The Foghorn
Excerpt from The Comb, a Novel (Coming Late 2014)
There had been a wedding in the room. Many weddings, actually. I could feel them.
Perhaps because I’d been to a wedding in this room before. The groom was British and he wore glasses. He had thin pale hair, styled with a small comb with fine teeth. He’d bent slightly forward before entering the room so his mother, not quite five feet two, could comb it the way she liked. The bride was from Texas. She was tall and slender, with generous dark hair. She worked with me at the Hotel. The groom politely nodded while she laughed out loud. Too loudly, we found, to be contained in one decorated space. It was a wedding seen by a few and heard by many more, via the windows and hallways.
“She looks like that one in the Stepford Wives,” said another hotel colleague to me as we sat next to each other in the gold chivari chairs that the staff had brought in and put in rows.
“You know the one, Bobbi or something, who says she likes scotch and ringdings before all the men haul her away. The one that always talks too loud.”
She snapped her fingers.
“Paula Prentiss. That’s who she looks like.”
The snapper, whose nickname was Gillie, whatever that stood for, was not at the wedding because she liked the bride, Deb, short for Debra. Gillie gossiped often that she did not like her at all, in a way which made me question her upbringing and the obvious newness of her wealth. She constantly poked fun at the age of Deb’s shoes, which were not always new.
Gillie came to the Inn to take notes on Deb’s wedding location. Gillie was cheating on her husband with a much richer, taller man, an executive in our company who was also married. The affair had taken place in a number of Hotel rooms though it sometimes just utilized the executive’s generous desk.
Gillie wanted to have the ceremony details planned, for the luxurious second go, before her first “mistake” and his less than ample wallet was, as she put it, “coldcock dumped.”
“I’m a doer,” she said, as if the label was envied or remotely original. “I just want to know what it’s all going to look like.” When the rich tall guy married her. She was sure it would happen.
I hoped she didn’t expect me to be there, to witness her ceremony of conniving and its resultant lotto winnings.
She imagined herself prettier than she was. She winked and giggled and made a clicking sound with her tongue.
“It’s how it’s done, little girl,” she told me. “You’re twenty-two already, Miss. Better wise up, Buttercup.”
She thought it was cute when she called me “little girl” and “Miss.” She was actually serious, not realizing how her condescension and lack of couth made me feel soiled. Which was an unwelcome feeling as that afternoon had been sunny and breezy, and the French doors were flung open, and the smell of jasmine and lavender and mown lawn and warmth and salt came in.
**
It was that same set of French doors that Zane and I broke out of, at what I think was just after one am.
The men were still talking. Dr. T holding court and Minister Ash listening, making steeples with his fingers to give the deliberately false impression of sacred thoughtfulness. And the central bankers and others watching both of them intently. For a sign or a signal.
Still, it would be hard to get past them. To sneak upstairs would require that Zane and I go one at a time. To convince them that we weren’t destined for the same room, and Zane was just on the edge of being drunk. He didn’t usually partake, but it was from Ash’s cellar in New York and it was expensive, so he did. I watched. And now he was looking at me in a crazy sort of way, a way that said he wouldn’t mind creating a rumor this evening, and he would foil my excellent cover up even if I’d planned it perfectly.
I could script him through the walk, and he would nod in assurance, memorizing it all, down to every last detail. And then he would do it in his own way.
Because that’s what he always did.
This usual behavior had caused a few “moments” over the course of the day, ones it would be hard for me to forget.
There was a Frenchman at the meeting who wore scarves and was demonstrative. He continuously interrupted Zane’s presentation, making it difficult for others to follow. He seemed intent on disrupting the proceedings at times, though such efforts were often incomeplete. He would be distracted by staff, particularly young female staff, as they walked in and out.
Zane was seething at him. I could tell. The interruptions were too much. But he said nothing. He just had that look on his face. Like he was taking notes. Planning revenge. Even when the Frenchman was telling a female server how tres belle she was, in a way that seemed innocuous.
Most of the men took time to flatter Zane. Very purposefully, in a planned way. This was less about his genius than the consistent signals that he was a sort of heir apparent. Ash’s choice.
As the head of the Japanese delegation, Inouye, mentioned to me at dinner, “he seems to get along with the President. He also gets along with the Minister.”
I nodded and said nothing, noting to myself that the break that had occurred between Ash and the President had become obvious beyond our own cohort. It had been kept out of the media successfully.
