We Are Not in Pakistan

by Shauna Singh Baldwin

  Colette opens her door a crack, lets Fletcher in and stands in the doorway.

  “Okay,” she says. “Next time, I’ll invite you, and you bring your partner.”

  “Oh, sure! And you’ll invite jealous Tim to be cured, right?”

  She’s see-through. Born in a glass factory.

  “It won’t work, unfortunately. E-mail from Nepal today — my partner says we should, um, separate. Things to work out, he says.”

  For Colette, Nepal is just someplace without Jacuzzis or minibars, and Fletcher can tell she didn’t think they had e-mail. As for the rest, she doesn’t know how to react. “I’m sorry,” she says at last, in a neutral tone she uses with her girlfriends when they split with a guy. “Were you together long?”

  “Twenty years. And I fought my loving parents two years before that, just to be with him.”

  He was looking away.

  “Tim and I were together seven years,” says Colette, as if searching for a parallel.

  “And you’re desperate for a wedding. I understand. Public acknowledgment, right? Two becoming one.”

  Same as Fletch wanting Yoriko for a live-in girlfriend, getting tired of stealth encounters behind park bushes.

  “When I want to be analyzed, Mr. Know-all, I’ll see a therapist,” says Colette with a laugh. “Thank you for a really neat evening. Fletch, are you in?” And, over her shoulder, “Good night.”

  Going upstairs, Colette tells Fletcher that the last time she’d played one guy off against another was in college — a delicate, tedious business. Those college boys had been as predictable as Tim, never coming out well in a political test. Martin, on the other hand — not as predictable.

  She falls asleep without reading a page. Lights on, clothes on, without brushing or flossing or applying her Retinol cream, three glasses of wine being more than she’s had in ages.

  Fletch wonders if gays can be reformed; he would sure prefer living with Martin than with Tim. But he remembers Grandmère reading him a piece from some paper Tim would call radical — probably The New York Times — that said they can’t. Too bad. And Martin is good at weddings. Might be even better at planning his own.

  Fletcher doesn’t think reforming Martin is part of Colette’s game plan, anyway. Which went fairly well for her tonight. But it appears Martin isn’t going to play along, so there’s no way she can go any further.

  All right! Yeah!

  Fletch’s nose twitches. He licks it, then makes his last nightly round of the house. If Yoriko were here, he’d give her one big slurpy kiss and snuggle up to her all night.

  Fletcher finds a nice spot and curls up at Colette’s feet.

  Fletch is in Colette’s dream, barking from a great distance, though his little yapping head is right by her nose. She tries to reach up and push him away but her hands refuse to come with her arms. Light jabs her eyes as Fletcher pulls away her blanket and wrestles it to the ground. He will smother himself. Colette struggles to raise herself on one elbow. She reaches down — hard floor rises to meet her and a sharp pain notifies her she is awake. Fletch disentangles himself from the blanket like a triumphant Houdini and leaps at her again, the whites of his little eyes very close.

  “Stop it!” says a woolly voice something like her own. He tugs at her, growling. He must have to pee badly … Well, better this than messing the rug.

  At the top of the stairs her legs suddenly refuse to carry her. Too much to drink …

  Colette sits down. Her feet look tiny from this distance. Walls warping, colours blending, everything, she muses admiringly, turning very abstract, one colour beginning to predominate: black.

  One corner of her nightie pulling — it’s caught in Fletch’s teeth. Colette drags herself up against the banister, holds on tightly all the way down.

  Bowls of Alpo and water come into focus, still full — he can’t be hungry. And he’s almost ripped off the metal strip at the base of the front door. “Bad dog!”

  No sound comes out. His barking is hammering in her skull. A wave of nausea — this is no hangover.

  Is she being punished for all the Sundays she’s missed church, for too many missionaries turned away from her door, too many refused donations to Father Flanagan’s Boy’s Camp, St. Rita’s Rescue Mission, Save the Children? She should have heeded the Apocalypse Man, the end is near, but he’d been wrong about it coming last New Year’s Eve …

  Kitchen tipping and tilting around her. An eon to drag herself to the phone near the stove. Where’s the nine, the one and the one? Oh no, oh no! She’s passing out; this must be death.

