In the fourth round, Rourke gives Vargas a sickening combination—a right to the jaw, followed by a smooth uppercut left, also to the jaw, then a clean right to the face in the indent between nose and cheekbone, and there is shouting, in a roar, like a train popping from a tunnel. And a bell. And a retreat, to the corners. I keep my eyes on Vargas, watching in spite of the blood. His nose sheds an amber stream from one nostril. His mouth guard gets slipped out, and water goes down his face and chest from the corner man squeezing a sponge. Ice goes on the cheek, and the cut man checks the eyes. His head tilts back and people talk at him, giving coarse encouragement.
Rob appears opposite from where we stand, on Vargas’s side, about ten feet from the corner, talking to Vargas’s brother. I think it is the brother, by the resemblance. Rob’s face floats mat level. It surprises me to see him there, though I suppose it doesn’t matter where Rob stands. The men in the ring and out of it are the same: there is an equivalency between the sides. Mr. Xinwu spoke of respect between adversaries, and I honestly feel no animosity toward Vargas. What I feel primarily is curiosity. His heart, his mind. The bed he sleeps in, the layout of his kitchen, who talks to him through the bathroom door? I have the feeling people talk to him through doors, that, like me, he is never alone. No one talks to Rourke that way.
Seconds remain before the next round. Corner people pull back. Vargas is joined by his brother, who hangs down, just for a moment, one arm linked to the corner post. As the brother speaks to Antonio, both look over to Rourke, like they are viewing a horizon. Is Rourke watching; does he see them? I don’t look; I can’t. I haven’t once looked in his corner.
“Two grand,” Swoosey shouts to Mark, “for every round Harrison lasts after this one.”
Mark and Swoosey shake. Not really shake so much as touch hands. “Four grand,” Mark wagers, “that he won’t last this one.”
A bell rings. I don’t know which—the fifth, I think. Vargas shoots over like a junkyard dog. There is a roar of approval as he crosses into Rourke’s vicinity. With his right arm and his body, he keeps Rourke in a limited region as his left fist makes contact. Rourke’s abdomen, Rourke’s face. Vargas goes at him, again and again, five times, ten times. Rourke accepts the force of each short thrust, trembling thickly like a gong, withstanding, absorbing, not losing footing—he has root. I think back to Montauk, to the stoic self-sacrifice, to the almost ghastly oneness, to the minuscule and endless preparations required for such a massive exertion. It is awful to see him hit, but worse to see him step so expertly into pain.
Rourke’s right eye swells and turns hard. I imagine the blood inside gathered like sheep, though blood does not come in flocks; I just picture it that way, caught inside, lost and stray. He’s having trouble seeing: he has to dodge blind. On the next strike to the face, Rourke’s head flies back as if he is following the trail of a jet. For a moment, his neck is exposed before the weight of his head rolls back around onto his chest, reminding me of a swan getting shot. The referee is there, giving a standing count. Everyone in the room is waiting for Rourke to fall. Maybe Mark was right, maybe the plan for Rourke is to go down. A part of me wishes it were true; yet, another part wants him to keep fighting. Needs.
Vargas trots triumphantly; his people call his name. Vargas. Vargas.
I grip the seat in front of me. My eyes begin to admit just color. The brown lines in his body, the brown lines in the ring, and in the room beyond, the brown sea of heads. If anyone is calling to Rourke he doesn’t hear—I don’t think he can hear—and yet he is still standing. Though it doesn’t surprise me that he won’t go down, I do wonder who it is that he is fighting.
The next moment is impacted. I have the sense of multiple end points, of time spilling over like water to define adjoining, previously hidden places. I see Rourke testing those places, preparing to test them. The stiff hull of his skin and muscles, superficially hard but on the inside open and opening further to pain, to all the pain he has not yet incorporated. It’s like he is allowing himself to feel, which moves me more than his blood and blindness. I see his father missing. I see his reluctance to claim the space left empty by his father to which he felt by nature disentitled. I see the inability to protect and to be protected. I see down, all the way down, down into the mat—it’s like a well—and I think how good it must feel to go back, to return to the place he was left alone, the place he was marked. I know the feeling. I often go back. To the day, the hour, the minute of losing him.
