A Flash of Blue Sky

by Alon Preiss

She pulled out her key.

  “Then just follow me if you wish,” she said. “If you have to get home soon so that you can be fresh at work first thing tomorrow, then don’t follow me. Maybe I will see you up there.” Daniel figured that he didn’t need to be fresh tomorrow at work.

  So Daniel followed Susan inside, and Susan opened a bottle of wine.

  She turned to him, sitting there on the arm of her couch. She leaned against the wall, and she shut her eyes.

  “This will seem very forward, but it is not all that forward, not really.” She put her hands on the top of her head. Her shirt slipped up a bit, just a little, baring a tiny bit of flesh, perhaps half a navel. She could hear her heart speeding up. It pounded in her ears. “My eyes are shut. Do whatever you want. Just do … whatever.” She heard silence, a car outside slipping a bit in the darkness, righting itself. Her heartbeat, drowning everything out. “Whatever you want,” she whispered. “Don’t say a word.”

  This was a test, but there wasn’t really any wrong answer.

  Except one.

  Had he done anything very very strange, Susan told herself in later years, when such behavior by a young woman would be seen not only as foolish but also as unenlightened, I would not have permitted it. But who knows? No one ever took full advantage of that offer to go really bananas.

  After keeping her eyes shut and waiting for Daniel’s next move – expecting anything from a gentlemanly peck on the cheek to a bit of passionate gba ọtọ mmekọahụ – she opened her eyes to find Daniel drunkenly asleep on the couch. There it was: the only really wrong answer.

  She nudged him a bit, he slung an arm around her and she dragged him to her bedroom, where they collapsed together for the entire night without an undergarment even out of place. Daniel would not be able to remember, when he would try to recount the incident years later, how he had wound up asleep fully-dressed on top of the covers in Susan’s big bed, lying chastely on his back. After four hours, he awoke the next morning feeling strangely uneasy, his unsteady joy encumbered by almost unbearable guilt. Susan seemed unhappy to see him as well. He wanted to apologize, but he couldn’t find any words that would not be presumptuous. Apologize for what? she might then legitimately ask. For not banging me? Please. You did me a favor. If they’d had sex, perhaps everything would have been different this morning. At least they would both have known why he was here. “Morning,” Daniel said to Susan; she was making coffee in her kitchen, wrapped tightly in a long, warm bathrobe. She nodded and a strained smile appeared on her face.

  “I’m making you some coffee,” she said, unnecessarily. Then, “You must be really groggy and tired.”

  He stood in front of the mirror in her hallway, tying his tie. “Look, Susan,” Daniel said. “I was up working till two am the night before. It’s nice to be here, you know.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Susan smile as he looped his tie through the collar. She poured him a cup of coffee and brought it over to him. “Call me, if you want,” she said gently.

  He hopped in a taxi, which sped downtown as he read the New York Times in the back seat. On the front page, the President of Slovenia responded to fears that the high standard of living in his nation might not last forever.

  Henry appeared in Daniel’s office doorway at ten am, triumph glowing in his eyes. He was rather proud of himself, he admitted, for his insight. Daniel looked out the window at the Statue of Liberty. “If she didn’t remind me of all my troubles, she’d be the girl to help me forget all my troubles.”

  “Oh for God’s sake, Daniel. What troubles?”

  “I still can’t help the feeling that I’m doing a terrible thing,” Daniel said.

  Henry sat down at the edge of Daniel’s desk. “Let me ask you this,” he said quietly. “Do you want to go back to Natalie? Deep down, do you wish you could go home to her every night? Not to a wife, but to her?”

  “Who knows? So much effort, so much energy, you know. So many years. It shouldn’t be all for nothing, should it? I just feel like that’s not right. To put so much of myself into something that fails?” He quickly changed the subject. “Oh, well. Big day of work ahead.” Picked up a pencil and stared thoughtfully at the lead point. “Work work work,” he said. “Work work. Work.”

