But, he thought as he waved down a taxi, that couldn’t be it. Sadie had eventually come around, at least out loud she did, and congratulated him, in fact, taking him out as if they were in college again, just searching for an excuse to get drunk enough to sing Don McLean at the top of their lungs, and so he tried to discard it and enjoy the moment. It was a beautiful island, despite the recent hurricane. It wasn’t so much the white beaches and blue skies, but it was the dichotomy of it all. There were boarded up shacks next to a Bvlgari shopping center, a villa next to a man with a goat, selling mangos and pineapple on the roadside. Condominiums without roofs and boarded windows sprawled up the mountainside. Trees had been uprooted, dirt and debris piled aside the highway, victims picking through what remained. The rich, however, didn’t seem as affected. Their property was already under repair, heavy machinery parked next to towering mansions and high-end retail centers. There didn’t seem to be a middle class here, only the super rich and the dirt poor, and this, for some reason Harry couldn’t quite articulate, intrigued him—it was like witnessing particles and anti-particles in a quantum element, at once quintessential to the others’ survival, but forever repelling each other with their unlike charges.
“I know you,” the cabby said, pointing up at the rear-view mirror, his finger bobbing up and down like he was scolding Harry.
“You ever been to Oklahoma City?” Harry asked, sure the man had not. Harry just had that type of face—roundish, cheery, pink-cheeked—so that he was often stopped on the street, his interrogator wondering how she knew him.
“No, no,” the man said. “I saw you on the news, my man. Picture blown up everywhere.” The man had a thick Caribbean accent, and so Harry had trouble understanding him, but he thought the man was mistaking for a news anchor.
“No,” Harry said, waving his open palms in front of him, “I’m not famous or anything. Just a lowly physics professor. I teach classical mechanics to community college students.”
“No, no. You are famous. You are. But where did I see you?” The man stroked his goatee as he pulled into the resort where Harry would be staying. It was a nice place, sprawling rather than vertical, plastered in multi-colored stucco. It resembled a child’s toy in that regard—bright pink and lime green—and everywhere guests meandered about with drinks in their hands, all of them smiling, smiling, smiling, and Harry thought: Yes. This is exactly what I need.
The man parked. When Harry turned around to square up the fee with him, though, the man had lost his smile. For a moment, Harry was confused—why did the cabbie look so angry?—but he didn’t have time to consider the man’s outrage. The driver simply punched Harry right in the nose, and before everything went black, Harry could’ve sworn he heard the bone snap.
THE HOSPITAL, IT TURNED OUT, was nice. It was clean and bright and smelled of chemicals, just like any hospital stateside. Before his trip it wasn’t like Harry had considered what a hospital in the US Virgin Islands would be like; however, he found himself surprised that this was so. For some reason he’d just figured the facilities he took for granted back home—hospitals, city streets, metro bus terminals—would be dated and dingy, like visiting a third world country. He scolded himself for this impulse, finding it, well, racist, but it was still there, nagging at him like a canker sore he couldn’t keep from flicking with his tongue.
His doctor was a young man, early thirties Harry guessed, and it was he who finally broke the news to Harry. “Four hundred and fifty thousand retweets between taking off and landing. A million more during your cab ride and here at the hospital. You’ve been on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News. You name it. That is the very definition of going viral.”
“That wasn’t my intent,” Harry said. “It really wasn’t. I’m not racist.”
The doctor flattened his lips. He was trying to remain neutral, neither affirming nor denying Harry’s statement. How very diplomatic of him, Harry thought.
“I’m sure it’ll pass,” the doctor said as he tilted Harry’s face up by placing two fingers underneath his chin. “You’re just the flavor of the week. Everyone will be distracted by some other outrage by next Tuesday. You’ll see.”
