Arc of the Comet

by Greg Fields

  There in the living room he spun her around and faced her. Finnegan knew little about dancing, although he thought he was quite good at it. He danced best when he was drunk. The music shot forth in blunt-edged darts that pummeled his inner ear and vibrated the stem of his brain. Still grasping his bottle in one hand, he let himself be carried by the hard rhythm. His limbs reacted of their own accord as he moved in jutting motions to the music.

  Glynnis moved more softly. She swayed and stepped lightly, a gentle counterpoint to the harsher music. Finnegan could not focus on her very well. All her features melted together in an indistinguishable blur. Once or twice her image duplicated itself so that two Glynnisses moved before him. Finnegan thought she was smiling her gently wry smile, but he could not be certain.

  He did not care as the music pulsed whether Glynnis was enjoying herself. At that moment it didn’t matter. As he danced, Finnegan felt displayed, exhibited in a new form to both his friends and his lover. He felt graceful and fluid and strong, serendipitously in union with an unknown, all-encompassing force. He danced, and expected—no, demanded—that Glynnis dance with him in this new form. She must be here, and he must know that she was there.

  Finnegan did not know how long they danced there. He recollected staggering back down the hall once, twice (or was it three times?) for more beer, and to relieve himself. Each time he returned the music thumped loudly, he found Glynnis and they moved around the living room in motion to the music. He thought other couples were dancing, too. He thought O’Hanlon and Rosselli were out there with him, each with some new young girl, and the thought caused an unbounded love to sweep through him. Brothers together, even here.

  The clock on the bookshelf showed a late hour. Perhaps it was 1:00, or perhaps it was 2:00, Finnegan could not discern. Still they danced, tirelessly, and still they drank, now only a handful left from the original crowd, no more than a dozen.

  Willie Mark, a tall, angular swimmer made solely of bone, stepped into the room. A girl Finnegan did not know but supposed to be another swimmer stepped in behind him. “Hey folks,” said Willie unsteadily, raising his voice above the music. “We need some air, don’t you think? Whaddaya say we go down to the street.”

  “Ain’t nothin’ on the street,” answered Dan Rosselli. “Nothin’ down there at all ’cept a park and a dirty old river.”

  “Yeah, the river!” yelled Willie Mark, now excited. “We don’t just need air, we need a swim. Let’s go for a swim, right now. In the Raritan. You ever done that before? Anybody been in that river? Come on, let’s go. A swim’ll do us good.”

  One or two skeptical voices rose in protest but Willie Mark talked them down. “What’s wrong with you guys? It’s warm enough, for Christ’s sake. The water’ll be good for us. Wake us up and give us some exercise. Whaddaya say?”

  Finnegan liked the idea.

  “Yeah, Willie’s right. Let’s go for a swim. Come on, we need a swim,” and Rosselli, O’Hanlon and three or four others added their concurrence. The idea all of a sudden seemed adventurous, and a bit charming. After a few minutes everyone but Tom McIlweath and Anne Newbury had been talked into it, but they came along as the group cascaded down the wooden stairs to the street. At the foot of the stairs, though, they broke away.

  “I’m taking Anne home,” said McIlweath to no one in particular. “I’ll see you guys later. Good luck.”

  “Mac, you can’t leave us now,” cried Finnegan. “We gotta go for a swim. Come on, that’s what you do.”

  “No, Anne’s got to get home. Besides, I’m not drunk enough to go along and I’m not crazy enough to do this while I’m sober. See you guys later.” Anne had already climbed into McIlweath’s car parked three houses down. She had not said a word in parting.

  “Oh, let him go,” said Willie Mark. “He’s got other commitments. Whose cars are we gonna take? Who’s sober enough to drive?”

  “None of us or we wouldn’t be doing this,” said O’Hanlon. “But I’ll drive. I can fit five and so can Rosselli. Let’s go.”

