The Underneath

by Melanie Finn

  Ben, she thought. She would call Ben. She would be with Ben. They would talk. She could help him, whatever the problem, she was sure of it, and he would tell her, they would lie down together, talking, sharing, lying across his big brass bed, whatever colors she had in her mind, whatever scars, whatever he was doing with drugs, whatever she said to her children, she and Ben would absolve, and fuck tender, hard.

  Her arms and legs moved as if directed by a drunken puppeteer. She opened the bathroom door and glanced out. Slim’s back was to her as he conferred with the hats. It now occurred to Kay that he knew them, they were acquainted. She retreated to the bathroom, slumped on the floor, to wait until she sobered up.

  At what point did she become foolish—the third Wild Turkey, the second Jäger? Or the moment she walked in the door, imagining she was someone else—the tough, independent, sexy woman journalist of before?

  Oh, The Mighty Before.

  The ladies’ room door opened, one hat two hat, red hat blue hat.

  “No,” she said, mumbled, dribbled. “No, no, no, no.”

  Their arms around her, firm and possessive, they chatted to each other, “You got her?” “Yeah.” And “It’s okay, babydoll, we’re just gonna have a party.”

  She swatted at them, they laughed. “Crazy ho is super tanked!”

  “No, no, no, no, no.” She was a basketball gradually losing its bounce. “No, no, no.”

  A door opened. Light blasted in so she shut her eyes, and she thought, okay, whatever, really, I don’t care, I deserve this, these men with their stupid penises, why does it always come down to this?

  “My bag,” she said.

  “Your bag? You want your bag?”

  “Money,” she mumbled.

  Blue hat chuckled. “We already got that.”

  They were somewhere in the middle of a parking lot. The sky was faded blue, denim blue, and around were tall red-brick buildings, the smell of hot tar, and a yellow butterfly dancing. Red hat kept his arm around her, familiar as a lover.

  “Why do men wanna put their dicks in women all the time?”

  “What? What?” Blue hat leaned in so Kay could see the hair in his ears, the patches on his neck he’d missed shaving.

  “Why rape?”

  “Rape? Honey, we’re just going to party.”

  “I don’t, no, please. I want to go home now.”

  “Whaddya say, honey? I can’t hear you.”

  Kay was certain she was speaking, she was speaking clearly. “Leave me.”

  But they laughed, giggled. “Cat got your tongue?”

  Kay could not find her feet, and very far away, a little thought on the most distant cloud, was the idea that it’s not the booze, it’s a roofie or whatever spike in her drink, and in some ways this was worse because they meant this to happen and so it will happen and she was beginning to become afraid. She was thinking about her body at the bottom of an embankment, on the railroad tracks somewhere. She wondered not about rape but how they would kill her.

  “No,” she said.

  Red hat punched her in the ribs.

  “Hel—” she started to say but the word stuck. Her mouth couldn’t form the whole word, just heard: “Hel—” and then again “Hel hel hel hel.”

  Help will not come but hell.

  She felt warmth on her inner thigh, wetness, something had been loosened.

  “She’s pissed herself. She’s fuckin’ pissed herself!”

  Blue hat propelled Kay away from him and for a moment she was suspended in space before slamming into the pavement, the pavement slamming into her, Sam would say The Cosmic Frying Pan.

  She started to crawl, inching toward the sound of the street, over there, she was certain, cars, people, children, her children. Her ribs exploded with pain again, then her back. She had this idea they were kicking her and she couldn’t quite believe it as if there must be some other reason for the sharp electric stabs of pain. She couldn’t quite breathe and yet she was aware of the grit in her knees as she kept crawling, the salty taste in her mouth.

  59

  BEN CHECKED HIS WATCH: 5:14. The hot, still afternoon, this quiet backroad, grasshoppers sawing in the long grass, purple vetch and Queen Anne’s lace. A bee buried itself in the bright yellow fronds of goldenrod. Ben leaned in to study it and he was certain that the bee understood the beauty of the yellow, felt not merely the utility of the yellow but the trembling, neural charge of yellow.

