by Ben Marcus
* * *
—
We aren’t kids anymore. We are old. Older. Nearly dead, really. My husband, James, is nearly dead, at least. He shows it. When he went to the doctor recently he hid the results from me, and I didn’t really ask, because we have to ration our concern. We can’t waste it on false alarms, and even if it’s a genuine alarm we must, I have come to believe, enact a protocol w/r/t what we feel. James shows his feelings so liberally that they come at a discount, and their value diminishes. When he says he loves me, usually in a threatening way, it always seems to beg for reciprocation. I guess he cries wolf. More or less sobs it. One could argue that whatever James says is merely the word “wolf” in one language or another. If he loves me, it is because that might open the portal for more cuddles and touches. That’s all. He needs to be swaddled and I just happen to often be in the same room. If I ever dare to walk past him without touching his hand, or his head, or stopping to outright kiss him, he pouts all day and looks up at me with mournful eyes. A husband, these days, is a bag of need with a dank wet hole in its bottom. The sheer opposite of a go bag. I comply with James’s wishes when I can, but the day is long and I have other projects.
I guess I want James to die. Not actively. Not with malice. But in a dim and distant way I gently root for James’s absence so I can see to the other side of the years I have left, get to what happens next. For a good while, James was what happened next for me. As a person he was a sort of page-turner. I moved through parts of him and made discoveries, large and small, and he led me to places and ideas I’d not seen or heard before. This looked and felt like life. And then, and then—even though I don’t think it happened suddenly—the story died in my old, tired husband. It ended. I knew everything there was to know: what the nights would be like, how the morning would feel. What he would say. What he wouldn’t. How I would think and feel around him. How I wouldn’t. Knowledge is a lot of things, but it definitely is not power. Dread is the better term, I think, though I do understand how that ultimately fails as a slogan.
The hotels inland are full so we follow the endless line of cars to the shelter. We are shown to two cots in the center of a high school gymnasium. There must be five hundred beds here, scattered out in a grid. At midnight the sleep sounds must be symphonic, particularly with the soft lowing arising from the pornless apertures of the elderly. The scoreboard is on in the gym, but it seems that no one has scored yet. Zero to zero. I’d like to feel that there is meaning in this, but I am tired and hungry. “Voilà,” says the volunteer, who has a walkie-talkie on his belt that squawks out little birdcalls. He is a handsome young man and he seems unreasonably proud to be playing this role today. I picture him unplugged, powered down like a mannequin, maybe sitting in a small chair in a room with sports banners on the wall. James and I stare at the cots as gratefully as we can, and for a moment I wonder if we are meant to tip the volunteer, because he stands there expectantly as wild children rocket past our feet.
“Just let us know if there’s anything we can do for you,” he says.
Anything? What a kind offer. A softer mattress, I think, and bone-chilling privacy, and a beef stew made with red wine. Some sexual attention would also be fine, if not from you specifically, because I fear you are too polite. Maybe you have a friend? After drives like that I often crave a release. But only a particular style of lovemaking will do. I have evolved a fairly specific set of requirements. If you don’t mind reading over these detailed instructions, briefing your friend, and then sending him to meet me in the janitor’s closet, that would be fine.
We tell him thank you, no, and we wait for him to run off before we start whispering our panic all over each other.
“Yeah, no,” says James, looking around, fake smiling, as if people were trying to read his lips. “No fucking way.”
“Maybe for a night?” I offer. I would like to be flexible. I would like to bend myself around this situation, which is certainly not ideal and is almost laughably experimental. One imagines doctors behind dark glass somewhere, rubbing themselves into a scientific frenzy over the predicament they’ve designed for us—two aging soft-bodies forced into an open-air sleeping environment. Maybe we are tired enough, and armed with enough pharmaceutical support, to render ourselves comatose on these trim little cots until it’s safe to go home. But wouldn’t people fuss with our inert bodies? Wouldn’t they see that we were so heavily tranquilized as to be unresponsive and then proceed to conduct whatever procedures they liked upon us? I only surrender myself to all my sweet medicines when I can lock a door, because I hate the thought of being fiddled with when I’ve brought on elective paralysis and can’t exactly fiddle back.
“The storm hasn’t even touched down on the island yet. We are talking days, maybe,” says James, rubbing his face. He rubs it with real purpose, pulling the skin into impossible shapes, before letting it not exactly snap back onto his head, taking its time to retract like the gnarled skin of a scrotum, and I fear for him a little bit, as if his hand will drag too far and pull his face free. I can’t really watch. If he must dismantle himself, piece by piece, I wish he would do it in private. Together we look around, as we might if we’d just entered a party. There’s no one here we know. It’s just a crowd of ragged travelers, forced from their homes, with far too many children running free. The children seem to believe that they have been released into a kind of cage match. Kill or be killed, and that sort of thing. The cots, mostly empty, are simply launching pads for child divers, exploring their airborne possibilities. They leap from bed to bed, rolling into piles on the floor, whooping. A style of topless nudity prevails, regardless, it seems, of age. Certainly there is beauty on display, but it’s ruined by all of this noise. One might reasonably think that there should be a separate evacuation receptacle for children. A room of their bloody own. Answering their special needs. Relieving the rest of us from the, well, the special energy that children so often desire to display. Lord bless their fresh, pink hearts.