  Finnegan was not certain precisely whose car he piled into. He sat cramped in the back seat, his legs jammed together between two girls whom he only remotely knew. Glynnis sat in front, or so he thought. His neck could not support his head for long, so it bounced from side to side on the short drive. The girls, one named Barbara and the other Jill, kept up a conversation with him about some indistinct topic, but he paid no mind. He responded where his thickened mind deemed appropriate, and the three of them laughed through most of the trip. The girls were as drunk as Finnegan was. As they crossed the narrow steel bridge, Finnegan felt the one on his left, Barbara (or was it Jill?) slide her right hand between his compressed legs. She slid it quickly up to his groin and whispered something in his ear which the whirr of the tires over the metal grating drowned out. Finnegan wished he had heard. He leaned to his left and kissed her hard on the mouth. He liked the sensation, the pure, sensual wickedness of it, and wanted more. With a quick left turn, though, they were in the park near the river.

  Theirs was the second car to arrive, and as they spilled out Finnegan saw that it was O’Hanlon who had been the driver. The ten of them moved toward the river. One or two excitedly ran ahead. Although the night was the warmest since the days of late summer, the light breeze blew a chill across them. Finnegan stumbled forward, found Glynnis and draped an arm around her neck. He found O’Hanlon too and threw his free arm around his roommate’s shoulders. O’Hanlon in turn was folded around Barbara/Jill, who had now turned her attentions to someone less committed. The four of them teetered onward, bumping into each other and holding each other up.

  The ones who had run ahead had already arrived at the river’s edge and had removed their shirts. Finnegan, O’Hanlon and the girls were the last to get there. O’Hanlon disengaged himself and kicked off his shoes. Finnegan did the same, the muck of the shore clinging to the bottom of his feet. He was filled with a sensual excitement, an awareness of immersion not only into a body of water but into a state of sin, a twisted ritual of reverse baptism. The women there aroused him, but no more so than the men, indulgent partners in the unfolding, delightful, sultry scene. The cool breeze hit his chest as he took off his shirt. He smelled the renascent aroma of new grass, he heard the light slapping of the river against its banks.

  Before him the group was growing increasingly naked. The first two young men, swimmers, had stripped to their shorts. They looked at each other, then back at the group. With broad grins they peeled off the final pieces of clothing, pirouetted to a round of applause, then dove into the black river. The cold of the water caused them both to shout out, but then they splashed briskly, kicking up water at one another, until their limbs refilled with warmth.

  Finnegan looked at Glynnis, who stood next to him in bra and panties. She smiled at him impishly. Even in the darkness, Finnegan thought he could see her deep eyes twinkle. Her eyes continued to glint, never leaving Finnegan’s face, as she reached behind her to unhook her bra. She tossed it beside her, then latched her thumbs inside her panties and pulled them down. Glynnis kicked them aside, still smiling, still maintaining even in drunkenness (Was she really drunk? Conor could not tell.) her remarkable self-control. Unhurried, unrushed, always poised.

  “Come on, lover. It’s time for a swim,” she purred.

  She unbuttoned Conor’s jeans herself, slid down the zipper, and Conor obediently stepped out of them. His underwear immediately followed. Finnegan paid little mind to his own nakedness; he felt no shame, nor did he shift to hide himself. He was, instead, more intent on Glynnis. Her long hair fell around her thin shoulders and toppled onto her breasts, stopping at her nipples, stopping at her heart.

  Unreality, all of this, for we are not here. Rosselli and O’Hanlon are not here; I am not here on the banks of this ancient river. Nor is Glynnis standing before me in her lovely form, Aphrodite upon the shore.

  Finnegan looked down, now oddly detached and objective, on this strange revelry from an u
nknown height. It was as far away from the essential soul, the jellies and syrups that constituted Conor Finnegan, as a Bosch painting. He inspected each face, he noted each form and sought to memorize the stark details of this darkened scene. Glynnis a part of it, exposed from all illusion, dipped now and forevermore into our shared, fated humanity.

  Glynnis, do not pursue my folly, do not follow my own besoiled destiny. I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed. You alone can reach me through the smothering mire and redeem the twisted hypocrisy of my jerry-rigged soul. Go back from me now, that you may return to pull me free.

