by Peter Besson
***
“Who was that?”
Ansel hung up the phone and looked over at her. There she was, in all her glorious nakedness, and not one whit embarrassed about it. His eyes wandered over terrain his hands and mouth had explored last night. It shouldn’t feel awkward, but it did. As if he were trespassing on her intimacy. If she noticed his unease, she didn’t show it. Or didn’t care. This was her. Naked. Beautiful. Suicidal.
“Guy next door,” he said. “He’d like for us to avoid shooting at him.”
“If you were a better shot, there would be no problem.” She smiled.
Ansel had to tear his eyes away from Nikki. So much about her hurt Ansel. She dredged up old anguish, beauty and pain like a deep-water trawler pulling surprising truths from dark depths.
He lit a cigarette, and as he did, he realized he’d almost forgotten his appointment with death in the next few days, and it was because of her: the naked, beautiful woman in his bed. The woman who’d crashed into his life, at least the small sliver that was left of it, and who’d come with everything he’d tried to forget. He knew he never would, no matter how many deaths he had to die; she would always be there, waiting for him. The dead had all the patience in the world.
“What’s wrong?” She’d watched Ansel’s face go dark, a long sharp pain edging deep lines into it.
He surfaced as if from a dream. Before his eyes, past and present seemed to warble. There she was. He felt his insides slowly tear, but still…
“Twelve years,” he said.
“Twelve years what?”
“Twelve years I’ve been trying to come to terms with it.” He didn’t have to close his eyes to see the beach. The sun throwing its last rays across the horizon before bathing the ocean deep red. The fiery blaze of sunlight in the tangles of her hair. The delicious salt on her skin. The sun-kissed freckles sneaking down the front of her chest. Her eyes, the same eyes he saw before him now, the same sparkling mischief. “Tamara. My wife.” Only the sound of water breaking on shore. “She died.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “What happened?”
“Life happened.” Ansel shook his head, struggling to free his thoughts from the past, to shake the image of beach, sun, wind, water. Hair, skin. Salt. Tamara. But he could still smell everything. Smell her. “I lost her. And I keep losing her. I forget. Things get buried. The days when nothing extraordinary happened? They’re gone. I can’t remember. I’ve lost months of her like that. Time we spent together. I’m sure we did things. Talked, laughed, maybe cried, maybe made love, maybe argued. I don’t know… they’re gone.” He reached in the air as if attempting to catch those fleeting moments, but they’d vanished. His hand hovered; then he let it drop. “I’ve been trying to make sense of it. All those years. Mulling it over and over and over. But there’s no sense. Only time. And slowly, everything faded. She faded. Like an old photograph. I lost the details. The small things that seemed so unimportant at the time but that, in the end, add up to a person, a life. It all paled, washed away. All except one. I still have this vision of her, on a beach. Standing in the surf, the water playing around her ankles, the wind running fingers through her hair, and she turned around toward me, smiling, happy. That was the day I knew I’d marry her.”
He saw her, as clear as Nikki. Standing in the ankle-deep water, the sand washed out from under her feet, and she spun around to look at him. The smile was the sun itself. “I love you,” she said. A whisper that he couldn’t possibly have heard over the breakers, but he did.
“The day you walked into my room, when I tried to end it all, it wasn’t because I couldn’t go on. I haven’t been able to go on for over twelve years now. I wanted to end it because I was afraid I’d lose that last image of her, and then all I’d have left is the pain. And that, I wouldn’t be able to bear.” Ansel drew closer to Nikki. She’d sat up, still deliciously immodest in her nakedness, in her refusal to cover up what was natural, lovely. “And then you walk in. Young. Beautiful. About the same age my wife was when…”
Perhaps he hadn’t been entirely truthful with her. There was another image, one that would never fade, one he could never forget. What he truly couldn’t bear would be for this one final image, and the indescribable pain it held, to be the only thing left.
He touched Nikki’s cheek, and in that touch was everything. “And here you are, and it all comes back.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
“No, don’t be. It’s not just the pain that comes back.”
