Кейт Браверман - A Good Day for Seppuku

Amy hasn’t had the right accessories for any of the towns or situations of her life. In the lobby of the River’s End in Laughlin, Amy regrets the silver she didn’t buy in Aspen. And the squash blossom in Taos. She should have taken the birthday beads she was offered by a laughing woman on peyote. Or even a turquoise bracelet from a pawnshop in Flagstaff where she saw thousands in rows in display cases. The Navajo nation was divesting itself of its semi-precious stones for beer and crack and it was horrifying. She didn’t want any of it, not even for free.

Neon drifts like party streams and bolts of crepe paper. Or spun glass in the crimson of the plumes of jungle birds thought to be extinct. They didn’t disappear. They’re here, at the River’s End, in their giant electric aviary.

She should have acquired a silk shawl somewhere, brass hoop earrings, a skirt in a floral print or a chiffon dress, fall leaf colored and embroidered with flowers, iris and pansies and violets, perhaps. And a straw hat with a flagrant yellow silk flower. She could have made herself into a garden. But she was a professor of no. Maybe she was born this way.

The tinny bells don’t come from cathedrals or ships. They’re machine proclamations of impending money. And it occurs to her that no accessories could possibly be right for this occasion.

“Let’s check out the river,” Raven suggests. She’s put on mauve lipstick and a citrus perfume.

Outside the casino, air cracks against her face. It must be 110, Amy thinks. 115. Heat rolls across her flesh, laminating it. This is how time takes photographs.

It’s how you get into the eternal line-up. It has nothing to do with Homeland Security or INTERPOL.

They walk into liquid heat. Huge insects perch on the ground. Clusters of scorpions. And nests of roaches and maggots.

“Crickets and grasshoppers,” Raven explains. Her skirt is a compendium of all possible shades of purple. Her skirt is wind across dusk mesas. Raven brings her climate with her. She wears sunset around her hips and asks, “Are you OK?”

OK? Is that a state with borders? Or an emotional concept? Can you drive there, get a suite, break a 20 for buckets of dimes? Should she reply with a flag or a drum? And what is in the arc of light on the side of the parking lot? It’s a confederation of hallucinatory swooping forms, too thin to be birds. They’re creatures from myth. They’ve broken through the fabric, tearing through time with their teeth.

“Bats,” Raven says. “Can’t you hear them?”

Everything is humming. It’s a corrupted partial darkness, too over-heated and streaked with arrows of red neon to be real night. It’s grazing above the surprisingly cold river. Amy touches it with her hand. The riverbank is studded with abandoned construction sites, iron grids with no walls, roofs or windows. It’s a ghost town.

They stand on a sort of loading dock. The terrain is increasingly difficult to decode. What is that coming toward them? A sea vessel? Yes, a mock riverboat calling itself a water taxi.

Raven reaches out her tanned arms, and helps her climb down the stairs. “You’re going to vomit,” her mother whispers. “You’re drinking too much. You could never maintain.”

The boat motion is nauseating. The water taxi crosses one thin strand of river, disgorges silent passengers who seem already defeated, and takes new ones to the other bank. The water taxi rides back and forth, back and forth, ferrying gamblers from Arizona across the river to Nevada where it is legal. Everyone is somber.

Amy Gold closes her eyes and counts the rivers she’s been on or in with her mother. The Snake, Arkansas, Rio Grande, Mississippi, Columbia, Missouri and Wailua, and now this ghastly Colorado in July where she doesn’t have the right accessories, not a scarf, bracelet or shawl. And what do they call this? The Styx?

“You’re not smoking,” Amy realizes.

“Even bank robbers quit,” Raven replies. “Even guys in the can quit.”

It’s the last ride of the night. The driver repeats this twice. He’s accustomed to passengers with Alzheimer’s and hearing aids, canes and walkers. And she’s been in the boat for hours, her head in her mother’s lap. She’s finished her emergency pint of vodka. She manages to stand, and pauses on the dock.

There’s an anomalous movement in the river. Some rustling denting the water the way tuna do in shallow bays. Then the water looks like submerged dogs are running just beneath the surface. Two boys are doing something with white flowers. They toss bouquets into the muddy river and the flowers are instantly, savagely ripped apart.

Amy is startled by an agitation beneath the surface. Enormous fish circle around the wood planks. They must be four feet long. There are severed palms in the water. People have removed their hands and these grotesque fish are eating them. The hideous dark gray fish. It’s a ritual. They must supplicate themselves.

“My God,” Amy says, wondering if she should jump in. She’s an excellent swimmer. She learned CPR. She takes a breath.

“Just carp.” Raven is tired. “Hundreds of large carp.”

“But what are they eating?” Amy has a pulsing ache that begins in her jaw and runs through the individual nerves of her face. Fine wires are being pulled through her eyes. Perhaps they’re going to use her for bait.

“Bread,” her mother says. “Look. Pieces of bread.”

Yes, of course. Slices of white bread. It is not the amputated hands of virgins. It’s not the orchids the Buddha promised. It’s bread from plastic bags. And we are released. We are reprieved. Enlightenment does not announce itself on the map. It is random, always.

“Where are you going?” Raven demands. “You’re sick. Let me help you.”

She is frightened.

“I’ll come back,” Amy says.

“You haven’t been back in since San Diego,” Raven says. “You left too soon, Amethyst. Fifteen was too early, baby. And you’re not going anywhere now.”

Amy Gold is moving through the lobby; she’s running, and she’s way ahead of her mother. She’s been way ahead from the beginning. That’s why her attention wanders. It’s always been too easy, she remembers, finding a path between islands of machines with glittering gutted heads. She possesses the secret of this age. It’s about the geometry of cheap metal. And she knows where the parking lot is and she has the car keys.

Amy Gold stops, paralyzed. She understands this moment with astounding clarity. No. She’s not going to pack her office at the university. She’s not going to carry books through corridors, one cardboard box, one square casket at a time. We decide the components of our necessities. We design our own ceremonies of loyalty and propitiation. And history fails to explain the significance of accessories. The silk sash around your waist can be a fishing line. Or a noose to hang a man with. Why isn’t this even a footnote?

Raven is reaching through the garish neon, her palms open, waiting to receive something. Pages from the original Bagavaid Gita? The UFO invasion plan? An Anasazi document inscribed in glyphs on bark in a lime ink unknown for a thousand years?

“Give me the keys. Give me the booze and cigarettes,” Raven commands. “I’m taking you home.”

Her mother is a sly predator bird who avoided capture. She’s infertile, arthritic, and she’s lost her claws. Her liver is diseased and her nest is lit by kerosene and candles. She’ll be safe there. She will receive the correct instructions and this time she will listen. When they drive through the Four Corners, through the region of the Harmonic Convergence, this time she will hear.

Her mother is driving, white and stiff in the darkness, a woman with lines like dried tributaries gouged into her face. She gave birth to a daughter she named for the distillation of all strata of purple. Raven wraps a shawl gold as a concubine’s solstice festival vestment around her shoulders. This woman will give her tenure. Amy leans against her mother; her eyes close and she is completely certain.