by Roy Scranton
Suzie turns and walks down the hill.
The hill, in the dark, under the moon, over the lake. A mysterious hill, a portentous hill, a hill made for a Chickasaw brave to ride up to be painted by Remington—lean torso, tragic mien. Suzie shakes her head and turns away and walks down the hill.
Wind spills from the innumerable stars and whispers along the lake and Suzie walks down.
Jim turns to her. Jim turns and reaches, pulling her toward him. Suzie breaks away and says something, crosses her arms across her chest. He says something back and she shakes her head. She shakes her head and turns and walks down the hill, leaving Jim standing by the small tree, silhouetted against the fat white three-quarters moon.
In the lobby a drunk in a shiny gray suit sits leaning, elbows on knees. A woman with spangly earrings and blonde hair and brown roots stands off to the side, fists on her hips, staring beyond the door into the dark.
Across the lobby through the door to the dining room they can see a party, hear the tinkle of glasses and chatter. The clerk tells them they’re very lucky, very lucky indeed—there’s a wedding on, but they have one cabin left, a two-bedroom suite, and they can bring up a cot.
All the way from New York, huh?
A woman stumbles out of the dining room laughing her head off, followed by a red-faced man lunging at her.
The clerk hopes they’ll have the chance to enjoy Quartz Mountain Lodge’s many great features, including its eighteen-hole golf course, interpretive hiking, spelunking, Olympic pool, and volleyball courts.
They load out their gear into the cabin. Remy says he’ll take the cot.
The shore of the lake damp from rain. The moon rolls gently in the black water. A coyote yips.
He glances at her walking next to him in the dark, her suspicious eyes gleaming and her ripe lips drawn in a tight line. She’s wearing her i ♥ oklahoma T-shirt and a thin black hoodie. He notices again how tall she is, nearly as tall as he is, and feels again the desire to put his hands on her hips and draw her close.
She walks alongside and can feel him looking, making plans. She wonders which movie this is. She wonders if she’ll let it happen. Maybe tonight with the moon and his stubble and the moist thick air, maybe tonight after filming, maybe the moon and lake and stars.
He’s talking and she listens and talks back.
Coyotes cry in the distance. Stars glimmer.
We’re all like the moon tonight, Remy thinks, standing in the dark outside the cabin, seeing everything cold and distant. Witnessing. It’s a nice night for it.
They’re out there somewhere in the moonlight with the coyotes, and he knows there are two ways they could come back. And if together . . . Well, what business is it of his? It’s not as if she’s the last lover on earth, not as if he didn’t already have enough going on back in the city, not as if he couldn’t Grindr up some action in an hour if he wanted, once they returned to civilization, so what’s the fuss? Why the cathexis? But there was something, wasn’t there? Was it Jim? They’d never competed before, not for anything. Remy always bowed his head and let Jim run things, let Jim do whatever Jim wanted. It was Jim’s money. Jim’s camera. He was just the hired eye.
Why is it different now? Is it her? Is it them? The weird shit at the diner? The road? You change the environment, you change the being. Where does desire come in?
Do what you will.
Do what you do.
Hold up, step back, and film. Be the camera.
The moon above, promising everything. America and love and a whole new you. Narrative tension, climax, resolution.
You remember sitting at the kitchen table in your apartment back in Middletown and Nina was over and you wanted to get into her pants so bad, you’d been working her three whole weeks trying to make it, and you finally had her over and you thought Chuck was out of town for the weekend, Chuck the Superfuck, that’s what homeboy called himself. But no, there he was, and as soon as he started flirting with Nina, what’d you do? Did you tell him to fuck off, take Nina into your room, close the door? No. You withdrew. You felt distant and then you were distant and then you were filming him in your mind, him, her, them, you took an anthropological, aesthetic interest in their mating behaviors, and later on, after you all got high, it was his bed she slept in. Nina with the Angela Davis gap in her teeth and those really quite enormous breasts. And you beat off in your room listening to them fuck, imagining you were there, in the mix, giving and receiving, fucking, getting fucked, because after all it wasn’t just Nina you wanted.