  Moses was on time, as always, his Ford Pinto grinding to a stop. They hailed each other, then walked around the rig, Moses touching the logs, tapping the chassis, taking possession. Ben handed him the paperwork—the manifest, the forestry reports, the shipping documents. Moses scooted his chew to the other cheek with his tongue, checked the papers carefully, the signatures, the pages. He tapped one page with his pen. “I’ve been hearing things about Frank.”

  “What things?”

  “Like, he’s not around.”

  “He’s around. That’s his signature.”

  The trucker glanced at Ben, “Hey, man, it’s my load.”

  “The signature is genuine. All the papers are 100 percent clean.”

  “There was a big bust out of Lowell just last week,” Moses noted. “Wilder Bundy.”

  “This is not risk free, we are trafficking heroin,” Ben said.

  Moses answered with a wry smile, spat out a wad of chew, and climbed into the cab. “Thanks for the disclaimer.” He tipped his hat and pulled out.

  *

  The truck had turned out of sight and Ben could no longer hear the gears shifting. He got into Moses’s Pinto. It chugged and sputtered and stank and the clutch was badly in need of replacement. But it got Ben home. He waited on the sofa, checking his watch. 6:00. Moses would be at Derby Line. Customs and Border Patrol would be checking over the paperwork, checking the load. They’d be taking note of the forester’s signature and it looked just fine. They might bring the dogs out to sniff around the cab or the wheels. The dogs would find nothing; they couldn’t get close enough to the logs in the middle of the load. Everything was in order. They’d wave Moses through.

  Ten grand. All this for ten grand. Plane tickets, Ben had calculated, a car, enough for gas and food. Sunscreen and hats with those corks hanging off, just for fun.

  6:10 and Ben knew something was wrong. CPB had checked Frank’s signature. They had a file. They had a memo. Frank Wilson is missing. Somehow that prick Paul Steiner with his shiny, tiny city shoes had made good on his threat. Hence: Wilder Bundy. And now Moses was in a small room with a large, short-haired man in a uniform. It was the DEA, maybe Kay after all. He’d never see Jake again.

  He ran to the bathroom, fell to his knees in front of the toilet. His body heaved, the burning yellow bile spewing out. He listened for the sirens, a fleet of them stirring the dust of Jones Farm Road, four or five state troopers swarming into Ed’s, the others were heading here, and who would milk Ed’s cows, who would relieve them as they stood un-milked for days, their udders hot and hardening, and they could not understand their abandonment.

  But there were no sirens, there were no cops.

  From the living room, then, came the bright ping of a text.

  60

  “Thank you, General,” I said—I said it softly, carefully. I said it with real gratitude. And maybe that was my mistake; he smelled the musk of my fear, his particular fetish. I said: “I would like another woman and her two children to come with me, please.”

  He opened his arms expansively. “But of course, Kay. If you think it necessary. Gol is in our hands, it will remain so. Your new friends have nothing to fear. But—” A warm smile “—but as you are asking, yes, there is room for them.”

  Now he tapped the end of my bed, a little drum roll with his fat fingers. “You will write about this. You will write about my kindness. I am a fair man. Not only evil.”

  In the morning, at first light, we heard the sound of the helicopter. Tati edged me into a wheelchair and wheeled me
out, her daughter and two children drafting in behind us. Two of the general’s soldiers lifted me into the chopper. I looked back and saw the doctor. He was leaning casually against the door frame of the clinic entrance. I could not read his eyes behind his glasses. He twirled his stethoscope, watching us.

  Suddenly, from out of the dark maw of the building, came General Christmas. He walked toward the helicopter.

  He had to shout above the sound of the blades. “Have a safe flight, Kay.”

  “They are also coming with me,” I gestured to Tati’s family.

  “Ah,” he said. “There has been a change of plan.”

  I held his gaze, saw the smile twitching at the corner of his lips like a restless fly.

  “There is only room for you.”

  “There’s plenty of room. We could fit ten people in here.”

  Christmas splayed his hands. “Is this your helicopter, Kay? Or mine?”

