I slunk away without a sound. No one noticed. My new plan was to get stoned and see what happened. I was on my way home to do just that when my phone rang. The other phone. Martin had finally gone to New York.
This is the routine. On Mondays, Nabi’s husband goes to London or New York on business. The car stays at the airport until he comes back, Wednesday or Thursday night. Because Bermy is a geological dust mote, our laws about cars are like Chinese laws about babies. So Nabi, managing partner of Bull’s Head Shreds, takes the ferry to work and lets me take her home.
This time it went like this. She didn’t know I’d been to a funeral, so when she called she said she was sorry to interrupt my work. Two shredding specialists and a driver called in sick, she said; there was slack to be picked up, she’d just found out some lawyers wanted us for a big job as they prepared to move their offices, so it’d be great if I could come and spend the afternoon.
I said, “I miss you too.”
I drove into the city, and on striding through the front door at Bull’s Head Shreds I found myself inside an everything-proof plexiglass cube. Wayneesha, the receptionist, recognized me from her desk beyond the glass and activated a high-tech keycard reader, giving me the go-ahead to flash my high-tech keycard at Door #2. Having cleared Door #2, I chatted with Wayneesha, Wayneesha buzzed Nabi, Nabi buzzed me through Door #3. Behind Door #3 was a little chunk of hallway, Door #4 leading into Nabi’s office, Door #5 to the secure server room, and Door #6.
Door #6. The heart, the stomach, and the guts of Bull’s Head Shreds. Our Maximum Security (Level 6, thank you) Warehouse where a shredder big enough for a family of Homo sapiens sapiens to live in turned paper into dust.
Nabi saw me in the hallway from her three-doored whatever-proof transparent-plexiglass office. She also saw into the break room and everything in Max Sec. To get between the break room and the warehouse, people had to walk through Nabi’s office. I don’t know how she could stand it. Cameras were everywhere.
“Dr. Caines, I thought next year’s Christmas gonna get here before you.” Her voice sang out through the intercom in one of her pellucid and impenetrable walls.
“Muses live to be obeyed, Mrs. Furbert.”
“Is that right? Well, so do I. Reinforcements for you, Bryan.” She poked a button. Max Sec supervisor poked in turn from the inside. Door #6 popped open with a wail as of a giant alarm clock.
I bro-fisted Bryan, grabbed coveralls, safety goggles, dust mask, construction-worker earmuffs, and the barcode-scanning thing that once more read my keycard. Assigned the drop-off pile, I grabbed a file box delivered by some walk-in. Scanned the barcode that Wayneesha’d pasted to the box, which the scanner and our wireless network logged into my record, adding me to the box’s Chain of Custody. I upended the box on the sloping conveyor belt that lapped everything up into the giant shredder’s multi-maws.
All the while and none too softly in the background—cool and faintly whitened with the HEPA-filtered dust of the no-longer-
remembered—a forklift fitted with a networked computer electronically unlocked the secure storage bins we provided to our customers, raised the bins like sacred offerings, and emptied them onto that same conveyor belt to be pulverized at something like ten thousand pounds an hour.
Credit card receipts, doodles, and some accounting firm’s eight-inch binders full of mathematical arcana all hacked up together into paper chum. The shredder excreted it in indistinguishable minute particles, which the same machine gathered up and packed together into bales. The bales of nothing would go forth over the ocean to the Land of Milk and Honey to be reformed and sold as new, unmarred paper. Nabi says I shouldn’t say “Land of Milk and Honey” in reference to the USA.
My purpose was to make sure no rotten carrots, flat tires, or dead babies came out of the drop-off boxes. They never did. I looked at used-up papers climbing the conveyor belt. I was grumpy and uneasy. Hadn’t seen head or tail of Mrs. Nabilah Furbert in weeks, thanks to Martin and that stupid storm; hadn’t been to work in a little while myself, sort of thanks to Aetna but really out of a desire to make my absence keenly felt. Whenever something like that happened, I tried to get ready for the worst and knew I wasn’t ready.
