Peter Buwalda - Bonita Avenue

My headache was gone, that’s how fast the blood drained from my brain. There was someone in the bathroom. A junkie with Christmas plans. A serial killer with Christmas plans. With two soft steps I stood at the door and pulled it farther open. The same terrible stench hit me like a ton of bricks. The bathroom was disproportionately huge, design overkill that played on the nouveau-riche thirst for luxury: suspended toilet, his-and-her washbasins, bathtub, water-tight shower whose sliding glass door, I noticed at once, was open.

The next moment there were flies — a swarm of metallic flies, a pestilential cloud that lifted off and, as if on command, alighted again. Pinching my nose, I approached the shower. The flies clung to a body that hung from a noose of orange nylon, the rope we used to fasten the boat. It was clothed; the torso was like soaked fruit in a lambswool sweater — it looked set to explode. The shins — swollen, festering, moist — bulged above the thick-laced hiking boots. The inside of the cubicle was smeared with dark wetness; in the corner, a toppled bucket. The head— his head. The rope, tied with a sturdy knot onto the hinge of the open vent, pulled it skew, the neck had an unnatural kink. The face—

I choked back my vomit. Aside from being bluish-green, the face was swollen, the tongue stuck out of the twisted, grimacing mouth. On the chin, a whopper of a scab. The left eye was closed, but not the right one, it bulged out. It was more out than in. It stared as though it had collected all the torment and agony that a person could suffer.

I puked before I reached the toilet. The contents of my stomach sloshed onto the plastic floor tiles between the cubicle and the bowl. I squatted, gagged twice more and stood back up. My head. My heart was up in my skull. I went over to the washbasins and turned on the faucet.

“Don’t cry, God damn it. Don’t.”

Cold water. I rinsed my mouth and my face. I stared into the drain. Paper: a piece of paper stuck out of his breast pocket. Had I seen it right? An envelope, a napkin?

I mustered all my courage and turned around. I took a step toward the shower. Without looking at the face, I reached for the breast pocket, first came up against the dead chest, felt the sluggish weight, and jerked back my hand. Panting, I grabbed hold of the doorpost. “Dad. What—” Then I took the body by the hips and held it tight.

It was an envelope. I brought it with me through the bedroom and upstairs to the deck. I sat down on the bench in the pilothouse and caught my breath. I tried to breathe normally, focusing on a red buoy off in the distance, where the bay met the ocean. Only when I started freezing — half an hour later, an hour? — did I look at my hand that still clasped the envelope. It was a standard size, it looked like it contained a postcard. My belly felt heavy. I tried to tear it open, but my fingers were trembling. And my head was about to explode. I laid the envelope on the table and got up. Suicide? What had happened to the fighter? I tipped a second packet of ibuprofen into my mouth and forced the powder down with spit.

Suddenly there was the barrage of questions, stupid ones and idiotic ones all jumbled up together. How did he get in? Did he have a key? Why did this have to happen? Did he already have the key when we got back from vacation? Did I have a knife? Or scissors. Couldn’t leave him hanging there like that. Why did he do it? Has anyone missed him yet? Mom? His department? Those flies had to go. Is it my fault? I had to lay him on the bed. That rope around his neck. Call the police? Why didn’t you call me? I had to go into Sainte-Maxime to find a police station. I had to call Val-d’Isère.

But I didn’t get up, I stayed put. “If you really had such a problem with it, Dad,” I said, “why didn’t you fuck ing come take it out on me?”

With barely functioning fingers, I opened the envelope. There was indeed a card inside, a repro of an old Sainte-Maxime poster, I’d bought it that summer and left it lying there, Jugendstil with a palm tree and a beach. Something was written in pen on the back; through my tears I could make out his surprisingly childlike handwriting. Instead of reading it, I tore the card into little pieces and threw the scraps overboard.

At Venlo he crosses the Meuse. Large ice floes hug the edge of the graphite water, a long barge carrying mountains of beige sand keeps a middle course. On both meandering banks he sees the provincial clusters where thousands of families will soon be waking up to the gray December light; for yet another consecutive night the snow covering has thickened. Aaron’s parents: didn’t they live in Venlo? He met them once, in their son’s house. Mild people with mild opinions. He should call Val-d’Isère, he had promised to call before leaving home. A message from a mild husband with mild opinions. As long as it keeps freezing. He rolls down the back window a bit farther.

Fumes penetrate the Audi, morning rush hour is under way, the roads become increasingly congested with truck traffic, heavy tires lisping their way through the salty brown slush. Since Duisburg he’s been stuck at a snail’s pace behind an Italian eighteen-wheeler, but he is still early. He hadn’t the energy last night to install the roof pod, so his skis are lying on the flattened passenger seat and the suitcases are in the back, stuffed with unironed pants and shirts; only now does it occur to him that what he’s wearing — a moth-eaten lambswool sweater, a dubious pair of jeans, and hiking boots — is out of character; he is, to put it mildly, quite a sight.

Day breaks off to the east, the ashen morning sky is like a ponderous announcement of the mining region he’s about to drive through. Don’t think about it . The image, it seems, is stored in countless caches in his memory, it comes hurtling at his retina from unexpected corners of his subconscious. Book a hotel in France. He forces himself to imagine a bed in Metz or Nancy where he can actually sleep for a couple of hours. Prepare himself for the normality of Val-d’Isère. A showered guest, duly attentive to his host and hostess. A few curative hours in a hotel room. Near the Belgian border he stops for gas, wipes snow from the windshield. Inside, in line for the cashier, he spreads his limbs in order to absorb as much warmth as possible. He strikes a strange pose there in line, halfway turned toward the car, never once taking his eyes off the Audi. He buys chewing gum, puts three pieces into his mouth.

His breathing is shallow. He crosses the border, nodding to a pair of chatting customs officers as he passes. Shouldn’t have drunk that rum. The moment he’s out of sight he floors it. For the past hour or so he has felt an unprecedented anxiety, his nerves are off-kilter, like somebody is jerking a brush through the tangled dendrites. He grits his teeth, but as soon as he releases the pressure his teeth start chattering. Avoid Liège, his rule of thumb: they always used to get hopelessly lost in this chaotic city. Drive around it. He wants to go to an anonymous place, an illogical place, somewhere that takes some trouble to reach. Belgium is reliably illogical; he has already taken a detour in order to be here.

The snow chains, why didn’t he bring the snow chains? They’re lying on top of the cupboard in Joni’s old room; earlier that night it seemed too risky to go upstairs, and after that it had slipped his mind. And now he’s driving in the Alps without snow chains. Or is it already thawing?

He is on a kind of ring road around Liège. Instead of heading south, to Metz, he decides to go west, he takes the A15 to Namur. It is impossible not to think about it. To block out the image he evokes substitute thoughts — pleasant thoughts, under normal circumstances — visions of off-piste skiing, of the copious meals Hans will prepare for them, of complex mathematical formulas — but they flutter away, they are too flimsy to accomplish much. He racks his brains for something stronger, something potent enough to convince himself that he is doing what he has to do, but he comes up empty-handed. He jams his index finger into his skinned chin.