The Map That Leads to You

by J. P. Monninger

It felt like a punch to the gut. It felt like someone had taken a sharp, delicate file and tapped it with the palm of his hand into the meaty furrow between my brows. I couldn’t move. Someone jostled me and said excuse me. I assumed he said excuse me, because I couldn’t understand him. I turned and nodded. Then I returned my eyes to the patch of people where Jack had been an instant before.

  Where Jack Vermont, my Jack, had been dancing in celebration, his arms raised, a beautiful woman beside him.

  A gorgeous woman beside him.

  But was it Jack? Had it been? I couldn’t say with certainty. On one pulse I felt absolutely positive that Jack had appeared like a specter dancing with his arms upraised, in his barn jacket, the same barn jacket he always wore. In the next instant the rational part of my brain dismissed the vision as wish fulfillment. As delusion. As the product of exhaustion and a heightened emotional state.

  And was he with another woman? Is that what I had seen?

  Had I seen anything at all?

  Stop, I thought. Make everyone stop for a moment. I needed everyone to stop as if I had dropped a contact lens on the ground. Keep your position. Then I would pass among them, the world’s largest duck, duck, goose game, and tap one after another and ask them to leave. One by one, I would whittle them away until whatever remained, whoever remained, would be Jack, or Jack’s doppelgänger, or a man who resembled Jack so closely that it defied rational explanation.

  I hurried forward. Something in the village common roused the people into a cheer, and by the time I reached the assembly, Old Man Winter had already been ignited. He burned at the top of a large bonfire, his scarecrow body turning into a wick inside a piercing yellow flame. The crowd yelled and danced, and the cowbells, the perpetual, insistent cowbells, rang like a hellish chorus jibing at the Old Man’s suffering. Everywhere I looked, the masks changed form by catching the light from a new angle. I could no longer determine what I felt: a wild appeal to a primitive self, fear, joy, anger. Maybe that was the point, I realized, as I circled the crowd, turning this way and that to make my way between the crazed dancers. Maybe the winter that counted, the one that needed to be burned most of all, lived inside us.

  I searched for an hour. Two hours. I searched until the Old Man and his throne of fire had burned down to a smoldering heap of ash and charred tree trunks. I searched until the local constabulary came and backed us away while the fire department hosed down the last of the fire. Then I watched as a backhoe scooped up the remaining ash and waste and dumped it into the bed of a blue truck.

  The Old Man was gone. Jack was gone. I walked back to my room, to Mr. Roo, to the Cupid heater with the pursed lips and the breath of hot air. My lost boy was still lost.

  * * *

  I couldn’t sleep.

  I couldn’t come close to sleeping. I fed the Cupid heater coins and stayed on my cot, trying my best to come up with a plan. To come up with anything. Mostly I argued for or against the proposition that I had seen Jack. One second I thought, It had to be Jack. I knew Jack’s shape, his build, his walk, down in my bones. As soon as I grew comfortable with that assertion, doubt crept in on thorny little mouse feet, nose twitching, ears flexing, whiskers rising up and down.

  It was not Jack, the mouse told me in those moments. Girl, you really need to get over this guy.

  And if it was Jack, and Jack had been dancing in that crowd, was it possible his new girlfriend was beside him? Was he hooking up with someone new just as he had hooked up with me? Was this his pattern? A romantic sociopath? A serial sexual predator?

  No, no sleep for me.

  No clear thinking, either.

  Then the room suddenly began to shrink. I knew it was all in my head, but I couldn’t quite deny the evidence of my senses. I stood and did some stretching. I did at least a quarter hour of yoga. Afterward, I got out my iPad and checked for Wi-Fi. Nothing. The room continued to shrink. Finally, I grabbed my jacket and went outside. It was cold and bitter and dark. If the villagers were sending Old Man Winter back up to the mountains, or at least murdering him, they weren’t doing a good job of it. The entire town smelled of charred bonfire remnants.