Nikki didn’t know how to react. What to think. She was still deaf in her left ear, and her cheek burned as if she’d been slapped by a pro wrestler, repeatedly, in exactly the same spot. She’d seen Ansel trying to hang himself, she’d seen dead bodies, witnessed a man get struck by lightning, and then she’d had sex with Ansel while he’d tried to shoot her in the head and missed. Should she thank him? Be mad at him? Forgive him for being a terrible shot? Or had he missed on purpose?
And why did she only now register that he was standing before her naked?
“Let’s get some fresh air,” she said.
***
Huntley had been right: It was shaping up to be a glorious day. Clouds chased across a brilliant blue sky. The few puddles remaining from last night’s downpour quickly evaporated and left the world looking freshly scrubbed. The sun painted everything in ultra-realistic colors, like a TV set with its chroma setting turned all the way to bubblegum.
Nikki, her arms outstretched to the sides like a tightrope walker, skimmed along the retaining wall that encircled the roof. It was dizzying to watch, her hair streaming in the wind, nothing preventing her from taking a wrong step and plunging down twenty stories to the concrete splat-pad. From Ansel’s vantage point, walking next to her safely on the roof, staring up, it looked like she was flying, or taking a stroll among clouds. He forced himself not to hold out a steadying hand, or to even appear concerned. It seemed she knew what she was doing, but still, it made Ansel more than nervous.
She was suicidal, after all.
“Enough air for you?” Ansel asked.
Nikki spun on one foot, arms held high over her head—hard to do balanced on the ground, but it was terrifying on a wall no more than a foot wide, two hundred fifty feet above street level.
“Jesus!”
She waved him off. “Just getting warmed up.” She jumped in the air, scissor-kicked her legs out into a split, and landed gracefully on her tippy-toes on the narrow ledge. “Tadaaaah!”
“Christ—what—would you come down from there?”
“Nervous?”
“Yes—no—can’t you just do your gymnastics on the floor like everybody else?”
“Not gymnastics. Ice-skating. And I used to be quite good at it.” To prove it, she jump-twirled in place.
Ansel forced himself not to grab her, pull her down to safety, and shake that nonsense out of her. Instead, he hid behind sarcasm and hoped it would work. “Impressive. And utterly useless. Who ice-skates anymore?”
Nikki shrugged. “The rich. The beautiful.” She stared at Ansel, wild-eyed, wobbling dangerously on the ledge. “The insane!”
Ansel jerked, ready to rush her, but she only steadied herself and laughed. Gotcha!
All of a sudden, from behind Ansel, a man ran toward them. He wore a suit, tie, and expensive shoes, and from what Ansel could make out, his cuff links blinked golden. His wavy hair recently trimmed, fingernails pink from a manicure, he nodded a quick greeting at Ansel and jumped over the low wall behind Nikki, grabbing nothing but air. He didn’t make a sound, simply vaulted over the edge and fell from view. Nikki and Ansel showed no interest in the falling man. It happens.
“Not everything has to be useful,” Nikki said. The thud of something heavy and wet hitting something hard echoed from below. “I was good. Very good. Sure, I was the spoiled princess, got everything I ever wanted. My dad hired an army of trainers, coaches, masseuses, sports physiol
ogists, nutritionists, acting teachers, yoga teachers… anybody who could possibly help me. He thought that’s what I wanted. To win, to be the best. I never did. He never really understood.”
She closed her eyes half-way, floating across the top of the retaining wall, one step away from oblivion. “I almost made it to the nationals. But that didn’t matter. Not to me.” Step after self-assured step, she skated along the wall, each foot dipping low as it reached forward, giving her movement a lyrical, dance-like rhythm. “I liked the feel of the ice. Moving to music, getting lost.” She pirouetted on one foot, slow and beautiful, a mesmerizing dance on the brink of certain death. “So cold. Calm. White.”
