Rivers

by Michael Farris Smith

  Aggie yelled back, “I probably should have gone ahead and killed you last night. Or right now.”

  Cohen wasn’t sure he’d made it out against the noise of the women, so he asked the man to say it again.

  “You heard me,” Aggie said.

  “No, I didn’t,” Cohen said defiantly. “Say it again.”

  “I said I’m going to save you. You were sent here and you know it. Like the rest of us.”

  “Nobody was sent here.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “I understand enough of what I see.”

  “That’s what you see now.”

  “It won’t be no later.”

  Aggie nodded. He grinned at Cohen from under his hood with the eyes of a man who had been set free. The eyes of a man who understood the power of conviction when there was no one around to judge.

  The screaming then became something more than painful. It became torturous. Grotesque. Cohen watched Aggie and he didn’t know what he was dealing with here in this place, with this man. Didn’t know exactly who Aggie was or what he had done or what he was capable of but he knew it was some bad shit. Women behind locked doors and one man with the keys. The Holy Bible stuck in his back pocket. Wearing the coat he’d taken off a dead man. The power to send out others to ambush and steal. The drop-dead glare of the unrepentant.

  The woman’s scream was shrill and pleading and there appeared to be no mercy in this land. Cohen stood still, listening to her, watching the man with his brow unchanged while the screaming of the woman splintered the storm around them and he thought of Elisa and what it would have been like with her belly round and the name chosen and the room built and painted yellow or pink or blue. He thought of the tiny nameless thing that died with her and he thought of the small thing fighting for its life inside that trailer where the women stood helplessly around the mother as if they had been ushered back to a time when there was no other choice than to wring your hands and pray. There were the screams and the pleas but there were no answers and the sun was creeping on the edge of the horizon and somewhere people were sleeping in warm beds and somewhere it was going to be a beautiful day.

  It was then that Cohen lifted his coat and shirts and he unsnapped the sheath and took out the knife. He held it in his right hand and waved it like a badge. Aggie’s eyes widened and he stepped back but Cohen wasn’t going for him. He was going for the trailer where the screaming came from and when he got there, he opened up the door and he walked right in and he saw the blood and he saw the anguish and Ava, kneeling between the woman’s legs, turned and looked at him and he pushed her out of the way.

  19

  ON THE MORNING OF THE fourth day in venice, they awoke to a faint sunshine. Elisa rolled over onto Cohen, kissed him, and said I’m going for a run.

  Cohen reached for her as she tried to get up from the bed but she playfully pushed him away and stood at the window.

  “I can’t believe you brought your running shoes,” he said. “Me and you need to discuss what the word ‘vacation’ means.”

  She took off the T-shirt that she slept in and she pushed back the white drapes and stood in the open window in only the panties she had bought the day before that had CIAO written across the bottom.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  She stretched her arms and she was beautiful in the morning light. “It’s Italy. Nobody cares,” she said. “It feels good.”

  He stared at her freckled back and shoulders and all he wanted to do was snatch her back into the bed and do wild things to her. He was about to go for her when she moved from the window and opened the armoire next to it. She found shorts and a tank top and her running shoes and she began to dress.

  “Only a short one,” she said. “I gotta sweat out some of this wine we’ve been putting away.” On the nightstand was an empty wine bottle and on the floor by the bed was another.

  “You’re gonna get lost,” he said.

  “Probably. But I’ll figure it out.”

  “Well,” he said and he rolled over. “I’ll be right here when you get back.”

  She tied her shoes and found her running watch in the suitcase. Then she kissed him again and went out the door and he listened to the sound of her footsteps on the stairway.

  HE AWOKE TWO HOURS LATER and heard the tenor voice outside. Elisa hadn’t returned. He checked his watch twice to make sure she had been gone that long and he believed she should have been back by now. A short run for Elisa usually meant forty-five minutes. Maybe an hour.

  He took a long shower and then shaved and brushed his teeth. When he was done he thought of standing naked in the window like Elisa but realized her curves provided a much more desirable picture. He put on some jeans and a white T-shirt and then he stood in the window and looked out at the courtyard. Healthy vines grew out of terra-cotta pots and up a trellis and red blossoms stuck out from window boxes on the building across the courtyard. The handful of wrought-iron tables were filled this morning with the absence of rain and a young waitress moved between them delivering coffee and plates of bread.

