“God dammit!” God damn it.
Foster clutched his head in his hands, and he collapsed to the floor. He lay there holding his head, fetal and contorted. He lay there in his robe and socks; lay there with the pistol butt and ammunition box piercing his rib. And he thought of Christmas. Not of last Christmas, with microwave cuisine before the wet-smoldering fire, but the Christmas before—in D.C. He pictured his father—the water running in the sink—the wet strap of his new tourbillion: a Cartier from his mother, opened just that morning in private. Pointlessly washing lettuce—to escape in-laws, to feign honest toil—donning it like Halloween makeup, while the cook and housemaid stepped from view that he might pose alone with work. His enmity rising with the addition of each new bath ring of bitters and vermouth—a table chart in gathering force with a festive stemware charm. There was his sister’s husband: a middle-age boy in old man clothes. There was his wife—his ex-wife—and there was his mother standing in the doorframe. His mother standing threateningly in the doorframe; piqued with canine violence—storming the threshold with that matriarchal proxy for bringing down the door. Raging for order and sense and decorum. Foster wanted to talk to her now, he wanted to call her, wanted to hear that tone of pitiable condescension telegraphed from some childhood violation, some early disillusionment in him. He wanted to call Catherine, wanted to hear little Pauline, wanted to hear her smack her lips on the air, he wanted to hear her breathe.
Now he lamented the phone—now it stung, and he groaned into closed eyelids. Stupid. So stupid. He wanted to squeeze his skull in—press it flat beneath his fingers, between his palms—beneath the sheer hydraulic tonnage of his disgust—press the electric charge from his last tingling neuron.
It struck him as humorous then—a mechanical irony: the same load he’d apply to his cranial yolk—till it ran through his own fingers, was the same compression required to hold him in—keep him together; stop him seeping out between his teeth; the corners of his eyes. They were the same. The strength required to reduce him to vacancy and sustain him in cohesion, were the same.
He opened his eyes. He squinted sidelong at the nightlight stabbed into the wall: a small, dim lighthouse to mark the hazards of imagination. He thought of the man from the executive office—The Familiar. He thought of calling him. He wanted to call him and ask about the burning apartments; wanted to ask him what the hell was going on. But this was the one question he could not ask—perhaps the only question he could never ask. The question was a confession—that there was something deeply amiss; that he’d been a fraud; that he’d made a mistake, which like a single pebble’s avalanche—had grown terrible by its own echo; that he’d launched a conspiracy of sloth—had lanced himself on the spear of his own torpor. Nevertheless, he needed to call him. He resolved that he would. The Familiar. Surely it would be horrible. He was waiting for the script—a virus—that Foster no longer possessed. Had been expecting it. Demanded it. Foster resolved to call him—to reset the whole affair.
He’d tell him the computer had failed—been lost or damaged. Destroyed. An awful, regrettable, and unforeseeable accident, had ruined it, erased it; the perfect and delicate thing was gone—evaporated as completely as August or Sachs. But with nothing more than a loan of time and patience, Foster would repeat the work—he would build it all over again—and it would be fine and beautiful. The very thing he’d asked for: a functional and potent proof of concept. And Foster would do it, too. He resolved that he would do it, just as he resolved that he would call—the man from the executive office. It was the only thing to do. He would call him, would confess to the loss, apologize for the delay—for the action of powers beyond his control. And then he would set to it. He would settle down, in honest labor, and do it. This is what he would do. This is what he would do. Would do.
Then Charles Foster closed his eyes.
2.
Foster woke in the late morning. The nightlight glow softly from the baseboard. His cheek was slick with saliva. His face burned from the bristled imprint of carpet. His hands were numb and senseless for the odd angles of his arms, and his side felt as it were spilling vivid, colorful pain from where he’d lay on the gun and box corners. In the hall a warm breakfast light fell orange and dappled over the shards of phone, and when he could move, he moved toward this with hands and knees. He rooted through debris for the SIM card, and when he’d found it in a chassis fragment, he rest on his elbow with it for some time.
