Richard Bausch - Before, During, After

“I haven’t had a drink in ten years,” the heavy man said. “My name’s Walt Skinner. I’m an alcoholic.” This time, the meaning of the words seemed to arrive in his mind as he spoke. His eyes welled up, and he took the last of his drink. “My wife’s here somewhere.”

“I do not usually drink,” Duego said. “I do not like the taste of it.”

“I do,” said Constance, “and I do. I do drink and I do like the taste. And I want to get very drunk today.”

“Jesus,” said Skinner, wiping his eyes with his fat fingers. “I can’t find my wife. She’s here somewhere. I can’t feel a thing. This isn’t touching a thing.” He put the glass to his mouth and took what was left in the melting ice. His hands shook. He kept moving one leg, a nervous up-and-down motion, toe to the ground, heel raised, the movement of someone normally much thinner, so that the ticlike nature of it glared forth, the frenetic shaking of panic. “We’re from New Orleans. You think they’ll keep us from flying there?”

“Everything’s grounded,” Constance said.

“I guess I ought to go looking for her. This feels so helpless. All those people and there’s nothing we can do. My wife went off with some lady friends this morning. She might not even know.” His face seemed to register this possibility. The mouth dropped slightly, the eyes widening, all the color leaving his round face.

Duego said, “I am from Orlando. I have no relatives in New York.”

Both men seemed now to be waiting for Constance and Natasha to speak, to say where they were from. It was a peculiar moment: social expectation spun over appalling actuality. Natasha nearly laughed, and an odd braying sob rose from the bottom of her throat. “She’s moving back to Tennessee,” Constance said. And in the next moment Natasha did laugh, turning away from them. The laughter turned to tears.

Constance patted her shoulder. “It’s all right, honey. I know it is. It’s all right.”

Natasha feared allowing herself to think so. Thinking so could bring on the thing through some terrible convergence of fate: Faulk deciding to go down there and stand on the street, looking up. And perhaps he was looking up when the plane hit. It was as if she could cause this to be true by accepting the probability that it was not true . And then something like premonition came to her that things were only beginning. There were other horrors to come.

Tall, stately Grace came back with another tray of drinks.

“That was fast,” Constance said. “Just the way I like it.”

Grace set the drinks down. For a few moments, they all drank and were silent. Natasha began to feel as though she were violating some kind of morality, greedily taking this form of analgesic help in the face of the unbearable visions of the morning. She finished her drink and excused herself, wanting solitude now, moving away from Constance’s questioning expression across the wide lawn leading down to the beach.

She walked there through the hot sand. And when she reached the edge she felt a deep pang, centered in her chest, just below her neckline. For a moment she thought her heart might be stopping. She put her hands there and looked for a place to sit down. It came to her that she might never get up if she let herself sink to the ground in this moment. Unsteadily, slowly, she walked into the water, feeling the cold pull of it and then the slap of it as it came back, wetting her to the knees. The pain in her chest wall lessened. She waited, crying soundlessly, while the water sucked back, pulling sand along the sides of her feet, foaming there, and then rushing at her. Iris would be worried and trying to call. Iris would know where Michael was. Michael would call her. And why hadn’t he called? The circuits, the overloaded circuits. She looked out at the horizon, that straight dark border under the moving sky, and it terrified her. The waves came in.

Finally she turned, and here was Constance, being helped along by Walt Skinner. They both had their drinks.

“I’ve switched to vodka,” Constance said, holding up her glass. “For my fourth double.” Then she stopped and seemed to consider. “Sounds like something from a tennis match. Fourth double.”

Skinner held his drink up. “My second.”

“That’s your fourth,” said Constance.

“Okay. I stand corrected. I must’ve miscounted.”

“How many did you have this morning?”

“Nothing this morning. I’m goddamned certain of that.”

“You’re lying through your teeth.”

“Madam, I have no teeth. I wear dentures.” He laughed with a low snorting sound, enjoying his own humor, staggering, and she helped him stay on his feet. Together they splashed unsteadily into the water, holding on to each other. They were in almost to their knees when Skinner fell back into a sitting position, holding his drink up, spilling none of it. “Looka that,” he said. “Didn’t lose a drop.” He seemed to be grasping at the fact. There was something hysterical about it: a moment of mastery over the physical world. “We’re stuck in paradise. We’re the lucky ones.” He held the glass higher.

“Shut up,” Constance said. “Don’t talk like that. Jesus.”

“You gonna stand there?”

“Cold.” She sat down carefully. “I am never ready for it to feel so cold.”

“It’s warm as toast,” Skinner said. Then he seemed to recall himself. “Goddamn. What’re we doing, anyway? I don’t know where my wife is.” The water rushed away from them and then came back in foam.

“I’m beginning to believe you made her up,” Constance said.

“I hope we bomb the living shit out of them all. Nuke the fuckers. Pardon my language.”

Natasha started back up the beach.

“Don’t leave,” Constance called to her. “We came to get you.”

“I can’t find my wife,” said Skinner, coughing. “I’m scared. I need another drink.”

“Natasha,” Constance yelled. “I can’t get up.”

Natasha went on, hearing their commotion. They were no longer aware of her, the two of them helping each other get up and laughing crazily. Before she reached the central building, she encountered a man and woman, roughly Constance’s age, headed down to the water. The woman was distraught, and he was supporting her by the elbow. They were talking about how they had visited the World Trade Center only last week.

“You’ve been there?” Natasha said to them.

“Yes,” said the man after the slight hesitation of his surprise at being spoken to. “We were just there, visiting with our son. And he took us to the top.”

“He’s safe?” Natasha said.

“He lives in Brooklyn.”

“Can people get in to go to the top at nine o’clock?”

They looked at her.

“When is it open to tourists?”

“Oh, I don’t remember,” said the woman. She had a big brown mole on the side of her neck.

“It’s nine-thirty,” the man said. “I’m certain of it. I looked at the sign.”

People could be so perfectly kind. Natasha thanked them and wished them a fast return to their home.

She went on into the lobby with its television still transmitting the foment of voices, repeating the images that now suddenly, somewhere beyond language — despite everything you knew and feared — were weirdly, distressingly thrilling, too. It was the awful majesty of the terrible. In the bar, she sat at one end and watched the crowd of people trying to find a way to occupy themselves. Duego walked over from somewhere beyond the patio and stood looking at her. He was holding a glass of what looked like orange juice.

“I cannot concentrate on anything,” he said. He had been crying. She felt an urge to touch his wrist but held it back.

The bartender walked over and stood staring. He was a small man with a gray ponytail. When he smiled, a gold tooth showed.