Glimmering

by Elizabeth Hand

  And Trip gazing upon it all unperturbed, unmoved. Unknowing? wondered Martin. But could not bring himself to ask, could not bear to think what answer he might receive: that the boy had seen it all before, that the drowned kingdoms were not new to him, or strange; that the scoured ruins of the earth belonged to Trip more than they had ever belonged to Martin.

  One night they anchored in mid-channel. After a makeshift meal of spongy fried potatoes and the last of Diana’s rosemary they sat on deck, facing shore and watching the sky convulse above them, a slowly turning wheel of purple and indigo and a bruised red that was almost black. Martin had Mrs. Grose’s farewell bottle of brandy beside him, and every now and then poured a jot into an enameled mug. He poured some for Trip as well. The boy didn’t drink it; he balanced the cup on his lap, every now and then raising it to his face to sniff it warily. The air felt dank and viscous. It wasn’t hot, but Martin still broke into a sweat.

  Maybe that was the brandy, he thought, or just fatigue. He took another sip from his mug, and winced. A strange indefinable smell hung in the air, like burning dust or gunpowder. In the distance a silvery flare leapt from a high promontory, as though something there had exploded soundlessly.

  “It’s getting worse, isn’t it?”

  He nestled the mug against his chest and glanced at Trip. “What?”

  “The sky.” Trip’s voice was subdued. He stuck his chin out to indicate the lurid tableau above them. “It’s not getting better. It’s getting worse.”

  Martin looked up. He shrugged, feeling a sliver of cold where the heavy night air nosed down his shirt. “Is it? I guess I can’t tell, anymore. Maybe we’re just getting closer to the city—you know, more houses, more lights…”

  “No.” Trip raised the mug to his lips and took a sizable mouthful. “Ugh—!”

  Martin laughed. “It’s not beer. You’re supposed to savor it—”

  Trip swallowed and took a cautious sip. “Okay.” He grimaced.

  Martin leaned back, gazing into the sky. “How much worse could it get?” he said. “Diana was talking about those space stations they’re sending up at the end of the month—I mean, joint Japanese/American technology, how can we lose?”

  Trip shook his head. “I don’t know.” His eyes in the infernal light seemed translucent. “It’s like it really is the Rapture…”

  “The Rapture?” Martin stared at him. “You mean the end of the world? You think this is the end of the world?”

  Trip nodded. “The Last Days. That’s what John Drinkwater used to say. My choir director,” he added at Martin’s quizzical look. “And my grandmother—”

  He took another sip of brandy. “—she totally believed in all that stuff. If she could see me now—”

  Trip traced the outline of the cross branded on his forehead. “Man, if she could see me, she’d definitely think this was it. The end of the world. The end of the fucking world.”

  Martin listened, fearful lest the boy stop: it was the most he’d heard Trip say of himself since he’d found him on the beach at Mars Hill. Beneath them the Wendameen rocked gently. Finally he asked, “Is that—is that what you believe?”

  Trip gazed upward. Streamers of gold spun from the ominous spiral, slid down to disappear behind that far-off promontory where something burned, smoke like dark thumbprints against the lurid sky. After a moment he shook his head.

  “I don’t know. I guess. Or no—no, maybe I don’t.” He frowned. “I mean, if I really thought that, probably I wouldn’t be doing this—”

  He opened his hands, cradling the mug of brandy. “I mean, I wouldn’t be letting you take me to New York,” he said. “To look for her. If I really thought it was the end, I guess I wouldn’t care.”

  Martin looked away. Because Martin did think it was the end—for him, at least—and somehow that didn’t stop him from caring at all.

  “She’s your girlfriend, then? This person you’re going to find in the city?”

  “No, she’s not my girlfriend,” he said “Actually, I hardly even know her.”

  “Was she—is she someone you knew from—well, your church?”

