Cruisers

by Craig Nova

  Katryna’s cheeks were a little reddish and her hair needed to be combed as she came into the kitchen, where she picked up the underpants and put them into the pocket of her house dress, which she then held together at the throat.

  She started when she saw Frank.

  “I thought you’d be gone longer,” she said.

  “I guess,” said Kohler.

  “Did you find any trespassers?”

  “No,” said Kohler.

  The dog put its nose between her legs, but she pushed it away, although the dog did it again. Kohler pulled it back. When he did, she stared right at him. How much did he know? How much had he seen?

  “Well,” said Katryna. “Let’s have a drink.”

  She got out a bottle and poured some brandy into three mismatched glasses. Dimitry came out of the bedroom, wearing just a pair of black jeans. He looked from Katryna to Frank and back again, and then at the dog. He sat down, as though that would make this more casual. Katryna sat down, too. The dog panted. Kohler took a seat between Dimitry and Katryna and put out his fingers for the glass. His hand was just opposite Katryna’s, and she slid her fingers closer, not quite touching him. He had the rifle across his lap.

  “Why did you have to charge money?” said Frank.

  “Money?” she said.

  “The hundred and seventy dollars,” said Frank.

  “Oh,” she said. “That.”

  “What a mutt,” said Dimitry. He reached out to pat the dog. “I bet that thing will chew your ass off if you let it.”

  “Yes,” said Kohler.

  “We don’t have to let this get out of hand,” said Dimitry.

  Katryna took a large drink. The dog started barking, its body and head still, just the mouth opening and closing and the ribs heaving. It wasn’t barking at anything in particular so much as giving voice, as though everything in the air was distilled into this insistent yapping. The sound was wet and hoarse, like a barking seal. Katryna looked at the dog and then at Kohler and at Dimitry.

  “Everyone makes mistakes,” said Dimitry.

  “That’s right,” said Frank.

  Katryna put a hand to her head and looked down at the floor, and then the dog came up to her and tried to nuzzle under her hand, but she pushed him away once and then again, harder the second time, and when he came back again, she kicked him, and the dog made a low growl.

  “Don’t be stupid,” said Dimitry.

  “You do this with my wife and then you call me stupid?” said Frank.

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” said Dimitry.

  “How did you mean it?” said Frank.

  “We can work this out,” said Dimitry.

  “It’s not what you think,” said Katryna.

  “No?” said Frank.

  The dog started barking again and it roiled around now, jumping up on Katryna and going over to Dimitry and licking at him and coming back. Then Kohler saw that she had reached into the drawer of the kitchen table and taken out the punch that Kohler had stolen and now she started clicking it, the sound, that click, click, click, like finality itself.

  Dimitry said, “This is no big deal. Really. We can talk it over. We can work it out. Everything can be worked out.”

  “Yes,” said Kohler, bringing up the rifle. “You’re right.”

  The dog went wild, going from one side of the room to the other, and then it stood right in front of Kohler, barking, drooling, jumping up. The sound of the rifle, in the confined space, was louder than the loudest explosion of thunder he had ever heard. It was like a physical presence that washed over all of them, and existed like a scrim that covered up how things had changed forever. Dimitry’s chair was tipped over now, and Kohler instinctively avoided looking at the disorder on that side of the table. Only the dog jumped around that shape on the floor, howling and barking, and then coming over to Kohler.

  “Get away from me,” said Kohler. “Get away. Get away.”

  Then Katryna stood up, still holding the punch, but not using it anymore. She looked down at the thing as though suddenly realizing its uselessness, and then she put it down on the table.

  “What do you have to say?” said Frank.

  She shook her head. How could she explain the tolerances by which she lived, the small difference between getting something to work and ending up like this? What was the difference? A hundred and seventy dollars. The money was on the table and she picked up the first bill and ripped it in half and then again before letting the square, rough-edged bits flutter away from her fingers into the dirt and the crimson stain on the floor.

  “You aren’t sorry, are you?” said Frank.

  “What does that have to do with anything?” said Katryna. “That’s too big for me. Everything is smaller than that. A few dollars here. An hour there. That’s all.”

  “For a few dollars you threw this away?” he said. “For a few lousy bucks?”

  She shrugged again.

  “I loved him,” she said. She motioned to the floor, which she wouldn’t look at either.

  “Well, that’s great,” said Frank. “Then why did you charge him money?”

  “Why?” she said. “I needed it.”

  “Oh?” said Frank.

  “So you and I could go on living together. See, that was the difference. A hundred and seventy dollars.”

  “A hundred and seventy dollars,” said Frank.

  “Yeah,” she said. She starting ripping up another bill, the green and white shreds drifting away from her fingers like confetti that is dropped after the party is over. “What do you know about being trapped? Confined in a place that you can’t get away from?”

  She looked up at him.

  “Well,” she said. “Can you understand?”

  He thought of that closet, and the wink of the man who had paid him to watch.

  The dog threw its head back as it barked, showing its white teeth and red tongue and a hole at the back of its mouth. The sound was so perfectly repeated as to seem like the same thing over and over, like a stuck record.

