The Bewildered

by Peter Rock

  “No way,” Kayla said. “She is definitely not.”

  Ahead, the dark shapes of houses loomed, lights here and there.

  “—and what she’s doing with all that wire,” Chris continued, “and everything—she never really explains, or tells us anything about herself.”

  “Why would she?” Kayla said. “It’s not like we ever ask her anything, either.”

  “So, what?” Leon said, still waiting for an answer. “We’ll just stroll up to her door and knock?”

  Kayla swung her pack around to the front, unzipped it, and reached inside. She pulled out the orange phone headset, trailing its wires, the alligator clips on the ends.

  “Hey,” Leon said. “How did you get that? Did you even ask me?”

  “It belongs to all of us,” she said. “And I’m the only one who knows how to work it.”

  “You do?”

  “Now I do.” Kayla stopped walking and pointed straight ahead, at a low structure, all its windows flickering with bright fluorescent lights. The only neighbor was a ramshackle Victorian with all its windows boarded up.

  “That’s the trashiest house I’ve ever seen,” Chris said.

  “It’s a trailer,” Kayla said. “That doesn’t really count.”

  “This is definitely it? Why would she live all the way out here?”

  “Because she’s not like other people, that’s why. She doesn’t want to be surrounded by them. You’re the one who’s always saying she’s different.”

  “I didn’t say she definitely is,” Chris said. “I only said she might be.”

  “That’s what we’re finding out,” Kayla said.

  Nearby, under a tall cedar, Natalie’s truck was parked; Kayla pointed to it as she spoke, but none of the three moved closer. They stood indecisively on the dirt road, watching the house, stealing glances at each other.

  “Whatever you guys want to do,” Leon said. “I’m easy.”

  “‘I’m easy’?” Kayla said. “That phrase is disallowed.”

  “And start having an opinion, Leon,” Chris said. He started toward the truck, closer, and the others followed. “She wouldn’t go anywhere without her truck, would she?”

  “She could have another car.”

  “But would she leave all the lights on?”

  They stashed their skateboards and musical instruments under the truck and leaned close against it, for cover. Its metal sides smelled of dirt, gasoline, rust. Through the tinted window, Chris saw the familiar orange carpet, the empty back of the pickup.

  “Perfect,” Kayla said, her neck bent, her face looking up. She pointed to the telephone pole, rising close to the truck, next to the cedar that stretched overhead. “We’re going to tap into her phone line.”

  “What if no one calls?”

  “At least we’ll be able to see better from up there.”

  “If she’s here,” Chris said.

  “If this is even her house,” Leon said. “Who’s climbing?”

  “Chris,” Kayla said. “You’re still hurt, and I need my hands free.”

  “Why?” Leon said.

  “To write,” she said.

  “I’m fine,” Leon said. “What?” But he didn’t argue any further as Kayla handed the spikes and harness to Chris. She clipped the plastic phone headset to his belt and shoved a heavy screwdriver into his back pocket.

  “We’ll be up in the tree,” she said. “Close by.”

  Chris began to climb. He had no gloves. The spikes slipped—still too big, despite his new shoes. As he moved slowly up the wooden pole, he listened to the metal bending on the hood, then the roof of the truck’s cab; Kayla and Leon stood up there, reached for the cedar’s lowest branches, and pulled themselves up, out of sight. Chris took it slow, pausing to breathe every other step; he did not look down. He felt exposed.

  “What if she sees us?” he said.

  “She probably wouldn’t even care,” Kayla said. She and Leon were above him, waiting.

  “She’d only see me, anyway,” Chris said. “You two, she couldn’t see.”

  After ten minutes, his head was even with the crossbeams, near the wires. The wires cut through the branches of the tree and gouged the trunk. He kicked his feet in hard, to hold him, and leaned back against the strap, resting.

  “Careful, Leon,” Kayla said. “Watch your hands; the wire is right there.”

  “I am being careful,” he said.

  They sat less than ten feet away, in the branches, looking at Chris.

  “What next?” he said.

