by Joy Williams
“Your ambitions are all admirably boundless,” Gordon said. “I’m curious as to how Foxy intends to destroy the United States Navy.”
“Mess with their computers. It’s so easy. Like picking pockets. I have a gift.”
“Must be an idiot savant,” a man in sunglasses said.
Foxy shrugged. “Maybe.”
Gordon scanned the room impatiently.
“You, Scarlett,” he piped, “why are you still here? It’s time to leave, face reality.”
“I’m not at my strongest,” Scarlett said.
“You’re terminal,” Gordon squeaked. “You don’t get any stronger.”
“You’ve got to feel the time is ripe and I have something of a headache.”
“That light show at the corner of your eyes is not a celebration in your honor, it’s the tumor moving in,” Gordon said. “Shall I escort you out of here myself?”
“You certainly will not,” Scarlett said indignantly. “You shouldn’t even be back. It’s highly unusual. You don’t have the authority to come back.”
“I’ll go with you,” Foxy said.
“That would be nice,” Scarlett said with little enthusiasm. “My son would but his career keeps him busy. He sells his sperm. He’s giving away my grandchildren right and left. He calls his jism ‘White Eagle.’ ”
“We’re glad you’re back, Gordon, and I guess we’re all interested in how you managed it,” the man in the dark glasses said, “but you can see the problem here. Poor lady’s lost it. Which brings up a number of moral concerns that weren’t in play before. She can no longer be considered responsible, hell, she can no longer—”
Scarlett hissed dismissively. She had never seen old Tom without his black glasses but she imagined his eyes as two dark caves where the little bats lived. She didn’t want to look at him. It was preferable to look at the aged lint congealed in a corner of Laundery, though it moved if you looked at it too long. She felt weirdly confident, amazed by the fact of her continuing existence even here. And shouldn’t it be enough to feel that astonishment and have other people be happy for you? Though it seemed, actually, as her mind cleared a little, as the gaily darting lights that Gordon had so annoyingly perceived withdrew, that this amazement boded badly even, that this euphoria—this euphoric occasional confidence in being—was hardly more than a physical phenomenon prefiguring demise or dementia—whichever, really there was hardly a hairbreadth’s of difference between them—a phenomenon sometimes not so gently derided by medical professionals.
Old Tom was jawing away, now referring with little delicacy to marbles and their loss and arguing that Scarlett could no longer be sent forth to perform indifferent justice.
“Impartial,” Scarlett corrected him. “Impartial justice.”
Gordon grinned. His small teeth looked as though they were about to fall out of his mouth.
“I know,” Scarlett assured them all. “If no one asks me I know. If I want to explain it to a questioner, I do not know.”
“The problem with elderly terminals is they get canny,” Tom pushed on. “They slip the bonds of conviction real quick. One minute they’re with the theorem, the next they’re as indisposed to dying as any civilian. And once they go gaga, they can’t be utilized, it isn’t ethical.”
“Ethics is going to be the ruin of this operation,” Gordon said. “Still, I think it would be helpful to summarize who and what as a group we are.” He closed his eyes as though in prayer. They were lashless. “We are not an assisted-living facility. We are not an assisted-dying facility.”
“We are not depressed, we are not suicidal. We are emotionally sober,” Foxy said fiercely.
Slowly, the eyes opened. “You must have loved your little Twelve Step before you came here,” Gordon said.
“So what, why not,” Foxy sulked. She wondered if his pecker was as shredded and gribbled and nicked as the rest of him or whether it hung wondrously, impossibly smooth and aloof, its head like burled oak. She’d like to coax it out and mock it. Still, Gordon was kind of cool.
“Tonight is the first night of the rest of your life,” Gordon warbled.
“Don’t ask me to explain that first day thing,” Foxy said. “I’m not defending nobody but I learned a lot from those people. Like I felt I was made for loneliness but deep down I thought it wasn’t so and then I discovered I was made for loneliness. Getting off the big H made me more common, sure, but I’m dedicated, I’m legit. I don’t want to collapse in some line, waiting to buy a movie ticket, pissing my panties. I don’t want to be in some hospital bed, gaping at some cute intern, being totally undignified in front of some cute intern. Accomplishing my death rattle for his edification. I don’t want to be on the toilet. So many times people telling you about the deceased try to be discreet about it but you know the truth…So-and-so died parked on the toilet, making every effort…I want to go out like a bride, not like some bug. I want to be part of the future. Lola’s given us a great opportunity here. This campaign is awesome. It’s a very awesome campaign. We will bring about the collapse of the collapse recovery. We are the agents of collapse in this delicious campaign against the morally colorless and corrupt. I’m ready for a proud and wolfish death. With my death, an active death, I’ll make the world more wolfish.”
She stopped and looked around shyly.
Khristen heard someone whispering to her, Why don’t you speak, don’t you know how to speak with us…
“If I may, I want to say I’m ready now,” Scarlett said. “I don’t remember things like I used to but that’s a gift that’s given to us aged that is not sufficiently admired. Everything remembered is what’s dead and everything you can’t remember lives. That’s what I got out of that lovely, lovely speech.”