  Where’s God? Jesus, save me!

  The ambulance siren is louder than the Apocalypse Man’s bullhorn, and the things she is saying! The things she can laugh at! And the next minute she is crying for the only mammal who loves her in the whole world. Where is Fletcher? Without him she has no one.

  Someone is holding her around the waist and peeling her fingers off the front door. A scream, her scream, “Fletcher!” The seasoned professional voice talking into the radio belongs to the burly black man beside her. “Seventy-two calling … We’re ten-nineteen. Convulsions, passing out.” He growls something ornery but resigned about being summoned at four in the morning, says it looks like a drug OD to him. Colette tries to say she hasn’t taken any drugs, only a few glasses of wine, but she can’t. He listens, then forces a tube into her mouth, and she can’t make a coherent sound.

  A jolt; the ambulance begins to move.

  Bright overhead lights in Colette’s eyes. She clutches the breathing tube on her chest with both hands in case someone tries to put it back.

  “Fletch! Fletch?”

  “Try not to worry about your dog,” says a coat-shaped man who has risen between her and the lights. “Try not to identify so closely with his needs.”

  A man who looks like Tim springs up at Colette’s bedside, blustering to the man in white about suing the lot of them — has to be Tim. His face close to hers, he strokes her hair.

  He says, a long way off, “The phone rang and all I heard was barking. I thought, oh shit, that pampered little mutt must have hit the speed dial. I waited for you to shut him up, but when that didn’t happen, I got this bad feeling: I should have checked out that wise-ass Martin.”

  He was worried about her. He is still worried; Colette drinks in his anxiety.

  “Anyway I got out of bed, got in the Lex and zoomed over. Found that stupid little animal of yours lying there barely breathing, flat as a pancake with his nose to the base of the front door. Then I found you. On the floor, clutching the phone.

  “I called the paramedics, and by the time they came, I had followed the smell and the engine sound, opened the garage door, and there was that no-good new boyfriend of yours, power-locked into the limousine with the engine running. The fumes must have drifted into the ventilator and up to your bedroom. And I guess we won’t be hearing from him again. Anyway, so the medics realized you weren’t ODed on drugs.

  “Then I came back to the dog and he was so small and weak and not yapping or peeing or undoing my shoelaces any more, just looking up at me with those brown teary eyes. I wanted to leave him to fend for his goddamned little self for a change. But he’d done the best he could — shit, even if he hadn’t, I just couldn’t leave him to die … Colette! Hey, Colette!”

  The walls begin a vertiginous slide, all the surfaces colliding in cubist shards and opening to nowhere. She falls fast, spiralling off into infinity.

  • • •

  Prongs rasp against the soft membrane in Colette’s nose as she bobs near consciousness. Gurney wheels vibrate beneath her shoulder blades. Strong gentle hands. Another siren screeching vaguely. A stranger’s tight voice. “Step on it, man — five minutes and she’s a goner. Move, move!”

  Running and shouting, down a hall past a sign marked Emergency — Triage. The gurney halts before the heavy door to an acrylic cylinder. Colette slides in on chrome tracks, swallowed feet first by the machine. A sound l
ike a refrigerator door closing, sealing shut at her head. She will remember a brass mouth tube expanding her throat, silent air pressing for an instant on her eardrums, and the eerie echo of her interior pinging its message to the universe — please please let me live.

  I am, I am. I want to be.

  Pressure climbs to three atmospheres on the exterior gauge. Colette comes to, breathing in fire. She lies motionless, sweaty-hot. Unreachable woman-pharaoh mummified live in her sarcophagus. Tim’s face at her side. Through the intercom, “Colette! Don’t quit on me. I need you! Hey, you want to be married, Colette, we’ll do it. I promise! I’ll even live with that goddamn dog. C’mon, live!” And as her eyes open wide, he repeats it, nodding vigorously.

  He said “married.”

  Each cell jolts, gasps, takes in air.

  The garage door screeches and thunders, rolling up over Fletcher’s head. The limousine is gone, the scent of death lingers. He leads Colette in, trots into Martin’s wing.

