Kurt’s combat boots skidded the floor in two parallel lines running from the wheelchair to Owen’s shins. He wound up and kicked at Owen’s knee, groin, but it didn’t matter. He tapped Owen on the back and then began hammering down on Owen’s spine. The beats came muted and rhythmic like the patter of fingertips over covered ears.
Owen found Stevie in the background of the photo. Blurred from profile to turning away, caught in doorlight, retreating in disgust. Owen saw white.
After two kicks landed and did nothing, Kurt lost the focus of his struggle. He looked to Altberg, who was smiling. He looked to Hal, who was still taking pictures.
Owen leaned into the choke. Ear to ear with Kurt, Owen ground his own forehead into the picture on the wall, looking at the reflection of the crowd behind him as the glossy print fireworked with the flashes. Owen sliced his left arm even farther across Kurt’s throat. Five seconds and Kurt would pass out, ten seconds and he might be dead. But Owen was in pure space, stomping down time whenever it bubbled up under his feet. Unable to count the seconds, he had no way of knowing how long the choke was on and the flow of blood to Kurt’s brain blocked.
Kurt’s kicking stopped. Owen had been holding him up, pinning his weight into the wall, so there was no telling when exactly Kurt went limp. Owen dropped the body. Head, shoulders, arms, and hips all landed in the same heap and simultaneously struck the left armrest of the wheelchair, which flipped over as if it had been hit by a tossed trash bag of half-filled bottles and cans.
Altberg pawed at the wheelchair, making a halfhearted attempt to lift it from Kurt’s body but clearly waiting for someone else to step up and do the actual work. Hal waved him out of the frame and kept shooting until the memory card was full. He fumbled the reload and missed the shot of Owen parting the crowd of toreadors and sprinting away.
For the first time in Owen’s life, he found the part of a curtain. The Desai installation was empty and he strode into the main gallery. He sprinted past million-dollar art without anyone so much as telling him to slow down. Ahead, he saw guards in blue berets adjusting the volume knobs of their walkie-talkies. He would have to outrun information.
Which was impossible. Two police with guns were at the main door. He ran straight toward them. Four palms told him to stop. When he was closer, the one on his right told him to stop running. Owen slowed to a fast walk. One guard put his hand on a Taser. The other stepped forward and grabbed Owen’s lapel.
Owen picked up a marble head and threw it into the air, forcing them to catch it and release him or let the artwork crack on the ground.
Owen knew the rule for fighting more than one person: Throw your first punch at the guy you haven’t been looking at. It wasn’t quite a punch; Owen planted his right foot and shoved the larger cop on his blind side. The officer took the brunt of Owen’s assault without so much as a stagger, his chest a springboard that sent Owen careening toward the door. The officer he had been looking at caught the falling head.
Into the night. Owen circled behind a crowd of tourists and waited for a whistle or a gunshot. A carousel crowd circling around him, heads tilted back and laughing theatrically. Half the faces lit with cell phones. A parking lot attendant in a navy windbreaker yelled. Just before the fair, Owen had stashed his bag on top of a hexagonal kiosk. He was now at the kiosk, jumping up and swiping for his bag’s handle. He caught it and ran away before the report echoed throughout Basel.
The Rhine pulled him downhill. The mass of tourists and art elite clogged in front of a stopped tram.
Then someone grabbed his left hand.
He sank.
The eddies, the electric, and her voice. He sank further.
—Easy. This is your little burned-out ring. Just stay calm.
The tram darted away, and the crowd vectored out like an asterisk. Stevie pulled him into the largest current.
—I killed Kurt.
—What?
—I killed Kurt.
She pulled him away from the tourists, who may not have all spoken English but could all comprehend killed. They veered to the Wettstein bridge to the left bank of the Rhine. The bridge was at least a quarter mile. If police came in either direction, he’d have to jump.
—You’re fine. They staged it. He’s done that before. At first it was like someone shattered an aquarium. People spilled out the main entrance, flopping all around, gasping and lost. I thought you set the place on fire until security started shouting for a doctor. But they were being filmed too.
