Alvaro Enrigue - Hypothermia

The Captain shifted into first gear and got rolling. In spite of the ugly domestic shipwreck that Verrazano had already related to him, he felt sure that work and operations aboard the Outrageous Fortune would go smoothly. The mood inside the forecastle was heavy, so he decided to risk a joke to lighten things up. He figured that the wretched Horowitz needed to understand that desertion is simply part of being a devoted sailor. They’d hardly left the plant when he tried to break the ice. With the utmost solemnity he said: So, it sounds like your old lady got tired of eating real Polish sausage and decided to go for the little Bedouin dates instead. Verrazano couldn’t control himself and burst out laughing. Drake didn’t react, so the Captain attacked the other man to show whose side he was on: I don’t know what you’re laughing at, fat ass. My slutty old lady says Italians got dicks the size of olives. The response was immediate, the same flurry of insults as every other day. Horowitz heard it as if from behind a waterfall. He had no desire to do anything, so he closed his eyes, hoping to sleep a little before they started dancing with the trash cans. Suspended in a drowsy darkness he heard very little after the Captain, believing him sound asleep, began to enjoy discussing the that amazing bit about the shit in the bed. In a serious voice he asked: How old do you think his little boy is? About three, the fat man answered. I wonder, said the old man, if he was standing there watching while her loverboy squeezed it out. Man, when he saw the size of that turd I bet he started clapping. Drake’s eyes flew open, stricken with rage. He saw the Captain’s shocked face for a moment before covering it with his hand and smashing the man’s head against the window. Without loosening his grip on the driver, Horowitz grabbed the wheel with his right hand and pulled the truck off the highway. He yanked the hand brake, and when he felt the truck come to a complete stop, continued slamming the old man’s head against the window until the glass was covered in blood. Verrazano stared at him in disbelief — truly surprised, perhaps, for the first time. This is a mutiny, Drake told him, his left hand still gripping the Captain’s face, his right hand fishing in the bag for his rifle. Whose side are you on? The fat man didn’t have to think twice: I’m for the people, he said. He took out the gun himself and pointed it at the Captain. Sorry, Cappy, but we’ve got a new set of rules.

They gagged him with duct tape, then bound his hands and feet with electrical cable. The old man offered no resistance. With obvious pleasure, Horowitz set him in the middle of the front seat and took over the wheel. They hadn’t gone very far when Verrazano asked Horowitz what they were going to do with him. We’re going to maroon him on an island. Then we’d better hurry, before the traffic picks up. They took the next left. Drake stopped the truck in the middle of the road. Between the two of them they carried the old man to the bushes. I’ll let the police know you’re here, Verrazano promised when he was sure that Horowitz was out of earshot. Before starting the truck again, Drake took a black flag from his duffel bag and tied it by two of its corners to the antenna on Outrageous Fortune .

What followed was barbarous depravity and cruelty: hot pursuit, ramming and boarding, assault, robbing and setting fire to a liquor store. Their broadsides against three parked minivans earned sufficient notoriety that for weeks afterward, housewives in the D.C. metro area would panic at the mere sound of a garbage truck rumbling by. Their spree lasted only a few, short hysterical hours. By noon they were already prisoners of their own catastrophe.

Heading north on a lightly traveled road with Verrazano at the wheel, they moored the ship on a backwater bend. Drake offered the only gambit he was willing to play: With what we’ve done today, you’re gonna spend the rest of your life in jail, he said. He unfolded the chart and indicated a salt marsh in Chesapeake Bay. The only way to get there, he continued, is by following neighborhood streets. We can probably reach the place before they catch us. There’s a big old marina, sticks way out into the sea. It’s not used anymore. My dad took us there fishing sometimes. The fat man gathered what was left of his wits: I’ve got friends in prison. I’m sure I could make others once we’re inside. Besides, I promised the Captain I was going to let someone know which island we stranded him on. Drake shrugged his shoulders. His companion added apologetically: There’s nothing else we can do, Horowitz, my sympathy for your pain only goes so far. Then help me pilot the ship until we get there. I’d be delighted. Without saying another word, Horowitz left the forecastle and climbed the ladder to the poop deck. After bringing the ship about, Verrazano set a northeasterly course under full sail. For Drake the highway was the fresh, clean, wide-open sea. Tightly gripping the deck rail, he felt the sun on his face, the wind against his chest, and breathed the putrid smell of corruption rising from the bilge.

After reaching a certain size, a secret generates a zone of silence around the one who carries it. Like a refrigerator, it has its own microclimate that people can poke their heads into but where no one else can remain. Every so often someone opened the door, the light would go on, and he would smile — his teeth like Tupperware containers — waiting patiently for the door to close again. What he wasn’t sure about was whether he viewed reality as he did, like some prerecorded event, because he was leading a double life, or if his divergence from the world he inhabited since moving to the suburbs had led naturally to the strange condition of his feeling as though he were hiding in plain sight, the result of spending a certain amount of each day in secrecy. The question was: had his deficiencies led him to become a refrigerator or were they one more eventuality in his destiny as a refrigerator?

It came out during one of his first Thursday therapy sessions: The suburbs serve to protect the rest of the country from the peculiarities of the city, so those of us who live in them can’t escape our own insulated condition; we’re the martyrs of refrigeration, we cut a swath of mediocrity, and the daily commute from home to the city and back again allows the values of the rest of the country to remain exactly as they were when the Puritans stepped off the Mayflower to found the nation.

He didn’t mention the part about feeling like a refrigerator; it was such a silly simile that he was a bit embarrassed about it, but sometimes he could feel the water pitchers, the vegetable crisper, and the slightly rancid cheese all sitting on his shelves. Nor did he mention it to Rob, his neighbor, the day when they discussed the problem of the suburbs. The weather was so hot that he felt like he was trapped inside a bubble from which it was impossible to make himself understood.

It went like this: he was crouched down planting belenes when he heard Rob say his name — or rather, that hollow, tortured sound he was now accustomed to identify with himself. He didn’t raise his head because he didn’t feel like it. Nor would he have done so at all but for the sweat dripping into his eyes; the moment after his neighbor insisted on tormenting the vowels in his name, he happened to have to wipe them with the back of one of his gardening gloves.