"You Shall Know Our Velocity" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eggers Dave)
SUNDAY
We woke at ten and went to the airport to see what they had. We knew there were flights to Paris and London. In the airline office, the manager spotted us and he opened his arms. "Where will it be today, friends? Mozambique? China?"
We laughed. Funny man.
"Wait," said Hand. "What flight to Mozambique? When?"
The man flinched, like we'd had taken a swing at him.
"No, friend," no longer meaning the word, "we don't go to Mozambique."
A plane to London left at three o'clock, another, to Paris, at six. We wanted to speak English again. "We want that flight to London," I said. We knew now that to get anywhere north and cold we'd have to first hit a hub. At Heathrow we'd figure out where to go.
"This time you'll wait for the plane?" the man asked us.
"We'll stay here."
Hand got us sodas and we sat. The airport soon filled with white people, tanned, most with golf clubs. Where had they come from? We hadn't seen any of these people in town, in the mountains, at the disco. We hadn't even seen a golf course.
There were two hours, 120 minutes, before the flight left. We still had about $400 in Moroccan bills.
"We have to leave," I said. "We can't fly with this."
"We told them we wouldn't leave."
We left.
We drove to the resort walls. Not far from the airport was a string of hotels, with long driveways and gates of iron, and we sped to one, called Temptation, and parked across the road from its grand pink-flowered entrance. The resort was walled in on all sides, parapets of twelve fuschia feet, and just beyond the walls, on the right side, a small shanty community stood, in the shadow of the barriers and the small overhead trees.
"You go," I said.
"How much?"
I gave him what I had, saving a few sample bills for Mo and Thor. Hand approached the closest structure, a yellow box of wood and sheetrock, big enough for two people, no bigger than a large camping tent. He was – moron – still carrying his soda. His sunglasses, mended with eight adhesive postage stamps, were atop his skull, staring at the sun. He peeked around the doorway. A woman stepped out, wiping her hands on something like a dishrag, red and heavy with water.
Hand waved. She nodded to him and looked immediately to me. I waved. She nodded again, this time to me.
His left hand holding his soda, Hand dug into his right pocket to retrieve the bills. The woman looked at me again. I smiled apologetically, but with an expression that said
Something was stuck. Now Hand was reaching to the pocket with two hands. He'd wedged the soda between his arm and torso, and when he finally pulled the bills free, the soda jumped and spilled, in a small geyser of brown liquid, a foot upward and three feet down, onto the woman's legs and bare feet.
I turned around. I couldn't watch. I walked a few steps toward the car, wanting nothing to do with Hand. What kind of person brings his soda? You're giving $300 to people in a shack and you bring your soda? Nothing we did ever resembled in any way what we'd envisioned. Maybe we couldn't help but make a mess everywhere we went -
I had to see what was happening. I turned around again. Now Hand was on his knees. The woman was holding the money but Hand was using the woman's dishrag on her legs and feet. He was dabbing and wiping, quickly but gently, and she was watching him, astounded and unmoving. He stroked the rag down her left calf, washed her right knee, rubbed her right dusty foot and then her left. Then he did it all again. It was unwatchable.
She touched his head, asking him to stop, to stand, and after giving her legs one more good look, he stood.
Hand's garage, with fresh shingles still the color of stripped pine, was sturdy but not too high. My own was low enough but full of holes; Tommy and his friends, years before, had tried to build an addition, on the roof, with plywood and tar paper, and things had gone south when they realized the beams had termites and couldn't hold even their own weight. Hand's garage, though, was strong and sloped downward and it was his we'd planned to jump from. The idea was simple, and was logical for three boys who wanted to be stuntmen: we had to jump from a garage roof to a moving truck below.
We were thirteen and Hand's dad had a blue pickup he backed into the garage every night because he liked the rush – he called it a rush; it was the first time I'd heard the word used that way – of being in the truck, facing forward, receiving the sun, when the garage door rose and he could bolt out onto the highway without looking back. He was a strange man but his enthusiasms had come down through Hand, obvious and undiminished.
One morning before school Hand, Jack and I waited. We'd put blankets in the truck bed the night before, dark ones to match the truck's blue, cobalt and metallic, so Hand's dad wouldn't notice in the dim garage light. We were ready but Jack didn't want to jump. He wanted to watch us jump. He'd planned to be a stunt-man, too – he claimed he did when we asked him; we'd asked him pointedly, to make sure, after he declined to try out our homemade grappling hooks and roused suspicion – but though his commitment seemed real enough, he didn't want to do this jump.
"Pussy," we said.
"Fine," he said.
