Anne is silent for a moment, and then she says, “Well, January is the kindest month. The world outside you fits what’s inside. It’s a grim place, the world, but it’s the world. At least you’re not a freak, at least you’re part of it.”
And that’s all Anne and Hatcher say to each other.
Hatcher turns in at the road to the Raffles and he drives them fast in a great whirlwind of dust, but as the vast white sprawl of the hotel looms ahead, he throttles back drastically, he squeezes the steering wheel hard, and he slows the car down. He regrets this now. He wishes he could have just walked out of the Automat and left her there to do what she had to do but not be a fucking part of it, not carry her here himself. But as soon as he wishes this, he knows there was a deeper imperative. He had to seek out the thing that hurts him most.
And they are stopped in front of the Raffles Hotel and the engine is off and the car is ticking and the blood on the grill and on the windshield is flying away and Anne is opening her door and she is getting out of the car and he is sitting behind the wheel and he is not moving and though there is no death in Hell, he knows that he and Anne are dead to each other.
Hatcher drives back to the city and parks the Fleetwood on Peachtree Way in the same spot where Dick Nixon parked for the Harrowing. Hatcher gets out and walks toward Lucky Street. The rubble of body parts and rocket parts is all gone. The street is full of the bearded men in tunics and animal skins pressing on to nowhere. Hatcher barely looks before him as he walks but instead scans the passing crowd. He reaches the Automat and takes a few steps beyond so he can see up and down both streets. He does not notice Judas Iscariot, who is curled up and sleeping fitfully in the bright sun in the center of the rubble-strewn lot from whence the Fiery Chariot departed, remembering the event of this afternoon now as his Master’s first return and a promise made to come back for him someday. But Hatcher isn’t looking for Judas.
He goes back and pushes through the revolving door into the Automat. The writers’ groups have resumed. The group in the Catholic Bible but not the mainstream one, the prolific Gnostics, the Old Ones whose books were lost, Judith taking criticism from a severed head, and all the rest. The New Testament writers who got dumped or lost. But that’s not Judas with his back to the door. It’s the man Hatcher is looking for. Hatcher approaches the table, and Dick Nixon is explaining to Festus and Silas and Rhoda how his mother was a saint, a Quaker saint, and so was his wife, and how if he’d been at the foot of the cross, he wouldn’t have run away, and Hatcher puts his hand on Nixon’s shoulder.
The ex-president looks up. Hatcher reaches down and puts the Cadillac keys in Nixon’s hand. Nixon looks at them.
“You are not a crook,” Hatcher says.
“I know,” Nixon says.
Hatcher climbs the circular iron staircase toward his apartment, slowly, the heaviness of his legs already upon him, the outer curving of the stairs blinding him over and over as he circles toward and away and toward the full, overhead sunlight in the alleyway. The day seems to be rewinding itself. It seemed later, earlier. And he emerges into the corridor. He stops. Ahead is the Hoppers’ closed door. And then his own empty apartment. Anne is gone. He stuffs his hands into his coat pockets, even before he realizes he’s searching for something. One last thing left undone before he’s ready to face the rest of eternity. In an inner pocket he finds the list of addresses.
He has seen his wives. And his mother. He shivers again at that. He has seen Beatrice and Virgil, whose delusional preoccupation when he came for them was of no consequence. They had no worse a fate than he, going down with a faux Titanic while having what surely turned out to be unsatisfying sex. He has not seen Dante, who, however, is a professional liar. Hatcher has no interest in finding him now. But there is one more address, from the impulse to help Sylvia Beach. The address of the former companion she longs for, Adrienne Monnier. She should have this.
Hatcher turns away from his apartment now and descends the stairs and rushes along the alleyway and into Grand Peachtree Parkway. He turns toward the neighborhood of the writers. He makes good time along the margin of the crowd, as always, until the run of store fronts and apartment stoops begins. He slows down and studies the windows going by and soon he finds himself before a hand-lettered sign: SHAKESPEARE AND COMPANY. He stops. But a single glance inside makes him lay his forehead sadly against the glass. The store is empty. The shelves are bare. Sylvia, like all the other bookstore owners in Hell, has almost instantly gone out of business. He curses himself softly. He secured Adrienne’s address but not Sylvia’s. He thought he knew how to find her. And in the cursing of himself, Hatcher backs away from the shop and a shoulder bumps him, from the edge of the crowd, and he thinks to go to Adrienne, at least, and tell her that Sylvia is somewhere in the writers’ neighborhood, and this leads to more unfocused steps and then another shoulder and another step and he is drawn into the great, onflowing current of the street crowd.