But it was not lost on Mr. Inouye, who seemed like a wise and measured man. He did not speak up or down to me in any way. His sincerity comforted me, and I took him seriously.
While I could tell he was irritated by the flamboyant Frenchman, Zane remained in almost Vulcan control.
There was only one moment he did not.
There was a slight man of professorial appearance at the table. He was distinguished and polished far beyond the others, carrying himself in the manner of an emeritus or former king of a secret society or realm, and everyone in the room acted in accordance with this role. His accent revealed him to be from Israel and his words revealed him to be an academic of senior status.
Zane was afraid of him.
I was taking notes on Zane’s presentation, noting his pauses and his mumbles. Zane runs his words together when he is nervous, and he splits them hard when he is angered.
Whenever he looked over at the professor, he would pause too long, then mumble too much.
The professor’s replies were always quietly put.
“Please explain what you said once again, Mr. Leonard.”
He was testing him. To see if what he was saying was just a heap of words, or an actual tenet. Something Zane actually knew.
Zane had presented himself as a thinker of immense global things. The wonder kid who had driven the EOBI, the dry run with the peso, all the things that came next.
He thought himself a celebrity, and everyone played along with that.
Almost everyone.
Now Zane’s starpower was being questioned by a mentor from an age before. Or so Zane had categorized him.
Zane had been advised by others, including Chairman Ostrosny , to accept such situations with grace. She smiled broadly and whispered to Zane in an almost motherly fashion.
“You have much ahead of you. Much to look forward to. Let others be a part of your success.”
Chairman Ostrosny had a gentle smile. I had experienced it myself, and it was probably the only smile I believed. I tried to think of someone else who smiled that way. No one came to mind.
Zane had not heeded her advice, though on occasion he pretended to.
I saw immediately that the professor wanted to teach Zane, to be a part of his ascent. But it was to be a master-apprentice relationship. On the professor’s terms.
I almost laughed at the idea.
Zane was terrible with authority. Had I not been the minutes taker I would have apprised the Israeli professor-king of this myself.
As I thought this, he spoke. Slowly. He had everyone’s attention.
“Mr. Leonard. You have a grand vision, but you have no steps toward it. You must know your steps. You must have them in place. As yet, you do not.”
Zane’s right hand rose slightly, and then turned palm down towards the table. He did not hit the table, but kept his hand controlled, straight, stiff, in midair. His lips wrinkled together, pursed as if holding in words. But he answered.
“I must know them as I go along,” said Zane. The arrogance of his tone would have been effective at half the strength. But it went overboard. He sounded like a bratty teenager. The professor-king chuckled. And said nothing.
Zane had lost the point.
But the game was still on, and the men at the table leaned in for what was next.
To their surprise, it was Ash who spoke.
“Mr. Leonard has the matter well in hand,” he said.
It wasn’t entirely true. Or even half true, just yet. I think what Ash was saying, in the presence of all, was that young Zane was his protégé. Not the professor’s.
Out of curiosity, I looked at Dr. T.
He was staring downward. His chubby fingers, next to a dish of candies, fondled the end of a mint wrapper, not yet undone. He was convincing himself not to eat another piece of candy, and he’d fail in that endeavor.
He was hiding something.
*
I heard shouts as Zane and I flew out of the doors; shouts of laughter that accompany the stories told over scotch in lounges after five course dinners.
The main course had been lamb, which was delectably presented with spring vegetables and a mint jus, but included a dollop of spring pea puree. I had asked for the peas to be served as peas, not as a neon dollop which dominated the entire plate.
I am unsure which wayward staff member pulverized the peas, but the result was colorful.
Zane said that it looked Martian.
I told Zane that he looked Martian, and he should be happy that I was serving him Martian food. I came up behind him. I put my hands over his funny ears. He tipped his head back and I looked at his face upside down.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m off to jump all over the Chef,” I said.
“What?”
“For the Martian pea puree. Calm down.” I smiled.
I then went and lectured the kitchen, exaggerating my humiliations where necessary to make the point. I was called an ugly word by the Chef, who took complete responsibility for the bright green glob on the plates. I told him that I keep a list of everyone who calls me that specific word. And I told him to serve peas unpulverized.
The rest of the meal went perfectly. The fruit tart had a light foccacia like crust which had a touch of sourness to it. The cream was fresh and unsweetened. Even the Frenchman loved it, over licking his spoon as he thanked me for the menu selection. He said that Americans like desserts too sweet; if I picked this one I must know something others do not.
I must be French.