But he didn't see the point. Why not wait till we're older, when we'll get trained by actual
The garage door rumbled open below us, and we saw the roof of the pickup slowly emerge and collect the light of the rising sun, still cool and blue. We hadn't prepared the timing. We hadn't prepared a signal and hadn't planned to count -
Jack jumped. We watched his back descend toward the steel of the truck, watched him land on his feet, then tumble forward onto hands and knees, then roll onto his back. The truck wasn't moving. Hand's dad had stopped immediately – 120 pounds had landed in his bed – and was opening the door as Jack, on his back, on the blankets we'd laid down, looked up and saw us both, mouths agape, still on the roof. He didn't seem surprised.
"Can we go now? We should go."
"Hold on," I said. I was determined to get this postcard out. We were parked near the airport.
"Did you just say shit in a postcard? You can't do that. They'll confiscate it."
"Who?"
"The censors! Moroccans won't put up with that. Who's it to?"
"The – Forget it."
I folded the postcard in half and started another one.
Today we would do it.
"Okay," he said.
Hand would jump from our rental car to the back of the cart, while we were moving, and then give the driver the money we had remaining. We would pull our car alongside, doing maybe 15 mph, and Hand would jump from his window onto the cart, a big enough target, as big as the bed of a large pickup truck. Easy.
"Maybe too easy," Hand said.
We drove up and down the airport road seven times, trying to time it with a series of different carts. Here's one:
 |
They were all perfectly shaped and traveling slowly enough, but every time we were close, something went awry. A cop behind us or coming from the opposite way; a man on a scooter pulling up and asking if we needed directions; another man on a scooter offering hashish. Kids on bikes looking too curious. The road was too crowded. Where were they all going? They were like extras, paid to drive to and fro -
Hand was sitting on the door, his torso out the window.
"This won't work," he said, ducking his head into the car.
He got back inside. I asked why it wouldn't work.
"Torque," he said.
I pulled over. I stared forward. I wasn't going to ask him what torque had to do with jumping on a horse-drawn cart.
"Let's switch," I said.
"You can't do it. You can barely walk."
"Let's go. I'll do it."
– I have to follow through, Hand.
– We've already followed through.
– We have to follow through every time.
Hand drove and I sat on the doorframe and we turned around to catch up with a man in a cart. We found one near the entrance to the airport. This would work; I'd jump, give him the money, then jump off, onto the road, and we'd fly off to Moscow.
We pulled alongside the same cart. Was it the same cart? It was the same cart as above. Hand slowed the car to match the cart's speed, about 12 mph. The man, at first not paying us any mind, suddenly turned his head and watched us, confused, concerned. We were looking at each other, he and I. I was trying to see a way that I could get myself onto his cart and he seemed to know this. I looked at the back of his cart, and then at him, and at his donkey, then back at him. He didn't want me jumping on his cart. With a
This was stupid.
"Get back in here, idiot," Hand said.
"This is easy," I said, though too quietly for him to hear.
"We'll get arrested," Hand yelled.
My foot was on the doorframe and I jumped. The cart came at me and I could see the grain of the wood of the side panels. I could see the asparagus, or whatever it was. The shoulder and elbow of the man. Then a gap in his cargo, a gap where I would land, grey wooden planks. I felt them, my hands smacked against them, my hest, but my legs were below. My chin hit the wood and then I saw the quick swirl of sky then wailed backward and my back struck the pavement and I saw the sun and was still.
I'd missed. Or I had hit it, but hadn't jumped far enough. I didn't have enough thrust.
"Speak!" It was Hand. "Speak, dumbshit."
"What?" I mumbled.
The cart driver was now bent over me, too. These two faces. They were so different. The cart driver's face was crooked. His jaw jutted to the right. His teeth were headed in so many directions.
The pain in my spine began to know parameters. Soon it would dull again. I sat up.
"That looked fucking awful," Hand said.
The man next to him, crouched down now, said nothing. He looked at me like I was a neighborhood child who no one understood but had to be dealt with daily, the kid who chased cats and spied on elderly women.
"Does it hurt somewhere in particular?" Hand asked.
I got my legs under me and stood. The man was short and now looked up to me. I closed my eyes and stumbled a few steps to my left. I was losing equilibrium. Was I? I didn't know. The damage at this point could be anywhere. Nothing would surprise me.
"You want to get in or stay here?" Hand said. "You fell like a bag of sand."
"Sorry," I said. My lungs hurt. "I thought that was a sure thing." I noticed that the donkey was watching me, too. Of the driver, Hand and himself, he seemed to be the most sympathetic.
Hand and I stood, he waiting for me to walk or fall, me waiting for a sign. The man from the cart started toward his donkey.
"Wait," said Hand. Then to me: "We might as well."
I got the bills from my sock and gave them to Hand, who delivered them to the man. The man shook his head, bewildered, but took the money. He climbed back onto his cart and urged his donkey on, before we could change our minds. My back was raw, dented by a hundred pieces of gravel. We got back in the car.
"We should stay and see a doctor," Hand said.
"In Morocco? No."
"Those Congolese people were coming here to study. You look around this city? There's money here. They must be good."
"Let's make the flight."
Hand sighed and started the car.