  What she has done, he thought, is run until she got lost, then found herself a young Italian stud. They are now on a little boat that will take them to his bigger boat and by this time next year she will be speaking Italian and standing naked in her own bedroom window with her hunky young Italian traded in for a new hunky young Italian.

  He smiled but didn’t laugh because it didn’t seem an impossible scenario with the fairy-tale look that had been in Elisa’s eyes since they had arrived.

  He sat down on the bed and turned on the television and watched the replay of a soccer match from last night. Milan and Barcelona. He couldn’t tell which was which but he listened to the constant chantlike choruses from the crowd and felt almost hypnotized. He watched for half an hour and then he began to worry some, so he turned off the television and put on shoes, socks, and a shirt, and went out to walk around and look for her.

  He turned right when he came out of the hotel. A short walk and he arrived at a busy plaza. Tucked in the corners of the plaza were kiosks for newspapers and magazines, cigarettes and postcards, tourist maps and T-shirts. Restaurants and cafés lined the streets and waiters in white shirts and black ties moved from table to table and tourists walked slowly from café to café considering the best place to sit. In the center of the plaza was a small fountain where angels arched their backs and reached toward the heavens and at their feet children tossed in coins and splashed one another playfully. Branching out from the plaza were numerous streets and alleys and Cohen looked around and tried to imagine which one Elisa might have taken, but he realized it didn’t matter, as in this labyrinthine city your first turn had little bearing on where you eventually wound up.

  He crossed to the other side and bought a pack of Lucky Strikes at a kiosk. He unwrapped the pack, lit a cigarette, and watched the plaza scene for another moment before picking a random alley to follow and try to find his wife.

  Cohen moved along the street and crossed a canal and then he crossed another canal and he seemed to have merged into more of a local neighborhood. He passed a grocery store, a Laundromat, an appliance store, and a flower shop. A woman came out of a doorway with a dog on a leash and in another doorway a bicycle leaned against the wall. Cohen walked until he was out of the neighborhood and into a retail shopping district, a series of store-lined streets with sleek, scantily dressed mannequins and shiny jewelry and Venetian-made glass vases in the different windows.

  He looked for a running woman. The day was warming and he was sweating some on his face and neck and now he was really worried. He noticed the dead ends where the water was stagnant and the alleys covered in shadows and he realized there were a thousand places to drop and disappear. He kept walking and smoking and looking and he came to a plaza that he recognized from the day before and it seemed he was making some sort of circle back toward the hotel. Maybe she’s back, he thought, but the thought only lasted an
instant and he decided to call out. He cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled, “Elisa!”

  Movement in the plaza paused and people looked at him.

  He took advantage of the quiet and again yelled, “Elisa!”

  From a window somewhere an unfriendly voice yelled back so he kept walking. As he walked he continued to call out, the echo of his voice sometimes shooting along a passageway and sometimes falling dead in a dead end. He called out and walked more briskly and even looked into the canals as his imagination pictured a floating running shoe or running watch or her beautiful bare back afloat in the still tepid water.

  He came to the intersection of five streets and in the middle of the intersection was a statue of a conquered winged lion with a woman in a long, flowing gown, wielding a spear, sitting on top of the lion. Cohen climbed up on the lion, stepped from the lion’s head into the woman’s lap, and managed to get on her shoulders so he could have a better view. A store owner came out of a gift shop and yelled at Cohen, pointing and waving and clapping his hands. Another Venetian passing by joined with the store owner. Cohen ignored them and from his perch looked down each street, screamed out her name. The store owner came closer to Cohen, waving his arms and shouting and Cohen jumped down from the statue and yelled back at the man and the man backed off. Cohen then turned in a circle, looking at all the streets, trying to decide what to do and sweating more now than before.

  He realized he hadn’t left a note or word with the front desk and that if she had returned, she would be wondering what had happened to him. So he started running. He ran in what he thought was the general direction of the hotel, hoping to find a familiar street that would take him there. He called her name. Screamed her name. He paused at the ends of streets and looked both ways, he looked down into the canals when he went over a bridge. He hurried but tried not to miss anything.