  “My church?” Trip drank the rest of his brandy, then reached for the bottle and poured more into the mug. “No. She wasn’t exactly a churchgoing girl. I mean, I doubt she was saved or anything like that. She was foreign, for one thing. Russia or someplace, I forget.”

  “But—so you want to save her? That’s, um, thoughtful.”

  “No, I don’t want to save her. I just want to—to see her again. That’s all.”

  He turned away. His profile against the burning sky looked sharp, almost cruel, the hollows of his cheeks touched with flame, his eyes colorless. Martin’s heart clenched. He tried desperately to think of something to say, something that might redeem the moment, save him from looking pathetic as he sat there staring at this boy as though he were the Rapture, his last best hope of sunrise.

  Trip only shook his head. “Thanks for the brandy,” he said, easing himself to his feet. He stretched, looking down at Martin, and smiled; but the older man could see that it was forced. “I’ll do first watch, okay?”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  “No prob.” Trip turned and walked away.

  The night passed with no more talk between them. Trip woke Martin to stand his watch; then, as night soured into dawn, he brought him a mug of hot tea on deck.

  “Thanks,” said Martin, feeling hung over. “We should be shoving off, I guess.”

  Unexpectedly, Trip smiled. “It’s been kind of cool, hasn’t it? I mean this whole thing with the boat? ’Cause like you got it all fixed up, and into the water, and—”

  He spun on his bare foot, letting his arm swing out to indicate the rainbow sweep of sea, the jutting headlands beyond. “And we made it! We’re there!”

  Martin smiled. “Yeah,” he said, gazing into Trip’s blue eyes. “We really have almost made it.”

  That night, they came to the East River: College Point, Rikers Island, South Brother Island. To starboard the horizon stretched green and yellow, a waste of spartina and cattails, reek of mussels and mudflats and red crabs like scorpions that nudged up against the Wendameen’s hull upon mats of seagrass. Martin had thought, at least, that he could point out to Trip the glory that was Manhattan.

  But from here the island seemed nothing but marshland. A glittering haze hung above the fens, sparked here and there with blue or red. It took Martin some minutes to realize that this was the New York skyline, not so grand a thing as it had been; more a memory of a city moored there above the restless grasses. As they drew nearer the marsh gradually gave way to decrepit waterfronts where buildings had tumbled into the channel, some frozen in mid-fall, beams and flooring and stairs like the gears of an unsprung clock hanging above the water. Pilings, black and reamed with rot, thrust dangerously close to the little boat as it made its passage. Now and then a dinghy or barge, men and women fishing or dragging seines through the ruddy waters. Once they saw three dirigibles in formation above the river, towing something behind them. On shore people moved, the same slow dance of making and unmaking: fires, food, children, shelter; between and behind and atop broken buildings, under tarps, in cars, in houses and apartments and trees. Martin thought of Calcutta, of children living in oil drums along the canals in Djakarta—how quickly New Yorkers had caught up. Odors wafted out to the Wendameen, so that Martin would suddenly grow faint with hunger. Frying fish, chapati, garlic and onions, woodsmoke, meaty reek of unwashed clothes, excrement, incense, disinfectant, autumn leaves: he breathed it all in where he stood in the cockpit, motoring now, a sign of journey’s end; breathed it all out again, saying good-bye.

  “So where’re we going to stop?” Trip hopped down into the cockpit, stooping to coil a loose line and set it alongside life jackets and a can of baked beans licked clean. “You know someplace?”

  Martin looked at him. Trip’s eyes were wide and shining, his cheekbones streaked with sunburn and hair with silver-blon
d. He looked absurdly happy and healthy, the very picture of boat-trash in his floppy cable sweater and rolled white pants.

  “Do I know someplace?” Martin raised an eyebrow. “You said it was about a girl you had to find. Now where would she be?”

  Trip was silent. He leaned against the coaming, steadying himself as they motored between uneven rows of pilings. Martin watched him but said nothing more. They continued on, into a seemingly endless ruined landscape. You think New York looks bad from a Greyhound bus, thought Martin, you think it can never get worse, but hey! Check it out—

  He almost laughed.

