“Look!” shouted John. Somehow, they had found their way back to the ranger’s station. Pru was discombobulated from the setting sun and the hand-holding. He dropped her hand when the van came into sight. They got in and both started laughing. “That would have been really smooth, huh?” John said. “I take you out and get you lost in the woods.”
He put the key in the ignition and turned it. Nothing. He tried it again. Still nothing. They looked at each other. On the next try the engine rolled over once, gagged, and fell silent. Even more silent, it seemed to Pru, then before. Then the dashboard lights flickered, and faded. When John opened the door, the overhead light didn’t come on. He went to pop the hood while she rooted in her bag for her cell phone. She could see him out there, the white of his T-shirt standing out slightly against the other gray forms.
“I can’t see anything, and even if I could, I wouldn’t know what to look for,” he said, getting in the van. “You getting anything?” She had taken out her cell phone and had turned it on. It glowed blue, but she couldn’t get a signal.
“No,” she said. “Nothing.”
John sat back in his seat. “Shit,” he said.
“What do we do?”
They were at the park ranger’s station, in the absolute dead of nowhere, with no phones, no food, and no bathroom. Just stay calm, she told herself.
Then John said, “Wait here.”
He got out of the van and Pru watched him try the doors of the ranger’s station. He walked all the way around the outside of the building, searching for a call box, a stash of emergency flares, she didn’t know what. He went back to try the doors again, and all the windows. Then he came to the van, his hands shoved in his jacket pocket, a scowl on his face.
He got in and said, “I think we better hunker down and wait for the park ranger to come back.”
She tried to keep her voice steady. “When do you think that will be?”
“I don’t know. I guess it could be tomorrow morning.”
“Someone has to know we’re here, right?”
“Okay, listen, don’t panic.”
“I’m not panicking. I’m just thinking, I’m just saying, that someone had to have seen the van, and realize we were still out. They wouldn’t just leave while we were still out, would they?”
“I’m afraid they have.”
“And listen, you don’t have to say ‘panicking,’ like I’m some hysterical female or something. Honestly. You hardly even know me, so how do you even know what’s panicking and what’s, you know, regular concern? I’m just trying to get a handle on what’s happening here. I could have a whole range of emotions that you’re not even fucking aware of. So don’t say panicking. Now try the goddamn car again.”
He did. Nothing. Just a jingle of keys, then silence.
“All right,” she said. “So now we know. We’re stuck.” She was having trouble breathing.
“It’s not so bad,” he said, scampering to the back of the van. “Look, we have water and food and, you know, even blankets. Moving pads, really, but they’ll do. Look how thick they are! And hopefully it won’t get too cold tonight. We’ll be okay.”
Pru wanted to be cool and cooperative but her stomach was churning. She couldn’t remember the last night she’d spent outside. She didn’t think she was the most regimented person on the face of the planet, but honestly. Shouldn’t they be shouting for help, sending out smoke signals, something? She couldn’t spend all night out here, in the wilderness. What were they supposed to do, for all these hours, with no movie theater, no restaurant, nothing? What would she smell like in the morning? She didn’t have so much as a toothbrush!
Pru sat in the front seat, shivering. Her family hadn’t been one of those camping families. They might take a small cottage on a lake for a week or two during summer, but never in her life had she slept out in nature. The Whistlers liked to be home, in their beds, reading well past midnight. Oh, how she wanted to be home! She needed people and running water. Dead bolts and a security system and, when she could afford it, a night doorman. John seemed perfectly content with the unexpected adventure, this rent in the fabric of the everyday. He was actually enjoying this. He was hopping around, making a pile of blankets, cheerfully going through the bag of food he’d brought for their lunch, rationing the leftovers.
When he saw her sitting there, unmoving, he said, “You’re not okay, are you?”
“I’m fine,” she managed to reply. “Good.” She practically whispered it. She was furious with him. How irresponsible! How stupid! And she’d wanted so much to like him. But a man who let himself get lost, who drove a half-dead van up the side of a mountain—was this a man you’d trust to pick up your own children from soccer practice?
“We’ll be okay,” he said. “I promise. There’s no one around for miles.”
“Oh, great,” she groaned. She was remembering the bits of the shower scene from Psycho she had glimpsed through her fingers, when Rudy had discovered she’d never seen it and decided it was an essential part of her cultural education. She also remembered how, a few nights later, Rudy actually ripped open the shower curtain while she was in there, scaring the absolute bejesus out of her. Although he apologized immediately and swore up and down he had no idea it would terrify her so, it was days before she’d even let him spend the night. And she never again took a shower when he was around.
Because, when it came down to it, Pru was an absolute chicken. That was why she lived in the city, in an apartment building, surrounded by people. People, people, people, please, and more people. Nothing can happen to you with that many people around. At least, if something does, there are witnesses.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ve got to go.”
She grabbed his arm. “What?”
“To use the facilities. The bushes.”
“Oh,” she said, releasing her grip. “Okay.”
While he was gone she searched the glove box for anything she might be able to use as a weapon. The only thing she found was a very short screwdriver. He was away for a long time. She sat there with the little screwdriver in her hand, feeling alternately scared and foolish. He was gone so long that she finally rolled down the window and yelled his name.
