by Chris Stuck
Ernie and I didn’t say anything to each other. He slumped on the hood of my car and let his bum arm dangle. After fifteen long minutes, Ralph’s truck crawled around the corner like a tank and stopped in the middle of the street, all of its spotlights blazing. Ralph jumped out and hobbled over to us, wiping blood from his upper lip. He blew his nose and spat a wad to the ground. “This is the third broken nose in three years. You guys okay?”
I said I was fine.
“Ernie?” Ralph studied his face.
“Leave me alone, you asshole.”
“Where is she?” I peered into the cab, expecting to find her restrained in the passenger seat, but it was empty.
“In the back,” Ralph said.
I turned to the truck bed and saw the outline of her big body. Ralph and I walked around to the tailgate. “What the fuck did you do to her?”
He scratched his neck. “I was chasing her, and she ran into my fender. I was only going five miles an hour.”
Phiney lay on her stomach, groaning like she was dreaming. Her arms were bent at her sides. Three linked cuffs held her wrists over the small of her back. I followed the length of her body and saw that she had only one slipper on. Her other large foot was bare and callused. I couldn’t believe I was standing there with two white dudes I barely knew, over the body of a woman I just helped hunt down, a Black woman.
“We need an ambulance.”
“No, we don’t,” Ralph said. “Calling an ambulance will open a can of worms we can’t close. No, she got her clock cleaned, that’s all. Seen it a hundred times.”
I leaned over the truck bed and watched her. Her face twitched. The rhythmic rising and falling of her body showed she was breathing. Her eyes fluttered, and she mumbled gibberish, something about going to jail. We were just standing there when Ernie lifted her large foot and gazed at it.
Ralph was too busy massaging his nose to notice. “It was hell getting her in here,” he said. “She’s five hundred pounds if she’s an ounce.”
Ernie held Phiney’s foot loose in his hand, as if it had just fallen into his palm. His head tilted to one side. Her other slipper rested against her leg. It was the biggest terry cloth slipper I’d ever seen. I picked it up and eased it onto her foot. Ernie set her leg down. We didn’t dare look at each other.
* * *
Ernie and I didn’t talk much on Monday night. We barely drank. His left arm was in a sling, and I had a knot on my forehead. It was around one in the morning, and we were watching a documentary on his phone. It was about African pelicans, how they migrated north, stopping at lakes and rivers for rest and water. About halfway through their trip, though, they ran into a drought. What used to be a lake the size of a football field had dried to dust. The British dude narrated so heartlessly. The ground was cracked, waves of heat wiggling up. The pelicans stopped flying and started walking so their chicks could keep up. After a few days, they had to leave the chicks behind. For their own survival, the British dude said. They showed the pelicans flying away as the chicks on the ground watched them go. Some of the chicks flapped their wings. Some still walked. One simply stopped. It didn’t squawk or try to fly. It just sat there and waited.
“That’s messed up,” I said. “The cameraman’s right there, I’m sure he’s got some water.” I sat forward and wrung my hands.
“They can’t,” Ernie said, flatly. “It’d mess up the flow of nature.” It was about the only thing he said all night.
* * *
When seven rolled around, quitting time, Mr. Doberman strolled in the door, smiling as usual. One look at us, though, and he was confused. “What the hell happened to you two?”
I glanced at Ernie. He didn’t want to talk. “Rough weekend,” I said. It was probably the most I’d ever said to the dude.
He blinked a few times. I could see his wheels turning. What stupid shit had we been up to while he wasn’t there? An empty fifth of Rebel Yell that we’d forgotten about stuck up out of the trash can next to the front desk. He picked it out and held it up by two fingers. He eyed both of us again before dropping the bottle back into the trash. “Fellas?” he said. “Don’t come back here. And don’t think about asking me for a reference.”
He watched us go. I looked over my shoulder and saw Doberman glancing around, inspecting things. It made me want to go back and apologize. This isn’t the real me. I’m not usually like this. But I turned and jogged up to Ernie. We went out to our cars like any other morning. I began to think on that morning, genius that I was, that maybe I’d attached myself to the wrong person. Ernie was so pitiful with his back hunched, his arm pressed tight to his body by the sling. We’d probably never see each other again, but all I said was, “Later, man.” I got in my car and let him leave out of the parking lot first. He didn’t give me his usual wave.