  He ran down a long alley and then cut across a canal and ran along another long alley and up ahead he saw people passing on the street. He believed that it was the street of his hotel and he was right. He turned onto the street and after several minutes he recognized buildings and the hotel sign came into sight and then he saw, almost to the doorway, Elisa walking with her arm draped around a short woman in a long skirt. Elisa leaned on the woman and they inched along and Cohen raced and he caught them as they made it to the door.

  “Elisa,” he said, out of breath. He saw that she held a rag on her forehead and it was dabbed in blood and he grabbed and hugged her though she still leaned on the woman.

  “She okay. She okay,” the short woman said, pushing Cohen away, and then she moved Elisa’s arm from around her neck as if to say, Here you go, she’s yours. The woman’s glasses were held by a silver chain around her neck and she had kind, wrinkled eyes.

  “I’m all right,” Elisa said, laughing a little and reaching for Cohen. “You look freaked out.”

  “What the hell happened?”

  “Got lost. Like we said I would.”

  The woman made a fist and bonked her own forehead. “Head hit on ceiling,” she said.

  “Street,” Elisa said and she pointed at the ground. “Head hit on street.”

  “Okay. Good.”

  “Head what?” Cohen asked. Her arm was around his neck and she held her hand out to the woman. The woman took her hand and Elisa said, “Thank you so much. Grazie so much.”

  “You okay?” the woman asked, nodding.

  Cohen stuck his hand in his pocket and took out some money and tried to give it to her but she wouldn’t take it and she backed away, nodding and saying, “Okay, good. Okay, good.”

  “Grazie,” Elisa said again and the woman waved and turned and went back her way.

  Cohen and Elisa moved inside the hotel and sat down at a table by the bar. She fell into a chair and moved the rag from her head and she was cut and swollen above her eyebrow.

  “Goshdammit,” Cohen said.

  One of the teenagers passing by saw Elisa’s eye and Cohen stepped behind the bar. He took a clean rag and wet it with cold water and gave it to her. “Something else?” he asked and she said no and told him thanks.

  “I’m stupid,” she said.

  “You’re not stupid, but what happened?”

  “Running. Lost. Tripped like I almost had about a hundred times already trying to run on these stones and bricks and hit forehead-first. Knocked me a little loopy. Then that woman walked up and found me. Helped me sit up and I guess she lived right there ’cause she went in a building and came back out with the rag and some water.”

  Cohen reached over and wiped a trail of blood and water from the side of her face. “You scared the hell out of me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I told you that you’re not supposed to exercise on vacation.”

  “I get it now.”

  He touched her hand that held the rag and moved it from her eye. It was about to stop bleeding. “Does it hurt?” he asked.

  “Does it look like it hurts?”

  “Yep.”

  “Then it hurts.”

  He moved her hand and rag back to the cut and said, “I’ll be right back.” He went upstairs to the room and found a bottle of Tylenol and went back down to the bar. No one was around so he went behind the bar and got her a bottle of water and himself a beer.

  He sat down at the table and handed her three pills. She looked at them. Looked at him. Looked at his beer and her water.

  “Are you serious?” she asked.

  He got up again and took another beer from the cooler. He grabbed a bottle opener from the bar top and he sat down and opened the beers and slid one to her. She took the pills, stuck them in her mouth, and washed them down with the cold beer.

  “Now that makes a girl feel better,” she said as she set the bottle down on the table.

  Cohen reached into his pocket and took out the Lucky Strikes. He picked up his beer and let out an extended sigh. She winked at him with the eye not covered by the rag. The anxiety of separation fell from them but didn’t disappear.

  “No more solo excursions,” he said.

  She shrugged.

  “I mean it,” he said.

  “Should we leash ourselves together?”

  “If we have to,” he said. He reached over and moved the rag from her face and looked at the cut, swollen and red. He then replaced the rag and said, “Just drink your beer.”