No one sees me leave. I retreat to the back of the auditorium. I look one last time as the crowd begins to roar. Rourke is coming off the ropes on the deep left. He seems to stand in glowing water. He tries to right himself. He rises then tips, and his gloved hands jerk toward his ears.
The referee holds one hand back, keeping Vargas in check. Rourke staggers forward; one step, two steps, each time getting closer to Vargas. Every eye in the house is on him. He arrives at center, finding it despite his confusion. Time seems to stop; the ring hangs from his feet. He turns at an angle to face Vargas, as if to say to some acquaintance on the street, Oh, and by the way—then out of nowhere, Rourke hauls his right arm back and cracks Vargas across the jaw. Vargas flies, stunned. Rourke takes the moment and moves in, starting on the body. Clear and sure. Again, again, a machine.
From where I stand, there is light, a spilling visionary light, from where it comes I don’t know, possibly my imagination. The light spawns globes about the heads of the fighters like the pre-Renaissance halos of Giotto’s saints, like these are men of sacrifice, like they are martyrs, though in fact there is nothing epic about them. They are common, common because we all begin with dreams but end with nothing, nothing more than what we, in our battered humility, can make of ourselves.
And voices, a hot sea, chaos rising. Rourke, Rourke, Harri-son, Harri-son.
June 1984
Farewell! Thou art too dear for my possessing.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
47
The last time I saw him was on Broadway, half a block north of Houston. It was dark and cold, and Mark and I were walking downtown to an opening. It must have been my third year at NYU. In the middle of the street, a junkie was blocking traffic. There’s a gas station with a car wash right there—anyway, there used to be a gas station, by now it may be gone—and the fluorescent pink light it produced made the street into a kind of theater. In the vortex of this enormous auditorium was a hunched body—Jack’s.
“How disgusting,” Mark yelled above the car horns.
Jack. Death-like and emaciated and stalled in a choke of municipal chaos. Mark was right, it was disgusting. I could almost see the venom through the sheerness of Jack’s skin, like a million insects crawling.
“C’mon. Let’s go.” Mark tried to steer me away.
Would he come to me, would he know my voice? There was a way I used to say his name; if I used that voice, maybe he would come. If I tried to lead him from traffic, to a storefront, to a doorway, to some place of relative safety, would he let me?
But Mark didn’t know Jack or anything about Jack, and it would have been bad if I’d run out onto Broadway and reached for Jack’s hand, and Mark shouted not to touch the stinking filth of it. I would not want Jack to feel filthy or stinking in my eyes. If there were trouble and the police came, Jack would be taken into custody, not Mark. Never had I wished so desperately for a friend, for Rourke or Rob or Denny, for someone who trusted me. Usually you think of a friend as someone you trust. I’d never thought before of a friend as someone who trusts you.
Mark got me onto the curb. “You really are a sweetheart. The way you worry about people. And birds.”
Jack is so small, I thought as we walked to the corner. Perhaps it wasn’t fair to think that way when his version of manhood resisted dimension. Usually, you had only to look into his eyes to locate the power of him. But I had not seen his eyes; they’d been closed. Later, if there was to be a later for him, there would be shaking and profane rocking, a
triangle of city streets to navigate that would seem to span miles—a stoop, a fire hydrant, the bumper of a car, and after that, a feeble search through some garbage cans, for what, not for food, he would not want food, a little leftover wine, maybe, in a precipitately trashed bottle. Later, in the ruthless and overbright morning, there would be a dilating consciousness more odious than I had ever encountered, as it labored like a half-chewed animal against the withdrawal of the pacific state he had found in his high.
Before turning west onto Houston Street, I looked back. I saw Jack bend lovingly into his addiction as debris from the street whirled like a symphony around him. The seat of his jeans was black. I wondered if he smelled like vomit. It occurred to me that I was fascinated by the look of him because the look of him was the feel of me—we were no different; we had ended up exactly the same, friendless and anonymous, ravaged on the inside. Whatever deficits had drawn us together in the beginning continued to bind us.