At the mall he was washed and pressed. He upgraded his phone for a fee—generally reconstituted its hard alpha-numeric memories for a fee—watched an affable father of two perform the gestures for which he provided the fee; and sat in an armchair at the foot of the escalator abrading his knuckles on his chin and considering the store’s Rorschach banner—a punctuation in strenuous exercise—and roused the new phone on its splash of factory charge. He was thinking about his father again: as a boy, walking in the yard, following as he trod along mole tunnels with the index of his heel and muttered curses. Cuffed trousers draped the laces. Wingtips like polished obsidian, knife-edged and uncreased. They bore into the bread-soft caverns like spade teeth; arrow points launched into the earth with ambivalent prosecutorial malice. Something in the vision turned him back to thoughts of The Familiar—the call; the reset; the work. He should do it before his courage drained—before all his temperature left. The dangling spectacles on their jaunty cord: he should do it now, while they were in view: feed the furnace while the shovel’s up. But he also wanted to test his voice, run flight checks on his tongue; prime the mechanisms of his corrective deceit. He also wanted to wait: also wanted not to call. Ever.
He rang his mother’s line instead, listened as it rang through five times to voicemail. He imagined her severe gaze. He imagined her mock surprise in answering, as though he might be calling out unexpected from the other room. He imagined her sitting through a boutique horticultural seminar while groundskeepers tended the lawn. He imagined her at ribbon cuttings; ship christenings; library dedications; all manner of consecration in presidential denomination. He thought again of Pauline: a furniture decoration; a human simulacra with damp eyes and feral whispers. He rang Catherine’s line as he thought this. It rang five times through to voicemail. He imagined the flare of her nostril; he imagined the delicately turned undercarriage of the lower lip he had once enjoyed. He imagined her watching the phone ring through.
The rustle of warm fabrics and the shuffle and snag of shoe rubbers filled the space with a basketball court solemnity. Decorative carpet lay at his feet and the patter of footfalls across it vanished with the pause of shopping casters over entry mats. He imagined The Familiar, feet beneath his shoulders in naval brace—as though the ground under his feet might swell with whitecaps; pitch like ship-deck. He should call him. He saw him peering over coffees at him in Tel Aviv; he saw him gazing unblinking into the sky-lit fountain—the water aflame in bitter starlight. He should call him. He should call him from the car in the parking garage. He thought of himself calling August; calling Sachs. He thought of himself calling his mother; Catherine—calling to reach through and raise tickles of paternity. He should call him from the car, he thought. And then, like August, he was calling him. The phone was ringing—from impatience and fear: dread. ring— A dread he no longer had the courage to wait to face. Ring— He couldn’t wait for the car. It was a piss that won’t hold. Ring. He would’ve made it fifteen steps and courage would’ve let go all down the inseam and into his socks.
It rang three times. It went to voicemail. There was no message. Just a short marker tone: a sour beep the color of red indicator light. The sort of thing on intercom panels and old English cars. Small and round. Three rings and a flash of sound the color of history. Foster felt like standing. Saw himself standing. As though it were the action to follow a cue. A comment for bodily articulation. A judgment in self-reliance. But he did not stand. He sat in the chair. And the chirp of sneakers and the animat
ed rasp of thighs in cloth and the tick-over of escalator handrail and the high, empty gymnasium sound—all lifted away from him in murmuration.
3.
“Why would I not be sure? Memory troubles?—eyesight? A question to do with integrity? For what reason? Why wouldn’t I be sure?”
“Certain. I just meant—certain,” said Charles Foster, kneading his jaw with his thumb. He’d stopped off at his dealer’s—a little tramp of Kirkwood house—sat in a threadbare recliner while he’d waited for his prescription to be filled, and been served an appetizer of four stiff lines on a china plate. And now his jaw cramped painfully.
“Whether I’m certain or just goddamned sure, look pretty well the same from here. From right here. I’m certain I would like to know on what basis you ask? Right? Like who are you? Right?”
Foster had stepped out of the dealer’s with high voltage ringing in his ears—vibrated down the dog-shit lawn to the car; folded a paper rose with gritted teeth; stashed the laminated brick in the seat springs, and drifted east. And now squinted across the bar at a rare 1950s edition of ethnic Mediterranean stereotypes.