And quickly Hatcher McCord is sucked toward the center, though he finds that he doesn’t care. He doesn’t have the energy to do it right now, but he knows he can always slide back out when he wants. But at this moment he is wedged front and back and right and left by these four denizens: Isabella Andreini, former actress and member of the Gelosi Commedia dell’Arte troupe of late sixteenth-century Italy; William W. Ross, former Fuller Brush door-to-door salesman of Altadena, California, and the 1948 Western Region Salesman of the Year; Spec 4 Jason Stanley of South Bristol, Maine, and former clerk-typist at the Long Binh base camp about thirty clicks up Highway 1 from Saigon; and Jezebel, former wife of King Ahab of Israel. And this moment happens also to be the very moment that a mid-day sulfurous rain begins.
A flaming spot flashes onto Hatcher’s face and he knows what’s happening and he has never before been caught in the rain, never, and he tries to move but the crowd implodes and it is too late and another flame on the forehead and a spray of pain, serrated blades, a thousand of them, ripping through his face and his shoulders and his chest and then the drenching of pain, and things slow down, things slow way down, as every cell in his body shreds and dissolves, and he feels each one separately, he could count each cell though they are as great a multitude as the stars and each one is raging as hot as the bright flaring center of a nova. And the four denizens pressed into Hatcher are also dissolving and they flow together, these five, and in the rain you never lose your consciousness and all the bodies dissolving around you are part of your body and your body is part of theirs, and inside Hatcher, even as he is dissolving, a voice speaks: I am between wives and my ratings are high and I am with a tiny-boned woman with dark skin and a black bindi between her eyebrows and we are naked and she says she did not know who I am she says she never watches the evening news and outside the window a flare is falling from a guard tower on the perimeter somebody is nervous about Charlie and I look at Hoa which means flower and she has just stepped out of the black silk pantaloons that all the hooch girls wear and she is no whore she says and I say I know and I rip open my gown and I tear it from me as I go mad from the scorning of my passion and the eyes of my noble audience the Grand Duke of Tuscany and his bride grow wide and I am wrapped tight in a body stocking but their eyes are on me as if I am really naked and she is naked right there in my Fuller Brush Illustrated Catalog on page six and she has her hair pulled up and tied in a red ribbon and the very end of the handsomely designed unbreakable plastic handle of a number 401 Shower Brush is all that covers her nipple and just barely and he lays me down beneath an almond tree and we are naked and we share a quince before we touch I bite and he bites where I bit and I lick that place where he bit and bite in a new place and we make our mouths sweet make the very air we breathe from our bodies sweet before we kiss for the first time and this is before Ahab comes to me and brings his god whose breath stinks of old blood and if I never leave the almond grove without becoming the wife of this other man if I marry my own if I marry the body that first holds me and breathes sweetly an
d deeply into me then perhaps Baal can save me from the knock on the door and she has the look I’ve always wanted to see in a woman’s eyes she has that look even from the first moment and I sit with her on her couch and our shoulders are touching and she stops on page six and she smiles faintly and she touches her hair at the back and she orders a number 401 Shower Brush and she orders a number 386 Flesh Brush and she says its name slowly drawing the word out Flesh she says I want a Flesh Brush and I say number 386 and I write down her order and I shake her hand and I leave because I am the fucking Western Region Salesman of the Year and if I do what I think of doing when my gown is ripped and is falling at my feet if I take my hands and clutch the body stocking and dig my fingers deep and I pull it apart and rip it from my body so I can stand truly naked before the Duke and his bride perhaps I can be fully true at last to who I am for I went upon the stage so that I could be naked and I could be seen and she is naked and we touch and that is the last time and afterwards I don’t know where Hoa has gone and the other hooch girls shrug when I ask about her and I can only lie on my bunk and watch the flares in the night sky and dream of me coming home from the lobster boats and she is waiting for me my flower of a wife and she takes me to the bath and strips me naked and she scrubs the smell of fish off me with a brush and she takes the tip of her finger and she touches me in the same spot on my forehead as her bindi and she says that’s where all the experiences of your life have gone where you will find everything that you are and we touch and we touch and though we never say a word about it we both know we will never do this again but before she leaves she cooks for me she tears the chicken apart with her hands and she cooks with asafetida and it smells like tar it smells like Pittsfield when I was young and when everything was new it smells like the tar from the streets but it tastes wonderful and she is gone
And in this moment, all the souls in the streets of Hell are indistinguishable, they are shimmering primordial puddles that stink of sulfur and are full of regret, they are full of eternal regret.
