Lighthouse Island

by Paulette Jiles

  Chapter 10

  The fifty-story building took up most of the block. Nadia turned into the knot of skyscrapers and the wind was torn and intensified by their height. She came to a porte cochere and a five-foot column of squared stone. There would be food and drink inside, buffets, cool air. Nadia was faint, hot, and inelegant. On the column a plaque of worn bronze that said; RITZ-CARLTON. Guards stood at the entrance with blank stares. The Ritz-Carlton. As Thin Sam had said.

  She quickly read the notice board as she walked past. It was up on a three-legged display board.

  GERIATRIC NUTRITION AND HYDRATION PROJECT, 21ST FLOOR MON TUES WEDS

  COMMITTEE ON CLINICAL WORKLOADS, 35TH FLOOR ALL WEEK

  AEROGELS AND LIQUID CRYSTAL DISPLAYS IN BROADCAST TECHNOLOGY 15TH FLOOR ALL WEEK

  DEMOLITION: AFFECTS OF AIR OVERPRESSURE FROM CLOUD COVER LESS THAN 1,200 FEET IN CONTROLLED IMPLOSIONS 19TH FLOOR WEDS THURS FRI

  If she could reach the top floor and even the roof she could see where she had been and what lay ahead to the north. She decided against the front doors and did not look at the guards but went around the corner into an alley. Somewhere in the back there had to be a way in. She passed the entrance to a kind of courtyard full of garbage containers and bins: the kitchen. In there she saw two guards with a young woman in a maid’s uniform held between them. They were pressing her into a long white van. The girl was shouting and calling for her supervisor. Their voices echoed among the recycle bins and air ducts. A guard grabbed the girl by the hair, his big fist tangled in her hairpins and maid’s cap. Nadia kept on walking as if she had seen nothing.

  She came to a deep bay: a loading dock and a van. The lettering on the side of the van said PROVISIONS AND CATERING, NUTRITION and displayed the Nutrition Department logo, a sheaf of wheat. Her heart was slamming its halves together as if alerting her; Be afraid. She ignored it.

  She circled around to the back where the rear compartment of the van opened into the loading bay. Guards stood nearby, their heads turned, listening to the noise of the arrest over in the kitchen courtyard. A man lifted steel containers by the handles from the back of the van to a dolly and the containers were spewing straw all over the garage floor, straw to insulate the cold food that Nadia would so much like to sit and devour. Salmon croquettes, 20 lbs. Carbonation Recharge 20 lb. pressure bottles.

  Here! She stepped forward. You can’t do that.

  The man dropped the cold food containers and squinted at this frazzled but somewhat cute young woman in a shabby office suit.

  I can’t do what? He tipped his cap back on his head.

  That’s twenty pounds in each hand, she said. That’s over the limit.

  No, ma’am, it is not, said the workman. The limit is twenty each hand for an adult male.

  I’m sorry but it’s been changed. She pushed her own straw hat to the back of her hair. It’s been changed to fifteen for each hand. I can get a copy of the new regulations for you if you want. She lifted her shoulders. I don’t make the rules, she said. She glanced at the containers and wondered what salmon croquettes looked like, how they tasted.

  Well, damn, he said. It gets crazier every day.

  Don’t it, said the guard.

  A big change in our thinking is coming, said Nadia in a pious voice.

  Well, what am I supposed to do? We have three men unloading. Are we supposed to carry one of these cold boxes in both hands? I could lift four of them. Shit.

  Wait, she said. Stop. They should have people out here helping you. Let me get somebody.

  She walked with quick steps past the guards and found the freight elevator straight ahead. She went into it and then turned and looked out again. How do you work this thing? she said.

  A guard came up. His uniform was sweaty and the hem of his pants legs were leaking threads like a fringe. He smiled at her.

  All right, all right, he said. What floor?

  The Geriatric Nutrition Conference, she said. Twenty-first. We’re supposed to oversee the buffets while we’re conferencing. Is there a code thingie? She groped in her tote bag and came out with the tortoiseshell glasses and bent over and stared at the keypad. She couldn’t see anything but a blur but she understood that the glasses were going to be very useful.

