The Horses of the Night

by Michael Cadnum

  To be one of Barry’s friends was to feel honored. To be liked by Barry was to be endorsed by someone who knew virtue and good humor. It worried me to see him like this. “You need a vacation,” I said.

  Barry laughed and agreed. “Or a little more tennis. I have to be at the medical center about five minutes ago. I’m lecturing on a subject Nona suggested. Responses to pain in the cerebral cortex.”

  “I would have thought the brain is pretty well mapped by now.”

  “We take a natural interest in it. Man’s best friend.”

  Barry grabbed a rolled-up newspaper from the bar. “Do you realize that your girlfriend is a genius? I mean a literal, actual genius?”

  “She always impresses me,” I said. Talking about her made her seem all-too absent. For a moment, though, I could feel her lips on mine.

  “She studied with a man named Valfort,” Barry was saying. “Pioneered brain mapping, refined hypnotherapy. One of those guys who’s so advanced he’s weird. The story is that he helped Nona Lyle a lot with personal stuff, theoretical stuff. That’s not my field, really. But I hear that Nona has the finest medical mind in North America, and she chose to work in psychiatry so she could help sick kids.”

  Dying children, I nearly corrected him, but I knew that Barry was at ease with a kind of euphemism, his style of talk both boyish and intellectual, as though an inner censor kept this complex man from expressing complicated thoughts.

  He gave me a tap with his newspaper. “Take good care of her,” he said, and he was gone.

  Peterson leaned against the bar, and he spent perhaps a moment longer examining his sweet vermouth than it required.

  “I can’t agree,” I was saying. I was trying to reassure him. “Your work has that solid look. The look of reality.” I said the last word with just a touch of irony. The truth was, Peterson’s work had looked like weak copies of my own.

  Peterson shook his head, smiling, but there was a ruefulness to his expression that I didn’t entirely understand. “When I saw your work in the exhibit a few days ago I knew that I didn’t have a chance.”

  “You’ll make a name for yourself. Children will run across the open spaces you designed for them.” I had a vague glimpse of myself in the polished mahogany of the counter, a tall man, lean, with tie loosened, jacket unbuttoned, my face in the indistinct gleam little more than a blur.

  “I can’t do what you do,” Peterson was saying. “When you design a landscape you realize—this is how the world should look.”

  I thanked him for his kind words. This was all proper and professional, two men of talent sharing the late afternoon. There was an unsettling undercurrent, however, which was unexpressed, something that troubled Peterson deeply.

  He looked away from me, leaning against the counter, running his finger over a bead of water. “You don’t sound bitter.”

  “I am,” I said, but in a way that denied the words.

  “I don’t blame you.”

  Peterson leaned like a man about to deliver bad news, or a confession. “You forgot about DeVere.”

  “I thought that this time …”

  “There would be justice,” said Peterson, completing my thought. Peterson paused, and gave his twist of lemon a poke with a forefinger. “I should refuse the prize,” he said abruptly.

  I let him continue, suddenly hopeful.

  “It won’t be actually awarded for a few weeks,” he said. “I have plenty of time to turn it down, and the prize will be yours.”

  “Why would you do that?” I asked.

  Peterson did not respond at once. He motioned with his head, and we stepped to a table well out of the way. The bar was filling up with architects and accountants. The lounge was a study in the sort of lighting Rembrandt would have adored, and each of the scattered couples looked both weary and aglow.

  But Peterson did not look youthful just now. Something kept him from speaking. At last, he said, “Anyone could understand why he hates you.”

  I chuckled. “Isn’t that a little strong? People don’t hate each other anymore. They feel competitive. They feel a rivalry. Hatred is out of style.”

  “He’s invented his own reputation—and everyone believes him. Designs sportscars for Nissan. Airports for Zurich, Singapore. Practically dictates to the city of San Francisco what architects they should hire and what color the mayor’s suits should be. He’s thinking of letting R.J. Reynolds put his name on a brand of cigarettes. He and Renman have lunch with the president. And he takes the trouble to see you as a threat.”