"I don't want this on me," he said.
"You won't. I'm good."
"You're a fucking wreck."
We returned the car and and saw the currency exchange bastard, who refused my right to change my signature, who threw himself in our path. We changed the money we needed to change – the nicker did so without incident, and we walked away, walked backwards, glaring, shaking our fingers silently. I was done with the man. Hand was not. When I was at the door, Hand strode quickly back to his window.
"You are bad man!" he yelled.
The man watched Hand, unmoved.
"We are here giving your people money and you try to stop us! You are the wall! Everywhere there are people like you! People who get in the way. You are a constipation! A constipation!"
Everyone was staring.
"You see what you do to my friend?" He was pointing at me. "You make him fall off cart! All is your fault! All in world is fault of people like you!"
The man registered no emotion whatsoever. This sent Hand over the edge.
"You know what they do to you in Bible? They throw you out! You are lost in the flood of Noah! You are cast out of the temple! Cast out! You read the Bible, rude man? Do you?"
I was grabbing him now. I yanked his shirt from behind and he turned to walk with me.
"Cast out of the Bible!" he yelled one more time, as we left the room and stepped out into the light.
The inflight magazine offered an article about a man who was building a single-person commuter plane.
"Holy crap," I said to Hand. "You see this?"
"I'm reading it at the same time." He had his own copy.
The plane would be small, affordable and able to take anyone anywhere. A plane for one person, fit to travel to any destination in the world, more or less – some details needed sorting. It seemed to be the solution to really every problem there was, especially mine. There would be no real restrictions, and no one to wait for, no one on whom to rely. I thought I might swoon. The only issue was the timeline. The inventor had been working on the plane for about twenty years and now he had a prototype – it was ravishing; they had a picture and everything – but, they said, it would likely be twenty years longer, best case scenario, before the planes would be available to civilians, another ten years before they'd be the least bit common. I'd be in my late forties or more likely dead. And the plane, like any perfect idea, any perfect idea dreamed and built by one person acting alone, had its legion of doubters. Why, they wondered, would someone design a perfect machine that could travel anywhere to anywhere, but build it to accommodate only one?
Hand put his magazine down.
"You were like a flying squirrel," he said, turned to me. "I wish you could have seen it. Your hands were out and everything. And your shirt sort of caught some wind – it was cool there for a second, it looked like you had that extra flesh or whatever, like a sail. But then you didn't get a grip on the cart. You just kind of hit it and bounced off."
At Heathrow we made straight for the information desk. A middle-aged woman, with curly iron-colored hair and the happy tired face of a third-grade teacher in her last year, asked if she could help us and we said she could. We needed, we said, to know if there were any flights leaving within the next two hours to countries in Eastern Europe where no visa was required for entry.
She didn't even laugh. Let's see, she said, finding under the counter a huge book, a kind of phonebook, full of comprehensive visa information for the world's nation-states. We grinned at the woman, at each other. This woman, she was something. I thought of gifts we could send her once we'd gotten home. We were happy to be in London among these people, in this airy and sparkling airport full of exotic space-age persons in well-cut and thoughtful and understated clothes, walking purposefully, striding even, confident in their futures, sure of their loves.
Belarus required a visa. Kazakhstan needed a visa. There was a flight to Moscow but a visa would take two days minimum, the woman guessed, chewing the inside of her mouth. Why Eastern Europe? she asked. We didn't know. We wanted to be cold. For a day or two, Hand added. "A day or two," she repeated, looking down through her small glasses and onto the flipping grey pages of her phonebook of nations.
"Estonia?" she said. "They don't require a visa."
Hand slapped the counter. I feared he would whoop. "Estonia!"
Wait.
"So is there a flight to Estonia?" I asked.
She checked her monitor. There was. In two hours, to Tallinn, via Helsinki, on FinnAir. The woman had all the information in the world.
"Can we take you with us?" Hand asked. She giggled and touched his hand. We said goodbye and soon we also loved the woman at the money exchange desk, who cashed my traveler's checks, my name written –
I bought a book about Estonia and Latvia and mints and gum and batteries from a tall Pakistani – I think Pakistani but know I shouldn't guess – clerk who smiled for no reason weirdly at Hand and we ate dinner at an Irish diner staffed internationally – Dutch waitress, Swedish busboy, Korean bartender (we asked them all) – and while two were rude to us we didn't mind because the book said Estonia was full of natural wonders and that Tallinn was a gleaming jewel in Eastern Europe -
"It says it's like a suburb of Helsinki," Hand said.
"So it's not poor?"
"No. Says here everyone has cellphones."
"Shit," I said. "We'll have to leave the city then. We'll leave and find some people."
"Huh," Hand said, scratching his ribs, still reading, "I'd thought it would be like Sarajevo or something, full of crumbling walls and bulletholes."