On top of that, sightings of Masami and Barrington have never been good for my nerves. Why would Masami interrupt a moneymaking day for an old lady? And not just any old lady, a dead one and a stingy one who whined to the cops about a single month’s rent. Myrtle just didn’t fit the profile of the uncommon investor who gets Caines Asset Management to kowtow.
Could be political. Barrington had the look of the campaign about him. Then again, he never leaves home without that look. Personal, then? Another all-new plot to ruin my life? A connection buried so deep in my unconscious that I acted on it without knowing? Or a coincidence?
Ludicrous. Masami would rather lose a limb on purpose than accidentally appear to let a hair slip out of place.
I might as well indulge myself. Remembrance may be all I have left.
In the car, Nabi said, real soft, “What is it, Dr. Caines?”
I didn’t want to say anything. But at the traffic light on Dundonald, she said it again.
“What’s wrong, baby?”
Her hand on my knee. And it seemed like a thousand years since I’d listened to her voice.
“Ran into my parents.” I sounded like a kid with a scraped elbow.
Traffic light on Spurling Hill. She touched my cheek. Didn’t make me say anything else. There’s nothing she doesn’t know, anyway, concerning that particular debacle. Nothing she doesn’t know about anything authentic. We have only to look and we’re defrosted. Down to the nuclei that we conceal from others behind titanium doors with umpteen foolproof locks.
Doors, locks, and little colored stones liquefied and diffused at the foot of Spurling Hill. It was painful, she seemed about to cry, I caught her hand and we both knew—two weeks without each other had damaged both of us.
We drove along South Shore. Bright blue sky, late-summer breeze. Bermuda’s is an untamed beauty, disordered and sundry, off-the-cuff and uncontainable. Pink oleanders and orange hibiscus share the curb with cherries in red, yellow, and green, pink and purple ice plant, blue bells, match-me-can splashed with red and burgundy. Casurinas reach for leathery bay grapes, thick-leaved rubber trees, and royal poincianas, those vast trees with hoards of bright red flowers. Those to the south bow to the wind coming in over the ocean. Their trunks bend over the road, branches reach for their companions on the opposite side. The northward trees grow tall to meet the embrace of the southern, and the road becomes a tunnel. Sunlight sprinkles the cars like tears of longing from the branches. Beyond the trees, sandy beaches flush rosy with their love for the mercurial ocean. An ocean so clear I could see right to the bottom from the road. Monday through Wednesday or half of Thursday, everything was exquisite.
By the time we reached Southampton, we were almost calm, stroking each other’s fingers. Nabi was herself again.
I should say one of her selves. I find their dynamic rather telling.
“You know, I think there’s something going on with Wayneesha, I don’t know what, but I’ll find out. Baby, I’m sorry, I know you’re writing, but with three people out sick I really need you to come in tomorrow—”
“Didn’t I tell you I’d flatten out the world for you?”
“Yeah, go head. Get me a puppy I can keep at your place.”
“What? No.”
“I want a Bichon Frise. Martin’s allergic.”
“No.”
“See what I mean? Giant rolling pin’s heftier than it looks, innit.” She has a delightful laugh.
Chatting again, she barely stops for breath; she’s researching a hard drive shredder, a super-powered shredder that disintegrates computer drives as if they’re paper; it’s the latest thing; the thing is, it’s expensive—like she doesn’
t want to tell me while I’m driving expensive—but even though paper documentation is still crucial, nowadays it’s all about digital documentation too; and the NAID says nothing is more vulnerable than digital information in its end-of-life phase—and then her phone rings.
She went quiet when she answered.
“Hi honey. Yes. Okay. Okay.” Long pauses.
This was the other Nabi. Gleaming and untouchable in a plexiglass box.
She hung up. “Martin. Left one of his iPads home, wants me forward this and that. I didn’t even know the man’s got more than one iPad. Mercy. What was I saying? Oh, right.”
And she was back. My Nabi was back, and I was triumphant. He had no idea there was a Nabi who poured her heart out to me and told him nothing. We went up to my flat.
“Kenji,” she said against my chest.