Her eyes were slits. She didn’t see the ground below. Or the edge of the wall, or the sky all around her. She was back on the ice. Cold and silent. There were people in the stands surrounding her, but she didn’t hear them. All that mattered was gliding across the white. The flow of movement. The effortlessness of life. “But then the world crashed, and suddenly, skating became a useless luxury. Who the hell can afford a huge refrigerator when the world’s boiling as it is? And for what? To make a massive sheet of ice in the middle of an oven? And so it all went away.” She paused on the wall. Arms extended, legs pointed. The picture of grace. “Try explaining that to a little girl. That everything she thought was important, from one day to the next, wasn’t anymore. Nothing makes sense for that girl. She only knows one thing.”
Nikki opened her eyes and turned to Ansel. “Nothing lasts.” With a smile, she spread out her arms and let herself fall backwards, like reclining into a pool of infinite blue.
“Oh my god.” Ansel rushed forward, reaching frantically and just managing to catch Nikki by one hand.
Barely.
The only thing preventing her from falling was Ansel’s grip on her wrist and fingers. Legs locked, body stiff, leaning into the void as if she were about to rappel down, she smiled at him. “What are you doing, Ansel Grayson?”
Ansel held on for dear life. Her life. But he was struggling. Smoking unremittingly for the last decade hadn’t helped prepare him for this. “I was just about to ask you the same thing.”
Nikki leaned her head back. All she saw now was a brilliant blue sky, puffy white clouds like cotton drifting idly about in an upside-down world. Her smile widened. “You should try this sometime.”
“Tomorrow. You wanna come back now?”
There was a deep calm in that blue sky, high above, where cold winds chased the edges of the atmosphere. Nikki felt herself expanding. She was bigger than just her body. There was more to her than just her. And everything was right. It always would be. Perfect. Her feet lost traction. She felt herself slip. She would fall, but somehow, she knew, she would join the calmness of that flawless sky.
“So, what, because you can’t skate anymore you want to kill yourself?”
Nikki snapped to. Deep calm blue sky was gone. She glanced back up, narrowing her eyes at Ansel. “Don’t be an idiot. I was seven. Lots has happened since.”
“Like what?” Ansel’s arm burned. He didn’t know how much longer he would be able to hold on.
“What do you care?”
“I don’t. Only trying to make conversation for the last few seconds of your life.”
Nikki smirked at Ansel. It was a knowing, come-hither smile. She wriggled her fingers, untangling her hand from his. He strained to cling to the last bit of her. “I think you do care,” Nikki said. Her little finger slipped. Her ring finger. Now she was holding on with only her last two—
“Shit!” Ansel lurched forward and grabbed her by her jacket, but her feet dropped away. She fell. Her weight nearly pulled Ansel over the wall, but he gripped tight and caught her.
Nikki laughed out loud, her feet dangling twenty stories above the street. Ansel broke out in a sweat, holding on to her by her coat.
“See? You do care.”
“Just a reflex.”
“Why won’t you let go then?”
“I should,” Ansel said. He thought about opening his hand and letting go. Their situation was hopeless. Their lives were hopeless. They’d come here to die. She’d wanted to end it last night, when they were in bed together, but his hand had slipped. He wasn’t sure if it had slipped or if he’d shot the wall on purpose. If he pulled her back up on the roof, it would be a conscious decision. He would cross a line he hadn’t thought he’d ever have to cross again—the responsibility for another human being. He’d come to Hotel Terminus to shut himself away, to cut the last thread he had with humanity: his own life. But life hadn’t made it easy for him. It held on with a fierce hunger.
There they were: her swaying at this ludicrous height, his body trembling from the effort of holding on. They looked at each other, and all of a sudden, the world dropped away beneath them and all that was left was Nikki and Ansel, the two of them caught in the same struggle of life and death and decisions too big for either of them.
Each saw the other.
Reflected.
Found.
A moment of transcendent weightlessness that soon gave way to brute physics: As slender as she was, she was getting fucking heavy.
“Now what?” Ansel said.
***
“I’ve seen this a thousand times,” Ansel said.
“I haven’t. And I’d like to know my options,” Nikki whispered back.
“There’s not that many. I can tell you—”
“Ssshhh.” Nikki put her finger to Ansel’s lips.
