I went to Christina’s yesterday. She’s seven months now. Haven’t seen her since the third month. I put my hand on her, just to check her size. When I touched her there, my best friend, she flinched and pulled back. As if I were a thief. As if what has happened to me could be like a cold, catching.
I told her I had to go. She bit at her fingernails. She got me my coat.
There are also four bibs, three sleepers, a mirror, her brush, two pairs of stiff white shoes …
The diary fell off the bed and slapped on the floor, the sharp noise spurring the instant recall of a cab door slamming outside their apartment building in Chicago. He’d left Gabriel’s home the night after his conversation with Maria Robles, spent a day attending to other business in Mexico City, and arrived late the following evening in Chicago. Only Lena wasn’t waiting for him at the airport. He called home and got no answer. He had jumped from the cab with a growing sense of dread and raced up the slick, snowy stairs.
The front rooms were dark and cold. Farrell called out to Lena. She didn’t reply. He leaned against the wall, listening to the china clock, begging the darkness that he wouldn’t float above himself again.
He took a deep breath, pinched his finger, and began to search. His wet shoes made a high, slick, squeeking noise as he crossed into the living room, aware as he’d been a thousand times in the last year of the blow of wind, the flutter of drapes, the bubbling of the aquarium.
A stream of light from the nursery issued into the hallway. He opened the door. Lena was curled in the corner near the crib, wrapped in the comforter from their bed. She clutched a stuffed pink elephant. She was surrounded by dirty dishes.
“Thank God, I …” Farrell began.
Lena picked her chin off her chest and looked at Farrell as if he had been standing in the doorway for hours. “I couldn’t throw it all away.”
“Okay,” he said. He slid down the wall opposite her, his wet overcoat spread out underneath him.
Lena seemed to see him and yet not to. He realized she’d been awake for a very long time. She said, “Do you ever get the feeling that the vision you have of yourself doesn’t jibe with the image other people have of you?”
“Sometimes,” he said.
“What do you do?”
“I try to keep thinking about that person I want to be and hope it all comes true.”
“Has it?”
“I suppose so,” Farrell said. “I’m married to you.”
She gave a wan smile, then said: “What do you want out of life?”
“I don’t know,” Farrell said, and he understood he was being totally honest. “Probably uniqueness. Singularity.”
“You know, Jack, that’s the difference between us,” she sputtered. “I see things in specifics. You look at the world as a concept.”
He looked at his wife during the silence that followed and realized with a pang of guilt that, though he still loved her, he had not desired her in a long time. “That’s not fair,” Farrell said. “She was no concept.”
Lena drew her knees to her chest and hugged the elephant. “I guess that wasn’t fair.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“I want life to be fair.”
“That’s like asking to be a child again,” Farrell said.
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what I want from life now, right now?” she asked.
Farrell crawled over to her. “Tell me.”
“I want to leave Chicago,” she said, digging her fingers into the elephant’s neck. “I need to go where it’s warm all the time. Cold reminds me, it surrounds me.”
“You just said you can’t throw it away …” he began.
Lena stiffened. “I’ve already quit my job.”
Farrell stared at her, knowing that he should feel the surge of pity someone like Lena deserved at that moment. Instead he seemed to look at her from the other end of a long tunnel. He didn’t know who she was anymore. “Gabriel told me about a job in San Diego,” he heard himself say.
Lena nodded. “We have to go.”
Farrell nodded, unsure of what else he could say. For a moment Farrell held his hands an inch away from her as if his body and hers were charged with opposing magnetic forces. He thought of Mexico again, which made him relax; and his hands rested lightly on Lena’s soiled blue sweater. They fell asleep that way in the corner next to the crib.