I text Lettie, because there’s no way she and Richard would put up with this sort of bullshit. Are they here? In what quadrant? Could they issue a specific cry, maybe holler my name?
Airbnb! she texts back. Headed to Morley’s for clams and bloodies. Where r u?
Oh Jesus, right. People made plans. People thought ahead. I think it’s best not to mention this to James, because that’s something I could have been doing while he drove, securing our safe, private, cozy lodging and making dinner rezzies and otherwise running advance recon for this sweet adventure of ours.
James has curled up on the cot, and he’s staring into space. He looks tired. His color is James-like, which is never so great. I’m not sure how to monitor a change. I worry that he’s parked for good now, that the powerful laws of the late afternoon, which seem to visit men of a certain age, will be pulling him down into some bottomless, mood-darkening sleep, from which he will wake crankily, trumpeting his exhaustion, denying that he ever slept.
“Are you going to be napping?” I ask him, as neutrally as I can. “Because…”
“No, I’m not going to be napping. Are you kidding me? Here?” He has a way of shouting in a whisper. It’s his evacuation shelter whisper, I guess, although it has caught the attention of certain of our neighbors, who might want to scooch their cots somewhere else, come to think about it.
Yes, I want to assure them. We will be like this all night, whispering our special brand of kindness at each other, so pull up a chair and put your heads in our asses. That’s where the view is best. Perhaps that’s one way to secure our area and erect a kind of privacy barrier.
“Maybe you should get up?” I say.
“Jesus, Alice, I’ve been driving for hours. I can’t relax for a minute?”
“Yes you can, and even longer. Take all the time you like. I would just like to know your plans so I can plan accordingly.”
“What,” he hisses. “Are
you going to go out and meet some friends? Go out to lunch, maybe?”
We have a different strategy when it comes to the timing of our emotional broadcasts. James buckles in public, and a hole opens in his neck, or whatever, and out comes his sour message for me and the world. One feels that he is emboldened in a crowd. It is possible that he does not see them as human, and thus fails to experience shame when he debases himself in their midst. Like masturbating in front of a pet. Whereas I frequently wait until we are alone, and then I quietly birth my highly articulate rage in his direction, in the calmest voice I can manage. I certainly have my bias, but it is possible that neither style is superior, and that a level silence in the face of distress or tension is the ultimate goal. Silence, in the end, is the only viable rehearsal for what comes after, anyway. I mean way, way after. And one certainly wants to be prepared. One wants to have practiced.
“Not here, James,” I say, as brightly as I can.
“What you mean is not anywhere, right, Alice? Not anywhere and never?”
Not bad. He is learning. Although I do not doubt that he will share his feelings with me when we find some privacy.
We head out to the car and talk this through. The cots will be here as a last resort, although it feels odd using the word “resort” with respect to such a location. James feels that we should start driving because there will be plenty of other people with our same idea, all of them racing to find the closest hotel room. It’s kind of the plot of Cannonball Run, except the people are old, they drive very slowly, and some of them just might die tonight. Eventually, James explains, if we go far and fast enough, we should find some part of this hellish country not affected by the storm, with plenty of empty beds. He would like to express confidence now, I can see that. I imagine that he wants me not to worry. If only he could do it without making me worry so much more.
The roads might still be packed, he says, and who knows about the weather. Around us there’s a fringe of rain and the sky is black and there’s that sound, a kind of pressurized silence, as if the orchestra is just about to start playing. The conductor will tap his baton and all hell will break loose. We figure we should get out of here, head further inland, and maybe there will be some food and a nice clean bed in a room where we can lock the door. It sounds decadent to me, and delicious, and I sort of cannot wait. We are a team, and it feels like we’ve just broken out of jail together.
We pull onto the highway and I check the news on my phone. “They are calling this storm Boris.”
“Boris,” he says flatly, as if I’ve just told him the name of a distant star.
“What’s the thinking there?” I wonder.
“They needed a B name.”
“Yes, well then, Boris, of course.”
“And they practice a kind of diversity.”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t know. I’m sure they want to be inclusive.”
“Not to trigger anyone by using a regular name?”
“Boris is a regular name,” says James. “In several parts of the world. With massive populations. Possibly more regular than John, worldwide.”
“Then let the storm go bother them.”
“I’m sure there are people named Boris over here.”
“Oh I’m sure. I bet their cocks stink.”
“What is wrong with you?” James is grinning. I don’t think he minds my moods when they’re not directed at him.
“Plenty. I’m hungry and you won’t let me eat. We just have to drive and drive. I’m going to hurl myself from the car.”
James smiles, and he pretends to do math, wetting his finger and tabulating an imaginary problem in the air in front of him. “Fifty,” he says.
“What?”
“I definitely think that’s at least fifty times that you’ve threatened to jump from a moving car. At least since I’ve known you. I can’t be sure about the time before that, but something tells me you had a penchant for it in your early years, too.”