I was underwater. The water was buoying me up as water does. When I broke the surface my lungs would fly open, grab the air, Nabi was the air, and my empty chest would squeeze—but it had been two weeks; what might she have decided in two weeks? My blood was thrumming in my ears; my arms were like crinoline around her, hesitant and stiff, caught between longing and fear.
Nabi said, “Long two weeks.”
Luring me up as air does. And the sunshine at the surface.
“Sorry I didn’t call back that time. It wasn’t safe,” she said.
She left her shoes on the mat. Glance at me over her shoulder, where I was still on my own threshold. That glance, I know it well. I see it all the time in the empty spaces in my days. When it comes in memory, it stings. But in person it’s a wave big enough to throw me at the shore. I scooped up Nabi in my arms, we did the whirligig thing, her laughter bounced high and wild around the room.
That glance is reserved for just two people. It’s a question, it’s unspoken doubt. Even when she’s wrapped in silk and pearls, ready for a night of stars and virgin cocktails, sometimes that glance slips through. Course I’ve never actually seen Mrs. Furbert all dolled up for a benefit or gala even though, if there is one going on, you can be sure she’ll be there.
I did get to see her just before she got married. Nabi was holding the flowers, the end of her train was fastened to her wrist, and her parents were in the room. In the back of the church. So I could only touch her hand. An encouraging, brotherly, damning-it-all squeeze. And that glance became a look of horror.
That night I thought I’d never get out of bed again. And, execrable dolt, I couldn’t fathom why I’d think such an outrageous thing.
We ran out to Ethelberta, my rascal blue twin-engined Scout, which I’d really bought for Nabi although neither of us was ready to admit it at the time. I think Nabi thinks she’s a bit afraid of the Atlantic deep, and maybe she is a little. Everyone should be a little. When the ocean decides to take us, it’ll take us without warning. More inexorable than the density that buoys us up are the currents that will surely drag us down, such things answering to nothing but the moon.
But once we cleared Dockyard, I’d offer Nabi Ethelberta’s helm, and Nabi would accept. It made her laugh to see me put my feet up on the waterproof blue cushions in the pointy end. I’d sit facing the square end so I could see her laughing, beaming brighter than the sun-sparks in the water. We never knew where she’d take us. Some minikin dwarf island, a nursery for sea-things of all colors? A secret sliver of cove between Bermuda’s cliffs? Challenger seamount where the humpbacks hold their concerts or the wreck of the Vixen where grand shoals of silver fishes would sweep and surge around us, of one body with the water?
“Turtle!” said Nabi. I turned too slow as usual, the little yellow head slipping below. She could’ve chosen any of those half-wild places, and on a Monday evening none but turtles would’ve seen us. Would’ve been another story on a Saturday, but we almost never had a Saturday.
We stayed away from populated beaches. Only by a miracle would we not have been recognized: this is Bermuda. We almost never dropped the anchor, never approached other boats. We waved exuberant hellos to strangers at a distance just like everybody, couldn’t help ourselves; standoffishness would’ve made us stand out anyway. When we approached the marina, Nabi buried her head in a floppy hat with a huge brim. I’m an embarrassment, you see. Being in my company is an insult and embarrassment. Don’t mind me, I never remarked on this, we never discussed the undercover shit, just did it.
That day the briny blue was a rich, royal color and the relentless rippling of millions of little wavelets with dark undersides murmuring of mysteries below. Nabi took us out to sea, way out past the wreck of the Cristobal Colomb, where about seventy feet of water was suddenly six thousand feet deep, something like that. I wondered which way she would aim the pointy end before she yanked the power. We always kept Bermuda hazily in view so we’d know where to find it. Nabi liked to turn us so it was in front, a slim but solid edge on the water. I would’ve put the island at Ethelberta’s back, rendering our horizon a vast open question.