“Do you want me to go with you?” Foxy asked.
“Didn’t I say that would be nice,” Scarlett said. “That would be nice.”
“Go then,” Gordon said grandly. “Disappear into the dark, into the wet unwild, leave the butts and bounds of our poor little community, skirt the slack waters of our trapped rotting lake, this lake which reeks in silent torment, forever corrupted yet harboring life, her green warm fish, her liquidities ever throwing themselves forward, chewing through their obscure element, ever toward no new place, no promised country or other shore…”
“Ah Gordon, you have a way with the words,” the chorister said.
“The womb of nature and perhaps her grave,” said Lola.
An enormous cockroach sauntered across the floor. Honey startled as a memory stirred within her remarkable chest, the irreducible essence of her high school days returning to her with its odor of lipstick and wool. There was a chemistry teacher they were all mad for. He once demonstrated how a cockroach without its head could learn not to dip its leg in water from which it received a shock.
“I think our problem—one of our problems anyway—is acclimatization,” Tom said. “Who could imagine that it was possible to become accustomed to these rooms, this lake, these…” he indicated the group with a vague sweep of his hand, “…companions. When I first came here I had visions. They’d come in waves. Boom Boom Boom. It’s been days, weeks now since I’ve had one.”
Honey watched the cockroach which was the size of a kitten vanish under a splintered baseboard. Oh, she’d thought the world of that chemistry teacher. He’d certainly been the handsomest man in town.
“Acclimatization is very much a concern,” Gordon said. He smiled and his teeth looked like small golden fish resting in the darkness of his mouth.
I miss…Khristen thought, I miss…She felt transfixed, impaled, untranslated. She’d changed so much so as not to miss it even more, for that’s how you change—by missing something too much and pretending not to.
“What happened to ya, Gordon,” the chorister called out. “You look very awful. Scaly, speckled. A dead ringer for a g
host.”
“I had gone forth,” Gordon said. “I harbored no hope of returning to you.”
The chorister nodded, stroking the sofa fretfully.
“The weather, as would be expected, was extreme. The wind! The wind here is but a breeze compared to it. I found myself on a wide road leading to my destination. The wires of great fallen poles struck out at me and lashed me as I walked and I accepted their bitings and lashings.”
“You got a number of infections I think,” Hector noted.
“It was later revealed to me that the wires had been favored by certain assemblies of birds at their toilette. Larks.”
“Larks!”
“Once known for their jubilant song and their pathetic habit of nesting on the ground.”
“How ironic that it would be the humble lark,” Hector said.
“Flesh-eating microbes have now taken up residence on my body,” Gordon said. “I am told that I’m not infectious, not that that would trouble you, I assume. I admit that I rather enjoyed returning, walking through the great repulsed or pitying throngs of this tumbreled world. Repulsed or pitying, the emotions have become so similar. Some were angered that they were forced to perceive me, my appearance, but most ignored me, denied me. Denial is now an art, a social grace, a survival tool, as is apathy which has become a sign of refinement.” He paused, and with a peculiar gesture crossed his arms over his chest. “What was your experience?”
After a moment, Khristen realized he was addressing her. “I didn’t return, I just arrived,” she said.
“That’s true, Gordon,” Lola said.
Some reiterated the understanding that guests were not permitted among their number. This was no place for observers or visitors. The motel was provided for the rather distasteful concept of guests. The motel, where figures lounged about talking about nothing in particular as though nothing had happened.
“Maybe you can tell us a little more of the situation out there, Gordon,” Tom said. “What’s the moral temperature of the population?”
“I just love the way he talks sometimes,” Honey confided to Khristen.
“People who lack all sympathy are feeling better about themselves. The more a person doesn’t care the freer he becomes. The new thinking is that compassion is nothing but self-cannibalization.” Gordon yawned, a fearsome sight.
“Any centralized command?” Tom asked. “Guidance from any quarter?”
“Any art?” the chorister wondered. “I suppose worship has fallen off?”
“There’s the usual useless guidance. Worship is negligible. Art’s decor, and is mostly confined to depictions of the harrow. Some of it’s pretty abstract but if people can be assured it’s a harrow it will find acceptance. Representations of the harrow are in all government facilities that remain and homes are encouraged to display the image as well. It started out as a bit of nostalgia but devolved into a sign of respect, of self-acknowledgment. No one gives thanks to it of course, just respect. It’s a unifying symbol. Says, We will not be overcome. Pretty much everything is up and running again. The amusement industry has heroically reestablished itself. Disney World has rebooted and is going strong.”
“Disney World!” The chorister paled. He had suffered his first extreme breakdown there when he perceived his archenemy, the magnificent and unapproachable thurifer, approaching him in deceitful welcome costumed as Minnie Mouse.
“The mega-technological fantasy of glorified and constant consumption in controlled and utopian worlds which prepare people psychologically for life in denatured artificial environments has never been more popular.”