  Here, here, I’ll do it for you.

  He punched in a code and then the button for the twenty-first floor and then threw a lever. As the door closed he lifted his billed cap to her and she smiled, her lovely broad smile that lit up her face, and the door closed and shut him out.

  She felt the lift in her feet, soaring as she shot upward, higher than she had ever been in her life. Taken aloft in a dirty box with splintered wooden bumper rails and the blinking lights that numbered floor after floor as if it were some kind of moonshot, outstripping gravity and a life of tedium and/or imprisonment. She sailed into the unseen hot summer sky toward altitude and buffets.

  When the elevator stopped on the twenty-first floor the doors opened and she heard a cart rattling down the hallway and somebody yelling Wait! Wait!

  Nadia punched the button for the top floor, the fiftieth, and held it in. The doors slammed on the cart person. When it arrived at the top floor she stepped out as if on a stage. At the far end of the hall a great window had been replaced by plywood and in the plywood was an air-conditioning unit spewing out cool air in a steady, damp wind. The carpet was some sort of plush weave in bright blue and dark red. The walls were an unsightly salmon color.

  In the ornate hall mirror her hair curled slightly in the chill humidity and she saw that she was a bit shabby, a bit dirty.

  She needed water and something to eat, soon. There was the possibility that she could pass out. That would be the end of her because if she were unconscious she could neither lie nor distract nor deceive.

  By now her name and photograph would be on the removal list and that list sent all over the offices of the infinite city where dull and witless office slaves spilled citrus-powder drink on their keyboards and accidentally deleted files and made jokes about the faces that came up on the removal list. She herself personally knew office slaves who had seen a face on their fly-specked computer screens and then later came across that very person in a hot supply room and said, witlessly, Don’t I know you from somewhere? If this happened to her she had decided to say, Oh, you saw me on Shoptime, I got a part as an extra, I was holding up a hat.

  Down the hall was a wooden door with POOL AREA stenciled onto it and a keypad with a slot above the door handle. A pool. People swimming in a pool full of water. Maybe a buffet. She must not seem surprised or astounded at anything.

  A cat, or something she thought was a cat, came strolling down the corridor. Nadia stopped. She had never seen a cat before except in illustrations. It was an orange-striped cat and held its bushy tail in the air as if it led an invisible parade. Its license tags glittered and jingled. It meowed, an appealing little noise, and Nadia thought perhaps it was saying something but she had no idea what the sound might mean.

  A door opened and a woman stepped out.

  Come here, she said. Edward, come on. How did you get out? The cat turned to her in a slow, calm way. The woman saw Nadia backed against the wall. She frowned.

  Haven’t you ever seen a cat before? she said. Who are you? She looked at Nadia closely with narrowed eyes. You stay right there, I am calling security.

  Nadia fumbled for the thick eyeglasses in her purse and put them on with laborious gestures.

  Oh, it’s a cat! she said. I am half blind without my glasses. Well. She gazed down at the animal, a live, breathing animal.

  The woman picked up Edward. Why are you here? The woman wore dark patterned lounging pajamas and a pair of thong sandals. Her hair waved in the blast of air-conditioning that swept down the technicolor hallway.

  Yes, where is the buffet? Nadia wiped the glasses clumsily on her skirt hem to give he
r something to do with her shaking hands. I’m with the Sylvia Plath Literary Society and I got off on the wrong floor. Our buffet will be nothing but bones and rinds by now.

  The woman considered this. Sylvia Plath? I didn’t know there was a literary society meeting here this week. The cat hung purring and limp in her arms.

  No. We are not very good at advertising ourselves. Nadia folded the glasses carefully. I suppose we should make more of a noise about ourselves. But at any rate.

  The woman with the cat in her arms still hesitated. Are you a writer? she said.

  Oh no, no. I wish.

  There was a short silence. Well, I do like Plath, myself. The one about an icebox. When they had iceboxes.

  Yes. “The smile of iceboxes annihilates me. Such blue currents in the veins of my loved one! I hear her great heart purr.” Nadia smiled.

