He shrugged and turned the TV off.
Dawn Wakeman said: Thanks. Can I use your bathroom?
He pointed to a door by the kitchen. Dawn Wake-man went to the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. Leaning over the sink, she moved her face close to the glass and inspected her teeth. They were perfectly straight and white. She’d always been convinced that her teeth were the part of her face that men liked best, but ever since she’d given up on men, she thought of her teeth not as instruments of glamour and seduction, but as things to bite with. When she wasn’t focused on showers and towels, she thought about what she could bite, and though she’d never actually bitten anyone, whenever she saw politicians on TV or in the papers, her teeth felt sharper, and her mouth was filled with predatory cravings.
The impulse made her feel foolish and guilty. After all, it wasn’t ladylike, and her parents had brought her up to behave in a dignified manner, even around people who didn’t deserve it. The nation’s current leaders didn’t deserve it. But now that she’d replaced the President’s televised face with silence, she felt less violent, calm enough to pull her teeth away from the mirror and go back out and have cake and coffee, luxuriating in the media-free atmosphere she’d created. She took a table near the doorway, glancing out the window down the cobbled street to the river. A young man over seven feet tall approached and took her order.
Dawn Wakeman said: Isn’t it much nicer now that we don’t have listen to the President’s lies and a bunch of advertising jingles?
Lance Boyle looked over his shoulder to make sure his boss wasn’t listening, then softly said: Absolutely.
Dawn Wakeman liked the way Lance Boyle said absolutely. There was something about the look in his eyes that made her think of her dog. She thought she better quickly check to see how her dog was doing, but when she stepped outside she didn’t see him. She leaned back in through the doorway and told Lance Boyle: Looks like my dog got away. I better go find him.
Lance Boyle: I wish I could come and help you look. But things are pretty busy here right now.
Dawn Wakeman smiled and said: Oh that’s okay. I’ll find him.
She turned and walked away quickly.
Lance Boyle was amazed. He couldn’t believe that the TV had been turned off. His boss was the kind of guy who never compromised about anything, even when he was clearly wrong. Yet Dawn Wakeman had gotten what she wanted, like someone with a knack for making dogs obey commands, though apparently her own dog wasn’t always obedient. He hoped that Dawn Wakeman’s dog was large, a Saint Bernard or Great Dane, because a large dog would be much easier to find than a small dog, which could easily disappear behind garbage cans or between buildings.
A woman came in and sat in Dawn Wakeman’s empty seat. She looked so much like Dawn Wakeman that at first Lance Boyle thought they were twins. But when he came to her table and gave her a menu, he saw that she didn’t look anything like Dawn Wakeman. The two impressions merged, two faces that looked the same and different at the same time, as if the same would never be the same again, as if difference made no difference, as if the words that kept telling him a story about himself, changing the subject over and over again until everything sounded the same, had reached a point where the subject made no difference, and the story would never be told the same way again. Lance Boyle took a step back, took another step back, and stopped.
Silence pooled itself on people’s plates, becoming the greatest meal they’d ever tasted. They stuffed themselves and would have called for more, but they didn’t need to speak to place their orders. The silence pooled itself on their plates automatically, and each new dish was even more delicious than the one before. The silence also made the lighting softer, made everyone look their best, and Lance Boyle savored himself in the mirror, fell in love with his height, felt relaxed and confident when he the took the woman’s order.
Honey Stone was puzzled when she met the waiter’s eyes. When she’d seen him in the café before, she could tell he felt strange about his height. But something about him had changed, and when she told him what she wanted she could see how pleased he was that she was looking at him. Over the years, Honey Stone had learned to read in people’s faces what they thought of themselves, not what they told themselves about themselves, but what their cells felt about sharing a shape with each other, contributing to the same organic system. She’d gotten so perceptive that she’d considered marketing her methods, offering classes in the art of reading people’s bodies.
But a few nights before, she’d met a man she couldn’t read. She’d drawn such a blank from the message of his body that she’d lost it completely. She knew he was somewhere in his own bathroom, but she couldn’t find him, and she’d gotten so confused that she’d actually concluded that she could start living in his apartment, paying almost nothing for a space with a lovely view of New York Harbor. Now that she saw the change in the waiter’s body, she knew what to look for in the man she’d lost track of, and she got up and left without waiting for the waiter, dashing down the street, outrunning the sound of her footsteps back to the room she’d begun to call home.
Honey Stone looked out the window into the gathering fog. Her body began to relax as the night came on. The motion of the lights in the harbor pulled her slowly into a trance, releasing all the words in her head from their customary shapes and sounds. She turned and met the face of Harry Knight coming out of the bathroom.
He said: It’s getting late.
She said: I think you’re right.
They left and walked in silence through the maze of industrial streets, across the Brooklyn Bridge to the lights in the fog of City Hall Park. When they came to a bench, they told themselves to stop. They looked at each other. No footsteps approached or moved away. No garbage was blown by wind across the pavement. There were streetlamps near the benches in the park and lights in the harbor fog. But no one coughed or laughed or lit a cigarette in the distance. No sirens made the night seem filled with tragedy and menace. No cabs or trucks went by, and no one screamed or wept or tripped and fell. But Harry Knight and Honey Stone were surprised when they looked at each other, as if they weren’t expecting what they saw. They took a step back from each other, took another step back from each other, and stopped.
They both had a lot to think about. But they weren’t thinking. It’s true that if you saw them standing there in the fog, looking like they were just about to say or do something else, you’d probably assume that they were thinking, that the silence was filled with unspoken words, possibly important words. But when you reach the stopping point, you don’t think. Everything just happens. The noise that’s been in your head all your life isn’t there. It’s like it never was.
STEPHEN-PAUL MARTIN, former editor of Central Park magazine, has published many books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. He is currently a Professor of English at San Diego State University.
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