Nobody, Somebody, Anybody

by Kelly McClorey

  “Alaska, huh?” Gary said. “But you know, it stays dark there for half the year—the sun just doesn’t come up. Though personally I think that sounds kind of nice. Perfect for hibernating. Maybe I was a polar bear in a past life. What do you think?”

  “Polar bears don’t hibernate.”

  “Is that right? Well, maybe it was a penguin. Kids did use to say that I waddle.” He stood and tottered from one leg to the other with his shoulders hiked up and his arms held stiff at his sides like two flippers. He seemed to lose control of his own motion and then finally hopped on one foot and crashed back down into his chair.

  Denali cocked her head. “You’re weird.”

  “Me? No way.”

  She tugged her headband down to her neck and rubbed the skin on her forehead where it had left an impression, tiny grid lines. “Feels like a waffle,” she said.

  Gary leaned in to inspect. “Hmm. It kind of looks like one too. Like a delicious waffle. Now I’m really hungry.”

  “Yuck!” She shrieked and darted away, one eye checking back over her shoulder, hoping for some kind of action.

  Gary didn’t disappoint. He rose to his feet, bellowing, “Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman!” and thudded after her with giant monster footsteps. I didn’t mind being left on the sidelines; in fact, I was magnetized. I could’ve watched them go on like that all day. When Denali finally decided to be caught, he picked her up sideways and pretended to munch the meat on her forearm like it was corn on the cob.

  Denali sat with us while we gorged on barbecue. Gary attacked ribs and pork butt and soft-shell crab with a fanaticism that brought him repeatedly to the verge of choking, and I was not much better, raking a bone with my teeth to pick up every last tidbit, my hands soggy with oil and barbecue sauce. Denali observed, pressing her thumb into a buttermilk biscuit. “Wow,” she said, shifting her eyes from Gary to me. “Would he really have eaten me?”

  “Oh, no.” I wiped my mouth and gave her a serious nod. “He only eats kids when he’s really desperate. And only for dessert. He says they’re too sweet for a main course.” Gary gestured in agreement, his mouth full.

  “We have cake for dessert!” Denali said. “And there’s two kinds, chocolate for me and coconut with the shreds on top for my mom. Plus grilled peaches, ’cause that’s what Hank likes.”

  “Phew,” I said. “Then you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.”

  The three of us had formed a happy little triangle, and then a woman coasted by, pulling all our eyes toward her and dismantling it, just like that. She was impossible to ignore. She wore a skimpy dress that exposed her slender shoulders and the plank of her back, firm and suntanned beneath a wild flow of long, sun-dappled hair. When a breeze came, throwing the ends of her hair out in a miraculous, iridescent display, it sucked the dress tight against her body, and sucked the breath from the three of us as well, for we could now see the precise contour of her round butt and athletic thighs. It seemed to me that such a being could not be made up of organs made up of tissues made up of cells, at least not the same organs and tissues and cells that made up the rest of us.

  “She looks like a mermaid,” Denali breathed.

  “She does,” Gary replied.

  I’d come across plenty of attractive women in my life and could recognize them as such without any further reflection—I knew my standing, and it was decent enough, I didn’t care to work to improve it or resent others who did. But the existence of this particular woman felt like a direct challenge to my own, and rather than put up a defense, I wanted to join her and revolt against myself. Why had I decided to cut my hair, anyway? Why hadn’t I let it grow long and lush and golden while I lounged in a bikini, letting the sun polish my dull complexion?

  Spellbound, Denali hopped to her feet and followed the woman without even a wave goodbye. Gary and I sat in our chairs, doing our best to appear oblivious. He finished eating. I let ants crawl onto my plate. Around us, guests launched ceramic balls, beanbags, and horseshoes at their corresponding targets and screamed in triumph and defeat. “We could play,” Gary said. “Yeah,” I agreed, but neither of us made a move.

  “You’re good with kids,” I said after some time.

  “Well, she was fun. You are too.”

  “Fun?”

  “Good with kids. But, yeah, fun too.”

