Permafrost

by Peter Robertson

  I decided to press her a little on this.

  Well, yes, she agreed, he had a blood relative, an aunt, on his father’s side, who had been married to an American citizen, but was now divorced. According to their records Mr. Pringle was supposed to be visiting her. Mr. Pringle had no criminal record, had never been convicted for drug trafficking offenses. And this was enough to clear his request for a visa.

  Was there anything else unusual? I wondered.

  Well, she’d replied, he’d not bought a return ticket, and he hadn’t specified a length of stay. In the era of friendly relations between countries, visa restrictions were often waived with the good-faith purchase of a return ticket by a solid citizen from a reputable country. To Ms. Chalmers this blot on Keith’s record clearly signaled a desire to stay in the country indefinitely.

  He’d flown into the country on standby, thereby saving himself half the price of a one-way ticket.

  But where Ms. Chalmers saw degenerate cunning I instead saw frugality. Keith had probably planned on flying standby back home. It was a first-come, first-served affair. He would show up at an American airport and keep his fingers crossed. In the meantime the length of his stay was indefinite, and that seemed to tie in rather nicely with the fact that Keith was clearly close to being a bum, or a hobo, or, as his native country had euphemistically decreed, a new-age traveler.

  And so, as Ms. Chalmers continued her reserved character assassination, I closed my eyes and imagined him for the first time. Keith: sitting alone, tall and thin with his hair still an unruly shock of brown curls falling across his winter-sky blue eyes, slumped in a line of seats at a gate in the international terminal, drinking a cup of American coffee, furtively picking up someone’s discarded newspaper, which could be from virtually any city in the world, buying a carton of American cigarettes, with the last of his American money.

  Maybe he would buy Lucky Strikes. Maybe not. I was taking a romantic tack.

  He would check his ticket repeatedly, and he would be nervous as he tried not to stare at the parade of reuniting families speaking in safety their own language, wrapped in a cocoon of blissful isolation, their words impossibly fast, their emotions scurrying all over the place, and all over each other, tears like the tributaries of lost rivers on the faces of the young and the old, especially on the old.

  For the dysfunctional, the poorly loved, or the terminally alone, an airport, particularly one in the grip of the immigrant ebb and flow, was capable of producing an acute sense of despondency.

  As yet I knew little about Keith, but I thought he might be alone.

  I returned to the kindly Ms. Chalmers.

  “Do you have a recent photograph of Mr. Pringle?” I asked.

  “Naturally,” she said. Her tone grew colder. “We always keep one of the submitted passport photographs. For our own records.” She paused. “But I thought you were good friends.”

  Oh we were, I quickly assured her. We surely were.

  She spoke again, her tone harder and measured. “I think I need to know the precise nature of your interest in Mr. Pringle, Mr. . . . I don’t believe you mentioned your name.”

  She was right. I hadn’t. So I did.

  * * *

  Then I took a deep breath, and I told her what I had decided to do, the decision I had arrived at, as I sat in my car and read the newspaper in the early morning. An inexplicable decision, fueled by unfocused emotions that were noble and selfish.

  But the oddest aspect was the spontaneity.

  That was so unlike me.

  “I’m going to try and find him,” I told her.

  And the amazing thing was that I believed it myself. I would take a few days, and I would track him down.

  She was silent for a moment. Then she finally spoke.

  “Isn’t that usually a job for the police?”

  “Well. Yes, I suppose it is. How are they doing so far?”

  “Ah.”

  I waited.

  “I suspect they haven’t a bloody clue. And to be quite frank with you, they don’t give a damn anyway. He’s a destitute foreigner on an expired visa adrift in a great big country and they have plenty of nasty homegrown criminals of their own to deal with.”

  “I can understand their position.”

  “I can too,” she said. “But tell me, what can you possibly do?”

  It was a good question, and I didn’t have an answer ready.” Well. I have a lot of money.”

  It wasn’t a terrific response. “That’s very nice for you.” She spoke coldly.

  “And I have a lot of time.”

  “Mmm.” Was I getting any warmer?

  “So I can look.”

  “I see. And can your family spare you?”

  I had to smile, because I have a wife, and I was very certain that she could spare me.

  “Oh, I expect so,” I said.

  There was a silence, where I imagined she made up her mind.

  “Well. Jolly good then,” she said suddenly.

  Did she really say that?

  What was her first name? I wondered what she looked like. Was she pretty? Was she a battle-ax in fighting tweed? I managed to somehow juxtapose both into my imagination.

  “Do you have a fax machine?” She asked.

  I told her I did. Nye would have been outraged at the question.

  “Oh, that’s right,” she said briskly. “I was quite forgetting you were rich. Well, give me the number then. I’ll send you our complete file on Mr. Keith Pringle. I should warn you that it isn’t terribly much.”

  I gave her the number.

  “Thank you, Ms. Chalmers,” I said.

  “Phoebe,” she said. “It’s Phoebe Chalmers. I’ll give you my number if you don’t mind. Perhaps when you find anything you’ll be good enough to call me and let me know. It’s a little silly. But he’s rather one of ours. Isn’t he? And you won’t tell anyone where you got your information, now, will you?”