“Ah, your first name is Francais, non?”
The Minister skipped dessert, and spent time with his wine. Jutting his tongue into it like he does when he is alone.
The after dinner chat was in a circle of easy chairs, arranged for this purpose. They were not a smoking crowd, though cigars were offered just in case.
They were surrounded by plans and secrets, and the thrill and necessity of talking in code. Even if the Inn staff heard something, they weren’t to really know what it meant. They were forbidden to talk with the press, who still camped in vans and cars off the front lawn near the valet parking station.
They were set far enough away so even I didn’t have to deal with them.
The folders were put away. The proceedings were officially declared off record.
And the minutes taker, the one who had planned their lovely evening and had gotten less than a thank you for doing so, was careening through the dark across a muddied lawn, just doused by sprinklers minutes before, and still soft and cold and unstable to bare and running feet.
I imagine myself in a movie.
“She started going faster when he grabbed her hand, and she felt like she was flying, undirectionally, swallowing up mist and darkness and hoping she wouldn’t turn an ankle. Or fall.”
The grass was too wet, I told myself. A fall was probably inevitable.
As it turned out Zane fell first. One of the harp-shaped sprinklers was still uncovered, sticking up from the lawn leading up to the boat pier. Since he’s Zane and never admits to tripping and falling at any time, preferring to call attention to how the Earth itself must have moved under him instead, he tightened his hold on my hand.
To ensure that I fell also. We missed the sprinkler. But I fell on top of him, as if romantically choreographed.
It looked planned, I’m sure. Though it wasn’t. We rolled around a bit and both managed to get dirt in our hair, declare the probable presence of earthworms or worse nearby, and catch sight of rowboats at the little pier.
The gate was locked but it could easily be overcome by climbing and leaping.
There were lampposts by the pier, though they were not on to guide boating. They illuminated the shoreline so those at the Inn could look out and see a pleasant view, even at night.
The view in the brochure. The one they’d paid to be physically present with.
I told Zane I wanted to watch the sun rise.
Zane wondered how soon the sunrise was, asking as if there was a way we could see it sooner than others.
We untied a rowboat.
The argument over who would hold the oars was brief. He won. I let him. He stood up in the boat and it rocked back and forth. I thought we’d tip over, and we were just far enough out and I was just clothed enough that I didn’t want to swim back in.
Zane is a better swimmer than I am. I wondered if he would help me, if the boat capsized. If he purposefully capsized the boat, could I ride on his back?
I dream of this. Of Zane swimming and me holding on. Trusting him.
But I don’t believe it.
It is just a thought. An imagining. Not real. I am drowning, and Zane saves my life. I entertain it and then I put it away.
I wonder if he would want to save me, or if saving me would merely be a heroic accident. One for which he took no risk, but received generous credit.
**
I almost drowned once, and it was nothing like a heroic accident. It involved a series of deliberate decisions, and risk was a part of all of them.
I was at the Lake. In the canoe with Casey and Jackie. They bobbed around and laughed until I fell out. A summer storm was approaching, and they said they hoped the lightning would electrocute me and they could watch.
I tried to get back into the boat, but they both kept pushing me out, hitting my knuckles hard and bending back my fingers backwards and sideways into unnatural positions as I tried to grip the sides. Though it was summer, the lake water was cold enough that my fingers were numb, and their attacks on my fingers were not as painful as they’d wanted them to be.
Realizing that getting back into the canoe might be the less safe option, I decided to try to swim to shore. I was not a strong swimmer, but I decided to try anyway, not seeing any other choice. There were buoys about 80 feet out from the shore, and I could stop and hold one if I needed to rest.
And then the water was disturbed. Jackie had jumped in.
I was terrified. She was going to kill me. I made the Sign of the Cross. It seemed a logical thing to do, and I could do it while swimming. And while Jackie grabbed my leg. And held.
I could not move forward. I was pulled under and looked up and saw her blond curls splayed by the still rocking water. She had my ankle. Her nails went in, trying to draw blood from my most visible vein. My foot was right in front of her stomach.
I bent my knee and released with might. I kicked her.
She was thrown back. I’d gotten her, right below the rib cage. I went in again, but she had leaned down to brace her stomach. I kicked her harder. In the nose.
I didn’t realize how hard until I saw blood spout from her freckled, pale and piggish snout, into the water.
And she let go.
I was still far out from the shore. I was breathless. I realized this when I got my head above water. I was dizzy.