  For Emmett, as well, the previous evening did not turn out quite as planned. As Daniel and Henry headed out into a night heavy with mystery and possibility, Emmett stuffed a few documents into his briefcase and clicked it shut. He looked around his office one last time. Then the phone rang, and the screen above the receiver flashed the name of an ageing partner eager for attention. Emmett thought for a moment of not picking it up – what would happen? He would not lose his job. He would perhaps receive a mild rebuke the next day, to which he would reply that he had left just a few minutes earlier, longing to see his wife who had been so patient. Nothing would happen to him if he didn’t pick up the phone. He stared at the name on the screen as the phone rang a third time. He answered it.

  Many hours later, when he staggered into his home, all the lights were off. The apartment smelled wonderful, as though there had been a party there hours earlier. Warmth and hospitality radiated from the walls. He loosened his tie and walked into the bedroom. Katherine seemed fast asleep; moonlight shone on her face. He sat down on the bed and leaned in very close.

  “I’m so sorry,” Emmett whispered, but it came out wrong, too mechanical, too cold.

  “I worked hard on dinner,” she whispered, her eyes still shut.

  “I know,” he said. “It smells delicious. I could smell it all the way down the hallway when I got off the elevator. I know you made all the neighbors jealous.” Then, guiltily: “What did you cook?”

  “Salmon,” she said. “Fresh vegetables. This special sauce I tried.”

  “Is it good?”

  “It was,” she said. “I ate your portion, so you’ll never know. I bought white wine.” Her tone grew plaintive. “I was so happy, Emmett, waiting for you to get home. I was looking forward to wining you, dining you, and getting you into bed.”

  They were both quiet, as the cars drove by on the avenue below.

  “This guy called just when I was ready to leave,” Emmett said. “I wouldn’t have stayed if it had been up to me. You know that.”

  “Don’t explain,” Katherine insisted.

  “I just want you to understand why this happened.”

  “I understand. Believe me.”

  She didn’t open her eyes; she wouldn’t even look at him.

  “Listen,” he said gently, “I work very hard. I’m not mean to you. Can’t you just be happy?”

  “I miss yesterday,” she said. “I miss having some beautiful tomorrow to dream about. I don’t care if you’re perfect.” Her voice grew so quiet that he had to lean in close to hear her. “It’s OK to break from it all, Emmett,” she whispered. “Don’t think about your responsibilities. It’s OK, you know. Don’t intellectualize every decision until you’re powerless to act. One day, one moment, when you realize what’s right for you, just let all of this go. Don’t even think about it. Just let it go. Just like that.”

  “Yes, Zen master.” He smiled. “I have this terrible law firm cafeteria meal in my stomach. My heart is beating from stress. Don’t you know I would rather be here with you?”

  “Tell me one reason why I shouldn’t leave you,” she said suddenly, and now her eyes were open.

  Emmett hadn’t expected that. He tried desperately to make a joke. “My life insurance,” he said. “I’m insured for two years’ salary at the firm, and you won’t get the money if you leave me.”

  She paused a beat.

  “Then tell me why I shouldn’t kill you and make it look like an accident.” He couldn’t come up with an answer.

  Emmett and Katherine owned a machine that worked arm muscles and leg muscles simultaneously, simulating the workout one would get while cross-country skiing. Emmett had found that after twenty minutes locked into this machine, which looked like som
e kind of sci-fi torture device, he would feel like hell, his arms exhausted and weak, his entire body covered with sweat, his back aching. The machine was top-of-the-line. It had cost one thousand dollars.

  Now he left his wife alone in bed to dream about killing him and pocketing the insurance money. He took off his suit and his undershirt, dumped his clothes on the couch in a pile and climbed onto the exercise machine in his underpants. He swung his legs heavily back and forth, pushed his arms in and out. He yelled, “On!” and his television sprang to life.

  “Video!” he called, and the VCR turned on and played an eerie, computer-animated succession of artificial images: metallic landscapes, machine-like animals and trees. “Channel eleven!” he shouted out, and the television switched to a program in which an enthusiastic man in a gray suit and blue tie demonstrated an amazing beef jerky machine, while a studio audience cooed in awe. “Channel J!” On the TV screen, a naked man with a mustache leered invitingly. “Video!” A computer bunny scurried lovably across the screen. Emmett screamed, increased his speed. In the bedroom, Katherine listened to all this with growing alarm.