“Does it rain there still?” Hector said. “Is it spring? It must be about time.”
“Outside of entertainment there’s more subservience, more allegiance to a non-conciliatory unified and robust response to threat. All that is non-human is considered detrimental to the future. All conservation attempts are considered reactionary. Any suggestion to repair or renew our relationship with nature is perceived as an attempt to exploit a crisis. People think the planet is attempting to make threats—the withdrawal of spring—and nonnegotiable demands, and it pisses them off.”
…I’ve thought about you and thought about you, Khristen heard the voice say faintly, and wondered when I’d see you again…
“There are few prohibitions,” Gordon went on, waving away the moths that were approaching him in wonder. “Rules are considered too onerous in this time of stress. People have to blow off steam. Arson has become popular again. Let this fucking land of ours that has turned against us burn, is the prevailing sentiment.” Gordon regarded his purulent knuckles, worse on the left than the right.
“What about our exhortations that were always part of our actions?” Honey asked. “Weren’t they occasionally persuasive? Scarlett wrote a highly detailed informative paper, didn’t she? I never read it but…”
“No need to bother with manifestos anymore. There’s no interest in tolerating arguments for paradigm shifts.”
“So those who’ve gone before us…their efforts haven’t made any difference then?” Honey said.
“Just added to the general mayhem. Of course no one’s put two and two together yet concerning the resort here and more directed sabotage out there.”
“Are suicides prevalent?” Tom asked.
“Figures are way down. The few that occur are committed in the old-fashioned manner, onanistically, without addressing social, ecological or spiritual issues.”
“You’ve certainly brought back sobering news,” Tom said. “Grave news, I mean.”
“That unfortunately is my report,” Gordon said. “Or most of it anyway.”
“So much to absorb,” Lola said. “I regret we can’t adjourn on a more positive note. But keep in mind, everyone, that nothing must affect our obligations, and prompt departure times must still be met.”
Poor old carling, someone sighed, and Khristen realized she had heard more voices than there were beings in this looted yet still accommodating room because there really weren’t many of them there.
* * *
—
It was time for reflection, Honey reflected. She would maneuver around Gordon’s assessment somehow, keep her spirits high. Their deaths would matter. They would effect, what did he call it, a paradigm shift, the earth would heal as a result of their actions, balance and beauty would return.
She decided she’d stay in the courtyard tonight, her legs were too tired to carry her to her room. She liked the courtyard, where fragments from the resort’s carefree past could still work their way up through the dirt to the surface—cribbage pegs, lanyards, confetti. You really couldn’t call it dirt anymore, least of all soil, because some worm had come through and changed its composition but the stuff was generally referred to as dirt, it being accepted that it was too much trouble to define it as something else.
She settled herself down cautiously. Heart of gold and limbs of lead and several minds directing the whole apparatus. She tried to suppress her longing to have her Cadillac back. Like a great beamy boat it had been transporting the cargo of her body. It would take her anywhere she chose to go. It was harder to get around now, even here, particularly here.
She was old now and it had taken her far too many years to arrive but she could still pinpoint the moment when a chain of events culminated in a debt it had taken her decades to pay off. But that was what happened in a world where you were asleep and made sleepy accommodations as a dreamer would, in a dream.
The first links of the chain appeared in the semblance of a man wanting to resurface her driveway. A few hours later it was a man who wanted to repair the crack in the Caddy’s windshield. She couldn’t even see it but he detected it and offered to fix it. Someone wanted to prune her trees, hang up holiday lights. Life is too short to clean your own house, a woman told her vehemently. Lastly arrived the
vendor with the fish. She was outside, then, still in her bathrobe, wondering what was killing the birds again. She had stopped feeding them, hoping the problem would resolve itself but it had not. A stumpy truck clattered up her driveway.
“Look,” she said, “I don’t even own this place. I’m renting.”
“I want to sell you some beautiful fresh fish. For supper. Join my club for a small fee and each week I’ll deliver a beautiful fish to your drawer.”
“Drawer!” she exclaimed, laughing.
“Door, door, of course,” he said irritably. He had orange hair and wore mirrored glasses.
“No, no, no. No fish. I sympathize with you having to drive around like this trying to make a few bucks but no. No fish.”
He darted around to the back of the truck and raised the door. “Look. Just look please, then decide.”
Something of the purest white with a long needle-like snout lay on a shelf from which water hung in gelid strings.
“What is that?” Honey asked.
“Its head doesn’t have eyes in it. See? The real thing.”
“The real thing,” Honey said. “What is it?”
“From China, this fish. Baiji. From the Yangtze.”
“But how did it get here?”
“Truck. Refrigeration. Latest large aquatic mammal driven to extinguishment. Before that, it was, oh gee, the Caribbean monk seal in the fifties.”
Honey, in her favorite bathrobe, had never felt more vulnerable and decided on the spot that she would discontinue this swanning around in the old comfy thing of a morning.