Lee Klein - Jrzdvlz

“Yes, my first beer, never much of a drinker, lost the bet, can’t explain it,” I said, or something like that, my words trailing off. Seamlessness between thoughts and tongue was disturbed. A polite chuckle nevertheless escaped, a generous response as though my flailing were a kind of sophisticated humor. Another blush warmed my cheeks. Whatever wave of embarrassment went through me deepened with another long sip, and no matter how strong its pull, the undertow inside me was far too weak to draw from their good time.

“Another song,” said the guitarist, clearing the air. The rhythm he began removed our need to speak.

The finest balm is music, and they seemed to play as though to forgive me. With each strum and rattle and effortless arpeggio, they restored my spirit with these repeated figures. Music to the rescue, everyone united, bewinged. The lights flickered and dimmed and extinguished, and just like that, lanterns and candles were lit. We glowed mysteriously, golden, the lights turned off so we either looked less flushed or to signal the late hour. By candlelight and lantern, men sang and stomped and spun as though with ideal partners, sometimes arm in arm with their neighbors or kicking like offended mules. Nothing needed to be sacrificed. There were no sins. The more I drank the more I was sure Renner herself, overseer of this unexpected paradise, was my one true Eve.

“Come on now, wake up.”

I opened my eyes to see her beaming over me, hand on my shoulder, squeezing it like a melon at the market. Finding me sufficiently fresh, she helped me to my feet and led me out the door, which she locked behind her. My mouth dry, my head heavy, my eyes aflame, my nerves registered every distant clatter. She had asked me to escort her home but here I was being helped along uneven cobblestone streets. It smelled of smoke and hay and as we neared the river, a general fishiness unlike around the Mullica, more like a muddy reek, a riverbank exposed, pollutants best left underwater aired for all to smell. I hoped at first she’d pause along the way but as we moved into shanty areas so disordered they seemed somehow tangled, I hoped she’d keep moving. Some slept wrapped in coarse blankets surely stolen from horse stables or stood around fires, warming themselves, rehashing arguments they believed winnable if a perfect mix of repetition and volume were attained, the greater the emphasis the lower the chance of rebuttal, perhaps they thought, though it seemed likely no one thought much. They stood and moved their mouths, destined to recover their senses only after sleep.

She set the scene in advance of our arrival at her home, not knowing that I had slept so many nights in trees and caves, and on beaches. I admit to not being the best listener, remembering only that she had lowered expectations so when we crossed the threshold whatever appeared would seem miraculous or at least a relief.

How she made this walk alone each night I did not know, or maybe she knew everyone in town. No matter my natural abilities, there was something askew about these dense quarters, especially at night. Steam escaped from unseen sources. Shadows fell across potential assailants. The sky seemed fractured, starless, as thick, milky, winter clouds streamed low like the breath of Death. These narrow streets forced me to hunch shoulders and press tighter to my escort—the one I escorted—the one with whom I made my solitary way, arm in arm, maybe my Eve.

“Here it is,” she said. “Not what you may have expected.”

“I have no expectations other than spending continued time in your presence.”

She touched my cheek and smiled.

She pushed the door open with her rump. It led to a private alley, passing other gloomy doors before we came to hers. She keyed it open and led me into complete darkness. A sulfurous burst and the world returned around a match in her hand. She lit a wide candle scented with honey.

“My sister and child are asleep, so we must control our voices.”

Her child or her sister’s? Where did it say anything about Eve having a child?

“They live with you?”

“I said so as we walked.”

What else had I not heard?

“When I come in late, I sleep here. We do not have much, but it is warm, and you seem a willing guest.”

She lit a lantern that filled out the contours of the place. A small bed in the corner, chairs, a Franklin stove, nothing more than what was needed.

“It is not much but it is better than some, especially in this city.”

“Could you not live elsewhere?”

“We don’t choose to live here, and yet living here so long, beauties emerge, wonders within those rooms, or at least the remains of my youth. Every step releases memories.”

All that Stearns had said about wiping these slates clean, about moving them to beautiful new compounds in the pines, how could all these streets transform into boulevards and parks? An American Paris, he had said. So tightly compressed the lives were here, the city would need to extract them by force.

“If granted the opportunity to leave for a paradise nearer the sea,” I said, “a river community in the middle of the pines where the cleanest water were everywhere and conditions were serene and sanitary, would you consider it, especially considering the child?”

“How do you know of this?” she whispered, closer to me, guiding me to the edge of her bed.

“Know what?” I said. “Only I hear you speak of the conditions here and despite sentimental connections I wonder if another habitat may be preferred.”

“But,” she started, and then conflicted thoughts forced chin and cheeks in alternate directions. “What you said makes me believe you have heard what’s been said about this.”

“Is it so uncommon, to move somewhere more natural, if granted a wish?”

“You refer to something else. I see it in your face. Your eyes turn inward as though to have nothing more to do with what you speak.”

My dear Eve, let us not argue, lie down beside me, let me feel your warmth on this cold night. Your eyes are alight. Use that heat otherwise.

“Then perhaps I should ask what you know?” I said.

“Who sent you, what sort of spy, on whose side?”

“I am baffled, my dear.”

“What do you know about the recent bit of open-air theater?”

“Who does not know of it? But I cannot begin to retell the horror I saw tonight.”

As soon as the words escaped I knew I was in trouble. But still I told her about the sacrificed kangaroo. My story, whatever it had been, was assailable now from all sides.

“And so what of the wedding?”

“At most I attended the marriage of an innocent animal to the infinite,” I said, fearing she might open the door, indicating steps I should take through it.

“Who are you?” she said. “I thought you were someone in need, yet now I feel you are part of some larger plan. I hear so much. Every night I am told one confession and overhear another. Those musicians are more than they seem. Those men enjoying themselves were not drunks.”

“There is more to my story than a wedding that did or did not occur, a stream of stories in fact that have brought me to this spot, and I am therefore thankful for each. I have heard stories too but I am not much of an actor in them, and the dress I can explain perfectly well, but perhaps not at first.”

“For now can you fit beside me?”

We lay with hands at sides, as far as we could from each other. She did not ask me to remove clothes or shoes. The long coat I kept on. She lay beside me also fully clothed. We were models for a study of doomed lovers about to be entombed. The tension between us ran back and forth, related either to her suspicion or my attraction. We lay there, my chest rising and falling in time with hers, as the flame of a candle beside the bed made its way toward its own pooled wax.