The Surrendered

by Lee, Chang-rae

  "There's nothing to talk about."

  She finished what was left in her wineglass and then filled it up again. "It doesn't matter to me. You don't have to say any more. I don't care how many women you've had in your life. Past or present."

  "Present? "

  "I'm just telling you I don't care at all."

  "I don't believe that."

  "Well, I'm just telling you. You're not the only one with options, you know. I work with lots of people at the furniture store. Most of them are men."

  "I'm sure they are."

  "The manager even asked me out the other day, right out of the blue. I've worked with him for years. He said I was looking 'vivacious' these days. He's okay, I guess, but to be polite I said I had to think about it. What do you think about that?"

  "I guess you ought to do what you want."

  "That's the question for us, isn't it?"

  When he didn't say anything Dora got up and asked him if he would like another slice of pie.

  "Sure," he said. "But I'll go get it."

  "I'm going inside anyway, for my shawl. It's suddenly getting cooler. Like a storm is coming."

  "I'll move everything back inside."

  "No, I like the air. Let's stay out here as long as we can. Okay?"

  "Okay."

  As she passed him he hooked her thigh with his hand and drew her close, a brackish-sweet air from their earlier exertions fi ltering through the thin muslin fabric of her skirt. The scent of them was heavy and he breathed it in deep, to let it etherize him, though it worked the opposite effect. He cupped her broad bottom and she responded by pressing his face into her belly, pinching the roots of his dark thick hair between her fingers.

  "I want to stay here with you," he said. "Nothing else."

  "You don't have to say that. I'm a big girl."

  "I'm not saying anything I don't want to."

  She leaned down and pecked him lightly and he kissed her back with a force and fullness that seemed to draw off all her blood and then fill her up again, her cheeks and neck flushed, dewy. His mouth peppered the patches of color on her pale skin, taking in her ear and then her throat, gliding down to the soft flesh above her breastbone and resting there while he guided her leg until she sat straddling him in the rickety chair, which creaked loudly and sharply.

  "We're going to break it," Dora said, backing off slightly.

  "You can fall on me."

  "Aren't those children still around?"

  "They all went inside," he said, but only because there were no more reports of their play. She didn't look around, either. Her long skirt tented their legs and while kissing him she reached beneath and unbuttoned his trousers and raised herself just enough to shift them down. Her own underclothing was in the way and he tugged at it and she simply pulled it to the side, clearing a way, recalling to him again what he liked best about her, her plain good sense and lack of put-on shame and fundamental ease with her body.

  "Can I tell you something?" she said.

  "Uh-oh."

  "I don't have to. I can shut up."

  "Go ahead."

  "Did you know you are a very good-looking man? It's hard to see it because you don't wear it easily. But, honestly, you're the most handsome man I've ever seen, much less known. Only the funny-looking ones have ever gone for me. I guess poor Sloan was the last example. And there you were, every night at Smitty's, with no one to appreciate you. You don't know any of this, do you?"

  He didn't answer, because it was always easier not to say that he did know it, and had known so all his life, how he was sorry for the specific misery his appearance had brought him and others, and for what? For the great sum of nothing.

  "Now I've killed the mood."

  "No, you haven't," he said, pulling her closer.

  "You like it out in the open air, don't you, mister?" she whispered, hovering above the now high-angling press of him.

  "Must be your fault."

  "Mm-hmm," she said, teasing him, slowly spanning him, like a blind, knowing snail.

  "You're ready yourself," he said.

  "I was going in for more pie."

  "You can go."

  "I will."

  But she didn't, nor did Hector stir a hair, both of them content to linger in the half-light. They could not know that their pose from any distance appeared to be as chastely still as sculpture. Desire in Middle Life. And it was in this marble calm that Dora took on a sudden shine, her skin and hair lustrously abloom with the wondrous feed of stopped time, her heart as well as her mind momentarily unburdened of their accreted regrets, self-lashings, those long-ingrained gravities, so that it seemed to Hector that she was thusly gliding above him at a tiny but still measurable remove, which was in fact a blessing; he could handle her quite near, though much closer and he might panic, maybe cut and run. And he didn't wish anymore to do that.

