Nick Arvin - The Reconstructionist

She was quiet. He heard a TV in the background. ‘I keep thinking that this is my fault,’ she said. ‘I’m going to go to work tomorrow. I think it would be good to see the kids. What are you going to do about your work?’ she asked. ‘Your job?’

‘I don’t think I’m going back.’

‘Oh.’

‘If Boggs were there or if he weren’t, either way, I would feel like shit.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I know you liked it.’ A couple of seconds passed. ‘I’ve been looking at his things,’ she said. ‘I can’t bear to touch them. These folders he set out. His shoes. His magazines. His skim milk in the fridge. His mug that says, “You’re OLD when gettin’ lucky means finding your keys.” I hate that one. I’ve been trying his phone number every few hours. Since you got him at three in the morning, I’ll be up all night trying him.’

‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea. You’ll drive him crazy.’

‘Crazier?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, he always wanted some magical life, not this one,’ she said, ‘like a child.’

Ellis said nothing. He passed a semi pulling a long tank with a polished surface that drew the world into shining horizontal lines. ‘Enough about him,’ Ellis said. ‘Tell me how you feel.’

‘I’ll tell you what I feel.’ Then she was silent for a long while before she said, in a rush of exasperation, ‘I’m sad.’

He laughed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. But she laughed, too. ‘We’re a couple of clowns,’ he said, ‘crying on the inside.’

‘I hate self-pity,’ she said. ‘I hate it. It’s useless.’

‘Go on.’

‘But it’s a cruel, cruel world. It’s a darkness.’

‘Last one out turned off the lights.’

‘I was once in a bathroom stall,’ she said, ‘and someone turned out the lights as they left.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Nothing happened. I calmed down and felt around to find the wall and I followed it out. But it was terrifying! A dark restroom is the archetypal darkness.’

‘Life is a dark restroom full of blind clowns crying on the inside.’

‘Is it a crime if a blind clown shouts fire in dark restroom?’

‘If a clown falls in a forest of deaf clowns in a dark restroom, does he cry on the inside?’ He was laughing. ‘What are we talking about?’ he said. He tried to stop his laughing, but it only grew worse.

‘Send in the clowns,’ she said.

His diaphragm hurt.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘It’s all right.’

‘The crying leading the crying,’ he said.

They were silent a minute.

‘It’s going to be hard for us,’ she said. ‘To explain to friends. And, to live together, to be a couple together, when all that we’ve had until now were snatches of moments.’

‘I’ve thought about that, too.’

‘Is that why you’ve gone off?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, no, of course not.’

‘Listen, I need to be angry, and you won’t give me any room to do it. I’m losing my mind. And you’re out there. Why are you out there, when I’m so furious?’

He was silent.

‘Say something.’

‘Do you want me to say I’m sorry?’

‘No, no. I don’t know. Maybe, I want you to say you’re angry, too.’

‘I am. I’m very angry.’

‘You don’t sound like it.’

‘I’m angry!’ he shouted.

‘I’m angry!’

‘I’m fucking pissed!’

Heather laughed, chokingly. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘We’re both losing our minds. You will come back?’ she said. ‘I feel like everyone has left me.’

‘Of course I’ll come back.’

‘I’ll hold you to that. I can be ruthless.’

‘You know,’ he said, stopped, debated, went on, ‘Boggs mentioned Christopher, and it made me wonder what you remember about when he died.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What do you remember?’

‘Let’s not talk about that now, for God’s sake.’

‘We should’ve talked about it a long time ago.’

‘Maybe, but we didn’t. Now John says something, suddenly it’s urgent?’

‘You were at the Exxon station when it happened, right?’

‘A Mobil station, or whatever it was. I don’t want to get into this.’

‘Exxon, I think.’

‘I remember a Mobil,’ she said.

‘A red sign. I remember it was red.’

‘Yes, Mobil.’

‘Exxon is the red one,’ Ellis said.

‘Really?’

‘I drove past one a few miles ago.’

‘I guess I could be mixed up.’

‘But you were there, right? Were you actually looking directly at the intersection when the collision occurred?’

‘Stop it,’ she said.

‘I’m wondering, what’s Boggs getting at?’

‘Nothing?’ she said. ‘You know him. We can talk about this, but I want to see your face.’

‘You’re putting me off.’

‘I am.’

‘Please, just talk.’

‘Not about this.’

They said a few empty things. Gaps opened between phrases. She said goodbye.

He phoned the hospital and asked about James Dell. Dell was still in 312, the receptionist said, but no one answered the phone there.

He put the phone in his pocket and bit down on his tongue until it bled.

Later he caught the minivan drifting over the white line and into the rumble strip. He startled awake, but soon he was struggling again with his eyelids, and he had to defer to a staggering exhaustion. He took the next exit and followed a two-lane road until he came to an abandoned Gulf station, graffiti-tagged, windows boarded, pumps gone. He parked behind the building and reclined the seat to sleep.

His watch marked creeping minutes. A haze softened the moon. His back ached. He called Boggs a couple of times, without success.

Screaming, he woke from a dream that he could not remember. Nor did he want to; to prevent its return he kept his eyes open and sat feeling stunned and wishing the night over. But accidentally he slept again, this time in a deep oblivion.

He bought breakfast bars and orange juice and ate in the minivan, watching vehicles move between gas pumps, watching drivers talk on their cellphones with mirthless expressions. James Dell’s pallid, desiccated skin suddenly hung before him, as if in a curtain, and with it the choking antiseptic odour of the hospital – he remembered that these had been elements of the dream that woke him the night before. He started the minivan and began to drive.

He drove another hour, road to interstate to exit, parked, stood out of the minivan on a gravel shoulder, walked the acceleration lane to the point where it tapered out, then turned and strode into fallow land.

Milkweed, tall grasses and clusters of sumac patched the ground. In the middle distance stood a few maples, and past those the land rolled with hill-backs bristling with serried corn. The interstate exit provided access on and off a two-lane that extended straight out of sight to either direction. Beside it, near the interstate, stood a lonely rectangular brick structure covered with extravagantly flaking white paint. On one wall were three large blue block letters: VFW. A red Chevy pickup, at least twenty years old, rested beside the building. In front stood a vintage howitzer, also painted white, weeds brushing the bottom of its barrel.

Ellis moved slowly in the grasses and weeds, some of which offered clusters of small white flowers. When he turned, he could see the trail he had cut, pressing down the plants as he walked. He looked for a similar trail that Boggs might have left if he had been here, and studied for several minutes a couple of weeds he found broken, but he had no experience in this kind of tracking and could make no conclusions. An hour passed. He stopped after each step, examined the ground and its objects. The delicate pale bones of a bird. A pizza box collapsing into the earth. An oval sink basin. Then, half buried in the dirt, he discovered a wooden shingle.