Harry wasn’t comforted by the doctor’s assertions. The nurses and orderlies and doctors all leered at him, hesitant to engage lest they couldn’t control their outbursts. Harry could tell by the way they held their shoulders perched up near their jawlines, like if they got too close, they wouldn’t be able to stop from placing their hands on Harry’s neck, pressing their thumbs into that soft spot above the sternum until they heard it pop. Despite this, though, Harry hoped the doctor was right. It was a joke, after all, and there were so many more important things going on in the world besides his ill-advised humor, but all hope dissipated when Harry made it back to his hotel room. He was hesitant to log back onto Twitter, but he did, slowly opening his laptop and typing out his password with only his pointer fingers.
“I hope you get raped.”
“You bigoted, Nazi scum.”
“Better watch your back, motherfucker.”
“We are going to ruin your life.”
The response went on and on and on, tens upon tens of thousands of them. Harry scrolled downward, thinking he would see an end to the vitriol, but there wasn’t, the little blue bar barely having moved on the side of his monitor, the words now flashing by illegibly. It was overwhelming, and Harry couldn’t help but feel dizzy, pleading silently to no one in particular, to everyone all at once, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. You have to believe me. I really, really didn’t.
HARRY WANTED TO STAY IN bed. He didn’t wish to watch television, or turn on his phone, or go online. He only wanted to order room service, direct the concierge to leave the food outside his room, and to charge the bill to his credit card. Lock himself up until his credit line was maxed out, or management kicked him out, one or the other. He would become comfortable in his new life here. He could see the beach from his window, and he’d read mystery novels and meditate. He’d never have to return home, never have to face another person again—the judgment from strangers, their all-too-human sneer that would cut through Harry like nuclear fission.
But he couldn’t. He’d come here to adopt his child, and he couldn’t hide from her like he had his problems his entire life. Until they ebbed away on their own, or at least until enough people had forgotten so he could reemerge without the shame he’d felt for his mistakes, for drinking too much or for offensive comments, for inappropriate touching and desires and fantasies of taken men. And so, despite the pain and fear and anxiety he thought might cripple him, he left the resort to go to the adoption agency, to see his daughter, about whom he had dreamt for so many nights.
He still had a bandage over his nose, a piece of plaster and gauze strategically placed to hold the bones in place as they healed. Because of the discomfort, the light as he exited the resort was unbearable. Pain shot through his corneas to his cerebral cortex so that he had to shut his eyes and hold his palms against his forehead, but it soon subsided enough for him to make it to the beach. It was calm there, the melodious surf the only noise. Harry dipped his toes into the water and welcomed the sunshine against his neck and bare arms. For the first time since landing, Harry felt relaxed, his worries and anxieties and fears seeping out of him through his outstretched fingertips.
It was then Harry decided he could reattach himself to the world. He pulled out his iPhone, the screen illuminating in that familiar, comforting way, and loaded up Twitter. At first, he only noticed his timeline, updates from Politico and NASA and The Wall Street Journal, but at the bottom of his screen was a little pop-up alerting him to his 1,349,735 notifications, and counting. He checked Facebook. The same there—countless messages threatening his safety, his life, the wellbeing of the ones he loved. He had voicemails, dozens upon dozens, from his parents in Phoenix and his boss back in Oklahoma City, from friends, both current and lost, even some he hadn’t seen since his twenty-year high school reunion. He ignored the
m all and pulled up Google Maps, entering the address for the adoption agency. It wasn’t far, and so Harry decided he would rather walk than take a cab. He needed the endorphins, a rush of blood and serotonin to make him feel better.
The topography of the island was much different than back home. Instead of red clay and Indian-grass plains stretching out in every direction, Harry’s line of sight was constantly changing. To the east churned the Caribbean Sea, deep and crystalline blue, capped by white waves pushed to shore by the seasonal trade winds. Directly in front of him was a winding and rolling highway, and to the west grew a dense tropical forest, elevating against a graphite-colored mountainside, interspersed with brilliant orange and yellow and green flowers. The fauna blended into the landscape, camouflaged by eons of evolution, but when he looked closely, he found an iguana baking in the equatorial sun, and in the tree line Harry could’ve sworn he spotted a white-tailed deer, but that couldn’t be right. Could it?
