Dylan Nice: Other Kinds

On a day hot enough to make the new shingles tacky, I told him I was going someplace else.

“You already moved out,” he said.

“I mean far away,” I said.

“You’ll need work,” he said. “Know what you’ll do for work?”

He said work and meant work — money had nothing to do with what work was.

The next fall I started in on a two-year stint of shooting whiskey and snorting cocaine with some actual rich kids who took my drawl as something I’d invented to distinguish myself. I loosened up with my money, my words got faster, and there was no way to tell the difference between me and them. Our hands were soft, we talked about lifestyle, and we all hated a very specific part of ourselves. These kids asked questions — they saturated your thoughts with their informed analysis of the world, and no matter where I went, I felt crowded. My apartment was a replica of a place that might be home, a self-consciously executed attempt at romance where I hosted people I knew I would never miss.

The seasons were long and less graceful than in the mountains. On a hungover autumn day so dry it burned my eyes, I got a card in the mail. I had never told her where I went; the forwarding address was written in my father’s hard-pressed hand.

For a while, I thought about burning it where I stood. Then I thought maybe I could open it like a normal person, smile at the sentiment, and display it on my kitchen table. I dug my finger under the flap while I walked back into the apartment. I could tell it was from the faith section of the card store. It was subtle, but the front had a big landscape that evoked transcendence.

It didn’t say much more than happy birthday with the suggestion she was alone again.

Already far out of town, I stopped at a gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes and fill the tank. I stood by my truck, smelling the gasoline in the heat and remembering all the heat I’d ever felt. Big trucks were coming by bright and fast and disappearing back into the flatness. The light at the edge of the sky was orange and thick with twilight. The gusts from the semis pulled at my clothes and I could see the men inside, their faces dark while they sat still and drove fast. They found work, driving to some place they didn’t know and then back toward the last thing they remembered being good.

The tide had receded and left pools of water between the rocks. The rocks were slick as he walked across them. Some of the others laughed in a group at the top of the beach. They would see he was walking to be alone now. One of them wore her hair black and straight down the white of her shirt. He tried not to listen for her.

He walked far enough not to hear any more. The rocks were worked in tight against each other by the ocean. Just ahead there was splashing. In a pool between two rocks were eels with holes for gills and purple skin. They were moving in places he couldn’t see through the sand they stirred. After a moment, he saw their mouths locked, their bodies curled together. The two eels straightened; they bit their mouths hard together and spun in a circle. They spun and curved until there was just a gap between their tails. The fight pushed them both in the same direction.

Later he found her on the boat, sitting near the railings. She didn’t move to look at him. The way she moved had been saying nothing to him for a long time. He told her he had seen the eels.

“They were locked at the mouth,” he said. “They were spinning in circles, fighting.”

“Maybe they were lovers.”

“Still,” he said.

She lay down, closing her eyes. The sun was getting strong — it was still early. Her hair ran over her shoulder and led farther down her. He got up to circle the deck. There was the ocean with its currents and salt. The boat bobbed, anchored in the water. The girl lay there and breathed and he knew she wasn’t thinking the things he did. He moved to the places he could.

The girls talked of weddings and vacations, and Tom sat against the red wall at the end of the booth and said nothing.

One girl sat across from him, but she had her head turned toward the other people. Her hands were small with unpainted nails and she kept them still on the table. It was calming, how small her hands were. She and the girls were students with Tom at a big university with plain buildings along a river. The girl with the small hands talked fast. She had fair skin and dark hair which she kept short. Her teeth were round in the way Tom thought girls’ teeth were.

She was engaged and wore a diamond with red stones around it. The wedding would be in the summer, on the coast in the north. There was going to be a white house with the gray of the ocean worn into it. The girls asked her questions. She smiled and answered them simply.

He listened to the music and was angry for having nothing to say to her or the other girls. After a while he heard them talking about going to another bar.

Other students walked in polos or cocktail dresses because it was warm. There was enough wind that the clouds moved fast above the buildings. The town was on the plains and the flatness there changed the shape of the sky. It had been smaller at home. The wind felt different coming in from the emptiness out there — it was like he was standing at the spot where the world began to get round. He was exposed.

Tom walked slower so he could be close to the engaged girl. He walked just behind her and watched the light from the street lamps and what it did on her hair.

“Why are you quiet tonight?” the girl, Elise said.

“I try to think of things to say but nothing so far,” Tom said.

“And why do you think that is?” Elise said.

“I’m not sure. Everyone is talking so much.”

She was quiet after this but Tom didn’t try to understand why. When he did talk, he didn’t like the things he said. Tom was used to people talking slowly about serious things. Men sat at dark-stained tables with smoke hanging in front of them. They said things that sounded like scripture, like it had all been thought about long and hard and decided upon.

She walked beside him but quiet now. The sidewalks were lit with orange lights and colored signs in windows. There were brick streets and buildings with paintings on the walls. The paintings were of children sometimes or mountains and landscapes with something like a man or an airplane to show you how big everything was.

Tom felt good looking down at her while she walked beside him. He liked seeing her hair and the curve of her cheek. He liked not seeing her face but only remembering it for now.

The next bar had holes in the ceiling with wires hanging out. The girls took a booth and two guys came over from the bar. They wore bright shirts with buttons and styled their hair. Tom was against the wall and across from Elise again. He knew she was a girl who would answer his questions with other questions. She would want an example of what he was saying. He would try and talk about cloudy, vague things — he made a fog to cover everything but just the edges of something incredible or terrible happening.

He remembered a news story he saw earlier and how Elise might be interested. The story was about a baby born with six fingers on each hand. The doctor in the story said the fingers on this baby were so perfect it was a long time before anyone noticed them.

“Will they remove them?” Elise asked.

“No,” Tom said. “His hands are more perfect than ours. Six fingers is the stronger gene. It’s only that it’s rare.”

“Then how is it stronger?” she said.