The Fall Line

by Mark T Sullivan

  Farrell groaned. He dropped back on the bed. He reached for the diary, thinking he could put himself in neutral, all taste buds dead, listening to Lena’s voice.

  December 29, 1988

  The day after Christmas, a local dentist, an experienced diver, got caught in the kelp beds off the coast here. It took two days to find him, and when they brought him to the surface, he was bloated.

  I showed the newspaper article to Jack, who refused to read it. He said he doesn’t like to think of what might have been.

  I am tired of his attitude, of never looking back and barely looking forward. He seems distant and I can’t get him to open up. I tried to tell him that living for the moment can strip you of your connections. He just sighed. I got dressed and went to work four hours early.

  January 2

  Came down with the flu the evening before New Year’s. My black dress I bought for the dinner at Jim Rubenstein’s house will sit unused, but I don’t mind a bit. Jack left work early and stayed home to care for me, which was nice because we hadn’t spoken much since the dentist drowned.

  I was as sick as I’ve been in recent years, a forty-eight-hour bug that kept me in bed. Tending to me seemed to open him up for a while. On New Year’s afternoon he shut off the football games and sat on the edge of the bed and read to me from his favorite book, Kawabata’s Snow Country. It was the section where Shimamura, the Tokyo businessman, and Komako, the geisha who loves him but whom he cannot love, talk of the bird-chasing festival of February; how the children ten days before the celebration cut the hard snow and erect a palace. On the day of the festival, the children build a great bonfire before the palace. When the fire dies, the children sleep in the palace and in the morning they climb to the roof to sing the birdchasing song.

  Jack put down the book and stared off into space.

  I asked him if he was okay and he said he just remembered when he was four and his grandfather, his mother’s father, held his hand in Copley Square in Boston. They were on their way to Fenway Park for a game—and pigeons flew all around them, rising into the sky. He said standing among the birds was like being in a moving cloud. He said it had been a long time since something so peaceful had soothed and moved him.

  I was quiet, watching him, hoping he’d talk again, but he didn’t. I said softly that I used to soothe him.

  He turned to me as if I were not his wife, but an old friend, and said he still did love me, more than I could know. He said he couldn’t explain it, but he was facing the fact that you can be confused about life for no real reason.

  Moments like those I can’t help but forget the bad times, because he’s mine and that’s enough. He crawled under the covers and I laid on his chest while he stroked my hair until I fell asleep.

  January 5

  Jack left last night, took a flight out of Tijuana. He’ll be gone for four days to Mexico City. We are as well as we’ve been in many months. Something about this trip seemed to bother him, but he wouldn’t talk about it except to say that he hoped it would be his last.

  When he’s gone, I drift into places that scare me. Don’t want to write about this, but little Elizabeth and her mother, Lydia, are back in the hospital. Lydia overdosed and had a compound fracture of the femur falling down the stairs of her apartment. Elizabeth was thrown free; she only broke her arm and suffered a concussion. A miracle that she didn’t land on the Fontanel.

  Looking at the little girl, I wondered how the authorities could let Lydia have her back after she tested positive. They wince, but tell me again that a baby’s best left with her mother.

  I worked a double shift yesterday, night and graveyard. Went up to Lydia’s room, nonpaying, back of the hall. She slept, hitched up to a morphine drip. Probably thrilled her. The narcotic droplets fell into the plastic line and mixed with saline. I prayed I’d see a tiny air bubble roll in the plastic. Better for Elizabeth. Better for Lydia. Better for me …

  I have another graveyard in two days. It’s three in the morning now and I’m frightened of seeing Lydia or Elizabeth again because I don’t know what I might do. It’s like the way you feel knowing your car’s not driving right and the next exit is miles away and it will drop you off in a bad section of town.

  When I was a girl, I’d sit in the back seat of our old black Buick on long trips, feeling trapped. I’d blow soap bubbles through a plastic ring. My father would yell when a bubble, purple and green and clear, floated into the front seat. I didn’t care; the bubbles set me free. I keep thinking that if I put a little bubble in Lydia’s morphine line, I could set Elizabeth free.

