This would be the first of his darker days, when he would begin to seriously doubt that he would ever find Mr. Krantz.
The firemen and policemen were putting out the fire now, smoke billowing, and Eli finally allowed himself to be led away. He followed his family to the parking lot, too stunned to speak with them about what had transpired. When Vanessa offered to drive him home, he refused.
“I’ll drive myself,” he said. She put the back of her hand on his forehead, as if testing for a fever. He pulled away. “I’m fine. I’ll drive. I don’t want to leave my car downtown.”
“I’ll go with him, Mom,” Ginger said. Eli didn’t want the company, but he was too upset to argue, so he said nothing, merely opened the passenger door for Ginger and waited while she climbed inside.
“We’ll come over, too,” Amelia called to him from her own car.
“Okay,” he said.
“See you all there,” Vanessa said, and her cheerfulness, Eli sensed, grated on them all.
On the ride home, stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic, Ginger giggled.
“What is it?” Eli asked.
“Nothing.”
“Tell me.”
Drawing her knees to her chest, Ginger propped her feet—encased in grubby sneakers—on the dashboard, something Eli typically hated but that he chose to tolerate this evening. “It’s just … she was like the actress in King Kong—”
“Who?” Eli said. “Fay Wray?”
“Lindsay Meeks! Yes! Like Fay Wray! All like, Ah! Help me! Help! Save me from the giant ape!”
She flailed her hands around in imitation and then snorted and laughed.
“Ginger,” he said. “Isn’t she your friend?”
Ginger wiped at her eyes, both crying and laughing now. “And King Kong was like, Ah! I’m on fire! Meow! Belching fire! Ack! Roar! Arms up! Meow!”
She fell silent now, laughing so hard that no sound came from her, and for a moment he was concerned that she was about to pass out. But then she lifted her face and put her head back, gasping for breath, her face gone glossy with the purest happiness, so very happy and free, as only children can be. How young she still was, his littlest daughter, not a woman at all but just very young and very innocent, so very different from how Amelia had been at age seventeen.
There was a short window in life where she would be able to feel this way. It would close soon, surely. Eli wanted her to get a grip on herself.
“Ginger,” he said, taking hold of one of her knees. “Ginger.”
She shook with laughter. She erupted with it.
“Ginger,” he said, trying not to yell. “She was your friend. Remember? You said she was nice.”
Ginger sobered up, regarded him in confusion. “So what? I’m just laughing. Not at her. Just, you know, at the situation.”
“This was her night,” he said, “her big night, when the whole city admired her, and it was ruined. Set on fire, Ginger. Up in flames. Literally.”
Ginger’s lips quivered. She was trying not to laugh—trying—but the mention of the fire was too much for her. She crouched over her legs again and muffled the sound of her laugh with her arms, but it was no use; she couldn’t hide it from him.
“It was her big night, Ginger, the night when all of Lilac City gathered to see…” And he trailed off here.
He was being a hypocrite, and he felt his hypocrisy keenly, and he was embarrassed about it and made all the more hungry by it.
Gary was now Lindsay’s hero. Ginger couldn’t compete with Lindsay Meeks, not now, not ever. So let her have her laugh, Eli thought. At least she’s not laughing at me.
Ginger, meanwhile, continued to buckle and shake, stopping for whole minutes at a time before remembering some other hilarious detail and convulsing with laughter again. Eli ignored her. He saw himself as all of Lilac City no doubt saw him tonight: laughable, misguided. He thought of Mr. Krantz. He felt bested.
Eli took a hand from the steering wheel and wiped at his face. Ginger finally managed to calm down. For this, Eli was grateful.
They were home. Eli turned off the car’s ignition and regarded the house for a long moment. There was no point, he told himself, in feeling such self-pity. Tomorrow morning, he thought, there will be a fresh pot of coffee and a thousand things to do at the office. He would engross himself again in his work. This was a great comfort.
Thus bolstered, he followed Ginger inside.
Amelia and Jim sat together on the living room couch, speaking in low voices with Vanessa. Eli greeted them and apologized. He was tired, he said, and he was going to bed.