The plane was all white blond businessmen under forty – a Scandinavian young entrepreneurs' club. We sat at the back and read British tabloids, their pages bloodthirsty, bewildered, pious and drooling. The flight attendant needed help getting a mini-vacuum out of the overhead above us. Hand obliged, and we had free wine the whole way there.
We toasted each other repeatedly and at midnight we were drunk in the bone-quiet empty and dirtless Helsinki airport, wandering through the long-closed brushed-steel shops while airport employees were gliding past – "Jesus Christ," "You're kidding" – on folding silver-gleaming push-scooters. Then forty minutes in the air to Tallinn and through customs and blasted by the frigid angry glass air and into a cab where the driver, with his neat hair and heavy jowls, looked like the guy who ran our community pool back home. That man, Mr. Einhorn, had exposed himself, they said, not to the kids but to their grandmothers, one of whom finally objected. Our cabbie spoke English cheerfully and took us to the only place where people would still be awake.
It was one in the morning and the night's black was flat. We were close to the Arctic Circle but we couldn't see a thing. Were we close to the Arctic Circle? I thought so. The highway was Chicagoan and the buildings along the way not different enough from our own. Was this the Midwest? It was so similar in the dark. The air was similar, the air mixed with night, the air sucking your breath from you. The landscape was soaked in a grey-black wash from which streetlights stared with a dull intensity. I pretended briefly we were on the moon, and the homes were labs for surveyors. Estonia could be the moon, I decided – it was one of ten or twelve countries I'd never remotely planned to see, had never heard of anyone seeing, but which now seemed to contain everything we wanted -
"I always felt like Estonia would be the coolest of the Baltics," said Hand.
"What?" I said.
Hand leaned forward and spoke loudly to the driver. "I always am thinking Estonia is the most great of the Baltic nations!"
"Thank you," said the driver, turning to examine Hand. "You are from the United States?"
"Morocco," Hand said.
"No!" the driver said, again turning to look at Hand.
"Today we come from Morocco!" Hand continued, "tomorrow we come from Estonia!"
They both laughed. Where did he get this shit?
What we saw of Tallinn was ancient and dark, but we saw very little on the way. We arrived at the Hotel Metropol and dropped our bags in the simple clean room and then fell back down to the bar, which acted also or primarily as a casino, everything burgundy and bright Kentucky green, with all of the tables, maybe seven of them and one in the back, occupied. We drank burnt umber beer at the bar, Hand closely watching the unabashedly implanted and low-cut woman, blond and with a bright strong face of sturdy opposition, serving our drinks.
"So," Hand said, "Estonia."
"We're in a casino in Tallinn."
I was exhausted.
There was a man next to us, greasy, showy with a silk handkerchief waving from his suit, chatting with a younger woman in blue velvet. Beyond them, two men with coats on, skirting around the bar, toward us.
One was tall and burly and sweating heavily under the burden of his coat, his backfat, his small overworking heart. The smaller was wiry and thin-faced, like the bassist for a British Invasion band. They asked us our nationality. We told them American. The bigger swayed toward me, spittle at the corners of his mouth, his eyes unfocused, about to say something.
He said nothing. He lost interest and turned to the silk handkerchief man with the leggy woman. He asked the man a question in Estonian. The man answered something inaudible and to that the large heavy man saluted him with a loud
All eyes darted toward us, to the bar area in general. Had I ever heard someone say that? No. Not in person. But because the man was close to us, and we were newly arrived, it looked like we were with the man. Or that we were responsible, complicit.
I backed off and smiled apologetically to the room while Hand said
Hand played poker while we pieced it together. The silk handkerchief man was German, we guessed, and the Estonians still resented the Germans for their role in the Soviet takeover? Hand was sure that Germany had taken Estonia – he knew they took Latvia – and this was reason enough. We settled on this explanation and I watched as Hand lost $100 of my money. It confused me for a minute, the money-losing. It was becoming less clear what was happening with this money. How much had we given away? No idea. It had seemed like a lot but it couldn't have been over $7,500. We had a long way to go. And only three days, or actually less – sixty hours. How would we do it? And to whom would we give it? Was the point to give it to people who needed it, or just to get rid of it? I knew the answer, of course, but had to remind Hand. Didn't we figure this out before, in Marrakesh? Always we learned things and forgot them. Almost nothing could be learned for good. Hand wanted to lose money, now, here. We could lose it all here, certainly, easily, and would we be more free? In a way, sure, but -
"Let's go," I said.
The casino workers, matching in number the patrons one to one, were busy watching, touching their fingers lightly to the felt, the leather, the burgundy walls.
"Fine," said Hand. And with that, he was done. I had vague fears that Hand was a secret gambling addict and was now relieved. We were still mobile.
We stepped outside – the cold whipped our bare faces – and asked the cabbie, the same one, still sitting in his Mercedes reading Günter Grass – that was weird, that kind of callback – to take us to Old Town, the cultural center, and he started the car, while warning us that nothing was still open.