  The following Saturday morning, Emmett awoke from a dream about work, a dream that dissipated immediately but left an aftertaste of despair. “I’m so tired,” he murmured. “Sleeping makes me so tired ....”

  Katherine, already dressed, pulled off the covers, tossed them in the corner.

  “Big day, Emmett.” Work, he insisted to her. He had so much work to do. He curled up into a cold little ball on top of the mattress. She shook her head, pulled him out of bed, tossed him a shirt, jeans, gave him a coat and boots and led him downstairs where a rental car awaited them. Emmett asked what was going on, and Katherine told him to shut up. They became stuck in a midtown traffic jam on 34th Street that stretched from 5th Avenue to 7th Avenue, and the West Side Highway was at a standstill, the air filled with futile, angry honking. But after the Tappan Zee bridge, they were suddenly free as the wind, and Katherine drove for miles and miles, along an interstate, off the interstate, along a two-lane highway, onto a gravel road. Trees had grown wildly along both sides of the road, and their branches intertwined overhead. When the road ended, Katherine took Emmett’s hand and led him one mile into the snowy woods along an almost invisible trail. They reached a log from a newly felled tree, covered with snow. Katherine sat down, and Emmett did so as well. “Listen,” Katherine said. Emmett asked, Listen to what? “To the silence,” she said. He stared off through trees covered with snow and frost, past a little frozen stream. “You can’t hear anything but the soft whistling of the wind. You need places like this inside of you, Emmett. Little peaceful places where you can go, and listen to nothing.” Emmett listened. Somewhere in the middle of the gently swirling forest wind, a woman was screaming.

  Who can identify every element of every sound?

  Nobody, that’s who.

  Silence does not exist. Loud, anonymous dins swirl around us twenty-four hours a day.

  Where do sounds come from, the ones that no one recognizes? Are they dropped from rain clouds, are they brought from afar by gusts of wind? Where do they go? Do they vanish into the dust, or are they held captive inside typhoons, carried across oceans? Does thousand year-old laughter from Kazakhstan dance in the streets of modern Madrid, do wails of sorrow in Yaroslavl whistle through the prairies of Arizona then freeze in the New England snow? Nobody wonders. Einstein’s skin cells are here, in this room, invisible. You are breathing Einstein. Can you hear him, too? Do Einstein’s sobs and the explosions at Semipalatinsk crash over the Caspian Sea – and does this collision make it rain? Does the rain fall on the armies at Tbilisi, and can they hear Einstein weep?

  That Saturday morning, wails of sorrow in Yaroslavl, on the other side of the world, awakened Irina, the little girl who had once vacationed with her parents in Sochi, and who had grown to the age of seventeen in the intervening years, but who would never lose her affinity with the little wide-eyed girl on the beach who impressed the adults with her emptiness, nor her admiration for the other little girl, the one who looked so much like her yet was not afraid to do battle with the sea.

  In the kitchen, her mother was drinking a cup of coffee. She didn’t say good morning. She shot Irina an angry glance. Irina stared back at her mother, a middle aged woman in old clothes, with thick, heavy arms, gulping down her last drop of coffee.

  She looked Irina over, from head to foot, made some sort of critical remark, some cutting, pointlessly cruel evaluation. Irina tried to shut her ears and her heart, but her voice broke when she responded.

  “It’s not my fault,” she said. “I’ve always tried to do ...” What other people expect of me. It didn’t sound right. “My best,” she concluded. “I’ve always done my best.”

  Her mother didn’t reply as she marched through the front door. “Clean the apartment today,” she shouted at her daughter. Irina called after her mother: “Remember, I’m visiting Tatiana at Moscow University,” but her mother did not hear.

  Irina’s mother taught children in primary school, little children who might someday grow up to be like Irina and get a job in the biggest tire factory in Russia, one of the town’s proudest current achievements. Perhaps capitalism would close the tire factory, and the children would grow up to be unemployed, or criminals. The Golden Age of Yaroslavl, after all, had ended in 1700.