Chapter 8
ST. PATRICK’S DAY DAWNED gray and stormy, which put Inez in a foul mood because the preparations for the Y Couloir couldn’t go forward. In the late afternoon, Farrell suggested a trip to a bar he knew outside of the canyon. Tony and Ann declined, saying they had to work on their equipment. On the ride down the canyon, the rest of them heard a radio report that the weather would change. The jet stream would retreat north into Wyoming over the next twenty-four hours. Forty degrees and sunshine was the forecast for the next three days. Inez leaned over the seat and planted kisses on the cheeks of Farrell and Page, who was driving.
“The time for you, he comes in just two days,” she crooned. “You make the history.”
Farrell’s heart beat faster when she was near. He leaned away from her voice. Page gripped the steering wheel tighter and pressed harder on the accelerator.
Three shots of Old Bushmills, two beers, and a game of eight-ball later, Farrell had a tough split shot to put the seven in the right side pocket. The fact that he could look over the tops of his knuckles and see Inez’s face and jet black hair framed by his skin tweaked his concentration. He scratched.
The Wave seemed to have recovered from the day before. He was stripes. He stuck out his jaw and brayed: “You got no center, mon.”
Farrell handed him the cue: “And you, dope fiend, got nothing from the Adam’s apple up.”
“Sure do, mon,” The Wave beamed and rapped the cue off the side of his head. “Just light up there, that’s all.”
The clock above the bar chimed 5:30 P.M. A new crowd of revelers, some with tiny shamrocks painted on their faces, crowded in and ordered pitchers of low-alcohol beer. On the jukebox, Dwight Yokum sang of guitars and Cadillacs and hillbilly music. The Wave bent over and hit the cue ball hard. It jumped the rim of the table and bounced across the floor. The barman, a rangy man sporting a black cowboy hat, glared. The Wave shrugged: “No eye-hand, mon.”
“Get some,” the barkeep growled.
Farrell picked up the cue ball. He admitted to himself that Lena’s diary had become a festering wound; where he had expected comfort, he found torture. When he thought of her, his stomach burned as if her fingernail dug into his side. He leaned against the wall, pretending to analyze the table; instead the room shifted and now he saw Inez, The Wave, and Page through a thin, white gauze as if he were taking photographs of them all through a soft-filter lens. Whiskey in the afternoon will get to you.
From her purse, Inez plucked a quarter, which she used to dig at the thick varnish on the wood. She looked at Farrell and said, “Why is the man like you without work so early in life?”
Inez. She cooled the burning sensation in his gut. “Why do you make movies?” Farrell asked.
“You first.”
“How will I know the truth?”
“You do not,” Inez said, her tone seductive. “Perhaps that is what makes it so interesting, no? To figure out the lie?”
“This is your game,” Farrell said. “You tell the truth first.”
Inez dug the serrated edge of the quarter into the varnish until a short dull groove appeared on the table. Farrell stared at it, thought of his father, and felt a pang of nausea. Before he could wallow, Inez sat up straight in her chair, laid her right ankle across her left knee, and grabbed her right foot. “I was to … no.” She hesitated. “When I was young, I want to be a photographer.”
Page leaned back in his chair until it rested against the wall. “Like your dad, huh?” he said. “He was some kind of journalist, wasn’t he?”
Farrell
noticed The Wave’s shoulders bunch as he turned to the jukebox.
“Some kind,” she replied. “He wins the Overseas Press Club award for international photojournalism. But really, he never succeeds in what he is after.
“When I am … was seven, he gives me a little automatic camera for my birthday. I go to school then on the hill in the vieux quartier of Lyon, the oldest part of the city. The buildings are tall and are—I think you say ‘staggered’?—staggered up the hill. The streets, they are narrow and made of stone. My school is off the steep stairs that comes from the square, which has a fountain. Three roads enter the square, and when school lets out, we pour down the stairs like water. Everyone yells, so happy.”
Inez paused and took a sip from the beer glass.
“I carry the camera around my neck always,” said Inez. “I take many pictures, but none of them looks like the ones my father take. He looks at them and he nods. But me, I can see in his eyes they are dull: pictures of friends, of the school or Madame Kennedy, my cat. My father gives her that name. So one day, I walk down the stairs with my classmates. The sun comes through the clouds into just one half of the square. It is a good light. I step on a wall at the stair bottom to get the picture.
