Ether

by Ben Ehrenreich

  She wished she had a radio. She knew another cigarette would make her gag, but she pushed in the lighter on the dash again anyway because she enjoyed waiting for it to pop out — something small to hope for. She inhaled deeply and didn’t gag. She turned and found the freeway and drove out again, back into the smooth-paved suburban wastes where no music played and no one walked the streets.

  The long-haired girl slowed to observe a small procession of men advancing in single file down the graveled curb. Their leader wore a sandwich board and a necklace of black-rimmed lenses. A megaphone trailed from a strap on his wrist. Behind him walked a bent old man, and behind him rolled twin cripples in matching wheelchairs. Holding up the rear was a fat man dragging three stuffed lawn and leaf bags. One of the cripples waved to her. She waved back and drove on.

  The orange Empty light flashed on the dash. “Shit,” the long-haired girl cursed aloud. She had no money to buy gas. She turned the car around to face the direction she thought might be home. She drove over a bottle. It popped beneath the tire and she cursed again. Her anger flared. She wanted the short-haired girl to hurt as she did, in exactly the same spot. She wanted a hole to open in her rib cage and close only when she bade it close. She wanted boils to erupt on every patch of flesh she had been foolish enough to kiss. She wanted the traces of her saliva to morph to toxic sap. She wanted the short-haired girl’s hair to fall out where she had gently tugged it. She punched the steering wheel. Why couldn’t the world outside better resemble the one she felt inside? Why couldn’t everything be in flames?

  He escapes.

  The stranger waited until he could no longer hear the boys crashing through the bushes. He lay on the concrete floor and listened to the echoes of the raindrops on the roof. It was so loud that he thought the rain was falling inside his head, another downpour of kicks and blows. After a few minutes had passed, he rolled onto his back and over again until his hands were aligned with the edge of the door. He slid his legs beneath him, then with his back to the wall he pushed himself up, catching at the knob with his hands. He turned it behind him, leaned on the door, and swung himself out into the rain.

  The stranger stood outside the same railroad shack on the wall of which his assailants had earlier been pissing. Two small windows were boarded up, from within and from without, but the plywood outside one had been torn off, leaving a long crescent shard of pane which caught the stranger’s image. His hair lay flat against his head, matted and dark with blood. His face, normally gaunt, was swollen, his nose broken and twisted twice its normal size. His right cheek was crudded up with mud and pocked with tiny gashes from being stomped against the rocks. He was bleeding from a tear across his forehead, and more blood had crusted down beneath his nostrils. His beard was as befilthed as his face and hair, and from between his lips swayed the stiff black tail of a mouse.

  He did not look into his eyes, but tore himself away from the shack, and hopped off into the rain. He hopped from puddle to puddle and made it almost half a mile before his legs gave out and he toppled face forward into the mud.

  I clear my throat, again.

  I wake to find the stranger standing beside the bed. That’s not quite right. I’m not sleeping, and if you’re not sleeping it’s hard to wake. But my eyes are closed, and she’s asleep beside me, her head on my shoulder, her palm resting on my chest. I count my breaths until I lose track and I start over and begin counting again until it bores me and after that I stop and just lie there listening to her slow breathing and to the rain beating against the windows and the aluminum gutters and the roof and when I open my eyes I see him looming above me, a shadow among shadows. He’s dripping all over the floor.

  The stranger’s voice is ragged. “Are you going to tell me anything?” he says.

  I put one finger to my lips. I lift her hand from my chest and her head from my shoulder. I slide out from beneath her, kiss her sleeping eyelids, and point him to the door.

  We walk out through the darkened living room to the porch. He leaves a thin trail of mud on the floor behind him. My feet are bare, and with every step I feel the cold, wet grit of the tracks he’s left. His gait is cramped and painful, his limp worse than before. He trips over the carpet, bangs his shin on the coffee table, curses.

  “Quiet,” I hiss.