“John?” she called, louder. She strained her ears. No movement, no response, nothing. She sat up, tense and alert. Her fingers tightened around the ridged handle of the little screwdriver.
“John?”
Suddenly, there was someone standing next to her, outside her window. “What?”
She almost leapt out of her skin. “Jesus!”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t do that again!” Her heart felt as though it would explode out of her chest.
“Okay. Sorry. I was just looking around the ranger’s station again. This van is going to get cold, you know. I thought I might find a way inside.”
He opened the rear doors of the van, and she could hear him rummaging around back there. “You get under these blankets,” he said. “You’ll be warm enough, I think. It shouldn’t get much below thirty, if we’re lucky. And these are pretty thick. You’ll be okay.”
“What are you going to do?”
He was climbing into the front seat. “I’ll be up here,” he said. “Okay? I’ll lock the doors.”
Pru made her way to the back of the van, and slipped between the moving blankets he’d piled up for her. They were quilted, very thick and heavy. But John was right, she was entirely warm and cozy under them.
“How are you doing?” he called from the front seat, when she was settled.
“I feel like an armoire.”
“They’re a little moldy, aren’t they? Sorry.”
“Why do you even have these?”
“What? Oh. From when Lila moved out. She took some furniture with her.”
“Did you help her move out?”
“Yeah. It seemed the decent thing to do.”
A new thought struck her.
“Is it okay if we fall asleep? W
e won’t die or anything, will we?”
“No.” That was all he said, that one word. No other explanation. But it reassured her. She was going back to liking him again. Already, she missed his nearness.
“Are you okay up there?” she asked, after a minute.
“Just fine.” A pause, then: “Wow, the stars are amazing. Oh, wow. You should see Delphinus. Look, see that diamond? With nothing else much around it?”
“No.”
He turned around. “Are you even trying to look?”
“I already know I can’t see. I can never see constellations. I can’t even find the Big Dipper. Any group of six stars make a dipper, as far as I can tell.”
“No, look here. Here’s the Big Dipper. Right out the front window. Can you see? Come down until you find these two bright stars. They’re always in line with Polaris. That’s the bowl, see? Polaris is the end of the handle of the Little Dipper. You find those three stars, you can always find which way is north. And, of course, your dipper.”
She heard him moving around, trying to get comfortable. She thought of the van’s front seats, their hard, lumpy upholstery. She felt a little guilty, with the lovely, warm bed he’d made for her. “Are you sure you’re okay up there?” she said.
“Oh yeah, I’m fine. I can sleep anywhere.”
She was thinking about insisting that he come back and take the bed for a while, but she must have nodded off, because she suddenly jerked awake. She heard John moving around and said, “John?”
“What’s wrong?”
“Do you want to come back here?”
“Oh no, I’m all right,” he said.
She sat up so she could see him. He was curled up in the driver’s seat, shivering, with the blanket pulled closely around him.
“Come back here,” she said. “You’re freezing!”
He stumbled to the back and they sat up under the blankets, with their legs touching.
“What time do you think it is?” she said. It was disconcerting not to know. She almost always knew what time it was, within six minutes. It drove Patsy crazy. “How do you do that?” she’d demand.
“I don’t know. Maybe midnight.”
Pru pulled the blanket up as far as she could. “My nose is freezing.”
“Try not to think about it.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. We could talk.”
“Okay. What should we talk about?”
“Do you want to hear the story of Delphinus? Now that I’m thinking about it?”
“Sure.”
“Okay. Poseidon . . . you know Poseidon, right?”
“Ship that drowned Shelley Winters. And god of fish. Or something like that.”
“Close enough. Poseidon had fallen in love with one of the sea nymphs, named Amphitrite. But Amphitrite, to protect her virginity, fled to the mountains. Delphinus found her and wooed her for Poseidon. He persuaded her to return from the mountains and to marry Poseidon. So, to reward Delphinus, Poseidon put an image of a dolphin in the sky, among the stars.”
“You know, that’s a lot like what happened with me and Rudy.”
He laughed. “How did you meet Rudy, anyway?”
She smiled, in the dark. It was actually a good story. She met Rudy when she and McKay were playing pool, at the bar under the souvlaki place next to her building. She loved watching McKay shoot pool. He took less than a second to line up the shot, then happily whacked the cue ball with the stick as hard as he possibly could. He hit very few of his shots that way, but he didn’t care.
Rudy was supposed to meet a work friend, and while he waited, he watched Pru and McKay. He told her, later, that he’d liked the “set of her jib.” He and McKay traded quips for a while, until McKay understood it was really Pru he was interested in. Rudy asked if he could call her, and although he was a bit of a mess, with his sloppy clothes and his big old glasses, he seemed funny and sincere. She’d just broken up with someone not a mess—and not funny or sincere, either—so she’d said yes.
