Each day, he thought, I die a little. I must. I get out of bed, don’t I?
Mornings he walked the two miles along the creek into town, reexamining the last few years like beads to be memorized in his pocketed fists before they slipped away forever. He walked faster, but his life only seemed to recede that much more swiftly across the dunes and back to the sea. He could neither hold onto nor completely forget how things had once been. Whether or not they had ever truly been the way he remembered them was not the point. The spell of the past, his past, real or imagined, had settled over him like the shadow of giant wings, and he could not escape.
He submerged himself in his work at the shop, a space he rented for small appliance repair behind the Blue & White Diner, but that was not enough, either. For a time he tried to tell himself that nothing else mattered. But it was an evasion. You can run, he thought, but you can’t hide. Rex Christian had taught him that.
Some days he would have traded anything he owned and all that he had ever earned to wake up one more time with the special smell of her on his pillow – just that, no matter whether he ever actually set eyes on her again. Other days his old revenge fantasies got the better of him. But all that was real for him now was the numbness of more and more hours at the shop, struggling to penetrate the inner workings of what others paid him to fix, the broken remnants of households which had fallen apart suddenly, without warning or explanation.
When not busy at work, the smallest of rewards kept him going. The weekly changes of program at the local movie theater, diverting but instantly forgettable; the specialties of the house at the Blue & White, prepared for him by the new waitress, whose name turned out to be Jolene; and Jolene herself when business was slow and there was nowhere else to go. She catered to him without complaint, serving something, perhaps, behind his eyes that he thought he had put to rest long ago. He was grateful to her for being there. But he could not repay her in kind. He did not feel it, could not even if he had wanted to.
By late December he had almost given up hope.
The weekends were the worst. He had to get out, buttoned against the cold, though the coffee in town was never hot enough and the talk after the movies was mindless and did not nourish. But he could bear the big house no longer, and even the guest cabin had begun to enclose him like a vault.
This Saturday night, the last week before Christmas, the going was painfully slow. Steam expanded from his mouth like ectoplasm. He turned up his collar against an icy offshore wind. There were sand devils in the road, a halo around the ghost of a moon which hung over his shoulder and paced him relentlessly. At his side, to the north, dark reeds rustled and scratched the old riverbank with a sound of rusted blades. He stuffed his hands deeper into his jacket and trudged on toward the impersonal glow of the business district.
The neon above the Blue & White burned coolly in the darkness.
The nightlife in Gezira, such as it was – Siamese silhouettes of couples cruising for burgers, clutches of frantic teenagers on their way to or from the mall – appeared undiscouraged by the cold. If anything the pedestrians scissoring by seemed less inhibited than ever, pumping reserves of adrenaline and huffing wraiths of steam as if their last-minute shopping mattered more than anything else in this world. The bubble machine atop a police car revolved like a deranged Christmas tree light. Children giggled obscenities and fled as a firecracker resounded between lampposts; it might have been a gunshot. The patrol car spun out, burning rubber, and screeched past in the wrong direction.
He took a breath, opened the door to the diner and ducked inside.
The interior was clean and bright as a hospital cafeteria. A solitary pensioner dawdled at the end of the counter, spilling coffee as he cradled a cup in both hands. Twin milkshake glasses, both empty, balanced near the edge. As Victor entered, jangling the bell, the waitress glanced up. She saw him and beamed.
“Hi!”
“Hi, yourself.”
“I’ll be a few more minutes. Do you mind? The night girl just called. She’s gonna be late.” Jolene watched him as she cleaned off the tables, trying to read his face as if it were the first page of a test. Her eyes flicked nervously between his.
“Take your time,” he said. He drew off his gloves and shuffled up to the counter. “No hurry.”
“The movie –?”
“We won’t miss anything.”
She blinked at him. “But I thought the last show –”
“It starts,” he said, “when we get there.”
“Oh.” She finished the tables, clearing away the remains of what other people could not finish. “I see,” she said. “Are – are you all right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you don’t sound like it.” She looked at him as if she wanted to smooth his hair, take his temperature, enfold him in her big arms and stroke his head. Instead she wiped her hands and tilted her face quizzically, keeping her distance. “How about something to eat?”
“Just coffee,” he said. “My stomach’s . . .” He sought the precise word; it eluded him. He gave up. “It’s not right.”
“Again?”
“Again.” He tried a smile. It came out wrong. “Sorry. Maybe next time.”
She considered the plate which she had been keeping warm on the grill. It contained a huge portion of fried shrimp, his favorite. She sighed.
The door jingled and a tall man came in. He was dressed like a logger or survivalist from up north, with plaid shirt, hiking boots, full beard and long hair. Victor decided he had never seen him before, though something about the man was vaguely familiar.
Jolene dealt out another set-up of flatware. He didn’t need a menu. He knew what he wanted.
Victor considered the man, remembering the sixties. That could be me, he thought; I could have gone that way, too, if I had had the courage. And look at him. He’s better off. He doesn’t have any attachments to shake. He opted out a long time ago, and now there’s nothing to pull him down.
Jolene set the man’s order to cooking and returned to Victor.
“Itwon’tbe long,” she said. “I promise.” She gestured at the old Zenith portable next to the cash register. “You want the TV on?”
She needed to do something for him, Victor realized. She needed to. “Sure,” he said agreeably. “Why not?”
She flicked a knob.
The nightly episode of a new religious game show, You Think That’s Heavy? was in progress. In each segment a downtrodden soul from the audience was brought onstage and led up a ramp through a series of possible solutions, including a mock employment bureau, a bank loan office, a dating service, a psychiatric clinic, and, finally, when all else had failed, a preacher with shiny cheeks and an unnatural preoccupation with hair. Invariably this last station of the journey was the one that took. Just now a poor woman with three children and a husband who could not support them was sobbing her way to the top of the hill.
I hope to God she finds what she needs, Victor thought absently. She looks like she deserves it. Of course you can’t tell. They’re awfully good at getting sympathy . . .
But someone will come down and set things right for her, sooner or later. She’ll get what she deserves, and it will be right as rain. I believe that.
But what about the kids? They’re the ones I’m worried about . . .