  I had no idea if I was safe wandering around town by myself. Now and then, a couple or a group of revelers passed me. I always nodded. I told myself to turn around, to go back to the Cupid heater and try to sleep. I also told myself that I needed to call the airport as early as I could the next day and book a flight out of Bulgaria. I even considered calling my parents, maybe my mom, just to reassure them that I had not gone completely mad. But then I realized needing to reassure my parents I wasn’t crackers sounded like a bad piece of reasoning. If you have to tell someone you’re not crackers, you probably are.

  I walked for another half hour before coming on the couple.

  That’s what I would call them ever afterward. They wore wolf masks, only their mouths and lips exposed, and beautiful clothing. The man wore an ancient cutaway, the kind of jacket George Washington wore, with knee-length pants—plus fours—and a blond wig of some sort over his scalp. The woman dressed in the style of Marie Antoinette, with a full gown of brocaded material, and she wore a gray wig on top of her head and a narrower, more vulpine mask extending upward from the bridge of her nose. Their appearance made no sense whatsoever. Initially, I could hardly credit my eyesight. What did costumes out of the 1700s have to do with the festival? But before I could advance toward them—they stood near a working fountain, the water splashing up in a white arc of light—I heard their music. The male wolf—that’s how I came to think of him—put on a vinyl record on a tiny turntable and stood back to make sure it ran properly. When the music came on fully—it was a waltz of some sort—he turned and bowed toward the female wolf. She curtseyed and moved into his arms.

  Then they danced.

  They danced quietly, expertly, and as they moved, the spray from the fountain sometimes seemed to leap and ask to be ice. They danced on cobblestones, and I was the only witness. I couldn’t say for certain, but I believed they danced only for one another. They did nothing theatrical besides their outlandish costumes. They did not turn to look at me or engage me in any way. They merely continued to move and spin, the vinyl record spotty with pops and clicks, the fountain water providing a glimmer to their movements. I watched and felt my eyes filling. I yearned to see it as a sign, as a token that I would find Jack, but a part of me didn’t even care for that hope. No, it was enough to see them dance, to believe they were sufficiently in love to bring a portable turntable onto a plaza in the small hours of the morning in order to waltz with one another.

  I watched them another minute or two, then backed away as silently as I could. In the muted light of the fountain, I saw them spin and revolve together, a wolves’ dance on a cold spring night.

  56

  The next morning, I ate breakfast in Mr. Roo’s dining room. He made good oatmeal. He served it with cinnamon and a thick piece of black bread from the night before.

  I told him the story of seeing Jack for an instant. Of thinking I had seen Jack, anyway. In no time, it became an idée fixe with him that I must find my lost boy, as he called him. But he had no solid plan to offer. He kept saying destiny would have a hand. He liked the word destiny and said it often. He said when we stop looking for something, it usually shows up. Then he asked how I liked the oatmeal. I said it hit the spot.

  My phone rang before I finished my oatmeal. It was Amy. I excused myself and walked away to an empty table to talk with her in privacy.

  “Are you okay?” she asked as soon as we connected. “Tell me you’re okay.”

  “I think I saw Jack last night.”

  “What do you mean, you think you saw him?”

  “It was crowded, and he was only there for a second. I couldn’t get to him fast enough. And he was with another woman, I think.”

  Amy drew in her breath. She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she spoke.

  “You’ll find him, Heather,” she said.

  �
�I will.”

  “I know you will.”

  “I will.”

  “But if it becomes torturous, don’t feel you have to stay. You are captain of your own ship, remember? You are the wild, new, freer Heather. The one who takes off and tells her employer to fuck himself.”

  “I’m not torturing myself. And I did not tell Bank of America to fuck itself. I give the company good value. I’m a good employee.”

  She didn’t say anything for a second.

  “Is the festival fun?” she asked.

  “Yes, it is. In a strange way, it’s very fun. I’m having a wonderful time. I’ve never been to anything like it.”

  “I’m worried about you. I’m also more inspired than you might know. You’re doing one of the bravest things I’ve ever heard about.”

  “I’m all right, Amy. I’m strong enough for this. I am. Maybe it wasn’t even him that I saw. It’s hard to say. People were dancing, and the light wasn’t good. Maybe I imagined him. Maybe I conjured him into existence just because.”