I thought for a moment whether I should just let myself die.
I sank back into the water and it felt suddenly comfortable. In a way I had not expected. The girls’ cackles had subsided, and I felt the current carry me, not fight me. It no longer seemed to be taking my breath. It was my friend now.
I was twelve and it had been enough time; some did not even have that long.
Children of war, cataclysm and poverty. Children who had diseases for no reason.
They died before they were twelve, and before they had a chance to anger God. Or leave him entirely, out of pride or something like it.
Which made me think of things from the other direction. If I died, I would not do what God wanted.
Clearly I’m supposed to live. That’s why God let me beat up Jackie, I said to myself in my head, in my most serious twelve year old voice, adding,
“Besides, think of how victorious my cousins would feel if they could take credit for my death.”
I pictured their cheering faces, and their faces terrified me more than dying did.
They would not have reported on my calm decision to voluntarily give myself to the lake. They would have made up a story which painted me in the craziest and worst of ways, and I would have had no voice. No defense.
I would not ever have an answer.
Jackie would delight in knowing what a dead body looked like floating by. Bloated, disfigured, discolored. She had been way too fascinated by the slow death of crawdads in the outdoor boiling kettle. It would not have taken much for such cravings to leap to humans.
My brief thoughts of drowning and leaving this world had cleared my head. And given my cousins a chance to leave me there alone. Thinking that I wouldn’t be able to make the swim.
As it turned out, my consideration of death may have saved my life.
When I made it back to shore, I hoped to myself that I would be welcomed. That others would have worried. That they would be happy that I was home.
But Casey and Jackie had gotten there first, and were in control of the narrative.
The story was that I had kicked Jackie, and had drawn blood.
No one minded that I was vomiting water on the beach, having just taken the longest swim of my life about 10 minutes before an electrical storm. Which hit gloriously and offered a noise and light filled backdrop to all the sympathy and affection showered on the injured, bloodied Jackie.
I was punished. Following absurd verbal humiliation and accusations of demonic presence, including full blame for my scotch drinking Aunt Elvie’s afternoon headache, I was ordered to eat dinner alone. In the guest room. I was actually happy about this. And I locked myself in the room. I looked for a Bible, hoping it would have a story about Old Testament God wreaking havoc and revenge on cousins that tried to drown people and then lied about it afterward.
I wondered what God thought of Jackie. Casey, I thought, would show off and be mean but eventually relent. She was a wannabe villain, one without spine. Jackie was different. She was a sociopath without rules. I fully expected that upon achieving adulthood, she would find a way to kill people and get away with it.
And just like the uncouth Gillie and her little notebook of wedding plans, she’d force a rich man to fund all of it.
I couldn’t find a Bible, but after weeding through several volumes about wine and golf, I found a book with pictures of Switzerland. I looked at the mountains and chalets. I hoped that God would forgive me for almost deciding to die.
I thought about what my obituary would say and what the flowers might look like, as I peered through pages of Alpen beauty. I fell asleep before I ate dinner. I woke up after midnight, and was hungry. I sneaked into the kitchen and ate sardines.
“These are my first meal since I decided to be alive again,” I announced, in a whisper but very officially to myself, before I ate all of them. Right out of the pull top can.
**
Zane is rowing. The steadiness of the sound of the oars, the creaking of the boat and the sound of water being shifted along became a repetitive lull that quieted my memories. They were almost not there anymore.
The pier behind us was rotted. Breaking, with a few extra posts scattered in the water. The old pier had been twenty or thirty feet longer, or so it appeared; the new pier was decaying already.
Only in one place.
I learned that from the inventor, the nice one who was in the house next to us at the Lake. The one that let me hide from Uncle Rollie when he was drinking.
The inventor taught me that you didn’t have to replace the posts — just the middle part that the water lapped up and down on and was indecisive about.
The top was protected by the air, and the bottom by the water. It was the middle, the part the water washed over at intervals, that suffered the most, he’d said. That was the part that feared the currents and tides.
The water was calm until we got past a point, and then Zane’s rowing was not the same. His arms would grow harder as he rowed, and he stopped at one point and put out his foot. He squeezed his toes over mine.
“Hi there.” He waved with his fingers, like he had little felt puppets on them. I think his fingers were stiff and he had to wiggle them.
“Hi,” I said back.
The boat bobbed up and down, the oars now inside and at rest. It was still dark, though not far from light.
I thought I saw something in the distance. A fishing boat, probably, considering the early hour.