“I’m a friend,” said Foster.
“Right, because her friends all come up here to ask after her. Her mailing address, right? Milkman leaves cold bottles at the door, right? No: ‘patron,’ man, ‘patron’ is the word you want—you were a friend you’d know what the hell, right? You’d know.”
He stood opposite Foster at the bar. For all he knew, a doorman just slipped back to crib a drink. His brow was smooth and untroubled. It bore the dimple of a once-sharp impact and a lone crease bisecting shallow crown from heavy Cro-Magnon slope. A cape of neck fastened at his shoulders, and the nose was pressed flat at the bridge. Foster’s own nostrils were numb and dry and tender all at once, and he pressed them with a sniff to compose whatever thought would come.
“Lilith? Lilith,” he said.
“Only horses with fast names race, right? Look man, I told you, nobody’s seen her; the girls haven’t; I haven’t; and she’s not on the schedule for any shifts. Maybe I should be asking you.”
“Would she go by something else? Would someone else know?”
The man straightened. “There’s nothing else. And there’s no one else to know it. One friend to another: have a drink—go have a sit with one of the girls; or maybe you’ve just got other shit to do.”
Foster stepped back in a centering reflex and looked down at the man—a flesh boulder in fabric wrap: his gaze flitted over the club—its horizon of paisley carpets; its decorative accents in black enamel paint and corrugated metal sheet; its thin brass pillars—fire poles of material need down which seraphim slide but never ascend. He was no longer looking for the girl, but landmarks, anchors of recognition, and finding none he turned from the man at the bar and left.
He crossed the knurl of gravel lot; mounted the high chair of the Suburban, and sat in hungry dejected silence. He was raging with deep and convulsive loneliness. A reservoir taking collection for days; rising with each precipitating subversion; an ungovernable lust for witness, for the anechoic presence of company—he’d left the club and felt the moment of overtop, felt the inundating motion. And this time when he lifted the phone; this time when he dialed; this time when it rang, there was an answer: the cool and childlike voice of Kim Soong.
4.
Charles Foster broke eggs in a skillet. He searched refrigerator drawers, but in vain. A tomato with frost of mold; onions tumbling in rubbery desiccation; bag of peppers mottled with disease. So he took his eggs with ketchup. Runny whites over scritch of fork. He sat with the computer folded to the side and paper rose for breakfast cordial. He ate to the sound jowls and cutlery and cleared the plate to yellow entrails. And he opened the paper rose, carefully unfolded and admired its tuft of pollen. It was Sunday. The blinds were lifted. The curtains pulled. And light was in the room, smoky and new. It didn’t make Foster hopeful, but it gave him the mood of hope. He fashioned a straw; rolled the bill carefully against the table, and leaned in to celebrate the promise of the rose. He had called Kim Soong—made a lunch date for today. He’d sit elbowed up to the plate glass on South Grand and look over the table at her; her simple smudge of airbrushed features, and he would smile, he would feel easy and relieved; he would be pressed into service as a physical being, and he would be saved: absolved from his terrors and his doubts and his loathing—by the company of woman. Not a special or beautiful woman, perhaps, but woman nonetheless. He’d reached out to grasp at a common ordering principle—and by this common ordering principle he would be saved. A catch-rope to stop his slide; to resurrect him from his opened cavity. He felt pride at the insight: the ingenuity—the commission of action. He would save himself by the tools at hand, and had bent them creatively to purpose. He would endure; he would meet Soong; he would reset; he would work; he would hear from The Familiar; he would craft the script. He would persist. Prosper. It’s all in the head—he said aloud. It was decided. These were matters of the mind: thinking and making and being. They were cause on cause on effect. It’s a change of mind—he said. Just concentrate. Reset. And for the reset, a change in mind. He rolled the straw on the table. He put a hand on the laptop. The force required to crush him was the same force required to bind him together. He remembered the thought. Replayed it with its epiphanic pearlescence. He caressed the computer: the toolkit of his escape: his vindication. And he considered the straw: a bit of new currency: tight and perfect tube of bill. Not even once spent and already adulterated to a purpose. He considered the rose, touched its delicate petals, turned it to observe its alternative angles. He thought of his fingers’ touch against those petals; he thought of his mind enlivening that touch; he wondered where between the petals and the fingers and the touch and the mind which animated it, might he be? The thought was rare and quick and exhausting—like the misfire of a cantankerous vapor lamp. It was intrusively unfamiliar; dazzling; and it left a voided cavity in its retreat. Foster wanted to be outside then. Something in the thought made him want to be outside. He wanted to drink coffee and go to the gym; he wanted to be in the light. And he would be. He decided he would be. He tenderly refolded the paper rose—untouched, unvisited—closed its petals and pushed it away. He moved it across the table with the index of both hands. He pushed it beyond the computer and past the yellow plate, leaned forward with extended arms, until it was nearly on the opposite side of the dining room table—a closed lotus floating in a high-stain lagoon. Just so far the distance was appreciable. Just so it was out of reach.