  Afterward, while Dora slept in the bedroom, he found himself cleaning up the apartment. They had started early and it wasn't even dark yet, just past eight o'clock. She always dozed a little after sex. Plus, she'd had a whole bottle of wine, and the better half of a second. He'd drunk plenty himself but as usual he remained more lucid than he preferred to be, the beer more like coffee to his system, arresting nothing useful (like memory), and blotting only his already paltry need for sleep.

  He quietly washed the soiled dishes and pots they'd left in their haste to get to the bed, then swept the floors and polished the counters and the stovetop. From his job he had all the supplies one might need, but since living here he had never once bothered to clean the place thoroughly. Once or twice a month he'd make a cursory pass with a sponge and broom. No one had ever visited before, and he wouldn't have cared anyway, but mostly the apartment was messy because he no longer registered the layers of grime and dust. For if you suspected you were immortal, if you were afraid you might never be extinguished, the evidence of which had accrued enough over the years to convince him to almost believe its truth--the way his wounds, even the seemingly grave ones he'd suffered during the war, healed with a magical swiftness; that he had aged in a way that appeared to the eye as if there were no other time except this one, no prior or future state--the concern for something like cleanliness, strangely enough, receded. But Dora, thank goodness, was solely of this world, and for her sake he moved on to the living area, mopping the coffee table with a rag and knocking the seat cushions of dust outside on the patio. In the bathroom he wiped the sink basin and mirror and brushed out the toilet and then vigorously scrubbed the tub twice of its scum, the second time with a fresh rag, for she'd surely enjoy a bath in the morning. He could at least be an attendant, make things serviceable and pleasant for her, if not grand. He did such work at the mall, but there was a satisfaction in doing the same for Dora that made him think his own best usefulness was in these small, unheroic tasks, that his destiny in this realm was to take the form of the most minor of tools, a not solely metaphorical stain scrubber, or hammer, or rag. That contrary to what his father had always fantasized for him in his too proud and envious way, the ideal scale of his labors would be thusly unreported and fl eeting, spot-small. And the realization left Hector awash in the feeling that he was finally doing something right, something decent, and he quietly donned the clean T-shirt and trousers from on top of the bureau, careful not to disturb Dora from her downy wine-imbued slumber. Let her abide. He now had a good mission; headed for the bodega off Broad, he would buy some things for her, purchase not his usual canned spaghetti and pork and beans and box of saltines but what he thought Dora might fancy when she awoke, some fresh eggs and bacon and Portuguese sweet rolls and tea. He'd buy some jam as well, maybe a couple of flavors, even three. And on the way back he'd stop, too, at the liquor store for a bottle of wine for her and a six-pack of beer for himself, in case another thirst caught them in the middle of the night, or after breakfast. He checked the meager cash in his other trousers (he didn't own a wallet) and went hunting for bills and coins strewn loosely abou
t the apartment--nearly twenty-two dollars in sum--and went out into the Fort Lee night, his pockets bulging with the scrounged change.

  The skies were clouded over and where the streetlights had burned out it was pitch-dark. In the small brick row houses the older folks were turning in for the evening, their upstairs rooms lamped with bedtable lights or the colder flicker of television, the cast beams striping the tiny front yards and walks as if they were a miniature tabletop landscape, all of them stitched together by the line of mature if stunted trees growing in the median and the parked cars fi tting exactly on the block in a serendipitously bespoke measure. It was mostly serene save for the droning air-conditioning units and the hidden cadres of urban locusts, whose competing songs on certain unbearable nights felt more like waves of heat than sound. On the main avenue there was disco music and thumping jungle-like music and the reports of traffi c and people calling out of cars toward the grimy storefronts, where neighborhood youth accosted in fair share one another and the indifferent beat cops and the young immigrant couples in love, the bums rooting in the wire trash barrels for the dregs of beers and take-out food, all of them content in the now fast-cooling air. And had they carefully regarded the broad-shouldered man in the white T-shirt and dungarees stepping into the overbright bodega, his scarred, battered hands selecting from the shelves the fruits of this most modest human errand (the kind he'd avoided for decades), they might still have agreed that he was indeed cut from an antiquated cloth, this long-lost bolt of hero blue. But of course he wasn't.

