Бен Маркус - Notes from the Fog - Stories

The hotels inland are full so we follow the endless line of cars to the shelter. We are shown to two cots in the center of a high school gymnasium. There must be five hundred beds here, scattered out in a grid. At midnight the sleep sounds must be symphonic, particularly with the soft lowing arising from the pornless apertures of the elderly. The scoreboard is on in the gym, but it seems that no one has scored yet. Zero to zero. I’d like to feel that there is meaning in this, but I am tired and hungry. “Voilà,” says the volunteer, who has a walkie-talkie on his belt that squawks out little birdcalls. He is a handsome young man and he seems unreasonably proud to be playing this role today. I picture him unplugged, powered down like a mannequin, maybe sitting in a small chair in a room with sports banners on the wall. James and I stare at the cots as gratefully as we can, and for a moment I wonder if we are meant to tip the volunteer, because he stands there expectantly as wild children rocket past our feet.

“Just let us know if there’s anything we can do for you,” he says.

Anything? What a kind offer. A softer mattress, I think, and bone-chilling privacy, and a beef stew made with red wine. Some sexual attention would also be fine, if not from you specifically, because I fear you are too polite. Maybe you have a friend? After drives like that I often crave a release. But only a particular style of lovemaking will do. I have evolved a fairly specific set of requirements. If you don’t mind reading over these detailed instructions, briefing your friend, and then sending him to meet me in the janitor’s closet, that would be fine.

We tell him thank you, no, and we wait for him to run off before we start whispering our panic all over each other.

“Yeah, no,” says James, looking around, fake smiling, as if people were trying to read his lips. “No fucking way.”

“Maybe for a night?” I offer. I would like to be flexible. I would like to bend myself around this situation, which is certainly not ideal and is almost laughably experimental. One imagines doctors behind dark glass somewhere, rubbing themselves into a scientific frenzy over the predicament they’ve designed for us—two aging soft-bodies forced into an open-air sleeping environment. Maybe we are tired enough, and armed with enough pharmaceutical support, to render ourselves comatose on these trim little cots until it’s safe to go home. But wouldn’t people fuss with our inert bodies? Wouldn’t they see that we were so heavily tranquilized as to be unresponsive and then proceed to conduct whatever procedures they liked upon us? I only surrender myself to all my sweet medicines when I can lock a door, because I hate the thought of being fiddled with when I’ve brought on elective paralysis and can’t exactly fiddle back.

“The storm hasn’t even touched down on the island yet. We are talking days, maybe,” says James, rubbing his face. He rubs it with real purpose, pulling the skin into impossible shapes, before letting it not exactly snap back onto his head, taking its time to retract like the gnarled skin of a scrotum, and I fear for him a little bit, as if his hand will drag too far and pull his face free. I can’t really watch. If he must dismantle himself, piece by piece, I wish he would do it in private. Together we look around, as we might if we’d just entered a party. There’s no one here we know. It’s just a crowd of ragged travelers, forced from their homes, with far too many children running free. The children seem to believe that they have been released into a kind of cage match. Kill or be killed, and that sort of thing. The cots, mostly empty, are simply launching pads for child divers, exploring their airborne possibilities. They leap from bed to bed, rolling into piles on the floor, whooping. A style of topless nudity prevails, regardless, it seems, of age. Certainly there is beauty on display, but it’s ruined by all of this noise. One might reasonably think that there should be a separate evacuation receptacle for children. A room of their bloody own. Answering their special needs. Relieving the rest of us from the, well, the special energy that children so often desire to display. Lord bless their fresh, pink hearts.

I text Lettie, because there’s no way she and Richard would put up with this sort of bullshit. Are they here? In what quadrant? Could they issue a specific cry, maybe holler my name?

Airbnb! she texts back. Headed to Morley’s for clams and bloodies. Where r u?

Oh Jesus, right. People made plans. People thought ahead. I think it’s best not to mention this to James, because that’s something I could have been doing while he drove, securing our safe, private, cozy lodging and making dinner rezzies and otherwise running advance recon for this sweet adventure of ours.

James has curled up on the cot, and he’s staring into space. He looks tired. His color is James-like, which is never so great. I’m not sure how to monitor a change. I worry that he’s parked for good now, that the powerful laws of the late afternoon, which seem to visit men of a certain age, will be pulling him down into some bottomless, mood-darkening sleep, from which he will wake crankily, trumpeting his exhaustion, denying that he ever slept.

“Are you going to be napping?” I ask him, as neutrally as I can. “Because…”

“No, I’m not going to be napping. Are you kidding me? Here?” He has a way of shouting in a whisper. It’s his evacuation shelter whisper, I guess, although it has caught the attention of certain of our neighbors, who might want to scooch their cots somewhere else, come to think about it.

Yes, I want to assure them. We will be like this all night, whispering our special brand of kindness at each other, so pull up a chair and put your heads in our asses. That’s where the view is best. Perhaps that’s one way to secure our area and erect a kind of privacy barrier.

“Maybe you should get up?” I say.

“Jesus, Alice, I’ve been driving for hours. I can’t relax for a minute?”

“Yes you can, and even longer. Take all the time you like. I would just like to know your plans so I can plan accordingly.”

“What,” he hisses. “Are you going to go out and meet some friends? Go out to lunch, maybe?”

We have a different strategy when it comes to the timing of our emotional broadcasts. James buckles in public, and a hole opens in his neck, or whatever, and out comes his sour message for me and the world. One feels that he is emboldened in a crowd. It is possible that he does not see them as human, and thus fails to experience shame when he debases himself in their midst. Like masturbating in front of a pet. Whereas I frequently wait until we are alone, and then I quietly birth my highly articulate rage in his direction, in the calmest voice I can manage. I certainly have my bias, but it is possible that neither style is superior, and that a level silence in the face of distress or tension is the ultimate goal. Silence, in the end, is the only viable rehearsal for what comes after, anyway. I mean way, way after. And one certainly wants to be prepared. One wants to have practiced.

“Not here, James,” I say, as brightly as I can.

“What you mean is not anywhere, right, Alice? Not anywhere and never?”

Not bad. He is learning. Although I do not doubt that he will share his feelings with me when we find some privacy.

We head out to the car and talk this through. The cots will be here as a last resort, although it feels odd using the word “resort” with respect to such a location. James feels that we should start driving because there will be plenty of other people with our same idea, all of them racing to find the closest hotel room. It’s kind of the plot of Cannonball Run, except the people are old, they drive very slowly, and some of them just might die tonight. Eventually, James explains, if we go far and fast enough, we should find some part of this hellish country not affected by the storm, with plenty of empty beds. He would like to express confidence now, I can see that. I imagine that he wants me not to worry. If only he could do it without making me worry so much more.