with complaining, and the complaints were colored by what was really the matter. It looked absurd, was absurd and selfish to be lamenting about being stuck in paradise, and if she kept the real situation to herself while complaining about being here, that was how it would seem.
The night wore on. Toward dawn, she woke sitting in her chair, her neck sore and stiff, both her hands asleep. She paced and swung her arms and rubbed her own numb fingers along her thighs and finally got into the bed under the sheets and lay staring at the white ceiling or at the flicker of lights out in the dark reaches over the sea. At last, sleep came, a dream that she was home, and there was nothing slightly nightmarish about it, yet when she woke, fear roiled in her stomach. Turning over on her side in the softly rising light, she thought about how far she had come from where she had just dreamed she was. There would be no more sleep in this dawn.
She went into the bathroom and looked at herself in the light. Amazingly, the sore places were not bruising. She saw herself, tanned, slim, no sign of violence showing. Her jaw was sore.
The hours of the morning were rainy with a slight chill in the air, though by early afternoon the temperature had risen. The waves thundered continually on the beach. She had gone back to bed, and she lay listening to the sounds. She did not even get up to eat.
She slept more, not aware of it as sleep until she opened her eyes and saw that the light was different. She turned and looked at the entrance of the balcony, the railing, and the ocean. She closed her eyes, dozed, and awoke to the rhythmic pounding of the surf and the fading light.
The day passed like this, and Constance stayed away. Constance was leaving her alone.
Natasha couldn’t think now what they might find to talk about. And then of course she knew. They would talk about the attacks, the planes, the killings, and the backdrop of it all would be what Constance had seen of her and Nicholas Duego on the beach. It would be there, unspoken, the mud on the floor, as Iris used to say. Constance would never be able to accept that nothing had happened; and what she did believe about it was too far from the actuality to contemplate without anger.
There were little bottles of liquor inside the minibar. Constance had opened the one in her room on the first night. Natasha opened hers now and drank four of the bottles, two whiskeys, a brandy, and a rum, sitting up in the bed with the blankets over her knees. When she was finished with the rum, she stood, a little shakily, moved to the window, and closed the curtain across the entrance to the balcony, and then got back in bed.
It was night when she woke, still woozy from the drinks and with the beginning of a headache. Her lower back hurt, but she was sure this was from lying down so long. She lay there in the dark, suffering it, too near sleep to rise, and waiting for the drifting off that she thought would come. She could still feel the ghost-pressure of Nicholas Duego between her legs and along her hips, and she thought of finding some way to be insensible until that was gone, until it would stop. She got up and drank the last two little bottles, a gin and a vodka.
Faulk called in the morning. He was back in Memphis and would be looking at houses. “I’m just checking out places we can go see together,” he said.
She felt nothing. “You choose,” she said. “Really, I mean it, honey. I’m sure it’ll be wonderful. I just want to be with you. You decide.”
“Well, I’m not going to do that. If I see something I think you’ll like I’ll ask them to hold it until you get here. Baby, are you all right?”
She lost composure for a few seconds.
“Natasha?”
“No, I’m not all right. I want to be home. I hate this.”
“I know,” he said. “I know.”
Later, she called Iris, who said that she wanted them to have a place of their own, nearby. She was healing fast from her fall. She sounded harried and stressed and worried about making everything perfect for Natasha’s return.
Before, During, After Page 15