“These junkies are totally desensitized,” Mark informed me, throwing a shearlinged arm about my waist and tugging me. “You or I would end up dead, but that guy can drink out of a puddle and be back on the street tomorrow.”
It’s strange sometimes, the way stories interlock, like those plastic monkeys that connect by the elbow. I never imagined that Rourke’s and Jack’s lives would conform again in terms of theme or episode, but they did, coupled as they were by my peripheral involvement. When you allow your story to connect with the stories of others, you are either kind or crazy. There is a fine line, I think, between compassion and madness.
It did not occur to me during the fight to think back to Jack on the street, though I might well have—the drug making Jack’s skin a wall like Rourke’s skin had been a wall, protecting him against being hit. Each sought to pervert a natural gift—Jack by silencing his voice, Rourke by defacing his form. Each possessed enormous confidence, yet felt himself socially lame, utterly alone. Vargas beat at Rourke from the outside to weaken the underlying flesh, just as the heroin masticated Jack’s vitality, beating him on the inside with a lighter touch but greater strength. Every time Vargas made contact with Rourke, it was as if he were pounding a child’s body, no matter that Rourke was strong and had made himself hard. To me his flesh was tender, because all I’d ever done was treat it tenderly.
How could a man as clear as Rourke ignore the gross arithmetic of cruelty? How could a man so physically disciplined permit the consequence of his efforts to be defiled? And Jack, raping his treasured reason, making himself stupid. But me—I loved them both, and by both I was loved. What was it that I wanted so badly I needed it twice?
Andy’s Place is an all-night diner in Margate, New Jersey, two blocks south of where Rourke’s fight had been. When I left the auditorium during the fight that night, I had no idea which way to go. The streets were empty and the wind had turned wild. My clothes were whipping as if I were on a speedboat. As I walked, I could hear my name, near and far, as though the sea itself were calling. Evie! Eveline! Ev-e-line!
I discovered the diner and slipped inside. It was surprisingly good. It had a clean foyer with a clean working pay phone, and posted on the wall by one of those toy-grabbing games was a laminated list of numbers for car service companies to Manhattan. I got through on the first try to Monroe Limo and was told by a polite dispatcher that it would be about fifteen minutes before somebody came. I figured I should wait in back in case anyone came looking for me. I informed the waitress that a car was coming, then I ordered toast. I was a waitress once too. I didn’t want her thinking I had bad manners.
She had her elbow on the counter in front of the pass-through to the kitchen. She said, “White or rye?”
“Uh, rye.”
“Jelly?”
“No jelly.” I pointed to the bathroom. “I’ll go wash up, you know, and stuff.”
“G’head,” she told me knowingly. “I’ll knock when the cab’s here.”
——
Carlo wasn’t on duty, Al was. Al gave me forty dollars to cover the ride up from Jersey, plus a seven-dollar tip. I’d planned to keep the driver waiting while I went up to get cash, but Al pulled out his wallet. Mark would give him an extra twenty for the courtesy, so I said fine.
I got upstairs at 2:00 A.M. I know the time because the first thing I did was pack, starting with the sterling alarm clock Dad and Marilyn had given me for Christmas. I had no idea why the clock came first—maybe because of its honest, bright numbers or the effort they’d surely put into choosing it, debating its virtues against the virtues of all other clocks. For some reason they’d settled on this particular one, and, I don’t know—I just felt bad about it.
After that I packed my books, and last, all of my clothes. Luckily, Mark had just purchased a set of luggage for the trip to Italy we were supposed to take. I carried the four stuffed suitcases and a knapsack into the living room, and I arranged them in size order. Then I stacked them so they would consume the least amount of floor space. Then I stared at them, considering where to go and how to get there. No matter where I went, Mark would follow, and anyone who tried to help me would be dragged into a double mess, that being the mess of my reality, plus a whole new mess of Mark’s making.
