Viaticum

by Natelle Fitzgerald

  The Trembler put an arm around his shoulder as if they were the best of friends. “That’s how it is here in Saltery Bay. Everyone knows everything about everybody else. If you buy a place here, you’ll figure it out pretty quick. And since we’re sharing . . . How about you Mr. Ma . . . Michael? It’s not that often we get tall, dark strangers wandering in.”

  The Fairies leaned forward and looked at him eagerly. Conversation around him petered out and it seemed the whole room was waiting, holding its breath. His fingers sought his wedding band, yet he found it wasn’t there. The nakedness surprised him, then he remembered taking it off. He’d taken it off in the car. He’d twisted it off and put it in the glove compartment when he was barely out of the driveway with Jen’s latest grievance still ringing in his ears. It was one of the stories he’d told himself, part of his cover. He remembered, yet the nakedness surprised him.

  They were watching him. Waiting.

  “I guess I’m not officially a divorcee yet but . . .” He could feel their want, their desire for intrigue pulling him towards his expected role. The tall, dark stranger. “But I’m in the process. Is that what it’s called? A process?” He wondered if maybe it were true.

  Barry twinkled. “That about describes it.”

  The Fairies beamed. The dark-haired one placed a hand on his arm. “Saltery Bay is such a supportive community. It’s a great place to heal.” Her eyes were wide and dark and earnest.

  The other one, the near skeletal one with the silver hair, nodded seriously, “Love is so much more honest after marriage. You get all the bullshit out of the way.”

  Annika took it all in with her steady eyes and haughty face and he felt foolish under her gaze. He wondered if she’d noticed his hand searching for the ring. He was pretty sure she had.

  She excused herself and went back behind the counter. He got up to get another beer, hoping to talk to her again, but it was the other girl that served him. The intermission ended and a bluesy, barefoot girl played the guitar and there was another poet and then a fiddler and then a young man who did a jig and played the spoons to the uproarious laughter of his wick pinching ­buddies.

  Eventually people began to filter out. Annika came back to the table and Barry and the Fairies got up immediately, as if they’d planned it. They joined the group of men with silver crew cuts. Matt was alone at a table with Annika.

  He twisted the beer bottle in his hand, aware that the opportunity to find out about her was basically being handed to him on a platter, yet he fumbled for words. She was truly a beautiful woman. “So firefighting. Wow. You don’t look like a firefighter.”

  She smiled. “It was a long time ago. There was a forest fire training center near where my family had a farm, and I tried out, just out of high school. One of the foremen helped me get a job. I was young and strong. I doubt if I could do it anymore.”

  “But it must have been hard, no? I’ve heard it’s super hardcore.” She didn’t look like she could lift anything but those hands . . . the set of her face. There were so many contradictions about her that he didn’t understand. She didn’t act like a liar and yet there was a lie somewhere. He could feel it.

  “It is and it isn’t,” she said. “Physically it’s the most demanding thing I’ve ever done. It’s dirty, hard work and when there’s a fire you work long, long hours. During my later years, I was on a Heli-access crew and the training was intense, but the stress was mostly physical.” Her face became reflexive now as she remembered. “The goal, the danger was always obvious and I liked that. Fire. Smoke. You can smell it. Feel it. There’s a simplicity to knowing exactly what you should do that I liked. My other job, working at an insurance agency, I always felt unsure. Did I say the right thing? Did I piss someone off? There were all kinds of politics to navigate. I found the firefighting easier, in a weird way.”

  Matt was caught between his sense of understanding and his awareness of the opportunity to find out more. “So why did you stop then, if you liked it so much?”

