Further Out Than You Thought Read online

  “Just don’t tell him.”

  “About your being knocked up? On the nest? With child?”

  “About that.”

  “You gonna tell him?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “When?” He stopped to let a lamppost hold him up.

  “In Mexico,” she said. “Remember?”

  “Mexico,” he said, and she watched the word sink in, watched his body relax into it. “We need rope, yes?”

  “I have it.”

  “Because we’re tying him up.”

  “We are.”

  “Because he’s crazy.”

  “Well,” she said, taking his arm and coaxing him off the post and down the sidewalk. “If truth be told, we’re all a little crazy. The point is, don’t say anything.”

  “About your delicate—”

  “Right.”

  “Cross my heart, hope to die, Gwendolyn.”

  They’d reached Third Street and stood silent a moment, taking in the quiet. The city was only sleeping, but it felt to Gwen as if it had stopped breathing and died in its sleep. Everything looked smaller. Where were the come-along beater cars and their lonely radios bleating love songs into the night? Where were the solitary people out for a predawn stroll? Even the Leave Earth man must have found a box to call home until morning. There wasn’t any fried vanilla on the air, no just-made old-fashioneds. In fact, Jin’s was dark.

  Valiant lumbered to the window and pressed his nose against it, peering in.

  “Anyone there?” Gwen said, sticking to the curb.

  “Gotta be.” Valiant knocked on the window. One, two, three, four—his signature knock, as though Jin would know it was him and would unlock the door. Only how would Jin know his knock? Valiant wasn’t thinking—he was desperate, and drunk. He knocked again.

  Nothing.

  Valiant began to sing, an impromptu jingle.

  Jin, oh, Jin, crazy Jin,

  Be a darlin’, let me in.

  See how fine it would be,

  give a pack of cigarettes to me.

  He danced a little as he sang, hopping from one foot to the other and turning around. They waited for a light to come on, for Jin to stumble in from the back room, a sleepy smile on his face, shaking his head at Valiant’s antics, but Jin’s Joint stayed dark.

  Valiant knocked again, this time harder on the window. One, two, three, four. Five, six, seven, eight. Double trouble.

  “Come on,” she said. “He’s not here. Let’s go.”

  “Oh, he’s here. Hey, Jin,” Valiant shouted. “You goddamn Chink.” Then, “No,” he said, in a low voice to himself. “That’s wrong.” Then he smiled and hollered, cupping his hands to his mouth and pressing them to the store window, “Nip! Gook! Open up!”

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “What? It’s just a joke,” he said. Gwen tugged at his arm and he shook her off and pounded with both fists on the window. “Jin! Cig-a-rettes!”

  “I’m going home,” she said. Walking to the curb, she heard the latch click behind her, the door squeak open.

  “Thank God,” Valiant said. “Jin!”

  She saw the silhouette of a man in a T-shirt and jeans, his back to her, his legs spread. “Motherfucking nigger.” Even with his heavy Korean accent his words were clear. Motherfucking nigger. Did he mean Valiant?

  The Count had his hands in the air. “Hey, man,” he said. A smile showed his white teeth and made his face look like a cartoon.

  Gwen came closer. She realized she was walking soundlessly, on her toes.

  The man turned. The pistol pointed at her stomach shook in his hands. She held her breath. Her face, her ears were hot, the palms of her hands tingled and pulsed. This was like her dream. The gun at her stomach—did it mean her dream had been a premonition? She wished she could fly. She dropped her shoes. And then she laughed, that ridiculous trill of a laugh that meant things were beyond her comprehension, beyond her control. It was a laugh that should have been a scream.

  “Oh God, God, please,” she heard Valiant say.

  She stopped laughing as abruptly as she’d started. The scene had gone slow-motion, so she knew it was real—a real gun, a real man with his finger on the trigger. This moment was her life. She looked from the O of the gun’s barrel into the man’s face. She recognized him. It was Jin’s brother. The man’s eyes darted from her to Valiant and he aimed the gun back at him.

  “Kim?” she said. “It’s Gwen. Remember? I met you this morning. We’re your brother’s friends.”