He may be right. I don’t care to reflect too far back, particularly on the threats I may have needed to utter in certain stifling situations as a youth, which, one should not be surprised, very often occurred when I was a passenger in a car. I used to think about it more seriously, imagining myself rolling like a weevil, but finally free of torments. And of course the most delicious part of the fantasy was what would happen in the car after I ejected. The shock, the panic, the deep, abiding respect. Even the jealousy. Someone had finally done what everyone else could only dream of.
“Boo-ya,” I say. “Perhaps a more intuitive name.”
“Beelzebub.”
“Bitch face.”
“Bronwyn.”
“Bald Mountain.”
“Boredom.” And we both laugh.
“Boredom the storm is barreling down the coast. Boredom brings destruction in its wake. Coastal villages still recovering from the deadly effects of Boredom.”
* * *
—
The road is kind of gross. There’s a wild, erratic rain, as if some man with a bucket, hiding in a ditch, is occasionally hurling water at us, like from an old film set. We have the news on, and we’ve texted some friends. Everyone is everywhere. A few of them did opt for the cots back at the shelter. What could it hurt, they wrote. And they’ve come around with snacks! Our plan is to push to the next town, but it’s hard to see how that happens in this rain, in this darkness. It’s two hours or so in normal driving conditions, and looking at James, squeezed into an awful, tense ball behind the wheel, gnashing his teeth like a cartoon character, it’s hard to feel that he has two more hours of driving left to give. Poor thing. This is the statistic that is looking to claim our aging, musty bodies: the danger that befalls people in flight from other danger.
“I’m happy to drive,” I say.
“You don’t like how I’m driving?”
Okay, well, see. “I’m offering to help.”
“I’m good. I’m great.”
Sure you are. James is like some harassed sea creature, hiding behind a rock. I rub his neck, smooth down the back of his hair. I need my driver alive. My poor, poor driver. By taking care of him I take care of myself.
“Thanks,” he says. “That feels good. If only I could see. I mean, right? I feel like I’m playing a video game. What you could do is call some hotels or motels up ahead, to see if we can get a room.”
There’s a Holiday Inn and a Motel 6 in the next town. Both lines are busy when I call. I keep trying, and meanwhile I pull up the map on my phone, but my signal is getting spotty, a single bar flickering in and out, and the image of where we are never quite comes through. It’s loading and it’s loading and it’s loading. I see our blue dot, moving slowly over the screen, but there’s no terrain beneath it, just a gray block, as if we’re floating in space over some bottomless void.
James pulls over at a gas station and we get chips. Lots of them, the sort we rarely allow ourselves at home. All bets are off. I would inject drugs into my face right now. I would drink gas from the car with a straw. Inside the store, the single-serving wine bottles look exceptional to me—golden bottles in their own gleaming cooler, a shrine to goodness—but it’s not fair to James, who has to drive. I don’t want him drooling. I don’t want him jealous. I’d prefer to keep his feelings to a minimum.
We can hardly see anything save the lights and the black slashes of rain streaking past, but the same sign keeps appearing on the side of the road, every mile or two: Exit 49 Food. The third time it crawls past, close enough to grab and shake, to possibly dry-hump, I start to salivate. I picture plates of unspecified steaming goodness. Salty, crunchy objects littered over wet mounds of something achingly delicious, with sauce, with sauce, with sauce. Polenta with stinking gorgonzola, maybe, and a fork-tender bone of meat from some brave animal. A shank, a leg, a neck, cooked for four years in a thi
ck mixture of wines. With tall drinks that fizz a little and work directly on quieting down one’s noisy little brain, perhaps even a warm cloudy drink you pour directly into your eyes. James seems to register my reverie and insists again that we keep driving. Have to have to. He slaps the steering wheel. That’s why we bought chips, he cries, trying perhaps to sound like a real human being who feels enthusiasm. It’s sort of awkward. We have chips, he says more quietly. If we stop now we are doomed, goners.
“It’s just that it’s already kind of late, and I’m pretty hungry,” I tell him.
“What are you saying?”
“That it’s late and I’m hungry?”
“If you’re not prepared to offer a solution then maybe you should not speak.”
Well, it’s an interesting rule, and I do enjoy constraints around what can and cannot be said. The deepest kind of etiquette. But if you applied such a standard to everyone, the world over, there’d be very little speech. The world would undergo a near-total vow of silence, with a few exceptions. Perhaps that would be a desired outcome. Perhaps a special island could be set aside for the solution-proffering peoples, who would slowly drive each other to murder.
“Okay, sure, I will restrict myself to a solution-based language. Here’s a solution. Let’s go to a restaurant. That would solve so many problems. The problem of hunger, the problem of exhaustion, the problem of claustrophobia in this goddamn coffin, and the very real threat of escalating discord between two individual passengers.”
“Go to a restaurant and then what? Eating will make us tired. Where will we sleep? I hate being the only one who thinks about these things.”
“Oh, is it not fair?” I say. And I will admit that my voice dips into a pout here.
“That’s right,” says James. “It’s not fair. I didn’t want to put it that way.”