  Glynnis grabbed Conor about the waist and led him into the river. The cold water shot up Conor’s legs and into his heart. Glynnis let out a yip, then gathered herself and plunged headlong into the murky water. Conor took several deep breaths trying to gather his strength. The breeze wrapped around his chest, head and neck. He stepped through the water until it rose to just below his loins. Around him his friends splashed and swam. The river was shallow; the only way to immerse himself was to dive in fully. He did so, up to his neck, and after a few seconds some feeling returned to his stunned limbs.

  Glynnis swam over him and under him and on each side. She frolicked like a white, sleek dolphin, dancing through the water ahead of Conor’s unsteady form. Others had moved down the river to spread themselves out. He saw O’Hanlon with Barbara/Jill a few yards away running his hands over his companion’s slickly solid breasts, the young woman laughing huskily. Five men and five women, all now paired. Glynnis, too, was laughing, and under the water her own clever hands darted over Conor’s most sensitive areas.

  But Finnegan did not reciprocate. His excitement dispersed into confusion, into disorientation, into the shock of certainties disrupted. He sobered quickly, and wished he had not come.

  He sloshed through the water back to shore. He expected Glynnis to follow him out, but she did not. Instead she turned into the river and pushed herself down near the others. Conor looked back from the shore as he pulled himself fully into the dry air. He watched Glynnis flip to her back, then over again, and he heard her call something to Rosselli and his mate for the evening, but he could not decipher what she had said. Rosselli called something back and they both laughed. Finnegan felt tremendously alone.

  He plodded up to where his clothes had been strewn. The night air hitting the water on his body caused him to shiver, but there was nothing with which he could dry himself. He picked up his shirt, shook off the dirt and swabbed his body with it as best he could, then he climbed back into his clothes, his chest draped with the damp shirt. He felt no warmer.

  Below him the river ran, and in it, downriver and away, his friends splashed in subtle foreplay. Glynnis, he could see, swam among the playful couples, talking to one, then another.

  ’I wish she were here,’ thought Finnegan, ’with me, keeping me warm. I wish we had not come, and I wish I had not drunk so much. But April dawns warmly and bodes a spirited springtime. Glynnis in the water, and an Irishman who loves the sea. We lay equal claim.’

  Finnegan leaned back into the dirt and sparse grass. He closed his eyes to ease the curious confusion out of him. Glynnis would be back soon, and it would indeed be a spirited springtime. All he could do now in the cold, lonely darkness was wait.

  ***

  Behind the river in another direction Tom McIlweath sullenly drove his car through the empty neighborhood streets leading to Anne Newbury’s home. The evening had not gone well at all. He and Anne had quibbled all night, disagreeing on nearly everything that came their way. They had both been indefinably out of sorts. The very presence of each other had proven an irritant. Yet even as they could not identify the source of their sour moods, neither could they suppress the bitter humor that crept over them. There was no logical reason that they should be so brittle, so easily annoyed with one another, but while logic suggested a kind demeanor, the vague mists of emotion demanded something else.

  So it was that neither Tom nor Anne had particularly wanted to be at the party. Each would have preferred to be alone. As one of the hosts, though, McIlweath was obligated to be there, and, as McIlweath’s close friend, Anne felt obligated to keep him company. That was a natural aspect of the habits into which they had fallen. The two of them stayed anchored to the couch all evening, exchanging only desultory greetings with those who came and went. All the while, the haunting annoyances that had dictated their misanthropy ate away at the back of their minds, silently acidic in the insistence of acknowledgement.

  The scene around them had grown cruder as the crowd thinned. Those who remained grew drunker, louder, and more boisterous. Their language took on a rough air of lustiness that made McIlweath flinch. Anne made it clear that she did not like the music that pounded through the room where they sat, she did not like the wild dancing going on in front of her, she did not like the great amounts of beer that had been consumed, and she did not really care for the people who were consuming it. She had been forced to share this evening, to endure it. In a general sense, McIlweath agreed with her, but he deferred her repeated requests to leave.

  “Just a little longer, Anne. We can’t leave now.”

  “But Tom, why not? I hate this. No one even knows we’re here.”

  “It wouldn’t look good. We can’t leave this early.”

  And although McIlweath himself wanted to get out of the cramped, hot, primitive scene and fill his lungs with the rich air of the spring night, even though he would have preferred to rid himself of Anne’s presence and end their bout of carping, he forced himself to stay. He knew that Anne was equally miserable, and probably more so. He took enough consolation in that to make himself last out the evening.