  He looked at her again, his unseeing eyes flat and frightened, and then shifted his focus to Valiant—Valiant with the smeared dried blood across his hollow cheek. The blood didn’t help things. Still, in his aqua satin robe and his black slippers, he was hardly capable of concealing a gun, let alone of beating anyone up. Yet Kim walked toward him, his gun on him, his hand trembling. Valiant backed up until he was against a brick wall. “Mae de Deus,” he muttered, and closed his eyes.

  Inside the store a light came on. In a crumpled, unbuttoned shirt and jeans, Jin crept out from the back room. She’d never seen him so scared, so tense and humorless. His arms were at his sides, in one hand he held a pistol. She smiled and waved both hands in a frenzied gesture above her head.

  Jin didn’t smile. Had he seen her? No. The window was a mirror. He saw just himself.

  Valiant was saying a prayer in Portuguese. She recognized the prayer, the insistent rhythm of it. Her grandmother used to say it in Spanish, over and over, her fingers rubbing the beads of her rosary. Dios te salve, Maria, llena eres de gracia.

  She knocked on the window. Jin ducked behind the counter, peered out from the side and from his crouched position pointed the gun. Like he’d seen in all those American Westerns, Gwen thought. True Grit. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

  Kim had his gun on her, too. She put her hands up. She’d be just another riot death. One that could have been avoided had they played by the rules and obeyed the curfew. Cigarettes. They’d gone out for cigarettes. What had they been thinking?

  Jin crept forward and opened the door. “Miss Griffin?” he said, and lowered his gun. He shouted at his brother in Korean, and Kim’s hand fell to his side. Still holding the pistol, it dangled there like a dead fish.

  “Count?” Jin said.

  Valiant slid down the wall to the cement and broke into sobs. “Sorry,” he said, choking and swallowing. “I needed . . .” he wheezed, “cigarettes.”

  Jin spat an order at his brother. Looking down at his tennis shoes, Kim walked inside.

  “I am sorry one, Count,” Jin said and offered him a hand. Valiant took it and stood. “Miss Griffin,” he said, “I—”

  “It’s not your fault, Jin,” she said. She picked up her shoes off the curb and went to Valiant’s side and steadied him.

  His head hanging low, Kim brought out a pack of Camels and a six-pack of Budweiser and handed them to Valiant. Jin barked another command at his brother, and Kim with his dog eyes wet and red looked up at Gwen and Valiant. “Sorry,” he said, and plodded inside.

  The Count took a twenty from his pocket and offered it to Jin.

  Jin shook his head. “Is a gift,” he said.

  Nineteen

  THEY WERE HALFWAY to the Cornell before the Count opened the pack of cigarettes. He pulled the plastic tab with his teeth and spit it into the gutter. He hadn’t said a word, and his whole body quivered as if with cold. He stopped, striking a tenuous stance, as he flicked and reflicked the lighter. Nothing. Gwen gave it a try. Her hand shook, and she used her other hand to hold it steady. A flame sprang from the plastic casing—fire where there had been only air. He sucked at the cigarette, inhaled long and exhaled slow. He cracked a can of beer and drank a good bit of it down.

  Slogging on down the street, he leaned on her all the walk home, but she didn’t feel the weight. The sky was lightening, so reluctantly at first that she thought she was imagining it. One by one, the trees emerged from th
e shadows. Their leaves began to glow, and then the windows in the apartment buildings. The world was taking form, catching the predawn light. And she had a lightness to her, too. A rush of anticipation. Twice in a single day she’d been reborn. She was alive when she might not have been. The possible was perceptible.

  She thought of another sunrise, just after she’d graduated from high school. She’d walked home from her girlfriend’s house through the still neighborhood of her youth, past the dark, dreaming houses. She wore a black dress and walked in her bare feet, holding her shoes, as she did now. At home, she’d stood in the door of her father’s bedroom, the room that had been theirs, his and her mother’s, and she’d watched him sleep. Gwen had grown, changed into someone else without his noticing. She had wondered how he could sleep when she was so awake. Her mother would have noticed. She would have sensed her restlessness, her newfound vibrancy. And Gwen, standing on that threshold, felt her mother’s absence carve itself like a canyon through her, a passage made of water and time. She had closed the door on her sleeping father and gone out to the swimming pool where she took off her dress and dove naked into the cold water. Holding her breath from one end of the pool to the other, she knew then that her childhood was over.