  Refuse bumped up against the boat. From somewhere onshore echoed music, guitar chords churned by bad radio reception or shitty boom box into something almost indecipherable; but Martin realized that he did know it—Sonic Youth, “The Sprawl.”

  He did laugh, then. Because just when you think it can never, ever, possibly get anything but worse, someone comes up and bops you on the head with something like this, radiant guitars ringing in the wreckage of New York City, lemony afternoon light masquerading as sunshine, beautiful boy on deck…

  For just a moment, for just that one instant, it was perfect. Even if the world was ruined, even if Martin was going to die, even if he would never know love again, never fuck again, never hear another song: if the world ended right now, it would have been perfect.

  He began to cry.

  Because it was beautiful. Because for that moment he had glimpsed the perfect geometry of desire, death at its apex, art and beauty and yearning bright angles below. He wiped his eyes, took a deep breath, and felt it fall away; felt the world claim him again, for just a little longer.

  The breeze left salt and a fine film of oil upon his cheek. He swiped at that as the Wendameen nosed on through the crimson water and the music fell silent and Trip assiduously avoided looking at him. But something of the moment’s radiance remained, something that Martin wouldn’t let go of, not that easily, not without a fight. He adjusted the tiller, tossed his long grey hair back with what he hoped looked like defiance, shot Trip a grin; and began to sing.

  It made his chest ache, and his throat; he had trouble catching his breath. Still he sang everything he could remember the words to. Not a great deal, actually. Martin had a terrible voice, there had never been much outside encouragement. He sang “My Little Red Book” and “I Get a Kick Out of You,” “Camelot” and “Yellow Submarine” and “Valentine,” which had an impossible chorus; “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” and “Amazing Grace” and something he’d learned for his First Holy Communion and hadn’t sung since. He bellowed “Coney Island Baby” and “Baby’s on Fire”—Trip took the tiller, still not a word. Rodgers and Hammerstein and old drinking songs,

  Adieu, adieu, kind friends, adieu,

  I can no longer stay with you.

  I’ll hang my harp on a weeping willow-tree

  And may the world go well with thee.

  He felt as though he were drunk, or tripping. He had thought—hoped, maybe—that he might drive the boy away like this, such an unapologetic show of The Old Queer Cracks at Last: Rapture of the Creep.

  Instead Trip continued to stare at the passing shoreline. Ahead of them an intricate network of docks and piers thrust out into the water, small freighters and workboats anchored amongst them. Onshore the mottled patchwork of a cobblestone street had collapsed beneath a block of eighteenth-century buildings, abattoirs that had been turned into warehouses and artists’ studios. Martin looked down into sanguine water and saw the outline of a train car there, sparkling where the light touched it. He glanced back at the shore, street sign skimming a few inches above the rippling surface; looked back down and started to laugh.

  It was not a train car at all but the Starlight Diner. He had always hated it. “What?” said Trip; the first word he had spoken in an hour.

  Martin shook his head. He was shaking. He was burning up. Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea after all. There was dust or grit in the outer corner of his eye; he ran his finger there: nothing. He blinked, raised his head, and saw it was not dust but the shadow of someone moving along the boom.

  “Fuck,” he said, shading his eyes. “Who the—”

  But there was no one there; of course not, was he crazy? He turned away so as to avoid seeing Trip’s expression—not accusatory, not disgusted, not grateful, not anything, the little prick—the wind raw against his face as once again Martin began to sing.

  Riding on the Sloop John B

  My grandfather and me

  Around Nassau town we did roam

  Drinking all night, got into a fight

  Oh I feel so broke up, I want to go home…

  He faltered. Martin’s mouth dropped open, and he turned in astonishment. Trip was singing.

  And oh, please let me go home—

  I want to go home

  I feel so sad and broke up

  I just want to go home…

  Not just singing but seizing the song, taking the old words and transforming them, so that Martin felt as though someone had shoved an icy hand down his back.

