by David Gates
Back inside, he sat on the bed and picked up his socks. “So tomorrow?” he called. “Up with the lark, yes? We should look at the trails.”
“I knew it.” She came out of the bathroom. “Shit. Okay.” She sat down next to him on the bed and he unfolded the map. “I was thinking this one.” He pointed to a trail called Moose Meadow, 5.5 kilometers, marked with a blue square. A green circle means an easy trail. A blue square indicates a moderately difficult trail. A black diamond advertises the most difficult trail Ridgeline Lodge has to offer. There was a mind behind this: perhaps the mind of the ear man? Look at how they varied the verbs.
“Have you ever seen a moose?” he said.
“Of course not. Nobody has. Have you ever seen anybody die?”
He looked at her. She was looking at the map. “There’s a question,” he said. “Not actually. I saw what was supposedly the Danny Pearl video.”
“Do tell,” she said.
—
They drove back toward the town looking for somewhere to eat. The sad little strip by the Northway had a McDonald’s, a Dunkin’ Donuts and a Ponderosa. “This is grim,” she said.
“I should’ve asked our guy.” He pointed to the Ponderosa. “Okay, now when I’m president, every one of these will be required to have an Italian place next door called L’Allegro.”
They passed under the Northway. (So was she not impressed with the jeu d’esprit?) On the other side, a Stewart’s and darkness beyond. “Okay, this is hopeless,” she said. “Why don’t we just go in here and sort of forage.”
“There must be some quaintee oldee innee,” he said. “I’ll give our guy a jingle.” He pulled into the Stewart’s and got out his cell.
“Don’t, okay?” she said. “I hate to think of him putting a phone up against that ear. Look, I’ll get some treats and we’ll have a picnic in our room.”
“Okay,” he said. “You’ve obviously got a vision of this.”
Back at the cabin, she shooed him onto the deck. The moon had gone higher up and gotten smaller. As he tried to find a face in it, he heard the yodeling witch-laughter of coyotes, echoing off lake and mountains. He opened the sliding door. “You need to come hear.” Margaret stepped outside, listened and said, “Is that what I think it is? It’s horrible. Soup’s on.”
She’d laid out a feast on top of the dresser: Beer Nuts, Nabs, a Hershey’s Special Dark chocolate bar, a Slim Jim still in its wrapper, a rectangular bar of yellow cheese, out of its package, on a paper napkin. The pair of plastic glasses from the bathroom, poured full of Bloody Mary–looking stuff.
“Well well.” He picked up the Slim Jim. “Protein suppositories. What’ll they think of next.” He tried to bite open the top.
“What are you doing?” She touched his hand. “I just thought you’d be amused. I don’t want you sick. This is the low-sodium V8, incidentally.” She put both arms around his waist. Side of her head against his breastbone. “So are we the two most awful people who ever lived or died?” She took a long breath, let it out. “I want this just to be exactly the way it is, you know? Even a little bit depressing.”
“Aren’t you the connoisseur,” he said. “Connoisseuse.”
She slid a hand inside the back of his pants, under the briefs. Dry finger at his asshole. “What would you think if I broke up with Morgan?”
“Is that in the cards?” He tightened himself.
“Isn’t everything always in the cards?”
“Well. I guess initially I’d be sad for you.”
“Okay,” she said. “B plus. B.” Took her hand out. “B minus.” She headed for the bathroom. “I need to wash my hands. You notice their soap, by the way?”
“Should I have?”
“Cashmere Bouquet. It’s so grotesque. That man with his ear, putting out the Cashmere Bouquet.”
“Presumably they’ve got bonne à toute faire,” he said. “I think he’s more the concept guy. Or is that a pricky thing to say?”
She said, “I won’t say the obvious.”
—
He picked up his watch off the night table: ten of seven. Daylight at the bottom of the window shades. Sunday morning. Margaret was still asleep. On her stomach, head to the side, lips parted, bent arm guarding the head. Each exhale a growl down in her chest, thinning to Sssh as it came up and out. He considered the face: here we had what was agreed to be loveliness. But one was also supposed to intuit the pilgrim soul in there. He closed his eyes and kissed the cheek, as if a real person were kissing another person.