  She wished she could get in a pool now, could spread her arms and kick and fly through the water—sleek and free and on to a new chapter. “Mexico,” she said, because the word itself was a warm embarkation, a flight of the mind.

  “O meu Deus! Yes.” Valiant sighed. “Darling, take me away from this monstrous city. Save me.”

  They crossed Sixth Street, disregarding the constant red light. Still no cars, but the sky was a pale blue-white, like the film on a blind eye.

  The curfew was lifted. Morning had come at last.

  She stepped onto the flower bed, the soil cool and soft under her feet, and boosted Valiant through her open bedroom window. He tumbled into the bedroom. “Ow!” he cried, and Fifi trotted in, barking her high-pitched alarm of a bark. Gwen followed him through their apartment. He was moaning, dragging his shoulder along the wall, disrupting the hall of fame. In his wake, their framed photos clattered to the floor. Gwen picked hers up. The glass was cracked, and she took out the photo, glad to have it off the wall.

  Still on the sofa, Leo rubbed open his eyes. “What the hell happened to you?” he said, looking at them both.

  “We nearly died,” the Count said. The gash on his chin, Gwen saw now, was open and bleeding. He collapsed onto the sofa as Leo moved his legs. “We nearly died and you, what did you do? Savior of the whole goddamn city? You slept. Hope you had fan-fucking-tastic dreams while we had guns pointed at our goddamn foreheads.”

  Disregarding his drunken tirade, Leo got up and put a pillow under the Count’s head. His flag was right there on the coffee table and he didn’t hesitate. He brought it to the Count’s chin, used it like a handkerchief to wipe the blood. “Hold it there,” he said, pressing the Count’s hand to the fabric.

  “Leo,” said Gwen. “Your flag.” Or was it her flag? She’d been the one to fashion it, to thrust it into his hands.

  “Good use for a white flag, don’t you think?” he said.

  “So you’re not marching?”

  Leo was in the bathroom, the water was running. “There’s time. There’s more fabric,” he said, coming out with a wet washcloth in his hand.

  He knelt beside Valiant. With the washcloth he cleaned off the dried blood. He seemed to be careful, folding the washcloth so the blood didn’t touch his hand. But what if it did? And what if he had a small cut on his finger? It was hard for her to watch. She turned, hating herself for thinking this way, for not being more generous, more brave.

  Now Leo’s open hands hovered over Valiant’s chin. Leo had his eyes closed and was moving his hands back and forth in a slow, waving motion, as though he were performing a magic trick. Voilà, she half expected him to say, pulling a rose from Valiant’s mouth.

  “What are you doing?” she said.

  “Shhhh. I’m healing his chin.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m going to his apartment. Valiant, you need anything?”

  “Handcuffs,” Valiant said.

  “I’m sorry.” Leo’s hands fell to his side. “Handcuffs?”

  “Love,” said Valiant, gazing up at Leo, “means never having to say you’re sorry.”

  “I’ll be back,” she said, and laughed. It was an easy laugh, deep and true. It had been so long she hardly recognized the sound.

  In Valiant’s bedroom, the outfit he’d worn on the roof when the city was burning was in a heap on the floor. She grabbed the clothes with their reek of stale smoke and his pair of worn black cowboy boots.

  She took his camera from the kitchen table. Half the roll was left. She slung it over her shoulder. In the living room, she took the handcuffs from the windowsill. Behind the buildings, the haze was brightening. She blew out the candles—Saint Sebastian and his semicircle of clones—and stood before the Virgin, her face aglow. Gwen closed her eyes and wished—though not for anything. She wanted to glow the way the Virgin glowed, as though she housed a flame, a single, slender tongue of a flame, with its numinous blue window into another world. She opened her eyes and with a small breath blew her out.