It was two now and Sunday and everything was dead. We had been traveling all day, a waste. We'd done nothing.
The cabbie rolled us through Old Town, windows open, the car moseying over the cobblestones, as he pointed out various landmarks – churches and places of assembly, all presumably older than even the beaches of our own country. I was yawning, eyes tearing from the frozen air, when finally we pulled up alongside a small sign, bearing the silhouette of a curvy and naked woman.
Hand pointed to the sign. "We have to go. Is it open?"
The cabbie said it was; it was the only place open in Tallinn at two on a Sunday night. Do we really want to go to another gentleman's club?
We paid the man and walked down a narrow alleyway and through a medieval wooden round-topped door and then down. Down a low-ceilinged hallway and down again and then through a swinging double-door and finally we were in a sort of basement den, the basement of an ancient building, almost surely once this structure's dungeon or crypt, where hay would be stacked in one corner and men tortured in the other. In one corner sat two men in suits, separate and each alone, and in front of us, beyond the clear plastic column of water, bubbly and lit green and full of fake flat zebrafish jerking up and down, a topless shiny woman with Barbarella's boots was swinging wildly around a gleaming golden pole.
We sat down. A booth around a silver table.
With new drinks we watched the woman dance. She was tall, with barn-red hair, petal-white skin and blue eyes. She was not such a great dancer, but she was loving this pole.
"Always the pole," Hand said.
These dancers love those poles, and they go around and around on the poles, and sometimes they get so acrobatic on the poles, and it's always lost on me. Upside-down on the pole, twirling on the pole, back against the pole, front against the pole, climbing the pole. The pole is fine, I think but I think maybe the pole is not worth so much concerted attention.
– Hand, people like this can teach us nothing.
– Maybe, but they're awake and we're awake. That's enough.
Or it could be that I wanted a pole myself. These women were doing some impressive maneuvers, but with the pole as home base, as pillar and facilitator. I had no such pole. Could I do more and better things with a golden pole? I had no pole.
She finished and while Hand went to get us more drinks she came to me. A second earlier she had been rhe dancer on the mini-stage, with the boots and the pole, and now she was here over me, her knee, next to my thigh, on the upholstered bench, her heat on me, the smell of garlic, her shampoo, strawberry-scented and strong, her long hair tickling my nose. She touched my chin, tsk-tsking while scanning the various flaws and scabs, and I smiled politely, in shock.
Her name was Olga. She was Russian, but wanted to go to Sweden to make more money. "This is my last day here," she announced. After tonight, she would go to Sweden to become a bartender. We asked if she knew how to bartend. She said no.
– You're not going to Sweden tomorrow.
– I know.
– We are to overpay you to help you on your trip.
– Yes.
– But you will stay.
– Maybe.
– I can't even begin to know how you got here in the first place.
– You're more like me than you think.
She had a warm snaggletoothed smile. She looked like a neighbor I once had, Angela Tomaso. It struck me for a second that this might in fact
This was not Angela Tomaso. She smiled into my eyes and then turned. Hand had returned – where were the drinks? He'd forgotten the drinks – and now she was on Hand and things were much less polite. She seemed to genuinely like him. She preferred him to me. Even in a transaction like this, she got to choose. He was grinning like mad. Every act of charity has choice at its core. My head was still talking to her.
– I think you do have love for Hand.
– It's impossible to fake this all the time.
She was straddling him, her hand between his thighs, her other hand in his hair.
– Olga I agree. You can't fake it all.
– There's no way to pretend. I have an irregular and bursting heart and that's why I'm here. It erupts so many times every night and I can't help it. I know this is a strange way to express it but I feel real love for your friend, and for you. For you it's more general, it's my love surveying you from above, approving, you as part of a landscape I love, a human one, while with your friend it's more specific. It's his smell, his thick neck -
– Fine. Enough.
Hand was trying to get something – what? Oh, money – from his sock. I was looking at her dimpled and thong-bisected rear as it rose and descended on his crotch.
– But see how we are the same? You and I, Will? We both see strangers and we react. We don't like to walk by people without nodding. We're broken when people are rude. We're broken when people can't meet us halfway. We can't accept the limits of normal human relations – chilly, clothed, circumscribed. Our hearts pull against their leashes, Will!
But as suddenly as she'd come to us, she was back to the dance-floor and engaged in more spinning around the gold glimmering pole. Maybe someone else was liking the pole. Maybe I was missing something. I looked around, at the other patrons, half-expecting to find some guy grinning and clapping, going nuts for the pole. No such men were here.
When she was done dancing, she came over again, asked to sit down, suggested Hand buy her a drink, he did, and now she was sitting next to him, her long fingers moving like spider legs, slowly, in the low thicket between his neck and skull.
A new woman was dancing. White-blonde, heavier, curvier. I sat up. I watched her for a while, wondering what we were doing here, if I was expected to leave Hand and Olga alone. Her nose was buried in Hand's neck. She pulled back to face him.