  “Yes, it’s a little hard to understand,” I said, with a dry laugh.

  “Not really. You have taste. You have a name. And people like you.”

  I gave a half-embarrassed chuckle.

  “But it’s true. You’re naturally, by birth, what DeVere would love to be. His background isn’t all that glamorous. Didn’t he change his name—?”

  “Vernon. Tyron Vernon.” I felt a little protective of DeVere for a moment. Everything about him was artificial, and therefore something like a work of art. Ty DeVere was a name with spin, I had to admit. And didn’t most Americans remake themselves in one way or another, changing names, dwellings, spouses, working hard to shed the past? “His background was agricultural.”

  Peterson considered this. “His costumes for Carmen were not bad. And I suppose his line of dress shirts does something for a man with a certain build. The sort of man who looks good in anything.”

  Peterson seemed to consider his own words, and then continued, “Anna Wick does most of the work. She has a handshake that makes your bones ache for a hour.”

  “She’s a remarkable woman.”

  “She’s what you might call self-made, too, isn’t she?”

  “Born Annabelle Wickford in Medford, Oregon,” I said. “The rumor is she never sleeps.”

  Peterson absorbed this, then went on, “I think that he has done more harm to you than you can possibly believe,” he said.

  His words made me gaze into my own drink, an untouched brandy and soda. When I looked up, he was waiting, as though he needed my permission to speak further.

  “How would you describe your career?” he asked.

  “I’ve had some interesting projects. I’ve designed a few roof gardens, and I’ve drawn up plans for a few schools. Usually donating my time, of course.”

  “But you wouldn’t say that your career has been a success.”

  “Well, not exactly a success, no.”

  “DeVere watches your work, your bids, pays attention to what you submit, and where.”

  My voice remained easy. “You don’t mean that he’s out to ruin my career.”

  “Exactly.”

  My voice did not betray my feelings. “Perhaps he’s right. I should resign myself to the pleasures of my class.”

  “Your work is very fine. Noble, enlightening—I admire it tremendously. You deserve fame for your designs, Stratton. But listen to me. As long as DeVere is alive, and as long as he pursues you, you’ll have trouble accomplishing anything important as a designer.”

  I reflected, “When DeVere was starting out, designing jeans and earrings, he approached my father for an entrée into what people like DeVere call ‘high society.’ My father was always bored by that kind of ‘society,’ and told DeVere about the fund for the handicapped, one of my father’s pet projects. DeVere thought my father was dismissing him.”

  “You don’t dismiss DeVere.”

  “Do you want me to give you permission to accept the award?”

  His voice was tight as he said, “I’d like to say I can’t accept it.”

  “I could pursue DeVere legally, sue him. I can pull a few strings and get the award overturned.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “Because I want to win the award honorably. Really win it, not wrestle it away from you. Because fighting a man like DeVere on his level makes me despise myself.” Because, I did not say, I am a better man. So that it was pride—vanity—that k
ept me from fighting back. “Because, in the end, it still might not work, and I would be muddy from a struggle against a man—” I did not finish my thought: a man who was not a human being so much as an ambition-beast.

  “The feeling is mutual, isn’t it?” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You hate DeVere.”

  I laughed. “Not at all.”

  “I think you do. I think you despise him, and you haven’t figured out a way to express it.”

  Like most people, I resent accurate insight into my own personality, but I had the sense to acknowledge this. I managed to laugh again, and said, “You could be right.”

  “I’m going to accept the award, Stratton,” he said. “Please don’t try to stop me. I don’t feel proud. I need the money.”

  There was that fluttering light again, like the beginning of a migraine. “You’re honest, at least.”

  “Do you realize I’ve spent the last six months designing sandboxes for an arts school in Berkeley? My wife’s been working for the phone company—”

  And I myself, he did not have to say, did not need the money, as everyone knew.

