by K B Jensen
After she returned from her honeymoon in Shimla, she got her photos printed and the first picture on top of the pile was the two of them on the plane. He was white as a ghost next to her dark skin, like a halo.
She knew she should’ve thrown it away, but she hid the photograph in the bottom of her jewelry box, along with his crumpled business card. She dropped his book and the 100-rupee note inside a manila envelope. She pulled a dollar and the spare change out of her wallet and held it in her hands. She turned the coins over and felt the ridged faces of the presidents and the English words. She told herself she liked what the American represented, a kind of freedom she didn’t have or even necessarily want or need, but she could never love another man, another country, now. Could she? There was always the possibility, she thought, albeit a small one.
“Maybe in another life,” she wrote on the dollar bill. She put it inside the envelope, sealed it, wrote out the address and told her driver to mail it for her.
Then she did her best to forget the American.
* * *
“I don’t get it,” he said in the dark.
“What don’t you get?” she asked. She rubbed her hands together trying to generate some heat in her extremities. The chill was starting to set in. She shifted back into the driver’s seat and turned the car back on. It was in the red zone and a huff of cold air blasted through the vents. It would take a while to warm up again.
“So she keeps his picture, but she never sees him again.” His breath rose in the air, a mist around them.
“Yeah,” she said.
“She seems a bit repressed.”
“No, she’s just an honorable woman doing what she’s supposed to do,” she bristled slightly. “But a woman can still have feelings. She’s free to feel.”
“You sound like you should be getting a Ph.D. in English lit,” he said, with a laugh. “You need to drop the accounting, the M.B.A. It’s not you.”
She leaned closer to him on the passenger side, close enough to feel the heat through the layers on her right side, feel the heat of his breath in the small, cold space. She found herself moving closer against him as she fought the cold.
“I can still change my mind,” she said. “But I have to have a day job, don’t I? Out in the real world?”
“Haven’t you ever heard that expression, love what you do and never work a day in your life?” he said.
“Of course,” she said. “But you can also love what you do and never get work a day in your life.”
“So she loves him?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Maybe,” she said. “I don’t know. I guess that’s unclear isn’t it? Why not, though? Isn’t it possible?”
“It’s impossible to love someone that fast,” he said. He furrowed his eyebrows.
“Haven’t you ever met anyone that made an impression on you in a short period of time? You only spend a short, little period of time, a few hours or a few days with them, but they change the course of your life. Or you fall just a little in love and the time seems longer than it is. A week feels like a lifetime. You could get lost remembering each moment with them. Haven’t you ever felt that way?”
“No,” he said.
“Then you’ve never really been in love,” she said, crossing her arms, cradling her body. She was still leaning toward him, and she was starting to feel a small ache in her back.
“Of course I have,” he said, letting out a heavy breath.
“Just not that kind of love,” she said.
“I think you’re quite the romantic,” he said. “I think the fantasy is just better than the reality. I don’t think it’s possible. It’s impossible, impossible love.” He was mumbling now. He went in and out like that. He grimaced.
“My God,” she said. “You’re bleeding again. Fuck. We’ve got to find a way to get it to stop.”
She wondered if he was bleeding on the inside of his skull as well. What if he had a blood clot, and he was going to die in her arms? The panic rose inside her. She fought it down, took a gulp, took a series of deep breaths. No. She was in a kind of shock, a kind of denial. She wasn’t going to think about that now.
She pressed the T-shirt bits against his head and felt the warm blood under her sticky fingers. She wished she had a way to wipe it off.
“There’s got to be something in this car I can use to stop this,” she thought.
She leaned over and rummaged under the seats. Her fingers danced over the grit buried there for years and found a couple of pens and an old, squashed water bottle mostly full of ice. She took a cold swig and spat it out onto the backseat because it was so stale. Her hands crinkled wrappers under the seat and touched on a fat roll of duct tape. What the heck was that doing in here, she thought.
It was from her dad. He loved duct tape. He must have left some in the car when she moved back home. He used it to seal all her boxes. It had seemed brilliant at first until it came time to unpack them. She was grateful now that it was there.
“It’ll do in a bind,” she said. “Maybe I should host my own survival show.”
“You have to survive first,” he said. “Is that sterile?” His eyes narrowed suspiciously as he glanced at the roll.
She ripped a long, gray strip of duct tape with her bare hands. “I don’t think that matters so much for now.” She fiddled with the bloody cotton shirt scraps.
She took a new piece of cloth and pressed it against his wound. Then she laid some duct tape over it and wrapped it around his head.
“There,” she said. “How’s that for pressure.” He looked ridiculous, with his head bandaged like that. She would’ve smiled if she weren’t so scared.
“It’s gonna hurt like hell to take it off,” he said.
“Let the hospital deal with that when you get there. At least you’ll be alive. The last thing we need is you bleeding to death while we wait for help.”
“I don’t want to think about that,” he said. “Bleeding to death. Tell me another story.”
“I don’t want to tell any more stories,” she said. “Why don’t you tell me a story? What did you study in school?”
“So now you’re gonna ask me about my past lives,” he said. “I’d rather not go into that right now. I’m tired.”