After an hour’s trek, he made it to the adoption agency, a wooden shack nestled into the mountain far from any tourist destination. Chickens roamed around an open dumpster, pecking at bits of refuse that had fallen shy of their destination. By the time he arrived, Harry was exhausted, drenched in sweat, ankle swollen and likely sprained. His nose ached, shooting pain through his cheekbones and sinuses and forehead so that it felt as if his brain might explode. He tried to compose himself the best he could, but he knew he looked like he’d been in a car accident, a homeless man, a desperate man.
Well, he thought. If the shoe fits.
He walked through the entrance, and it wasn’t at all what he’d expected. After the hurricane had hit, orphaning so many children, he’d expected the state agencies to be overwhelmed with need, resources spread thin and conditions unbearable. Images came to him of Katrina years before, news reports of riots in the Big Easy, police sniping looters from the roofs of Target Superstores. This place, however, was clean and well managed. He entered a large room that seemed to double as a welcoming lobby and arts-and-crafts center. Adults showed dozens of children how to make macaroni necklaces as a woman behind a desk eyed him suspiciously.
“Can I help you, mister?” she asked, the “i” pronounced long and like an “e,” pulling the word out like meeeester. The accent, as much as Harry didn’t want to admit it, sounded like the whine of a spoiled toddler.
“Name is Harry Humboldt,” he said. “I’m supposed to meet my daughter today.”
Her eyes alighted with recognition, and alarm, and she reached for her phone. She dialed four numbers, a colleague’s direct extension, and whispered into the receiver, and as she did so, Harry’s stomach filled with dread, acid and bile brewing in his lower intestine so that he felt nauseated and dense.
“Ms. Alex will be with you in one meeenute,” the woman said as she pretended to busy herself with files.
Ms. Alex showed in less than one minute. She was a heavyset woman, pear-shaped and bulldog-cheeked. Right away Harry didn’t like her, and it wasn’t so much the bureaucratic way she ushered him into her office, shooing him from contact with impressionable children, but more of a gut feeling—this woman hated him. With every fiber of her being, she loathed everything that was Harry Humboldt.
Her office was small but organized, everything color-coded and in its place. She bid Harry sit with a flick of her wrist, as if she was used to dutiful obedience without even uttering a word.
“I have First Amendment rights,” Harry said, preempting how he was sure this conversation was to go. “It was a stupid tweet. It was. It was an even worse joke, but I do have rights.”
“Of course you do,” Ms. Alex said. “But we don’t see this as a First Amendment issue.”
“Sure it is. I tweeted something offensive. It’s gone viral, and now—”
“This is a safety issue, Mr. Humboldt. We have legitimate concerns about Gloria’s safety.”
“That is insane,” Harry said. “I would never hurt Gloria. I love her. I have wanted nothing more than to be a father.”
Ms. Alex turned to her computer and put on reading glasses. “ ‘I will slit your throat in your sleep.’ ‘I will set your house on fire.’ ‘Your children will be murdered as you watch.’ ‘You’re dead, you racist demon.’ ‘Everyone you love is going to be killed.’ This is just a very small portion of what we found online.”
Harry swallowed, or tried to. His saliva had all dried up.
“These sound like very real threats of violence,” Ms. Alex said.
“They’re internet trolls. It’ll pass. Surely, it’ll all die down.”
She pointed at Harry’s face. “But for now,” she said, “it’s manifesting itself quite literally.”
“Oh this,” Harry said, trying to come up with an excuse that sounded legitimate, “this is nothing. I—uh—well, it’s sort of embarrassing.”
Ms. Alex stared.
“It was an accident, is all,” Harry said. “I fell while getting out of the plane. Face full of cement.”
“That’s the story you’re going with?”
“It’s what happened.”
