He pissed himself. And it’s this, as he laughs at it, his laughter—she knows he’s alive. Warm urine, soaking denim. His mouth, she kisses him, and they hold each other as someone frantically knocks, and the door is opened by the manager, who finds the gun open on the floor, and a girl cradled like a child in the guy’s lap, the two of them laughing like lunatics….
They rush to the Wagon Wheel diner. The table is too small for their order, so they scrape eggs onto the cheeseburger plate, baked potato onto the pork chop. They hardly talk, devouring hash browns and lemon meringue cake. Jamey laughs, says Holy fuck, with his mouth full, every once in a while.
Out in the parking lot, he holds his hands up and shouts: “I’m alive!”
Then he vomits up half of what he ate. But still—he feels good.
They turn in early—right after sundown. She’s so tender and painful in bed, like a princess isolated in a tower for years. They’re relentless under their geometric-striped coverlet, in sheets that smell of cheap soap, and he does everything he knows how to do.
At sunup, he slips to the hotel door, barefoot, to watch. It’s a subdued dawn, wavelets of dark cloud over petal-pink sky.
All day, they talk and talk. She pushes one idea, and he listens to her bizarre and beautiful reasons.
The next morning, Don drives Jamey to Laramie, where he pawns the Patek Philippe watch, stowed in Elise’s underwear for the Greyhound ride, and he buys tickets at a travel agency. They have two connections, a long trip for a girl who’s never flown. He buys Don a milkshake at a drive-thru and a bottle of rye on the way back, and the cowboy mixes them and drinks, and sighs as they head into dusk, animal eyes shining like pearls from the landscape.
They go to the airport in Don’s truck too, the old cowboy driving slow since a pregnant lady’s on board. They sit three across on the cracked leather seat, backpacks in the truck bed.
The windows are down and the breeze is sharp. The sky is so massive and so blue, it can’t be fully understood. Elise looks up at the mountains, their white caps shrinking day by day as sun melts the snow into rivers and springs, feeding thimbleberries and musk thistle and columbines.
She is wild with happiness.
The airline agent is surprised they only have carry-on bags, but they get checked in and wait at the tiny airport for their plane. When they board, Jamey gives her the window seat so she can watch the land get smaller as they rise. It’s such a clear day, the mountain range looms in crystalline detail.
They fly to Chicago, then go through customs at Munich, board another jet. Jamey tells the stewardesses that Elise is pregnant, and the ladies with lipstick and blond bobs wait on her, bring her extra pillows, fresh OJ, a cold compress for her hot face.
They land in New Delhi, stand in the customs line for an eternity, where Jamey asks the American in front of them (a white-haired, gin-blossomed retired professor) for directions, and the man offers to share a taxi into the city.
The cab is shining and bulbous, British racing green with a yellow top, and the driver wears a turban.
“What are you all doing here?” the American asks.
“Just wanted to come somewhere we’d never been,” Jamey answers, enthralled by the long hotel lawns and polluted sky, stacks of lush jungle bushes and white houses, highways that look like highways he knows but are crammed with smaller, tippy cars in unusual colors: custard, burgundy, powder-blue.
Their taxi jerks through a neighborhood, and they finally get out, Jamey slinging both backpacks over his shoulders.
“Hotels in either direction,” the man says, pointing at the wide dirt lane. “Come up for tea first if you like.”
“That’s really kind,” Jamey says, “but I think we’ll move on, thank you.”
The couple walks slowly through crowds, past buildings molded from dirty putty, the store signs painted in rainbow colors, their Indian letters like drooping flowers soon to stand and bloom, extravagantly dotted and twisted, the roots and shoots of an alphabet.
People shout, rickshaws are driven by men in striped shirts and loose short pants, sweat flicking off their faces. The language buzzes like flies or birds. Fumes and gases are unknown. Food bakes and crackles at corroded carts, and Jamey and Elise don’t know how anything tastes yet.
The people here think this street is ordinary!
They keep going, dazzled, high on life.
And children watch Elise, this dark-braided woman who walks with strong shoulders, chin up. They stare at her. They seek out her gray eyes, which are soft in the hard turquoise lines.
Except one girl. Her eyes are milky and phosphorescent, and she tags along with older kids.
Elise remembers that she has strawberries, wrapped in an Air India napkin, in the backpack’s pocket. She brings them out. She takes hold of the blind kid’s tiny hot hand, and puts the bundle into her palm, closes her fingers for her. The girl changes the tilt of her head, as if to hear the strawberries, but she doesn’t unfold the package yet.
Seeing herself do this, Elise realizes she always knew she would give the fruit away, at this exact moment, to that girl, with this exact feeling in her heart.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My love and thanks to:
My phenomenal agent, Sally Wofford-Girand; my exquisitely wise and kind and visionary editor, Alexis Washam; Lindsay Sagnette and Molly Stern for their faith and support; Jillian Buckley, Rachel Rokicki, Lisa Erickson, Claire Posner, and everyone at Hogarth for bringing this book into the world; Mr. Swink, Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, Writers Omi at Ledig House, the Ucross Foundation, the Edward F. Albee Foundation, Steve Stern, Sweet Zoe and Lady Olive, Kathryn Davis, Captain Bob Morris, Nicholas Delbanco, Charles Baxter, Eileen Pollack, Patricia Jones, Marjory Reid, Barry and Lorrie Goldensohn, Rachel Hanss, John Andrews, Shaun Dolan, the work/playmates and Swedish Fish at 4710 E5, Jim Lewis, Alyson Richman, Bruce Mason, Barbara Purcell, the beloved citizens of AHAB, Austin Film Festival, Melissa Tullos for the books, Bradley Bechtol for the walks, Justine Gilcrease for black-and-white lilies, everyone at Truth Be Told and the women at Lockhart Correctional, Fleurs du Mal Syndicat, Neil Little for everything, Anabel; my extraordinary parents, Deborah and Jack Libaire; Julien, Jake and Erin, and Gus and Edie for inspiration.
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White Fur Page 31