A Bright Ray of Darkness

by Ethan Hawke

  He looked at me. “You get it? Just ’cause you’re in pain doesn’t mean anything is wrong.”

  Just then the door to the bar swung open and a loud female voice yelled, “Bruce! I lost my keys! Fuck.”

  A young woman had barged into the bar, drunk and giggling. She was wearing a blue jumpsuit. She was foxy and keenly aware of it. She enjoyed the whole bar turning towards her.

  “Anybody want to get laid tonight?” the girl in the blue jumpsuit shouted to the barroom. Sam and I looked up. “ ’Cause I don’t have anywhere to sleep!” Her girlfriend was cackling behind her. Various men began heckling. She ignored them, and walked over to Big Sam and me, confidently picking up a pool cue. She looked straight in my eyes and said, “You boys want to get schooled by a homeless hillbilly slut from Waco, Texas?”

  Oh shit, I thought. Here we go.

  “I’ll break,” I said.

  When the girl in the blue jumpsuit walked in my door at the Mercury, she was instantly in love with my daughter’s black and white puppy. They wrestled on the floor while I went to the bathroom, washed my face, stared in the mirror, and wondered if The New York Times liked the show.

  “Oh my God, does your daughter just love this puppy?” the girl shouted out to me.

  I didn’t bring this woman home to sleep with her; I just couldn’t stand to be alone. Also, I thought it would kind of impress her when she found out that I’d been honest back at the bar, when I had told her she could sleep in my kids’ room. I thought it might make me seem trustworthy—at least to myself. It would be something positive “self-image-wise” to build on.

  “Yeah, of course she loves the dog…It’s a puppy. Little girls love puppies,” I shouted through the bathroom door.

  “What’s the troublemaker’s name?” she squealed.

  “Night Snow.”

  “Night Snow?” She laughed. “What do you call her?”

  “The Blue Jean Kid,” I answered.

  * * *

  —

  The night before I’d bathed my two kids together in the same bathtub. My daughter had wanted to bathe the puppy, too, but finally, I drew a line. Two naked kids in a tub was enough for one father.

  “Daddy,” my daughter asked, “what’s the word for when people who get divorced change their mind and get married again?”

  “God, I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think there is a word for that.”

  “There has to be,” she said, “ ’cause that must happen all the time. I mean, most people don’t stay divorced. You and Mommy are the only ones I even know.”

  “Well, you’re only in kindergarten. I think you’ll find as you get older, more and more of your classmates will have parents who are divorced.”

  “Arthur has a friend whose parents are like us,” my three-year-old son said.

  “Who’s Arthur?” I asked.

  “A dumb cartoon character, he’s not even real,” my daughter said.

  “Well, in truth, they say about half the people who get married get divorced.” I leaned over the tub wringing out a washcloth.

  “There’s no way that’s true, Daddy. That’s stupid. Where did you hear that?” she almost shouted, her wet face pink and exasperated.

  “I read it in a book.”

  “Come on, Daddy!” she hollered.

  “What?”

  “You can’t believe everything you read!”

  I laughed.

  “When did you and Mommy even get divorced?” my daughter asked with her head full of soap. “Because I don’t remember when it happened,” she continued. “And it just seems like something a person should remember.”

  “I don’t remember either,” said her brother.

  “Yeah, but you don’t remember anything. You’re too young!” she snapped at her brother.

  “Well,” I said, still on my knees, trying to rinse their hair while making sure no one got soap in their eyes. “It’s been happening for a while. Your mom and I slowly started growing apart till it seemed like it might be better for everybody if we lived apart.”

  “It isn’t better for me,” my daughter quickly added.

  “I don’t even know if it’s better or not,” my son said. “I can’t remember if we ever all lived together.”

  “You see!” My daughter stood up in the tub. “He’s impossible. He doesn’t remember anything.”

  “The truth is, darling,” I told my daughter, “this all might be a lot more difficult for you because you do remember. It might make it a lot harder.”

  She climbed out of the tub and sat on the bath towel on the floor and began to sob.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Her brother stood up naked and soapy to get a better look.

