Chang-Rae Lee - Aloft

But I'm deeply worried, this spiky scare rappelling down my spine, especially with her mentioning how happy she'll be, the image of her splayed out on a motel bed with a hand mirror snowy with crushed pills, a plastic garbage bag, a straight razor.

"I'm coming out now," I tell her firmly, "whether you want me to or not."

But just as I put down the phone and stand up I see Kelly wave, wave, and not really to me, like she's on the top deck of the Queen Mary, embarking on an around-the-world. Her blond hair spilling out of the scarf (Why there is a glamour in all departures, I don't know.) Before I can even get outside she's speeding away, her dusty little car clattering down the main street of the village, being nearly broadsided as she drifts through a red light. There's another clamor of protesting horns, and then, momentarily veiled by a white puff of oil-burning acceleration, she's gone. I try her cell over and over but all I get is her outgoing message, whose molasses lilt always manages to upend me: "Hi y'all, Kelly here. I ain't home right now. But do say something nice."

W H I C H I H A V E tried to do, at the time and then throughout this evening, but all I've been able to muster is to say I am here if she needs me, whatever hour of the night. It's nearing midnight now. All this sounds pretty good, like I'm on call for her, braced by the nightstand, wracked and sleepless. Of course if I were a wholly better person (and not just a former-lover-turned-friend) I'd be out searching the avenues for her, having already called her friends and maybe even Jimbo (number from the office Caller ID), having already gone by her apartment, instead of half dreading the blee-dee-deet of my cordless as I sit here on the patio beneath a starless Long Island sky, steadily drawing down an iced bottle of cut-rate pivot grigio. I'm worried about Kelly, of course, not quite admitting that part of me is scared stiff she might try to hurt herself, but here I am taking up space in my usual way, as if waiting for the news to come on, some defining word filtering down from the heavens to let me know what ought to be done next.

This is what Rita found most chronically difficult about me, and what Theresa has begun openly referring to as my "preternatural lazy-heartedness." Jack has to this point professed no corresponding view, which I suspect is because he's finally realized that in this regard the apple hasn't fallen very far from the tree (or off at all), and is perhaps an even more fully realized version of its predecessor. Kelly Stearns, if I may take the liberty to suppose, would probably identify this quality of mine as how I'm most like "a real jerk," which is what she called me after the last time we slept together, not for anything that happened (or didn't) between the sheets (I've always tried to be at least eager and attentive in love's physical labors, understanding I'm no expert), but for the solidly marvelous days leading up to that last passionate if cramped union, when I took her on a fancy Caribbean cruise despite my unswervable intent of breaking up with her once again, and for all.

In her opinion, I should have dumped her before the trip, which by any standard of decency and decorum makes good sense, though in my behalf I should say that I did want to treat her and spoil her one last time, not as reward or consolation but because I genuinely cared for her and wanted to make her plain happy and frankly saw no other way to accomplish it save for going on a carefree junket heading nowhere in our immediate world. Kelly et al. (the entire office, except for Miles, who surprisingly falls to my side of the ledger in most worldly matters) naturally saw my aims as self-serving and usurious in spirit, a sneaky final lust-grab and cruel deception, made even worse by the fact that Kelly and I had reached that certain juncture in our relationship when a romantic luxury cruise might seem an odds-on prelude to proposing a union unto death. Indeed, in anticipation of something special Kelly had brought along some of her more wicked boudoir getups, including a melt-away fruit-roll teddy burnished in edible gold that the Parade gals had slipped in her carry-on, as well as a distinctly matrimonial gown, complete with lace train, just in case I had arranged for the captain of the ship to perform a surprise wedding-at-sea.

The first hint of trouble was when I unpacked my garment bag and only had a Permapress travel blazer to hang up, the sight of which momentarily arrested all her functions, as if she'd looked up to see a complete solar eclipse. I asked her what was wrong and she tried to ignore me but then broke into a sweet smile and said brightly, "Whatever could be wrong, my ever casual man?"

Kelly, like all the Southern women I've known (three total — the other two being the identical Cohen twins from Decatur, Georgia, Terri and Traci, who were lifeguards at the Catskills camp where I landscaped several summers of my youth), features an inborn lode of a chin-up, good sport reserve that I can tell you positively jazzes a guy like me, though eventually invites some ill use and taking advantage of, too, if unwitting and unintended. The Cohen twins, I remember, besides being splendid swimmers, were deadly rifle shots and archers, their identical carriage buxomly and erectly Aryan, which the young Jewish-American campers beheld with a hushed adoration and trembling. That last summer I dated Terri (I'm pretty sure), my buddy Lorne seeing her sister, and by the middle of the camp session we'd convinced them that losing their virginity with a couple of Gentiles was probably an ideal way to go, there being no strings or expectations. Ever reasonable, they agreed. So one night we paddled our canoes to the little foot-shaped island in the middle of Lake Kennonah, outfitted with sleeping bags and candles and condoms and a fifth of Southern Comfort. The four of us drank together and then Terri and I hiked to the other side of the island and spread our bedding atop a broad flat rock right by the water. We could still hear Traci and Lorne talking and laughing and then getting very quiet, and without even kissing much we took off our clothes and started making love. I say this not because I loved her or am uncomfortable using cruder terms but because I thought then and still do that no matter who it is you're with or whether it's the first and/or last time, there's always at least one verifiable moment when you can believe you're doing exactly that, literally trying to make love, build it up, whether by alchemy or chemistry or force of will. With Terri Cohen it was no difficult task, for she was ardent and mostly unafraid and steadfast beneath me on that absolutely ungiving rock, which made me feel like I was going straight through to the igneous, like we were plunging another axis for the world. (This is but one of many a young man's ego-istic virginal follies — sentimental and ridiculous, I know.) Afterward, not unhappy, and both quite sore from the vigorous but clearly unclimactic-able sex, we hiked back in silence to where we'd put ashore. We weren't thinking about Traci and Lorne, or at least I wasn't, and suddenly we came upon them in the can-dlelight, in mid-engagement, her slender heels tapping out time on his back, and perhaps it was because they were twins that Terri didn't pull us away or try to hide us. We watched as they crescendoed and decrescendoed and crescendoed again, until they finally came (Traci before Lorne, amazingly), when Terri grabbed my hand and hustled us back to our spot on the rock and astraddle of me swiftly finished us both.

Now there's the definition of a good sport.

I'm long accustomed to the umbraged, oversensitive, volcani-cally eruptive type, firstly my good mother, who could shame a false confession out of Saint Francis and who, during her last moments on her deathbed, scolded us arrayed there to go wash our hands before leaning on her Belgian lace bedspread. When I was young she and my father had horrific arguments over his handling of the business and the periodic dalliances he'd have with his young bookkeepers fresh out of night school, the nas-tiest of their fights ending with my mother wielding a rusty fish-filleting knife, swearing that she'd gut them both if she ever caught them, and my father (recklessly quoting Sartre and Camus and Reader's Digest) taunting her with the then recently announced death of God. Hank Battle has always liked a rousing fight, especially with family, whether fair or not, and if I were constituted more like him I'm certain I'd have ended up with a woman who would burn the bed before letting me tread too long over her.