“Is that a boat?”
“We’re not lost you know,” he said.
I laughed. “I know.”
Actually I wasn’t sure I knew that at all. But I was too soothed at that moment to care.
“I just wonder if we should ask that fishing boat where we are.”
He made a face. I made one back.
I got my way, and we made our way over to the boat. I decided I was very glad that Zane was rowing, as the job got harder as we went further out. He didn’t tire or complain.
We pulled up to the boat, and said our hellos. The fishermen seemed to prefer talking with me, for some reason. Maybe it was because Zane was suspicious and thought I would ask for directions, but I led in with my request.
I wanted to see the sunrise. Could we get in the boat?
The answer was yes. As it turned out they were working fishermen, though they rented their boat out for tours to get extra money in season, so they kept their boat in rather picturesque shape. Our rowboat tied on, we got a lesson on where the fish lived and how the season was going.
They told me what fish to avoid and choose when I was planning menus. I’d told them I was an event girl. “Advance, they call me,” I said. The fishermen called me that too, from then on. “OK, Advance you are!” I don’t think they recalled my real name, so this worked well.
The sunrise would happen soon, though there would be mist, they assured me, as if that were necessary.
The mist was all around us. It was eerie and beautiful. It knew no one’s plan.
**
The boat clipped eastward and the water settled again, and Zane and I were up front. His light jacket was around my shoulders and his arms were too.
We are wordless and quiet, and his face is buried into my hair, the same way as it was the night we first met, in the Minister’s residence, though it wasn’t his residence just yet.
Zane’s head moves around to my right, and rests on my shoulder. He turns and kisses my neck.
The lead fisherman, the one who owns the boat, is watching us, and says,
“I can do a wedding here you know.”
I jumped a bit, though he probably didn’t see that, under Zane’s jacket.
Zane turned to him.
“No need,” he laughed.
“We’re married already.”
I jumped again.
And he squeezed me and a rush of warmth went through my body.
**
I was convinced I hadn’t heard that right.
No, I had. And it was a joke. I breathed deeply and reassured myself.
But the warmth was still there. Laughing at me and my self-reassurance.
“Lucie.”
Zane whispered into my ear.
“Are you going to look at me or not?”
He’s laughing at me. In the most wonderful sort of way.
I squinched my eyes hard.
I was not going to cry. I had decided.
“No!”
In my most stubborn voice. But I was not convincing him.
He turned me around himself, and I opened my eyes.
I looked into his eyes, and he grabbed my cheeks and kissed me.
Long. Long. I was not even breathing.
“OK?” his hands were still cupped around my face.
“OK.” I replied. I could barely hear my own voice.
And I wasn’t thinking about the sunrise at all.
My next thought may have seemed out of sequence. But it was not.
“What time is it?”
The fisherman heard and he thought I was asking about the sunrise.
“Sunrise isn’t for about twenty minutes,” he said,
But that wasn’t why.
I want to know what time it is, so I can make this moment exist.
To give it an objective place and space, to make myself believe that it happened.
Just like this.
But I had forgotten my watch. It was back on shore. I would just have to guess.
Zane was kissing me again. There was mist all over my face, and I heard a faraway sound that I had not expected, one you hear more clearly as you go further toward the ocean.
It was a foghorn. Funny to hear it, in mist so light, so lusciously soft as this.
Not tule fog, not city fog. Not the thick stuff I knew at home out west. But it’s mist, and if you’re a ship, it’s enough. Enough that you need some guidance getting through it.
If not a map, or light, then sound.
It was a repeated sequence, melodic, in three parts. It was beautiful and lonely, but not the resigned kind of lonely. The kind that’s felt in a foghorn that is leading a ship, a ship that has not realized its own solitude until that solitude is broken.
**
I felt as if I no longer needed to breathe.
I wanted to be nowhere else. But here. In this boat. In the mist, with strangers. One of the strangers, the one I had been in the rowboat with, is familiar.
He is too familiar, I think to myself.
As if I can announce I want to be alone, and what I will really mean is that I want him to be with me while I am.
Not because he is perfect or ever will be, but because we are too connected already, for some reason I cannot find words for, and did not ever plan for.
And I want desperately to know exactly what time it is.
I watch for the sun to come up, so I’ll know.
From behind the mist, it rises. As expected.
We climbed back over the pier gate, and stumbled back up the muddy lawn. Falling and rising and not minding as we do. Running in mud is a lot like running on sand, but the give of the ground is different. So is what sticks to your feet. We are holding hands and I’m going faster because he is. And I am envisioning a warm bathtub. I wonder if Zane likes bubble bath.