  “What is it?” he asked gently.

  She looked at me with fat tears pouring from her eyes as she gently shook her head, confessing, “I don’t remember either.”

  Bathing our oldest as a newborn had felt like a slippery science experiment, she was so tiny and fragile. There was a big plastic doohickey still attached to her healing belly button. When we first brought this creature home I sat down and stared into her deep ocean-like eyes. I loved her effortlessly. And I promised this child—I will be your goddamn guardian-fucking-angel. Not just a father, I will be a winged messenger of heaven floating above you, watching you, laughing when you say something funny, protecting you from danger, helping you remember your hat…I will be there with you always. The baby and her mother would sit in that steaming bathtub for hours and I would wash them and love them. Mary and I made the child a chocolate Duncan Hines cake with vanilla icing every Wednesday in honor of the weekly anniversary of her birth. We were beyond happy. Afternoons, evenings we played gin rummy fifty million—a game we made up that never ended. Playing cards was like an occupation in those first days of our daughter’s life…Bathe, change diapers, make cakes, and play gin were all we did and we loved it. One time I remember laughing so hard at something Mary said, tears streamed down my face and I dropped my hand, playing cards scattering to the floor.

  I would get up early with the baby and let Mary sleep. At dawn, with pockets full of freshly bottled breast milk, I would go for a three-hour walk up and down the avenues of the city. Just me and our baby. When I brought her home and put her in Mary’s arms—they were both complete. Whole. Watching them together was like living inside the Nature Channel. We were a part of the galaxy. The three of us were tigers walking on ancient stardust into the future. Mary was a great mother. She loved her baby hard. Always stroking her hair, rubbing her skin, keeping her warm. She never set her child down. Never let her baby cry. She kept her girl meticulously clean—like a mama cat.

  “What about this,” I told my kids as I dried them off in the Mercury bathroom. “Let’s make up a word that means a family who, over time, has healed all of its broken places.”

  The kids looked at me blankly. They were both wrapped in the fresh white hotel towels.

  “What about ‘albacyclelion’?” my daughter offered after only a moment.

  “Why ‘albacyclelion’?” I asked.

  “Alba is Spanish for morning and mornings are healing. Cycle for bicycles, which make you feel good, and lion for…for…” She began to stumble.

  “For obvious reasons,” I offered.

  “Yes. Albacyclelion.” She smiled.

  “You can’t do that,” my son said. “People can’t just make up words!”

  “Yes, you can,” I said, beginning to put their pajamas on them, “Shakespeare does it all the time.”

  * * *

  —

  I stood in that same bathroom and listened to the girl in the blue jumpsuit wrestle with the puppy. Taking a deep breath, I looked down at the tiles on the floor and imagined the breath
my daughter was inhaling at that instant. I imagined her room at her mother’s house and her heavy sleeping limbs. I imagined my son. I pictured his room. I remembered what his hair smells like as he sleeps.

  Walking back out into my apartment, I escorted the girl in the blue jumpsuit to my kids’ room and showed her the bunk bed.

  “My daughter prefers the top bunk, but you can have whichever one you want,” I said.

  “I have a baby too,” the girl said quietly.

  I stood silent and looked at her.

  “I gave her up for adoption. She lives in Phoenix. At least she did. She’s two years old now.” She paused. “How old’s your daughter?”

  “Five,” I answered.

  “I’ll take the bottom bunk,” she said sadly.

  “OK,” I said.

  “Do you have any whiskey?” she asked. “I’m not nearly drunk enough to fall asleep.”

  We went back into my living room and sat like a couple of normal adults, listening to quiet music and drinking whiskey on ice.

  “So, what do you do for a living?” I asked, trying to make casual conversation.

  She was sassy as all hell; it was hard to be alone with her without thinking about taking off her clothes. She had a kind of rockabilly sneer that was out of place in New York City. Her blue Adidas jumpsuit was zipped up tight, holding back what appeared to be giant heaving breasts.

  “Don’t ask me that,” she said, swirling her ice.

