Lori Ostlund - The Bigness of the World

Everyone nods except Martin, of course, who will be in Singapore by then. Even Noreen nods, though she is tired of everyone, but she is most tired of Sylvie — Sylvie, who never knows when to stop talking. Even when they are in bed, lying side by side with books in their hands, Sylvie cannot stop talking. “Do you see these books in our hands? That means we’re reading,” she said to Sylvie a few nights earlier, her voice straining to make it sound lighthearted, like a joke. And tonight will surely be worse because tonight, frustrated by having her story cut short, Sylvie will feel compelled to finish it again and again as they lie in bed.

Sylvie, she suspects, did not notice that the others were alternately puzzled and amused by the story, not to mention annoyed by the pace at which it was told. Noreen tries to imagine the story from their point of view, a story heard over drinks around a pool in a hot, bright country, and though she had sympathized with their impatience, she still cannot make sense of their reactions, for she cannot find amusement in anything about that night, certainly not in the fear she felt as Deb pressed the Australian woman against the bar, pool cue twitching in her red, meaty hands, and announced, “In two minutes, if you are still here, I am going to kill you,” not screaming the words as an exaggerated expression of anger but stating them clearly and matter-of-factly, attaching a time frame, making of them a promise.

Is it possible, Noreen wonders, to locate the exact moment that fear (or hate or love) takes shape? And is there ever a way to convey that feeling to another person, to describe the memory of it so perfectly that it is like performing a transplant, your heart beating frantically in the body of that other person? That night, after the Australian fled, Deb turned to Noreen and Sylvie and remarked nonchalantly, “She knew,” and Noreen, looking fully into Deb’s eyes for the first time, saw in them something distant and unmoored, like a small boat far out at sea.

When it was Noreen’s turn at the pool table, her hands shook as they held the cue, which felt different to her now — like something capable of smashing open a head or boring through a heart. As Deb racked the balls for the next game, her back turned to them, Noreen grabbed Sylvie’s hand, and they fled the bar also, sprinting across the vast, dark parking lot, glancing around nervously as they fumbled to open the doors of Noreen’s car. Once inside, they locked the doors and flung themselves on each other for just a moment, their hearts thudding crazily against the other’s groping hands, before Noreen started the car and sped out of the parking lot, not turning on the headlights until they reached the street. Halfway home, they pulled over on a dark street and finished each other off quickly right there in the car, not even bothering to silence the engine.

* * *

On the third afternoon, shortly after the five of them convene and order their first round of drinks, a sweaty woman approaches their table and asks whether they have seen Martin. “Martin?” they repeat in a sort of lackadaisical chorus.

“Yes,” she says impatiently. “Martin. I saw him having drinks with you yesterday. I’m his wife.”

They look at one another nervously. Martin had not mentioned a wife. “We haven’t seen Martin today,” Joe says at last.

Martin’s wife picks up a napkin from their table and wipes her face with it. “I’ve been out all day with friends,” she explains. “Man, is this place muggy.” She studies the napkin for a moment, then says, “Well, I better run up to the room and get myself into a shower.” But she does not commit herself to action; instead, she continues to hover over them, and so they feel obligated to ask her to sit down.

“I must look a fright,” she says, falling quickly into a chair. She eyes them suspiciously, as though she suspects them of harboring a loyalty to Martin, and then launches immediately into the story of how Martin ordered frog legs in Ubud. Amanda, with a drawn-out Canadian “oh” that almost gives her secret away, shrieks, “Oh no, the poor frogs.” The others say nothing, especially Calvin, who does not think that Amanda would be impressed by a joke about the dead, legless frogs.

In the midst of this, the front desk man appears beside their table. “Mrs. Stein,” he says quietly, addressing Martin’s wife and mispronouncing her name.

“Stein,” she corrects him curtly.

“Stein,” he repeats dully. “I am very sorry, Mrs. Stein. I do not know how to say this, but the plane has crashed.” He does not know when he decided to begin in this way, by referring to the plane, a pretense suggesting that they share between them the knowledge of her husband’s departure.

“I’m afraid that you must have me confused with another guest. I don’t know anything about a plane,” says Martin’s wife, speaking stiffly, almost angrily.

He puts his hand nervously into his pocket, seeking out Martin’s twenty-dollar bill, which feels different from Indonesian money, sturdier. Yes, it’s there. It exists, which means that everything else exists — Martin, the flight change, the plane — but, he realizes as he gets to the end of this chain of associations, what this means is that none of them exists.

“The plane that your husband was on,” he croaks. “I switched him yesterday because he was nervous about flying our local airline. I called the Singapore office myself. He flew to Jakarta this morning, and from there he was going to Singapore.” His seemingly lidless eyes blink once, slowly, and then focus on the table.

“It’s true,” says Noreen. “Martin told us yesterday that he was leaving this morning, that he had just changed his flight because Garuda made him nervous.”

“Why didn’t you mention this a minute ago when I asked?” Martin’s wife asks, widening the scope of her anger to include all of them.

“I guess we thought that maybe he’d changed his mind,” explains Calvin.

“He did not,” says the manager sadly. “I took him in the hotel van myself.”

“It really was none of our business,” adds Joe.

Martin’s wife stands then, stands and takes another napkin from the table and passes it across her face, and when she is done, it is as though she has wiped away the angry expression, and in its place a new expression struggles to take shape, her face like a television screen as one fiddles with the antennae, all blurs and fuzziness and glimpses.

The manager has begun to cry, quietly and without embarrassment. “Come,” he says to Martin’s wife gently, reaching for her arm. “The families are gathering at the airport to grieve. I will take you.”

The five Americans watch them walk away from the table together, too shocked to speak. They order one round of drinks and then another, and finally Calvin says, “That front desk guy’s a heck of a nice guy,” and because they are a little tipsy by now, they drink a toast to the front desk guy.

“His English is really good also,” says Sylvie. “I mean, he knows a word like grieve ?” She holds up her glass, and they drink a second toast — this time, to the front desk man’s English.

Only then do they discuss Martin, shaking their heads finally at the irony of the situation: how Martin died as a result of his desire to live. “Yep, old Martin would have liked that,” Calvin says, and they nod together, agreeing that their friend would have appreciated the irony, for that is how they have come to think of Martin — as a friend — because he is dead and they were the last to know him.

“Well,” says Noreen after a moment, stretching to signal that she is done for the night. She stands, and Sylvie rises as well. “It was nice meeting you all. We’re leaving for Bali tomorrow.” She does not look at Sylvie as she says this.