The next morning, at one minute after seven, her phone rang. He didn’t even announce his name. It was as if he’d been waking her up every morning for years. “Don’t you hate it when you forget to turn off your clock radio on Sunday, and so you wake up to NPR’s Bluegrass Hour?” he’d said. She sat up and listened to him talk for half an hour. The very neat but insincere guy she’d just broken up with—Nate—hadn’t been much of a talker, either, so it was a very pleasant change. Rudy made her feel pretty loved, that was for sure. Now that she thought about it, though, it seemed a little odd. He seemed so sure of her, so quickly. That sudden attachment, and all the proposals? What was all that about, anyway? She’d liked it, though. She couldn’t deny that.
She made John tell her about Lila. They’d met at her twenty-second-birthday party. They were both doing graduate work at Columbia, and he’d been invited to the party by a mutual friend. Just before John and his friend arrived, Lila ate a piece of the cake, which someone had spiked with twenty-two hits of acid. She did her share of drugs in those days, but she hadn’t known about the acid in the cake. John left the party before the acid had kicked in, but the next morning, he saw her. He was on the commuter train to the city and happened to look out the window at the next stop, where Lila stood waiting on the platform. He knew she had a job, at Sotheby’s. She was wearing dark glasses and standing stock still, and even though there was snow on the ground, she wasn’t wearing shoes. John had gotten off his train and brought her home, and a year later they were married.
Pru added a swing coat and a French twist and had a complete picture of John’s wife at twenty-two: Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly, deftly applying lipstick without a mirror as she was being driven away from the city jail.
“It wasn’t awful,” John said. “It wasn’t like we woke up yelling at each other or had affairs or anything like that. It was just sort of . . . a struggle. A little struggle, every day. Pick, pick, pick. You know.
“And then she had a miscarriage. It was early, first trimester,” he added, quickly. “I had already bought the diner and we were caught up in disagreeing about that. The place embarrassed her. She hated the name, the old sign, and the beat-up furniture—all the stuff I love. She wanted me to make it nicer, serve more sophisticated food, have couches. But that all stopped as soon as she was pregnant. The baby gave her some other focus, I think. And we were happy, talking about names, painting the baby’s room. That kind of thing.”
He drank from the water bottle. Pru thought of the bedroom she’d seen in John’s apartment, the one half-painted yellow. The nursery, she thought, sadly.
“I guess having a baby wouldn’t have saved us,” he said at last. “We would have gone back to being unhappy, eventually. But, you know, losing it just didn’t help. And that’s it, really. She moved out a little while later. Right before I met you.”
“But you could see it, right?” Pru said, after they were quiet for a while. “A way that something like that actually could have turned out differently? I don’t mean to sound callous, but I remember thinking that when Rudy and I were having such a bad time—this could be good. Somehow, this could make things better. Like you could show each other your qualities, you know?” She smiled a little. Her mother’s word, “qualities.” The night air must be getting to her. She never would have said that in the city.
He nodded. “I guess that’s right. I guess that’s why I feel like I have to let go. We just didn’t get there. I decided I’m going to give her whatever she wants. Let this thing end, in the best way we can.”
She could hear all kinds of sounds around them, the wind in the leaves of the trees, crickets and something that sounded like frogs. She heard a branch break and jumped, grabbing John’s arm. Someone named Jethro creeping through the bushes, a homemade knife between his teeth. No; probably just a squirrel.
When she touched his arm, he’d quickly reached to put his own hand over hers. It was as if he’d been waiting for it. She’d had t
he same response when they’d held hands earlier. It was hard to even think that in that moment the nature of their relationship had changed, it felt so utterly familiar. He took her hand in both of his and rubbed her cold fingers, as if to warm them.
He said, “I can’t believe it, still. I’ll be divorced.” He said “divorce” as though he was trying it out for the first time. It was awkward, listening to him talk about his heartbreak while stroking her hand. In another context, she would have dismissed him as something of a player. Here, in the dark van, under the blankets, it seemed perfectly natural.
“I’m embarrassed to say this, but divorce embarrasses me. It’s like telling everyone you’ve failed, each time you announce your marital status. I never thought of myself as someone who was proud, you know, of any kind of status. But I guess being married did mean something to me, being a husband. I guess with my parents both dead, and my sisters with their own families . . . Well, it felt like something of my own. We were married before anyone else in our circle. Married, in graduate school, everything seemed to be going according to plan. And then . . .”
“Kaplooey?” she supplied.
“Kaplooey.”
“Are you sure it’s going to end up that way?”
“I think it’s what she wants.”
“John,” she said. “What do you want? Where are you, in all this?”
He was quiet for a while. Pru moved closer under the blankets. They were pressed together, side by side. She thought maybe she was getting sleepy. She was starting to drift in and out of consciousness. Then he said, “I don’t want her to stay with me if she’s unhappy.”
“Do you get to be happy?” Pru asked, drowsily.
He was quiet for so long that Pru thought he’d fallen asleep. Then came his voice: “Yeah, there’s that. It’s just—I’m just not used to thinking in those terms.”
She started to drift off again. It was very quiet, and it had started to rain, very gently. She could smell John’s shirt next to her nose. Suddenly, they were both jolted awake. Something heavy hit the roof of the van, right above their heads. Something alive, and freaked-out. Whatever it was began scrambling around. It sounded like someone was trying to cut through the roof with a set of butcher knives.
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