  “Why not?” I asked, laughing nervously.

  “ ’Cause I don’t want to tell you, and it’ll make me feel creepy to lie.”

  “What, are you a hooker?” I asked.

  “No!” She stuck her fingers in her whiskey and flicked the wetness towards my face.

  “So, why won’t you tell me?”

  “ ’Cause you’ll judge me.”

  “I’ll judge you!” I laughed. “I already know I like you.”

  “Yeah, but you’re the big-shot, rich movie star.” She smiled into her glass.

  “Oh yeah, is that what you think?” My material wealth had dropped exponentially since I left my wife—so I was living under this false impression that I had joined the masses and was now among the salt of the earth.

  We sat in silence.

  “Your wife is crazy hot,” she said, obviously pleased with herself for having the guts to broach the subject. “She is, like, so fuckin’ sexy. I love her music. You have to tell me about her. She’s a legend. The greatest ever—I think. She seems like she’s a pretty awesome person too,” she said.

  “She handles her press beautifully,” I said.

  “I’m kind of proud of myself that I’m gonna fuck a guy she fucked.” She snarled confidently.

  “Hmmm,” I said, smiling.

  “Does that hurt your feelings?” she asked.

  “What?” I asked.

  “That she doesn’t love you anymore—the things people say about you in the press—I saw one program where they were really superhostile towards you—it just seems like that would suck?”

  “It’s a drag,” I said. “I always thought if your aim was true—things would work out for the best,” I mumbled, trying to appear cavalier about this news of another disparaging show.

  “But what if your aim wasn’t true?” she asked sweetly. “What if your heart is a little tiny bit black?”

  I looked at her blankly. My blood stopped.

  “Even saints have a little spot of black on their heart, don’t they?” she asked.

  I nodded, some part of me still frozen.

  “I think you looked hot on that program—gives you kind of a bad-boy edge, all that nasty press—you know? The more they shit-talked you, the more I wanted to kiss you. Is that weird? You used to be a little squeaky vanilla behind the ears, ya know? I never wanted to fuck you till the lady on the show said she wished there was a prison for men like you.”

  “What do you do for a living?” I asked again.

  “I’m not telling you.” She smirked. “What’s it like to be rich? What’s it like to take a taxi whenever the fuck you want?”

  “Are you a model?” I asked.

  “Don’t be an asshole. I’m not retarded.”

  Personally, I thought she was gorgeous, but I guess she didn’t fit the current model standard. She was only five-two and her teeth were crooked in a sultry way.

  “You don’t need to lay any lines on me. I’m already here.” She poured another slug of whiskey. “You can do whatever you want to me, by the way—I don’t care,” she said, half-curling her upper lip. “If you can think it up, I’ll probably like it.” I stared at her, my pants beginning to swell. “Just don’t lay on a bunch of corny lines that make me think you think I’m stupid.”

  She was attractive the way a wild animal is—I just wanted to reach out my hand and touch her.

  “Well, what brought you here all the way from Waco, Texas?” I asked.

  “It sure as shit wasn’t my fuckin’ job, you turkey,” she said, having a raunchy, private laugh. “And I’m just from Waco; I lived in Austin.”

  “What did you do in Austin?”

  “I worked at a place called Sugar’s.”

  Now, I, too, am from Austin, Texas, and I knew Sugar’s…I passed it anytime we went to the airport. I’d never been in there but I knew what it was.

  “So, you’re a dancer?” I smiled.

  “What are you, Presbyterian?” she asked. “I’m a stripper.”

  “Prove it,” I said.

  “Turn off this sad-sack shit music and I will.”

  I was playing Willie Nelson’s “Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues.”

  “What’s your choice?” I asked.

  “Do you have any Prince?” she asked, unzipping her blue jumpsuit. She had a white wifebeater on over a black bra. Her breasts were obviously fake. They were perfect and large, much like a drawing on the side of a fighter jet.

  “Play whatever music you want,” I said.

  She walked to the stereo, fiddled with my computer, and put on Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U.”