  Farrell slammed the diary shut, unwilling, unable to read more. He pinched the bridge of his nose until he thought it would break. He could not bear the thought that his wife might have killed. Slicing through his head came the terrible realization that he had focused so tightly on his secret life that he hadn’t seen the torture Lena endured long after Jenny’s death. That set the room in motion again, not the easy, pleasing spin he was used to. No, the walls rocked and swayed, the furniture tilted, the ceiling lurched and crashed like a wave. He felt seasick. He buried his face in his pillow the way he would as a boy when his parents locked him in his room. He opened his mouth to the fabric, to let loose gagging screams.

  Even that didn’t help. Farrell pitched to his feet, careening out the door into the frigid night air.

  Inez opened the door to her room before he could knock a second time. She wore a blue velvet bathrobe and had a drink in her hand.

  “I think you do not come,” she said, standing back so he could come inside. “Drink? It’s the Pernod.”

  “Yes,” Farrell said, taking a seat near the only clear table in the room. He held his breath while Inez poured two inches of clear liquid into the glasses, added ice from a bucket, then crossed into the bathroom to add water. Farrell made his rocking mind slow by making a quick inventory of the room: dual video-editing machines, seven hardened plastic trunks for the cameras, two sturdy tripods in the corner, and three pieces of bright aluminum luggage, expensive.

  “Must be tough to lug around an entire editing setup with you from mountain to mountain,” Farrell said. As she mixed the drinks, he noticed for the first time how slender her legs were. He became unhinged again. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to come here.

  “The video is what is so large,” she replied. “But to print what I shoot every day is a luxury I have not. This is the best of seconds.”

  “Have you looked at today?”

  “Trés engageant.” She leaned over to hand him the drink. The top of her robe opened and Farrell could see the rise of her breasts. Her smell surrounded him. “You and Page especially. So strong in danger.”

  “And tomorrow?”

  “This is a secret,” Inez said. She sat on the bed. “Maybe I do not even know myself. I like to do the improvise.”

  He thought of Page and The Wave, then asked: “It’s not in your files here somewhere?”

  Inez stiffened, then relaxed. “Files?”

  “Dossiers,” Farrell said. “The Wave claims you keep them on us.”

  Inez waved her glass through the air so the ice rapped off the sides. “Ce n’est pas grandes choses. I keep notes on everything and everyone. You do not expect the journalist to interview without preparation, no? I think The Wave blows it outside of my perspective.”

  “He’s concerned that your questions were a little too personal.”

  Inez leaned back. Her laugh gargled from her throat, filling the room. “The world is personal. My films are personal. You worry too much.”

  “If I do, then why did you follow Page last night?”

  Inez flinched. “How did you—”

  “I followed you, almost by accident. I was going gambling.”

  “Well, I … another drink?” Inez asked. She jumped off the bed. He couldn’t help trailing her with his eyes. She was calm, much calmer than he was. He decided she would only reveal herself under pressure.

  “That bothe
rs you, that I followed you?” Farrell asked.

  Inez smiled. “No, I just do not know you are interested. Another?”

  “Why not?” Farrell said.

  This time she put the drink on the table next to Farrell and lay down on her side on the bed so the robe shifted to display her leg to the knee. Farrell tried his best to ignore it. Success did not come easy around Inez.

  “You followed him for research then?” he asked.

  Inez drew a lazy circle on the corduroy bedspread. “Of course.”

  “What did you find?”

  “A secret. To reveal now would be a cheat,” Inez said. “The mystery is in the slow discovery.”

  Inez propped herself up on one elbow, facing him. “Did anyone ever tell you that you are too serious?”

  “Not many,” Farrell said. He took another pull off his drink, trying not to look at the robe, which had parted so he could see the beginning of her belly. “What secrets do you know about me?”

  Inez brushed her hair back from her face and smiled. “Too little, I am afraid. You are my slow, slow mystery. So much to unravel.”