He noticed the hurt on Amelia’s face, the confusion on Jim’s. Vanessa’s face was a mask of anger and pity. And then there was Ginger, making excuses for him to everyone, as always.
“It’s not like he doesn’t want to see you,” Ginger told her sister as Eli climbed the stairs. “He’s tired. He worked really hard, you know? On his monster? His hominid, I mean? And the foot bone! It’s nothing but ashes now. So it’s a bummer. We can have dinner together, though. Maybe he’ll come down later. I’m so glad to see you!”
But as Eli washed his hands at the sink and changed into his pajamas, he heard the unmistakable sounds of Amelia and Jim leaving the house, of Amelia and Jim’s heated conversation in the driveway, of their car backing away and speeding from the neighborhood. Following came the predictable sounds of Vanessa finishing dinner, smashing dishes around, angry with him as she passive-aggressively cleaned. She wouldn’t come to bed for hours, Eli knew, but would stay up, drinking wine and watching the popular television shows that she would later berate as artless.
And where would Ginger be? Talking on her phone? Thinking of the tall boy from the float committee? Or would she be scribbling the day’s disappointments into her diary?
It didn’t matter. Eli let it all go. He was fantastic at letting it all go. It was beyond him. He lay in bed, throbbing. He closed his eyes. At the threshold of the dreamworld, Mr. Krantz loomed before him, not made of paper this time but of flesh, and when the fire reached him, he could not be saved.
In his sleep, Eli screamed with delight.
1994
PEOPLE OF THE STREET
It was Ginger’s sixth week in Spain. The panic attacks had ended. Now it was just the slow wretched acceptance of being away from Cort for another four months. On this sixth weekend, she called him from the Plaza Pelícano’s public telephone. She used a phone card purchased from the nearby tobacco shop, a phone card that required she type in a twenty-digit number, her impatience swelling as her fingers trembled over the keys. What a relief when Cort actually came to the phone; what a relief that he was, unlike last week, waiting for her call. She listened to him talk, the phone pressed to her ear with such force that his voice gouged like a drill into her skull. She stared stupidly out at the world, ignoring the stray dogs glaring at her from beneath the tattered awnings, ignoring the children, many of them familiar to her now, tearing parentless around the plaza, stopping at her side to tease her and laugh at her: “Americana, Americana, ¿con quién habla?” Cort said he was glad to hear from her, and Ginger closed her eyes. He told her about nothing in particular: his microbiology professor’s tendency to pick, mid-lecture, at the seat of his pants; his roommate’s annoying habit of redistributing the unwashed dishes to Cort’s bed (“What a dickwad!” Cort exclaimed, incredulous. “I pulled back the sheets and there was a rotting plate of lasagna. Such a cocksucker!”); the hangover he’d battled all morning, a hangover that made him miss having her around. At this moment, one of the glaring stray dogs deposited a slick wormlike turd near her feet. Ginger forced herself to laugh. Cort needed her, she reminded herself. He wouldn’t leave her. He had just said, in so many words, that she bettered his life.
“So how’s the rain in Spain?” he asked buoyantly.
“Not so much rain,” she said. She winced at her voice’s breathiness, at its high, tremulous lilt. She sounded girlish and sentimental, even to herself. “Just
one day of it, really. I saw two mopeds crash. All the wet oil in the streets. So there are a lot of accidents.”
“Cool,” he said. “Anyone mangled?”
“This lady’s leg was pretty effed up. Moped trapped her underneath. But she was okay.”
“Bogue.”
“Yeah. Totally.” She waited a moment. “Have you been getting my letters?”
“The letters! Oh! Yes! They’re awesome! Thank you!” His tone changed. “Although the fellas think it’s funny. I mean, you send me one every day. Sometimes more than one. And don’t get me wrong. I love it. It’s like Christmas, kinda, when I get back from class and here are all of these letters and postcards waiting for me. It’s cool, right? But, you know, they think it’s weird.” He exhaled loudly. “Not that I care what they think.”
She swallowed with difficulty. “I really liked the letter you sent me. Your description of the river was beautiful. You’re such a good writer.”