  It’s been seven hours and thirteen days,

  Since you took your love away…

  This young woman stepped up onto my coffee table and danced like she was a teenager alone in her room. I was the mirror. The puppy exploded with a flurry of curious barks, circling the coffee table. We both laughed and the girl with the blue jumpsuit slowly removed the blue jumpsuit entirely.

  She was a professional dancer, no doubt. She was telling the truth.

  At the nape of her neck, she had a tattoo of the head of an emerald green viper spitting out its tongue, the body of which descended, wriggling and writhing, across her shoulders, all the way down her back, swerving up over one hip and then swimming down over the other. The tail swished back and settled erotically in the crack of her ass. When she moved, the snake appeared to slither up her spine.

  The muscles of her back looked powerful, but still soft with youth. She moved effortlessly above me, wearing only her white panties and her white see-through Hanes wifebeater. Turning her back to me, pulling her shirt up, she’d let me watch her snake slither. Then she’d pull her shirt down and turn back towards me.

  She unfastened her bra and let it fall to the floor without taking off her shirt and slowly slid her panties down with her thumbs. Her pussy was neatly shaved.

  Then, she pulled her panties back up again.

  She danced. I watched.

  As the song ended, she prowled on all fours across the coffee table, and kissed me.

  “I want to see where the man of the house sleeps,” she said, shuffling barefoot out of the room in search of my bedroom.

  “Come here,
Blue Jean Kid,” she called out.

  The puppy took clumsy strides after her.

  Here we go. Game day.

  I picked up the bottle of whiskey and stood. Turning off the lights, I walked down the hallway. I stopped when I heard her playing with the puppy in the bedroom.

  Now, I’d never done anything like this before, but I remember my movements exactly because my throat burned for days afterwards. I took the bottle of Jim Beam that was still more than three-quarters full and drained the whole liter in a matter of seconds. Just hiked the glass bottle above my head and glug, glug, glug, poured the entire thing down into my empty burning belly. As I set the hollow bastard down and stepped towards the bedroom and into the darkness of the hall, I was disappointed to discover that I was still completely lucid.

  As I entered the black of my room, my young lover grabbed my face and pulled me down hard into bed. I held her gently and kissed her tenderly—the way I’d kissed every girl since the eighth grade, like a boy who’d been brought up right.

  “Oh, Christ.” She simpered. “I didn’t come here for a back rub. I came here to get fucked.” She bit my ear hard. Ten thousand firecrackers lit up my nervous system.

  “If you think the keys to my apartment aren’t in my purse, then you’re stupider than I thought.” She pulled herself up close to my ear, whispering, “You look like an angry young man, but if you want to fuck me, you’re gonna have to take this piece of ass. It’s gonna hurt. If you have any plans to put your cock in my mouth, or up inside my cunt, you’re gonna have to start acting like a man.”

  She clenched my scalp in her fist and ripped my head back hard. My neck snapped and pain shot through my vertebrae.

  I was no longer even remotely concerned about not having a hard prick.

  Much of what happened next has disappeared into the void of some Jim Beam–soaked subterranean consciousness. Blurry details visit me from time to time—like how good it felt to hurt her. How much she liked it. The way her breasts spilled out of that sweaty wifebeater. Her arms were so thin. I could feel her heart beating through her wrists. The way she never took off her underwear. It twisted around our clenched fists. She fought hard to keep that cotton underwear on, even while we were fucking. My hands wrapped around her, her voice box vibrating against my palms. There was her smell that marked the room—not just the scent of cum, sweat, and cheap perfume, but also the smell of some kind of terror. How easily she cried, I remember that. She cried all the time. How tightly she hugged me through sloppy tears. “Come on,” she snarled in my ear. “Don’t pet me like a fucking cat. You think I break?” She’d punch me with her fists; push me away; pull me close. It was dark and I had become shatteringly drunk. The floor had no ballast and was easily confused with the walls or the ceiling. It felt so good not to have to pretend to be nice; to be asked to do things that I had felt guilty for wanting to do. It was as if each time she hit me, I would grow to some other, much greater size. I didn’t have to be ashamed of anything.