I’m still not sure what Ernie and I were to each other. We weren’t alike, really. We hadn’t picked each other. Life had put us together. I knew almost nothing about him. I didn’t know where he grew up, couldn’t say if he was left-handed or right-handed. I didn’t even know where he lived. I thought I should’ve known at least one true thing about him. That’s probably why I followed him that last day.
I stayed a few car lengths behind, expecting to tail him home to some run-down apartment building or maybe a dingy trailer. To my surprise, he stopped in a cookie-cutter residential neighborhood a few miles from the museum. He parked in front of a ranch house across from a golf course. The house was a dull blue with white shutters and boxy bushes. A sprinkler shot a long jet of water over the lawn. As I parked a half block or so behind him, a middle-aged woman in a yellow robe came out on the front steps to water her plants. When she saw Ernie posted across the street, she paused there, and her face stiffened.
A second later, another woman came outside. She wrapped her arm around the wife’s waist. They both glared at Ernie before turning to go back inside, first the wife and then the teacher. He didn’t get out or try to talk to them. He just sat there in front of the house, probably tipping his head back to take a drink.
I stayed there for five minutes, realizing this was a funeral. He eventually pulled away, and I turned my car around and went back to my rented house. I sat by the phone, trying to pump myself up to call Sylvie. I rearranged all our furniture, worked up a good sweat, and then stopped. This call wasn’t going to be easy. It was my last chance. After some hesitation, I dialed the number. I circled the living room as the line rang. By the tenth ring, I thought no one was there, but I let it keep going. I turned and something made me look back. I could see the long black phone cord trailing behind me just like a tail. And that was when someone finally answered.
Chuck and Tina Go on Vacation
All their friends were doing it: traveling to interesting places, staying in amazing rentals. Mike and Kenya were the first. In December, they went to Bali and rented one of those over-water bungalows. They posted videos of themselves diving into the ocean right from their porch and dog-paddling to a swim-up bar. #balibrunch. In April, Ricky and Sanjay went to the South of France and posted videos of themselves dressed in robes and stocking caps, roaming their rented château like Ebenezer Scrooge. #castlelife.
June wasn’t much better. Lisa and Marla went to Iceland and stayed in a modern fortress. They asked Chuck and Tina to go, but unfortunately Chuck and Tina couldn’t swing it. “It has a private chef,” Marla said. “Are you sure? The food’s gonna be cray-cray.” No, Chuck and Tina said. They were sure. All of Lisa’s and Marla’s posts consisted of plates of food, puffin, lamb, walrus, each dish speckled with luscious sauces.
Upon seeing them, Tina sat Chuck down, and they liked each and every post so as not to appear jealous.
“But are we jealous? I don’t feel jealous.”
“That’s because we’re not. We’re just happy for our friends, the way they’d be happy for us.”
After a moment, he said, “Do you think they’d be happy if we went somewhere interesting and amazin
g, too?”
Without hesitation, she said, “Probably not.”
* * *
The right place for them came along in September. Jabari, a friend of a friend, had just finished renovating a small rental in Mexico. He had a weeklong slot open, and Chuck and Tina could have it at a discount. The only problem was Mexico wasn’t exactly high on their list. It wasn’t that they were prejudiced, classist, or some snobby first-worlders. They were Black. They were conscious. They were woke. It was just that they’d already been to Cabo and now wanted to go somewhere more exotic, Madagascar, Uruguay, somewhere their friends had never been. “So, instead of being snobs,” Chuck said, “we’re just picky and competitive.” He pulled at his soul patch.
“Yeah, but who isn’t all those things?” Tina swiped through the pictures on the travel site. “Holy shit. The apartment has a private pool. We’ve never stayed anywhere with a private anything.” They were used to hostels and rooms for rent, scary bathrooms shared with who-knows-how-many mysterious people. This place, though, was a work of art, a modern three-bed, two-bath open concept. It was hard to tell where the apartment ended and the patio began. It was new. It was almost like it was theirs.