When he woke up again she was sitting on the bed taking off a shoe.
“It’s so incredible here,” she said. “I told the cleaning woman to go away so you could sleep.” She dropped the shoe on the floor and started on number two. “Actually, I think it’s his wife. I was down talking to him and I noticed he had a ring on.”
“Wait, you were down talking with him? What does he talk about?”
“I don’t know. He seems kind.”
“Hey, anything’s possible,” Cal said. “So what should we do about breakfast?”
“First things first?” She reached down and started rubbing through the covers. “Or are you really hungry?” Stopped.
“I am, to tell you the truth.”
She took her hand away.
“What?” he said.
“Nothing. Let’s eat, then we can have the hiking segment and get that done.”
He looked at her. “What.”
She sat up and started putting her shoes back on. “I guess we should hike a little. Otherwise we could have just fucked at my place. And had a decent meal.”
“Come on, I liked our picnic,” he said.
“Well, now you get to have more of it.”
She got up and started taking things out of the paper bag again, then froze. “Do you hear that?” Jet going over.
“What, the airplane?”
“I guess it’s nothing,” she said. “I always think, you know, it’s starting. That would be the worst, to be caught up here.”
“Yeah, wouldn’t that surprise the nearest and dearest,” he said. “ ‘Um, sweetie? Where exactly were you when I was getting vaporized?’ ”
“I just have this fantasy of all these burned people who didn’t die right away, just all walking north in this big mass.” She shook Beer Nuts into her palm. “So what’s the worst joke you know? Like the most offensive.”
“I’d have to think,” he said. “Okay. What sits on a wall and bleeds?”
“And bleeds?” she said, chewing.
“Humpty Cunt.”
“Oh.” She swallowed. “Well. That came readily to mind.”
“What’s the most offensive one you know?”
She shook her head. “I don’t really like that word.”
“Huh,” he said. “Hitting limits left and right here.”
He got up and went into the bathroom, closed the door to piss. Margaret—another of her peculiarities, possibly endearing—went the whole hog, not just closing the door but running the water.
When he came out, she was back in bed, covers up to her chin. The old surprise-surprise. “I will think this is romantic,” she said.
“So,” he said, “you want to fuck?”
“Oh sure.” She sat up against the headboard, her clothes on. “My cunt,” she said, “is just dripping for it.”
—
When he got out of the shower, she was gone. And the half joint gone from the ashtray. Well, was this not her little interlude too? He should’ve made it crazier for her: pot didn’t cut it these days. Handcuffs? Coke, for sure.
Somebody banged on the door, then the lock clicking, and there stood the ear guy, Margaret behind him.
“You folks are checking out,” he said. “I told the lady.”
“We’re actually booked for tonight too,” Cal said. “If you look in your—”
“You heard what I said. Fifteen minutes, that’s when I’m calling the trooper.”
“What
the fuck—”
“The lady’ll tell you about it.”
“Suppose you tell me about it. The fuck exactly is this?”
“What the fuck this exactly is,” the ear guy said, “is just what I said.” He looked at his watch. “Fifteen minutes I call the trooper and give him your plate number. Right? We straight on that?” He stepped aside to let Margaret into the cabin. “I won’t charge you the extra day. That oughta be a load off your mind.” He walked off leaving the door open.
Margaret was cramming stuff into her bag.
“So,” Cal said. “Will the lady be good enough to tell me what the fuck happened?”
She didn’t turn around. “He’s a total asshole.”
“And here I thought he was one of nature’s gentlemen. So what happened?”
“Let’s just go,” she said. “Before he really has us busted.”
“What did you do, smoke up in front of him?”
She grabbed the bag and went into the bathroom. He heard something clunk into the tub.
“Hey,” he called. “I asked you something.”
