by Chris Cander
Clara, feeling less like a lost dog, if not quite included, watched him set up his tripod fairly low to the ground, digging around in his bag and muttering to himself, “Where’s my wide-angle lens? Light meter. Yes, here. Okay.” He crouched down, careful with his stiff leg, so he could peer through the viewfinder. He changed settings—“ISO 100, f/14, 1.6s,” he mumbled—and focused the lens. He seemed completely absorbed in his work, and these tiny manipulations fascinated her. It made Clara think about her equivalent: going into the pit, removing the oil plug and its gasket from an engine, letting the oil drain out, changing the filter, replacing the oil. Menial, yes, but deeply satisfying—though probably nobody would find it interesting enough to actually watch. She was surprised at how much she missed the feel of oil on her fingers, missed finding the solution for a challenging problem, following every step, keeping things in order. Cleaning up after Alex, who always made a mess. Working with Peter.
Once he began taking pictures, Greg stopped talking to himself. Maybe, Clara considered, he needed to listen to something besides his own voice in order to capture each image. She thought of the line in his website bio: I record what is there and what is not, so that you may see what it is that I hear. Clara closed her eyes and listened, too. There was the rush of wind, stronger than the day before, shearing off the mountains. The steam-whistle scream of a hawk. The snapping of the camera shutter. Beto, standing behind them, striking a match to light a cigarette. When she opened her eyes again the sun had slid behind the mountains, and the clouds that streaked across the sky had taken on an orange-and-purple blush. The small stones in the shallow pond, which was still in shadow, seemed to float in a sea of reflected golden light. Her Blüthner’s black finish gleamed against the white salt pan, while its doppelgänger wavered in the pond. In the trick of this late light, the salt pan almost looked like a snow-covered valley.
That night, back at the hotel once again, Greg invited her to join him for dinner.
“I DON’T WANT TO BE ANYWHERE but here,” Katya said, moving even closer to him and draping a leg over his, as though to trap him under the sheets. The window was open and an ocean breeze moved the curtains adagio, like a slow dance in the dark. It was a new moon and no light was coming in except from the digital clock on the bedside table. The beach bungalow belonged to a friend of his, a divorcé with more money than free time, so they had it to themselves almost whenever they wanted it, which had been nearly every Thursday afternoon for the past year and a half, for as many hours each time as they could get away with. Lately, they’d been staying until after dark, desperate for more time in each other’s arms. It was a seven-mile drive for him if he was going from his office, a thirteen-mile drive for her: close enough that they could spend a few uninterrupted hours in bed or walking along the beach or in a café, but far enough away that they didn’t have to worry constantly about being seen.
“Me either, my love. Let’s just stay here. Move in.”
She laughed. “Where will you put all your books?”
“Well, when we put your piano out on the curb for the scavengers to take, we’ll have plenty of room for books.”
She pretended to slap him on the chest, and he pulled her into a tight embrace. “Fine, no books. We can put the piano in the kitchen. I don’t need to eat; all I need is you.”
“That is better,” she said, and kissed him.
“Our anniversary is coming up. Two years since our first lesson.”
“You are a terrible student.”
“The worst. But a wonderful lover.”
“Yes, of course. The best.” She bit him carefully on the shoulder.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you, too.”
He rolled onto his side and propped himself on his elbow. “Why?”
“Зачем?”
“Yes, why. Why do you love me?”
“You don’t know?”
“I do. I just like hearing you say it.”
“Such a silly man.”
“Your silly man,” he said, and kissed her on the neck, just below her ear, where she was the most sensitive. “Tell me.”
She tipped her head back to give him a better angle. “I will tell if you keep doing that.”
He hummed agreement into her skin, and goose bumps rose up to meet him. “I love you for always coming here with me, every week, for your piano lesson.” She giggled.
He licked her earlobe. “What else?”
“I love you for how you look me in the eyes for many minutes without blinking.”
“I could look at you forever, you’re so beautiful. And your fingers, the way you touch me like you’re playing Scriabin or Tchaikovsky. You don’t even know you’re doing it.”
She played the first few measures of Scriabin’s E-flat Minor Prelude on his chest, presto. Each time she touched one of his nipples, he flinched in pleasure.
“And what do you love about me so much to bring you back all the time?” she asked.
“You want me to tell you in Russian or English?”
“English. So I can practice. They say ‘pillow talk’ is the best way to know colloquial speech.”
“Well, we’ve had plenty of that, haven’t we?” He rolled on top of her, shifting her body beneath his until she was flat on her back. “Anyway, I don’t know enough Russian to express myself adequately. Okay. Well, your talent for one. You manipulate me like a puppeteer every time you play. Whatever emotion you want me to feel, it works. I don’t even know how you do it.”
“That credit is to the composer, not to me.”
“You’re wrong. It’s you.” He kissed her on the nose. “Then there’s the conversation, the communication. I’ve never felt as free to talk and tease and joke with someone.” He paused. They both knew that by someone, he meant his wife. “But with you I can be open. We can talk about the…mechanics of physical love. You’ve completely opened me up in that regard. And I love how amazingly you respond to me when I’m passionate. I’ve been with people who were horny, but never passionate. Not craziness that comes straight from the heart, not like this. You understand?”