—What?
—Look, I think Kurt planned all of this, but we’ve still got to run. I thought we could take a kayak a quarter mile downstream to the French border and get a friend to meet us. Then I had a better idea.
—You don’t understand. He’s dead. No more.
—Breathe. There are about fifty cops around here, and after the few alarmists finished screaming, all of the radios said to ignore the distress call, that it was all part of the show. As far as the cops are concerned, it’s all dismissible as art.
—He’s dead.
—I can guarantee that Kurt would never actually become a martyr; he would only pretend. I’m sure the whole thing was staged.
—He wanted me to punch him. Hal was taking pictures. Kurt can walk. The whole wheelchair thing was a game.
—I’m not waiting around until you start making sense. We need to get you out of Basel. So. Breathe. And take this.
Stevie handed Owen a yellow carbon with some numbers scrawled in boxes and a lackadaisical signature at the bottom.
—What’s this?
—This is how you avoid life in prison. We’re going on a cruise.
Owen squinted at the typed header of the carbon: VALHALLA RIVER CRUISES. He still didn’t quite understand.
—We’re sailing the Rhine from Basel to Amsterdam. Six days. Nothing but mouth-breathers—people that police ignore. These are the people you want to be with right now.
—I can’t pay for this.
—We’re booked. You’re holding the receipt. I booked us a cabin. The money is spent.
Owen drifted for several blocks. People were definitely pointing. Stevie had said she bought us a room. Plural us, singular a. The tremor in his hands had stopped. One excitement had canceled the other. Her scent cleared everything. And what was it? Soap? Dove soap? It was as if every other thought, every other association he had ever made, was grime he needed to wash away. This one smell was the thumbed water hose that revealed the purer, paler goose-bumped self that he had forgotten.
Owen jumped when a car’s headlights swept the wall before them. He shook himself into a panic and realized people must be watching.
—Keep talking to me. You’ll look less suspicious. We are just walking and talking about art. Actually, fuck art. Let’s talk about music. Keep talking. Our boat is just there, under that bridge. It leaves in an hour.
—You told me the police radios were reporting that nothing happened.
—I might have made that up to calm you down. They were definitely saying something. You know, numbers, crackles, ventriloquist-mouth stuff. Whatever they said, there were about fifty police cars headed straight for Messe Basel with their sirens blaring, about five minutes before we met. You didn’t hear that?
—I never hear anything when I’m walking.
She took his palm in both of hers.
—It’ll look much less suspicious if you kiss me and tell me I’m a genius.
Owen kissed her.
—You’re still shaking. It’s fine. There weren’t fifty cops.
—Then why did you say that?
—There were probably forty, forty-five tops? Let’s hang back, then slink on board. Can you slink?
—I’ll try.
Stevie and Owen were now behind a foam of elderly tourists flowing through the bottleneck of the gangway plank and onto the Christmas-light-lit Valhalla River Cruise ship Saga.
The Saga was a double-decker ship—they used the word ship but it was built f
or rivers, not oceans; specifically, the Saga was built to navigate Europe’s two great rivers: the beautiful blue Danube and the majestic muddy Rhine. Barge would be a more accurate term for the Saga. If Interpol was after Owen, agents would be combing the barges—but only barges that admitted to being barges. Stevie was betting the agents would avert their eyes from a barge in drag.
Officially, everyone on this trip was booked from Zurich to Amsterdam. Buses had brought the flight-weary passengers from Zurich this afternoon. Most were ready to float—even if the ship wasn’t yet moving. The naturally bold, and those emboldened by the dictates of the itinerary, spent the day tromping from one riverside souvenir shop to another in search of the Platonic cuckoo clock and a good deal on a Swiss-made watch.