The moon making promises, he thinks, looking up at her walking down the trail from the lake, alone, smoking. He waits for her to come to him, witnessing.
The moon in the window.
Jim’s hand on the bedroom doorknob. The yellow lamplight falling from the end table across the couch and floor. The cot still folded in the corner. His cheek twitches in the half-light. His hand on the doorknob. Her hoodie on the back of the couch. His hand heavy.
Her voice behind the door, rhythmic, quietly driving. If it’s our trip, it’s my trip. I understand us. I understand we. I understand collectivity. I get to drive.
The cot still folded in the corner. The moon three-quarters full through the cabin window, through the opening between the curtains, through gut and rib cage. Jim stands listening, listening for another gasp, his stomach and crotch tightening. The carpet is soft and thick, dark brown with tiny gray squares. He sees his torso reflected in the screen, the silver gleam of his cavalry Colt. His empty left hand curls in a fist over the doorknob.
He hears her grunt, twice, three times. His cheek twitches in the half-light. The fireplace, kitchenette, cot folded in the corner. The moon in the room, three-quarters full, making promises.
Horses and whispers. She walks along the split-rail fence before the horses staring, dust rising around their hooves. A man comes through the gate in the fence. He’s got a face like a blob of wet dough with two eyeholes poked in and a flap of skin for a mouth. “You walk on water,” he says, “and fly away. Feel it in your hands, here,” he says, taking her hand in his and pushing into her forearm with his fingers, then into the crook of her elbow, “and here.”
She backs into the fence. “I’ve got stuff to do,” she says.
“Steve?” the man says, then makes a fluttering sound with his mouth flap: Hltltltltltltlt.
She climbs over the fence down into an alley on the Lower East Side, where a shapeless feathered skinsuit digs in cans. The buildings go all the way up, exposed brick, the sky lost somewhere in foggy, artificially distressed gray clouds. Pixels gel, freeze, and flow. She’s aware of the fact that Steve is somewhere alone, crying, left to his own devices, which are few and insubstantial. She feels bad and knows she needs to feed him, but where’s the kibble?
She looks under a dumpster. He likes to hide under things. She hopes there are some cars up ahead, so she can look under them, but the alley just keeps going.
Then one of the walls shudders with a boom-boom-boom. She edges back along the other side and sees through a window that opens onto the lower city buildings burning, a jet engine burning, a mob of white-hooded Klansmen praying to the fire.
“Steve,” she shouts.
There’s movement and the light shifts.
“Steve,” she shouts.
“Breakfast time, kids,” Jim’s voice through the door. “We gotta go.”
She sat up and reached past Remy for her glasses. “Just a minute,” multicolored blocks falling into place in her mind. The moon on the lake, the moon through the window. She could see summer sun now shining through the crack between the drapes. Clothes all over the floor.
“Well, hurry up, then,” Jim shouted through the door.
“Hold your goddamned horses,” she shouted back.
Remy rolled over, observing her sleepily. “Who’s Steve?” he asked.
“My
cat,” she said. She thought about kissing him, then just patted his hip. “Boss man wants to get moving.”
Remy blinked. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
He made a face. “Whoops.”
“Whoops what?”
“Whoops, I don’t know.” His eyes changed color at her, green to gray. “Are you . . . Do you think he’s upset?”
“At what?”
“At us. That we . . .”
“That we fucked?”
“Yes. That we slept together.”
“I’m pretty sure he’s pissed,” she said. “Is that a problem?”
“It could be,” he said, getting up. Suzie watched him for a minute as he pulled on his pants, looking at the scar across his chest that had disturbed and intrigued her last night. He was slim but flabby, the kind of natural beanpole who never needed the gym, built for hallways and conference rooms. The liver-gray scar ran across his solar plexus, just below his sternum, a deep and lurid trench cut into soft ocher flesh. Maybe that was where they installed his software, she thought ungenerously as she got up to put on her underwear. She wondered how bad she smelled, whether she needed a shower, and sniffed herself. She did.