  When Willie Mark drunkenly lurched into the center of the room and suggested a swim in the Raritan, McIlweath knew that the party was finally breaking up, or at least relocating. He and Anne had not yet talked themselves out. In fact, the strain of their conversation throughout the evening had weakened the defenses of their overly logical minds. The root of their unspoken annoyance had started to creep out. They both saw it coming and neither made an effort to avoid it. Willie Mark had interrupted its progression, but he had not destroyed it.

  At the foot of the stairs, when the survivors had all tromped down to the street, Anne had turned wordlessly toward McIlweath’s car. McIlweath took the time to tell Finnegan that he and Anne would not be going along. Conor, to McIlweath’s dismay, seemed too drunk. He hoped that no one would get hurt.

  He drove Anne home then, jabbing and poking at the topic that, once engaged, became so difficult to drop. It rose forward in a tidal wave of suppressed uncertainty and frustration, hovering above and behind them like a black vapor. It rang to the nexus of Tom McIlweath’s self-perception and questioned the validity of all his strivings because, at its simplest, it dealt with the young man’s destiny, challenging the assumptions McIlweath had set for himself. Anne Newbury had been the catalyst, and when she came to know fully her role, she played it to the hilt. She became almost predatory in her vigilance.

  This late and tiring night, as McIlweath slowly drove Anne home, the conversation rose and fell, choppy, a small boat on violent waters.

  “I don’t understand it, Tom,” Anne spoke with an obvious annoyance, or perhaps it was disdain. “I don’t understand you, I suppose. Sometimes you seem to be so amorphous. You have no form of your own. You just conform to whatever shape is convenient to where you are at the time. That’s no way to live.”

  “That’s not true, Anne. Or maybe it is true and you’re misrepresenting it by putting it so negatively. I don’t know. I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on myself.”

  Anne snorted derisively. “That’s foolish. Look at yourself objectively now. It’s April, you have less than two months left, and you have no idea what you’ll be doing next year. Or where.”

  “Ah, that’s the heart of the matter, isn’t it? ’Or where.’ You expect me to go trotting after
you to Boston like some obedient puppy, but because I’ve made no definite plans to do so you call me ’amorphous.’ Anne, what assurances can you give me? Why should I bend my thinking to suit yours?”

  “Because my plans are less flexible.”

  “And that’s of your own making,” McIlweath shot back. “I’ve never found rigidity to be very workable.”

  “Tom, I’ve gotten into Harvard Med. Do you know what that means? And do you realize how many excellent graduate schools there are in Boston? You could go to any one of them.”

  “But why should I? So we can go on for another year or two like this? Arguing with each other and taking each other for granted? Where the hell’s the warmth, Anne? There’s not much left anymore, at least not lately. I wonder if the stakes are high enough for me to follow you.”

  Anne sat in icelike silence. She looked straight ahead through the windshield. McIlweath, now engaged, would not back down.

  “For more than a year I’ve catered to your whims, Anne. I’ve not been too forward, I don’t think, and I’ve rarely imposed my own preferences when you’ve been at odds with them. You’ve dictated our social life almost totally. I’ve gotten to know your family intimately while I’ve ignored my own friends. Damn it, Anne, I’ve been absorbed by you. I’ve been sucked into your world without so much as a loose button left behind. I’ve been convenient for you.”

  “I’m sorry to have been such a burden on your free spirit.”

  “Don’t misread me, Anne. I’ve done what I’ve done of my own choice, and it hasn’t been without its rewards. You’re a marvelous companion and I care about you deeply. You’re brilliant and naïve and challenging and charming. I’m scared to death of losing you. But have you ever really made me feel secure? Have you ever really confessed your own feelings for me? You’ve never seemed the slightest bit grateful for my accommodations. You seem to expect them. And there are times when you seem so remote, like last summer when you were in training. Days can go by without so much as you calling me. Am I important to you, Anne, or am I merely a diversion who occasionally does you some service? Sometimes I have my doubts, and you play upon them. You use them very well.”