  Trip’s voice was clear and sweet and piercing, as pure a sound as Martin had ever heard, and loud—he sang like someone who had been given to it as parents used to sell their sons to bel canto; born to it.

  Martin listened, amazed and a little frightened. Was this what the boy had been hiding all these months with his self-contained silence, not a voice but A Voice?

  Or—with a shiver Martin recalled the luminous vistas they had seen, moon like a rabid eye, krakens and coelacanths rising from Buzzards Bay—had something happened to Trip these last few days?

  Let me go home

  I want to go home

  This is the worst trip

  I’ve ever been on.

  Trip stood, hand on the tiller, head thrown back. His voice died into the slap of waves and gulls keening. For a moment he stared up into the shimmering sky, gold and purple sequins stitched upon his skin. Then he lowered his face and gazed at Martin, with a look of such joy that Martin felt suddenly shy in his presence, as though he had glimpsed lovemaking through a keyhole and been caught.

  He stammered, tried to cover his embarrassment with uneasy laughter. “How did you—you can sing… ?”

  Trip grinned. “Yeah. It’s what I did, before. What I used to do…”

  He glanced down at the tiller and then at Martin. Without a word Martin stepped over and took it from him.

  “I—you think maybe this would be somewhere you could leave me?” Trip frowned, looking at the silhouettes of broken buildings lining the shore, the spires of skyscrapers that pinked the sky behind them. “I mean, it’s like downtown, right?”

  Martin looked at him, wondering if this was an attempt at irony.

  “No, this isn’t exactly downtown, Trip.” Martin raked damp hair from his face. “Do you have any idea where she might be? This woman you need to find?”

  Trip stared at the shore. Finally he said, “No. I guess I don’t. I mean I only actually saw her here once.”

  Martin resisted the urge to shout in frustration. He mopped his face with a bandanna, eased back until he could perch upon the edge of the coaming. A shadow passed across the floor; he glanced up but saw nothing. “Okay.” He wanted to crawl into his bunk belowdecks and fall into blind sleep. “Okay. So you saw her once—where was that? Do you remember an address, or anything?”

  Trip nodded. “That big place at Times Square—the Golden Pyramid or whatever it’s called.”

  “The GFI Pyramid.” Great, this is fucking great, I’ve sailed five hundred miles so this kid can look for someone he doesn’t know in the middle of Times Fucking Square. “Okay. That’s a start, I guess. I guess we could find someplace to tie up and walk—”

  “I—I need to go alone.” The boy’s voice was strained. “I mean, I know you brought me all this way, I don’t mean to be like rude or something, but I—she was, I have to—”

  The boat surged
shoreward as Martin yanked the tiller too hard. He shot Trip a furious look.

  But his anger gave way when he saw Trip’s expression, irradiated with a desire futile and intense as his own. Trip’s gaze remained fixed on shore. Unexpectedly he turned. For the first time since Martin had found him upon the shingle at Mars Hill, Trip extended his hand and touched Martin’s.

  “Thank you,” he said. “If we could maybe pull up here, somewhere—I could go.”

  Martin sat dumbly, waiting to see if there would be more. There was not.

  “All right.” He turned away, blinking back tears; feeling old and ill and immeasurably stupid. What had he been expecting? Not the prince’s magic kiss but more than this, certainly—a concerned hand on the shoulder, a low voice asking Will you be all right? Won’t you tell me what it is, isn’t there anything I can do?

  A minute passed. Martin nodded. “I’ll pull up here.”

  He brought the boat around, steered her toward where a mound of blasted rubble, brick and stone and concrete, had fallen into the harbor, forming a sort of quay. Small dark shapes sloped along the stones. There was a putrefying smell. Martin felt a spike of mean triumph, what a god-awful place; then despair, and fear.

  “This doesn’t seem too safe, Trip.” His mouth was dry. “Are you sure—”