A short time later Hatcher finds himself standing in the middle of Grand Peachtree Parkway, exhausted, achy, dazed, and near him are Isabella Andreini and William W. Ross and Jason Stanley and Jezebel and they are likewise exhausted and achy and dazed and these five are conscious of each other, they look into each other’s eyes and then quickly away again, vaguely aware that there was something between them but they don’t know what, exactly, though Hatcher works at remembering, and he does, briefly—like remembering a dream upon awaking and then forgetting it utterly a few moments later—Hatcher briefly remembers the shared longings, the shared selves, and he thinks he understands, he thinks it is only in pain that we are all truly connected, and when the pain ends, we are alone. Utterly alone in our heads. And as soon as he thinks this, he forgets it. But only in his mind. His hands flex and they remember. The crowd begins slowly to flow forward. His legs move and they remember. The others push among Hatcher and Isabella and William and Jason and Jezebel and the five disperse in the crowd, their bodies separating, their minds and hearts separating. And in their minds it is as if this never happened.
And Hatcher slides across the crowd as it flows onward and he emerges onto the sidewalk in front of empty bookstores. One of them has a sandwich board outside: Hell’s Belles Lettres. He is at the alley mouth where Virgil led him to Beatrice. Is this a bookstore that’s surviving? He steps to it, but the door is locked and the blind is down. No. Nothing lasts in Hell but the promise of pain. And he lifts his eyes, and there, on the corner on other side of the alley, its red neon sign spewing bright sparks, bright even in the mid-day sunlight, is the establishment called BURGERS.
Hatcher snaps straight upright. BURGERS.
BURGERS is open for business.
BURGERS.
He crosses the alley mouth and stops and turns and faces the door that leads into the only hamburger joint in Hell. He lifts his hands before him and he looks at them and he flexes them and he looks at the door. He steps to it and puts his hand to the knob and he turns it and he pushes and the door swings open and his legs move. Inside, there is a sizzle in the air, things frying, pungently meaty things, out of sight, and yet the place is empty. He closes the door behind him and he steps farther in. He stands in the center of a linoleum floor full of Formica-top tables, all of it white, achingly white from bright fluorescence overhead. He waits and he realizes there is no way in Hell he is going to figure out what this is about. He just has to move across the floor and through the door before him.
But he waits. He waits and he listens to the faint buzz of the ballasts above him and he realizes that he can no longer hear the perpetual street roar. Grand Peachtree Parkway is just behind him and he can hear nothing but the buzz of the light fixtures and a distant sizzle. And a doorknob rattling. Also behind him. But the knob is not yielding. Hatcher slowly twists around toward the sound, but by the time he can see the front door, whoever was trying to get in is gone.
He turns back to where he now feels strongly he must go. He squares his shoulders. He shoots his cuffs. And laughs just a little at himself for this. And he moves forward. He puts his hand on the knob and he opens the door, and he finds himself in a short, white-walled corridor, with another buzzing fluorescent bulb and another door straight ahead, only a dozen paces away. He does not hesitate. He moves on. Passing on the left is a door marked WOMEN and two paces farther, on his right, a door marked MEN. There is nothing else. The entrance ahead, he assumes, is into the kitchen.
