Janwillem De Wetering - Just a Corpse at Twilight

Grijpstra nodded. "When fate throws strangers together, briefly

…"

De Gier grunted agreement.

Grijpstra put out his hands in enthusiasm. "You know, I often think, that must be heaven: brief relationships between sympathetic strangers, no hassle, no sex. Who needs sex? I'm too old." He patted his belly. "You don't want to inflict ugliness on a partner. No, just drive up and down that interstate and eat mussels, or what we had at that oyster restaurant in Boston, quahogs? Stuffed…"

"That's nice "

"Know what we did afterward? In the Parker House suite? Aki sat in her huge bed, and I sat in my huge bed, and the waiters rolled in all that room service. Pirouetting, graceful chaps, lifting huge silver lids off huge silver dishes…"

"But you just had those quahogs," de Gier said. "What is this? The final feast? You eat instead of…"

"No, no. We did this right. We went to another hotel in between, with a bar and a turning platform, big black man on piano, same hair as your friend Flash but more tufted up, they did that Don Cherry thing you like, a Thelonious theme with percussion, no trumpet, a cello instead, doing both rhythm and solo. What is it called now?" Grijpstra touched his knee with a knuckle. "'Bemsha Swing!'"

"… cello didn't get squeaky?"

"… sleeping apart together. That's the way to really partake oftrue intimacy." Grijpstra pointed a finger. "Some think they always have to go the whole way… no… the cello was fine…"

"Why did you take a suite in that hotel?" de Gier asked. "Weren't there any rooms?"

"Why did you buy this two-thousand-dollar dinghy?" Grijpstra asked. "Aki and I passed a marina. Used dories on sale. Good solid fiberglass. Cheap enough too."

"A handcrafted cedar dinghy weighing under sixty pounds is more fun."

"True," Grijpstra said.

"I was just curious, Henk. I'm happy for you. I don't care what you spend, the more the better." De Gier frowned. "It's hard to think of things sometimes, expensive things, I mean. Mostly you don't need them."

"You could be sailing the Macho Bandido" Grijpstra said. "But you don't want the hassle. I've mostly run out of things to spend money on too. Nellie didn't even have a mortgage. Her house is just perfect now. I had to break out a wall to fit the new TV in but that was the last luxury she wanted."

"Spending is easier when you travel," de Gier said, "but I think I'm about done with that now. If you can clear this up I might go back with you."

"Help me out with the agency?"

"I'm open to offers."

"What if we don't clear this up?"

De Gier pulled on the oars again. He was shaking his head.

Grijpstra's nap lasted till late evening. He walked along the island's little beaches after that, and set off a bear alarm, a nylon line strung between large boulders, that brought out de Gier.

"Nice here," de Gier said, putting his camera away. So it was, Grijpstra thought. Moonlight on a calm sea, the never-figure-out-able zillion stars everywhere, seals assuming their tail-up, head-up banana postures on rocks being bared by low tide, a quiet ripple further along, cut, de Gier claimed, by a curious dolphin's dorsal fin.

"Very nice," Grijpstra agreed. "Proves things are okay maybe. Here, for instance."

"But there are lots of Heres. Most Heres are bad"

"Bad enough to row away from forever?"

"But ifI row out ofHere altogether," de Gier said, "no bad Here is anywhere."

Grijpstra frowned.

"It goes further than that," de Gier said. "It includes you too. The world needs me to be. You need me to be."

"If you're not here, none of any possible Heres are here?" Grijpstra asked. "You know that's all bullshit, don't you? I'll still be here. Eating hundred-dollar crab rolls in Amsterdam and watching people starve in the Here-Too places that the news is always checking out for dying babies."

"Switch off your TV," de Gier said, "then use your unlimited Diners Club credit card and spend the night harmonizing your spirit with the likes of Aki."

"Just one night," Grijpstra said. "One night ofFdoesn't mean that I don't suffer the human problem. Don't get so smart, Rinus."

"Now that we're on the subject again"-de Gier raised an eyebrow-"did anything between you and Aki, eh…"

"No," Grijpstra said.

"Look," de Gier said. "Maybe we don't agree philosophically but we can still be friends. Tell me. I've got this reputation but I don't really ever know how to be with women. It's very complicated. There's this theory that homosexuality is linked to being immature, and you must have done your fatherly/friendly thing again. You're sure nothing happened?"

They were back in the pagoda, drinking Louisiana coffee and chicory on the second floor's gallery. "This coffee is good and strong," Grijpstra said. "Most coffee here is weak."

"Regular American coffee is weak so that the citizens can drink it all day," de Gier lectured. "Because the country is worked by robots now. There's nothing more to do. Humans pour coffee into the great gap offree time. Drinking thirty cups a day is something to do."

Grijpstra glared.

"I'm sorry," de Gier said. "I thought you wanted me to explain America."

"Bah," Grijpstra said.

"But you already know it all," de Gier said. "Aki explained local degeneration. Where? In bed?"

Grijpstra smiled. "In your Ford product, on the way back from Boston. Hawaiian degeneration only. She was upset about the exhibition of Hawaiian historical art she saw in Boston while I was at the bank getting dollars for guilders. The paintings showed what the pre-Coca-Cola-and-hamburger era must have been like."

"Pre-Captain Cook-y scenes by a cookie-tin artist?"

"You know you amaze me?" Grijpstra asked. "You're the accused here. How can you try to be witty?"

"I forget sometimes," de Gier said. "Don't remind me. Go on. We're in Hawaii by Norman Rockwell."

"Norman Rockwell is no cookie-box-top-artist."

"I'm sorry."

"Okay." Grijpstra relayed the Hawaiian original scene with wide hand strokes. "Natural perfection… paradise… beaches before the oil slick… unsprayed fruit trees… straw-roofed houses with no broken toys in the yard… outrigger sailboats with no two-stroke outboards… beautiful priestesses swaying around the king… climate…"

"There must still be climate."

"Bad smog in Honolulu now," Grijpstra said.

De Gier pointed at the ocean, clearly visible up till the horizon. "Nothing here."

There was the sudden roar oftwin outboards. The boat at the end of a widening wake showed no navigation lights. "Probably Hairy Harry," de Gier said. "I often hear him. He must have brought in another shipment last week. He was ferrying like crazy. He kept going out, must have been a South American vessel off the coast somewhere."

"Does he ever see you?"

"We wave."

"Ignorance breeds fear," Grijpstra said. "You have no good reason to be here. He must be dreaming up theories."

"If I were Hairy Harry," de Gier said, "I would theorize that we represent a potential competitive supplier, out of Suriname or another former Dutch colony, St. Maarten maybe, St. Eustatius, there are all those places. We're checking out the scene and will be butting in soon."

"And we're not black or Latino," Grijpstra said. "We're his own kind, white repressed puritan Protestants, his own special brand of evil, a perfect match. Must be upsetting to Hairy Harry."

"Nellie convert you to Christianity?" de Gier asked. "I'd like to be Catholic sometimes. There was an article in the Police Gazette I studied once, about how the Catholics die more easily." De Gier shook his head. "It even showed statistics."

"Hairy Harry blundering between fear and desire, same way as us." Grijpstra looked across the pagoda's gallery at the empty expanse ahead, streaked by long lines ofslowly moving riptides that lit up white in the moonlight, "Could there be competition here? The last inadequately patrolled United States coastal waters?"