  “You love people’s closets, don’t you?”

  “Closets?”

  “Les penderies …” their hidden places.”

  “Absolument,” she said. “These places fascinate.”

  “I don’t understand how it fits in with the film.”

  “Alors, I do not think it is your business,” Inez said. She sat up. The robe fell off to the side so he could now see the rose of the nipple of her left breast. It jutted outward against the velvet fabric, erect.

  If she noticed, she didn’t seem to care. “But as I say, you intrigue me, Collins, so I tell you: By opening the hidden places, as you call them, we find the stairs. When one forces people to climb, their balance, she is not so steady. And they reveal themselves in front of the camera in ways I can never hope for in the situation ordinary.”

  “I still don’t see—” Farrell began.

  “Think of it like this,” Inez interrupted. She spoke rapidly, caught up in the passion of her thoughts. “What is captured in the ordinary ski documentary interests in the sense visual. One craves to see how far the skier might jump, or how steep the slope is he attacks. The pictures are beautiful in their way.

  “But they are surface, just pretty pictures.” She sat upright, crossing her legs underneath her. Again, Farrell could see beyond breasts to the dim flat of her belly.

  “Does my English make sense?”

  “Yes,” Farrell said.

  Inez smiled, her cheeks flushed. She knew he was entranced by her body. “It is like to look at a pencil sketch when you want the oil paint to be added to the canvas, or the chalk wash to alter the pencil line to give it the new dimension. The new dimension, that excites me—to unlock the mystery why, why someone risks his life skiing the Y Couloir or to jump off the cliffs at the Palisades or well, whatever …”

  He said, “I think you’re looking for something that isn’t there. Scientists will tell you that we thrill seekers lack an enzyme, that I go out on a limb because there’s this juice in my head I lack and the only way I can make up for it is through adrenaline. I’m just chemically out of whack.”

  Inez spun around to sit on the edge of the bed, close to Farrell’s leg. She put her hand on his knee. “Possible. But which explanation do you want to believe, that nature spins like the child’s top, or the individual is something compelling … something sensual?”

  Her hand had not left Farrell’s thigh. They both glanced down.

  “With me, it’s just always been there,” Farrell croaked. The air around her became misty. “I’ve always wanted to try things, to—”

  “You lie to me,” she said, running her index finger on the fabric of his jeans. “You have a reason, perhaps many more than one. I am content to comprehend just one. It takes time, but I understand later or sooner … because you wish me to.”

  Farrell felt himself floating. Before he was conscious of why, Farrell reached forward, pushed aside the robe, and brushed her skin. Inez shivered. Her eyes closed. He traced the weight of her right breast toward the nipple, which spurred a low moan from her lips.

  Inez slid down the edge of the mattress to her knees. With her right hand she massaged the front of Farrell’s jeans. Her throat caught air and released it when he arched his hips involuntarily under the weight of her fingers. She was like every risk he’d ever taken, a siren on the shore and he with no mast to lash himself to.

  He kissed her neck, tasting the salt and tobacco flavor of her skin. She drew him from the chair and pushed him back onto the bed and dropped the robe to the floor. Farrell’s breath grew sharp and shallow when she flipped off the light. She fumbled with his belt, drew down his pants, and muttered in French. She unbuttoned his shirt, rested her hands on his chest, then gathered her feet under her and crouched over Farrell. For a split second he heard a voice telling him to flee. But he was far, far beyond control.

  As she lowered herself onto him, she whispered in a raspy voice, “Tell me what makes you go, Collins. Tell me what makes you go.”

  Farrell’s mouth opened wide as she took him. “You do,” Farrell groaned. “You make me go.”

  Farrell woke in the darkness a few hours later unsure where he was and, once he understood, even more unsure where he was going. Inez lay with her back to him, curled into a ball, her breathing rhythmic and slow. Inez hadn’t cried out on her own the first or the second time; she waited until Farrell began. Afterward, in the languid moments, she draped herself across his chest like a soldier exhausted after battle. She ran her fingers through the hair on his chest and asked, “Who is Maria?”

