Joy Williams: The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories

“The French have spectacular wrecks,” a man said.

“I love that Jaws of Life thing,” a woman said. “Have you ever seen that thing?” She had streaked blond hair and a heavily freckled bosom.

“I saw an incredible Mexican bus crash once,” a small man said. But his remark was immediately dismissed by the group.

“A Mexican wreck? There’s nothing extraordinary about a Mexican wreck…”

“It’s true. The landscape’s such a void that there’s not the same effect…”

Steadman and Denise listened attentively. Denise didn’t have a car-crash story and if she ever did she wouldn’t tell it, she decided.

The waitress told them the previous couple at their booth had given her a five-dollar tip but had torn the bill in half, forcing on her the ignominy of taping it back together. She said she despised people, present company excepted, and told them not to order the veal. If they ordered the veal, she told them, she would not serve it, which would be cause for her dismissal but she didn’t care.

They decided to have another couple of drinks, and return to their room.

The room was not welcoming. It had seen too many people come and go. It was wearying to be constantly reminded that time passes and everything with it, purposelessly.

Denise watched Steadman place himself on the bed. He lay on his back. The room surrounded them. For a while, Denise lay on the bed too, thinking. Where had it gone, it had gone someplace. The way they were. Then she went into the other room, where the writing table and television set were. Their new traveling bags were there, big soft black ones. She turned off the lights, feeling a little dizzy. She wrung her hands. They should go someplace, she thought. There was tomorrow, something had to be done with it. She reviewed the day’s events. Her mind was like a raven, picking over gravel with its oily, luminous feathers. She could almost hear it as it hopped across the small stones but she couldn’t quite, thank God. Then she heard someone passing by in the corridor, laughing. A thin breeze entered the room and she thought of the distant water as they had seen it from the balcony, folded like a package between two enormous buildings. She looked at their bags, heaped in a corner. Night was a bad time. Night would simply give her no rest. Steadman was quiet now but he might get up soon and they would have their conversation. It was a mess, they were in an awful mess. He didn’t know how much longer he could stand this and so on and so on…Her eyes ached and her throat was dry, she hated this room. It, it just didn’t like them. She could hear it saying, Well, there’s a pathetic pair, how did they ever find each other? She’d like to set fire to the room. Or beat it up. She could hit, no question. There was someone passing in the hall again, laughing, the fools. The room stared at her lidlessly. Perhaps they could leave tonight. They would go down — Denise and Steadman, Steadman and Denise — past the night clerk trying to read a book—10,000 Dreams Interpreted. She remembered what the book looked like: red and falling apart. They had done this before, left in the night when the moon was setting and the sun rising. To get out while the moon was setting, that’s exactly what she wanted. She lay down on the floor. The room was not letting them breathe the way they had to; it was scandalous that they’d been given this room instead of another. Listening to Steadman breathe, she tried to breathe. She wished it were June. It was June once and they were somewhere and a mockingbird sang from midnight to daybreak, or so it seemed, imitating other birds, and Steadman had made a list of all the birds he recognized in the mockingbird’s song. He learned things and then remembered them, that’s just how he was.

Denise crept across the carpet toward Steadman’s bed and held on to it. His face was turned toward her, his eyes open, looking at her. That was Steadman, he knew everything but he didn’t share. He made her feel like a little animal sometimes, one with little animal emotions and breathing little animal devotions. She would ask him for the list very quietly, very nicely, the little piece of paper with the names of the birds, where was it, he was always putting it someplace and she had already gone through their bags, their beautiful traveling bags, ready for the larger stage.

“Steadman,” she said reasonably.

But how could he hear her? This annoying room was listening to every word she uttered. And what did it know? It couldn’t know anything. It couldn’t climb from the basement into a life of spiritual sunshine like she was capable of doing, not that she could claim she had. The individual in the hall howled with laughter at this. There were several of them out there now, a whole gang, the ones from the dinner party, probably, the spectacular-wrecks people, just shrieking.

At once Denise realized that the gang was herself and it was morning. Her hands hurt terribly. They were as pink as though they’d been boiled. She’d hurt them somehow. Actually, they were broken. Incredible.

She stared at them in the car on the drive to the hospital. Those hands weren’t going to do anything more for Denise for a while.

The doctor in the emergency room wrapped them up, the left first, then the right, indifferently. Even so, some things fascinated him.

“We’ve got a kid on the third floor,” he said. “He was born with all the bones in his head broken. Now there’s a problem. Are you aware that our heads are getting smaller? Our skulls are smaller than those of our brothers in the Paleolithic period. Do you know why? I’ll tell you why. Society’s the answer. Society has reduced our awareness skills. Personal and direct contact with the natural world requires a continual awareness, but now we just don’t have it. We’re aware of dick-all.”

Denise looked at her hands covered in the casts. They were like little dead creatures safely concealed in snow-covered burrows. Ugly dishes don’t break, she thought. But they had.

“Try to stay alert, miss,” the doctor said, playfully slapping her now utterly exempt hands.

Then they were driving slowly away from the coast through small towns. “I’m tired, Denise,” Steadman was saying. “I’m really tired.”

“Yes, yes,” Denise said. She was thinking of all the nice things she would do for this man she loved.

“I think we should stay somewhere until your hands are better,” he said. “Rent a house. Get some rest.”

“I agree, I agree. No more hotels. We’ll get a house for a while.” She was crazy about him, everything was going to be fine.

He turned off the road at a sign that said CAFE REALITY and into a parking lot. Actually, it said CAPE REALTY. Denise laughed. “And we’ll stop drinking,” she said. “We’ll just stop.”

“Sure,” Steadman said.

“I don’t want to see a lot of places, though,” Denise said. “I don’t want to choose.”

She sat in the car. She had ruined that room back there. Embarrassing, she thought. But the room had fought back. It made one think, really.

Steadman returned to the car and put several photographs of a house on her lap. It had a porch in front and a pool in back and was surrounded by a tall, whitewashed wall.

“I’m going to use this month wisely,” Denise assured him.

“Good,” Steadman said.

The important thing was to stop drinking. If she could get twenty-four hours away from last night, she could start stopping. Maybe they could get rid of all the glasses in the house. Glasses were always calling to you. Maybe this house wouldn’t have any. Their drinking had brought them here. Denise was determined to learn something, to leave this place refreshed. She yawned nervously. Steadman’s forehead was beaded with sweat, the back of his jacket was dark with sweat as he lifted their bags from the trunk.