“I focus on the fountain because the sun cuts the water into shadow and light. A car horn sounds. I swing the camera. A boy named Richard from the class ahead of me rides his bike. He looks back to his friends. The car, a blue one, slides on the wet stone before it hits the bike and throws Richard far into the air. I take pictures snap—snap, one after the other.”
Inez stopped, pulled a cigarette from her purse, and lit it. The blue smoke curled around her face. She slumped in the chair and took another long drag before continuing. “I run home through the streets, my shoes they slap on the wet stones. My lungs hurts, but I am happy. My father develops all the film. But there is only one real photograph, you know? Richard hears the car horn and he is at the angle to the car. He knows it hits him soon and his mouth is open. My father smiles when he sees this picture. He sells it to the local newspaper for eighty francs, uh, twenty dollars, and I buy a better camera.”
“What happened to the kid?” The Wave asked.
Inez shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “I do not remember. It does not matter.” She took another drag off the cigarette, then cocked her head at Farrell: “Your turn.”
“Been retired eighteen months.”
“Before you make the retirement?” Inez asked.
“Now that wasn’t your question.”
“You’re cheating,” said Page.
“I didn’t think you had an imagination, Page,” Farrell said. He pointed the tip of the cue at the one-eyed skier. “But I guess we can all be fooled. You got it: I was a cheater before I retired.”
With a lazy motion, Inez drew a chair toward her with the tip of her boot, then rested the sole on it and lit another cigarette. The movement was sassy and lawless. It excited Farrell. “Do you run from Wall Street?” she asked. “The trader in secret information, I think.”
Farrell cracked a ball across the table, sunk it, which allowed him an easy shot of the eight ball in the corner pocket. The Wave scowled. Farrell took another shot of Old Bushmills, feeling it roll through his stomach and numb the tiny flame that refused to die in his belly.
“Traitor of secret information, I like that,” he said. “But not true. Basically, I got involved in some bad business deals. It’s that simple. When it all blew up, I fell hard. Got these scars.” He paused and ran his fingers along the red lines on his face. “Afterward, I thought, why not go back to Alta, make some good deep powder turns.”
“Sounds boring to me,” interrupted Page.
“That’s bottle talk,” said The Wave. “I think he’s holding back.”
“Very good, Wave,” Farrell said. “We Irish talk quite a bit on St. Patrick’s Day. You just have to figure out how much of that was true and how much was off-angle bullshit.”
Farrell’s eyes met Inez’s. They locked, and with the whiskey flowing through his veins he thought, I could die there. He winked at her. She winked back. He turned away to begin a new game. He broke and scratched. Page sniggered.
“Page, the big player,” Farrell said. “Put your money where your nose is.”
“Teams,” Page said.
“Done,” Farrell said. “The Wave plays with me. You with Inez. Rack them up, I’ll be back in a second.”
In the men’s room, the door swung open behind Farrell. The Wave slid in next to him. The white bandage was visible on the kid’s head like a bow among the dreadlocks. The Wave studied the lines between the tiles, then said, “Watch yourself, mon. She knows more than she lets on.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Farrell said, and he zipped up.
The Wave, his eyes red and rheumy from too many joints, put a hand on Farrell’s shoulder. “You figure that out for yourself,” he said. “Just thought you should be aware that there are other rules being used.”
With that The Wave granted himself a look in the mirror, shook his dreadlocks over the bandage, and left in a flash of neon.
Farrell followed behind him, with a growing need to become very drunk. As he walked to the bar, he took a sidelong glance at Inez, then turned to the barman. On closer inspection, he was in his late forties, with massive, scarred hands, a silver band about the black hat, a day’s growth of beard, and a belt buckle that advertised a hunting outfitter from Jackson Hole. Farrell asked for a pitcher and three small bar glasses.
