Lydia Millet - Ghost Lights

At the same time he was noticing Gretel’s breasts, a caramel, tanned color, the scoops of them smooth and perfect where they emerged from the fabric of the bikini. He regretted his former indifference to whether T. was alive or dead; he was mildly astonished to recognize it. But he was more astonished at the beauty of the breasts, barely covered. They hid their light under a bushel. Men were not queued up beside Gretel’s beach umbrella, for instance, rubbernecking for a gander. The breasts were here, and yet their presence had not been widely broadcast, though it would clearly be of interest to the general public. He thought of crowds along city streets, waving and straining for a look at the Pope in his Popemobile.

Not so in this case. The breasts were unsung heroes.

Incredible that his own hands and mouth had been on them such a short while ago — a few hours, a couple of days’ worth of hours, anyway, many of them passed quickly in sleep. In geological time, it was a second ago — an instant. The sense memory of it. . no one was mentioning this. Neither he nor Gretel said to each other, right away, we are people who fucked, you fucked me and I fucked you, or made-fucking-love, or whatever. Instead it was as though this fucking had never taken place, and here they were discussing the status of a third party, one basically irrelevant to the fucking and its memory, in a separate compartment. Neither of them was bringing up her tits, her ass, how he had been all over all of them and also in the deep interior of her personal and individually owned body, to which he had no right at all but had been granted, for a few fleeting minutes, a provisional entry.

Neither of them was bringing up this list of items, these glaringly real items whose reality was greater, in fact, than most other realities, at the moment. At least for him. While genuinely regretting his callousness — which no one else knew of, and which was therefore a secret even more than what had passed between him and Gretel was a secret, because in that case she, at least, knew of it also, whereas no one at all knew how indifferent he had been to the alive- or deadness of T. (he was so grateful, as always, for the privacy of the mind) — he was far more interested in the fact that he did not want to escape from any of them, Gretel’s tits, her ass, even the softness and sweet, almost babyish smell of her inner-thigh skin. He wished it had not all happened in the dark, so he could have better recall, could see things as well as remember the feel of them. . but now the tits and the ass, the soft, musky thighs with their hideaway — or at least the darkness that had surrounded all of these during his only contact with them — were added to his list of regrets. Which was ridiculous. Regretting his indifference, which had actually hurt no one, and now regretting the darkness, which he had not chosen.

“I hope you don’t think badly of me,” he blurted, interrupting his own droning and semi-vacant narration of the events associated with T. He was bored of it.

“Of course not!” said Gretel. “What do you mean?”

He shrugged, awkward. Maybe there had been a tacit pact between them never to mention the sex, the adultery, whatever you wanted to call it. Now broken.

“Your friendship is important to me,” he said, lying. It was a lie, and yet not in spirit, because she was important to him — just not her friendship, per se, which was, given the logistics of their situation as well as the marital pairings, unlikely to the point of sheer impossibility. Could they be friends in theory, separate but aware? And what would be the point? “That’s all.”

“You don’t have to be embarrassed,” she said, and put her hand on his knee.

“It’s not a problem, then?”

“No problem,” she said, and smiled. She squeezed the knee lightly. It was as though she had nothing to hide, and nothing immoral or illicit had ever passed between them.

But the touch of her hand made him want to have sex again, with sudden desperation.

“ Mutti! Mutti! ” called a cornboy, and the two of them were running toward the umbrella, kicking up sand.

Gretel removed her hand, but not too hastily. Somehow her every movement was both graceful and casual. He wondered how she managed it.

“ Der hat eine grosse Qualle gefunden! ”

“A jellyfish,” she explained to Hal, and turned back to the boys. “Use your English! Did it sting anyone?”

“No.” They shook their heads.

“Good.”

“Coke please.”

“Me too.”

“How many Cokes have you already had today, Stefan?”

“Two.”

“Three,” tattled the Beta.

“That’s enough, then.”

“Please?”

“Please?”

She sighed.

“Look in my bag, then.”

They rummaged for money in her purse while she laid her head back and stretched her gleaming legs out beyond the umbrella’s shadow. “We haven’t lived in the States for that long, you know? They are still learning.”

“T. thought their English was very impressive,” said Hal, as the cornboys ran uphill again toward the poolside bistro. As he said it he felt the dynamic between them returning to normalcy, to the politeness of regular behavior. In the shift whatever had been intimate was lost, the raw, open thing between them was covered up and buried.

Which was an ending, but also a relief.

• • • • •

He tried Susan again from the telephone in his room, and she picked up on the third ring.

“Susan? I found him,” he told her, in a voice that was carefully solemn. Suspense.

“Oh my God,” said Susan, low. He heard her fear and felt a remorseful pang.

“He’s fine,” he said quickly.

“What?”

“He’s fine. He’s grown a beard.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. Really.”

She screamed on the other end. It sounded like she’d dropped the phone. It was a minute before she came back.

“I can’t believe it,” she said breathlessly. “Hal! I can’t believe you found him!”

“Seems he had an experience,” said Hal. “He has a new opinion about capitalism. He’s a changed man.”

“But he’s in one piece. He’s all there?”

“He’s physically fine. Thin though. You can see his ribs sticking out.”

“But so, so why didn’t he call me? What is he doing ?”

“I think he had a breakdown, or something. He may need help. In the readjustment process. He’s been living in the middle of nowhere like a hermit. No running water. Or electricity.”

“ T.? My God. I can’t believe this. So when is he — is he coming home soon?”

“We haven’t got it worked out yet. His tour guide died—”

“My God!”

“—is what happened. He was on a backpacking trip and he had to hike out alone. He got lost. It was a near miss, sounds like.”

“God! Get him to call me, then, Hal. Get him to call me right away. There are things I can still salvage, if he calls me now. I mean finances, legal situations. He would want me to, I know it. If I still can. I should try. Would you please?”

“I’ll try. But he’s not all there, Susan.”

“Just get him back here then. Get him back here. We’ll take care of him.”

It irritated him somehow, the assumption that T. would prove malleable in her hands and she could automatically mold him into his former shape.

“Who will? You will? You and Robert?”

There was a pause.

“I’m saying we need to have him taken care of, Hal. With access to services. Expertise and — and medication, if he needs it. It wasn’t so long ago he had his loss, you know. This is still fallout from that, I’m guessing. You know, his girlfriend — her dying was out of the blue. But he never did any bereavement counseling. None.”