“What’s it matter to him who you fuck?” she asked.
Remy frowned. “You know better than that.”
“So what? We have to bend to his fucking will?”
“Suzie, Jim and I have been filming together for a long time. We have a serious professional relationship.”
“Look,” she cut him off. “I need a shower. You boys have whatever relationship you have, okay, and I’m not in it. You and me, Remy, we fucked last night. We had a fun time. We’re consenting adults. And it’s none of Jim’s goddamn business. Okay? This, us—you and me, Remy—is a dyad, not a threesome.”
“I wish it were so simple,” Remy said. “Listen, Suzie, I think it can be managed, but we should go easy with him. Don’t provoke. Don’t escalate. Let him get used to things.”
“It can be managed? Are you fucking serious?” she said, throwing clothes into her suitcase. “I need to coddle this grown-ass man? I need to account for who I have sex with to this fucking guy? My employer? Are you fucking kidding me?”
“I don’t mean coddle him, Suzie, just give him space and respect. Let him get used to the idea, and I think he’ll come around.”
“I don’t explain myself to anyone,” she said, turning on him. “Who I fuck is none of his goddamned nevermind, and neither is it who you fuck. Maybe you should think about that.”
“Suzie, please. I would only ask you to hold back a bit. Don’t put him on the defensive.”
“What the fuck, Remy? Man up. You got the equipment.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Man the fuck up. You’re so worried about what Jim fucking thinks, be a man for once in your life instead of his bitch.” She shot the last word at him, stood, then turned back to her suitcase, jerking it onto the bed.
“That’s not very helpful, Suzie,” Remy said. “I shouldn’t have to remind you that, professionally speaking, we’re both Jim’s employees.”
“What are you, his fucking slave?” She whirled, shouting, then caught herself. Her face flushed. “I mean . . . We’re not . . .”
“I know what you mean,” he said, his eyes going bright and cloudy. “I guess I’ll see you at breakfast.”
“Remy,” she said, reaching after him.
“I’ll see you at breakfast.” He broke away, collected the rest of his clothes, and went into the living room.
Suzie stepped out of her underwear and into the shower, gritting her teeth, and as the hot water fell over her face she hit herself in the forehead, again and again, muttering, “Fuck bitch bitch fuck bitch fuck fuck.” That didn’t help much, so she dug her nails into the soft flesh below her hip bones until the pain was loud enough to take the edge off the feelings.
They’d had a fine time, she and Remy, nothing special, but it had been nice to have the intimacy, however transient. A warm body meant a lot these days, whereas maybe when she was younger she didn’t feel like she needed it so much. He’d been a considerate, gently aggressive lover, a tender top to her bossy bottom, and maybe it could have been the start of something. She doubted that now, and maybe it had never really been possible, given the situational algebra. In some sense, she felt like she’d known this would happen, exactly this, and she’d also known she’d never be able to depend on Remy to stand by her. She’d known all of it, from the opening sentence, and maybe this was how she’d written it.
She turned off the shower. Her hand stayed on the faucet knob, and she leaned her head against the smooth cream-colored wall. I’m done with this, she thought, done. I don’t know what you think you were doing, but you’ve fucked it up like usual, and the best option now is to just cut loose and run. She imagined Jim’s big brown eyes looking up at her from the breakfast table, like a dog you were yelling at who didn’t know why.
Out in the living room, she was surprised to find Remy sitting on the couch, staring out the window at the Oklahoma plain.
“Jim went to breakfast,” he said. “He told me he wanted to read the paper. Are you ready?”
“Yeah,” she said, with visible chagrin. “You didn’t have to wait.”
“I know.”
“That’s, uh, that’s great,” she said, fumbling with her cigarettes. “Man, I’m dying for some pancakes.”
Remy didn’t say anything. He just sat there looking at her with those summer-rainstorm eyes, now green, now gray.
