David Means - Assorted Fire Events - Stories

There are legends — the White River Sioux believe in Takuskanskan, the power of motion, a spirit behind all movement — and then there’s our own bland myth of sexual intercourse, that somehow souls can become transfigured in the act; that all that motion, shifting, shoving, and grunting, can remake us.

Alone on Sunday morning in his colonial up the hill, Hugh sat at a wide, oval table, facing the window, cradling coffee in a big mug he’d bought in Germany during a rock conference; in the other room the boys were watching television — a soft dribble of sound effects, of high-pitched voices. His life had changed. Of that much he was sure. There was confusion, a slight, spongy befuddlement in the center of his head. In his chest — beneath his ribs — a vacuum had formed and he was certain that it was the first stages of a mild depression settling in. To combat it he’d take a pill and drive the boys to Bear Mountain and rent skates and do laps, work on his backwards crossover. The feel of the blades as he walked along the rubber matting, just before he stepped on the ice, would set him straight. Afterwards he’d take them to the lodge for hot chocolate and then, with the dull blue, pre-Christmas twilight settling in, he’d drive home, following the ribbon of red taillights down the Hudson Valley. He’d feel better alongside a thousand other souls — all draining themselves back into a Sunday evening. Maybe when he got back to the house he’d call Grace. Maybe not. It was doubtful. She was a strange case. Too much dead weight. This morning he didn’t feel like the life-saving type. Anyway, there was a single woman named Ann he was thinking about. She worked at the reference desk at Columbia’s Butler Library. In the course of research for his book, a geological history of Iceland, he’d flirted with her enough to know she’d probably accept his offer of dinner in the country — a ride up the Saw Mill; she could spend the night (he’d take the couch and send the boys to friends’ houses), or he’d even drive her back in.

But his life had changed. It would never be exactly the same. The strangeness of that night would be hard to shake.

She had it set up, the VCR tape already inside. (When she inserted it, she felt the longing desire of the machine for the tape. It was the smaller camera cassette nestled within a larger shell mechanism that yawned the tape outward against the kiss of the playback head, all clamps and rollers and pins stretching taut.) She pushed play. Beside her on the couch, Hugh watched with a placid gaze — an expectant and politely curious look on his face as he crossed his legs and put his heel softly on top of the coffee table. His shoes were off. There were gold toes on the end of his socks and the copy of Dubliners, bound in dark green, on his lap. She hadn’t said much, just a murmur about wanting to watch something, and that was it, and the truth was, and she’d think about this later, he didn’t ask what she was going to show him. He didn’t care to find out ahead of time what in particular she was going to put on the screen. There wasn’t a need in him to know. It didn’t matter. What she’d decided to put in front of him by the way of entertainment was beside the point; the point was elsewhere. So the machine did the little windup sound — all that tension; there was a blip, a blue screen, then a black screen with some whites sinews of static along the bottom — and then, appearing out of the darkness, fading long and opening like a cornucopia of light and body parts, the scene of her and Ron making love on their honeymoon; first a blur, then dissolving (as she imagined Hugh saw it) through the darkness, a puzzle of light, the crack of Ron’s ass and her legs parted wide, in and out of focus at the same time, all accompanied by the sound of their soft moans and the camera motor — the hiss of the air conditioner, and behind that, the motorbikes buzzing down the calle.

“What’s this?” Hugh said, with a slight start, landing flat on each word.

“It’s me and Ron,” she answered; she was on the floor with her legs tucked beneath her, to the side, sitting halfway between the TV set and the couch.

“Exactly,” he said.

He might have said Shut it off, out of some kind of disgust, or shame; or he might have been turned on by the sad ordeal of watching her dead husband doing it to her; she might have stood up tearfully and shouted Look at what the world took from me, but instead there was the soft clatter of the storm widows catching a hard burst of wind from the north; there was the background hum of the camera motor’s resonating off the Spanish dressing table; the soft clutch of two people reaching an early orgasm against their wills; her legs clamping tight around the back of his thighs; nothing funny at all this time; it seemed a vastly different tape than the one she’d viewed with Ron on the small television in their apartment in the city. (The current television was twice as big.) Hugh sat back watching and didn’t say anything. He did so partly out of a politeness for her feelings; to stand and walk away — considering the sanctity of the situation — wouldn’t be kind; he had to at least see a conclusion to the night, so he watched for four minutes until the awkward disengagement after the orgasm, the parting of flesh from flesh, and saw the pixels of light add up to what seemed to be a template for the home-brewed porn tape. (He’d never rented one of those amateur porn tapes from the video store before, but this was exactly what he’d expected.) He watched the end and sat still while she shut it off, drew both hands through her hair, and told him he’d better go as she led him down the stairs to the mudroom door where he left his boots, and thanked him for the wonderful night while he tied his laces. Then, as she held his coat for him, he urged his arms through the sleeves; and she spoke the whole time about the breaded pork she’d had for dinner, and how nice the Hudson House atmosphere was, until he turned and said, “Hang in there,” and gave her a little hug, making out through his down coat the softness of her shoulders. He then trudged his way up the hill to the main street, turned left, and walked through town. His hood was up and the asthmatic seethe of his breath kept him company. He was a scientist, used to looking at facts, but he wasn’t hard-hearted. He knew what was up. The game was clear. She wanted to nix it, to throw it at him, her life before Ron’s death. She wasn’t ready to love again. It was too early. Her heart was still with Ron, as it should be. She was perfectly normal. Nothing was wrong with what she did, showing him the tape like that, acting out a commendable faithfulness to her past; it was the kind of impulsive, perhaps deranged action you’d expect from a widow. Strangely, he thought, it was (he was now hiking up the hill in jerky, quick strides) what you want from a widow. You want that soft sadness. You want the strange behavior — wild, passionate moodiness. You want pain manifested in deviant acts. There was a fine snow falling, melting as it hit his face. Grief seemed to crunch beneath his feet. The whole planet was a matrix of movements, he knew, causing irremediable change. He thought of Iceland, of the wild surges of gradient heat buried beneath the sea — of the long fissures of magma basting into the immense pressure of the depths, just twelve feet of water equaling the pressure of miles of air, and deeper still into a fantastic weight. In a week, back in Iceland for the conference on plate tectonics, he’d relax and think things over. He’d think only about geothermal system problems, precise yet still earthly and ultimately ungraspable. He’d take the boat out to the site of their study and dive with his colleagues. He’d gone down before in the Alvin — the only thing between his life and those tremendous pressures, a rubber gasket on the door. Pure titanium walls, five thick feet of it, but all that came between life and death was that gasket. He loved Iceland. There was no end to the amount of warmth they could tap from the earth — absolutely free. It was never cold inside a home in Iceland. The price: fantastic volcanic instability, the insecurity of knowing that at any moment, any day, the whole place might go up in a blast. He was at his door. His hand was on the knob. He had so much to do. He had to think it all over and come to some conclusion.