Сигрид Нуньес - Salvation City

Either it was all the noise they’d carelessly started making or the smell of the French toast, which Clem was now transferring from frying pan to platter. Someone could be heard on the stairs. Someone was descending with thumping, exaggerated slowness, like an actor playing a zombie. Cole remembered that Tracy had sprained her ankle yesterday. They waited, watching the doorway, and when she finally appeared each of them involuntarily took a step back.

Maybe she was sleepwalking. She certainly didn’t look fully awake. Clearly, she had just rolled out of bed. Her face was puffy and creased. Her wavy brown hair stuck out all over her head like a fright wig. Yesterday, PW had cleaned the cut on her eyebrow and put a Band-Aid on it. The Band-Aid was now stained with blood, and there were smears of dried blood on her forehead and cheek. The skin around the cut had turned purplish, and her mouth—hanging open in a dumb-struck expression—looked bruised and puffy, too.

She paused in the doorway, holding on to the wall, her weight on one bare foot. The other foot she held poised, toe daintily pointed, an Ace bandage binding the swollen ankle.

She was wearing her short hot-pink bathrobe with the white pom-poms at the belt ends. At the moment the pom-poms grazed the floor: she had slipped the robe on but had neglected to belt it. The robe hung open, the weight of the pom-poms pulling it open, dragging it half off her shoulders.

Maybe it was from hitting her head when she fell down yesterday. Maybe it was all the pills PW had made her swallow. Until she smiled at him Cole wasn’t sure she even knew who he was. The sight of Clem clearly perplexed her. She stared at him as if she had never seen him before. And maybe this was not so strange, because in that moment Clem was utterly transformed. Cole himself might not have known him. A person thrown from a high window or a cliff might have looked as Clem looked now, his mouth an O, his black-button eyes ready to burst right off.

And the next instant he was gone.

Cole barely had time to take this in. It was as if a tornado had blown through the kitchen and whisked Clem out the back door—before the spatula he’d dropped to the floor had ceased clattering.

The commotion upset Tracy. She swayed precariously in the doorway, still balancing on one foot but looking as if she would not be able to hold herself upright much longer. The robe had slipped a little farther down her shoulders. Another move and it would be on the floor, and then she’d be totally naked.

He simply could not look away. And strangely, he did not feel guilty or ashamed—or rather, these feelings were there, but he had other feelings as well. More clamorous ones—ones he would have found hard to put into words—drowning out guilt and shame.

He said, “Tracy?” And again, “Tracy? You okay? Can you walk?”

She smiled at him without answering. She’s going to fall, he thought, and as he stepped gingerly toward her, he flashed on PW’s story about his father stealing so close to a fox he was tracking that he could touch it.

Cole noticed the scar. It must have been from the cancer surgery, he thought. He would have expected to find the scar ugly but he didn’t, though somehow it made her seem even more naked and vulnerable. Her battered face, her limp, her lost and frightened air, made him think of a fallen angel.

She swayed, and when she swayed her breasts swayed. How was it he had thought big breasts were gross? They— she was apocalyptic.

He wanted to say something nice and reassuring to her, but when he tried to speak he could not. In the smell rising from her flesh he thought he caught whiffs of bourbon and vanilla. When he took hold of the robe to pull it back onto her shoulders, a thrill passed through him, making his hands shake. She looked at him and smiled again, but with the absent expression of someone not exactly sure why she was smiling. Her eyes were like PW’s when he was at his drunkest. Would she be like him and remember nothing about any of this later? God, Cole hoped so.

When he picked up the ends of the belt, she let go of the wall and rested her palms on his shoulders. He had stopped breathing and his heart was wild. Gently he tightened the belt around her waist. There: she was decent.

She leaned her weight against him as he helped her hobble to a chair. Without her asking, he knew she must want water. He brought her a glass, which she gulped down noisily, water dribbling down her chin. He brought her another glass, which she also gulped down, and a third, which she drank more slowly.

The water seemed to clear her head. She sat up straight, belching softly. She glanced around the kitchen, her eyes lighting up at the sight of the French toast sitting on the platter on the counter. Cole remembered that in all the hysteria of the day before she hadn’t eaten anything except breakfast.

He wet a dish towel at the sink, and as he wiped it over her face she closed her eyes and made a pleased, grateful-sounding gurgle deep in her throat, which made him turn red. When he stopped she kept her eyes closed for a moment and then blinked rapidly several times before popping them open. Wide-eyed, she looked like a girl. A pretty young girl. She looked like her niece, Starlyn.

“Good morning!” she said. Her gaze swept the room again and came once more to rest on the counter. “Do I see French toast?” She pointed excitedly. “Did you make that? Oh, what a peach!”

He had just set her breakfast in front of her when they heard a noise overhead.

“DaDa’s up,” Tracy said cheerfully. But Cole, familiar with PW’s condition the morning after he’d drunk too much, felt a tremor of anxiety. He thought of the people waiting at the church.

He was glad he wasn’t being forced to make conversation. With a hunger to match her thirst, Tracy was attacking her plate. (Though even in her befuddled state, she had not forgotten to give thanks.)

PW, on the other hand, would surely not want to eat first thing this morning. What he’d want was a whole lot of coffee.

As he was making the coffee, Cole started composing in his head another message to his aunt.

And later that morning, when he was alone—when Tracy was upstairs taking a bath and PW had dragged himself and his hammering head off to the church—Cole sat down to write Addy.

I can’t explain everything now, it’s too complicated. But things have gotten way crazy here and sadly I can’t come visit.

Now that the sun was high the room was becoming stifling. The air reeked of maple syrup and bacon. Cole took a sip of coffee. He had decided to start drinking coffee just that morning. Before, he’d never liked the taste. Honestly, he still didn’t like the taste, but everyone knew coffee was supposed to help you think. And he had so much thinking to do.

What I mean is I can’t leave Salvation City right this minute. There’s too much I have to take care of. I’ll explain next time we talk. But one other thing. Do you think I could use some of that money you were telling me about now? I know it’s supposed to be for college, but I want to get my own computer.

Yet one more decision he was going to have to explain to PW.

When he had sent his message to Addy, he went out and got on his bicycle. He was headed for the church, but once he started riding he decided to take the long way around, past the old railroad station, making a loop through downtown. It was hot but he wanted to be out for a while, and bike riding always soothed him.

After a mile the sweat poured down his face and gnats swarmed him. There was no coolness in the shade of the large trees under which he passed, just a damper kind of heat. Only the faintest blue showed in the hazy sky. A dog on someone’s porch began barking when it saw him, the noise like firecrackers going off in the calm street.