  “Well, I’m telling you all this in retrospect,” she laughed. “I did it for almost ten years, ten seasons anyway, and towards the end I was physically tired. Each year when the season finished, everyone else went back to their other lives, their real lives they called them, to their families and houses, but I didn’t have any of that. My family didn’t like how I was living, they’re strict Christians who still believe in traditional roles for men and women so they considered what I was doing a sin. We stopped speaking after I left home, so I didn’t have any family to go back to. Firefighting was my real life. In the winters, when the work ended, I never knew what to do. I tried working other jobs, waitressing, that kind of thing. I rented an apartment, even. Then the guys on my crew slowly began to drop off, getting married, having kids and moving on to other things . . . all my friends were leaving. Anyway, long story short, I met a man in the off season who had a good job in Seattle and I thought I was in love. Loneliness will do that, I suppose. I moved to Seattle, took an office management course and that was the end of my firefighting career. I still miss it, though,” she said, then shook her head abruptly. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I don’t usually ramble on about myself like this.”

  “Don’t apologize. Please! I get it. I totally get it,” Matt said, then all of a sudden he was telling her about Kato’s and how he’d loved tending bar there and how he’d been good at it, how he’d felt like he’d discovered a truth about the world and how that truth had lived in his hands and in his body but then everything had gotten confused and complicated. Being Michael was easier than being Matt, in a way, and she kept nodding her head like she knew what he was talking about and each time he tried to get the conversation back around to her health, he found himself telling her something else. It felt good to be understood.

  “I was trying to be responsible,” he said pleadingly, as if she might absolve him.

  She watched him with her steady eyes. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. Trying to be something you’re not can actually kill you, you know,” she said. She made a fist and held it in the V of her ribs and it struck him as a weird thing to do and weirder still was that he understood.

  Now people started coming over and saying, “Thank-you, Anni.” “Goodnight, Anni.” “This is so good for the community, Anni,” and even though he’d just met her he felt strangely proud, like they were thanking him too, like he was part of it somehow.

  The Trembler and the Fairies came over, trailed by the man with the silver crew cut. The Fairies made a great fuss over Annika and hugged Matt to their bony breasts as if he were a long-lost son, then the Trembler hugged him, then hugged Annika and Matt heard him whisper in her ear, “Enjoy your life.”

  When it was the man with the silver crew cut’s turn, he was far less friendly. He glared at Matt during the goodbyes then stepped up to the table with his hands clasped behind his back. “Are you fine, Annika? I can drive you home, if you wish.” He looked at Matt meaningfully.

  Annika stood and kissed him on each cheek in the European way. “Thank-you Helmut, but I’m fine.”

  “There is one more space in the truck.”

  “I’m fine. Really. Goodnight.”

  The man gave Matt one more deadly look then walked out. When the door closed behind him, they were alone. “Do you have some angry ex-boyfriend I should know about?” Matt joked.

  She laughed. “No, that’s just Helmut. He’s a friend. Mostly he just drives around in an old truck and refurbishes things he finds at the dump but if you ever need anyone killed, that would be your guy.”

  She smiled easily but somehow, in the now empty room, their friendly connection was broken. He felt a chill inside him. He shouldn’t be here, he realized. He shouldn’t be here at all.

  And perhaps she felt it too, for her smile dropped away and she stood quickly and shook her head. “I really should clean up now.”

/>   This was the moment to leave; he was aware that he should leave, yet he didn’t.

  Then he was helping her, moving with brusque efficiency, wiping tables and gathering bottles, his hands moving, moving as if he’d worked there all his life. He liked how it felt; it made him feel how he used to feel after a good night at the bar.

  He was taking a box of bottles to the storeroom when he brushed past her behind the counter. There wasn’t much room there and as his body brushed against hers the air grew heavy with awareness. A man and woman. Alone.

  He put the box away. His heart began to thud harder in his chest.

  “Well. Thank-you,” she said as they stood facing one another. “I really enjoyed our conversation but I have to get going now.” Yet she didn’t go. Not right away. Instead, she seemed to hesitate, to pause, to fumble with something in her hands. He took a step closer. He could feel his heart, da dum, da dum, asking what next? What next? The awful daring of it drawing him on even though he knew, he knew he should end it.

