Joshua Ferris - The Unnamed

He drifted over to where the crowd was thinner and rested his head against the wall and dozed standing despite the enormous sound.

To his surprise, she clung to him desperately outside the venue. She broke down in his arms while he worried that his clothes might smell.

“I’m sorry that it’s been so long.”

“You’re so thin,” she said, releasing him, but gripping his arms as if she feared that he might slip away.

They sat in a booth along the far wall of a Greek diner. Periodic voltage drops grayed the gold fixtures and darkened the cake display. Everyone at some point looked ceilingward.

She asked him if it was gone, and he said it wasn’t.

“Then how did you make the show?”

“I’ve been circling the city since you posted the tour dates. I turn around and walk back.”

“Without sleeping?”

“Part of the challenge, not sleeping.”

“When do you sleep?”

“When I get close enough.”

“And what do you do with your downtime?”

“Get closer.”

“And then you walk away again?”

He nodded.

“Isn’t that exhausting?”

He shrugged. “Gives the day its purpose,” he said.

It was an act of willful defiance, looping, circling back, keeping within a certain perimeter. It imposed a pattern on the random arrivals and departures, even if that pattern was just to see a show, or to pick up a few pieces of mail from a p.o. box. He was collecting p.o. boxes, he told her, all across the country.

“Speaking of which,” he said.

He unzipped the pack and brought out a freezer bag. He removed the two CDs he had ordered over the Internet. He showed her that he had uploaded them to his iPod as well. “I also have a concert tee and a poster of the show you did in San Francisco.”

She was surprised and touched. “You’re a good dad,” she said.

He demurred. “Just a fan.”

“I thought you only liked David Bowie.”

“That was in the room,” he said, remembering the months he spent in the hospital bed and the music she had introduced him to. “Out here I listen to everything.”

He put the CDs back in the freezer bag and returned them to the pack. The power dropped out again and didn’t return. There was a stir as people murmured and faded to shadows and shifted unsurely in the murk, as if from this point forward they would require absolute guidance as to how to proceed.

The waitress came over. “Your order didn’t go through, hon.”

“That’s okay,” said Becka. “Are you okay?” she asked him.

“I’m okay.”

“Can we just have some more coffee?”

He wondered, in the dim light, if his eyes had played tricks on him. The sundress was gone. There was nothing skinny about her.

“The last time we saw each other,” he said. “When was that?”

“I don’t remember,” she said.

“You were with your mom and Fritz.”

She shook her head slowly in the darkness. “I wasn’t with them.”

“You look wonderful,” he said.

“There’s more of me, anyway.”

He didn’t reply immediately. Then he said, “Does it still bother you?”

She puffed out her cheeks like someone about to burst, eyes popping wide. Then she settled into a grin shaded with resignation. “It’s my one go-around,” she said. “What do you do — hate yourself till the bitter end?”

“I’ve always thought you were the most beautiful girl in the world.”

“You’ve always been biased.”

“I’m glad you don’t hate yourself.”

“Acceptance,” she said. She shrugged. “It’s a bitch.”

Out in the parking lot she offered to give him a ride but he needed to be no place. Occasionally he stayed the night in a motel or at the YMCA and she tried to encourage him to do so that night but he said it was easy to fall back into the custom of television and a real bed, which later made his nights in the tent harder to reckon with. He was happier avoiding those places. And he no longer did cars.

“What does that mean, you don’t do cars?”

“They’re not an option,” he said. “If I need to be somewhere, I walk.”

“Not an option?” She rattled her enormous collection of keys in an unspoken admission that what he said was deeply strange to her. “Well, will you at least sit in the front seat with me a minute?” she asked. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

Her mother was sick. She had debated a long time over whether it made sense telling him. She knew his limitations and she didn’t want him to feel guilty about what was out of his hands.

“Is it serious?”

“It’s cancer.”

“I don’t know what that means,” he said.

“You don’t know what cancer means?”

“No, of course I know. I’ve just lost track.”

“Lost track of what?”

He paused. “What does the man say?”

“What man?”

“The man she married.”

“Michael?” she said. “She never married Michael.”

“She didn’t?” He was taken aback. “Why not?”

“I don’t know the details, Dad. She broke things off.”

How long had it been? He had lost track.

He looked out the window and down at the parking lot, a frivolous patch of blacktop into which one sprung toward a better destination or from which one departed in an onward spirit. But he would do neither. He would soon get out of the car and remain. Becka would drive away, and an empty evening ache would press down. And there was nothing he could do for either of them, for any of them.

He turned to look at his daughter. “There’s nothing I can do,” he said.

“I’m not asking you to do anything. I just thought you’d want to know.”

He shook his head. “I don’t,” he said.

He entered a town of cattle murals and savings banks where he bought a mocha frappuccino. He walked with the coffee drink between a double row of single-story houses, many of which were for sale. The gate to one hung open. The realty sign was strangled under an unmown thicket and a stained mattress lay on the front porch.

He stretched out on the mattress and finished the mocha while watching a black squirrel with a frayed tail fitfully stalk the trees. A man with a cane came out of the house opposite. He sat on the porch and turned to his left, then to his right, then to his left again, with the cane between his legs and his hands on top of the brass handle. Then he stood, and with the deliberation of a man whose life had narrowed to a single task, he broomed pooled water from the porch. He sat down again to inspect the neighborhood. Eventually he went back inside.

Tim rose from the mattress and left the yard. He went back into town, passing the murals on the sides of the buildings, mostly of cattle and horses but one of Native Americans. He stopped in a camping supply store and bought another pair of boots, adhesive reflector strips, a new tent, rain gear, energy bars, an additional base layer and pullover, and a compass. He replaced the old goods with his new purchases inside the pack.

To be more than the sum of his urges. Part of the challenge, not sleeping. Something guaranteed to expend his considerable energies and lend purpose to the day. He loved her. He had always loved her. To return to her before she died — that would be the last thing ever required of him.

He started off at the end of his next walk. He turned sluggishly until the compass pointed him east. He crossed the road at its instruction and angled across a field of forage grass to a creek and walked along the bank against the downstream current. The water rippled white. He wanted to sleep. His exhaustion was that of a field soldier who debated whether or not living was worthwhile under such circumstances. But it was only his first day. He couldn’t quit on his first day. He skirted a reservoir slower than shadow moves across a room. The black range in the distance stood against the sky like a spiked dinosaur.