At last, slowly, with great difficulty, as if having to break through something heavy and solid in the air around her, she rose and moved to the shore, tottering into the surf, falling to her knees, the waves crashing over her. She put her face down in the water and ran her hands over the grit of sand in her hair and along her hairline. The water seemed colder than it had been earlier. There was so much moonlight now. She got down, so that the water was just below her shoulders. It jostled her, but she remained crouched there, shoved by the motion of the waves, looking at the clean white moon surrounded by shadowy clouds.
The moon of any night on earth.
She kept her arms wrapped tightly around herself, sobbing, coughing, hacking. The tide seemed to be rising, the waves growing stronger. She let the waves come over her. The beach was empty, and she could see her clothes lying there — the jeans, with the panties tangled in them.
She did not know how long she stayed there, afraid that he might return. The moon went away and then came back again. She could not stop the crying or the gasping for air. A few hundred yards up the beach, a couple walked to the water’s edge and in. She knew the tide would carry them this way. And she felt fear of them. Gathering all her strength, she rose and left the water and made her way to the little sad pile of clothes. She managed to get into her jeans, still feeling where he had pushed into her, the pain there and across her lower back and along her jaw. She kept looking down the beach where he had gone, but there were only the looming palms.
Faltering in the loose sand, she walked, tottering, back to the resort, and in, toward the elevators. A few people still lingered in the bar. At the elevators, she pressed the button and waited. Smoothing her hair, she kept back a scream, looking to one side and then the other, fearing the sight of anyone, wanting more than she had ever wanted anything to get to her room and be quiet there, safe, door locked, all the lights on. She heard a man shouting in one of the first-floor rooms. The words were not distinguishable, but the tone could not be mistaken: someone was being mocked and belittled. She thought of men beating up their wives.
The elevator door opened, and she stepped in, and as it began to close, the fingers of a brown hand grasped the door and pulled it back. Nicholas Duego got on, looking soiled and ill, his shirt open, his hair wild and full of sand. He simply looked at her, where she had backed to the corner away from him, arms crossed over her chest. He would kill her here. Yet she wanted to fly at him, too, wanted to find the force within herself to obliterate him. She was crying. “Please,” she said. “Don’t. Don’t.”
“I am a nice man,” he said. “You will know that about me.”
“I’ll scream. I swear I’ll fucking scream.”
“I have never—” He stopped. There were actually tears in his eyes.
Suddenly she felt power, unreasoning strength. Some part of her knew that it was the last thing she would do or say. “Keep away from me, you fuck.”
“My unhappiness and anger made me cruel.” He lifted one hand.
She pressed against the railing, turning from him. “No.”
“I am not unkind. I would not take what was not given.”
The elevator door opened. He had pushed no button. “Keep away,” she managed, backing out. “I swear to God I’ll scream.”
He followed. There was an aluminum trash can with an ashtray full of sand by the elevator door. She picked it up — it was surprisingly light — and backed away from him, down the hall. He kept coming, but he was holding his hands out in a pleading way. When she got to her door she held the thing up level with her shoulders, as if to throw it. “I’ll hit you with this,” she said. “Get the fuck away from me. Goddamn you.”
“I did not mean to hurt you.” He seemed incredulous. “It made me mad when you kicked me. We were together on the beautiful beach, you and me.” He turned and looked behind him and then moved to the next door down — Constance’s room.
Natasha got her door open, scrabbled inside, and closed it. She set the ashtray trash can down with a loud metallic thud, and fumbled with the chain lock. She couldn’t get it, couldn’t make it work, but a moment later, just in time it seemed, she got the dead bolt to click into its socket.
His voice came, too loud, from the other side. “I do not take what is not given. It was ours.”
She put her ear to the wood, listening for a moment, and when she peered through the peephole she saw that he was still there, head down, one hand out leaning on the frame of the door. “Oh, please go,” she said, with a loud whimpering cry. “Please. I won’t say anything. Just please. Please leave me alone.”
Nothing. She waited, afraid to look. The nausea was returning. She went to the window and looked out at the light on the water. Back at the door, she put her eye to the peephole, and, seeing the long prospect of the empty hallway, turned around and sank slowly to a sitting position, knees up, crying and retching drily while the night breezes came in. The air itself felt dirty, stained. Time went away while she half lay there. It might have been hours. The hands of the clock were dead. Finally she made her way into the bathroom and ran the water, all the water — hot and cold, in the sink and in the bathtub. She tore the clothes off herself and threw them to the floor, shuddering, but then gathered them and put them in a plastic bag and stuffed the bag into the trash can that was still by the door. In the bathroom, avoiding the sight of herself in the mirror, she got into the tub and plugged it with the shiny metal lever, then sat down in the hot water and watched the swirls of it, blood streaked, at her ankles. When the water was near the middle of her calves, she turned the spigot off and unplugged the tub and let it all run out. Then she reseated the plug, adjusting the water so that it was even hotter. She soaked a washrag and put soap on it and went over herself, crying and scrubbing, hurting.
All this time the spigot in the sink was running, too. The room was steaming up. She stood up in the soapy water of the tub and turned the shower on. The shower water was losing its heat, but she remained under it, letting the stream of it run down her body. There was so much sand in her hair. She washed it, stood, head back, under the flow. The mirror and the window were a blank fog. The steam rose and curled about her. She turned the water off, thinking of fire and death. The attacks in the far-off cities of home.
Oh, yes. That.
She could not get clean. There was not enough water in the world.
After
Natasha and Michael
1
He might’ve slept. He had a moment of believing himself to be home, then realized that this trip was not taking him home. It had felt like mind wandering, but he understood now that it had been dreaming and that he had been asleep. He sat forward and looked out into the moving-by of the houses and streets and fields. The train was coming into what he thought was Washington, but it was Baltimore. It slowed and rocked and clanked, and now the platform came into view, the light there making a wide white bell shape in the dark. When the train stopped, through the rising steam and dust from the wheels, he saw the Asian boy get off. The boy went by the window and glanced at him and hesitated, then tentatively held up one hand for a few seconds. All his heartbreak was in the gesture, and he was someone moving through the most terrible hours of his young life, being determinedly decent, going on away.