  We went and served ourselves large blocks of cake. By the time I’d whittled mine to the last bite, the woman had graciously moved out of sight and I’d recovered somewhat. The fact of her existence no longer seemed so catastrophic. I felt mortified and petty. I’d turned her into a villain to justify my own villainous impulses. It was possible Gary had hardly even noticed her and that Denali would’ve left at that moment regardless of who had passed by—it wasn’t like she was going to stay with us for the rest of the evening.

  At dusk, they turned on Christmas lights and passed around bottles of mosquito repellent. The teenage boy unraveled a long extension cord and set up a turntable in the far corner of the yard, creating a little station for himself. Music erupted as he hovered over the equipment, his body rocking, his face hidden by that tower of hair, even more lopsided now thanks to a giant pair of headphones. The music—an electronic style with an unrelenting beat and erratic computerized vocals—didn’t exactly fit the occasion. It made me both proud and apprehensive, because here he was making a contribution that required tremendous bravery, but you could never be sure how that would be received. To my surprise, people didn’t hesitate. They gravitated to the grass around him and began gyrating.

  Denali discovered us again, her lips and teeth now stained with icing. “That’s my brother,” she said. “He has anger problems. That’s why my mom bought him that stuff. He wants to be a DJ.”

  Her mother appeared behind her, and I couldn’t help thinking, Here she is, the bride, it’s really her. There was a flutter in my stomach, as though I’d come face to face with a celebrity. She gathered Denali’s hair in her hands. “Nali, don’t you think you’ve bothered enough people for one night?” She tipped Denali’s head back and they stuck their tongues out at each other. “Hi, it’s Gary, right? Been a while. So glad you could make it, though. Sorry if she’s been a pest.” She turned to me and extended her hand. “I’m Samantha.”

  “Amy. Thank you so much for having us. This is a beautiful wedding.”

  “Oh, thanks.” She rolled her eyes and blew hair out of her face. “You stop caring about all the superficial things the second time around. But you guys are having a good time?”

  “A great time,” Gary said. “Congratulations to both of you.”

  “You two have got to get out there. At least to humor my son. He’s been planning for this for months. But don’t tell him I said that. He’d kill me. Right, Nali? Come, my pumpkin pie. Come dance with me.” They locked hands and sailed away.

  Gary stood transfixed, watching them sink into the crowd with an expression of bewilderment. “I hate dancing.” He sighed. “I’m terrible. And this? Music to have a stroke to.” He sounded increasingly agitated, but I could tell it came from a vulnerable place, as though he took their dancing as a personal attack, meant to expose his shortcomings. “Seriously, why wouldn’t they just ask him to play something else? Anything else. Even the crap my mom listens to—that’d be like a godsend right now.”

  “It’s nice, though. They’re showing how much they support him. He probably feels empowered.”

  Gary’s face softened. He turned to me with an odd smile that first gave me the sensation that a body part had come exposed, and then that my feet had left the ground. “Where have you been?” he said. He watched the dancers for another few beats and then took hold of my hand. “I’m terrible, I’m warning you, the worst there is.”

  “No one cares about that.”

  “Yeah, right. Dance like no one’s watching.”

  Now that I saw that the teenage boy had plenty of other supporters, I didn’t care much whether we danced or not
, but I got the impression that maybe Gary wanted to be coaxed. “We can make it fun,” I said, leading the way. “We can make anything fun.”

  At the edge of the stomping crowd, we swayed and bounced. Gary always kept himself tethered to me in one way or another, but I didn’t mind being his anchor, or the spray of his sweat, or how he moved in clipped steps that reminded me of his penguin impression. My body went rigid when the mermaid woman twirled past, but he didn’t appear the least bit interested, so I too lost interest, even closed my eyes to focus on forgetting her and being me, gliding my fingers through my new hair, the fresh ends. When I opened my eyes again, his face was close to mine, and he was saying something. “What?” I said. “What? I can’t hear you.”

  “I said, am I embarrassing you?” His hot breath tickled the hairs in my ear.

