Yelena Akhtiorskaya - Panic in a Suitcase

Breath held at the entrance onto the bridge, which their Honda Accord took swimmingly. Silence was maintained for the rest of the drive. At one point, after making a few unhappy circles, Levik pulled over in front of a garage entrance, was honked at, drove a little ways, and pulled over again. Reaching for the glove compartment, he accidentally brushed Marina’s knee and recoiled. A second attempt was maneuvered with caution. The GPS was installed in a few spasmodic motions. Suzanna guided the rest of the way to the opera restaurant. A crowd had already gathered. Levik slumped as if he were sitting in his office chair and said, Davai.

Marina didn’t respond. She sat in dire fear of being spotted by one of her friends.

Please go, said Levik, receiving no reply, which, after a few seconds, became a reply. An increasingly desperate barrage of appeals followed. Get out of the car, he beseeched. Just go! Marina maintained the silence on her end. Levik’s back rounded like a tire. Propping his elbow on his thigh, he gently tipped his cheek into his hand and shut his eyes. Through heavy lids, in a whisper, he said, Marina, are you going in there or not?

Take me home, she said.

Why are you being such a — a stubborn! he screamed. His foot slammed on the gas, and the Honda nearly missed a passing car. An explosion of honks almost kept Marina from noticing that Asya Brukhman, whose anniversary it was, was fast approaching with a giant smile, a hand raised in greeting.

The ride back to Brooklyn was calm. A resigned air set in, Levik’s preferred atmosphere. They were going home — was that such a terrible thing? He became so relaxed that after recrossing the Brooklyn Bridge he began to whistle softly, not quite noticing it himself. The truth was that he hadn’t wanted to go to the anniversary party, sitting for hours on end in a restaurant, making tired conversation while his wife pranced about, getting progressively drunker and more unruly. Now they could go home, he could go back to part three of the Nostradamus docudrama. He let himself believe that Marina’s anger was mild and fleeting, that she, too, was enjoying the languor of the drive.

The situation became delicate as Brighton neared. Levik slowed to a crawl when it came time to contemplate parking. It wasn’t in his interest that they vacate the vehicle. Only then would he learn the extent of the damage. A performance, he knew, was unavoidable. What he expected: a quickened pace, more ignoring, perhaps taking different elevators and forgoing inquiries as to tea/coffee preference. What he didn’t expect: Marina dashing off in her strappy heels in the direction of the beach, over which an impenetrable fog had settled, the kind of raw, curdled air that made fiery Saturns out of streetlamps, a field day for slugs, a density of atmosphere that in the past few years had become synonymous with late springtime in Brooklyn and which was portrayed far too romantically in Italian cinema classics.

Either Marina was deliberately not responding to frantic shouts of her own name or she was outside hearing range, having dashed farther than Levik could imagine anyone dashing in those shoes on a night like this. Though, knowing his wife, she’d already kicked them off. The ocean became fantastically loud when you were deprived of the sense of sight. Levik heard its roar to every side of him, which meant he was already disoriented. He realized that he wasn’t moving but standing in one spot, shouting Marina, Marina! and at the same time holding out his arm, not entirely convinced it was his. There was an echo, Marina, Marina! And then he was no longer shouting her name, his throat refusing to project a voice. He pushed, but the voice got snagged on something in his chest. He held out his arm and let it drop and hang limply, hoping his legs didn’t cave. It was funny when you thought about it: fog. That’s all it was, soft, harmless fog. And yet Levik couldn’t force his feet to move or chest to steady or throat to produce a sound. This was what they called terror, and it was seizing him for no identifiable reason within several blocks of his home, where he would’ve killed to be right then, stirring two spoons of instant coffee into Marina’s cat mug and pouring freely the nonfat milk. Reminded of Camus’s The Stranger , a book he’d read as a foolish young man with lots of brown curls and the inclination to like things he didn’t fully understand, and even so he hadn’t liked that book. Why, then, was it so often on his mind? The accompanying image was Munch’s The Scream .

Suddenly his arm came into view, as if someone had blown the dust off. It was thin and smooth, with a cold, even shine. Someone kept blowing, and the arm kept extending, growing longer and thinner while remaining defiantly rooted in murk. Levik shut his eyes and heard the chaotic ocean, opened them and saw a railing, an empty trash can, slanted boards intersecting his feet, a bench, then two, then three…. The fourth bench had knees and a messy blond bun. He was able to gradually reduce the distance between himself and that bench.

She just lay there. Her hair had exploded, now taking up ten times the usual space. It reached through the cracks, as if growing in the damp darkness between planks. If she sensed a presence over her, she didn’t stir. He came around, pushed her bare feet in to make some space, and sat. She made a few adjustments, found a more comfortable position, and was motionless again. For a moment Levik felt insane, as if something horrible were happening, but if he didn’t move everything could seem like the height of normalcy, as if he were a child wandering a department store after getting separated from his mother, attaching himself to any serviceable hem. Then he realized everything was fine, no one had died, he was still very close to home, even closer than before by approximately thirteen meters. The night was warm, and he could take this moment to breathe, maybe even contemplate something peaceful while directing his gaze into the distance, though there still wasn’t much of it.

He clapped Marina’s knee. Time to go, he said.

Don’t touch me, she said. Her voice was inviting, supple. Yet again she demonstrated mastery of the contradictory tone/content maneuver, which was spiderlike and had a paralyzing effect on the victim. She inhaled deeply. You know what I’d like to be? she said.

How could he know?

Homeless.

Maybe one day, said Levik. Not tonight.

This is so much better than being inside, so much more serene, don’t you think? And such a sense of freedom. I’d do well as a street lady — I think I’d have a knack for it. For one thing, I’ve never had trouble obtaining free food. I have enough imagination. You know that I never register temperature change. Hot, cold, it’s all the same to me. And it’s not like I’m particularly hygienic. In fact, there must be homeless people out there more hygienic than me. Forget the street. I’d stay on this very bench. Lie under the stars. Listen to the ocean. Do you think it’s saying something? Do you think it’s communicating?

No.

Listen, she said.

The ocean isn’t saying anything.

Marina’s head popped up, her mouth already twisted by an idea. Here goes, thought Levik, wincing in preparation.

We never decided — Paris or Rome?

Levik shuddered. If the ocean is communicating, he said, it’s saying, Go home, drink some tea, lock your doors. It’s unhappy with us and making it very clear. As long as we’re here, there’s no telling what will happen. Maybe that Cumbre volcano in the Canary Islands finally erupted and caused a massive landslide. A tsunami is headed our way as we speak.

What difference does it make where we are, then? said Marina.

Don’t you want to see your daughter one last time?