  “I’ll pay you, then, I’ll pay you to let them come.”

  He looked at the chopper’s captain, made a whirling gesture with his finger, the engine revved, the blades spun faster. Then he leaned in to speak to me over the din: “You asked me what it felt like.”

  He stepped back. The chopper began to lift.

  I caught Tati’s eye. I grabbed one of the soldier’s arms.

  “They are supposed to come,” I shouted. “You said they could come!”

  “You choose,” the general said. “Leave your child and take hers.”

  Now there were other soldiers, other elves, grabbing Tati and her daughter, pulling them back, the chopper rising up. I was shouting, “No!” And Tati threw her hands up toward me, a pointless, hopeless gesture.

  Then she screwed up her face and spat up at me, the gob of spittle hurtling uselessly through the air, it would never reach me.

  The chopper lifted up, the dream-sequence feeling of helicopters, that sudden blooming out of dimension. Above the clinic entrance, above Tati, her daughter, the frightened children, above the scrappy compounds around it, roads, tracks, shacks, houses, huts, above the dirty war.

  I held Tom close as the chopper tilted, moved up, up, and away, away from the town, as SPLIF slouched toward it. And while I was safely back in Nairobi, my private room at the best hospital on plush, clean pillows and Michael already making arrangements for us to travel to London, Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital, because there was a hole in Tom’s heart, while heaven and earth were moving to save me and my son, the war surged and swallowed Gol whole, Tati, the doctor, the nurses, the women, the children.

  61

  The darkened room, though not pitch black, merely shadowed. Red hat blue hat. Red hat blue hat. Kay slowly slid her hand between her legs. No pain, surely she would know, there would be pain, there would be cum, men with their sticky, angry seed. She coiled onto her side, feeling the vulnerability of her body, soft-shelled, permeable. But not raped. Then she inhaled, an atavistic trigger, she breathed in, conscious that she was scenting the room.

  The sheets were clean. A window was open, she felt a breeze. Someone was here, not red hat blue hat.

  Ben.

  He had fallen asleep in a chair in the corner.

  Her mouth was furry, her tongue swollen as a dead animal left in the heat. She shut her eyes, but that was no better. She opened them again, slowly taking in the small room, the overall impression of masculine disinterest, pale light seeping through the blinds. His room, he had brought her here. She remembered only red hat blue hat.

  His room, his house, the thin walls, the rickety window sashes, the blotches of mildew in the upper corners. She scanned over it now. He was poor. She felt sorry for him—pity, that most emasculating emotion.

  He opened his eyes. She watched his pupils shrink, portals closing. The blue of his irises symbiotically erupted, ocean depths radiating out from that dark center. They were beautiful eyes. But unreadable.

  “You want a coffee?”

  “What time is it?”

  “Morning.”

  “What happened?”

  He stood. “I’ll get you coffee.”

  He did not touch her as he passed. He padded out of the room, and she could hear him in the kitchen, running water, scooping coffee grounds out of a can. No room service, as with her other lovers, no breakfast buffet of tropical fruit and soft white bread rolls with slabs of cold yellow butter, the waiter’s slim black hands on the white china pot of coffee, the white starched napkins, everything a separation, a pretension, white, black, the extravagance of a napkin to someone paid less than a dollar a day. To be served breakfast by a black man in his ravaged country is complicated, too complicated to write about. So she wrote about what was easy, wars, refugees, General Christmas. To love was too complicated, so she fucked.

  Ben came back, handed her a mug. He sat on the chair, not the bed, not close to her, and she knew he was choosing distance. From his pocket he retrieved her phone.

  “The bartender looked on this to see if there was anyone who could help you out, any local numbers.” He tossed the phone to her.

  Her ribs, her head hurt. Red hat blue hat. “Thank you.”

  “Why were you there? At that bar?”

  “I needed a drink.”

  He leaned in. For a moment, she thought he might hit her. But he splayed his hand on her chest. Kay looked up at him, his face was closed and she was far out, down a dirt road. No one knew she was here. It may take me a few days to respond. As if there was anyone she needed to respond to. She spoke, almost a whisper: “Can you give me a ride back to my car?”