  “No I won’t. And thank you, Phoebe.” I said.

  And there I hung up.

  FOUR

  On two occasions a week, usually in the early evening when our schedules permit, Nye and I play a competitive game of racquetball in an expensive health club above a fashionable shopping center on the near north side of the city,.

  In truth, Nye and I are both antisocial and almost always free. His is the modern monastic life, while my time tends to be more quixotically arranged, as occasional social events come and go, and a philanthropic façade has to be maintained.

  Only one event in my week is rigidly allocated a specific day and time; it’s a charitable activity in a mildewy church basement that, perhaps not so very surprisingly, isn’t that far from the health club.

  * * *

  What is it that I do?

  And why do I find it so hard to talk about?

  Perhaps a sense of modesty?

  Once, a while ago, someone I knew very slightly asked me to serve meals in a soup kitchen. It was, as I recall, at a black-tie affair, and his request came out of the blue.

  I was surprised by the question, to say the least, and found myself blurting out a blunt, unthinking refusal, which, I’m sure, must have sounded unbearably rude. Yet my slight friend smiled wanly at me, a tolerant, practiced smile perhaps, and said that he quite understood. I think now that it was the weariness and poorly masked disappointment in his smile that did it.

  We said no more, embarrassed, and quickly separated to find our respective spouses.

  For a day and a half, I felt truly wretched. But I told myself that I really didn’t have the time. I said it again and again. I really didn’t have the time. I really didn’t have the time. I called my friend the following day and pledged to help out when I could.

  This happened a long time ago and I’ve missed few nights. In truth I’m n
ot much of a cook, but I know how to lay out a mismatched knife and fork, and I possess the necessary skills to scrub and dry the chipped dishes that wallow first in the huge stainless steel tubs that are filled with scalding hot soapy water.

  At the soup kitchen, I’ve passed many hours without knowing it, and I’ve listened to and occasionally participated in conversations I can never ever forget.

  It occurs to me that I’ve told no one up till now about my secret philanthropic life. I expect we modern saints are by nature a circumspect lot.

  * * *

  Nye’s racquetball technique follows a predictably robotic inclination. Each shot is an angled equation. If the blue ball drops beneath a certain height he kills it, if it bounces high he drives it into the ceiling and regroups. He seldom varies, and each movement is measured, evaluated as a possible winning option, or else an injurious risk. I spot him a decade and I often win because my game ebbs and flows, and he is quite unable to modify his calculations to include the random elements. He knows all this of course, but knowing it is one thing. He’s quite powerless to change his mode.

  I suspect that people often think me a cold fish, but I’m a seething emotional caldron beside Nye Prior. Tonight he won, and I responded, uncharacteristically, by smashing my oversize Ektelon Catalyst hand-laid graphite racquet against the glass wall at the rear of the court. Both racquet and wall survived without a scratch, although I did draw an alarmed spectator or two.

  Nye looked at me in slight dismay and confusion, as I clearly was, at that moment, an unfathomable jungle of mental disarray.

  “Thanks for the game,” he said quietly.

  I huffed off the court. Wordless. A graceless lump. Livid for reasons I was totally unable to prioritize.

  Thirty minutes later, and close to my sunny self again, we sat in the whirlpool, just the two of us, the soft enveloping steam rising from the smooth water.

  I spoke, the movement of my chest disturbing the water. “I’m leaving you in charge for a while.”

  “Is this a business trip?” He asked.

  “No.” I paused then, unsure how far to go in explanation. “I need to get away. I’m heading up north I think. Perhaps to simply drive around for a bit. It would be best if you didn’t try and pretend you need me at the store.”

  Nye failed to react to my news. He simply asked, “Can I reach you if I have to?”

  We both knew the likelihood of him needing me to be extremely remote, but I also understood the importance of technological lifelines to my associate and victorious racquetball partner.

  “You’d better give me one of the laptops,” I sighed.

  * * *

  Inside the two company 60 Meg Pentium laptop computers were 28.8 fax/modems running WinFax PRO software, which ensured us the fastest bps transmission speeds currently available, so that, if necessary, Nye could reach me in a nanosecond or less.

  My sudden leaving was unusual and gossip around the store would be rife. Was I engaged in a torrid affair? In the throes of a hostile takeover? Surrounded by exotic courtesans and oily vicelords in an opium den? Nye would take no interest in the speculation and thus flame the speculation.

  “How long will you be away?” He asked.

  I hesitated. “I think perhaps a week. Possibly even ten days. Certainly no more. Can you handle things? Tye?”

  “No,” he said drily. “But then who can?”

  “Quite. Well. Do your best. Fire him if you have to.”

  “And have all the girls walk out?”

  “Mmm.” I nodded. “I see your point.”

  He hesitated. “Can I ask . . . I wondered . . . are you all right? Is everything all right?”

  I smiled. “I’m fine,” I said. “Just tired. A little tired. That’s all.”

  “You aren’t in the habit of taking vacations. Sudden or otherwise.”

  “I know. Call it a change of habit?”

  “You aren’t in the habit of changing habits.”

  “No,” I said a little sadly. “I’m not, am I?”