  She started ripping another bill, and as she did so with impatient, frustrated movements, she said, “It was so close ... just that close ...” She held the bits in her hand.

  “You mean you almost got away?” he said.

  “You can’t understand,” she said.

  “Oh,” he said, “I think I can.”

  That sound went through the kitchen again, as loud as the loudest thunder, and with his ears ringing, he turned away, although he saw those shreds of bills, green and white, in disorder on the wet and darkening floor. The dog went from one dead shape to the other, sniffing, barking, jumping around, whining. Then it turned to the door and scratched at it with an insistent, hysterical desire to get outside. Kohler opened the door, just to stop the thing from making that noise, and watched as it went around the half-open door with a magical flash of speed. Kohler came outside, and the dog ran down the drive in a sprinting rush. It looked like a streak of black. Kohler drew a bead on it, but then he just watched it go.

  He went over to the stove and turned it on. The flames jumped up, blue and yellow. There was a lot of newspaper around, and he started rolling it up into balls and throwing it around the room, over the shapes on the floor, going outside to get more from the place where he kept newspaper to recycle. Then he piled up the balls all over the kitchen, around the stove, and finally began to throw them onto the burners, where the blue and yellow flames spread into the newspaper, changing color, becoming yellow and red and trailing smoke.

  Outside, he put the rifle and some ammunition in the back of the car. The crackling of the fire was lost in the sound of the engine, and then Frank put the car into gear and went down to the road, where he turned toward town. He concentrated on the yellow lines in the middle of the pavement, following them while seeing that everything, the hills, the trees, the beaver pond at the bottom of the hill, all looked precisely as before. This calmed him down, at least for a few moments, and when he got
to town, he was able to get out and fill the tank with gas, premium, $26.61 worth, which he put on his credit card so he wouldn’t have to go inside. The cool metal of the nozzle, under his hand, was as good as splashing water on his face.

  HE PARKED at the side of the town square and then got out and slammed the door with a hard whomp. Then he did it again, before standing there, looking over the black top of the car at the square itself. He walked around along the asphalt paths that went through the grass and between the wood-slatted benches. The fountain, where tourists came to throw pennies in the summer, was empty now. In October, when the fountain was drained, the custodian of the town hall swept them into a pile and picked them up with a dustpan, which he emptied into a garbage bag.

  Kohler sat down on a bench in front of the fountain and thought of the good intentions of every one of the pennies that had been thrown in here, just as he imagined the copper-colored arcs, like smears of hope, that had accompanied each wish. There was always the possibility, he guessed, that there was a residue in the air from all of that wishing and that he might get some benefit from it, but then he realized that thinking this way was just making things harder.

  The fire whistle on the square was like a klaxon in a war movie. It started its whining drone, but Kohler didn’t flinch, or look around. He guessed someone had seen the smoke from his house and turned in an alarm, but he knew that if anyone said that it was Kohler’s house, the firemen would take their time. That was how things had been in town for a while. And yet he had tried. Every year the town had the Christmas Club, which raised money to put up decorations on the common, and Kohler had worked with the committee that ran it, although recently they had written him a letter telling him that while they appreciated his interest, he wasn’t going to be needed this year. He guessed it had to do with his desire to have more tinsel than they’d had before. The other members of the committee had wanted lights. He was a traditionalist. Was that what had been at the heart of it? Then he sat there, hearing the fire whistle, which kept him anchored to the spot.

  The church was directly in front of him. It looked even better than the pictures of it that were for sale as a postcard in the general store. White siding, green shutters, a steeple, a flagstone walk in front, large windows on both sides that let the light in. It was the kind of place that Martha Stewart would suggest for a country wedding, and people came from as far away as Boston and New York to get married here. That was in the spring, summer, and early fall, and now the church looked deserted. One spring he had seen a bride and groom come out of the church and go up to the fountain with a handful of pennies. Thinking about those coins in the air, like copper scales, Kohler put his hands together, trying to find a way to know what to do, to have an instant’s clarity. It was all he really wanted.

  He walked across the empty green. The door of the church should have been locked, but when he pulled on it, the heavy slab of wood swung open and he saw the gleam of light on the pews and the flagstone floor, which gave the interior a sandy odor. Kohler drifted up the aisle and sat down just behind the first bench, one row back from the alter. The hush there was different from the sound in his house, or what had been his house.

  He put his head down and thought, Please, oh please, I tried so hard to be human and turned into a monster. If I could just have a clear sense of what I need. If I had a sign. If I could just see God. Just a glimpse. Then he concentrated, trembling, sick with the effort of trying to demand an audience of some kind. After a minute or two he heard the creak of a door on an old hinge, and then a whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, at once soft and reassuring, like a warm breeze. When he looked up, he saw a young woman who had emerged from a door at the side of the altar.