  Except that, in truth, I could certainly use the money. My family had a secret—many secrets.

  “I’ve been in therapy lately,” Peterson said. “I’ve been depressed.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, worried about this man I found myself liking.

  “I’m just a typical emotional wreck. Bad dreams, insomnia. It’s too much to expect you to understand. Your work deserves the award. But I need it.”

  Afterward, out on the street, North Beach was a brilliant study of colors, brakelights, shop windows. The air was cool, and scented with espresso, deisel exhaust, garlic, and the faintest tang of the Pacific.

  Years of suppressed anger, years of careful good manners, were stored in me.

  Margaret had been right. I had always been, in a very ordinary, unremarkable way, superstitious. I had no firm beliefs, in fact I scoffed at seers and psychics, wondering why, if they could visualize the future so clearly, they needed to earn a living reading palms. Certainly a clairvoyant could pick a winning horse, or a winning lottery ticket.

  And yet I found my eyes lingering on the horoscope column of the newspaper occasionally, and I was never entirely pleased to have the path ahead of me occupied by a black cat. A sunny day cheered me, and the glimpse of a full moon made me feel in touch with something profound. I had sometimes made a wish before blowing out my birthday candles, even when the cake was on a balcony in Venice, or in a lounge in Monte Carlo. Perhaps I believed, in a way I would have been ashamed to admit to myself, that the future could be outguessed.

  Now, once again, my future withered.

  This anger was bad. There was only one way to exorcise it.

  5

  Nona had once told me that I was hoping to get caught in a riptide, hoping that I would have to fight for my life in the waves.

  “You might be afraid of it, but you have to admit the truth,” she had said. “It’s what you want.”

  Suicidal: she had used the word, and asked me to stop.

  I took a quick cab ride to my home, and I punched the button on my answering machine, hoping to hear word from Nona. All I heard was the hearty voice of the contractor wondering when he could come by and resume work on my house.

  When indeed, I thought.

  I felt disloyal to Nona. I had not actually promised her that I would never go for another night swim, but I had not gone out into the surf for weeks. I stuffed the ample robe and the goose-down vest into my carry-all and grabbed my car keys.

  I drove the last remaining car I owned, the Mercedes, down Ocean Avenue through the dark. The car had been armored during the days when my cousin was kidnapped in Europe. My father had taken the precaution to soothe my mother’s nerves. Now the car shifted gears with the solemn forward thrust of a rolling fortress. The interior was pleasant, the ride quiet, and I did have the dubious satisfaction of knowing that the ammunition of most firearms could penetrate neither the doors nor the windshield.

  I found my way to the Great Highway and parked the car at Ocean Beach, at my favorite spot.

  This was not a desire for death. Far from it. I could taste the ocean in the air. The wetsuit fit snuggly and felt delightfully peculiar as I zipped it up, and I made my way down the sandy steps in the darkness. The rubber textile moved with my body in a way that made me feel protected, insulated from all harm, but this was an illusion. Only my torso was protected, and in very cold water this would not be enough.

  The scene was well lit by the glow reflected from the clouds, by the reflection of that light from the pale sand, and by the fragment of moon that kept slewing in and out of overcast. I tossed down my carry-all and the keys and sprinted toward the pale line of breakers.

  I dived and surfaced, spitting water. This was what I loved, this struggle, this cold.

  Sandy salt water filled my mouth. I had a flash of understanding: The horizon was a void, the sea was emptiness. And I was strong enough to survive it.

  Anger was gone. I worked against the surge of water, my legs aching and the chill seeping through the rubberized fabric of my wetsuit top.

  The beach was a scrawl of white suds, a dirty line of brown, a vague sprinkle of headlights. A bank of fog lofted over me, spilled over the view of the beach. The beach was gone, and I could see only the tossing water around me. The Pacific tasted of cities dissolved, aluminum and concrete and chrome stewed and then nearly frozen.