“Oh come on,” she said. “It’s a simple question.”
“I’m dying here,” he said. “I’d rather not go into all the people I’ve been.”
He had this weird way of not making any sense and making sense at the same time, she thought.
“Just one story,” she said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I have a few.”
“Maybe it will help keep you awake if you tell it,” she said.
“I’d rather sleep… but fine. I’ll tell you a story,” he said. “I’m not sure you’ll like it though.”
“It’s better than staring off into the snow,” she said. Something about their situation made her think of being lost at sea, lost in a sea of snow.
It took him a few minutes to start and when the words rolled out of his mouth, he sounded like he had slipped into some kind of late-night dream. Clear but deep and dark.
“I’m not going to hold anything back,” he murmured in the darkness.
Peter’s Tale
I took the water from the old well. It was a murky, yellowish brown. I tossed it out. I lifted another pail up, and it was the same. I cupped my hand and took a swig anyway. It tasted like eggs, like sulfur. I spat it out in a plume of foul-smelling mist.
I was squatting in the barn behind an old farmhouse. Its owners didn’t know I was trespassing on their land. I worried they might shoot me with a shotgun if they caught me. I spotted them a few times on their way to milk the cows. They were old and gray. Mr. McGregor had a beard and glasses. The name on the mailbox was McGregor like that old kid’s story about the old man and the bunny. I’m not making that up.
I had spent several nights in the old barn. I could tell it had once been grand and b
right red. Now, it sagged and tilted to the right. It was almost as if the building had crooked shoulders. The wooden planks had grayed in spots like human hair. The dirt floor inside was scattered with white splotches of dried-up, caked-on bird feces. Sparrows fluttered between the beams.
At first I hesitated to unroll my sleeping bag on the filth but it was better than the bug-infested weeds outside, at least that’s what I thought. Once I lay down, I counted at least a dozen nests. When I woke up in the morning, I could see the gaps and holes in the rafters, the light shining through beautiful and yellow, highlighting the specks of dust floating through each beam.
I got up, and I went to the garden. I pulled out carrots and wiped off the dry, black clumps of dirt. I grabbed some cucumbers, too. I walked back to the old well and rinsed off the vegetables with the briny water. Small hair-like roots clung to the unpeeled carrots as I crunched through them. Then I ate a cucumber and my stomach growled.
“Did you get enough to eat?” the gray-haired woman said softly behind me. There was not a mean note to the words.
I turned and looked and dropped the vegetables on the ground. The cucumbers rolled and bumped her tennis shoe.
“Son, you could’ve just asked us for help,” she said.
“I don’t need your help,” I said.
“Sometimes people like to help,” she said, tucking a stray wisp of gray hair behind her ear. “It’s the Christian thing to do.”
“I’m not Christian,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Why are you out here?”
She reminded me of my grandmother. Her hair was held back in a loose bun. I had been stealing vegetables from a grandmother, I thought, with shame.
“I lost my job,” I said. “If I’m going to be homeless, I figured it’d be better to be outside in a warmer climate, so I’m heading south.”
“We could use some help, if you want a job,” Mrs. McGregor said. “Come inside. I’ll make you some chamomile tea.”
The house had gray carpets and knickknacks of farm animals scattered on all the shelves. I took off my shoes and followed the plump, old lady into the kitchen and watched her drape an apron across her thick middle.
“I’m going to fatten you up,” she said, tying her apron on with a large bow behind her. “I couldn’t stand to watch you eating those vegetables out there, so skinny.” She gestured out the window. “I could see you the whole time. Bacon and eggs, sound good?
“Yes, thank you,” I said.
She laid out the strips of bacon on the skillet. The meat sizzled and grease splattered. I licked my lips.
“Does your husband know you’re helping me out?” I said. For some reason, I felt like Mr. McGregor was going to come home and shoot me in outrage at any moment.
She scrambled the eggs and puttered a bit in response. “What I say goes in this house,” she said, holding up her spatula to accentuate her point. “Don’t you mind him. He’s all right. He knows about you.”
“Oh, he does, does he?”
“We’ve been wondering about you for a while,” she said. “So what’s your story, anyway?”
“Why do you want to know? So you can print it up in the church newsletter and tell everyone how you helped the homeless man? I don’t have a story.”
“Every human being has a story,” she said. “You don’t have to share it if you don’t want to, I guess.” She looked away uneasily. “What is your name though?” Mrs. McGregor asked.
“Peter,” I told her. She didn’t seem to catch the irony. If she did, she ignored it.
“How about your clothes,” she said cheerfully. “Why don’t you borrow Mr. McGregor’s while I wash yours?”
She went into the bedroom and came out with a pair of coveralls and a dingy white T-shirt. “I think his regular pants would be too small for you. You can take a shower if you like, over here.” She pointed to a closed door with a cross-stitch hanging from a single nail. “Here’s a fresh towel. Leave your clothes out and I’ll wash them.”
“You’re too kind,” I said. I walked into the bathroom holding the clean towel. It had been two weeks since I bathed last and the grime showed in the crevices of my face, dark around the eyes and back of the neck. I still smelled of well water and bird shit.