  “Was there really a woman near him?”

  “Maybe. If I saw him at all, then yes, yes, there was. I’m okay, Amy. Honestly. I feel stronger, in fact. I feel like he is here,” I said, understanding it to be an honest statement even as I spoke it. “And it’s not just about him, Amy. You know that. It’s about what we had. If what Jack and I had wasn’t real, didn’t mean as much to him as it did to me, then I need to know. I need to know life can fool you that profoundly. If it does, then okay, I’ll keep going, but I’ll have a different feeling about it all. It will hurt, but it will be a lesson learned.”

  “It will make you cynical. I’m worried it will make you give up on things.”

  “Maybe it will. Maybe it’s part of growing up. Sometimes growing up seems like a simple process of casting things off. What do I know?”

  “Stay as long as you need to. Don’t do it halfway.”

  “I won’t, I promise. Honestly, the old Heather might have done it halfway. Not now. I’ve changed. But the festival isn’t enormous. If he’s around here, I would probably run into him eventually.”

  Amy blew out air in a hopeful release. I tried to imagine what time it was there, but my brain couldn’t handle the calculations.

  “When do you go to Japan?” she asked.

  “Next week.”

  “Okay,” she said. “That’s good. Go to Japan and get a new haircut or something. Buy a samurai sword. Shake it up. Good luck today.”

  “Mr. Roo says it’s all about destiny.”

  “Mr. Roo? Who is Mr. Roo? That can’t be his name.”

  “It is today,” I said, and I disconnected.

  * * *

  I walked. And I looked.

  Gradually, I learned the form of the festival. Dancing went on at all times. In fact, it was the job of the festivalgoers to keep the dancing continuous so that winter would not have a chance to take root again. Several people told me this. The sound of cowbells permeated everything. It dug so deeply into my consciousness that it disappeared eventually like the noise of a clock ticking or a railway car going by. Bells, dancing, Batak. Surva Festival.

  As I walked, I wondered what in the name of God’s last word I was doing in Batak, Bulgaria. I tried to imagine what I must look like to the passersby. Here was a young woman, reasonably attractive, dressed well, who seemed to wander aimlessly throughout the day. She was obviously American, obviously a tourist, obviously out of her element. She lived now in a single room, sleeping on a nunnish cot, while a white Cupid-faced heater blew hot breath over her to keep her from freezing.

  It was absurd.

  I was absurd.

  Olly, olly, oxen free, I whispered five times, a hundred times, a thousand times. It was the come-to-base call from childhood, the signal we used to say the game was over, come out now, stop hiding. Jack didn’t hear me. Jack did not come in or stop hiding.

  I ate a late lunch at a café off the common. I ordered more soup. Vegetable. The waiter brought it to me and asked if I wanted wine. I said no. I ordered a beer. I told him to bring me the darkest, heaviest, local-est beer he had in the restaurant. He smiled and nodded and hurried off. He was a short, runty man with enormous forearms. He put the beer on my table and nodded to indicate that he wanted to watch me drink it. I did. It tasted black and heavy, tasted of tree roots and dwarf toes, for all I knew, and I had never tasted anything better.

  “Yes,” I said. “Beautiful.”

  And that’s when Jack walked by the window of the restaurant.

  * * *

  I jumped up and leaned over a window table—a couple eating lunch leaned back, terrified, or annoyed—at this body that suddenly hovered over them. “Excuse me, sorry, excuse me,” I said in a rush. I tapped on the window. I tapped until I thought the window might break. But Jack didn’t hear me. He didn’t stop. His barn jacket disappeared in the crowds.

  “Here,” I said to the waiter, spidering back to my table. “Here, I’m paying. Here.”

  I threw money down on the table. The waiter began to dig through his pockets for change, but I didn’t wait. I ran to the door and pushed outside.

  I sprinted after Jack. I ran as hard as I had ever run. I knew he could disappear in an instant. He could duck in a store or decide to go into his hotel. Anything could happen. But at least he headed for the town common, where the dancers kept up their constant movement. Going in that direction, he likely would watch the celebrations. It was nearly evening, and the light and noise drew us all toward them.