  After he paid for the jams and some fresh hot fried bread he went to the liquor store across the street and spent what was left, and when he stepped outside again, laden with her morning repast, the briefest light rain drifted down. Then it was gone. The warmed, dampened sidewalks reminded him of certain sweet hours of childhood--well before he was much of a man, well before anyone (the neighborhood girls, the married women, the barmen) had found him out--when the summer torrents would interrupt the furious play of the street and they'd have to wait beneath the sagging porches for its sheets to roll past before they skipped back out, the smell of the damp concrete enveloping them in an odor earthen and stony but still creaturely, alive; he would have the sensation that he was on the broad back of an immense being, as unregistered as any sated flea, and he felt the same way now, virtually bodiless, happily ignored, free to go his unsung way.

  E L E V E N

  A T

  A P O N T H E C A R W I N D O W roused June; it was the drawn, dour face of Clines, come back out from the diner. She found herself braced against the throbs sharply echoing through her. The pills were not working. Or maybe she had spit them up; there was a shiny patch on the vinyl upholstery of the door panel. She felt as if someone were walking through the house of her body with a crate of porcelain vases and systematically entering each room and rearing back and smashing them against the walls. Clines got into the driver's seat and asked what they should do, and through gritted teeth she answered that they would keep going, taking two more pills in the hope that they would give her some relief.

  But before they had any effect Clines informed her that they had turned onto the street where Hector Brennan lived. Twilight had just passed into evening but she could still make out the character of the neighborhood, the rows of squat one-story houses with properties separated by chain-link fencing and narrow driveways. The houses were in generally poor condition and Hector's apartment complex was even worse, decrepit and badly in need of painting, its front yard peppered with household junk and broken toys. The trees were gnarly and unkempt. A trio of unattended dogs ran about on the sidewalk, garrulously barking at one another. So this was where he lived. She thought of all the elapsed years and the other grubby details that Clines had found out about him and she wondered if this was a life that had befallen him or whether he had sentenced himself to it, as people sometimes do, in punishment right or not. Clines parked and came around to help her out of the car. She was about to tell him not to bother in case Hector might see her needing assistance (she wanted no pity) but was instantly glad when Clines took hold of her shoulder and arm, as she might not have been able to lift herself from the deep, soft-cushioned seat.

  "Which apartment is it?"

  "Number sixteen, I think just there on the right. Will you be all right, Mrs. Singer?"

  "Yes. I'll be fi ne."

  But she didn't feel fine, for if stable and straight to the outward eye she was as good as gone; Clines somehow saw this and caught her arm when she lost her balance and nearly toppled. Despite an appreciative tingle in her chest she tried to shrug him off. Clines was insistent and walked with her, gripping her tightly enough that she could believe she was tugging him along. Some large tree branches were strewn about the scraggly, patchy lawn and she saw herself as the dead limb of a tree, at once ponderous and fragile, barely appended over the hard, unyielding ground. With the next good gust. Just before they reached the entryway she pushed away from Clines and bent over and gagged, nothing coming out of her except for a curdled slick of bitter, chalky spittle. The pills. It was as though her body were refusing amelioration, steadfastly denying her any comfort in order to make her cease, but rather than give in, June scolded herself and stood up straight, ignoring the shocks firing up and down her spine. She was still a relatively young woman, and if she had to die she was going to die on her feet, in beat of her own march.

  Clines grasped her arm and she pulled it away.

  "I'm fine."