“Let’s get out of here,” Suzie said.
Remy got up without speaking and followed her out the door. They walked from the cabin to the main building mostly in silence, the air still humid, Suzie smoking, Remy walking alongside with his hands jammed in his pockets. Just outside the main building, Remy stopped and put his hand on Suzie’s arm.
“Listen, Suzie,” he said. “First of all, what you said was fucked up—”
“I’m sorry, I—”
“Let me finish. What you said was fucked up, but I understand that you might be a little stressed out right now. You probably feel vulnerable and—”
“I don’t feel vulnerable, I—”
“Please,” he said, holding his hands up, palms out in a gesture of peace and patience.
“Okay.”
“You probably feel vulnerable and defensive. Okay. Let’s just both recognize what you said and put it behind us for now. About everything else—I know last night was just a night. I had a lot of fun and I like you a lot, but we’re both grown adults, and I can’t let a hookup come between Jim and me, in our professional relationship.” She stiffened, but he gave her a look, then went on, “And also you’re also correct that it’s none of his business whom I sleep with, or whom you sleep with, or if we sleep together. That is all one hundred percent valid, and a norm worth defending. Suzie, I can commit to you that if he tries to bring up what happened last night, ask about it, comment on it, he’s going to have to answer to me, because that kind of talk is simply not appropriate.” She exhaled smoke, listening. He went on, “What I would ask of you is to not provoke him. First of all, we hold the moral high ground on the issue now, but we lose it if we give him an excuse. Second, he’s upset, and I suspect he’d be willing to remain upset, without pushing it, so long as we don’t push it, either. Jim is a difficult man, but he’s also, counterintuitively perhaps, rather passive. That’s why he needs people around him, forces to bounce off of. Indeed, that’s exactly why you’re here. So what I would ask of you is to give him the space to be upset without engaging it. Don’t push it. Don’t give him something to bounce off of. Frankly, I believe once Jim gets used to the idea, he’ll be fine. He is, whatever else he might be, a serious artist.”
Suzie took a drag on her cigarette and looked up at the fragile blue-gray sky, imagini
ng it shattering with the flick of a finger. “Like I said,” she said, “I don’t fucking explain myself to anybody. If he minds his own business, we’re copacetic.”
“Right,” Remy said, not quite getting what he wanted, unwilling to push for more.
Suzie gestured at the door, cocking her head toward breakfast, and they went in to find the wedding party in the dining room chattering, sucking down mimosas, and shoveling eggs in their mouths. Jim had a table by the windows overlooking the lake, which shone flat glassy green in the morning light. He was drinking coffee and reading USA Today and looked up at them expressionlessly as they sat.
“Coffee?” he asked, holding up a teal carafe.
“Oh yeah,” Suzie said, turning her cup over.
“I was just reading about the baseball commissioner fixing games,” he said, waving the paper. “You believe that? They’re saying the 2016 World Series was rigged. The Cubs! The Cubs! What the fuck?”
“That’s fucked up,” she said.
“I mean, okay, steroids and doping, whatever, it fucks shit up, it’s a bit ridiculous, with the enhancements and supplements it’s like these guys are like the Hulk or something. I mean it’s unnatural.” He glanced at Remy. “But they’re still competing, right? I mean, if some guys do it, everybody does it, so it levels the field. It’s still athletics. It’s still a real competition. And, okay, if you want to suspend players for making political gestures, fine. Not democratic, but sport isn’t democracy, right, it’s a competition. So let them protest on their own time. But fixing games? Wow. Right?”
The waitress came up and asked them in a sugah-thick Oklahoma twang what they wanted, and they ordered eggs and bacon and pancakes, more coffee, and a large OJ for Suzie.
“So what’s on the itinerary today?” Remy asked.
“What fascinates me is that he was involved with the mob, apparently,” Jim said, looking at Suzie. “Some real bad sonsabitches. Real violent motherfuckers. I mean, there’s so much money involved, they’d almost have to be, right?”
“Sure,” she said, looking at Remy.
