“Iris won’t do that.”
“No, honey. Please. Later, okay?”
“Okay,” he said, “I’m sorry,” and got out of the bed, keeping his back to her because he was aroused. He felt a measure of humiliation and strove to put it down in himself, moving into the bathroom and turning the shower on. I am not a selfish man. He attempted to put that away, too, stepping into the stream.
He heard her come in. “Have to pee,” she said, just loud enough for him to hear.
She saw the shape of him behind the shower curtain and caught herself feeling sorry for him. Back in the bedroom, she opened one of her suitcases and started picking through what she would wear. The shower water stopped.
“I’m already your wife,” she called. “Do you feel that?”
Toweling off, he called back to her. “I do.” And then laughed. “I do,” he repeated. “Do you?”
“I do,” she said.
But he felt walled off from her in some subtle yet lacerating way, and he could not shake the suspicion that this was the beginning of something, that some nameless trouble was near.
5
The truck arrived, with two young men in it who looked like brothers — big, round shouldered, heavy in the belly, and with longish blond hair. The driver introduced himself as Bud and pointed to the other. “That’s Joel. We got hung up in Pennsylvania first. All the traffic going up to see that field where the plane went down. At least I guess that’s what it was.”
“There was construction, too,” the one named Joel said. “And then the storms near Knoxville.”
They worked together putting the most important of Natasha’s things into the space in the house that wasn’t to be painted or worked on, and then what she would immediately need — the rest of her clothes and a few books — in Faulk’s apartment. Mr. Baines sat on his porch with a plate of spaghetti and watched. Iris worked with Natasha going through the books to choose the ones Natasha wanted to keep within reach — volumes of poems, an anthology of Russian short stories, several novels. There were overlaps between her books and Faulk’s, and all of those she wanted to leave in storage, even after the house was ready.
“I’m going over tonight and start on it,” Faulk said. “I want to get some wood and more paint. Build some bookcases.”
He followed the men in the truck to a storage place on Summer Avenue, across from the wide parking lot of a closed-down motel, the Washington, the end of its sign broken down so that what you saw as you approached was THE WASHINGT. There was a lot of traffic, and the young woman behind the desk at the storage place seemed worried about it.
She was talking on the phone as she worked, taking Faulk’s credit card and handing him a form to fill out. “I don’t know what it is,” she said into the phone. “But I’m not going home that way. You see something and right away you think — you know. Is this another attack?”
Faulk filled out the form and signed it, and signed the credit card slip, and the woman handed him a key with a number on it. “Wait a minute,” she said into the phone and then in an apologetic tone directed him around to the back of the building. He mouthed the words Thank you, and went back out to the truck. Joel and Bud were standing there smoking and talking about someone they knew who had been in New York.
“I was in New York,” Faulk told them.
“Really?” Bud, the heavier of the two, said without interest.
Faulk helped them unload the truck. It wasn’t much. Among several boxes of knickknacks and keepsakes, he came upon a large square metal camera case full of photographs and papers. Seeing the corner of a photograph, he unlatched and opened the case. The photograph was of Natasha, smiling, standing in a living room with a Christmas tree behind her. The tree had no decorations on it yet; boxes of glossy bulbs were open at her feet. She looked to be about fourteen or fifteen. Her hair was cut very short, and she wore a scotch-plaid skirt and white loose-fitting blouse. He smiled, looking through the other photos. He did not allow himself more than a minute. He looked through pictures of her with friends, other women, Senator Norland and cousin Greta, school friends, several from her time in Provence. Many of them were dated. A more recent one showed her standing bundled in a black coat outside a restaurant on some snowy city street. He looked at the back of it and saw that it was dated January 2000, and Chicago was written under the date. Below the name of the city, in other hand writing, were the words: Love of my life. On Our State Street.
He put it back in its place. He put everything back and closed the box, taking another brief moment to look at her face in the one photograph. State Street. She appeared very happy and, he decided, she also looked full of love. It was in the eyes and around the sensuous mouth with its small, shy smile. January 2000. He thought of the April day of this year that he had met her and then counted to there from the date of the Chicago picture. Thirteen months. And when exactly had it ended?
“Memories?” Joel startled him, standing at the entrance of the cubicle with part of the frame of her bed.
“Yeah,” Faulk said, straightening quickly. “Memories.”
They followed him back to his apartment, and he paid them. Joel said, “So. Did you see the whole thing?”
“Excuse me?” Faulk looked at him.
“The towers.”
“Oh — I didn’t even know it was happening until I turned the TV on. I watched it on TV.”
“Man, that is weird.”
“My brother lives in Brooklyn,” Bud said, “ ’cross the river. You know. He saw it from his living room window. He saw the whole thing. Couldn’t believe his own eyes. Said, you know, it was like looking at movie special effects.”
“I’ve heard other people talk about that,” Faulk said. “You can’t get your mind around the fact that people are dying right in front of your eyes.”
“I can get my mind around it,” said Joel. “All the way around it. And I’d like to kill me some Islamers.”
Bud said, “My brother wants to come home, you know. Can’t stand living up there now.”
“Well, thanks, sir.” They shook hands. It was odd, how close he felt to them in that moment.
“You guys be careful,” he told them.
They climbed into the truck, waved at him, and drove away.
In the apartment, he found a note.
Gone to the store with Iris
Love you.
He sat in the chair by the window that overlooked the shady lawn. Less than two years ago she was in love with someone else, happy, smiling into a camera, standing on State Street in Chicago. Our State Street. He knew there had been unhappiness in the months before he met her, and he knew that it had something to do with the end of a love affair. He did know this. She had even spoken about it in an oblique way. But why had she kept the photograph with the handwriting, not her handwriting, on the back of it?
Just now, feeling this way, he did not want to be in her company. He looked at the note and had an uneasy moment’s vision that in Jamaica she had run into whoever it was that had taken the picture in Chicago. It felt true, as if he already had proof. He could not unthink it.
On the street below, two young women came by, one pushing a stroller with a sleeping baby in it, the other walking a small dog. He had seen them before. They lived nearby. They ambled along, laughing and talking, and the one with the stroller stopped to adjust the shade screen on it. The other tossed her pretty brown hair and looked at the sky. It struck him that people made some kind of peace with their country’s troubles and somehow never lost the ability to laugh and chatter or to enjoy good weather and the smell of flowers, the smiles of friendly company on a walk in the city. Why, then, could Natasha not go on a little, as these two were, coming down a dappled street talking, appreciating the late-summer light, the softly swaying shade and the breezes?