"You smell like…" she said, gesturing, as if making wind.
"What?" he said.
"Like outside," she said, and began chewing on his ear.
This new woman dancing was not a happy dancer. She threw a horrific fake smile my way; she appeared to be missing her bottom teeth, if that was possible. Hand and Olga were talking about Estonian television.
"Last night," she said, "I see on TV where bears and dogs fight."
Hand tilted his head. "How do you mean, like a nature show? In the wild?"
"No, they fight in a stage. Like circus. A show. The bear is chain, like police. [She made a gesture, her wrists pulling away from each other, to indicate handcuffs.} The dogs jump on him."
"What? Really? The bear?" Hand wanted details.
"Oh yes! On the bear!"
"Why doesn't the bear just bite the dogs or stick his claws in them or something? A bear would
"No, no. They take the teeth out of bear. And claws."
"They what?" Hand was outraged.
I was sure I'd seen this, in woodcuts. And I remembered where. "They did this in medieval England," I offered, though I'm not sure they knew I'd been listening. "I saw something about it somewhere. Woodcuts of it. Bearbaiting."
Hand looked at me blankly. He turned to Olga.
"They take the teeth out? Really?"
Olga was now teary. Talking about the bear fighting had upset her. She ordered another drink.
"That is horrible," said Hand. "And this is some kind of national sport?"
She nodded gravely. They talked about this much longer than I could stay interested, and longer than anyone but Hand, who had recently crashed an epidemiology convention in Indianapolis, would be interested. Now there was no dancing. A big screen TV was activated, and on it a movie featuring crazy sharks with huge brains eating scientists and LL Cool J.
Finally another woman, in a business suit, came over and asked if either one of us would like a massage or private dance from Olga. Olga nodded for herself and Hand. Hand stood -
"Just for a sec. You okay?"
"I'm good," I said.
– and left with her. Another woman, who a minute ago was bartending, took the stage and began rubbing her backside against the golden pole. There was a payphone near the bar so I called my mom.
"You're where?" she said. "I can't hear anything."
I pressed my finger into my free ear.
"I'm at a bar in Estonia. What time is it there?"
"Three. I'm staining a footstool."
"You're what?"
"A footstool."
"You're aiming it? At what?"
"In the garage?"
"I'm outside -"
"Make sure it's ventil – Oh."
There was a delay in our connection and it made us tentative. We waited to speak and then spoke at the same time.
The dancer had two fingers in her mouth. Now her ankles held the pole, and she was upside down. The link between the acrobatics and anything erotic was tenuous and slipping. I turned to face the phone, to concentrate.
"You're where again?" she said, almost yelling.
"Estonia. Tallinn."
I situated it for her. No one knows where Tallinn is.
"Hey honey," she said, not caring about Tallinn anymore, "you would tell me if you'd broken something here, wouldn't you?"
"Broke something? Like what?"
"A plate, a glass, anything."
"I don't get it."
"You know I walk barefoot sometimes."
"Right. But did you step on some glass? What are you talking about?"
"You would tell me, wouldn't you?"
"Of course. But I haven't been there in months, Mom."
– Jesus, Mom. What is going on?
"I just wanted to make sure you'd tell me. I woke up this morning and was afraid to walk in there – I was sure it was covered in glass. And you know how hard it is to see that glass, Will."
"Okay."
"I can't have the glass everywhere, hon. I can't have the broken glass underfoot."
– Not now. Wait. Please. Give me five years.
"Okay," I said.
"So why Estonia?"
"I don't know. They didn't need a visa."
"I almost went to Denmark once."
"When?"
"With your father of course. We wanted to honeymoon there. All the tulips."
"Oh." I hated it when she mentioned him without malice.
"Get away!" she yelled.
"What?"
"The dog next door. He's brushing up against my stool."
– Mom. Bring it together.
"Honey."
"What?"
"I should let you go."
"I have time."
"I don't."
"You should see this place. They've got these tall fishtanks full of fake fish, and they're bubbling up to the top, flying up there. Like embers from a campfire. Or like when you try to burn newspaper in the fire, and it gets so light and starts floating around, when it all goes up around your head."
"Will."
"Or the embers go up too. Remember that? The one time on the Wolf River, remember that, when you took us for my birthday? And there was that fake open grave along the path, with the shroud on it? With the bloodstain in the middle -"
"I have to go. Have a nice strip bar."