“Yeah? Thanks. I was super inspired. Sorry I haven’t sent you more. Been busy. Real busy. It’s weird, you know, because I feel guilty for not writing more. Especially after how much you send me. But I think of you a lot. I really do, Ginger. I hope you know that.”
Later, Ginger slowly walked toward the river, taking her time, watching her feet in their delicate espadrilles, avoiding the dog crap, ignoring the hissing, the catcalls. An old man rubbed his fingers together under her nose and put the fingers in his mouth as though tasting her. She scowled and drew her head down, parting her shoulder blades. She threaded her way from plaza to plaza until she reached the Guadalquivir, where her friends sat at a table littered with empty glasses, the sugary husks of recently drained tintos de verano. They were all—all six of them—the daughters of the wealthy. Like Ginger. Ginger told everyone her father was a doctor, too, a podiatrist, even though he’d given up his podiatry practice years ago. Sometimes when she visited a hospital and smelled the sterilizing chemicals and watched the orderly staff, she mourned her dad’s chosen career. It was embarrassing, really. In high school, Ginger had considered becoming a cryptozoologist, too. It sounded like fun back then. Chasing beasts! But, like most things her parents did, it no longer made sense to her. She wanted to be an artist. A famous painter or writer. Maybe a musician, although she didn’t know how to play an instrument and she couldn’t much sing.
Cort wanted to be a doctor. A real one. He, too, found her father amusing, a droll little man.
Her friends pulled their chairs over to make room for her. They were awaiting a pitcher of sangria and a plate of Roquefort sandwiches. When they finished eating and drinking, Ginger rose, light-headed, less somber if not exactly happy, and followed her friends into the heart of the city, toward the cathedral, the Gothic towers rising like a dark stony cliff before them.
This was how she spent her days here, drifting along sadly with her bubbly compatriots. She forced herself to eat and to drink. She forced herself to drink too much, to fake enjoyment. Every now and again she noticed something beautiful that briefly captivated her: a tiny fountain on an empty street; a hidden avenue with salmon-pink walls; a school of ancient Spanish women, huddled together in an old church, finally learning how to read. But these moments came to her as things happening to someone else. She wasn’t there. She was back in Seattle, with Cort. Back in his bed, wrapped in his red flannel sheets, listening to Leonard Cohen and talking about James Joyce. She wasn’t here in this beautiful sun-blanched city, this city that was both Roman and Moorish, Gypsy and modern. She wasn’t here with these wealthy American girls from all over the United States, from the Midwest and Texas and California and Maine, from large lawn-dotted suburbs in random cities. She was now a satellite self, discharged to orbit a remote planet. She stared out at everything with a robot’s eyes, merely collecting information, no emotional attachments forged. Like a good robot, she counted down every precise moment to departure. The return to Seattle. To Cort.
Her friends snapped photos and gossiped. They pitied themselves for their language program’s lack of attractive American males. Why is it, someone mused, that the boys stay home? Why are we girls the only ones studying abroad nowadays? Isn’t that wrong? Aren’t men, one of the other girls said, the more adventuresome sex, stereotypically speaking? Ginger listened to the argument with a sick heart. She had her own opinions on the matter: that women were weaker somehow, less satisfied with the present; that the baubles and styles of Europe attracted them with shallow promises of beauty and fashion. Ginger hated the reasons that brought her here. Except that she couldn’t really remember what any of them were. Maybe to learn Spanish? Or maybe that she had heard that it was something intellectual young women did in their third year of college? After all, she saw herself so very much as an intellectual young woman. It was how she wished for Cort to see her.
Someone tugged on her arm. This way, they urged. The girls were quite drunk. It was midday, crazy hot, and the alcohol made Ginger hotter. She rustled in her pockets for her change. She had stopped carrying a purse or a backpack—too many girls had fallen victim to thieves that way—and she carried almost nothing with her, finding that most of the time the bill was collected and paid for long before she even thought of asking for it. That was the thing with people her age who had lots of money: It was easy to be generous, so easy that it made all such gestures worthless. No one said thank you and no one noticed the lack of gratitude. Ginger did feel grateful, especially that these girls continued to humor her despite her clear misery. Some of them even listened with patient, kind eyes to her effusive monologues about Cort. Sometimes she lost control of herself, when she drank too much or her ache for him overflowed.