  Kayla pointed out the plastic box, tucked up high, among the insulators. It was gray plastic, and it wasn’t locked—there was no reason anyone would be here, no reason anyone should be. Chris pried the cover away with the screwdriver, as Kayla directed, then hooked the headset’s alligator clips to the stiff loops of wire she described to him. She was whispering, reading from her notebook, facts she’d copied from books and the Internet.

  “Now, we wait,” she said. “By the way, I got her payment, for the last time—over three hundred. We’ll put it away the day after tomorrow. Sunday afternoon.”

  “I just wish she’d call us for a new job,” Leon said. “I can climb. I’m fine.”

  “A little bewildered, maybe,” Kayla said.

  “Hilarious,” Leon said. “Funny, Kayla.”

  “That’s more like it,” Chris said.

  “Keep your voices down,” she said. “And we still have to stash the last money. Leon, if you miss another meeting, we’ll go without you. And have you been practicing that Handel? The Royal Fireworks one?”

  They waited. The canvas straps were tight around Chris’s hips; his legs already ached, and he picked at the splinters in his palms. It looked more comfortable in the tree. Below, oblong rectangles of light spilled out of the trailer’s windows, into the ragged yard, shining on all kinds of torn-up paper. There was no movement through the windows; square reflections, mirrors or shiny books, covered the surfaces of tables and counters. That was all. Chris looked down; the ground looked distant, solid. He tried not to remember, to imagine how Leon had twisted in this same harness, sliding all the way from the top.

  Suddenly, there was movement, a shadow cast, sliding inside, across the far wall, and then there was a woman, framed there, her dark brown, wavy hair around her shiny white shoulders. She wore a black bra, and perhaps nothing else; the window frame cut her off at the waist, only her torso visible.

  “That’s not her,” Leon said.

  “It is. She just dyed her hair,” Kayla said.

  “Why?”

  “Maybe that’s the real color.”

  “Are you sure that’s her?” Chris said. The woman below looked slighter, more fragile, than Natalie.

  “Look at her face,” Kayla said, “and the way she’s walking around, and the way she just spat in the sink.”

  “Right, right.”

  Natalie held something silver, something in tinfoil; she filled a pot with water, put it on the stove. The bra straps were straight and black against her pale skin. Dropping the foil into the water, she crossed the small room, stared out the window, and smiled.

  “She can only see her own reflection,” Kayla said, whispering.

  “She’s smiling at herself, then,” Chris said.

  Leon sat silent in the tree, close to where the electrical lines stretched through the branches.

  “This is great,” Kayla said.

  Another five minutes passed. Natalie stepped deeper into the room, so they could no longer see her. Chris glanced over at the tall, abandoned house next door—a place no one lived, but a place someone could. His legs trembled. As he tried to hold them steady, Natalie stepped into view. She took a tall glass from a cupboard; she filled it with water, mixed a spoonful of something orange into it, then drank it straight down, her head tilted back. She scratched her forehead, brushed her hair away from her eyes, and pulled it up. Her whole scalp seemed to come loose.

  “Whoa,” Chr
is said. “Did she just pull off her hair?”

  “Shh,” Kayla said. “It’s a wig, obviously.”

  Natalie’s hair had been shaved close to her scalp, a dark shadow on her head. She looked somewhere between a boy and a woman. Holding the wig upright, in one hand, she disappeared through a doorway. She returned, in a moment, without the wig, her head still bare. At the sink again, she splashed water on her face, and ran her hands along the crown of her head, as if reminding herself of her skull’s shape. Her head looked so much smaller, unprotected. The sight of it made Chris reach up and touch his own hair, the soft bristles coming back, and to squint over at the smooth shape of Leon’s head.

  Natalie spun without warning, away from the sink, facing the window. The three could hear the ringing telephone from where they were; Chris was so transfixed, watching, that he didn’t move until Kayla hissed at him. Hands shaking, he pulled at the plastic headset, dangling below him, and pressed it to his ear.

  It was Natalie’s voice—clearly hers, straight and sharp—alternating with a man’s voice that was high-pitched and uncertain.

  “Natalie?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s Steven.”

  “Steven?”