  Fletch has been feeling awful ever since he got back from the vet. As if he had peed everywhere. He didn’t keep his promise to Grandmère and protect Colette enough. He should have woken earlier, barked louder.

  On the speaker phone, because Colette was stirring water into soup, he heard Martin’s partner explain to Colette, “I don’t — that is, can’t — keep any of Martin’s stuff, you know.”

  He was with Martin twenty years and then left him. Does his kind of loyalty deserve a reward? Martin didn’t think so. Colette said his will left everything he owned to charities. “Didn’t leave his partner a frigging cent, just left him all the work.”

  Martin’s partner wrote a formal letter requesting a key as executor of Martin’s estate; Colette sent him one. He packed most of Martin’s personal possessions, anything suitcases could carry, and sent them to the parents who had been ashamed of Martin. Now they’ve got something to be ashamed of — Tim printed a newspaper article from a net archive and read it out loud to Colette, savouring the words: “charged with embezzlement in New York state.” The charities, he said, are going to have to hire someone like him.

  “Robin Hood,” said Colette to Fletch, but only after Tim left.

  Now, in the dining room, Fletch sees Martin like a holographic image. He’s ladling stir-fried vegetables over noodles. He’s rippling all the brown drooping ferns and palms as Fletch passes. Fletch’s nose twitches with his spoor in each room. The bedroom closet is open, Martin’s clothes are gone. The leopard-print linen has been stripped from his bed, only the comforter remains.

  I should never have trusted a cat person. Never.

  Colette sits down on the bed and holds Fletcher. She says there must be a story if only for herself. She says he was friendless, an outcast. Maybe the terror of existence grew larger than he could withstand. Maybe he checked out rather than checking himself in for therapy, counselling, self-remaking.

  She says this, but she’s describing herself, what she might have done in his circumstances. Any story she’s going to tell can only approximate reality. It’ll be a fabrication more fabricated than any she’s constructed before. Its plausibility will rest on the silence of the dead and her own fear that there, but for some neglected intervening deity, might have gone her still-breathing self.

  Fletch thinks she shouldn’t dig too deeply to explain Martin’s death. She’d only be using him again, as a prop in another story.

  She rubs his head, pushes bangs away from his eyes and says, “Tim wants me to sell the place before the wedding. The real estate lady from the Model Home has already called this morning.”

  Fletch growls and chews her hand a bit to say, This is so unfair. What about his job, his job to protect Grandmère’s home?

  She ignores Fletcher and continues. This house, she says, is where her life was almost taken, then given back. It deserves better. And it’s so full of memories. Of Grandmère, her parents. “Besides, selling a house where someone just committed suicide is so difficult. I’ll rent it out.”

  Fletcher wags his tail till he thinks it’s going to fall off.

  Colette lies down on Martin’s black comforter and pulls him close. “Oh, Fletcher, Martin had no one to cry for his last moments in the limousine.”

  Martin was Fletcher’s hope too. At least for a while. Now he’s gone, Tim’s going to think he owns Fletcher. And Colette.

  Fletch licks away Colette’s tears. It’s been a while since she’s cried for anyone other than herself. Then she says, “We’re going to be moving, Fletch.”

  Yoriko! Fletcher feels all of him drooping, not only his ears.

  At least Colette said we’re moving. No plans to give Fletch away to the pound.

  Tim did save Fletch’s life, so Fletch figures he owes him Loyalty for a few years.

  Oh shit! Tim won’t appreciate him.

  Fletcher’s lip curls. Tim better not mess with him or Colette — Fletch’s ancestors were wolves. His pedigree traces all the way back to the lion-dogs who guarded the Emperor’s palace in Lhasa.

  Can anyone predict what a man will do? Fletch doesn’t want to remember how his hackles rose but he couldn’t move to bite Tim. How he nearly passed out with fear that Tim would just leave him there on the floor. And he doesn’t want to remember his tears of relief when Tim picked him up off that floor so someone could rush him to the vet. He who hadn’t cried since he was taken from his mother.