  She had hair the color of cherry Kool-Aid, and was about twenty. One eyebrow was pierced and she had a silver ring in it. She wore a T-shirt and black jeans, and she had a broom. At the altar she began to work toward the door, sweeping the dust on the flagstones into a small pile, which she then moved down the aisle toward the door. Light shot up and down the polished handle of the broom as she worked, swaying her hips, going up the aisle. As she got farther away from Kohler, he felt her presence diminish in a way that he didn’t like. Then, at the rear of the church, near the door, she stopped and turned back, her voice resonant in the gloom of the entrance as she said, “The door is unlocked ’cuz I was gonna sweep. We’re supposed to be closed.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kohler said.

  “No skin off my nose,” she said. “Go on. Sit there if you want.”

  She pushed open the door to sweep the dust out, and when she did, she said, “Is that your car out there? The black one?”

  “Yeah,” Kohler said.

  She turned now and started back toward Kohler, still sweeping, doing so with a variety of sulky indifference. She got closer, pushing a smaller pile of her sweepings, and Kohler looked down and thought, Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

  “I have to lock up when I’m done,” she said.

  “I just came in to ...”

  “I know,” she said. She looked around. “I know. It’s all right.”

  He put his head down on the wood of the pew in front of him.

  “A lot of people come in. Like they just sit,” she said. “You know, like Isaiah. We look for light, but there is darkness. For brightness, but we walk in blackness ...”

  He wanted to speak, but then when he opened his mouth, nothing came out, and so he shut it and made a gesture, as though there weren’t words. She shrugged. Then she stood there, leaning on her broom.

  “How fast does it go?” she said.

  “What?” he said.

  “Your car. Does it go fast?” she said.

  She sat down in the pew on the other side of the aisle, and leaned on her broom, looking at him. “How fast?”

  “Pretty fast,” he said.

  “Like, give me a number.”

  “A hundred, a hundred and ten. A hundred and thirty.”

  “That fast,” she said. “Huh.”

  “Maybe more,” he said.

  She leaned on her broom handle and stared at him.

  “Are you from around here?” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  They both sat there, the girl resting on her broom, Kohler smelling the flagstones, which were like wet cement, although there was something else to it, a sort of certainty, as though people could come and go, but that presence, that damp atmosphere would last forever. Then he thought about his house, how the flames had started inside, but when he’d looked at it from the outside, they’d appeared as though an enormous red and yellow bird with a tail of smoke had sunk its beak into the kitchen.

  “This job is part of my probation,” she said. “But it’s kind of homey. My father was a preacher, in Island Pond, and we had to learn scripture. Like, if we had barbecued ribs, we had to give a line of scripture before we got one. I liked those ribs, when I was young. Now I’m a vegetarian.”

  She reached into her pocket and took out a joint, wrapped in white paper, which she put in her mouth, looking like Humphrey Bogart with an unfiltered cigarette hanging from his lip. She lit the joint and inhaled deeply, then offered it to Kohler, who shook his head. The smoke rose in a lazy, blue shape, like a big S, and then she exhaled, too, as though she had been diving and had come to the surface. The light from the window slanted onto her face, which made her skin seem radiant. With her eyes closed, she said, “Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment, who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain, who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters: who maketh the clouds his chariot, walketh upon the wings of the wind ...”

  She held out the small cigarette.

  “Sure you don’t want some?” she said.

  He shook his head. Then he remembered the barking dog.

  “I’ve learned something else, too,” she said. “One of the secrets is moderation. See?”

  She licked her thumb and forefinger and put out the tip of the joint with the two of th
em, giving it a quick squeeze. It made a pfft. Then she put the thing in her pocket. The smoke rose and hung above them like a small, horizontal island, which slowly dissipated. The words she sang came out in a low, throaty voice, which Kohler wouldn’t have thought she had, but it was hard to hear what she was really singing. Kohler put his hands to his head, and when he looked up he saw her smiling at him. She ran her hand through her red hair and giggled.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “Hey. I forgive you. Hey. See? It’s O.K. Whatever it is, it’s O.K.”

  He tried to speak again, but couldn’t. She was wearing a musky perfume, and it hung there with the smoke. He felt a little better, hearing her voice and her giggle. She smiled again and went back to sweeping.

  A cloud of dust hung in the aisle, the mass of it delineated by those same brilliant motes, which surrounded her as she worked all the way up to the end of the aisle and swept the pile into a dustpan, which she took over to the side of the room and dumped into a plastic trashcan she had brought in.

  “That’s really a nice car,” she said.

  “I used to think so,” he said.

  “Yeah,” she said. “You’re always looking for a new one. Like you see the advertisements on TV, and the next thing you know, you want the latest model. There’s always something.”

  “I can’t stand the color,” he said.

  “Well, you can always have it painted,” she said. “Or if you got a new one, you could get it in red or yellow. And then maybe you could get mag rims.”

  Now she stopped and looked at the windows on the side of the church where the sun shone. She took Kohler by the hand and pulled him up. Then the two of them went to the side of the church and stood where the light came in, the slight warmth of it and the luminescence hitting Kohler on the face. “Close your eyes,” she said.