It’s amazing how stress can age a man, I thought, leaning against the old, porcelain sink and looking into the oval mirror. I looked more than forty with a light brown beard streaked with a few wisps of silver hanging from a gaunt face. I had taken off my old jacket with the brass buttons and hung it on the doorknob outside the bathroom. It was the last vestiges of my corporate life.
I had been working at the bank for eight years. I never did get into the politics of it, so I stayed at the same desk the whole time, worked in the same gray cubicle. One day, I started noticing a strange, little error no one else seemed to catch. There was some funny business with the foreign currency. It didn’t matter if I was dealing in euros, crowns, pounds, or pesos, the decimal points seemed to be jumping around into the wrong places.
The customers never seemed to notice the difference. In this day and age, people seem to ignore numbers. I did have one old lady frown once when I handed her a twenty-dollar bill in exchange for a pile of pesos. She was looking at Andrew Jackson.
“The man was a murderer. The Trail of Tears,” she said, “And he’s on the twenty dollar bill.”
Politics and banking go hand in hand apparently.
“Only twenty dollars,” I muttered. It didn’t seem right so I took a step back from the counter and I went back to my cubicle to look over the receipts for this transaction and another. Then I went to the envelopes where we kept the foreign cash and counted it. I know I shouldn’t have unsealed it, but I had to know what was going on. I opened the envelopes and the coins and bills fell out, spilling onto my desk. It was strange. The receipts didn’t match. I unsealed more envelopes, dozens of them. I went over the calculations in my head all day but the numbers didn’t add up. I couldn’t get the numbers out of my head. So I went to my manager, and I told him what I’d found. I placed the receipts on his desk.
“There’s a problem with our foreign currency exchanges,” I said. “The conversion numbers are all wrong.”
“There must be a glitch with the computer system,” Douglas said. “I’ll check the numbers, and if it’s wrong, I’ll make sure this gets corrected right away.”
He was swiveling back and forth on his leather chair and had his fingers interlaced in front of him.
“The numbers are wrong,” I said. “I’m sure of it.”
He put his reading glasses on and was leafing through the paper receipts I gave him, frowning. I turned to leave him alone in his office.
“Peter, wait,” he said. “Good job catching this, thanks for bringing it to my attention. You can take the rest of the day off. You’ve earned it.”
Now, I wasn’t expecting a promotion or anything but the next day I came to work and the cops were waiting for me by the employee entrance. I didn’t even get to clean out my desk. There is a picture of my old pet cat still probably hanging in a cubicle in Capital Third. They took me to the police station, gave me some bad coffee, and badgered me for hours about the whole thing, while I just stared at the brick walls and flaking orange paint.
“Your boss suspects you of stealing,” the blond cop said. He had a face that was perpetually red with a long scar snaking down the side of one cheek. I wondered if someone had cut him. That’s what it looked like.
“He spotted you on the video leafing through the foreign currency envelopes. Why did you open that envelope?” the cop said, pausing the video that he was playing on an old outdated monitor.
“Because there was a discrepancy,” I said slowly and a little too loud. “The money the customers were giving us was not the same amount as the money headed to the main office. Some of it was missing and I showed this to Douglas. I showed it to him. I’m the one who gave him the receipts to look at, the copies didn�
��t match, dammit!”
“Don’t raise your voice at us,” the officer said. “How much was it every month, a couple hundred? A grand? Was it worth it, buddy?”
“Fuck you,” I said, standing up. “I didn’t steal anything.”
“Sit the fuck back down,” the cop said, and I complied.
I rubbed my eyes like a tired child. “Why don’t you ask Douglas, maybe he had something to do with it?” And then it sunk in. “Douglas must have been the one pocketing the cash.”
“Sure buddy, blame the guy who caught the problem, like we haven’t heard that ploy before,” the cop said. “But we’ll look into it.”
I had handcuffs on and the metal irritated my wrists. I fiddled with them back and forth, round and round until my skin was raw. They warned me charges could be pending, but they took them off and let me go anyway.
“Don’t go anywhere,” they said. “Stay in town.”
I took the bus home from the station. I was so angry. I was so angry I walked in the door and started packing a bag with socks, trail mix, underwear, a clean shirt, my sleeping bag. I was like a little kid running away from home with seven dollars in his pocket. I knew it was foolish, childish, stupid, but I didn’t care.
All I could think was I had to get out. I had to escape. I had spent enough of my life under fluorescent lights sitting in a cubicle, with my hands tapping at a keyboard, rubbing my eyes in front of a computer screen, and I wasn’t about to spend the rest of it in a jail, gripping metal bars and eating when they told me to eat. I wanted to sleep under stars.
“Don’t go anywhere,” echoed in my head and I said, “Fuck that,” out loud. I just wanted to be free, so I started walking. That was all I wanted to do, one foot in front of the other, outside my door, down the stairs, into the woods, along the highway, the grass snaking past my ankles up to my shins.
Should I take a photo with me, one of Elizabeth? No, I wasn’t going to take her picture with me. She had left me five months before, and you don’t go around carrying pictures of women who leave you, not in your baggage, at least not literally. I crumpled the photo and shoved it in my pocket. I’d throw it away later.