Carole Maso - Ghost Dance

Until now it had been a fairly mild winter — sluggish like the South. I thought Jack had begun secretly to prepare for a time when all the seasons would melt together, blurring into one another, impossible to tell apart. A coolish summer would turn into a muddy, green autumn. A snowless Christmas would begin a warm winter, and when spring came he would hardly even notice it. The mind would sleep forever in a homogeneous stupor, unchallenged.

But with this storm some hope for the diversity of the future was renewed in him. He seemed alive now with the possibilities. What had rested so long in him was now awakened. He paced around the room as if I were keeping him on this violent evening from some urgent, private calling.

Early on there had been signs that this would be an evening of supreme winter, irresistible winter, winter the Québécois know, winter the blind man sees. “Prepare,” the wind had whispered into my drowsy ear in the morning light as Sabine turned a corner and boarded her plane. “Prepare,” its freezing breath had said, but there was no preparing for what was to come. Those who assumed such a stance did so to reassure themselves and to calm those around them. I was reluctant even to feign a pose of readiness. Sabine had felt it, too, I thought. She had come just in time.

“Put on your coat,” jack said finally, going to the closet. He was clumsy in his boots and heavy clothing. Though he knew this place by heart, he bumped into things, as if he’d never been here before. Together we had explored every inch of my small studio. We’d been up against every wall, under every table; wedged between the police lock and the door we continued to reach new heights of ecstasy.

“But, Jack.” My voice curled around his chest attempting with its lowest and most seductive registers to pull him toward the bed. “It’s below zero.”

“I like it,” he said, putting his huge hand on the windowpane. “I like it a lot.”

“But we’ll freeze.”

“Put on your coat, Vanessa.”

“Where are we going?”

He held out the coat and I put my arms into the sleeves. I knew this was the night that all our other nights together had been a rehearsal for, preparation. Once my coat was on, I sat back on the bed.

“All right,” he shrugged. “I don’t need this. Don’t come. I’ll see you, OK?”

“Don’t leave me,” I said.

“Hurry up, then. Hurry.” He dragged out the word as he said it, in some way contradicting its meaning. I recognized the tone of his voice. He had spoken to me a thousand times before as I had clawed at his clothing. “Hurry up,” he had moaned, “please.” It was the way he sometimes told me to put in my diaphragm. His voice was a whisper, a cry. “Please, Vanessa, hurry.”

“Are those real boots?” he asked. “There’s three feet of snow out there already, Vanessa.”

“Kiss me,” I said with such authority that he obliged. As he slipped his tongue into my mouth, I could feel him beneath his coat, growing large. My hand moved through the layers of clothes.

“Not now, Vanessa,” he whispered. His mouth was hotter than any mouth should have been on such a night. “Not now.

“This is the night we’ve been waiting for,” he said, wrapping a scarf around my neck. Sure, I smiled, and locked the door.

Jack dragged me like one of those reluctant dogs through the crooked Village streets. “Isn’t this great? Isn’t this wild?” he kept asking. “This is what we’ve been waiting for,” he said, not without sadness, patting me on the back.

“You’re hurting me, Jack,” I complained as he pulled me across the icy park, “and I’m cold.”

“Don’t give up now,” he said. “You’ve come so far already.” His breath had shape; I saw three white pillars in the cold. “Let’s have a drink,” he said, motioning up the block. Light from a sign spilled through the snow. It blinked, “Corner Bistro, Corner Bistro, Corner Bistro.” Neon made me sad. It reminded me of people who had lost their way — drifters, the homeless. I was more lonely than I can ever remember being before, standing under that sign in the snow while Jack lit a cigarette. I thought we paused too long under it, and I pulled at his wool coat. I hated to think of that sign lighting the freezing night for no one. It was a small, inexplicable grief, an uneasiness that lingers long after the actual thought has passed and is replaced.

As we walked into the warmth of the bar, the few people inside turned and stared at us. Lonely, they seemed jealous of what they mistook in our faces for love. In the lines of our bodies they read a great romance, but they misread badly. They missed the point. It was something else that had brought us together, something far more immediate than love, less abstract.

Sitting at the bar, I thought I saw disgust, even hate, in Jack’s face, but it was only a passing shape. And in my face I knew there was great weariness: I wanted now only to rest.

“What would you like to drink?” he asked.

“I don’t want a drink tonight, Jack.”

“Are you sure?” he asked. “Are you sure?” In snow light I saw the passion that contoured his face.

“Yes,” I said. We slid along the freezing streets, moving more and more quickly. Desire was the terrible friction between our bodies. It syncopated our conversation. It propelled us into places we could not get out of. We followed it forward, dragging ourselves through dangerous terrain.

Who was he, I wondered? Whose life was this that I hung on to so tenaciously? He had refused to tell me even the smallest details of his life — what his real name was, where he lived, where he worked, what his family was like.

Did he have children? “Invent me,” he had said. “I will not exist if you do not invent me.”

It was snowing harder now and the wind kept changing direction. We were nearing the harbor. Our boots made black tracks in the snow. The ice was smooth and thick and treacherous.

“I can’t go any further, Jack,” I said, collapsing.

He pulled me up. “Believe me. You can.”

The violence of the seasons invigorated him. I pictured him energetic in the brutal heat of the city summer, concentrated in autumn’s excessive beauty, sexual in the torrential rains of spring. But we would never see the spring, I thought.

“Come on, Vanessa,” he said.

I was up to my thighs in snow. It was exhausting to walk through so much white. I was so tired. “You’re leaving me tonight, aren’t you? Why are you leaving me?” I said numbly.

He stopped. He was breathing hard. “Oh, Vanessa,” he gasped. “Don’t you see?” We had reached the water. “It is you who is leaving me.”

The wind whirled us in a convulsive dance. We staggered around each other in hopeless circles.

“No!” I cried, looking up at the ceiling of stars.

“Vanessa,” he said, weaving, swerving. “I have invented your life so many times. But usually the ending is sad.”

“It doesn’t surprise me,” I said. We neared each other, then pulled away. “I’m not surprised!” I shouted above the wind. We collided. He took me by the arms. “You can change the ending, Vanessa.”

We walked out onto the crystal pier. Water rose and fell around us in violent waves. I was freezing to death. I heard the lighthouse’s lonely snow tone. Ice floated by. “Look,” I said. “I see a white light.”

“Where?”

“Out there. I see a white light. A red light. A white light.” The water calmed.

“Yes,” he said. “I see it now, too.”

I was at peace. I turned around. Before my eyes the West Side Highway seemed to open like a field. I arranged the last few objects on the landscape. I looked at Jack. His eyes gleamed like ice.

The headlights of a car came up from behind. “No,” I cried. I felt something hug me like a vice. On impact the man in the car must have been hurled forward. I screamed and screamed, feeling some excruciating force enter me again and again in the snow. I was being slammed over and over. “Oh, God!” I cried.