She was the one who'd wanted to go to Great America. This was only three years ago, in the middle of a June everyone was marveling about – so blue and clear, the heavy May rains giving the greens unknown depths, underwater hues – and so many were home for a wedding – Teddy, from high school, was marrying a woman seven years older and twenty pounds heavier, and there was much talk, before and during, especially when she chain-smoked through the reception and its many speeches – and my mom wanted to go to Great America, and Jack and Hand and I with her. We were twenty-four or -five, Jack, Hand and I, and we all followed my mom – oh shit, Pilar was there too, for some reason – all day, letting my mom pay for things, letting her choose the rides. This was the day they rode the Demon – I wouldn't ride anything that brought me upside-down, and the smell of the bar across my chest brought memories of bike accidents, so I waited and watched – and afterward I watched the three of them, arm in arm in arm, legs almost linked, walking toward me. It was stupid and embarrassing and funny and stupid. This was the day Hand announced, while eating fries and mayonnaise for lunch, that in his opinion, a great shit was better than bad sex, a view that was seconded by my mom, which just about killed Jack. On this day Jack mentioned that he wouldn't mind staying at his current job, in his current position, for "twenty or thirty more years." He was content. When he finished enumerating the pleasures of his work, we were quiet. This day ended when we left at six, but began again when in the parking lot we learned that Mom had left her lights on. It was foggy in the morning and her lights were on then and now the car was dead and we had to start over.
We played backgammon on the hood while we waited for a Triple-A jump and when that was done the day ended again but began once more when we stopped for dinner and afterward the engine wouldn't turn. Triple-A again but this time we waited inside, at the bar – the first time I'd ever had a drink with my mom, anywhere – and Jack and Hand acted like it was natural and good – better here than in Hand's basement, where we used to shotgun Old Milwaukees before going out looking to steal Melinda Aghani's Cabriolet. But for me, with my mom here, and them here, it was the collision of worlds and every sip confused me. Jack told his story about how his sister Molly said, at thirteen, that she'd never have sex, ever. Why?
Hand was back, with a look like a sigh. Olga was behind him, with a grim smile.
"We better head out," he said.
"Okay," I said.
"Well," he said, looking sheepishly to Olga, "I have a big meeting in the morning. In the courthouse. Big trial. I better get some shut-eye. Wish me luck."
Shut-eye. Courthouse. Trial.
"Good luck," she said. I gave her $100, on top of what we paid for the drinks, about $6 each.
Outside, in the wretched furious cold and on the cobblestone, Hand apologized for staying so long. I said not to worry.
He was, clearly, more interested in the bear-baiting than in Olga.
"Can you believe that, that they take the teeth out of the bear?"
We were walking quickly in the direction of the hotel.
"The massage? Was it any good?" I asked.
"She did a private dance for me."
"A lapdance."
"Sort of," Hand said. "But here they set you up in a room, like a seventies basement. Blue lights and modular furniture, CD rack. She lets you choose the music."
"And?"
"She dances around. She's really bad as a dancer. She was so shy when we were alone."
"She touch you?"
Oh Charlotte, there were times, my friend, in bed with you, when I would grasp what was going on, would see you, all of you, your bursting flesh, your curves of such generosity, absurdity, and would find myself looking at you through the eyes of me at sixteen. My sixteen-year-old self would be peeping through my new old body and would see you and say
"Not much. She took off my shirt, rubbed my chest a little. I was just sitting there. She was laughing, I was laughing. I don't know if people ever get serious about that shit. Like if anyone can be in that situation going, 'Yeah, lady, this is the fucking best! Do that private dancing!' I mean, it's such an inherently funny situation. Like a singing telegram."
We were walking back in the direction of the hotel, ready to grab a cab if any were still operating.
"I have to see about the bear-baiting, though. That just kills me," Hand said. I knew he'd be stuck on this for a while.
"Yeah, I don't know," I said. "People like that kind of thing."
"I guess. I guess. It satisfies a pretty basic human desire, right? To see a big mighty bear killed by smaller, meaner animals, right? People love that kind of thing.
"Right."
"And they have to cheat to beat the bear, right? And gang up. They weaken the bear, one attack at a time. They take his teeth and claws out, chain him down and then they attack. It's a joke. On its own, who can take on a bear? No one."
"An elephant," I said.
"No."
"Elephants kill. I read that."
"I know, but see, it
"What?" He was veering.
"Those are the sorriest bulls there are! Those bulls are half-dead by the time they get in the ring. There just aren't any fair fights with these animals. And what kind of diseased, disturbed, stupid fucker would want to kill some great animal, I mean -"
"I'm not disagreeing with you." My toes were numb. "It's freezing Hand, can we keep moving?" He'd stopped walking and was gesturing emphatically. I couldn't concentrate. My blood felt like it was leaving me, replaced by crystals that scratched from within.
We jogged back toward the hotel and Hand continued, through visible exhalations. My chest felt so tight, the pressure of the air inside and outside so intense, so active. A pounding -
"So look at it this way," Hand said. "How many people have really witnessed, in person, violent acts in their lifetimes? A pretty small percentage, outside of playground stuff, little fights with sticks or whatever, right? But just as the world was becoming, like, evermore civilized, TV and movies brought violence to everyone, fuck it's cold -"
"I can't feel my ankles."