“Sure,” she said, her tone indicating she remained unconvinced. “It still doesn’t change the reality of the matter.”
“Which is?”
“I decide if Gloria goes home with you. And I can’t, in good conscience, allow that to happen.”
Time, to Harry, sped up. He hardly remembered leaving the adoption agency, the moments blurred together into an endless barrage of snapshots, like a drunk trying to piece together memories of the night before: Harry standing, something guttural building inside of him, fuming from his central core; him yelling at Ms. Alex, at no one in particular; a big, muscular man placing him in a chokehold, his arm bent backward, pulled to an impossible angle so that he feared it would break. But it didn’t. He was lifted and carried and thrown outside, and he remembered getting up. And he remembered walking, but it wasn’t until many hours later he came back to, his face and lips and neck and arms sunburnt, his throat cracked and his head thumping from dehydration. He couldn’t speak. He could hardly move. He was just in pain. Every single inch of him ached.
And he knew—he just needed one thing: a drink.
So he made his way to the beach bar. He slathered on SPF 100 and put on a hat and sunglasses and linen pants and went to drown himself in tequila. He ordered a margarita, drank that, drank another, and followed that up with a shot. He sucked lime juice until his mouth puckered and his eyes burned, and the entire time he couldn’t help but think that it was a beautiful island. It was, and he should, he decided, enjoy himself.
There was a man there. He was alone and he was balding and he drank a piña colada like he didn’t drink all that often, small sips out of a colorful straw. He stared at the ocean and pretended to read a three-week-old Wall Street Journal. He looked like a banker. He had the seriousness around the eyes, beady and pointed and hot like an oven, and it wasn’t long before Harry started to feel that familiar tingle down in his groin, his inhibitions lowering, like air released from a tire. He would do something stupid, and he didn’t want to stop it.
He ordered the man a drink, another piña colada, double rum, and took a seat next to him.
“Alone?” Harry asked.
The man eyed him. He made quick judgments. Intentions. Threats. Inventoried his exits and options. Harry could tell by the way he didn’t blink, just took him all in, head to toes to knees. And he liked what he saw. He did. He had this look in his eyes, this glint, like a toddler eying cake for the very first time. The man wasn’t gay, or at least that’s what he said.
“Just got divorced. Came down here to unwind. Let loose. Hell, who knows? Even meet someone new.”
But it was repressed. After two piña coladas, three, twirling the pink umbrella between thumb and forefinger, the man, Tom was his name, began to laugh and tilt his head back and graze his fingers against Harry’s forearm. It wasn’t long until they had a nightcap back in Harry’s room, a sunse
t. A dip in the hot tub turned into them naked and Harry scooting in behind him, both sweating and sweating and groaning and wincing and Tom saying slow, slow, please, just a little slower, I’ve never done anything like this before.
But Harry didn’t slow.
He sped up.
He pounded.
Harder.
Faster.
Harder.
Until the man screamed. Then there was blood. There was blood and screaming and the man pushed him away, told Harry not to touch him, that he would kill him if he ever told anyone what had happened, and Harry collapsed in the corner. There was blood and shit all over him and he couldn’t catch his breath. No matter how hard he tried he couldn’t. He just gasped and gasped and fought for a little bit of air, and he knew, down to a cellular level he knew, nothing would ever make any of this right.
HARRY DECIDED TO STAY. HE had nothing back home, really. One of the several hundred voicemails he’d received was from his boss, telling him not to return, that he would ship Harry’s personal belongings to the address they had on file, that it would be safer for everyone involved. His friends wouldn’t return his calls, treating him as a pariah, their association with Harry deemed bad business, even deleting him on Facebook and Twitter, his total number of friends and followers dwindling from the thousands to the hundreds to the dozens. His sister would take his calls, the only one, but she just seemed to pity him. “Oh, Harry,” she’d say. “Oh, honey. Oh, sweetie. I am so, so sorry.”
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