  After Nye had spent a few more uncomfortable moments tiptoeing through the booby-trapped regions of my personal life, he abruptly gave up, and lapsed instead into silence, and a steely-eyed contemplation of the water surface.

  I said good-bye then and left Nye to soak in his solitary, self-imposed silence. Was he plotting my overthrow? Considering a slew of hideous chores for Tye? Dreaming about a safe man? Or just letting the water splash over a young, beautiful body that housed a quick mind, that had turned both timid and a little trivial before its time?

  I parked the Mercedes in a tight space close to the house, on a quiet residential street two blocks from the lake, a mile north of the business loop of the city. The street has permit parking and a discreet security force on constant patrol, retired police officers, unwilling to tolerate smart-mouthed teens in suburban malls, and paid for by a number of concerned residents.

  When we married, I bought two adjacent townhouses on the street and immediately tore the dividing wall down, commencing the widespread gutting and rehabbing only newlyweds would attempt. The result was a house that didn’t actually gain more rooms, but which instead boasts several oppressively large rooms, all track-lit, bare-bricked, pale-wooded, earth-toned, and impersonal in their sterile designer starkness.

  I sat for a moment in my car as a neighbor hurried past with his German Shepherd dragging him determinedly toward the park. I didn’t know him or his dog, even though they live in a house three doors down from mine. A lawyer or a commodities trader, he lived alone, but was reputed to entertain blonde-haired prostitutes, who arrived by taxi late at night, and departed in the morning, pale faced and smudged, blinking in the sunlight like vampires.

  He was a mover and shaker.

  He was a complete stranger.

  * * *

  The lights were on in the living room, and her newly washed cream-colored Lexus was parked directly in front of the house. The obvious deduction to be made from these observations was that Patricia, my wife, was home.

  Was there ever a time when Patricia and I loved in the conventional way, the misty-eyed way, in the myopic intensity of a newlywed vision that excludes all others in its blinding focus?

  It seems impossible now, as the entrenched stasis of our existence holds fast. I think I know why she married me, although I’m altogether less sure why she’s still married to me, or why I’m still married to her. We do share in a complacency. Or at least, we did.

  At the end of my second year, in a not very impressive red-brick English college in a pretty market town not so very far from London I instigated a first small act of rebellion.

  My coursework up until then had been doggedly acceptable, and I was perhaps on course for a sound, if unspectacular, second class degree in American literature. The seminars I attended were certainly pleasant enough, even if the subject matter was at times weightier than I was willing, or equipped, to appreciate. After two tortured readings of Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, I had yet to form even the most embryonic of opinions, and I had positively squirmed through the snide and clearly envious sexual detailing of Couples, by John Updike. This painful experience would be alleviated years later, as I discovered his quartet of Rabbit books all by myself, quietly marveling at the erudite brutality with which the author rendered his constantly evolving main character.

  After the sniveling physical fear that characterized my early adolescence I found sports with a vengeance in my university years. Tennis and beer in the summer. Squash and beer in the winter, earning a place on the college teams in both sports, and only amateur status as a beer drinker.

  By the end of my first year I had managed to sleep with two plain girls in a very tight timeframe in my very narrow bed, and relished the thought of each one somehow finding out about the other. The juicy vision of a to-the-death catfight, with long
painted fingernails and a lot of intense hair-pulling got firmly anchored in my fevered head.

  I can assure you that it never happened.

  An exchange program had been set up with an American college in Chicago. The name of the institution was meaningless at the time, but the location triggered images of machine guns in cases and slick hoods in dark pinstripe suits and truthfully not much else. I applied for a place on the program on impulse, secured the requisite student aid, and asked a tennis friend to housesit my punk rock 45s in the old farmhouse his wealthy parents had rented year-round for him.

  Miraculously my applications were accepted, and an interview and a joint with an extremely laid-back professor/advisor went smoothly. My place in the program was assured.

  * * *

  I was bound for the States, a year’s worth of pleasant assimilation and light study ahead of me. And there I would meet and quickly marry Patricia, never to return to college for a final year in the august company of John Irving and Saul Bellow.

  It was referred to as a “kegger.”

  She was sitting on the edge of a loud group, on the edge of a beige plastic chair, in a shambolic yard filled with wildflowers and weeds and blissed-out students. We had drifted downstairs en masse, from the spacious loft apartment on the fourth floor, where I had sat on a windowsill, and looked out across the abandoned factory buildings spot-welded to the contrary course of the brown snaking river. That I was drinking an icy Budweiser beer from a long-necked bottle in a room filled with plastic cups was a sure sign that I was the guest of honor, even if I was being unintentionally ignored by the bulk of the sundry raucous collegiate types.

  Patricia was a tall and willowy beanpole of a girl, her severely pissed off and fashionably distanced looks seemingly precast in the supermodel deathly anorexic mold. Her long thin hair fell somewhere between blonde and brown and descended in an odd assortment of strands and groups of strands, fanning patterns and misty tangled tendrils reaching down almost to her narrow waist. Her hair would edge closer to blonde in the summer months, even though she was dangerously fair skinned, and hid out from the sunlight as a rule.