  I shook my head in an emphatic no. Then to prove it, I hurled my body into the most disjointed, over-the-top moves I could come up with, every part of me convulsing and my feet stomping the grass to a pulp, one foot nearly tripping the other. He keeled over with laughter, then drew me into a hug so I was swallowed up in his arms, my nose squished against his neck. I inhaled the spiced scent of a product melting off his skin, deodorant or soap or cologne, and his body odor seeping through, which I didn’t hate. As he released his arms, his lips skimmed mine. The contact was so fleeting it had to be an accident, the result of so much haphazard movement. I kept dancing. But he plunged toward me again, with more conviction this time, so that it couldn’t be mistaken: we were kissing, Gary and I, the two of us, kissing like we were any other couple enjoying ourselves at a wedding on Cape Cod. When we finally stepped back, I was light-headed and out of breath. The only thing to do, the only way to keep from exploding, was to dance, so I danced, and Gary danced too, we danced together, closer now, his hands finding my waist—until he said “Come on,” and hooked my wrist.

  The house was split into two halves, their roofs extending above the gap between them, and this was where he steered us. “Phew,” he said. We touched our throbbing ears and let the breeze fly sweetly into our faces. From here we had a view of the glossy black ocean below, though in the dark, it was more of an absence than a presence. As my sweat evaporated into the night, I felt chilled, purified, and slightly disoriented. If not for the taste of his saliva in my mouth, I might have convinced myself it had all been a vivid hallucination.

  “This is the breezeway Andy was talking about,” Gary said. “Helps with ventilation.”

  I lifted my arms to the air. “I love breezeways.” I tried to pin the remaining drops of his saliva to the roof of my mouth with my tongue.

  “Let’s go explore,” he said.

  The right wing opened into a gigantic living room with a soaring ceiling and one wall made entirely of windows that framed the ocean. At the far end a staircase spiraled up around a pillar and disappeared into a doorway cut into the top of the wall, just below the ceiling. “Neat,” Gary said. “This is like his own twist on a widow’s walk. Usually they’re on the outside, on the roof.” He led us up the staircase, knocking on a step as we went and saying “Oak.” At the top we discovered Hank’s office, which had another wall of windows, a desk with two computer screens, and a third screen mounted on the wall.

  In the basement, we found the passageway that connected the two halves of the house. It was softly lit by bulbs in iron cages, and the walls had built-in shelves displaying rows and rows of books, arranged by color to produce a rainbow effect. As we made our way toward the cracked door at the other end of the passageway, we heard sucking sounds, and then muffled, breathy voices. “Shh,” Gary whispered, his eyes alive with curiosity. We flattened ourselves against the books on the wall.

  “We should, you know, meet up,” a deep voice said. “You’re not that far. Just a straight shot on 1A.”

  “Mmm,” someone said, a woman. “Don’t you think we should see how the rest of tonight goes first?”

  “Ah. I thought tonight was just a dry run.”

  “Well, hopefully not dry.” She let out a warbling laugh, then a yelp as the sucking resumed, louder this time.

  Gary and I exchanged goofy looks, our eyebrows up and nostrils flared. “Sounds like someone else had the same idea,” he whispered. I wasn’t sure whether he meant the idea to take a tour or to use a tour as an excuse for a private rendezvous, and that made me uneasy. “Guess we’ll have to cut this expedition short.”

  “Guess so,” I agreed, and we giggled quietly.

  “You know what,” he said, cupping his ear. “That kind of sounds like Donny. Thought I saw him around earlier. An accounts guy.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t listen?” It was intriguing, sure, the type of thing I would’ve killed to stumble across when I was so desperate for other voices that I was even willing to steal Gary’s mail. But now we didn’t need them, just like we didn’t need Irina, or anyone else: we had our own story, and it was just as compelling as any other.

  The air stiffened as though the hallway itself, the floor and the walls and the shelves and every single book, even the pages huddled together inside them, was waiting in anticipation, and I waited too, waited to see what this night would mean, until at last Gary had mercy on us. He hinged down and kissed me, which meant we were doing this, we were kissing each other, not only at a dance party but in a house that was empty apart from the voices that began to recede as we took over the stage, demoting them to audience, perhaps straining to hear our noises now. In all this time, I hadn’t forgotten how to kiss. After the initial shock, it came naturally. He moved his hands to my shoulders, and something scratchy, a hangnail or split cuticle, grazed my skin. The intimacy of that amazed me, even more than his tongue in my mouth. His hands flitted from my arms to my waist to my lower back, too timid to land in one place for long, and this left me pleasantly dizzy, rocked by the bright spark of each new touch and the reverberations it left behind.