  I unbolt the door and step out onto the porch behind him. In the yellow light of the streetlamps I can see that his face is a mess, bloated with bruises, marked here and there by clotted cuts as if some overeager illiterate had tried to carve a word into his face. Mud is the only thing holding his suit together. He sits first, lets himself fall into the chair. He hugs his chest and shivers. Out on the boulevard at the bottom of the hill a drunk is yelling and a dog is barking at the drunk. The rain is fine and not as heavy as before. The air feels thin somehow, as if the world were quietly expanding, as if things were stretching farther and farther apart in increments too small to be observed. Which they are. The stranger curls his lip.

  “What’s so important?” I ask him.

  Spacing the words for emphasis, or perhaps from fatigue, he repeats his question: “Are you going to tell me anything?”

  I smile, shake my head. “I’m tired,” I tell him. “The rain used to help me sleep, but it doesn’t lately. It used to knock me right out, the pitter patter of it. Like those tapes people buy to help them relax so that they can uncover their hidden potential, get promotions and whatnot, do good in school.”

  He interrupts, “Are you going to tell me anything?”

  A bird wakes up a block away and sings despite the drizzle. Or maybe it’s a car alarm. “That’s all I’ve been doing,” I say. “You just don’t notice. You don’t notice anything.”

  He tries to laugh but it sounds more like he’s swallowed something wrong. “So I should thank you,” he says. “All of this is for my benefit. For my betterment.”

  “No,” I tell him. “Don’t flatter yourself. It’s not about you anymore.”

  He laughs for real this time, a strange, broken, falsetto chortle, like someone whistling through a sieve. He’s hugging his ribs and I can tell that each convulsion hurts him.

  “I’ll tell you a story if you’d like.”

  “Aren’t you doing that already?” he asks.

  “Fine. I’ll tell you a joke instead. This priest gets colitis. It’s awful, diarrhea all the time, blood and mucus in the stool, constant pain. He tries everything, special all-broccoli diets, steroids, fasting, disgusting herbal remedies, acupuncture, yoga, everything, then finally the doctor tells him he has no other options, he’ll have to have his colon surgically removed.”

  The stranger groans. He looks so awful sitting there, dripping, that I almost feel bad for him. “Okay,” I say. “Forget the priest. I’ll tell you the story.”

  “Just tell me how it ends,” he says.

  “Don’t be silly,” I tell him. “Nothing ends. Now listen.” I clear my throat, and I tell this story:

  “Once upon a time there was a little boy. He was never born, but was always a little boy. It never occurred to him that he should regret this — who remembers his own birth, much less what came before it? The little boy was lonely, though, as we all are lonely. That he did regret. To shake off the grasp of solitude, he taught himself to build things. He built castles out of young, green twigs, cities out of chewing gum, bottle glass and sand, whole planets out of fish scales, clay and rubber bands. He tossed his planets in the air sequentially and blew at them one by one out of the corner of his mouth until they spun in wide ellipses round his head.”

  The stranger interrupts me. “So I’m this little boy?” he asks.

  “No,” I tell him. “You’re not a little boy. You’re a scared old man. Now listen.

  “The little boy felt no less alone for all his tricks, so he undertook to build himself a friend. He collected the feathers that he found stuck beneath tangled, reaching tree roots or caught shivering in the tall reeds around ponds. He stretched the feathers into wings.
He balled rubber cement between his palms to form a breast, two thighs, a head. He found a sharp, hinged seashell for a beak, two small black seeds for eyes. He built a bird.

  “With his little boyish breath held tightly in his lungs, the little boy kissed the tiny feathers he had woven over the bird’s rubber cement scalp. He giggled when it warmed his hands and shook itself to life. Delight flooded his eyes. But the bird flew away. He could not follow.

  “Sadness curled the little boy’s heart. The sky dimmed. The air grew cold. The plants ceased growing. Their leaves dried and fell to the ground around the little boy, who lay there in the dirt, his fingers still sticky with rubber cement, unable to convince himself to stand. For the length of a season, the little boy mourned the bird and the sun barely dared to show itself.”

  “I don’t like this story,” the stranger says.