  Colette is going on: could she have helped Martin? Was it something Tim said? Was her using Martin against Tim the last straw?

  Self-recrimination descends, then lifts. “No, we can only help ourselves. People do what they’re going to do.”

  What’s the big deal about having the power of speech if Martin couldn’t talk to someone who’d understand? Fletch didn’t have speech and even he had figured Martin was in unbearable pain.

  If he could speak, he’d tell Yoriko: Forgive me! I’m glad there were no promises between us.

  Circling the cul-de-sac outside, the Apocalypse bullhorn flays the Sunday air. “Repent! Repent!” Fletcher lifts his head from Colette’s shoulder, gives a growl and a whine, but is unwilling to engage in a genuine altercation today.

  “No more games, no more plans,” says Colette. “This one nearly cost me my life.”

  But when her friends ask how she led Tim, of all men, to the altar, will she give Fletcher any credit for waking her up, or nearly dying with her, or mention Loyalty?

  No. She’ll put it down to divine intervention. Tim, she will say, couldn’t have persuaded her any other way.

  The View from the Mountain

  I met Ted Grand soon after he came to Costa Rica and built the Buena Vista. He didn’t know of me then, but I knew of him — every day during the construction of the hotel, I sat on my veranda in the morning, nursed my first bottle of Imperial and squinted to gauge his progress. The Buena Vista’s walls capped a peak three miles away, at first grey, soon white. Trust a gringo, I thought, to buy that view, with all the lights of San José twinkling in the valley below. A man was beaten to death by the local bosses and found picked clean by crows right where Ted Grand was building. Trust a gringo not to care that he was building on blood-soaked land. I refused to go see the hotel.

  Ted wouldn’t remember the day we met. I still do — my annual day of sadness. All my days were days of sadness then, but that day was the worst, the anniversary of the fire. The night before, I went through tequila, guao, Heineken, Pilsen and whatever else was in my cupboards to prepare myself. But Madelina and Carmen were before me. My little Carmen, only six years old. Screaming, crying. A bout of dengue seemed to be upon me. In the morning, I soaked a towel in ice water, went out to the veranda, sat down in my wicker chair and put the towel over my eyes.

  I heard Jesús’ Isuzu stop on the road below, but I didn’t budge. He came in without knocking, the folds of his pelican neck wobbling, his shirt flapping about his paunch. He stuck his big nose into a cupboard in my kitchen, removed a steel bowl, returned to the twin alu
minium vats sitting in the flatbed of his truck and ladled out enough milk to last me a week. He talked the whole time, as he always did, and some words got through the buzzing and screaming in my head.

  The gringo of Buena Vista, said Jesús Martínez, needed someone to look after his garden. Wanted someone who could care for ten coffee trees.

  “Listen to me, señor Wilson Gonzales.” His sombrero creaked and I knew he was tipping it back the way he did when he was serious. “The man who gets that job at the hotel can have all the coffee. Can you believe — he doesn’t want it.”

  “What for are you telling me?” I mumbled. “I drink a lot of coffee, but I never took care of coffee trees.”

  “What for —?” Jesús shook my shoulder. “If my son was old enough, I’d make him go talk to señor Grand, tell him he knows all about coffee. Tell him looking after coffee trees is what his father and grandfather knew in their cradles. But my son is too young, and he doesn’t speak English like you. So I tell you, mi amigo.”

  I lifted a corner of my towel and thanked Jesús for his tender concern and suggested he was wasting his time and gas.

  “You’re drinking more than milk — an educated man like you.” Jesús, like my long-gone mother, would be silent only when he had finished saying what he planned to say. “And señor Grand might need a man who can cook too. He should get a new wife. I hear his old one left him the very day the hotel was completed. Went to Florida with the man who sold señor Grand the chandeliers.”

  “I always said I’d never go up that hill. A man was killed there.” I took the towel off my eyes and wiped it over my face.

  “Yes, he was killed. And he died. A man died there and there and there.” Jesús pointed at the hill, the valley and the road dotted with crosses between them. “Everywhere you look, a man has died. Men keep dying, and what does it matter where they died or how? We all die.” He spat to emphasize his irrefutable logic.