  We paused for a breath and I said, “Do you still feel high at all?” Only after it came out did I realize that a corner of my brain had been hard at work, trying to eliminate all potential factors.

  “No. Wore off hours ago.” He stepped back and adjusted the bulk around his belt. “But I did do some cocaine in the bathroom. Just a couple of lines. To get me in a dancing mood.” His hands still on his belt, he kicked his legs out into a brief, fumbling jig.

  “Ha, ha,” I said. But when he stopped moving, his face went deadpan. It had a tinge to it, like he had nothing to be ashamed of but now I did, because I’d revealed myself to be naive and uptight, and there was no way to play it off now.

  Finally a twinkle flared in his eye, and his expression cracked. “I’m kidding,” he chimed. “You’re too easy.” He clasped my shoulders and jostled me a little, trying to get me in on the fun, and I was happy to concede because this was the kind of toothless needling that came out of Gary when he was feeling uninhibited and affectionate, and it was kind of fun being tricked, the prickle of uncertainty and the hot rush when the truth was revealed, I could get used to it and even play some games of my own.

  “Maybe we should go somewhere more private,” he said, backpedaling to a door at the beginning of the passageway. Before he even turned the knob, I could tell from the mood and the smell that this was where the teenage boy slept. While he groped around the wall for the light switch, I turned my head, for I felt an allegiance to the boy and didn’t want to betray it by snooping in his private room, let alone sprawling on his unmade bed with Gary, plus I didn’t know exactly what Gary expected to happen once we were inside—we’d already come so far today, astonishingly far, and now we could slow down, get our bearings, enjoy it.

  Luckily, Gary was having trouble finding the light. “He should’ve thought to put in clap-on lights,” I said. “Or a motion sensor.”

  “We’ll have to remember that when we’re building our house. Mansion, that is. Maybe in Hawaii?”

  I rocked my head, pretending to weigh the pros and cons. “Hawaii could w
ork.”

  “We’ll need a special wing for Mashpee. With a screened-in porch, so she can attack it from all angles.”

  “She’d love that.”

  “And what else?”

  “A breezeway, definitely. And maybe a widow’s walk like he has, with a special room at the top just for me.”

  “Now you’re just copying Hank. You’ve got to be more creative than that.”

  “Well, I don’t know anything about houses! You have to teach me.”

  “Okay, I’ll show you some really unique ones. Get your creative juices flowing.”

  “Maybe we should keep going with the tour,” I suggested. “We could go back upstairs. Use the front door. I know you wanted to see it.”

  “All right. But first . . .” He looked back down the passageway, toward the door with the voices. “Should we try to get a quick peek? See if it’s Donny?” He began tiptoeing back while I tagged behind, clutching the corner of his shirt. We heard a purr roll up a throat and “You smell so good.” Gary was pumped up, eyes blazing. It occurred to me that on the other side of the door could be the mermaid woman, naked from head to foot. Although it was only a slim possibility, I wasn’t sure I could survive it.

  As Gary’s head nudged forward, I felt along the shelf behind me, the spine of the last book and then the smooth marble bookend holding it up, and suddenly, almost without my own knowledge, I shouted, “Police! Open up!” With a jerk of the wrist, I sent the bookend to the floor and the books behind fell domino-style in a thunderous cascade. Gary jumped and grabbed my hand, and we careened down the passageway then up the stairs, out the door, and behind some bushes, giggling as we made it to safety.

  “You’re dangerous,” Gary said, breathless. He was stooped with his hands on his knees, looking up at me.

  “Maybe,” I said, drawing out both syllables to sound coy. “Did you see who it was?”

  “I couldn’t see anything. What a rush. Maybe I should’ve been a detective. Although you’d make a terrible partner. You’d definitely get us killed.”