Stevie and Owen sat on the quay until the last of the senescent trudged up the plank. An east wind blew the welcoming reception from starboard, where the gangway met the quay and where they were now walking. The diffusion of the welcoming ceremony, coupled with the fact that everyone else on board had begun this tour yesterday with a bus from Zurich to Basel, gave Owen the chance to sneak on board with none of the passengers noticing and only two crew members, both of whom Stevie had already met, smiling nervously.
Spotlights from hot halogen bulbs bounced off the receptionist’s whitened teeth and twinkled off the brushed aluminum appurtenances and walnut veneer of the welcome desk. The receptionist explained to Owen and Stevie that their cabin was on the lower deck. He looked once at Owen, winced at Owen’s eye, and directed the rest of his comments to her.
—First, welcome aboard. My colleague told me you were a last-minute addition to our registry.
Owen would later discover that his insinuating tone was because of the particulars of the arrangement Stevie had brokered. Because Stevie paid in cash, the stewards were able to keep the trip off the books and add the money to the tip share. The handwritten receipt, of which she had the original and Owen the carbon, was the only record of their presence.
—I’ll keep this brief. Our welcoming reception is in thirty minutes. You may want to skip that. We set sail any minute now. You’ll find all of the particulars of life on board in your welcome packet. You’re in cabin 154. Here’s your card. I’m afraid that in your case, I can only issue one. So don’t lose it. Due to the nature of our arrangement, you will not be able to charge dining purchases to the room. Please don’t forget that. It would cause problems for us all if we have to involve the hospitality manager. And if there’s nothing else, enjoy yourselves. Many couples return year after year to get away.
Stevie said it before Owen could, as they were slinking downstairs to their cabin:
—So we’re a couple now.
Stevie slid in the key, waited for the green light, and turned the handle.
Owen could respect that Valhalla Cruise Lines didn’t disguise the deck plan: standard rooms on the lower deck with porthole windows; junior suites on the middle deck with bigger but inoperable windows; luxury suites on the upper deck with French windows. Stevie and Owen were standard, Mustervolk, who would see the grandeur of the Rhine Valley through an acrylic porthole. Porthole brought to mind far worse connotations than window, which was why Stevie, in appropriate cruise-pamphlet jargon, renamed it their Window to the Rhine. “Oh, look at the spray on our Window to the Rhine.” “I wish we could open our Window to the Rhine.” “Someone carved his initials on our Window to the Rhine.”
The room was lit amethyst. At first he thought it was more cruise kitsch. Then he thought the color was in his head and ignored it, trying to keep things normalish.
—It’s not too late for me to hitchhike. That’d keep you safe.
Owen had to crouch to walk into the room. He put his bag down and sat on the bed. Stevie sat beside him and took his hand.
—Safe? If they were really after you, we wouldn’t be here right now.
—You heard them say everything was okay on the police radio?
—Not really. The guy I saw answer was smirking when he spoke into his epaulet. They did send an ambulance to the pavilion. But I saw the police, and they were treating the scene like a movie set.
There was a second of silence. Then Owen asked the question a bolder man might have blown past:
—Then why did you stay here?
—In spite of all your flaws, you’re clearly in love with the impossible. And I’m stupid enough to think there’s something redeemable in that.
—It’s more like I never learned how to give up a belief.
He hooked her belt loop and pulled her toward him. She smiled and unpeeled his finger with both hands.
—I didn’t mean that as a line. I’m serious.
Owen tried to look serious. So did she.
—They probably put us in the stern to be as far from the staff as possible. I think the staff rooms are all on our level. But this works, right? I think this room is exactly your height. Stand up.
As Owen posted both arms to get up, Stevie straddled his waist and grabbed the front of his shirt.
She curled up to find his top lip and miss his beard. She lingered for minutes. As the ship left port, someone above lit a chain of Black Cats, two dozen snaps loosing the nightbirds. Champagne corks popped into the river, and a chorus of the cruise diaspora alighted upon the lingua franca of Bon voyage! Stevie pushed Owen’s chest until he fell on his back. She looked down at him, his hands now laced behind his neck, biceps long plateaus.