  She stood in front of him, looking down. The air was so thick he could barely breathe.

  And he found himself saying, “Why don’t we go someplace else and have a drink? I’m really enjoying talking to you and wouldn’t mind a nightcap. It’s not so late.”

  He was almost certain she was going to say no for she didn’t seem like the hooking up type, and he wanted her to say it; he wanted her to cut him off, to end the da dum, da dum of the awful tension that was building, but then her expression seemed to change, as if she were remembering something. “Well,” she said slowly. “Okay. You could come back to my place for a bit. If you want to, that is.”

  They were standing very close now and he could feel his heart in his veins; he could feel it in his groin, the blood pounding what next? what next? the tension mounting until it was near unbearable and then, at the very height of it, at the excruciating peak of it, time seemed to stand still and there was this sharp little intake of breath, a kind of heart hitch at the top of the fall, that critical point where life could go either way, and then he was falling, he was letting himself go and his hand slid oh it just slid into the small of her back as if it were someone else’s hand pulling her against him and she melted so easily; she made it so easy. What the fuck am I doing? he thought as his mouth found hers. And yet it didn’t feel like a choice anymore but more of a sliding, like one foot in front of the next and the next on a road already decided.

  When they got outside, the world was still cloaked in fog and the air was icy cold, a slick, penetrating cold that froze the desire in him almost instantly. He looked down at the strange woman beside him. The warmth of familiarity, the kind words of her friends that had collected around her, that had glowed like a sort of halo in the candlelight, vanished in the darkness. She was suddenly strange to him, silent and unknowable.

  They walked side by side through the icy, prickling air and he had to fight to keep from shivering. She was wearing a flimsy jacket and seemed unbothered by the cold. What kind of person was this, he wondered. He would have one drink and leave, he promised himself. He’d ask her point blank about her health. He’d say that Barry had told him she’d been sick. One drink and he’d go.

  They kept walking and she pointed out a few landmarks, properties for sale which he couldn’t see. He commented on the quiet. He said that it was peaceful.

  They walked uphill towards where the fog lay thicker and blacker and soon the town behind them was an orange smear, like a fire burning behind a cloud. The air smelled of woodsmoke and he could hear waves sighing somewhere on his right. The pavement became a gravel road.

  She said, “If you do end up moving here, you could open a bar. People need an alternative to the Sports Bar. You saw how busy open-mic night was. A cute little Tiki bar or something like that would do really well here.”

  It was almost uncanny that she would suggest it. There’d been a few years when he’d thought seriously about this very thing. He’d even gone down to Mexico with a few guys from work and they’d toured the beaches looking for ideas. He’d talked to people, taken notes on prices, menus, that sort of thing. It smarted, in a way, to hear her talk about his abandoned dreams in this cold, dark place.

  “Rent is surprisingly reasonable considering where we are and the municipality is trying to recruit small business. They helped me out a lot,” she continued.

  “I doubt I could afford it,” he said bitterly.

  She grew quiet and he wondered if she’d caught the edge in his voice; or maybe she was mulling over the inconsistency, for hadn’t he said he was going to buy property? Quickly, he threw his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. “What I mean is, I don’t really know what’s going to happen, with my finances. With the divorce and everything. Right now I’m just considering my options. You know, getting the lay of the land.”

  She allowed herself to be pressed sidelong against him but her body felt stiff and thin; there was no warmth in it.

  “This way,” she said and they turned onto a road of packed Earth with grass coming up through and there was a sense of the darkness narrowing around them. “I’ve been through many changes recently,” she said thoughtfully. “People always talk about change like it’s a conscious choice; they talk about changing their lives as if it’s this big, sudden decision that they have to make, but I think it’s rarely ever like that. By the time you get to a point where you’re confronted with a major decision, by the time the crisis arrives, you’ve likely already decided. You’ve been deciding all along and the crisis is really just the consequence making itself known, forcing you to admit to the choices you’ve already made.”