  The woman smiled and stroked the orange cat.

  Yes, that one. She was relieved not to have to be suspicious anymore. She was a person who did not like to be rude or to confront people and especially here where things were secure and comfortable and people could be kind to one another. This minute, drawn, literary person needed kindness. Well, do you have your entry card? There’s a buffet down at the pool that’s very good.

  Yes, yes, I do. Does it work for this floor? Nadia looked from one end of the corridor to the other. What floor is this? She then put her tote bag down on the distasteful carpet with its relentless blue and red and began to unload her purse, a dotty and confused academic. Oh, it’s in here somewhere, she said. Just a minute. She took things out as if she were looking for her ID, as if this woman did not have the right to call an agent of Forensics the moment she suspected Nadia had no ID, no place to sleep, and did not belong in the Ritz-Carlton. I changed purses, she said. Just a minute. She had the notebook in one hand and the round tortoiseshell eyeglasses in another. She tried to lay the notebook on one side of the handbag so she did not have to place it on the floor, and then she put on the eyeglasses.

  She then took out her little cosmetic case and tried to balance that as well on the tote bag but it fell off. She peered at it through the thick glasses. Oh yes, she said, there’s my lipstick.

  Here, it’s all right. Edward, go on in. The woman opened the door and closed it on the orange cat and then pulled a blister card out of her pajamas pocket. This is the fiftieth floor. This is a private floor but it’s all right. Nadia followed the woman in her patterned pajamas down the hall. What is the one with the one-eared cat? “It is no night to drown in . . .”

  That’s the first line of “Lorelei,” Nadia said. No, the cat is in “Resolve.” “The one-eared cat laps its gray paw . . .” and so on.

  The woman laughed. I’m impressed! she said. I’m so glad there’s a society just for her!

  Yes, Nadia said. Me too.

  The woman dropped her card into the slot and the door opened.

  Nadia said Thank you so much and stepped through. We also study Farnham, but that’s mainly for the men.

  Chapter 11

  She hovered over the platter of what she thought might be tuna salad. There were raw vegetables on ice. She made herself sip slowly, slowly, at a glass of water.

  Perhaps you don’t care for the yolks? The waiter bobbed around behind the buffet and then slid a spatula under the boiled egg slices. I can give you just the whites.

  Oh, it’s all right, she said. It’s all right I suppose.

  Nadia sat with her loaded plate at a poolside table and ate carefully. She was now somebody else and must think of herself as somebody else. She must not wonder if they went to the apartment, if her face were now on a list with an R after it: Ran.

  She was anxious for the hunger pains to be gone. In a minute, in a minute. In a minute her hands would stop shaking. She counted to a hundred and then casually strolled back to the buffet table and took more raw vegetables cut into delicate shapes, orange carrots and other things; purple, pale green, bright yellow spirals and orange flowers. Where had they come from?

  She couldn’t stop looking at the pool and the two children jumping into it. The water was a darkish green color and when the children were in it, she could not see their feet or legs. So this was what water looked like when there was an entire pool filled with it. Like the sea.

  Large windows all around the pool room were boarded over and large air conditioners gusted cold wet air. So many amazing things in a short time, so much danger.

  The faintness had gone away and once again she felt like Nadia the Semi-Invincible and so she finished her third cup of coffee and walked back to the dressing rooms.

  In the shower room for ladies, there was an attractive girl trying to watch a small screen behind a little rattan desk and fill out some kind of form at the same time. A sign on the wall said there was a dry-cleaning and laundry service. Nadia saw swimming suits for guests in a basket. She took a size small and two towels. There were also steel containers that said Shampoo, Hair Conditioner, and Body Wash. Was this all free? She reached to take a plastic shower cap and noticed how dirty her nails were.

  Oh, look, she said. This is from working in my window boxes.

  How nice to have some, though, said the attendant.