—I swear to God that really just happened.
He laughed.
—You really are going to need to shave that. Like now.
Owen unglossed his lips with the back of his hand, then stood.
She tossed a pair of scissors on the bed.
—You might need these for your beard.
—I don’t have a razor.
—Thought of that.
She tossed him silk-foam shaving cream and a pink Bic Lady, which with its single blade posed a challenge.
The bathroom was comically undersized. The shower was a quarter circle wedged into the corner, with a plastic door that slid in a poorly sealed arc. The shower nozzle was dead even with his sternum. He pointed the nozzle as high as it would go and slid the door open so that his ass was hanging in the wind and water spraying the floor.
This was how Stevie found her man.
She laughed.
Owen stood too quickly and raked his back on the curtain track at the top of the door.
—Ooph. You’ve got to stop hurting yourself. I’m going up for food.
—Thanks.
Owen toweled off and wiped the steam from the mirror. Hunchbacked to fit in the frame, he cut wet clumps of beard into the sink. A few patches remained, burling his cheek with rosettes. His ears popped when he pulled his chin, revealing previously inaudible whispers and rolled guitars from the clock radio in the other room. Eardrums scarred by a lifetime in cold water meant his hearing was mostly garbage. These little pops of clarity were always a welcome surprise. He shaved in a goatee. He wrung out the water and combed it with his fingers.
Wind rushed from the closing door and cooled his cheek. Stevie was back. She turned him around.
—Getting there. But I still can’t see your lips. And that’s the part I want.
—Had to see how that looked. Not good.
—I’ll leave you to it.
Owen’s hair had almost grown to his shoulders in the past eight months. He took a handful in one hand, scissors in the other. Then thought of Jim Morrison: “Some of my worst decisions have been haircuts.” He trimmed and shaved the bottom half of the goatee, keeping a Mark Spitz mustache. He looked like a ’70s surfer. Had a kind of Morning of the Earth look that he should have tried in college.
—You missed a spot.
—I’m putting my top lip on notice. I’ll probably shave it tomorrow.
—I never realized you were so vain.
—Everyone’s vain in front of a mirror.
—Why wear an eye patch, then?
—I don’t know. What do you want from me? It’s just shitty. My only options are shitty or creepy. I used to think, “It’s just a face. What’s the big deal? It’s just a face, not a person.”
—I still think that. Do whatever you want. Except, please, shave that goddamn mustache.
—It’s cruise wear.
—Ugh. You’re worried about an artificial eye making you creepy? I’m checking the ledger and it looks like . . . yep, you owe me negative one mustache.
Owen relented. He scraped away the last trace of the past six months. Clean-faced, chest pink and mottled from hot water, towel still around his waist, Owen turned back into the room to find Stevie propped up on a fluffed pillow, one leg outside the covers gleaming in the soft light of the bedside lamp, one leg underneath, tracing small circles with her toes.
A waltzing brush up to her hip, then slow and more fitting as the web of his hand pushed the pulse down to her knee, then a broken chord, one finger at a time up her inner leg in a glowing trace. Beneath the rayon comforter, a brightness, the infant-tender orange of a hand over a flashlight, the living colors that only a body can produce. His fingers combed the electric, just above her skin.
—Your hands have finally stopped trembling.
Which was one way of looking at a world where every tremble is orchestrated, a dual cascade with someone else who was a flat steel bar before, a single tine dampened, but now, now mated like a tuning fork, resonates and rises up to sing.
Owen rolled into the bright light on Stevie’s side of the bed. This wasn’t early morning light. This was smothering midsummer afternoon light. He sat straight up and found Stevie drinking coffee in the lone upholstered armchair. She was back in her chambray shirt, smiling through the coffee steam.
A new feeling rose up Owen’s chest to the base of his throat. It was the first time he could remember finding more of himself, rather than less, like kicking aside some weathered old planks and uncovering an abandoned well. He smiled awake.
A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall Page 24