  “You know,” the man said. “From San Jose. Okitonics.”

  “Okitonics?” she said.

  “Right,” he said. “Where we used to work together.”

  “I don’t think I work there anymore.”

  “I know that,” he said. “Neither do I.”

  “This was in San Jose? Holy crow. California?”

  “I’m here,” he said. “Here in Portland.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “I’m living on a houseboat. Barely south of the Sellwood Bridge, down from Oaks Park—the amusement park, you know, it’s just open for the season.”

  Chris repeated everything he could, whispering, struggling to keep up, to follow the conversation, to relay enough that Kayla could write it down. Still, he watched Natalie as he listened, as she talked on the phone. Now she was searching for a stub of pencil, then writing, it looked like, on the wall next to the phone. It was as if Chris could hear the scratching she made, because at the same time, closer, Kayla was also writing, copying down the conversation he relayed.

  “Did you follow me here?” Natalie was saying.

  “What? No, nothing like that. I came up here to get away for a little while. How are you?”

  “Did someone tell you where I was?”

  “It was a whim,” the man, Steven, said. “Well, what it was, was I was in Fred Meyer this morning, shopping, and I thought I saw you, or someone who really looked like you, except your hair was different—”

  “I bet,” Kayla said, whispering in the tree, and the three stifled their laughter.

  “—I’ve been curious what happened to you,” Steven said. “I thought we were beginning to be friends, at the very least, and then whatever happened happened, and you were gone.”

  Natalie paced across her kitchen, twirling so the phone cord wound tight around her neck. Her scalp flashed in straight, white lines through the bristles of her hair. She twisted back the other way and the phone cord unwound.

  “Will this reach over there?” Chris said. “I have to get off this pole. My legs are all asleep. I might fall.”

  “Don’t drop it,” Kayla said.

  He swung the headset on its cord, like a pendulum—the tiny voices coming and going—and Kayla reached out and caught it. She held it to her ear, and Leon, standing on a branch beneath her, leaned his face in close. The thin cord stretched from the pole to the tree.

  Chris pulled his left foot free, the spikes loose from the wood. Climbing down took less effort, but it was just as unnerving. He glanced down at Natalie, still talking on the phone, then up at Kayla and Leon, listening, not watching him or even aware that he was descending.

  He jumped down the last four feet; the ground beneath him felt unsteady, yet reassuring. He unbuckled the harness, the spikes, slid them under the pickup, then crawled across the truck’s hood. Through the dark windshield he saw a wire clipper, a hammer, a Slim Jim wrapper and a baseball cap on the dashboard. He kept moving, standing, pulling himself into the tree, climbing toward his friends.

  Leon climbed higher, on a branch above Kayla; she slid sideways, so Chris could sit next to her on the branch.

  “Yes,” Kayla said. “Now things are really getting interesting.” She looked at Chris, then up at Leon. “Watch your hands, Leon—the power line. Your hand’s right on it.”

  The headset’s cord still stretched to the telephone pole, the alligator clips holding. The headset was tight between Kayla’s shoulder and head, and she was writing so fast that the branch shook. Chris looked down and tried to read the notebook, the piece of the conversation he’d missed. Kayla’s dark pencil angled across, ignoring the lines: WATERLILY. W-A-T-E-R-L-E-L-I-E. FRIENDSHIP. ACCIDENT.

  She held out the headset, her hand sticky with sap, and Chris took it. He lifted it between their ears, so they could both listen, their faces pressed together.

  “Who told you that?” Natalie was saying.

  “There were all kinds of stories,” Steven said. “You never came back, so no one knew what was true. I guess it was never clear to me if you left your job, or if there really was some kind of accident, or maybe both, or what—”

  “Why are you so curious? Is this any of your business?”

  Chris felt his face shift as Kayla smiled, eagerly listening.

  “Because we were friends,” Steven said to Natalie. “We are friends. I thought we were. I was just calling because I thought I saw you, and I was curious. I don’t mean to—”

  “Everyone looks similar in Fred Meyer,” Natalie said. “It’s that department store lighting in there.” The pot on the stove was boiling over; she fished out the foil packet, waving it, hot, all her actions full of impatience. “I must admit I have no idea what you’re getting at,” she said. “Did you want to see me?”