  “It’s not over yet,” I tell him, and go on. “Eventually the air warmed and the boy remembered the pleasure of the sun’s heat on his limbs. He stood. He stretched. He even smiled at the clouds.

  “The little boy decided to build himself a fish. He crafted fish bones out of twist ties and dental floss, filled them out with river mud, and stretched around it all a bolt of purple sequined cloth. For eyes he used smooth pebbles he found along the shore, for gills the blue plastic heads of twin-bladed razors. He cut his thumb on one, and smeared the blood along the fish’s belly. He held his breath and kissed its head. The fish wriggled between his palms. He laughed aloud. He ran to the shore, stripped to his shorts, and with the fish in one hand, dove into the sea. A wave knocked him over. The fish swam away. He held his breath and watched as it shimmied off into the blue.

  “His sadness grew. To be lonely because you’ve always been alone is one thing. To be left behind is quite another. The earth grew cold again. The boy wept, and for a while everything that lived died or slept as if it had died. At last the boy dried his eyes and rose again, determined. Saplings grew, and flowers, and green shoots, and it was once again possible for the boy to imagine that he would not always be alone.

  “He spread a piece of white carpet across a rock and filled it with toothpicks and wire and knotted thread. He made a rabbit. It hopped away. With a soggy towel, umbrella spines and shards of broken crockery he built a dog. It jumped from his arms. He grabbed its tail. It bit his fingers and ran off. He built a little girl out of blender blades, soft bread, green moss, and styro­foam. He stroked her rayon eyelids and kissed her beachglass eyes. She took one quick and hungry breath, then kissed him back. Then she pushed him to the ground and skipped away, singing to herself. By the time he had brushed himself off to give chase, the little girl was gone.

  “Sometimes, in the long night that followed her departure, the little boy thought he heard her voice again, her weird, wordless song. He could feel her rough lips pressed once more against his own. And the whole world shivered with his solitude.”

  “That’s it?” the stranger coughs, and coughs again.

  “No,” I say. “But it’s late. I’ll finish later. Good night.” And I leave him there on my porch, bent like a clothespin, wheezing into the space between his knees.

  He rests.

  Hours passed before the stranger stirred. When at last he opened his eyes, the rain had stopped and the clouds had gone away. He pushed himself up on his side. He tried to spit, but something clogged his mouth. The sun lazed low in the sky, bathing half the world in pink while the other half reclined in shadow. The mud shone like barroom neon. Plastic bags rustled in the breeze. A hummingbird twitched from bush to bush. Birds sang to one another about topics of concern to birds. A few feet from the stranger’s head, a spider dangled from a strand of silk, weaving itself a home among the weeds, its web shimmering a day-glo shade of orange. A beetle scaled a stalk of grass, while beneath it one thousand ants marched off in single file. Life delighted in life, but the stranger could not see it. He coughed up a clot of black blood and had no choice but to swallow it back down. He closed his eyes again.

  When he woke, the sun was gone. It had not been replaced by the moon. The sky was black and blue and sometimes purple and if you looked at it hard enough it would turn other colors too. The stars — how can I begin to tell you about the stars? How many hairs are on your head, on your arms and on your legs? Count them if you can. How many have you already shed in the course of your life and how many more will you yet sprout? Count the ones in your ears, in your nostrils, on your toes and the backs of your arms. Count the ones between your legs as well. There were more stars still in the sky above the stranger, each one otherwise incomparable to hair, burning and bedazzling, as if the dark of night were the bagman’s holey blanket stretched across the sky to hide a single flame, and each star just a pinpricked fragment of that blaze, with every wink and flicker begging the question: Why all this hiding? Why night at all? Why this filth and darkness? Why not just light and flame?

  The stranger tried to rise, but lacked the strength, and fell back into the cold and sticky mud.

  THREE

  He is rescued.