  When I breathed I sucked in the cold fog. The muscles of my legs were growing slowly into stone. I was heavy, and sluggish. I dived deep, into the churning bottom. DeVere and Blake, and Peterson with his needful eyes, were far away now.

  This was all that mattered. Brine burned my eyes, and I could sense the writhe of sand under my feet, the unsolid earth churning. How long had it been? Five seconds, then, as my feet plunged into the bottom sand into something nearly solid, ten.

  Fifteen seconds. I felt myself laugh. It was an inward sound. I was so cold it hurt the bones of my limbs, my body aching with the cold, and I was laughing! This wasn’t a game, now, I told myself. This wasn’t play. People died like this.

  Thirty seconds, and counting. The society columnists and the critics, the heiresses and the wealth-fatigued men of leisure would be surprised if they could see this: Stratton Fields at play. Drowning.

  But it was sport, I told myself. It was fun, and nothing more. When my head broke the surface I could see nothing. The air was sweet. Sand needled me, and my lungs were shrinking into two leaden stones. My heart contracted into a smaller and tighter fist with each pulse. I blinked, and swam, sensing the direction of the shore.

  I let the waves lift me, buoying me toward the beach. A wave tumbled itself, and my limbs along with it, but the danger and the greatest part of the pleasure was past. I body surfed, catching up with another wave that warped, angled me, and then the sand bit my knees and I erected myself panting, out of the foam.

  A wedge of water nearly cut my legs out from under me. The risk, the salt on my lips. It was all was so delicious, so unlike the rest of my life.

  Another wave tackled me, and I staggered and stalked my way from the sea slowly, as though reluctant to leave. I laughed at myself, gasping, dripping. Fun, I told myself, should not be so much work—or danger. I worked at the zipper of my wetsuit with stiff fingers.

  The fog was streaky, rolling past me, and seemingly through me, like a second, diaphanous surf. My fingers stopped unzipping the suit. My breath caught.

  I saw something.

  I told myself that I must be mistaken. No one ever swam this surf—no one but me. It was too dangerous. But there could be no mistake. There was something out there.

  I peered, striding into the wash of the waves. The fog and darkness obscured whatever it was, then blotted it entirely. But my instinct could not be denied: It was a human being.

  There was someone out th
ere.

  I was in the water again, swimming hard as the fog closed in. I could see only a stroke or two ahead. I called out, but my voice was soaked in the hiss of the surf and the mat of the fog.

  I plunged ahead, swimming steadily, until I reached the place where I was convinced I had seen—what? What had I seen? Surely not a person, I tried to convince myself. Surely it was a seal, or a bit of ship’s spar, or a life jacket fallen from a fishing boat. Perhaps it had been nothing, an illusion.

  I called, wordlessly, my voice a universal: Are you there? Can you hear me?

  Am I alone?

  I was beyond the waves, the combers breaking behind me, somewhere beyond the fog wall. I felt the unease, the flickering anxiety that meant that the cold was even more dangerous than before. I was nearly spent.

  But I couldn’t abandon someone out here to drown. I called again.

  And this time there was an answering cry.

  It was a brief, evanescent sound, almost not a sound at all. Someone was even farther out, through the fog. Someone was calling, and it seemed in my fear for the life of this stranger that this human voice was calling my name, if indeed it was a human call and not the song of a gull somewhere beyond the ceiling of gray.

  I shuddered. My own fatigue clung to me. My own confusion drove me to wrestle upward, out of the water, in an attempt to see through the mist, and then fall back again.

  There was indeed a voice calling. It was a human voice, and it sounded familiar.

  Then I saw her.

  Far off, indistinct with distance, there was a woman in the water. Her head and one shoulder were all I could see. She called out to me again, and I could not be certain any longer that what was happening was real.

  When I kicked hard, fighting the water in her direction, she receded and grew farther away. I wanted to rescue this woman, but at the same time I was growing certain that I had suffered harm through lack of oxygen, or the cold. This woman did not exist.