  But he did not relent, “Why were you in that bar?”

  She shut her eyes. “I just needed a drink.”

  He withdrew his hand.

  “Your clothes are over there,” he nodded to the fake cherry wood bureau.

  She saw them stacked neatly, freshly laundered, her handbag on top. She remembered pissing herself—he would have smelled this. He had bathed her while she was unconscious. He had taken off her urine-soaked panties and loaded her into the shower. He had held her naked in a way that was the opposite of passion. He had seen the bruises mottling her back and sides. She hunched her body away from him, drawing the sheets around her. He left the room.

  For a brief, sharp moment, she wanted him to come back. She could call him, and he would return, there would be something other than this waxy sadness: touch, a smile. But she heard the sound of his truck starting.

  *

  The radio filled the gap between them on the way to East Montrose: My Angel is the centerfold, na na na na na na. What else might Ben listen to? Bach’s cello concertos? Beniamino Gigli, songs of L’Africain? “Some dude,” she heard Michael’s condescension. “Some plumber guy.”

  Ben pulled into the parking lot behind the Dirty Ditty, stopped beside her car. She half-imagined she might see her own blood on the pavement, some residue—evidence—of the assault by the hats.

  “I should go to the cops,” she said.

  “Don’t do that.”

  “What they did to me, they’ll do to other women.”

  “Other women don’t go in there.”

  Kay sheltered her eyes from the sun’s hard flare. An overweight woman with a child in a stroller was crossing the parking lot, smoking and talking on her phone. Kay put her hand on the door handle, but then she reached back for Ben, reached out for him, she wanted to retain something of value. She put her hand on his. He did not move.

  At last, he exhaled. He removed her hand as if it were not her hand, not a hand that had caressed him and aroused him, but an object, neither cared for nor disdained, and put it back on the truck seat. “I didn’t know you took a photo of me.”

  “I didn’t know you’d looked through my phone.”

  “You sent it to your husband.”

  “No,” Kay began, “that’s not what happened.”

  But what did happen, she thought. My child sent it.

  “Go back to Frank’s, pack your things. Leave
.”

  “Ben, please—”

  Now he turned to face her. He was someone else now. “Leave. Just leave here. You have to.”

  She got out of the truck and he pulled away, before she’d even shut the door, tires screeching on the pavement. He made a sharp turn out of the parking lot and the door swung shut with the momentum, the truck and Ben gone in a loud burst of exhaust and burning rubber.

  Kay stood, bewildered by the light, the light searing down her optical nerve like a laser right into her brain.

  “You okay?”

  The woman with the stroller. Only she was more of a girl, perhaps 18.

  “Can I have one?” Kay gestured to the cigarette. The girl thought for a moment—the expense of cigarettes, to give one to a complete stranger; then extricated the pack from the pouch on the back of the stroller. She flicked on her lighter, and Kay lit her cigarette and inhaled, a diver going deep.

  The baby was gazing up at her with bright eyes, his smooth, pale skin yet to be splattered by the brains of the world.

  “He’s gorgeous.” Kay attempted a smile.

  “Yeah, he’s a good boy.” The girl stroked her child’s hair. “I know I shouldn’t smoke.”

  “You’re outside,” Kay absolved her. “It’s all right.”

  “My mom died of lung cancer. You’d think I’d know better.”

  So undefined, this girl, her shape all soft, her face without angles, a face you’d never remember, plain, functional. She had no barriers. She was open and guileless. She’d talk to strangers about her dead mother. “I’m sorry,” Kay said. “That must have been really hard.”

  The girl stared at the cigarette in her hands, the fingernails chewed down, raw cuticles. “I’ve tried to quit a bunch of times.”

  “Was your mother a good mother?”

  A considered sigh. “Good enough, I guess. I’m here, aren’t I?”

  Was survival the only criteria?

  Kay took another long, grateful drag. “I’m not a good mother.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I don’t love my children.”