And Nathan realized that he was already dead.
A shade that had somehow insinuated himself into this congregation.
But then the service was over. The congregants hurriedly folded their prayer-shawls and wound the leather straps around their phylacteries, for it was 7:45, and they had to get to work. Nathan followed suit, but he felt like an automaton, a simulacrum of himself, a dead thing trying to infiltrate the routines and rituals of the living.
He left the synagogue with the other men. He had an early-morning appointment with an old client who insisted on turning over his substantial portfolio again; the old man had, in effect, been paying Nathan's mortgage for years.
But as Nathan drove his Mercedes coupe down A1A, which was the more picturesque and less direct route to his office in downtown Fort Lauderdale, he suddenly realized that he couldn't go through with it. He couldn't spend another day going through the motions of dictating to his secretary, counseling clients, staring into the electron darkness of a CRT screen, and pretending that life goes on.
He simply couldn't do it….
He made a U-turn, and drove back home to Lighthouse Point. The ocean was now to his right, an expanse of emerald and tourmaline. It brought to mind memories of family outings on the public Lauderdale beaches when his son Michael was a toddler and wore braces to straighten out a birth defect. He remembered first making love to his wife Helen on the beach. The immensity of the clear, star-filled sky and the dark, unfathomable ocean had frightened her, and afterward she had cried in his arms as she looked out at the sea.
But as Nathan drove past the art-deco style pink cathedral, which was a Lighthouse Point landmark, he realized that he couldn't go home either. How was he going to face the myriad memories inhering in the furniture, bric-a-brac, and framed photographs… the memories that seemed to perspire from the very walls themselves? Helen and Michael would only whisper to him again. He would hear all the old arguments and secret conversations, barely audible but there nevertheless, over the susurration of the air conditioner….
He parked his car in the circular driveway of his red-roofed, white stucco home and crossed the street to his neighbor's yard, which had direct frontage on the intercoastal.
He was, after all, already a shade; he had only to make a proper passage into the next world.
And with the same calm, directed purpose that had served him so well in business over the years, Nathan borrowed his neighbor's hundred thousand dollar «cigarette» speedboat and steered it out to sea to find God.
He piloted the glossy green bullet through the intercoastals, motoring slowly, for police patrolled the quiet canals in search of offenders who would dare to churn the oily, mirrored waters into foam and froth. Yachts and sailboats gently tilted and rolled in their marinas, a gas station attendant with a red scarf around his neck leaned against an Esso gas pump that abutted a wide-planked dock where petroleum drippings shivered like rainbows caught in the wood, and the waterside pools and sun decks of the pastel-painted, expensive homes were empty.
Nathan smelled the bacon and coffee and gasoline, but could hear and feel only the thrumming of the twin engines of the speedboat. The bow reminded him of the hood of an old Lincoln he had loved: expansive and curved and storeroom shiny.
As Nathan turned out of the intercoastal and into the terrifying turquoise abyss of the open sea, he felt that he had escaped the bondage that had been his life.
The calm rolling surface of the sea had become time itself. Time was no longer insubstantial and ineffable; it was a surface that could be navigated. And Nathan could steer this roaring twin-engined speedboat forward toward destiny and death, or he could return to the past… to any or all of the events of his life that floated atop the flowing surface of his life like plankton.
Nathan was finally the engine of his soul.
He opened the throttle, and the «cigarette» seemed to lift out of the water, which slid past underneath like oil, sparkling green and blue in the brilliance of morning.
Dressed in a herringbone blue suit of continental cut, starched white shirt with rounded French cuffs, and maroon striped tie worked into a Windsor knot, he sat straight as a die before the enamel control console of tachometers, clutches, oil-pressure and fuel gauges, compass, wheel, and throttles.
He felt a quiet, almost patrician joy. He had conquered time and space and pain and fear.
He didn't care about fuel.
His only direction was the eternal horizon ahead.
It all changed when the engines gave out, coughing and sputtering into a final silence like bad lungs taking a last glottal breath. Nathan felt the constriction of the tight collar of his silk shirt; he was wet with perspiration. The sun burned into his face and eyes, blinding him with white light turned red behind closed eyelids, and wrenching him awake. It was as if he had been dreaming, sleepwalking through all the aching, guilt-ridden days since the death of his family three months ago today.
He loosened his tie, tore open his collar. He felt short of breath. It was blisteringly hot, and there was no protection from the sun in the cigarette speedboat. He pulled off his jacket. He was breathing hard, hyperventilating, thinking that he must somehow get back to shore. What have I done? he asked himself, incredulous. He felt feverish, hot then cold, and his teeth were chattering.
The waves slapped against the hull, which bobbed up and down and to the left and right; and Nathan could feel the sea pulling him toward death and its handmaiden of unbearable revelation.
He looked behind him, but there was not a shadow of land. Just open sea, liquid turquoise hills descending and rising. He tried to start the engines, but they wouldn't catch. The console lights dimmed from the drainage of power. He looked in the sidewells for extra fuel and oars but found only canvas, an opened package of plastic cups, and a very good brand of unblended scotch. No first-aid kit, no flares, for his neighbor was not fastidious, nor did he ever take the boat out of the intercoastal. This was probably the first time that the throttle had ever been turned to full. The boat was a status symbol, nothing more.
The compass read East, which was impossible, for if that were so, he would see land.
But east was the direction of God.
And the sea had become a manifestation of that direction.
The swells were higher now, and the boat rose and dipped, each time being pulled farther out, and the hours passed like days, and Nathan felt hungry and thirsty and frightened.
He thought he saw something on the horizon and stood up as best he could in the boat; he held tight to the chrome pillar of the windshield, and yes, there was something out there. A ship, a tanker, perhaps. He shouted into the soughing silence of the sea, but it was futile. It was as if he were being hidden in the troughs of the waves.
Hours later, when he was cried out and hoarse, cowed by the infinities of sea and sky and the desiccating heat of the sun, which had transformed itself into a blinding, pounding headache, he turned around. As if he could hide in his own shadow from the sun.
And as if turned to stone, he gazed into the past.
But not far into the past.
Not far enough to savor a moment of comfort before the tsunamis of guilt and grief.
Nathan returns to the morning that burns him still. He is shaving, his face lathered with soap from his chipped shaving mug that had once belonged to his grandfather, when Helen calls him. He can hear the muffled argument that has been going on downstairs between his wife and son, but he ignores it for as long as he can.
He simply can't face any more tension.