5.
When he arrived he threw the doors wide. Wide, so that they whistled on their dampers. He’d left the epiphany at the table and dressed for the gym; stopped in Clayton for coffee. He’d sat in the window and taken on the lazy patter of conversation, the Sunday blazers and broaches, the exclamations of steam wand. It felt civilizing, to sit among the amused and astonished, to be a professor with a corner table and coffee, to imbibe crooked paintings and periodicals, thumb-worn and castaway. And when, finally, he’d arrived at the gym he’d thrown the doors wide in exaltation. A deacon in adulated rush to sermon. He threw the doors and strode in to be received—muggy with the spice of forgotten wash—it was a threshold, real and discernable, and where it touched him now, it was honest and aspirational—today it was the stink of the approach.
Foster felt cheerful and gracious, despite the welling of the nag at the back of his sinus—the dull and needful itch. He worked light weights in the mirror and walked vigorously on the treadmill; he reflected confidently on his work to do—on the coming school week—on his lunch with Kim Soong—on the view onto Forsyth through tinted windows—on the exquisite hatchling: on little Pauline. He resolved to see her; that he would find a way to D.C.—soon; that he would love her better. When all this was resolved he would see her, bring her blankets and soft things, and new and better love.
He took this thought down the
narrow passage to the locker room—changed to trunks and towel: changed for the pool. Institutional white, and tiled, with an exposed trellis of joists and ceiling beams: the room was large and enclosed; sealed from the natural day, and rippling in strange polychrome artifacts of light. Lane markers and buoys and depth registers and the full, chlorinated brine of a manufactured sea, neither moving nor still. Foster had padded down the hall and past the elaborate counter and its elastic and joyful attendants and through the moistened door and into the pool room, warm to breathe and cold to touch, and oddly and happily, empty. It was a gift, he thought lightly; a token offering to his new good humor and his virtue. A sign that, however unsteadily, he’d managed to stumble both his feet upon the beam: a high, and right, throughway to the end. He eased off his sandals, slipped them neatly beneath a chair. He lay his towel, removed his shirt and entered the alkaline waters gently from the edge.
He knelt into the shallows and let the water hold him to the chin. It was soft and firm and tingled with discomfort everywhere it did not touch: above the waterline; his cavities; his muscle fiber. He was shimmering and porous. His edges fluttered and swelled; simultaneously expanded and contracted. He thought of Catherine bending the folding knife. He saw her handing it to him. Saw it in his palm: his incredulous palm. He saw her working at the cap of a baby food jar with it—a surgical point in high carbon steel. Wrestling at the lid, as if it were a screwdriver or butter knife—all the while imperiled. In perfect ignorance and material danger. You said it was a good knife—she’d said. He and the knife had misled her. He could feel himself receding; his envelope withdrawing: arms and legs, to torso, to chest, to lungs, to heart—and simultaneously expanding into the pool; impregnating its matter; crystallizing; vascularizing. He was populating its volumes; he was making bodily contact with hollow buoys; with slurping drains and traps; with greasy walls and gritted floor.
Equipment Page 17