When the phone rang, it was a relief. I hadn’t expected the phone. I’d expected the door—and Mark, standing there. It was Dan Lewis. “Sorry to call so late,” Dan said. “Hope I didn’t wake Mark.” Dan attended Juilliard, which was around the corner from Mark’s place, and often our paths would cross. Sometimes Mark and I went with friends to hear Dan play at the American, a dinner club in the theater district.
For a while he was quiet and I was quiet. It was 2:47; the silver clock was still in my hand. On the other side of the living room window, the wind was kicking up like crazy, like it wanted something out of me. Pieces of the street were making it up twenty-five floors. It was the same wind I’d felt outside the auditorium in Jersey, when I thought I heard my name in it.
I remember thinking, I guess tonight is the night. And then, of course tonight is the night.
“They found him in the woods. About two hours ago. At my grandfather’s farm.”
I’d been to the Lewis farm once during a February break when Dan’s grandparents had been in Florida. There was a blizzard, and we got caught upstate near the Catskills with no food and no phone. We tried to go snowshoeing with tennis rackets. I remember Jack informing us over a candlelit dinner of canned beans and toasted marshmallows that a wood pussy is a skunk. He and Dan argued that night, as usual, about changing the name of the band.
“How about ‘The Void’?” Jack had suggested.
Dan shook his head. “Sounds like emptying your bladder.”
“Not ‘to void,’ dumb ass, ‘The void.’”
“Oh,” said Dan, “as in space, as in illimitable distance.”
“Exactly,” Jack had said. “As in the gap between your fucking ears.”
Dan cleared his throat. “You okay?”
I didn’t know. I said, “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” he said.
“How did they know, you know, where to look?”
“I guess he wasn’t showing up in the place he usually stayed. One of his friends, acquaintances, whatever, called Manhattan information for ‘Fleming’ and got Elizabeth, and his family started inquiring. My grandfather had called me from Florida just the day before to say that his caretaker had reported a missing gun. He described it to me because he has lots of guns. I knew exactly which one he meant. I just said, ‘Yeah, I know it. That’s the gun Jack loves.’ So I told Elizabeth, and the local cops started searching the property yesterday morning. They went through the night in case he was still alive. They looked for twenty-six hours. You know, there’s six hundred acres there. Mr. Fleming drove up today to identify him.”
I leaned over the suitcases, crushing the high part of my stomach into one of the handles. I couldn’t help but think of boots through leaves. And of dogs. Most likely they’d used d
ogs. I thought also of the freckle in the center of his lower lip and the blue of his eyes. And the gunshot—
“How long—was he—there?”
“One cop said three or four days. But according to my father, a second guy said maybe less, that Jack was, you know, ‘thin’ to begin with.”
“And his mom?”
“Not good. I just got off the phone with her. She decided to have a memorial service next week. On Friday evening. She’s hoping we’ll speak. A couple of us. You, me. Elizabeth.”
An enormous gust rattled the windows. Dan heard it too, since he was only a few blocks away. “It’s windy tonight,” he said. “Like November. Your birthday’s in November, right?”
“Yes,” I said. “Funny that you would remember that.”
“How can I forget the night Jack gave you that necklace in the refrigerator box? The opal.”
I said, “Yeah, that’s right, the opal.”
“Well, take it easy, Evie. I’ll probably talk to you tomorrow. Tell Mark I’m sorry to call so late.”
“Don’t worry about it, Dan. He’s not even home.”
48
Sometimes you hear someone say, It was like seeing a ghost. By that they mean that they have experienced a penetration of the present by an agent of the past; they have experienced a destabilization. They call the sensation “ghost” because the occasion inspires curiosity and fear and touches on the twin marvels of space and time.
“Evie?” Kate says.
Her voice comes through plainly, though I am in my mother’s house in East Hampton and Kate is in France. Laurent sent her there after her graduation from McGill. She’s staying with her mother’s sister Yvette in Brest, a city by the sea, in Brittany. Yvette is a pharmacist; she has an apothecary.
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