Бен Маркус - Notes from the Fog - Stories

“Oh, is it not fair?” I say. And I will admit that my voice dips into a pout here.

“That’s right,” says James. “It’s not fair. I didn’t want to put it that way.”

“Because it makes you sound like a sad baby?”

“You’re the one who said it. You said it. How does it make me sound like anything?”

“Yes, let the record show that I controlled your words and rendered you helpless and unaccountable. I am all-powerful.”

James is quiet for a while. The rain is thundering down on us. The wipers are going so fast across the windshield it seems they might fly off the car. When exit 49 suddenly appears, James veers cautiously down the ramp and pulls the car over in the grass of an intersection.

“The record won’t show anything, Alice, because there is no record. It’s just us. I’m worried about getting stuck out here. That’s all this day has been about. I’m trying to get us somewhere so we can get a room and then we can worry about everything else after that. Could we maybe fight later, when we get home?”

“Oh, I’d like that.”

“I mean, I don’t really feel well, and the fighting is not helping.”

I look at him. So much of our relationship depends on him being alive. Almost all of it.

“Darling,” I say. “Let’s just go sit and eat and relax for a minute. We can still drive after that. We just have to get out of this rain for a minute. And after dinner, I’m driving. No arguments.”

We find the restaurantand get a table near the fireplace, which turns out to be just a storage nook for old copper pots. The waiter is a boy. Not an infant, and not exactly a man. “Are you all weathering the storm okay?” he asks, grinning.

Can one say no? I wonder. No thank you, we are not. We have failed to weather it and now we are here, in your restaurant.

The food that comes out is not disgusting. Sweet and hot and plentiful, moist in all the right places. It goes down pretty heavily, though, and I feel the day starting to expire, begging to end. James was right. The druggery of road food. We eat in silence, listening to the rain. Both of us look forlornly at the bar, thinking probably that we shouldn’t, we mustn’t. On the other hand, we could simply pass out drunk here and maybe they’d take us to jail. There are beds in jail. Soap. New people to meet.

A television above the bar shows a woman in a raincoat being blown off her feet. The clip must be on a loop, or else she keeps getting up, saying something desperate into her microphone, and then falling back down again. I’d like to tell her to stay down, just stay down and take it while the wind and rain lash at her flapping back, but she gets up again and the wind seems to lift her. For a moment, as she blows sideways off the screen and surrenders herself to flight, her posture is beautiful, so absolutely graceful. If you were falling from a cliff, no matter what awaited you, you might want to think about earning some style points along the way, just turn your final descent into something stunning to watch. On the TV there is nothing to learn about the storm, nothing to know. The numbers that scroll across the bottom of the screen are long, without cease, maybe the longest single number I’ve ever seen. Does this number describe the storm? What are we to make of it?

In the car we think it over. We are too far from a hotel, and plus, the hotels aren’t answering their phones. The driving is dangerous, if not impossible. It’s not really even driving anymore, it’s like taking your car through one of those car washes. We are exhausted beyond belief. I suggest, as tentatively as I can, that it is not unreasonable to think that we could sleep in the car. Each of our seats reclines, like an easy chair, and if we found somewhere safe and quiet to park, we could ride this out until the morning, maybe even sleep well. Then we could drive all day and maybe get somewhere where they have rooms. We’d be rested. The sun might be up. The world might have ended. But at least it would be tomorrow. Tomorrow seems like the only thing that will solve anything, ever. Along comes tomorrow, with its knives, as someone or other said. That’s not the exact quote, I’m sure, but the gist of it sounds true.

James seems like he may have given up. “Is that what you want to do? Sleep on the side of the road? In the car?”

“What I want to do is to be alone in a hole, covered in dirt. But sleeping in the car is the next best thing right now.”

“Yes, that often is the second choice after live burial.”

It starts to sound nice to me, really appealing. Like going to the drive-in, but without the movie. Like going parking, which we must have done once, in another life, before our bodies took on water and started to sink, before the spoil grew like a mold in the back of our mouths. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with sleeping in the car,” I say. “It’s going to be more comfortable than a motel, that’s for sure, not that there even is an available motel, and plus we won’t have to worry about the cascade of ejaculate that’s been literally sprayed from human appendages around every single motel room in the country. Purportedly.”

James seems to think about it. “When I stay in a hotel,” he says, “I do my best to ejaculate on the walls. It’s a civic obligation. You have to pull your weight.”

“That’s a lot of pressure for a man.”

“Sometimes I’m not in the mood. I’m cranky and I’m tired.”

“That’s when you bring out the jar from home?” I ask.

He laughs. “It’s good to have it with me. Who’s going to know, you know, if the product is older.”

“More mature, in some ways.”

“Must. Broadcast. Seed,” he says, like a robot, and then he mimes the flinging of the jar, splashing its imaginary contents out into space.

It’s not really a rest areathat we find. It’s a scenic turnout, and the view—of the black, bottomless abyss—is pristine. You can see all of it, every dark acre, and if we don’t see our own ghostly faces by the end of the night it’s because we’re not looking hard enough. We park a bit out of the way, under the branches of a mammoth tree, and when we quickly realize that we’ve just increased our risk of death—because trees seem to seek people out in these kinds of situations—we move over to an open parking space, with nothing threatening above us.

“Fuck that tree,” I say. “Way to try to hide your intentions.”

We put our seats all the way back and James pulls out a bar of chocolate from the go bag. I want to rub it all over my neck.

“Oh my god, oh my god. You are a genius,” I say. “Certifiable.”

“I like to think that I have an elusive, almost unknowable sort of intelligence.”

“What else is in there?” Now I’m excited.

James peers into the bag, rummaging around with his hand. “That’s the end of it,” he says. “The rest is just sadness. Sadness and real life.”

This is my sweet man. So weird sometimes. So uncommon. And he steered us here, to safety, where we can eat our sweets and surrender to the night and everything will be so goddamn swell in the morning. Even as the rain literally seems to be crushing the car, one hard bead at a time. Not the rain. Boris. Boris is doing this to us, the motherfucker.

The seats are a little bit divine when you tilt them all the way back. A little bit like first class on an airplane, which we only did once, and by accident, because of a mistake by the sweethearts at the gate. It remains a sort of benchmark for comfort outside the home.

“I’m sorry you don’t feel well,” I say. “Is it related to…”