  Her voice sounded strange and prophetic in the dark. He could barely see her. He wanted to leave, to run away, yet he walked on.

  Now there was a sense of widening in the way that sound travelled. There was a low, steady sigh of waves breaking nearby and they walked along a path with dry coarse grass coming up between worn flagstones and then they were next to a building. Matt ran his hand along the rough, wood shingles, then stepped up onto the porch.

  “This is it,” she said. “My home.”

  He watched her back. Her hair was huge from the mist, her body small and hunched as she fumbled with the lock, like an old woman, like a witch. What kind of person would live out here all alone? He ached suddenly for Jen and Jacob, for their bright clean house and cheery, mindless chatter. I’m so sorry, he thought, but he didn’t turn around.

  It was cold inside, so cold he could see his breath. It struck him as shocking, insane even, that someone in this day and age would let it get that cold. A cat came swirling about his feet.

  “That’s Zebedee,” she said.

  Zebedee.

  The light came on and revealed bare, yellow walls. There was no television, no dishwasher, no appliances other than the fridge and an ancient CD player on the floor. He felt a creeping sense of dread. He’d been to other women’s houses over the years; he’d been to rooms and dorms and apartments and even in the dingiest student dives there’d always been some small ­feminine touch; women always left some clue to themselves: jewelry on the nightstand, a photo taped to the fridge, something that told you who they were, but here there was nothing. The bareness shocked him. He didn’t know what it meant, only that he didn’t want to see it. He wished that he could unsee.

  “I’m sorry about the cold,” she said. “It warms up quickly with the fire.”

  He watched as she crouched down in front of the woodstove. He watched her blunt, muscular fingers on the matches, her knees at severe angles with no apparent discomfort, as if she were used to crouching that way. He’d seen poor people crouch that way in Mexico, cooking skewers of chicken over small coal fires at a bus stop.

  “Please make yourself at home,” she said. “There’s wine in the fridge if you want and there’s a blanket on the couch if you’re cold. It should only take
a few minutes to get warm.”

  He went to the fridge. Inside it was practically bare. Butter. Onions. Something wrapped in foil. He felt like voyeur, looking into that fridge with its poverty food, with its bareness. It shamed him. He shouldn’t have come here, he knew; he shouldn’t have allowed it to get this far; yet even as he stood, he felt another part of him, that flinty, hardened part of him breaking off and standing outside it all, searching the desolate little cottage for signs, for clues to the lie, whatever and wherever it was.

  “I have some leftover roast beef if you’re hungry. I could make us some sandwiches.”

  “No. No thanks.” He found two glasses, opened the wine, poured and went back to the fire.

  She was still crouched there with the orange light leaping up onto her face and his heart sank even lower. He saw in the firelight that he’d been wrong in his first assessment of her: her face wasn’t strong or set at all but rather poised on the very brink, on the very edge of its own ruin, like a beautiful statue about to crumble.

  She stood. “I hope this is alright. It’s a little rustic, I guess. Sometimes I don’t think . . .”

  He smiled with the corners of his mouth. “It’s fine. Super cozy. Here, have some wine.” But it wasn’t fine. The long walk, the discomfort, the damp in his clothes: he wished that none of it mattered to him but it did. He felt angry at her for letting her house be so cold, for naming her cat Zebedee. One drink and he’d leave, he told himself. He’d say fuck the whole thing and talk to a lawyer instead. He should have done that in the first place, he admonished himself.

  She sat next to him on the couch and stared into the fire. She didn’t say anything; she just sat there staring at the flames as they flickered and danced in the grate. The silence grew huge and heavy, full of accusation somehow. He was aware of himself in it, aware of his wife at home and his debts piling up and all the mistakes he’d made. Beside him, this strange, lonely woman sat, saying nothing, doing nothing, his guilty thoughts piling up as the silence stretched on, and finally he could no longer stand it. ‘Come here,’ he said and grabbed Annika by the shoulders. His words came out choked, as if he were being strangled.