Richard Bausch - Before, During, After

“I have never been to Washington and I would love to see it,” he said.

“You should go.”

“But you are leaving it.”

“I’ve left it. When I get out of here, I’m going back to Memphis. A small truck with all my belongings in it is headed there as we speak. To Twenty-Three Bilders Street, Memphis.”

“It sounds like a number of workers. Twenty-three builders.”

“It does. We have twenty-three builders waiting to build this building on this street lined with buildings.”

He laughed, and it went on. It was the reasonless laughter of dope.

“Lot of buildings,” she said. “Count them.”

“Twenty-three,” he said, and his laugh went off at the night sky.

“It doesn’t have a u in it. Bilders. It’s a man’s name.” She sputtered, nearly choking with her own laugh. “I think he was a banker. So my belongings are headed to this street with a little house on it built by builders, and the whole street has buildings on it now, probably built by this banker named Building. No, Bilders. Off High Point Terrace.”

He paused, wiping his eyes and his mouth with a handkerchief, which he crushed in his fist and jammed into his shirt pocket. “Do you believe in fate?”

It seemed that she couldn’t move the muscles around her mouth. “Explain.”

“That everything was leading to this.”

“And what is this , exactly?”

“We two, here, on this beach.”

“I don’t believe in fate,” she said to him. “So, no. But hey, thanks anyway.”

“I feel something led me here. Something in a past life.”

She flicked the roach off into the sand, and he got to his knees to retrieve it. “It’s done,” she told him. “There’s just the ash left. We’re done. All the fun’s gone out of it.”

He sat back and rolled another and lit it while she watched. The little residue of pleasant feeling had dissolved inside her.

“Do you feel it, too?” he said.

She sighed. “I feel dizzy and full of anxiety. And I don’t want to be with anyone. Please.”

“I only want to help you. And be helped.”

“Let’s talk about something other than ‘fate’ then.”

Behind them someone was crying, and someone else was singing. It struck her all over and yet as if for the first time that she was thousands of miles from home. “Your wife is a dancer, you said.”

“Yes.” He looked absurd sitting there hugging his knees, talking about fate, his dancer wife gone off with another woman. “I cannot help this feeling that I have,” he told her. “That the universe brought you to me.”

She had to suppress an urge to laugh again. She watched him breathe out the smoke. When he offered her still another hit, she accepted.

“I guess it is stupid,” he said.

She took the hit, handed the roach to him, and leaned back on her hands. The clouds over the moon were darker but still quite thin, moving faster than she thought clouds ever moved. The world was spinning. Everything was dissolving, going off.

“I believe the universe intends changes for us all,” he said.

“All us builders?” She giggled, and it took hold and grew deeper.

“I am serious now,” he said. “Hey, I am. I am serious.”

“Sorry. Strikes me funny.”

“I do believe the universe intends changes.” And now he laughed, too.

“This isn’t the best time to talk about the universe, is it. Or maybe it’s the only time to talk about it. Right? Isn’t that it? You get stoned and you talk about the universe? Only I don’t want to talk about the universe, man. Truthfully, I am so fucking averse to talking about the fucking universe.” This brought still another laugh out of her, and she looked at the fact of it, like marking the date.

“I am only trying to divert you,” he said. “I do not like such language.”

“Oh, God. Forgive me. I fucking didn’t mean to say averse . That was very fuckingly rude and vulgar of me. Pure fuckery and I do apologize.”

“I am not prudish.”

“Oh — well, thank you for the smoke.”

“That is helping?”

She saw the anxiety in his face. He was quite good to look at. “Listen, I don’t want to hurt your feelings. Really. I’m sorry, okay? I’m drunk and stoned and sick and panicky and I hope you don’t take it personally but I really don’t want company anymore. So why don’t you leave.”

“You cannot even bring yourself to say my name.”

“Oh, shut up !” She kept laughing.

“Say it, then.”

“Please leave me alone.”

He took another pull, inhaled it deeply, held it in, then sighed it out, offering her yet another hit. She took it. “Okay. Now. Please leave me alone. Nicholas.”

“You were not enjoying this?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“It is only a little kindness between friends.”

“I’m sorry. You’re right.”

“We were laughing beautifully.”

“Right. Okay, sure. And I fuckishly said averse . And you forgave me.”

“I do not know what you mean, now. I wish you would not use that language. It is impolite and unladylike. Not worthy of you.”

“Hey, fuck you, sarge.”

“Sarge.”

“Forget it.”

He leaned over and lightly kissed the side of her face, then moved a little farther away. “I mean nothing unfriendly. I have some other things to take.”

“No,” she said.

“Do you know about Special K?”

“The cereal?”

He smiled. “It is called that. Is there a cereal? I have it in pill form.”

“The cereal ?”

“Ketamine. It makes things happen.”

“No,” she said.

They went on smoking. She felt the drug moving through her, numbness running along the nerves of her face. Time seemed to grow elongated and strange. She let him talk, and he was very willing to describe for her everything he was going through. It occurred to her that he was just an insecure, nervous boy.

In a little while they were talking about the day, the trauma of it, and the way everyone seemed to tumble off some private deep end. “I do not even drink,” he said. “I like other things. But now I think I am drunk.”

“You keep talking about your big drug habits. Are you trying to impress me? Because it’s not working.”

“I was not trying to impress you. Only to help relieve your worry.”

“That’s sweet. Thank you for it. But I really just want to sit here by myself.”

He was silent. Perhaps a full minute went by.

“It has felt a little less awful,” she told him.

“I’m glad.”

Another pause.

“Suppose we are on a deserted island,” he said. “From a shipwreck.”

This seemed very amusing. There was a bleak something in the laughter now, and the fact that the laughter itself felt so mirthless made it all that much deeper. “Deserted desert island, right?” she said. “Oh, that’s perfect. That’s rich.”

“Not a desert, no.”

“That’s hilarious. Not a deserted desert island?”

“The dope is making you hysterical,” he said.

“Yeah, perfect. Hysterical.” She saw moving light on the water. The clouds were opening again.

“I think we should be as if no one else will ever come here. This is the first place. Adam and Eve’s garden.”

“Adam and Eve’s deserted desert island.”

“I am drawn to you. Very much. You are very beautiful. May I simply touch your face?”

She watched his hand come up to her cheek. The touch was tentative and gentle, and she felt a little sorry for him. He let his fingers move carefully, slowly down to her chin, and under her chin. He turned her face up and leaned down to kiss her. She let him and then watched him sit back and regard her. The world was coming to an end. And then once more everything shifted: there was not the sense of this being anything but a small, desolate pass, one of the nights of her life before. She had no sense of a self, of herself, as more than a set of floating impressions. She wanted sleep. The effects of the alcohol and dope she had ingested seemed to be growing more profound. She lay back, and he was leaning over her, supporting himself on one elbow. I am not the type , she thought. What type. Why is it a type? The words went through her mind. You are , she thought. You are, now. You were, then. What were you? She thought of Faulk. She saw him riding home on the train. He was probably all right. All her irrational fear was leaching out of her as the night cooled.