But I reconsider that. Probably inadvisable to make him smell flowery before a meeting.
As I said that, I felt a tightness and a chill.
The meeting. It will start in about an hour, guessing by the light.
I look up at the Inn just ahead, and fixate upon one place.
I think I see Ash looking at us through the windows of the pretty French doors, the doors of the room where they have all the weddings.
And then blink my eyes, and there is no one there. It’s a few wisps of cloud instead, moving across the glass as the light is coming up.
I don’t think Ash was there, but he could have been. I’m not sure. And suddenly, I want to run the other way.
Something is wrong. I look at the roof, but I see no fire.
“Wait!” Zane stops. So do I.
“They’re all in there.”
“What?”
“Did you just see him in the window? Ash.”
I had, but I did not want to say. I still wanted to think it was just the clouds.
I don’t have my watch, I keep telling myself.
“Oh, he’s going to kill me.”
“He’s not going to kill you. You’re his chosen one. You’re the last one he’ll kill.”
“Oh, I’m not so sure,” said Zane, and he let go of my hand. I understood. If they were watching, best that we proceed in orderly and disconnected fashion up to the French doors.
We entered, and the room was full of men. Well dressed. Well fed. With my folders in front of them. The ones I’d prepared. Red, Yellow, Blue.
I did not see the Green ones.
The meeting had already begun.
Zane and I stood in silence. Indefinitely.
I was absolutely ready to answer the question, “where have you been?”
I had already considered a number of rational, even impressive answers. I also reassured myself that I could make it up to my room to change and be ready for work in ten minutes.
The bubble bath would have to be later.
“Minister,” I said.
He put up his hand, indicating that I should not speak.
“Mr. Leonard,” he said, looking only at Zane, “what happened to you?”
His next statement was odd.
“A little boy has fallen into a well.”
The men, in low chuckles of businessmen politely laughing at a superior’s awkward endeavor at humor, react to the image he has offered. I wonder why they think it’s so funny.
Zane says nothing, trying to smile politely, clearly considering that speaking might be self-incriminating at this unprepared-for moment.
I wait for the Minister to speak to me.
Even if it’s an insult. I just want to hear his voice. He has not yet acknowledged that I am here.
I am nervous, and chilled. My hands feel like ice, as do my feet.
I wonder how many minutes I’ll have before he speaks, or I faint.
Not wanting to consider the edges or limits of this choice, I speak first.
“Minister, I will be back in ten minutes.”
My voice sounds certain. I did well.
He still doesn’t look at me.
There is quiet, which seems eternal, though it is merely a moment.
“Please return to your suite Lucie.”
“I will be right back. I apologize for being late.”
“We will not need minutes for this segment. This segment is unscheduled.”
He added, with a twisted flourish of sorts,
“So you are not late.”
He smiled for a half second. A half smile of pure contempt.
You had to be looking right at him to catch it. He never kept it on his face for too long. It is the most derisive look I can imagine. Even Dr. T is not quite up to such a look, in his most ferocious moments of intellectual bravado. He is awful, and awkward, but he is human. With the Minister, I cannot always tell.
He looked at Zane.
“Mr. Leonard, you are late.” He looked him up and down, in a way that communicated that Zane looked like he’d been out with a silly girl all night.
“Please be back in ten minutes.”
Zane seemed frozen. I suddenly was not. But I pretended to be.
The alternative was inadvisable. I might have been getting angry. Yet the anger, deeply contained and without words, might have given me a clarity I needed. As if I was being helped by someone I could not see.
The questions rushed through my mind.
Who was in the room? Who was not? Why was I being sent out? What was different about today?
I named the men in my head as I looked around the room. Some of them were not there.
The Frenchman was absent. So was Mr. Inouye from Japan.
The President was missing, as was Chairman Ostrosny.
The professor-king was there, and next to him was an empty chair.
In a prominent place. It was not Zane’s chair, which was also empty and marked by his tent card, further down the table. It was for someone else.
There was no tent card. It was someone who had not been on my list. The list I’d prepared for the President.
I stared at the chair and imagined what man might fill it.
I knew it would be a man.
I turned around and walked slowly out.
I expected Zane to follow me, but he did not.
I heard muttering as I left. At least four voices, maybe five. I wanted to turn around. I did not. I did not want to see the Minister’s face. An Inn staffperson met my eyes as I left. He was a banquet houseman, in uniform.
