It was night when she woke, still woozy from the drinks and with the beginning of a headache. Her lower back hurt, but she was sure this was from lying down so long. She lay there in the dark, suffering it, too near sleep to rise, and waiting for the drifting off that she thought would come. She could still feel the ghost-pressure of Nicholas Duego between her legs and along her hips, and she thought of finding some way to be insensible until that was gone, until it would stop. She got up and drank the last two little bottles, a gin and a vodka.
Faulk called in the morning. He was back in Memphis and would be looking at houses. “I’m just checking out places we can go see together,” he said.
She felt nothing. “You choose,” she said. “Really, I mean it, honey. I’m sure it’ll be wonderful. I just want to be with you. You decide.”
“Well, I’m not going to do that. If I see something I think you’ll like I’ll ask them to hold it until you get here. Baby, are you all right?”
She lost composure for a few seconds.
“Natasha?”
“No, I’m not all right. I want to be home. I hate this.”
“I know,” he said. “I know.”
Later, she called Iris, who said that she wanted them to have a place of their own, nearby. She was healing fast from her fall. She sounded harried and stressed and worried about making everything perfect for Natasha’s return.
“But I’m really feeling stronger every day,” she went on. There was a quaver in her voice. “I’m worried about you. You don’t sound right.”
“I’m so tired of being here,” Natasha got out.
She did not leave the room on this day, either. The hours passed. She bathed and cared for herself but did not eat. She could not read anything in the books she had brought, because her powers of concentration were broken. And when she could concentrate, she worried about being ambushed by something in the words. She felt this as a kind of fracturing of her deepest self.
Late that night she went on another walk, this time far along the beach, believing herself to be facing down the fear, heading straight at it, toward the lights that shone there. She wondered if it was Kingston, and then thought of Duego somewhere in that low sparkle far off. She went into the brush and picked up a heavy stone the size of a baseball. The walk back was hurried and aching, the muscles of her legs cramping, and there was a raggedness to every breath, a rasping that caught and seemed about to choke her. Near the resort, a man stepped out from the path leading there. She stopped and held the stone as if setting herself to throw it. “Keep away from me,” she said.
He was gaunt, wasted looking, all bone, and his eyes looked too big for his head. He stared at her, standing very still. “Not moving, as you see.”
“Stay back.”
His movement was shaky, and she saw that he was very drunk. He staggered slowly by, as if meaning to circle her, but then went on to the water and in, where he simply waited as if expecting to be knocked over by the waves. Mrs. Ratzibungen came down the path and went past her. “Harmless,” she said. “Poor creatuh. It is Lawton. My former friend. You remember. Please. He is drunk. He vill not hurt you.”
Natasha dropped the stone in the sand and started toward the resort. Nothing would change, and this was now the way life would be. Full of unreasonable fear all the time. She went on, pushing through the sand, stumbling in it. The night was as hot as the day had been.
Constance was sitting in one of the chairs on the porch. She had a large flower in her lap. “Ratzi just went in to get us a rum collins. We saw Mrs. Ratzibungen’s old boyfriend. The one who’s been drinking himself to death the last twenty-five years. When we saw you coming, Ratzi had the idea of the rum collinses.”
Natasha looked toward the entrance to the lobby.
“Sit,” Constance said. “Come on.”
Ratzi approached, carrying the drinks. “On the house,” he said.
His mother came back up from the beach, looking tired and beset, strands of hair loose on her forehead. “He vent home. I vill check on him later.”
“Does he know what’s happened?” Constance asked.
Mrs. Ratzibungen said, “I vill be ruined. Kaput. But I feel zo bad for you Americans.”
“Sit,” Constance repeated to Natasha.
Natasha, feeling the obligation, sat down.
“Here’s your drink.” Ratzi said. “On the house.”
“No, thank you.”
“Vee are ruined. Lawton just here drunk, sick. Und you buy drinks.”
“My mother is an alarmist.”
“Look at zuh books, you think I am alarmist. You don’t look at zuh books. Zuh Gleister people vill close me down.”
Ratzi said something harsh sounding to her in German, sipping the drink Natasha had refused. Then he looked over at Constance. “The Gleister Corporation owns the buildings and the grounds. We own the franchise. And we also have another place, a restaurant in Kingston. Doing very well. Quite well. Even now. I do look at those books.” He turned and said something else in the other language.
“Maybe I can loan you some money for the short term,” said Constance.
Natasha stood. “I have to go to bed. Good night.”
“Sit down. I want to ask you something. Sit.”
She did so.
“Are we still friends?” Constance had tears starting in her eyes.
“We’re still friends.”
“Where have you been?” She wiped them with the table napkin and folded it tightly in her fist. “I haven’t seen you since yesterday morning.”
“I haven’t felt well.” Natasha sniffled.
“Zummer colds are zuh bad vons.”
“This thing happened to all of us,” Constance said. “And people behave differently in this kind of extremity.”
Natasha nodded but said nothing.
“My daughter isn’t answering her phone. We’ve talked once. That’s it.”
“Maybe she’s out with people. You wanted to go be with people, remember?”
Ratzi said, “Maybe there’s still — you know, the volume of calls.”
“Volume of calls at two in the morning,” said Constance. “Her time.”
Natasha simply waited to be released.
“Zometimes I unplug my phone ven I go to bed at night.”
“Natasha, how many times have you talked to Iris?”
“I don’t know.”
“I heard you talking to somebody.”
“Ruined,” Mrs. Ratzibungen said.
Two young women came from the other end of the beach, laughing and talking. One, Natasha realized, was the girl she had seen crying in the lobby two days ago. The girl seemed wildly happy now and, seeing Natasha, walked over to her. “Guess what?” she said. “My father’s friend, they found him. He was in Washington having breakfast with some people. He wasn’t even there.”
“Oh, how happy,” Mrs. Ratzibungen said.
Natasha smiled at the girl and nodded, watching her go off with her friend, and she thought of all the people for whom this had not ended happily. When she came down for her walk, she had seen on television an image of people putting pictures of the missing on a wall near the rubble of what was left.
“Natasha’s fiancé was in New York.”
“But he is safe,” Mrs. Ratzibungen said. “Ja?”
“Safe,” Natasha said. “Yes.” She excused herself. This time Constance did not try to stop her. In the room, she lay down and closed her eyes, and a humming sounded in her ears. She got up and took some aspirin, swallowing it with a little water she got bending over the spigot, then went to the bed and lay down and pulled the blanket over herself as if to hide. I will not let it do this to me. I will not let it do this to me.