And he is before it. And still another knob yields to him, though this door feels very heavy as he starts to push, and it is faintly luminous, he sees, and he pushes hard to get it to move and it does, barely, he puts his shoulder against it and it is cool to the touch, it is emanating a coolness onto his face, a sweet coolness, and once the door starts to move, it feels not as heavy and now less heavy still and now actually easy and now the door is so light it feels as if it is opening itself and it swings suddenly wide, carrying him shoulder-forward for a step and then he takes another, just to keep himself from falling, and he rights himself and he stops, and the door thumps heavily closed behind him, and he is standing in a kitchen. A classic, compact, stainless-gleaming, fast-food kitchen with deep fryers and grills and bun toasters and sinks.
And it is air-conditioned. The hamburger grills are sizzling loudly and Hatcher can see the rows of burgers there, and it’s real meat—the air is full of the smell of all-beef patties—but there is no heat, there is only a soft undulant coolness all around. And there are no people.
Hatcher steps farther in. “Hello?” he calls.
But there is no answer.
He looks at the burger grill, beside him now. All the patty tops are pink. They have only recently been put there. But even as he watches, all the burgers rise in unison from the grill and rotate themselves in the air and they descend, and they hiss and pop and fry noisily on.
Hatcher lifts his face and breathes deeply into his body the cool conditioned air. Not since he died has he felt this. Not since he died. And he does not let himself think. He calls out once more, “Hello?”
Nothing.
He walks forward and emerges from the kitchen to find himself behind the order counter. Before him are rows of free-standing molded plastic booths in red and yellow. The window posters push Happy Meals and Quarter Pounders with Cheese. The windows themselves are storefront, looking out on the sidewalk of a city street with a glass office building façade directly across the way. Halfway to the front door, a to-go bag with the Golden Arches sits in the middle of a booth table. What Hatcher does not see is another person. Not in the restaurant. Not passing by outside. He steps around the order counter and suddenly senses someone to his right and he looks and he jumps back at a wild head of red hair and a red nose and a broad red mouth and he has been away from his life on earth long enough that it has taken him this brief moment to recognize Ronald McDonald, in yellow jumpsuit and red-and-white-striped shirt, and another brief moment
to understand that the clown, though life-sized, is not real. He is molded plastic. He stands watching over the dining area with his right arm extended and his hand cupped, perpetually ready to administer a comradely hug. And suddenly a rich, deep, mellifluous male voice speaks from the general direction of the clown, “Welcome.”
Hatcher comes near to Ronald. This is clearly no sentient being. But someone might be watching through the clown from some remote place. Hatcher says, “Hello?’
But Ronald says no more.
“Hello? Anyone there?”
Nothing. No one.
Hatcher looks out into the street. The air in the dining area is cool, the smell of the hamburgers is very good, and the silence feels like his head is lying on a down pillow. What part of Hell is this? And he knows the answer. He knows the answer to that, but he does not let even his deep inner voice speak it.
He moves toward the front doors. When he passes the to-go bag, he can feel it radiating heat. Not like any heat he’s felt in these past many risings and settings of the faux sun of Hell, but the heat of putting your feet up on your desk and unloosening your tie and somebody steps in and sits and you talk about the Yankees or the Jets with that heat kissing your fingertips through a bun and sweetly stirring your tongue, and this to-go bag is giving off not only heat but the smell of two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun. And Hatcher stops. And he knows this is for him. He picks up the bag.
He steps into the street. In the air is a hint of ripe peaches. And of coffee brewing. He looks up and down. No people. No cars. No birds, either. The sun is high but it feels mellow on his head. He walks toward the corner, and across the way is an urban park lush with live oaks whose broad limbs wear a dense cloak of Spanish moss.
And he is standing in front of Starbucks. And he steps in. And there is no one. But sitting on the center of the first table to the left of the door is a Venti that he knows—instinctively now—is a Toffee Nut Latte with extra foam. He knows it’s for him. He picks it up and it is sweetly warm in his hand, and he steps back outside, and he crosses the street and begins to follow a fieldstone path, and it is rising gently toward the center of the park, and he stops suddenly. He sets his McDonald’s to-go bag and his coffee down on a stone, and he steps off the path. There is no grass in Hell. Even at Satan’s hunting lodge it was fake. This appears to be real.
Hell Page 23