He nodded to me. Empathy. I nodded back. I did not know his name.
**
The hallway seemed larger than usual, and its Laura Ashley hues seemed to fade to black and white and grey, as I walked in a very deliberate straight line back to my room, using the carpet pattern as a guide.
I had to remind myself to breathe, and was still doing so as I stuck my key in the lock and accessed my room with its perfectly made bed, undisturbed from the night before.
I was sick, or numb. Emptied of something. But it was more than that.
I was absent.
Not just from a meeting. From my own body.
I was good at puzzles, even ones of great difficulty. I was all right with surprises, as long as I could choose what to do next.
Choose how to assemble, or reassemble, the puzzle.
But this wasn’t like that. The choices were not evident. Nothing was. It was all guessing. I seemed suspended, directionless, in a noiseless space. A place, virtual, known to infinity, where there was no puzzle at all.
There was nothing to do but wait.
I still did not have my watch on.
Fugue, I thought.
And I tried to define the word. Fugue. I envisioned Bach, channeling a demon. Trying to see what lived inside him. Trying to suffocate it, by water or crescendo, or other creative force he hadn’t yet known existed.
Toccata and Fugue. Unable to define it for myself, my own fugue, perhaps feeling envy for Bach and all composers of music, I recited all of my childhood addresses and phone numbers, Hamlet’s soliloquy, and the Nicene Creed.
I thought about the Minister asking Zane if he’d fallen into a well.
What did that mean? Everything meant something.
With him, no word was ever wasted.
I lay down on the floor. And while I can’t recall sleeping and probably didn’t, I was jostled from my separated state by an object falling on top of me. But I awoke and nothing was there.
I had dreamt it.
The door was open.
I leapt up, and despite a head rush that blurred my color-stained vision I dashed into the hallway.
There was a woman in the hallway, with pale skin and orange hair. And a dog. Saying nothing. Staring at me.
I looked again and they had disappeared.
I paced back and forth, atilt and unmoored like I was on the fishing boat again, seasick now even as I had not been seasick earlier at all.
And then I felt a strong grip on my left arm.
Zane.
Who hurtled me, arm first and without asking my permission, back into my room.
“Did I leave the door open?” I asked.
“You did.”
He looked right into my eyes.
“Are you sleepwalking?”
“I don’t know. Who was that in the hallway?”
“There’s no one in the hallway.”
“There was a woman in the hallway, with a dog.”
“I just saw you. Only you.”
“What is happening?” I asked. But not in a frightened way. I sounded like a machine. I heard my voice, disembodied.
I sounded like we were at a modernist play, the kind where the scenes happen improvisationally or randomly, intellectually curious about something intriguing that did not really matter.
“Your body, it’s so cold,” he said. “Your heart is thumping.”
I looked down at my chest, and I could see my heartbeat. Its rhythm not quite right. And for some reason, I am naked. Did I take off my own clothes? I don’t recall.
Was I naked in the hallway? I did not let myself think that. I did not ask Zane.
The situation had already progressed. We weren’t talking anymore.
He was on top of me. We’re on the floor. Yet I can’t feel anything for some reason. I am woozy, and floaty, though when I open my eyes I can see his face.
His face is pale, and clammy, and he looks younger than I have ever seen. Even younger than when I first met him. He is sweating and it has gone into his hair, and it drips onto me.
“Are you afraid?” I said, not knowing exactly where my words came from.
“No, what makes you think I’m afraid. I’m not afraid,” he insisted, almost angered by my question.
His words come out like this, in a rapid semi sing-song.
No, whamakesyouthinkI’mafraidimenahfraid.
I giggle, “what happened to the letter t?”
Its absence is noticeable when he talks like that. When he’s unnerved. He’s done it before.
He’s breathing hard, but he’s not drunk anymore. Definitely not.
He might be possessed, I tell myself. Or maybe I am. He is pinning me down, by my wrists, so hard I can’t move.
I think about fighting back, but I don’t.
I am watching what is happening, I think to myself. I’m unsure if its observance or self-reassurance. I choose this belief.
I am not part of it. Just observing. I still have mud in my hair.
**
He is quiet. His head is buried into my hair.
We are like that for a while, and I don’t know what time it is.
“Zane.”
He doesn’t answer. Is he asleep?
“Why wasn’t the President there?
Or Chairman Ostrosny.
Or Inouye.