They were seated in a cramped, airless room tucked away in the back of the hotel. Rickety chairs left over from the last century faced a compact stage with a large table where Huntley had laid out all sorts of weapons, tools, and equipment used for hurt. Huntley stood behind the table, holding up a strong rope, putting the finishing touches on a knot. “Depending on the circumference, the coils can be difficult to manage, but with practice, it becomes quite easy until…”
Ansel and Nikki were in the back of the room, behind a handful of people scattered about on the chairs, cigarette smoke and the smell of cheap coffee lingering in the air.
Huntley held up the finished noose, beautifully wound. “…we arrive at the conventional hangman’s knot. Eight coils are traditional, preventing undue slippage. Place the knot behind the left ear, which in most circumstances will result in a C1-C2 fracture, with variations subject to the height of the drop.” Huntley pointed to his neck, indicating where it would break cleanly if done the right way.
“See?” Nikki smiled at Ansel. “That’s the part you should have paid more attention to.” She mimed Ansel swinging from the chandelier again, her hand holding up an imaginary rope. Ansel sighed.
Huntley lifted an eyebrow. He wasn’t used to people talking during his presentations. Most who came were genuinely absorbed in the topic—naturally so, Huntley thought, since what he showed them could very well be the last thing they ever did in their lives. He laid the perfectly tied hangman’s noose on the table, refocusing on the task. “Care should be taken with the length of the drop to ensure the weight of the falling body does not exceed 1000 Newtons or 450 kilogram-force, to minimize the risk of decapitation. Unless that is something you desire for yourself.” He held up some laminated cards. “I have tables here to help with the calculations. Feel free to take one at the end of the presentation.”
For Huntley, death had always been an exacting art. His job was to ease people to their end, with predictable outcomes, and that could only be accomplished with precise information. Death was too important for guesswork. “The next implement I’d like to discuss is the razor blade and its proper usage.” He brandished a straight razor, not unlike the one he had used to cut a man’s throat a few days back. “An ideal and, it is said, painless tool for efficient scission of flesh, and perhaps my personal favorite.”
“You really want to waste your last day in a dark smoky room going through every possible means to check out?”
“What do you have in mind?”
“I don’t know. Not this here.”
Nikki gave him a long hard look.
“It is a beautiful day out there…” she said.
***
It was a beautiful day, with a spectacular sky. One could easily get lost in it. Ansel remembered lying in a field when he was a young boy, no more than seven, eight years old, arms behind his head. Summer buzzed all around him, long, uncut grass softer than any feather-down bed waved in the light breeze, and the sun warmed his skin like an oven, a gentle heat that found its way deep into his bones and created a weary contentment. He could have stayed on that hilltop and listened to nature hum for the rest of his life—his eyes closed, their lids a gauzy orange from the sunshine lighting up the blood pulsing through them.
This here wasn’t exactly like it. There was the magnificent sky, true. The sun shone with clear brilliance. The warmth of an early fall day seeped through him, and he was content—more so than he had been for a long time—but he wasn’t lying in soft grass on a hilltop. Rather, he felt hard track ballast digging into his spine, and the cold, hard metal of a rail bit into the back of his head.
He was lying on a train track with Nikki, criss-crossing the beams like damsels in distress in an old black-and-white movie, tied to the rails and waiting for the cowboy with the white hat to rescue them. Only this was the exact opposite: They were waiting for the train.
“Really? Run over by a train?” Ansel said. They were on the elevated train track running through the city, somewhere between stations. If one could ignore the noise and the stench and the overall crumbling decay, this was a pleasant spot to be in.
Nikki shrugged her shoulders. “Should have let me fall then.”
“Yeah, that’ll teach me.” He gazed up at the blameless sky stretching above. “What a beautiful day.”
It was. Perhaps this was even better than having her head blown off during an orgasm, she thought. This was more peaceful. Restful. Not a rash decision but a deliberate end to things. It might hurt, but she’d been hurting for over fourteen years now. A train running over her was nothing.