  Farrell stiffened.

  “You cry her name the first time and mine only the second,” Inez said. “So impolite.”

  “I’m sorry,” Farrell said. Consumate liar that he was, he regained his composure. “Someone from my past.”

  “Tell me about her,” Inez said.

  “For your notes?”

  Inez pinched the skin on his chest. “This is personal. You are in my bed.”

  “She was a lover in another life,” Farrell said.

  “Does she break your heart?” Inez asked.

  Farrell pushed Inez away. He propped himself up on his elbow to study her. In the dim light from the bathroom he could see her face pasted with the same expression he’d seen the day before when Page was about to jump: placid and yet hungry.

  “Her heart was already breaking,” Farrell said. “Saying any more would be impolite.”

  “But …”

  Farrell pressed his finger to her lips. Inez opened her mouth and bit at his finger. He wrenched his hand free. “That hurt!”

  “Pain and pleasure are so close,” Inez said, and she reached under the covers to stroke him. Despite the ache there and the sting of her teeth on his finger, he stirred. Only this time she did not cross with him; she bucked up and down, her mouth and eyes wide open, no sounds passing her lips. Even after he came, she continued the quick, sharp movements on him until he grew so sensitive that he almost cried out. He grabbed her hips to still her. She strained against them. He dug his fingernails sharply into her buttocks until he thought she’d bleed. She smiled, rolled off without a word, and curled up with her back to him.

  Now as he listened to her sleep, he thought of Lena and Maria. He felt guilty, then defiant: what else could he have done? It wasn’t what he wanted to do. It just happened. Something inside of him, those chemicals, whatever, had made him do it. It was beyond his control.

  He closed his eyes. Beyond his control. He repeated the words to himself again and again. Almost instantly he was back in Tijuana the night he left to go south to meet Gabriel’s customers. He had run across the wet asphalt of the runway while the engines of the corporate jet jabbed at his eardrum like a blunt, probing instrument shoved too far into the canal. As he ran, he told himself this was the last time, that after this trip he’d let the project unw
ind and move by itself. The liaison between he and Maria scared him. Lena’s children made him think. Too many streams of information, sensory overload. He was in too deep. A firm hand reached out to assist him at the top of the stairs.

  “It is very loud, is it not, señor?” asked the man. Farrell ducked through the door “My name is Hector. I’ll be taking care of you on the ride down. Your passport?”

  Hector was five foot ten inches and 165 pounds, with rich, shortly cut black hair. Farrell reached into the pocket of the speckled blue linen jacket he wore and handed him the passport. He figured Hector was a year younger than himself. Hector’s pronounced feature was his nose, off-center and heavy, obviously broken several times. Perched between thin eyebrows on the bridge of the beak were a pair of horned-rimmed glasses. These last, supported by a well-cut charcoal business suit, created the odd impression of a former welter-weight fighter who’d gotten a job as a junior attorney with a Wall Street law firm.

  “Very good, Señor Farrell.” He handed Farrell back the passport. “I believe your ride will be comfortable. There is some reading material that has been provided which I’m sure you will wish to review at some point during the ride: six hours, one stop.”

  Farrell shifted in the narrow galley. “Our destination?” he asked, hearing the fretting tone in his voice and becoming annoyed.

  “Did they not tell you?” Hector asked. “Cali, Señor Farrell. Cali, Colombia.”

  A sensation like the last two inches of bathwater draining from a tub enveloped the pit of his stomach. “Of course,” Farrell said. “Cali.”

  He had tried to tell himself it would be some neutral ground in southern Mexico. He was in too deep; they were heading for the heart of it.

  Farrell nervously tucked the passport back into his jacket and watched an airport worker help Hector with the stairway. He imagined a warm wind blowing in his face. His spine tingled. “Cali … Colombia.” Hector closed the door and turned, surprised to find him still in the gangway.