Donald Antrim - The Verificationist

For now, however, I was thinking about black-haired Rebecca and the War for Independence, and about how, in an insignificant battle fought not far from my home in this war, I once stabbed a man, sort of; and about how that man turned out to be a certain girl’s father; and about how this girl, this young woman, I should say, came to share intimate family knowledge with me, while, in the mist surrounding us, a legion of presumably friendly, well-intentioned wraiths abandoned their gravesites in order to crouch down in the matted grass and have loud coitus. Shall I risk my professional reputation and insist that this was what I heard? Would I be going, as Maria with her dead tooth likes to point out at every opportunity, too far? I opened my eyes and looked around and saw — not much. Keep in mind that the fog was thick, impressively so. We could not, Rebecca and I, see much of anything beyond each other or our own hands, though we could hear kissing and sighing, ominous noises prevailing in the darkness, gentle thumps and the unsettling echoes of bodies moving and shifting and touching, men and women breathing into one another’s mouths at the point before orgasm.

Or was this more likely the wind echoing from hillside to hillside, making low moans in the rain?

“We should get out of here. We’re going to get soaked. I’m cold. I don’t like it out here. I want to go back to the restaurant. I want to go home!” Rebecca cried out to me.

Home? Was this my Young Woman of Strength?

“I don’t like it out here. Why are you talking to me about dead people? You’re scaring me. You want to frighten me so I’ll sleep with you! But I won’t sleep with you! I’m saving myself for Johnny! Johnny loves me. We’re going to have a family together, a family of boys who will grow up to be men, and I’m going to be a doctor like Johnny’s father, a real doctor with a medical degree and a stethoscope! Take me back. Please. ”

“Okay.”

“What time is it anyway? How long have we been out here? Tom? I’m going to get fired.”

“You won’t be fired,” I promised, and felt somewhat sad on her account, glad on the other hand that I was nominally an adult and not a teenager in a crummy job; and I told her, “It’s not late.”

But it was. The wee hours approached. It was, it must’ve been, near the time for our inaugural pancake gathering on the south side of town to wind down and, well, end.

What exactly was the hour? Was it after midnight? Before? How much before? How late after?

Leaving the sacred battlefield mound was, luckily, a straightforward proposition. All it required was a little willpower. How nice it might be if everything in life could be accomplished by wishing. How sweet, too, if wishing achieved its own ends.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay here and lie down and, hmm, maybe fool around for a minute?” I asked her. And why not make this passing inquiry? There’s nothing wrong, most of the time, with trying. I should say that I did not expect an answer. I was, after all, a man wearing a ring. What would Rebecca see in this husband in his middle years, neither young nor old, and yet, as I imagined it, decrepit in her eyes, so bald and so out of shape, this cripple hobbled by back pain?

“Let’s go,” I commanded her, and, hand in hand, in tandem, we rose from the ground into the gray mist, aiming our heads to the right, banking northward. “Did you remember to bring the thermos?” I asked Rebecca as we glided high enough to locate — as we had on our trip out — through the fleeting openings in clouds, the shining river where, long ago, the young lieutenant drowned.

“Got it.”

But enough about medium-altitude astral projection and the faintly ludicrous picnic appurtenances. Suffice it to say that Rebecca and I found ourselves returned to the Pancake House — where, under the radiant lights hanging from the grimy, tiled ceiling, the situation was no longer what it had been a short time earlier. Not at all.

Dan Graham had disappeared from his place by the aquarium. I could not, looking down from my high perch beneath an omelette pan, find him among the people below. Plenty of smoke filled the room near the ceiling, suggesting that Dan had not been gone long. Perhaps he was in the men’s room. Wherever Dan was, it was a relief to know that the fish were, for the time being, safe from capsizing.

Behind the candy counter, off to the far side of the aquarium and partly hidden from view, young Bob and young Katharine were in a clinch. I could not see below the trainees’ waists, but I could tell that Bob had weaseled — or should I say “lemured”?—his hands into Katharine’s blouse; and, judging from the fabric bunched up as if yanked out of place by hooks between the girl’s shoulder blades, I’d say he had her bra undone.

Mike and Elizabeth had made progress in their budding relationship. This pair, each married to a spouse working safely outside the local psychological community, nevertheless knew better than to create a fuss or cause comment at the Institute offices. A quick glance showed their subtle courtship under way. Mike, not a terrifically sexy man by anyone’s standards, was doing his best with what he had, posing casually in a fashion that exhibited his well-developed quadriceps — Mike was a runner, and this was his knee-forward, slightly turned-out “hero” pose from classical theater and art. Elizabeth, in response, reached around with one hand to pull her hair back from her forehead. Her ears popped out in relief.

Someone dropped money in a jukebox. A few people — among these were Terry Kropp and a truly lovely woman I had not before noticed — moved to the room’s center, directly underneath Sherwin and Leslie. Who was this woman accompanying Terry? His wife? She was for some reason interested in encouraging Peter Konwicki to get up and dance; to this end she did the thing that a beautiful yet insecure woman will sometimes do if she’s drunk enough and the dance floor is uncrowded and she wants the support of a group, shuffling and wiggling a trail from one man to the other and back again, practicing democracy with her beauty. When she held out her hand to summon Peter, he blushed horribly — his whole head went red — and he waved his hands, palms facing out, as if the prospect of doing the bump with this woman and a fellow analyst, even a recent hire like Terry, was nothing less than mortifying. I felt a surprising rush of sympathy and compassion for Peter Konwicki. Why, all of a sudden, did I feel empathy for this man who wants to abolish my after-school programs? I found myself wishing that he would stand up and dance with Terry’s wife or girlfriend, whoever she was. Peter seemed, rocking back and forth in his tipped-back chair, lonely and a little withdrawn; and I have to confess that, for reasons I could not name, I liked the man, and wanted him to be happy. Isn’t that strange? The music was a pop song I had heard innumerable times on the radio while driving home or to work, several years before; and hearing it now caused me to think about a certain dinner at about that time, during which Jane ordered shellfish that made us both horrendously sick.

Oddly, no waitresses were in sight. Some tables and booths had been cleared, others were in shambles: isolated, unsightly messes of piled plates, cups, and bowls, water glasses stacked into precariously leaning towers on coffee-stained tables. However, no pattern relating the cleared to the neglected tables was apparent. Nor was there any light spilling beneath or between the tall swinging doors leading to and from the kitchen. The kitchen was mysteriously dark. Was the cook on break? The Pancake House & Bar stays open all night, so there must’ve been an explanation for the missing employees. Possibly the staff were out back smoking. I just don’t know.