Seconds after seeing the last pic, Chuck and Tina whipped out their Air Miles card that they had no business putting more money on.
“Fuck it,” she said. “Why the hell can’t we do it?” She clapped like a quarterback ending a huddle.
Chuck hit the Book It Now button and saw the final price. Really, it wasn’t that bad. But all he could think of was their next credit card bill, and their student loans. Their balances were up there, a frothy wave of already-spent cash cresting over their heads. Without meaning to, he made a weary face.
“I’m not making you do this, am I?” She was sitting cross-legged on their old love seat, stroking their cat, Kunta.
“Not at all. This place is cheap as hell, but we have to be careful after this. That means no going out.”
“It means no going out for you, too.”
Chuck nodded. “A little fiscal austerity never hurt anyone.”
Tina nodded, too, but slowly, as though her mind had wandered. She twisted one of her dreads. “But debt is part of being an adult, isn’t it? Besides, I think it’ll be good to have something to look forward to.”
Chuck didn’t really need much to look forward to except a couple of beers after work. But he agreed. Why start a fight when they were supposed to be happy?
* * *
As their plane reached cruising altitude, Tina said, “Can you believe we haven’t been anywhere in five fucking years?” When she was excited, she cursed openly in public. She’d taken full advantage of the weak complimentary coffee before takeoff, stacked it on top of the two cups of real coffee she’d gulped at the gate. Now she was as wired as a cokehead, talking loudly over the noise of the plane. Chuck hated when she got like this, but he knew she hated when he came home from the bar with one too many beers on his breath, knocking over shit.
“Yeah, this is gonna be great. A real recharge.”
“We’re gonna recharge our asses off,” she sang.
“We’re gonna have a pool. We can go skinny-dipping.” After fifteen years, he still thought she was the most beautiful, shapely woman in the world. She, on the other hand, didn’t consider being shapely a good thing. Just the mention of skinny-dipping made her turn away and look out the window, wrinkling her nose as though she’d picked up the scent of a stray fart.
Her long-lost mother had been shapely. She was six months dead now. Chuck was still kicking himself for calling Tina shapely just last week. They were coming home from a friend’s party and were climbing the four flights up to their apartment. He was pretty drunk, and she was really drunk. He was just trying to get some, after so long, but her drinking dysphoria had set in. Too much booze made her morose. “I will never be like my mother. Fuck her drug-addict ass and fuck you, too.” She was suddenly screaming.
Chuck cleared his throat and looked at the floor. “Okay. Fine.” He put his hands up as if he were being robbed.
She tried to hide her shame, but then she turned to him. She jutted out her bottom lip and said, “Sad emoji.” As consolation, she led him into the bedroom, and they lay down. She unzipped his slacks and began to stubbornly jerk his dick. It’d been months. But he’d had too much whiskey at the party. There was a reason they called it whiskey dick. After a few frantic tugs, she just said forget it and dropped his thing like a TV remote with dead batteries. She rolled over in her party clothes. He rolled over in his. They both fell into a long, deep sleep.
* * *
After customs and an hour-long ride with the private driver they booked, they reached the hill town of San Miguel de Allende, in Mexico’s central highlands. Chuck and Tina could feel the elevation in their heads and their lungs. For a moment, they felt drugged but in a good way. It was evening, and they looked out from the comfort of the blacked-out SUV. The streets were cobblestone, the architecture baroque.
Jabari’s place was in the Centro, near spas and boutique hotels, restaurants and coffee shops. The apartment was on the top floor of a two-story bright-yellow building. They walked into a domed living room, the ceiling’s intricate spiral brick pattern making Chuck think of fallen dominoes. To the rear, the lighted pool glowed like an aquarium. It was flanked by a gas grill and a couple of hammocks and teak patio furniture. Just like in the pictures, this place was a work of art. And it actually was hard to tell where the house ended and the patio began. There were six glass patio doors that folded open at the touch of a button. Chuck pressed it, and a small colorful bird flew in, did a quick loop around the living room and then glided out, tweeting as it left. “Oh, hello, little bird,” Tina said.