  20

  MARIPOSA HAD STOOD AT HER window and watched. When she saw Cohen come out of the trailer and walk to where he slept, she waited to see if a light would come on. When it didn’t, she figured he must have gone to sleep so she waited. While she waited, she watched the commotion. A couple of the other women and Aggie went in and out of the trailer and when the door opened and there was some light she saw the blood on their hands and arms and shirts and then she finally saw a bloody mess wrapped in Ava’s arms and she wondered if it was dead or alive. The door closed for a while and when it opened again Ava held a bundle wrapped in white and she walked out into the rain, Aggie holding her by the arm, and across to his trailer and it seemed as if he or she had made it. For now.

  She looked again to where Cohen slept. Still only black inside.

  She put on her coat and when she got to the door she remembered that she was locked in. But she turned the handle anyway and found it unlocked and she figured in the madness Aggie must have forgotten the doors. She walked out and the wind slapped the rain against her face and with her head down she moved to his door. She paused, looked around, saw them bustling back and forth in the trailer where Lorna lay.

  Then she put her hand on his trailer door handle, turned it slowly, opened the door, and slid inside.

  She moved in the dark. Didn’t see him. Didn’t hear him at first.

  Then he snored.

  He was facedown on the mattress, his arms and legs spread out as if he were free-falling. He breathed big and heavy, and her eyes adjusted some and she moved over toward him and knelt next to the mattress.
He was still wearing his coat and his muddy boots and they hung off the edge of the mattress.

  She took a candle and a lighter out of her coat and she lit the candle and set it on the floor. She removed her coat and laid it on the floor, then put her hands on his left boot and felt for the laces and untied and loosened them. She tugged some. He didn’t move. She wiggled it and the boot gave and she pulled it off, and then she did the same to the right one. He grunted once and heaved but didn’t turn and didn’t wake.

  She heard voices outside and she stood and looked out. Two others were moving across the compound, going back to where they slept. The light was off in Lorna’s trailer.

  Mariposa knelt again. She listened to him breathing. Listened to the random snore. Listened to the rain and the wind. Listened to the words in her head that wanted to come out and then she let them out in whispers.

  “I know what you came for,” she started. “I know you came for her. What’s left of her. What’s left of it all. I know what you came for.”

  She paused. Put her hand on the back of his leg.

  “Don’t let him keep you,” she whispered. “Don’t be like him. But I know you’re not that way. I already know it.”

  She paused again. Removed her hand.

  It was the first time in a long time that she had spoken to someone without angst, without vehemence, without fear.

  Her hair was held back with a rubber band and she reached behind and pulled it out. Then she eased herself onto the mattress. Cohen snorted and raised his head for a brief moment. Then it fell and he continued on in his restless sleep. Mariposa leaned first on her elbows, waited on him to settle some, and then she let herself down and lay quietly beside him.

  SOMEWHERE ELSE. NO COUNTRYSIDE. NO beach. No pastures or barbed wire or crepe myrtles. A concrete world where he walked down a city street on a normal day with normal people up and down the sidewalks and in and out of the stores. Looking at the street signs but in a language that he didn’t understand and there was nothing distinct about this place. He walked on, looking into store windows, stepping into bars and looking around the tables, stopping at a pay phone and dialing and then ringing and ringing and no answer and hanging up and walking on. Newspaper stands and vendors selling hot dogs and a woman in a tight silver dress smoking a cigarette in front of a dress shop. A dog without a collar sniffing at a garbage can. The random honk of a car horn and he walked on, looking in the windows, looking at himself in the reflection. His hands were cold and he blew on them as he walked and then he was lost, stopping and looking back over his shoulder to see if he could recognize which direction he had come, walking on another block or two or three, stopping and spinning and trying to figure where he was or where he was going or how to get back or anything. He tried to ask but no one understood what he was asking and they hurried past or snapped back at him in annoyance or pushed him. He walked on and everything looked the same and he couldn’t figure out what or who he was looking for and with each step the anxiety grew until he was calling out for help but none of the strangers responded and then there was a sudden, heavy rush of clouds and they disappeared inside stores and apartment buildings but he had nowhere to go and he stood and watched the black clouds suffocate the daylight and then he felt the body beside him and he turned but no one was there but he felt the body again and then he opened his eyes and there was the darkness of the night and there was the thing beside him that he had felt in his dream.