Mostly, Ginger tried to keep to herself. She hid from them her stuffed unicorn, Charlie, which she’d packed to help her through the difficult nights. She spoke to Charlie nightly, cried her fears into his matted, dissolving white fur. And she tried not to take it too personally when the other girls teased her about Cort, although it really did hurt.
The young women stepped together now beneath the high clean awnings of Calle Sierpes. A man painted entirely in gold stood perfectly still, regarding the world with the same empty robot eyes. Every now and again he shifted position, wondrously, mechanically, as though he were made not of flesh but of gears and gadgets. Ginger watched him for a long time, her friends slipping in and out of the nearby shops to try on shirts and dresses and shoes, and finally she gave him one of her few coins, depositing it in a hat at his feet. He rolled suddenly into a bow of thanks and remained frozen there, staring at the ground as if he had finally broken down. Ginger smiled briefly and then moved forward, looking for her companions, who had now gathered before an heladería a bit farther down the avenue.
A woman materialized just as Ginger began to order her ice cream, a beautiful older woman with dark hair and skin like boiled gold. Ginger shrank away, unnerved by the woman’s closeness. She reeked of some sort of herb that Ginger could not place—something rustic and earthy. Rosemary? The smell was overpowering if not unpleasant. The woman took up Ginger’s hand and stroked her palm, gurgling low in her throat, and Ginger tried to pull her hand away but could not. The woman gripped her wrist too tightly.
The woman began to ramble in Spanish about Ginger’s future. Ginger understood parts of it but not others: You’ll have two children, blondes—rubio. You’ll find wealth. You will live a long life but not one without sadness. Your one true love—the man who will love you the fullest—will be a moreno. You will make—
Ginger began to speak, too, with more-rapid Spanish than she had ever spoken.
“No,” she argued. “No. My one true love is a rubio. A rubio. Please. Look again.”
The woman lifted Ginger’s hand up higher, peered down into her palm.
“Moreno,” she confirmed, and dropped Ginger’s hand roughly.
She extended her own long, bejeweled fingers for money.
Ginger reached on impulse into her pocket and then stopped herself. No. Thi
s woman would receive no money. Not for misinformation.
“He’s a rubio,” Ginger repeated. “Rubio.”
The woman laughed and shook her head.
Some of her friends approached, licking their ice cream, listening to their argument.
“Palm reader,” one of them exclaimed. “Gypsy!”
They shoved money into the woman’s hands and presented their own palms. “Who will love me?” they demanded, laughing. More coins appeared, more palms. Ginger stood by, heartbroken, abashed, as the woman listed what color of hair to expect from their life’s true loves. Moreno, moreno, moreno. In one instance, laughing, calvo. Only one girl was allowed a rubio, and she was ironically the one who wanted to stay in Spain forever, hoping to marry a native and live by the sea in Cádiz.
Ginger slipped her palm into the mix again, as though to come up with a different outcome, but the woman slapped her hand away. Moreno, she said firmly, and made a severe chopping motion with her fist, as though to say, Enough. She left the girls standing there, laden now as she was with their pesetas. Ginger watched her go, destroyed. Her friends giggled to one another, but soon their attentions wandered to a bar they’d never noticed before, a bar that likely served fried calamari and pale beer. Ginger faced away from the bar, watching as the woman slipped into a blue doorway across the avenue. She read the sign overhead. A zapatería: a cobbler’s shop. The door snapped shut. Ginger waited a moment before allowing her friends to guide her inside the bar.
“Don’t tell me you’re taking that woman seriously,” one of them—the girl from Georgia with the small, perfect nose—said, noting her stricken expression.
“She said moreno, but Cort is a rubio,” Ginger said.
“God,” another of the girls cried, a more courageous girl than Ginger, a girl who had already banged a sevillano, “one more word about Cort and I’m going to shoot myself. In the guts. With a rifle.”
The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac Page 21