Chuck kept opening and closing the doors, trying to figure out how they worked, until she told him to stop.
“I love everything about this place.”
“Yeah,” Chuck said. “The smooth concrete just waiting for someone to crack their head open on is really swank.”
Tina playfully flipped him off. She opened the bright cabinetry, ran her fingers along the little Day of the Dead tchotchkes and art on the walls. As they walked through the place, she just kept saying, “Holy fuck. Can you believe this? I can’t believe this.”
Chuck wandered into the kitchen and played with the bank of switches and dimmers for all the different lights. He messed around with the remote-controlled air conditioners and the industrial ceiling fans that spun so fast they looked like they’d fly off and kill you. He opened the gigantic fridge and found Jabari had left it stocked with snacks and beer. “Are you kidding me?” Chuck reached for two cold ones and twisted off their tops. “Okay, babe. I’m convinced. This is gonna be the best trip ever.”
* * *
Their last few vacations had been bad. Years ago, when they went to Japan, everyone told them not to go in June, monsoon season. Chuck and Tina didn’t listen. They were itching to go somewhere, anywhere. Of course, it rained the entire time. They didn’t get to see half of the temples on their itinerary, and most of the restaurants they wanted to try were closed. They’d go back to their tiny Ueno hotel room soaked down to their underwear, their socks blue from the ink bleeding from their jeans. It sounded worse than it actually was, but it seemed to be the beginning of weirdness in their marriage.
All their trips were like that now. Chicago was windy. Miami just wasn’t their style. Even Vancouver, BC, probably the most innocuous place in the world, had been a bust. They’d gone for her thirtieth, a risky proposition since her birthday celebrations had become suicidal events. Just being in a new place made them overdo it on the day drinking. Each night, in their budget hotel room, she cried into her box of takeout, lamenting how old she was. What had happened?
In grad school, they’d had so many good trips, Glacier National Park, the Outer Banks, London. After grad school, they had more good trips, Amsterdam, Paris, Stockholm. They prided themselves on two simple facts: the
y’d never been on a cruise, and they’d never been in a tour group. Their student loans hadn’t cramped their style yet. Chuck and Tina were even beginning to think they were cosmopolitan. “We’ll live abroad one day. I just know it,” Tina said.
Now, who knew? They’d recently developed aches and pains and the need to use reading glasses. They’d rounded the age of thirty-five. Death was just up ahead. So, at this stage in their lives, did they really need to live abroad? They already lived in Brooklyn. What would be the point?
* * *
Chuck stumbled through the apartment for some bottled water in the fridge. Evidently, it was morning, and he was hungover. They’d drunk a lot and, it turned out, gone skinny-dipping, too. Yeah, he remembered that now, slightly. Their clothes were strewn all over the patio, along with empties of Jabari’s beer. As Chuck awakened further, he felt a familiar crustiness in his boxer briefs. He looked down in there, and the sour funk of intercourse wafted out. He smiled to himself. It was such a lovely smell. He even felt lighter, maybe from finally getting rid of his pent-up sperm. But then he felt terror light through him. He’d had sex with his wife and now didn’t remember a second of it. Shit, they really had to stop drinking. He went back to the bedroom and found Tina twirling one of her dreads around her finger and staring at the ceiling, wide awake.
“Everything okay?” he said.
She blinked and didn’t answer.
“Hello?” He handed her a bottle of water.
“I nodded yes.” She rolled away from him and drank. She did this sometimes. She was thinking about something, and it was best not to ask what it was. “I’m hungover, okay? Leave me alone.”
“It’s okay. We’re good.” He thought of asking if she’d found a new therapist. She’d had a minor disagreement with her last one. But he knew she’d just ask if he’d found one, too. After his father passed, he’d gone and talked with a soft-spoken white guy named Bob without telling her. At first, she thought he was having an affair. He eventually admitted he’d been seeing Bob, and then he ended it as though it were an affair. He didn’t want people knowing he was in therapy. For him, it was as bad as knowing someone frequented a prostitute.