  Fine lines forked from the woman’s eyes, and dug across her brow, but the eyes themselves were wide, and green, and youthful still. She dampened a cloth in a dented saucepan, and wiped the dirt and blood from the stranger’s beard. His suit was a suit no more, so torn and begrimed that it could not even generously be termed a rag. She peeled it from his body and threw it in the fire. She washed him from callused sole to matted crown, and the water in her improvised washbasin went brown five times with the muck she wiped from his flesh, and five times she dumped the pan out empty in the bushes, refilled it at the drainage pipe, and again heated the water to a boil over the flames.

  He endured this cleansing without complaint. He muttered something now and again, and if you had been there to hear him or if the woman who rescued him had been able to hear at all, you and she would have heard the words “now,” “hereafter,” and “I,” as well as many words you and she had never heard before, and many sounds that might have been words or cries or just harrumphs, you and she would never know.

  Every few hours his eyes opened wide and frenzied and the woman jumped back in fright. Once his hand leapt forth and grabbed her by the wrist, the flesh of her arm at the same time plump and saggy. He pulled her close, but then his grip weakened and his eyes blinked shut as stupor washed over him again. The bruise on her wrist showed for days. Still, when the sweats came on, she wiped his brow with a moistened cloth, and when the shivers followed she swaddled him with blankets, with balled-up sweatshirts and unmatched woolen stockings, with everything she had. She covered his body with her own, as if hoping thereby not only to warm him but to absorb his convulsions, to pull them into her.

  On the second day he woke long enough to drink some water, and when later, unconscious again, urine trickled down his thigh, she rolled him over and changed his bedding — piled strata of cast-off clothes laid in a roughly human shape on the dirt floor of her small shack. She left him for a while and came back with her pockets full. She brought a yellow onion, a wedge of cabbage, four limp stalks of celery and most of a baked potato, smeared with sour cream and crumbled bacon and wrapped in crumpled foil. She boiled it all into soup and when his eyelids next clicked open, she shoved a spoon between his lips. He spat the soup out, splattering her face. He jerked the spoon from her hand and hurled it off against the wall. Then his eyes clouded, and he rolled onto his side and slept.

  On the third day, the stranger sat up. He tossed the blankets from his chest. She sat across the shack from him, her elbows on her knees, her heavy cheeks squeezed between her palms. The single room was illuminated by a burning wick in a half-filled bowl of kerosene. He gazed around at the leaning walls, one of green, corrugated fiberglass, one of sheet metal, two of warping particleboard. He stared into the lens of the scavenged camera that she had mounted on the wall above his head. No wire connected it to anything. The device watched and recorded nothing, but it made her feel less alone. He
looked at her sitting on the floor before him, at the four skirts she wore one atop the other, the layered shirts on top. She wore three pairs of socks and two of stockings, but no shoes. He stared down at his own bare chest.

  “Where is my suit?” the stranger said.

  The woman did not answer. “My suit?” he asked again.

  She shook her head, placed one finger on her lips and another on her ear, and shook her head once more.

  The stranger nodded. “Dumb,” he said. “You’re dumb.”

  He ran his fingers over his chest and arms to indicate the absent garment, but the woman showed no sign of understanding. She stood, and retrieved from the surface of a small and wobbly table the bowl of soup, and the recovered spoon. She knelt beside him.

  “No,” he said, and waved her off. “Just go away.”

  That night she slept beside him, her fingers resting between the furrows of his ribs.

  In the dirt.

  The three of them kneeled around it in the dirt. “Looky looky,” said the tall and skinny, pawing gently at the thing. The short and fat slapped his hand away. He cleared his throat. “Humbly, I take it upon myself to do the honors,” he said, and tugged at the end of the string that bound what had until recently been the stranger’s most treasured possession, the material form of his most desperate hopes.

  “Hold on now,” said the tall and fat. With meaty fingers, he grabbed the short and fat’s wrist. “It’s not your turn.”

  The short and fat stared at the hand that gripped his tattooed arm with exaggerated amazement, then shifted his gaze to his comrade’s squinting eyes. “What’s that there?” he asked “On my wrist? Squeezing me like that? Some kind of octopus, I think. A filthy squid. And us so far from the sea. I can’t imagine how it got here.”

  The tall and skinny giggled. “Squid,” he said.