"Ankles? Really?"
"That happens to me. Can we sit down?"
"In this cold? We're better off walking."
Something was thundering from within my chest, a beating on my breastplate. This was new. "You're right," I said. We kept walking. I scanned the roads that bordered the park, for cabs.
"You okay?" he asked.
"Why?"
"You're holding your stomach. Was it dinner?"
"No, no. I'm good."
"Cramp?"
"No."
He gave me a untrusting look. "We should just keep heading this way. I can see the church next to the hotel."
"Good," I said. "I need to lie down."
We walked toward the steeple. There was such a weird tightness, a new kind of grip, lower in my chest. I was just starting to really examine the pain, map it -
I dropped. I landed under a bench at the edge of the park and was flooded with warmth. It was so warm, so many creeping-quickly vines spreading throughout my limbs and torso and all so hot, such a liquid heat within me – I dreamt of my face in dirt. My head was burrowing through soft black soil, was pushing its way through, twisting and clawing, without fingers. The dirt felt so warm. I opened my eyes. I was on my back.
It was snowing! It was so gorgeous. They were the biggest flakes I'd ever seen. Wow they were big, the size of birds, and they were falling at me, spinning, but too fast. Too fast – they were falling as if leaden, without their usual caprice. They were falling straight, like rain. I could barely breathe. I was sucking air out of tiny crushed lungs. Lungs the size of thumbs. My lids shut and I went out again. I saw myself on the back of a dragon, as he was scorching forests and countrysides – Or maybe I was the dragon.
Jesus, what were we supposed to do that night? Jack died ten minutes before noon.
After silently eating curly fries and gyros, watching a boy play an old Galaga machine, we went to a movie,
After the movie, which was too dark for our mood, we got popsicles from the 7-11 and stood in the parking lot, waiting. Soon we were done with our popsicles and were chewing on the sticks. We had nowhere to go. The next day was not possible yet.
There was a man on the outdoor payphone, lit blue under the malfunctioning awning light. His palm rested on the brick wall of the building above the phone, his hand gripping the receiver like a barbell. He kept hanging up, dialing again, hanging up, swearing, dialing. We watched, chewing, quiet.
A police car, huge and roaring, swung into the small parking lot like a whale thrown on a beach. A khaki-clad officer, wearing black boots over his calves, over his pants, walked slowly to the man, took the phone from his hand and hung it up. They began talking. Soon another police car arrived, this one an SUV. There were three cops, and they were all talking to the man, who we guessed was making obscene phone calls, or hassling an ex-girlfriend. Minutes later there were five cops – two talking to him, one on a radio – calling for more cops? – the other two watching the talking two.
Hand and I made each other laugh, putting words in the cops' mouths. We were knocking each other out and the cops didn't seem to care. They periodically glanced at us, two men standing under the awning, watching them, giggling, and I worried then hoped they might hassle us, too – it would give a new direction to the night and we had no idea how to use these hours, any hours anymore – but they only glared, sneered and finally handcuffed the man and drove away with him.
The blood was draining to my head. I was upside down and my stomach was being jabbed. I opened my eyes and was floating above the ground, watching the sidewalk and the frozen grass from five feet above. Oh shit this could be -
No.
"Put me down," I said. Hand had me over his shoulder.
"You're awake."
"You're fucking killing me."
"You want to stand or -"
"Just put me down."
He swung me down to my feet and I stood.
"Where were you going?" I asked.
"I wasn't sure yet."
"Dumbshit."
"Your face," he said, pointing to my nose. I touched it and felt the blood. The scab had opened.
"Hey!" Hand yelled. He was running away now. There was a taxi gliding slowly along the perimeter of the park and Hand was waving his arms at it, sprinting.
The cabbie, dark-haired and with a goatee, shared the front seat with his wife and their baby. We sat in the back and argued about hospitals. Hand insisted and I insisted. Hand worried and I worried a little bit, but we agreed that we'd see how I felt in the morning. The episode was brief and I felt good again. The blood still tickled through me, filling me again, but it was the cold, I decided. I thought about galling Dr. Hilliard but didn't want to do the time-zone math and didn't want to bother her anyway. It was the cold. The pressure of the cold air, the pumping of cold blood, all of it too much work. Why were we in Estonia anyway? It was all so much work. The air, the high-pressure air. I needed warmth. I wanted Cairo. The sun in Cairo would be so giving.
At the hotel, the man at the desk gave us a sour look and the casino was closed. We went to our room, Hand droning on about infant mortality in South Africa, Mandela's role -
I think Hand was still talking when I fell away. I slept and dreamt a dream almost only aural – hours, it seemed, of someone, huge but distant, cackling in a pained, choking way, and the room this time looked precisely like my mom's, with that painting of the boat up on sawhorses, the ground beneath roped with drought. Then Olga and my mom were the same person and they were both telling me to buy a gun to shoot the sick frothing dogs.
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