Ben Marcus - Leaving the Sea - Stories

For hours, it seemed, no trains came into the station. The tracks were quiet and the whole city was perfectly still, as if perhaps there’d been some agreement, deep in the brain of the city, that the machines would shut down at this hour, the vehicles grounded. Cars and trains and buses. A scheduled hiatus of activity on this clear, cold evening in Düsseldorf.

Down at the station, commuters still occasionally pushed out through the tall glass doors, locals mostly, pulling dark suitcases across the ice. How they’d come to town without a train was a mystery, until he realized that striding across the square, faceless in the darkening evening, were simply people who had arrived from elsewhere hours ago and waited inside, where it was warm, for someone to come and get them. These were the arrivals. Arrivals wait. Not all of them get met. They’d been staring out at the square all night as the tiny, fuel-efficient cars ripped here and there without them. Finally they must have realized that their rides weren’t coming, so they bundled up, took matters into their own hands, and walked out alone into the cold.

That night at the hostel, a visitor came to Julian’s bed. Some uninvited man crept under his covers, while he slept, and Julian woke up—suddenly, rudely, confused. This man was taking liberties . Before much could happen—before disgrace and shame and, who knows, the implication that he was even remotely okay with this—he’d fled to the bathroom.

His heart was blasting, his sleep shirt wet and twisted. From the bathroom, looking back out into the gymnasium, the air thick with sleep, there was no sign of anything. No man, no sounds, just beds and bodies and darkness. As if the stranger had vanished. Hands had been on him while he slept, but when he thought about it he kept seeing himself lying there reciprocating . He couldn’t piece it together. What in the goddamn hell had happened? He checked his body everywhere, testing. For evidence? Damages?

He’d been touched, that he was sure of. He’d been touched, it had happened, and now there was nothing to be done. He caught his breath, paced around the bathroom, splashed water on his face. He could shower, but he had no towel and it was too fucking cold, anyway. Someone had really been touching him. Now it was over.

He crouched in a bathroom stall, trying to think. Some scene in whatever he’d been dreaming—he’d been having some kind of intense dream, oh God—had allowed for this to happen, made him stay longer than he should have in bed. A bit too long, as if he’d enjoyed it. At first whatever was happening seemed perfectly okay, just unreal enough. He was holding on to someone. It wasn’t really a sexual dream, per se. It was more like cuddling. He’d been dreaming of cuddling, and not with Hayley, but big deal. That’s how it worked. You could date the whole world in your dreams and it was okay. You could, actually, date- rape the whole world in a dream, too. You could kill and clean up after yourself. Or not, you could leave evidence all over the world and get caught and go to jail forever and wake up crying. So fucking what? The point is, he was cuddling someone in his dream, and he was doing it in that squirming way, he had to admit, that he hoped might lead to more, and then he woke against a body and what were you supposed to do? There was no way not to respond. Anyone would. He was aroused, technically, but he certainly did have to pee. Usually after a pee that issue resolved. Usually. But he was aroused before the man had crawled into bed with him, so this was bullshit.

But was he? Oh, God. He wanted to cry foul.

In the morning he tried to explain the situation to the front desk. He spat his useless English and he gestured and he slammed his hand on the counter. They were only puzzled, behind the glass partition, by what he told them, as if to say: Someone tried to hold you and you fled? But why, sir?

He imagined someone calmly explaining: Don’t you know, sir, that this is why people stay at Müllerhaus?

Instead he asked about other accommodations, and they offered him a private room, for twice the money. Then, no, they withdrew that offer, because it seemed those were taken. The only available beds were in the Turnhalle, where he was staying, and if he would like to change beds, he could do that, for a fee. Maybe a bed in another part of the room? Maybe that would be better for Sir?

He lurked outside the hostel, watching the men light their cigarettes and head into town. They filed out silently, squinting against the day. Which one of them had done this? He scanned their faces and wanted to challenge them to have a dream like that, so sweet and comforting, very nearly a wet dream of cuddling, and then to wake up against a body—the heat, the moisture, the smell—this kind of thing is ancient and overpowering and we’re helpless before it—and not feel some slight rush of arousal. Really slight! You couldn’t do it. It could have been a dog and he would have nuzzled into it, feeling something. He might have given in and not cared. So what? Because it wasn’t really about the sexual parts of what lived and breathed right next to you. Man or woman or whatever. You were sort of aroused, if you got aroused, by something else. Not the person’s parts .

Oh, it was pointless. He realized, standing out on Schützenstrasse, once the men were gone from Müllerhaus and the locals had zoomed into the homes and shops that would keep them during working hours, that he was exaggerating his indignation. The whole thing was a wash. He was worked up for nothing. No one was watching and he was putting on the fucking Ritz, for God’s sake, as if there was something so terribly wrong with someone kissing him at night.

Was he really supposed to care at this late date who kissed him? Wasn’t it enough to be kissed by someone? What was the saying: beggars can’t be complete and total losers?

At a restaurant called Altstadt he ate a full breakfast of cold cuts and long potatoes. It was early but he ordered a beer, and it tasted so good he ordered another. He smoked and had a coffee and sat looking out the window at a small, distant piece of the Rhine. Then, on his way out, he realized he was still hungry and sat down again for a piece of chocolate cake. He pointed at it through the display case and they brought over, instead, a cake that turned out to be citrus and ginger, which he devoured. He had another coffee and could have sat there all day but he had plans to make and if he didn’t get moving, he was going to be late.

After his treatment that afternoon, Julian woke to a surprise.

“Your friend is here,” said the nurse.

Friend, thought Julian. Not possible. The word made him picture animals. Pets he’d never had.

“Your friend waits there now,” said the nurse, pointing up.

If he followed that direction, he’d leave the building and float through the sky before crashing to the ground. Head in this direction, sir, even if it takes you over a cliff. Waiting for you, maybe, will be someone who cares. Trust us.

Julian cleaned up in the patients’ bathroom. On the way out a nurse flagged him over to the doctor’s office, where his very own doctor, who he hadn’t seen for days, was hanging film in a light box.

The doctor greeted Julian and waved him over to a stool.

Julian, instead, stepped up to the light box. The scan was mostly black, a portrait of darkness.

“Is this me?” Julian asked. “My head?”

The doctor nodded.

“We are looking at your scan while you are here this day.”

Julian studied the doctor. He was trim and his skin glowed. Like most doctors, the fanciest ones, he seemed offensively healthy, as if he kept the real secret of vitality to himself. He would live forever and people would crumble and die around him. You were supposed to feel like death after seeing him, in terms of your complexion, your posture, your whole body. If necessary, this doctor would eat you to survive.