She didn’t, not entirely, not these nuances of his. But how he’d positioned himself over her, like he would protect and care for her, was enough. “Yes,” she said.
“It’s crazy how easy it is to be with you. Just like this, in bed together for hours. I don’t think I’ve ever spent more than an hour naked with anybody without one of us picking up a book, or turning on the TV, or leaving, or falling asleep. Have you?”
She thought of the first afternoon she and Mikhail had spent together in his small apartment, making love until it was dark outside, twenty-one years before. They’d had a few more days like that afterward, as they got to know each other—maybe weeks; it was hard to remember—but he had the disposition of an engineer, not a swain. He was drawn to routine and efficiency; lovemaking soon became just another thing to check off a list. Had they even fallen in love? She didn’t think so. They had simply succumbed to reasonableness and practicality.
Katya put her hand over his heart. “No, my love. Not like this.”
“I want to be with you all the time,” he said.
“So do I want to be with you.”
He sat up and turned on the lamp. His dark red hair was disheveled, his day’s stubble starting to show, sparkling silver in the light. Her own dark hair had started to turn gray, just a few strands here and there. She had asked recently if he thought she should dye it, and he said he didn’t want her to do anything like that for him. He said he loved watching her hair change, that he wanted to watch it go all the way to white and her veins to gnarl the backs of her hands. He said he didn’t care how the years showed on her as long as he was there to witness it. “I mean it, Katya. It’s been two years. We know why we love each other, so when are we going to actually do what we n
eed to in order to be together?”
She sat up, too, punching the pillows into submission behind her back for support. Then she smiled at him. “How do we do this, huh? We do love each other, but are you really going to leave your wife? You really want to accept my son? There are many things about this arrangement that are difficult.”
He didn’t hesitate. “Yes! Of course I’d accept him. I’ve always said that I would.”
She shook her head. “And what about your wife?”
“Remember me telling you that my colleague thought he saw her off-campus with a grad student?”
She nodded.
“I think she’s seeing him. Seeing him. You know what I mean?”
“A love affair?”
“I think so, yes. She’s been acting strangely. Well, she always acts strangely. But lately it seems different. She’s more distracted than usual. Doesn’t seem quite as angry. I don’t know—it would be great if she was involved with somebody else.”
“It wouldn’t make you upset?”
He paused. “Well, I don’t have much room to criticize her, do I? I’d like to think she’s happier with someone else. That would make me feel less guilty.”
Katya thought of the many lies they’d told since they began seeing each other, the energy diverted from their families so they could steal these few hours together every week. Phone calls during the day were easier to manage, but facilitating and keeping hidden the physical aspect of their relationship required constant vigilance and scheming. She also sometimes felt guilty, but not as much as she’d feared she would. She had decided long ago that Mikhail deserved her betrayal. It was her son she hated lying to, pretending she was driving to Mid-City every Thursday afternoon for adult chancel choir practice at a Presbyterian church where she pretended to work part-time. He was almost sixteen, both smart and suspicious. When he asked her why she played during choir practice but never during regular church services, she began sneaking away for a couple of hours every other Sunday morning. Sometimes, if her lover couldn’t meet her at the bungalow, she would actually go to the church, although she had no interest in either religion or God. It didn’t do much to assuage her guilt, but she gathered enough details that she could describe it to her son if ever he asked her to.
“In two years,” she said. “Grigoriy will be graduated high school, probably going to university. Then I can leave Mikhail.”
“Two more years,” he said, as if it were a death sentence.
“It’s not so long. It gives us time to invent a story to tell the children, to decide where we will live. Yes?” She put her hands on either side of his face and searched his light brown eyes. She ran her thumb over the rough skin of his purple birthmark, which she loved for reasons she didn’t need to understand. “I can’t leave now with my son still at home. I need to be there. But when he’s eighteen, he will be okay. He will be grown up, and he can take care of himself. You understand?”
He sighed, then leaned in and kissed her. “I do. I don’t like it, but I do.”
From within the pile of clothes on the floor, his telephone rang. “Shit,” he said. In spite of the exorbitant cost, he had bought a cellular phone so he could take his wife’s calls from any location without her knowing where he was. He had offered to buy one for Katya, too, but she hadn’t needed one. Mikhail never bothered to check on her, and if she needed to talk to her son, she could call from a pay phone. It was challenging enough to pretend that she was getting paid for all the choir practices and performances; explaining how she had come by the extra money for one of these new phones would be impossible.
“I’ll make this quick,” he said. He flipped the device open just as he closed the bathroom door behind himself. “I’m just finishing up a dinner meeting,” she heard him blurt.