  "We can't do this, Mrs. Singer. I thought it when we first met but I'm absolutely sure of it now. There's no point. This man Brennan isn't the issue anymore. It's you. You're not capable of doing this. How much more obvious does it need to be? If you insist on flying out with me I may have to quit."

  "Then quit," she said sternly, wiping her mouth. She tried to swallow the awful taste on her tongue. "Give me the files you have, and the plane tickets, and I'll pay you for what you've done so far."

  "You'll accomplish nothing over there," he said. "You'll waste precious time. You won't be able to find your son quickly enough, if at all."

  "I'll find him with or without you. I know that. You know how much I'm proposing to pay you, so you should decide right now whether it's worth your trouble. Or your daughter's, for that matter. Now, what are you going to do?"

  Clines looked down stiffly, his eyes narrowed with a palpable anger. But he spoke to her calmly. "Okay, Mrs. Singer. We'll follow your wishes. I won't bring this up again."

  "Good. Thank you."

  "But please know this. While I will do everything that I can to do the job, it will be you who directs me. I will make recommendations, but it's your responsibility now. You'll determine our success."

  She nodded. He asked if he should wait in the car and she told him that was fine. But as he turned she felt unsteady again and then completely parched and she asked him if he had any water in the car.

  "No, but I can go and get some. There was a gas station on the main road."

  "Okay. Go get it and then come back and then wait for me," she told him. "I'll see if he's here now."

  Even though it was only one step up, she had to pause to catch her breath on the exposed landing for the apartments (they were set off in pairs), the thirty or so yards they had traversed feeling like three hundred. The landing itself was littered with cigarette butts and crushed beer cans and reeked sharply of cat spray. Gnats ticked nervously about the weak entryway bulb. Behind her, out in the street, Clines drove off, and for a second she wondered if he would in fact return. Perhaps he would decide to abandon her here. The metal door of number 16 was scarred and dented and there was nothing at all to indicate that anyone lived on the other side, or ever ventured out. She looked for a buzzer but there was none, nor a push-bell or clapper on the door. She tried to knock, but as with the rest of her joints, her knuckles and fingers felt like spun glass and so she rapped softly with the flat of her hand. There was no answer or any sound from inside and she
tapped again.

  The door opened and there before June was a woman loosely draped in a bedsheet. She looked like a life-drawing model, earthy, shapely, her full breasts pushing out against the thin fabric.

  "Did you forget the key . . . ?" the woman said, trailing off on sighting her. She was sleepy-eyed. "Oh, excuse me. Can I help you?"

  The woman wasn't so much beautiful as she was beautifully present, animate, with her tousled reddish-brown hair, her decolletage speckled with ruddiness, the smooth globes of her shoulders shining and delicate. She was perhaps the same age or even slightly older than June but June suddenly felt like a dried, buckling veneer in the face of the woman's lushness, this outer layer that you could chip away without effort.

  "I'm sorry to disturb you. My name is June Singer. I'm looking for Hector Brennan."

  "Oh." The woman held the sheet tightly around herself with one arm, the other crossed in front of her, her hand gripping the knob. Her expression had instantly hardened. "He doesn't want to work for you again."

  "Again?"

  "He doesn't want to see you. He made that clear already. So I think you should get on now."

  "Please," June said, suddenly feeling like she ought to brace herself.

  "Please. It's too much to explain, and I want to speak to him now."

  "I can listen. Explain to me."

  "How can it matter to you?" June cried sharply, both of them surprised by her harshness. The woman instinctively stepped back but June leaned in before she could shut the door.

  "I'm very sorry," June said wearily. She felt as though she were slipping inside herself, her outside stiff but her soft tissue melting away within. Her condition had now become apparent to the woman, whose eyes flashed on the realization that this insistent, brittle person standing before her was in fact very ill.

  "I'm very sorry," June said. "May I ask your name?"

  "It's Dora."

  "Please excuse me, Dora. I'm sorry. I very much wish to speak to him. That's all."

  "He's not here," Dora told her. She examined June closely. "He was just here a little while ago. I don't know where he went."