  On her way to the door she turned. There was something about the room. Something odd. The center canvas of Valiant’s triptych—the image of his cock in black paint—was missing from the wall. She saw it then, in the corner, on the floor. The canvas had been stabbed to shreds and the boards that had stretched it were broken. He’d had an even harder night than she’d thought.

  She ran back down the stairs. She was racing the sun. It was called daybreak for a reason. They were getting out; they were leaving. The riots could go on without them.

  Inside her apartment, Valiant lay on the sofa, groaning, the flag still pressed to his chin. She handed him the clothes, and told him to put them on.

  The teakettle whistled. Leo was making his morning English breakfast tea. Ever since he’d started dressing as a revolutionary he preferred tea to coffee. It makes no sense, she’d told him one morning. The revolutionaries threw the tea in the harbor. Exactly, he’d said. But I have to really miss it when I give it up. Otherwise, what kind of revolutionary would I be?

  She wanted coffee. It was time for this revolution to progress, full speed ahead. Before she tied Leo up, she’d make a quick espresso. She brought the handcuffs into the bedroom. She’d have to rely on herself to pull this off, now that the Count was indisposed. She’d bring them out when all was ready.

  She threw off her robe and fastened a bra, which was tight, the lace just covering her nipples. And the plain white T-shirt—she realized when she stared at herself in the mirror—had never looked quite so much like, well, an invitation. Was it possible to grow a whole size in one night? Or had the ballooning been gradual, something she had chosen not to see?

  She knew her body was making a body, knew she wasn’t just getting fat. But she cringed at the sight of herself. And it was her father’s voice she heard. Her father’s stiff, omniscient commentary. She’d been all of twelve, settling in beside him on the sofa one Saturday night to watch The Love Boat, a plate of s’mores on her lap. Before she could bite into one of the gooey, sweet graham cracker sandwiches, he’d said, his eyes still on the TV, “Eat it now, honey. Enjoy every bite. In another year, you eat something like that and wham, it’ll turn straight to fat.” He paused as if for effect. “And I can’t imagine you fat,” he’d said, patting her thigh to reassure her.

  He had no idea she’d take that bit of advice and run with it. That she’d live on a hard-boiled egg and a cracker a day. No idea that she’d take it as a challenge. She could watch what she ate all right, and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. Another three years and he was spoon-feeding her ice cream on that same sofa. Her favorite—rocky road. At first she refused, and then, she swallowed. And this was the gateway to a whole new obsession. She’d polish off cartons—mint chip
, butter pecan, black cherry—and then she’d barf them down the drain. He couldn’t understand it. The ice cream vanished, the cookies, the chocolate. Anything sweet. She’d hated herself for it. And she’d put on weight in spite of the purging. Enough so that he’d stopped worrying, stopped noticing her altogether.

  Since she’d started stripping his only comments had been compliments. “Wow, honey,” he’d said when she swam in the heated pool at Christmas in her bikini. “You look like a million bucks.” Had he known the cause of her body’s full, taut shape, the cause of the new acceptance she’d gained for her own curves, she knew he’d have had other things to say. She could hear him now. Why hadn’t she asked him for the money for her school? Or why hadn’t she gotten a real job—using her mind rather than her body? After all, didn’t she have a college degree?

  Someday, when her life was different, she’d tell him the truth. Even the thought made her stomach flip.

  She stretched out her T-shirt as best she could and stepped into her black combat boots, a pair she’d bought years back at the Army Surplus Store. She laced them up tight. Like Barry said, you don’t know, you just don’t know.

  The piano filled the apartment with music. It was Leo, improvising. The thin notes shimmered, and she felt she was animating them, moving to their rhythm, unable not to move to it. Life and time was this river of piano set in motion by the tips of his fingers, and here she was bobbing along on it. And she was happy for now, this very moment; and she knew that what would happen would happen, and she’d be glad in that future moment, too, because it would mean she was living her life—this life that belonged to her alone and not to anyone else.

  She carried her suitcase into the living room. Leo quit playing and studied her. “Going somewhere?” She smiled and looked to Valiant for support. He had draped the washcloth over his face, and his body lay so still it made her heart stop. She stepped closer, watched his chest rise and fall to be sure he was alive.

  She saw the telephone on the arm of the sofa and remembered.