Katya stretched out on the bed, feeling like a satisfied cat. There was a time, early on, when they’d spent a whole day in a hotel, making love, having a picnic on the rumpled sheets, drinking sparkling wine from paper cups. It had gotten late without them realizing it, and he’d suddenly panicked. What if his wife was worried? Or suspicious? Her husband was working, and her son away on a school trip, so she had no one to explain her absence to. But he trembled as he dialed his home number, and when his wife answered he sounded overly solicitous and affectionate. Beads of sweat appeared on his forehead, his cheeks flushing red. He held his hand over his mouth as he spoke, but Katya was right next to him. She heard him lie about his day, make false assurances and, at the end of the conversation, tell his wife that he loved her. It sounded more reflexive than sincere, like how Americans ask, How are you? as a greeting without expecting a reply. Afterward, he couldn’t look at her directly. “I’m so sorry you had to hear that,” he said. “I’ve never done something like this before. I’m afraid I’m not a very convincing liar.”
It was new for Katya as well. Lying, cheating on her husband, stealing time from her son. But being with him—being loved by him—was her only reprieve from the melancholia that had tainted all her years since leaving Leningrad. She had fallen in love, truly. Yet the joy she felt with him didn’t entirely eradicate the sensation that her doctor had suggested might be depression. She still felt it acutely, especially when they had to leave each other and return to their own families. She wondered if she’d be happier if they could be together openly, if they no longer had to lie. Perhaps someday they would find out, though in the meantime she was willing to tolerate all of it, including bearing witness to her lover’s duplicity. It was surprisingly easy to get used to.
By now, it hardly bothered her at all.
“MAYBE YOU’D LIKE to join us tomorrow,” Greg said at the end of their meal.
She wasn’t sure what had caused this turnabout, and while she’d enjoyed his company at dinner, she remained skeptical. “Why?” she asked.
“It’s a long drive. Why wouldn’t I want to have a mechanic along? Didn’t you tell me I should?”
She looked away, took a sip of her beer.
“Clara,” he said, laughing.
She felt heat rise to her cheeks and kept her face turned away, although it wasn’t dark enough in the restaurant to hide her embarrassment.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Clara, look at me. Please.”
She took a breath, chastised herself for being so easily played, and faced him.
He looked straight into her. “I’m really sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
“You didn’t,” she said. Then she wiped her mouth, tossed the crumpled napkin onto her plate, and stood up. “Thanks for dinner. I’ll see you in the morning.”
* * *
—
“Good morning,” Greg said. “Truce?” He handed her a cup of coffee, and she peered beneath the lid. “I made it how you like it,” he said with a smile, then turned to the movers. “We’d better get going. It’s going to be a long day.” She followed them into the parking lot.
Greg walked with Beto to the U-Haul, pointing out something on the map. As Clara walked toward her car, Greg called, “You can ride with me if you want.”
She was surprised to realize that she did. She didn’t enjoy his presence as much as she was drawn to the complexity of it: the intensity of his eyes, his mysterious, limping constitution, how he seemed to be inviting her in even as he pushed her away.
“It’s a long drive,” he said. “Around seventy-five miles, but apparently the roads are so rough, it could take four hours each way. No sense in taking three vehicles. But of course, do whatever makes you comfortable.” Then he turned his attention back to the map.
Eight hours in a car with Greg? Now, that could be interesting. “Sure,” she said. “Give me a minute. I need to get some stuff out of my car.”
When she turned seventeen and bought her first car—an old junker she and her uncle fixed up—he stocked it with an extensive
emergency kit and warned her never to drive without being prepared to live on the side of the road for a few days in extreme heat or cold if she had to. “Never know when you or somebody else might run up against some trouble.” So she always kept water, a sweatshirt, a magnesium fire starter, a fire extinguisher, old towels, a first-aid kit, sunscreen, sunglasses, and lip balm, plus a cache of tools. At least Jack would’ve approved of her grabbing her toolkit and roadside emergency bag. She might take a risk on being in the middle of nowhere with three men, but she wouldn’t chance the environment.
“You have a spare tire, right?”
“Yep.”
“For the U-Haul, too?”
“Yes, dear.”
“Just checking,” she said, and popped the back of his SUV. She noted that there were five gallon-jugs of water, a thermal blanket from the hotel, and a cooler alongside his photography equipment, which she tried not to disturb as she loaded her things inside.
“There’s a picnic dinner in there,” Greg said. “And snacks. Oh, and I bought a six-pack for the guys and some wine for us.” He cocked an eyebrow and smiled. “Think we need anything else?”
Despite herself, she smiled back. The idea of a picnic and wine in the desert with an interesting—if irritable—guy seemed almost quaint. She shrugged. “I guess not.”
“Then let’s go,” he said, hoisting himself into the driver’s seat.
* * *
—
Everything in Death Valley seemed extreme to Clara, but thus far the six-hundred-foot-deep, half-mile-wide volcanic Ubehebe Crater in the northern part of the park was the most impressive; its array of colors and textures was nothing less than otherworldly. At the bottom of it, pink-and-brown mudflats looked like dried-up lakes. In between, colorful layers of sandstone and other sediments, carved by millions of years’ worth of debris flowing into the exposed red-orange bedrock, fanned out in deep gullies against the black volcanic terrain.