Or the French guy with the nice scarves that doesn’t like you.”
No answer.
“OK, fine. Just one question. This one.
Why do you hate the professor with the accent?”
He’s still silent, but I feel his heart beat faster now. He heard what I said.
There’s something about the professor.
Zane breathed deeply.
When he spoke, he didn’t answer me. He ran his words together again.
“Do you love me?”
“What?”
“Do you love…ME!”
He asked as if demons were inside him, he did. But whether it was the demons talking or him talking to exorcise them forth, I could not tell.
“Why?”
Apparently when I have no answer to something or am too thrown to think of one, I say “why?”
But I did have an answer.
And had he asked me on the boat, or on the lawn, or in any moment we were playing Risk on my bedroom floor, I would have answered.
After hesitation and a bit of a battle with myself, I would have looked him in the eyes and done it.
Would that have been joy?
But now I was back on script. Now, I was in a different place. Fugue.
Choose, I told myself.
I tried. I think my body convulsed in my trying, but maybe not as he showed no reaction. I tried to speak. The words would not come out. I heard only his.
My name.
“Lucie…”
He sounded desperate and exasperated.
“You don’t know…” His voice trailed into a mumble and didn’t finish its thought.
“I don’t know what?”
And suddenly I could talk.
“Do you love me Zane?”
I was going to make him do it first.
And I knew he wouldn’t, and I knew right then I shouldn’t have done that.
He looked at me and I saw five seasons pass through his eyes. Five ages, of newness and celebration and trepidation and resignation, and then a fifth one that I couldn’t quite identify, but it was childlike and he looked strangely beautiful. And alone. Touched by no one.
I dreamed hard as I looked back. Maybe I was praying, silently.
I was calling on something else. To speak for me.
I speak for so many people. I cannot speak now.
And now is when I need to.
Now is when every answer will be wrong, and now is when I have to speak anyway.
He let go of one of my wrists, to wipe his face with his hand.
I stretched my arm, and brushed back my own hair.
It was wet. Right where his face had been, and it was too much for sweat, and I touched it with my fingers then pulled my fingers down my face. He stared at me and color seeped into his face. His eyes were dewy. Had he been crying?
I formed my lips as best I could, though nothing seemed real right now.
I heard no sound.
Maybe he could hear me. I wanted him to hear me, to see into my mind, even where I couldn’t, and at the same time I was afraid he would.
I thought of one word.
Yes.
It resonated through my head, as if trapped inside of it.
His face twisted in pain and I was certain he was going to cry out.
His mouth began to open, and then it closed. His face went flat and the demon had left him.
And he got up.
I’d said nothing. The words had not left the safety of my own head. And that is where I held them. Tightly.
I watched him put on his pants and I heard the latch go click as he opened the door to leave. He opened it slowly.
He’s not looking at me, but I feel like he wants to. I whisper, trying one more time.
“Why wasn’t the President there?”
Halfway out the door, he’d avoid my question. I knew that. But maybe he’d give me an answer I needed.
I just wanted him to speak.
His face looked young again. A bit lost, a bit excited, a bit afraid.
I thought of the first night I met him, which turned out to be all too appropriate.
“Szent is here.”
And he closed the door.
The empty chair.
I know that the President and the Chairman don’t know about Szent, and I know it would help them if I told them.
But not even I know precisely why he’s here.
I know I need to find out the reason I was dismissed from the meeting this morning.
But I suspected that everything would get worse if I asked.
I decided it was wise to go back to my schedule as if nothing had happened. It would keep me in position to find out what’s going on. How it involves me. How it involves Zane, and what parts of either of those I need to be worrying about.
Just before I left I found a notepad from the Inn, from a cart that suddenly had a lot of them. And I wrote a note on it.
I love you.
I didn’t sign my name, because that was too obvious. But I made a doodle of two happy faces, one with long curly hair and another with funny ears. I folded it and decided to deliver it at a better time.
I received word that I would ride back to the Capital with Minister Ash and The President, and take notes as they talked in the car.
I am heartened to be riding with the President. But perhaps I should be frightened instead.
I remembered the time I fainted in Penn Station, on a hot late summer day in New York, when I was twenty. I woke up, and peering through the legs of people and cops leaning over me, I realized that I could not read. I was looking at the sign for a doughnut shop about twenty feet away.
I could see clearly. Yet it was as if the sugary pink and orange letters were in another alphabet. I did not know what they meant.
This went on for a minute or so, but seemed like an eternity.