When the cowboy brought them, he said: “Watch yourselves.” Then the bartender grinned and revealed a gap in his upper front teeth—the mark of an experienced street fighter.
“Always,” Farrell said.
Page watched him set the shot glasses and the beer on the table. He leaned forward: “You planning on going black or something?”
Farrell looked over at the cowboy. “I think I’d rather get dragged behind a truck. This is merely to put us in the correct frame of mind.”
Page selected a cue from a rack on the wall. “You break.”
“Lubrication first,” Farrell said, pouring from the Old Bushmills bottle he’d stashed under his chair. In the larger glasses he poured four drafts.
“Half for me,” Inez said. “The weight of you I don’t have.”
“That’s fair.”
“I’ll pass on the whiskey,” said Page, shaking his head. “Makes my head go round and round. When you’re whiskey drunk with one eye, you feel like you’re the tip of a top spinning.”
“If you do not mind, how does it happen—the eye,” Inez asked.
Page shook his head. “I do mind. Bad memories.”
“It helps to talk of memories,” Inez said.
The Wave interrupted, “Some things are better left unsaid, Inez.”
Inez shot The Wave a glare that in Biblical times would have turned him to stone. “I do not think this is your affair. Page?”
Page poured himself a shot and drank it fast. “Really want to know? My dad had this thing with the cards. Didn’t like to lose. He played this game with my mom. I called it ‘No Win, Gin, Slap Your Wife’s Face In.’ ”
“You don’t have to do this, mon,” The Wave said, the anxiety in his voice palpable.
“Shut up, Wave,” Page said. He poured himself another beer. “When I was thirteen, he loses big one summer night and comes home in a rare mood. Only I step in front of her as he swings. Shatters my occipital bone. I run outside into the woods and stay there all night. If I’d come in sooner, they could have saved the eye.”
“Jesus,” Farrell said.
“Satisfied, Inez?” The Wave asked.
Inez reached for a shot glass. Her hand shook as she drank. “For the moment.”
There was an awkward moment of silence. The Wave grabbed a cue, crouched over the table, shook two dreadlocks over his eye to give himself a rear sight reference, and fired. The balls ricocheted and split well, except a five group about a foo
t in front of the right corner pocket. A stripe fell. The Wave sank three more balls before missing.
“Yours,” The Wave said, and he handed the stick to Inez, holding on to it one second longer than necessary. He gave her a stoned leer and she was forced to tug it away from him.
Inez stood very still once she had the cue. “You smoke again, no? Merde. You dull your senses with this. You lose your edge.”
“I’m still there,” The Wave said. “Take your shot.”
Inez glared at him, then leaned over the table.
The Wave said, “So, Inez, how would you make this scene work in your movie?”
“I do not use such a scene,” said Inez, studying the ball.
“Just for instance. I mean, would you get low over the shooter’s back and line the lens up like he sees it? Or would that be too close?”
Inez studied The Wave as if she were seeing him for the very first time. “It is perilous to get too close, Wave,” she said coldly. “You place the camera back so the audience, they have the sense of the game and of the players. Their pace. If not, there is no logic.”
The Wave said, “It only moves when there’s a plan, a script, right? You ever operate without one, a script I mean?”
“I make the improvisations all the time,” Inez said.
“Now I know you’re tripping me, lady,” said The Wave. “I think it’s not on paper, you’re lost. You don’t know how to pick it up and go with it when you’re ripping. We’d never see you on the hill.”
“To be on the hill is not my strength,” said Inez. She shot again, missing. “I tell the world what is on the hill.”
“She likes to peek through her fingers,” Farrell said sarcastically.
“She’s cautious,” The Wave chuckled.
“I create the peak through the fingers,” Inez insisted. “And the critics recognize me for the chances I take with the camera.”
“Inez knew the risks, mon,” The Wave announced. “Tripped over the film on the editing room floor and cut her head. Tough break, but shit, she knew the risks!”
The Fall Line Page 11