  Nadia took everything into a glassed-in combination shower stall and dressing room and stripped off her clothes. A sign said, discreetly, that the shower water was nonpotable. The water was hot, the shampoo foamed on her head and ran down her face and all over her body like lava, and she felt she was arising from a half shell. All the street grime and sweat ran down the drain. She felt she must be several pounds lighter. The shower stall filled with luxurious steam and she held her hands to the showerhead and drank from them, which was risky but so was life at this point. It took a while to figure out the hair dryer. She held it to her head as if she were shooting herself with hot air. Her auburn hair flew and was sleek and bright again.

  Nadia pulled on the swimsuit and wrapped herself in a towel; she drank down all the water from her stolen water bottle, pulled off the woven koozie, and then refilled it from the sink faucets, also nonpotable. They did not seem to be metered. Then she took her clothes out to the desk and handed them to the girl.

  Would you see that these are sent to the cleaners?

  Yes, of course. The girl blinked and drew back slightly as she put the clothes in a bag but didn’t say anything.

  How soon can I get them back?

  The girl nodded. We’re fast, she said with pride in her voice. About an hour, hour and a half.

  Amazing! Medium starch.

  Name?

  Sylvia Plath. P-L-A-T-H.

  Very well, Miss Plath. Who are you with?

  The Discovery Group on Nonverbal Rhetoric and Visual Allure, Nadia said. The girl was having trouble spelling and so Nadia took the pen and wrote it out for her.

  She waded into the shallow end of the dark pool and attempted a desperate dog paddle that smashed up waterspouts and left her gasping. It was good, very good. Incredible. She got out and wrapped in a towel and then piled her china plate high with white-bread chicken sandwiches and raw vegetables and dried figs. Apparently these people had all they wanted to drink, so she told the waiter she would like a citrus soda and it was brought to her in a glass full of ice. She reached out for it as if it were a miracle in the desert, closing her hand around the beaded cold glass with its harmless volcano of bubbles gliding upward and as the waiter gazed down on her with a concerned expression she said, I should wear my glasses, I guess. He laughed politely.

  She was more or less the same in swimsuit and attitude as a table full of women sitting near her. They had their kids with them. They were talking about plans for a new resort of some kind up in the Northwest and the possibility of a vacation there. Get out of the pool, Nelson, get out now. You’re all wrinkled.

  Nadia smiled at everyone and felt alive again, prepared to
keep on lying and conniving for as long as it took.

  When it appeared no one was looking she took a plate of boiled eggs and bread and raw vegetables and little sausages and picked up her tote bag in the other hand and splashed with wet footprints into the women’s dressing room and found her clothes in a cotton dustcover. The attendant girl was not there. She put on her clean, pressed clothes and took a washcloth and wiped down her tote and everything in it. She packaged the food in the little plastic shower caps. She sat hidden in the shower with all her stolen food, a street princess with ill-gotten goods, and outside the television howled in the dank, enormous pool room with the sounds of a windstorm being reported from somewhere and herself in a life of fraud and flight.

  There were peanuts and some kind of crisps at the buffet. Nadia took the entire bowl with her to a lounge chair by the pool where the TV, out of its wooden console, swam with faces.

  Then the news came on. It was a scandal trial of two women assistant undersupervisors who the prosecution claimed had been running a drug-and-prostitution ring in the Home Heating Fuels Shipping Department and the studio audience jeered and catcalled, yelled Shame! The two women tried to defend themselves, they were crying, their hair shook, the camera bit into their private spaces like a devouring beast. Nadia stared, silent and frightened, as did the other women. Somebody wants their jobs, she thought, and knew it could be any one of them. She opened The Girl Scout Handbook and pretended to be deeply interested in it.

  Then the Facilitator was being interviewed in an industrial setting for a program called Watchdog, a kind of public affairs program hosted by Mark Fontana and Art Preston and sometimes Lucienne LaFontaine-Fromm. It always opened with a dog’s head looking out of a circle going Arf! Arf! Nadia tried to appear interested.

  He’s on again, a bony-looking man said. I’m tired of listening to that son of a bitch. The man clutched a drink in one hand.

  You’re drunk. His wife looked up from her pedicure with an angry expression. Watch what you say.