  Chris listened, Kayla’s cool, soft, smooth cheek pressed against his cheek, her sweet breath like a pulse, the edge of her ear touching his ear. Leon, above them, had stretched over, his head on top of theirs, his ear pointing down so he could hear, too. The bones of their skulls formed a kind of triangle where they could hear each other swallow, feel each other blink. They all listened, simultaneously, and made sense of the words. It was as if they were reading each other’s minds, a hint of how it might be, one day, between them, if they stayed true to each other, if they found their way.

  “Sure, I guess so. That’d be great,” Steven was saying. “Just to get together and talk. Name a time and place, and I’ll be there.”

  6.

  SWIRLS OF GASOLINE, visible even in the moonlight, colored the water of the harbor; loose packs of carp slid beneath the surface, nosing for garbage, casting new wrinkles. The cabin cruisers rocked and settled, their names painted in smug golden letters: XTASEA, JUNK BOND, THIRD WIFE.

  Steven uncleated his lines and coiled them on the dock. When he started the engine, it coughed black smoke that dissipated into the dark sky. The Waterlelie was wide, and very slow, the steering wheel in the stern. He eased her away from the dock, followed the buoys out into the channel. As he steered, he watched Heather, who sat alone in the cabin, wearing dark glasses, Ross panting at her feet. The dog looked like a cross between a hyena and a German shepherd; he wore a red vest, with white letters on it that read, PLEASE DON’T PET ME I’M WORKING.

  “What are you doing?” Heather called.

  “Once we’re out on the river,” Steven said, “I’ll tie down the wheel and join you.”

  Heather was the coordinator of a nonprofit organization, called The Seeing Eye, that trained guide dogs. She herself was gradually losing her sight; cataracts had led to detached retinas, and numerous operations had scarred them beyond further repair. Steven had known her for just over a month, and the changing, uncertain degree of her blindness often made
it a little more difficult to tell what she could or could not see. To assume too much was unkind, and to assume too little could be worse.

  “We’re underway?” Heather said, hearing his approach. Her face was pale, smooth and heart-shaped, her dark, curly hair swept back from a sharp widow’s peak.

  “Yes,” Steven said. “She’s thirty-six feet long, bow to stern, and indestructible.” He began to describe the oak floors, the round brass plugs instead of nails, the table hanging on pulleys, the portholes.

  “Can we go out on the deck?” Heather said. “It’s too quiet, too still in here; I want to feel that I’m on a boat, not in a living room.”

  He moved the small table out onto the bow, where there was just enough space for two chairs. He set the plate of crackers and cheese there, and the bottle of wine, then helped Heather come forward.

  “You look wonderful,” he said, as she stood.

  “All for you.” She held out her arms, on display. Her hips and shoulders were full, her body strong and solid. Almost six feet, a couple inches taller than Steven, she wore red, high-heeled sandals that lifted her even higher. Her dark curls reached her shoulders, the blue and white striped shirt a little like a sailor’s.

  Now they were out in the current, already under the Sellwood Bridge, traveling north. Steven had set the wheel straight with a bungee cord. The river was so empty, and they were moving so slowly, that he could easily change direction in time to avoid any potential danger.

  “I like the wind,” Heather said. “Sometimes I can hear it in the tops of trees, or whistling around buildings, and then in a moment it crashes down on me—the more vision I lose, the more wind will affect my mood, I think. It’s taking the place of the sun.”

  “That’s beautiful,” he said, pouring more wine. “Touching, I mean. We’re passing Oaks Park, on the right. I guess you can hear those kids screaming. They’re on the rollercoaster, the Ferris wheel. I can see the lights down below the trees, and then up above. We’ll have to go there sometime.”

  “I’ve been there,” Heather said, “slid down the long pink slides. Bumper cars—I shot rifles at the shooting gallery. I shot the piano players, the skunk, everything. I’ve been there. I’ve seen it.”