She came out and stood in the bathroom doorway. “ ‘I asked you something’?” she said. “Who the fuck are you? I told him I’d get high with him if he wanted. Okay?”
“Are you insane?” he said. “What, you came on to him?”
“And now would you fucking get out of my sight? Out of my field of vision?”
When he took a step toward her, she drew back her hand to hit him.
“Okay, we need to get out of here,” he said.
As they drove past the office, he saw a lanky woman in a pink uniform standing on the steps, watching them go.
—
“Here, I’ll tell you a story,” she said as they passed the exit for Warrensburg. “Will that put you in a better mood?”
“I’m sure,” he said. They hadn’t spoken since she’d told him to drop her where she could get a bus and he’d said that seemed appropriate.
“You’re not very encouraging,” she said. She lit another cigarette. “Okay, when my father was in the hospital? He was in so much pain that he told my mother, if she didn’t bring him these pills he had? That he was going to get God to send her to hell. He was going to, like, intercede with God. So when he was actually, finally going out, after, you know, months of this, my mother and I were each holding one of his hands, and he was whimpering. As if he was, like, coming.”
“How long ago was this?” he said.
She shook her head. “And I had this thing where I couldn’t stop giggling. And my mother slapped me. And right then, like that second, he went Haa and you could feel it in the room—everything, I don’t know, shimmered, and you could just feel it go.”
“How old were you?” he said.
Shook her head again. “This is my story.” She took a drag of cigarette. “I don’t need your editorial guidance.”
—
He walked from Hertz up to Ninety-Sixth and Broadway; it seemed important that he get across Ninety-Sixth before taking out his cell. “Listen, I’m around the corner,” he said. “I got Miltoned out. You want me to pick anything up?”
“Oh, good,” Fran said. “Good good good. I mean, not good that you’re Miltoned out, but you know, good that you’re back. I was just in the middle of playing the piano and we were just about to call Flor de Mayo. This is amazing, you couldn’t possibly have timed this better.”
Cammy’s voice: “Is that Daddy?”
“I see,” he said. “Well. Good.”
“Yes, it’s Daddy. She’s pumping her fist. She’s not really, but that’s the mood, or I guess that’s the vibe. I can’t quite put my finger on what the mood is.”
He took the elevator up and stood for a moment at the door, hearing the piano inside. It was that Schubert Impromptu—she’d never been able to get that Nude Descending a Staircase cascade of notes quite clean. One time he’d caught her listening to the Mitsuko Uchida recording, weeping. “Well,” he’d said, “you’re a lot better looking.” She’d said, “Fuck you, too.” When his key touched the lock he saw a pinprick of spark, betraying the hot energy bound in all things.
In the living room, Fran sat at the piano, backlit by sunset. Her calves below the piano bench, right leg forward left leg back, butt spread fetchingly, her chin up like an inspired Lisztian virtuoso’s, her hair hanging straight down and shimmying like a hula skirt. He sneaked the door shut, stood listening, then eased down to sit, knees up, against the wall in the foyer.
When she finished, he began to clap.
She turned around: “Oh, come come come. None of that. You’ll turn a girl’s head.”
“So where’s the Caminator?” he said.
She pointed with a thumb down the hall. “Denned up. Like a wolf cub. Like a flower, like a fire, like a fresh footfall in a long-forgotten snow.”
He rapped a knuckle on Cammy’s door.
“Daddy,” she said. She looked toward the living room. “I’ve been counting. That was the seventeenth time.”
“For what?”
“That she’s played that.”
“Babe, why didn’t you call me? Has there been, you know, behavior?”
“Not really. Just a lot of the piano.”
“Did she get any sleep?”
“It’s okay,” Cammy said. “It wasn’t all that bad.”
“Well. I’m back now. I wish you’d called me.”
“So Daddy?” she said. “Can you help me with geometry?”
