Norman Rush - Subtle Bodies

What in the name of fuck was the Vale? It looked like an establishment that had come through a time machine with stuff clinging to it from different eras. It was built in a lovely swamp. It was the place she could get a taxi to carry her up to the castle, she’d been told, so she loved it. She toiled forward. Her next roll-on carryon would have larger wheels. That would be superior when rolling your belongings through muck.

She was too tired. She had spent the night in Kingston in a motel from hell. She thought, I stayed in a room that was rejected by the people who made The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari because it was too scary: I’m going to tell Ned that.

She had to get to Ned. And she had to look good.

“This happened,” Gruen said. “Where you were, I don’t know. This was thirty minutes ago.”

Ned said, “I was indisposed. Go ahead.”

Gruen said, “Well, this happened. Outside the kitchen there’s a deck and a hatch and stairs that lead down to another deck. On the lower one you’re out of sight and private and you can enjoy the sound of the creeks the livelong day. So there Iva was on a bench and looking very shaky to me. I asked if she was all right and she stood up and asked if I was a smoker by any chance.

“Well I am, I hate to admit. I’m way cut down, but I am. I said something about this being a time when you can be forgiven if you take a drag or two. And I told her, which was the truth, that I didn’t have any smokes on me.

“So she said Here, I’ll give you one. I only have two. We’ll share. We’ll split and later you’ll get a pack for me when you go to the store next. Oh, and Marlboro is what I prefer but it doesn’t matter.

“And she took a lighter out of her pants pocket and then right in front of me she pushes her hand into her cleavage and comes out with two Marlboros and gives me one. It was warm and it smelled like her. I was pretty stunned but I pretended that this was the way I always got my cigs, of course. So we lit up, tra la! I was sorry for her. She smoked the thing like a machine.”

Ned said, “Outré,” which was not a word he’d used since 1974.

Gruen said, “Some people are kind of magnificent. Just an observation.”

Ned was running. It was downhill and steep and the road was what it was and he was trying to be careful. Nina was at the Vale, waiting for him. The message had come to the house. Elliot had gotten it. The message was that she could get a taxi but only as far as some bridge, so she was waiting for someone from the estate to come down in a car and pick her up at the store, unless that was unreasonable. When Elliot read him the message Ned turned south and began to run. He could get down to the Vale faster than he could organize the loan of a car. Also he wanted to run. Nina was insane to do this, but she was here.

It was safer to run on the crown of the road than in the ruts or on the margin. How was she going to like all this forest primeval, so dank, so endless. She was insane.

She was going to be a wreck, exhausted, how would she look?

Now everything was going to be impossible, but better.

Ned turned onto the spur path that led to the Vale’s parking area and he could see Nina there. He halted to get his breath. She had seen him and was waving as she mounted a low, broad tree stump at the edge of the lot. She began posing. The stump was a plinth for herself as a living statue representing Wrath. She put a fist on her hip and raised her other fist high in the air. The upraised fist became a claw. She was crazy. But it was going to be all right. She was letting him know he was forgiven, definitely. Yes, she was, she was letting him know. The old burgomaster was on the porch in his wheelchair. She didn’t care who saw what she was doing. There was something to be said for a little idiosyncrasy in the world. Her carryon was leaning against the stump, mud-caked.

She looked fine. Her black hair was done up in a tall bun whose crest was visible over the crown of her head. It was unusual for her, and probably intended to make her look taller, like the heels on the cowboy boots she was wearing.

He was close now. He could see that her eyes were done. She knew how to do makeup when she wanted to, by god. She was wearing tight new jeans and her fringed buckskin jacket, which carried a definite cowgirl reference, which was all right. The rather fierce first impression her small sharp face could give was softened by fatigue.

He jumped up onto the stump with her and embraced her so hard they tottered for a moment.

“I came here to kill you,” she said.

“I know. I know. I’m sorry.”

“How sorry are you?”

“So sorry, but we’re forgiving each other, right?”

“Not yet. I’m not going to kill you, I’m going to fuck you.”

“Absolutely.”

“That is your punishment.”

“I know. And I’m so sorry the way I left. My heart is shaking.”

He was squeezing her. He was full of joy. They had to get down from there. She was pressing his crotch with the back of her hand. She did anything she wanted to. He wasn’t hard. Afloat, he felt afloat .

“Hm,” she said.

“Don’t worry, my dear.”

He pulled her hand up and against his chest. He said, “Feel my heart.”

“Feel mine,” she said, and pressed his hand against the front of her bright yellow linen shirt, his favorite.

They had to stop this.

He renewed his embrace in order to keep his balance.

“Unhand my behind,” she said.

They had decided to proceed by stages up to the property, pulling her luggage and stopping to rest as much as they needed to, taking their time and talking, catching up. She’d said she loved all the trees, but described them as excessive, to make him laugh. She wasn’t above using a witticism twice if she thought he’d missed it the first time or had insufficiently appreciated it. She had no shame about it, in fact she thought doing that was funny.

They were at the bridge. She said, “I want to tell you something so I can forget it. You can help me. I had to squeeze past a woman in the aisle on the plane and I thought she was making a face at me so I made a face back at her, just before I realized she was exophthalmic. I feel awful. I want you to make it fade from my mind. I want it to fade so completely there’s not a trace. So make it fade.”

“I’m doing it.”

Nina said, “Tell me when it’s completely gone.”

They laughed.

They were kissing again. “It’s good you didn’t wear lipstick,” he said.

“Thinking ahead,” she said. She was neatening him up. She’d once said that makeup was advertising for your vagina and hers was taken. He’d liked that remark even if it wasn’t serious, because she was his.

One thing he’d learned from her, that she’d learned from the burgomaster, was that there was another road, a much longer back way up the hill that avoided the torrents and was used by trucks and emergency service vehicles. And she had brought him up to date on the Convergence. There was a solid consensus that the talking points would use Invasion but not Anglo-Saxon Invasion. He’d taken the position that that was what it was going to be, literally, even if the Spaniards were brought in to put a mustache on it. It was going to be Americans, Brits, and a few Australians but no French.

They crossed the bridge. Nina wanted to know what Douglas had meant when he said he lived in a dying forest.

Ned said, “He was being melodramatic. There was an ash blight. The other trees were fine. And maples were the successor species, so it ended up greener than before.”

Ned moved his attention to the urgent question of accommodations, meaning a decent bed, not a cot, and privacy. It had to be solved.