  I caught him half a block away from the town common. I recognized his back, his walk, the shape of his neck and shoulders. I wondered how I could not recognize him, his body was so familiar to me. I circled out and away, flanking him so that I could see his face if possible. I didn’t want to run up to him and jerk his shoulder around, screaming into his face, Hello, Jack. Remember me? Remember the girl in Paris?

  Maybe he was going to meet the other woman.

  For a half a block, I walked on the other side of the road from him. It was easy to do. The crowds clogged the streets. He had no reason to look for me or to believe anyone observed him with special attention. The only reason he would turn to me was if I happened to be in the center of an explosion of noise. Otherwise, I blended in to the festivalgoers. I kept his pace. We arrived at the town common at the same time.

  I stopped. So did he. We stood for a few minutes not moving. He kept his eyes on the dancers. I followed his eyeline to see if he sought anyone special.

  How many times, I wondered, had I rehearsed this in my head? How many times had I been able to say this or that, just the correct phrase, that instantly cemented us together, made him understand the absolute error of his ways, of his entire thought process, so that he would crumple before me and beg me to take him back? My insides felt stirred and rattled, and I wondered if I could speak at all. I had never imagined this. I had never imagined how hard it would be to approach him. At the same time, I realized I still loved him. I loved every molecule of him, every glance, every fact of him.

  I also saw that he was sick. He had thinned. His skin looked sallow.

  Turn to me, I thought. Turn now.

  And he did. As simple as that.

  But his eyes passed over me. They did not see me. His eyes went back to the common and the dancers, and I held my breath, wondering how it had come to this. Was I going to let him go now? For the first time, it occurred to me—it truly, truly sank in—that I had an obligation, too. Maybe it was my duty to let him go. By approaching him, maybe I would infringe on his privacy, his right to leave the world on his own terms. He had a right to be left alone, and I felt foolish and selfish that I had never taken that into account at a level that I should have.

  Destiny did play a part after all.

  His height saved us. He looked again in my direction and, without fully meaning to, our eyes met. I watched the recognition bloom in his eyes. I made a vow, silently, that I would not advance toward him. I w
ould not move a muscle. It was still within his power to walk away, and I understood, at last, that I would let him go if he did.

  We looked at one another a long time. People danced around us, but they didn’t make any difference.

  He moved toward me. I didn’t move. That was my promise to myself. I watched him coming closer, his face drawn now with illness, his body not nearly as solid as it had been. He had to stop several times to dodge around people, and then, miraculously, he stood in from of me. Jack Vermont. The man I loved beyond all hope or reason.

  He lifted me and kissed me and held me. He spun me slowly, and I knew, I knew, that he had lost strength. I knew everything now, every word or thought, and I clung to him, kissed him over and over again. He kissed me, and he set me down slowly, and he kept kissing me, breaking away and kissing me again, as if kissing was thought, was breath, and what was the point of talking any longer? He was dying, and he had decided not to make me the steward of his dying. I couldn’t blame him.

  “I couldn’t come with you,” he said, his lips near my hair, near my ear. “I wanted to, but I couldn’t. Forgive me.”

  I kissed him a dozen times. A thousand times. I nodded.

  “I know. I know it all. I know about Tom.”

  “The leukemia is back,” he said. “That’s it in a nutshell. I had tests done before I met you, and the results came back in Paris. Not good. None of it is good.”

  “Who was the woman?”

  He appeared puzzled for a second, then smiled.

  “It was my aunt. She came to see what my grandfather had discovered in Batak. She left this morning.”

  I held him. I kissed him. He was dying. His body had already lost its thickness, its strength and force. Leukemia was taking him. He put his arm around my shoulders. The festival raged at its peak. Tomorrow, I knew, it would begin to wind down. Mr. Roo would shut down some of his rooms and go back to being a humbler innkeeper. The city would sweep up, and Old Man Winter would begin his life high up in the mountains, living his one summer before he grew to maturity and turned white with frost and ice.