He sat at Cammy’s computer; she knelt, a hand on his knee. If two sides and the included angle of one triangle are congruent to two sides and the included angle of a second triangle, the two triangles are congruent. “I don’t get why they even need to have this,” she said. “I mean, Duh-uh. All you have missing is the last side. Figure it out.”
“Right, I see what you mean,” he said. “Listen, let me go get a feel for things, and then I’ll come back and we’ll swarm all over this puppy.”
He went to the kitchen and opened a beer.
“So,” Fran called. “Did you have your father-daughter moment?” He came into the living room; she was still sitting at the piano. “I am fine, by the way, thank you very much for asking. Oh God, I sound so critical. What can I play for you? I’ve been on a total run with Schubert. As I imagine you’ve been told. Now what would you most like?” He’d had this said to him last night in a different context. “It doesn’t have to be Schubert. Tell you the truth, I think I’m done with Schubert.”
“Anything,” he said. “Maybe something on the austere side. Not a heartbreaker.”
“Oh, that is you,” she said. “Well. You in one mode. God, I hope I don’t sound as critical as I sound. Well. Austere. Yes. We have just the thing. Almost just the thing.”
She began to play, from memory, the first of the Two-Part Inventions. He listened to the two lines of notes snaking around each other. Amazing, still, in the general what-a-piece-of-work-is-man sort of way, even if no longer something to love a person for.
—
Margaret kicked in her Bottom Feeder piece on Tuesday, attached to an email saying it was her last, and to send whatever checks she had coming care of Sylvia Moss—was that the mother?—at an address in Jupiter, Florida. It was unpublishable and unfixable. It started out with her on the bus from Albany and a TV up front blaring game shows and then to how the planet was done for—okay, no argument there—and human life was a virus. (Wasn’t that in Naked Lunch?) She said it would be better to get shot trying to kill the president than to die “the slow death of consent”—an arresting phrase, but what did it mean, exactly? She said the whole ride long she pictured New York nuked before she could get there, then how sorry she was to see that it wasn’t. Then she had stuff in there about cancer—how did that connect to anything? Where would you even begin?
George Lassos Moon
Aunt Lissa’s saying something very serious, and bad Carl’s playing with the metal creamer thing. He thumbs t
he lid up, lets it drop. Tiny clank. Aunt Lissa says, “Are you following?”
“Absolutely.”
“Give me strength.” Big sigh. “All right, enough said. What’ll it be? I don’t imagine you’ve been eating.”
“Coffee,” he says, which makes him sound blown away (like he’s not) because he’s got a cup right in front of him. He just means he’s fine.
“You’ve got to eat a little something.”
“Let me look in the Book of Life.” He lifts the menu from the metal rack. “Pray Jee-zus that mah name be written thar.” Inside they’ve got a color picture of a hot dog with gleaming highlights. “This is incredible,” he says.
“Why am I doing this?” Aunt Lissa says.
“You’re an enabler,” he says. “That’s a joke.” He’d better start marking them as such.
“Carl. You do understand what’s going on, yes? Could you look at me?”
He sees in Aunt Lissa’s eyeglasses a miniature glimpse of his own face. Boy, he is never taking drugs again, except down drugs. “You mean do I know I got arrested?” he says. He rubs his fingers back and forth across the stubble on his jaw, and it sounds exactly, exactly, like sawing wood. He’s even going to get off the Paxil, which makes like an empty space underneath your consciousness.
“Thank heaven for little mercies.” She looks at her watch. A man’s watch. “I still don’t quite—You were visiting somebody here?”
“Long story.” He thumbs up the lid of the creamer again. Lets it down without a sound.
“I don’t want to know, do I?” She checks the watch again. “Now, what about your job? Do you need to call them? I assume this is a working day.”
“Hey, works for me,” he says. “Joke.”
“All right. I’ve done my duty,” she says. “I guess I should tell you, I called Elaine. I had no idea you two were…”
“Right,” he says. “Actually, you know what I actually want? I actually want waffles.” He holds his palms six inches apart to show her the squareness.
“Is there anything you would like to talk about?”