We didn’t need the drama of a color-changing sky. We didn’t need a whole sun’s worth of colors. Nor the adventure of waves shattering on reefs, nor dolphins and blue-finned flying fishes. Just the boat, the open, and the crew of the Ethelberta, yes, that would be us. Nabi spun the wheel, cut the engines. Our home lay before us, De Rock dead ahead and gray, giving up its multihues to distance. We ate Chinese takeout while Nabi filled in those lost weeks. Every hymn she’d sung, every customer she’d shredded for, the temporary traffic light on Harbour Road, Discount Day at Gorham’s where she’d bought a new convection oven. I bathed in words like girt big boxes and Cuisinart borne like bubbles on her mellifluous voice. And then we didn’t need words anymore.
Nabi made an armchair out of me, her shoulder underneath my chin. We listened to the water buoying the boat and easing by us without knowing us. We watched the ocean moving but not changing, restive repose. And you know something? You have no notion how vital that moment was. To remember life is possible without needing to sleep through it. To be reminded rationality is possible without despair or dismay. I didn’t want to move, but my breath moved. And Nabi turned. I looked at her with gratitude and trusted that she’d hear it, and she did. She kissed it softly back to me. The ocean held us suspended, aloft.
Sometime, something too distant to see, the moon or a mega cruise ship passing far away, set the Ethelberta rocking. It happened with us too often: some mild external thing reminding one of us our time was stolen. This time I think it was me. It was usually me. I turned Nabi around, we started kissing exigently—till somewhere in the tacit din of my anxiety she discerned that this was a brimover of fear, and we didn’t want to love that way, out of fear.
She said, “Wait, Kenji. We’re here now, baby.” She tipped my head onto her shoulder.
You don’t appreciate this quieting, you don’t understand it. Since it wasn’t an illusion, we had to hold it carefully. Like holding a butterfly. Just as rare. Just as chancy and necessary.
You’re wrong if you think we were all serenity all the time. That kind of calm isn’t like me.
How I wish it was. But it was fugitive, and returning to my normal was a horrendous blow. I lived on a roller coaster. Every time Nabi sent me soaring to the top, I never knew if the ride down was a temporary dip or the beginning of a flying leap off the rails. In practical terms, this meant every time I thought Nabi was about to speak, my heart slipped out of position. Peezed over to the right and stuck in that place in my neck where the air’s supposed to come in.
This wasn’t a feel-good feeling. It was scary. It was because I never knew if she’d whisper something nice, send me cross de pond to buy some pens, or pull all the turtles out from underneath the world. Imagine: Martin calls, her voice does that soft thing, then she hangs up. Then what? Pick up where we left off? Or turn around, baby, this in’t working, I gotta go home. For real this time. As in forever.
And it wasn’t just w
hen Martin called. Every time Nabi began to make a word, I had to wonder if it would be a word for never again. Because there’s never a good time for such a word, it can happen anytime. Email, SMS, on the phone, or in my arms. I was living on the edge of a precipice with one foot hanging off all the time. At the same time, what can I say? I could listen to Nabi talk accounts and hard drive shredders till the ocean swallows up the cliffs. Listening for her voice was the very definition of hope. So what I mean is, it’s not like I wanted to back away, not like I even could. I couldn’t bring myself to think my toehold on the edge counted for nothing. And since it was just a toehold, I didn’t dare move a muscle.
Maybe dread and hope are almost the same thing. Like the distance between on-the-edge and over-the-edge is almost negligible but not really. So being with Nabi was bliss and anguish. Every sound she made was a terror and a treasure. I almost never breathed evenly. That’s something Nabi didn’t know.
AS2.
White copy paper creased trifold like a business letter. “Everything and every world is without reason, and is thereby capable of actually becoming otherwise without reason” (Meillassoux).
I left a printout of my essay on the nightstand on Nabi’s side. I woke to find her snuggling against me, reading. She drew my limbs around her like I was a giant shawl.
Waking up with Nabi. Nabi is worth waking for. Waking with Nabi is real waking.
“Aetna Simmons’ Final Words: Suicide and Suicide Notes as Works of Art. Baby, you think that stuff is art?”
I explained about the audience, creativity, French guy who said that thing about something. During the night we had loved with diuturnity and our emotions all out of hand. Now my brain was full of fuzz. Her body brushed me where I can’t be brushed and think properly. She looked dubious, but she read several pages over.
Drafts of a Suicide Note Page 3