  Aside from cleaning the apartment, Irina’s main chore was to take the bus 60 kilometers away to Moscow every week in search of meat. Sometimes she would make a little extra money by shopping for the neighbors. In Moscow, she would pass the special markets reserved for party leaders, with the police standing outside and the gaudily dressed Communists in their foreign clothes streaming in and out, and Irina would imagine someday gaining access to one of those markets, of wearing foreign clothes and going to a special market guarded by the police, not for safety, just really for show, for the power of it all As she rushed through the doors, Irina might not even look at the regular market people, as they stood, sweating, in their queues. She would be that other person, that famous woman with the flashbulbs exploding like lightning wherever she went.

  Today was a bright day, and Irina spent the morning in the park. Two weeks ago she had met Viktor, a man from Moscow; he had taken her to the Yaroslavl Circus before returning to his job in the city. But today he would meet her two blocks from her apartment building and take her away. There was a big reyv in Moscow. He was in on the organizing of the party, he said, and could introduce her to everyone there of note. He had dark features, he drove a nice car, he had a wallet thick with dollars; he didn’t boast of his mafia connections, but he smiled coyly when asked. That’s what everyone called the mob in Russia, the “mafia,” although very few Sicilians had been spotted on the street in Moscow. This impressed Irina, but she was most impressed by the attention he lavished on her, a seventeen-year-old girl who had flunked her university exams, who seemed doomed to live out her life in her mother’s apartment, or with the family of the sad local boy who had proposed marriage to her seven months ago, whom she had not yet answered. She supposed that she was still one of the prettier factory workers, for what that was worth, which probably accounted for Viktor’s interest. But she believed, rightly or wrongly, that the accumulated decade and a half of life in Yaroslavl had left her looking pale and tired, drained of the energy, confidence and magnetic beauty that would have been hers had she been born somewhere else, someplace like Paris, Amsterdam, or Las Vegas.

  She fell asleep, and when she woke up, she realized she was late. She ran along the banks of the Kotorosl River, past Podbelskov Square until she reached Volzhskaya Avenue, in the heart of the old city where she and her mother lived in a two room apartment in a rundown three-story building that looked out over the river.

  Viktor was sitting in his car, looking at his watch, attracting attention. In the narrow street, boys on their bicycles gathered at a safe distance, then a few scurried cautiously nearer to look at themselves in it
s black, polished sheen. No one dared touch the car. Old women stood in doorways, peered out of windows, hatred in their eyes.

  Irina hopped into the passenger seat. Viktor kissed her lightly on the cheek. “All my neighbors are staring at the car,” she whispered. “See, look at all the old women.”

  “That’s what you wanted.”

  “Let’s go. It’s giving me a big ego.” As he pulled out onto the main street, she said, “Now all the neighbors will know I left with you. They’ll tell my mother. If she found out that I left with a man, she would be very angry. But when she hears them describe you, she’ll be afraid to ask about it. She won’t want to find three guys with guns on the street by our house.” That wasn’t very funny at all, Irina realized a moment later. “Don’t you need to be more secretive?” she asked him. “Can you afford to draw attention to yourself?”

  “It will help,” he said. “The more people hear of me, the more people will come to me. They’ll know I know somebody. They’ll ask for favors. I’ll make deals.” He smiled. “I’m a businessman.”

  Now, in broad daylight, he looked twenty-one. She laughed.

  “You’re a boy,” she said.

  “I know where I’m going.”

  They left the town, passing the Passky Monastery with its blindingly white towers and the golden dome of the cathedral, and he said, “It’s so beautiful.”

  She replied, “I’m sick of it. Are you a religious boy?”

  He shrugged.

  “I think religion will save Russia until capitalism kicks in. The people need an opiate.”

  “How about opium?” she said, and he laughed.

  On the road to Moscow, she rolled down the window, let her hair blow in the wind. They drove quickly by the other ancient towns in Russia’s “Golden Ring,” these two incongruous moderns in their beautiful capitalist car. Irina imagined a camera framed on her and her handsome, corrupt new boyfriend. This was like a movie, like the mobster movies that came out of Hong Kong these days.