Leaving the Sea: Stories (20 page)

I
could not sleep until I had labored through a regular lust application performed with motion, gesture, and languageflower. There was no script or dance step to the discipline. I administered it to her whether she was home in the head or away, no matter the score between her heart and the world, whether she swooned or cringed when I held her, or if she gazed into space or feigned sleep.

She received my application with short, gasping tones she made with her own breath. The tones could have been stolen from a song. Every sound she made was borrowed from what was once known as music. It was not clear whether I should have responded with sounds of my own, which I had once used to draw people closer to my body, or any noise I could make to harmonize her noise into something passing for speech, which might then tell us what to do. Her sounds emerged most forcefully when the motion of my lust was pistonlike, an event that often featured my person volleying above hers, as if flying in place, she pinned beneath me, wilting in my shadow; or me behind her, as though driving a chariot, while she carved a location for herself into the bedclothes.

When we pursued the discipline, we fought toward the seizure known as nighttime. Nighttime promised a better statistic of invisibility. It was our primary collaboration, to arrive where we wouldn’t be seen. We fantasized about a place where we could be wet and boneless, where no one would dare attribute a feeling to us. The safest thing to say about water is that it has no bones, unless a person has been trapped in it.

She would announce her seizure some seconds before it occurred. She used American sounds known as phrases. She said: Here I come; and: Good lord. I imagine the sounds she made once passed for words. When I announced my seizure, often by reciting her name, she held my hand. The sun was briefly refuted and I achieved a dark area. At such times I could see the two of us walking through a garden, looking at the world as though for the first time, believing that the flaring, bright obstacles that kept us from seeing deep into the earth were actually only called flowers.

In daylight she wore motion-limiting weights called shoes. She had a wet mistake buried in her chest. It should never have been put there. Someone had concealed a weapon, which helped her manifest a wound. She tried to sweat it free by performing a function called crying. The five knives of her hand were once called fingers. She stabbed her face every time she tried to eat; the cuts released small blasts of clear air that made the day feel cool. The flag of sadness that concealed her arms was known as a sleeve. The flag flew the colors of her body, which there is no longer another name for. The word
body
used to refer to the evidence left behind that someone had died.

The first time you meet a potential partner presents an opportunity that will never come your way again, the chance to handle them freely, to smell their parts, to disrobe or possibly dismantle them, to mount their hind, to bark at them, to pull back their hair or grip at their scruff and whinny, to rope them to a post, to insert a wire into their back and control them through radio, to scull or tack in their perimeter, to kiss them gently, to hold their face and kiss their cheeks and shelter them from the wind with your wide, hard body.

Your appearance and behavioral strategy play a part in gaining this access to someone new, so it is imperative to keep your person clean and keep his tank and limbs filled with the appropriate fluid, seasonally correct and rich in emotion, to be sure his shoes are hard on top and solid for the long haul, to mind that your own person is posture perfect and can aim his body true, accounting for the possible refractions of light that occur between the people of today, also known as the new wolves.

The shovels we use to cleave the air in two—and possibly reveal a person we might fail against—were once abbreviated as hands. This was when we had two shovels each, and we apparently used them to scoop up objects we thought we needed, or to toss away those that did not please us. When we faced off with a person, the sound of our four shovels colliding produced a shield of silent, wind-free air known as home. This was when there were only two choices how to behave, on or off. We would apparently put some objects into our mistake tunnel, which was still the main opening in the face, and the tunnel was able to convulse around them and propel them deep into the body’s grave, which was then called, I think, a belly. The tunnel often became wet, but it had dry sticks in front known as teeth, to provide a final reflection of every object we buried in our bodies. Those people who wanted to consume us could then take an inventory of our assets simply by staring us in the mouth or, more obviously, putting their mouths over ours in an investigation known as kissing. Whenever she kissed me, she was prying for secrets.

My secret was my lucky bone, worn behind my face for good luck. It was an excellent protection against sorrow. Now seldom seen, at least in the daytime, this bone was once worn as an amulet above the neck to ensure a human appearance. Without it, a person might be considered an accident of light. It is a bone that grows in time with the body and achieves a round shape to best support the face. Some cultures call it a “head” and decorate it with paint and stones, or cover it with veils, gels, masks, and helmets.

In America the head sprouts either soft or coarse hair, features small apologies called eyes, and has a round mistake tunnel known as a mouth. The mouth asks for help by carving wind into short breaks in silence called languageflower. During escape tactics such as walking, the head precedes the person and falsely advertises his mood and what he might say. One of its functions is a decoy event called a smile. The head is better known as a flare for trouble. Some areas called cities feature millions of these flares hovering at eye level, and the effect is blinding. The Spanish word for this is
crowd
. In America there is a phrase—Bury your Head—which originates from the Dutch and translates, roughly, as: to marry.

In some parts of America the little bone above a man’s neck is considered to possess skills such as pain storage and escape strategies; the bone is suspended above the man as a charm against other people, who would otherwise seize his body and pour themselves into it, a self-camouflaging sacrifice known as a relationship. But other people also use the little bone as a buoy that one should not approach, because someone will die in the space it covers. If you get too close to the buoy, you will be trapped as a mourner. Circling the head is referred to as courtship. It is like chalk around a body before that body has died. It hovers in place and appears attached to the fear spout that was once called a neck. In truth, every man’s body is an announcement of a future disappearance. Just by being in the room with her, I was foreshadowing our separation. My head was simply the point where that disappearance would occur. If we ever need to know what will go away, we need only to look at a person. Anyone.

Sometimes the disappearance can be traced. We conceal a part of the world and it’s called swallowing. Many of the best objects, including the world’s first engine, a fault called the heart, are hidden in the body. It is a competition to hide as much as we can, a form of ballooning that is believed, in some languages, to make us more attractive. We say we love someone, which means we covet the hoard they might be storing in their bodies. While they sleep we reach at their hoard with our hands, an excavation better known as caressing. That is why lovers often say things to each other like: X marks the spot, Come and get me, I have a secret. Having a secret means: I have swallowed part of you and that is why you feel incomplete. Massaging the skin is another way to feel for a secret entry. It is unfortunate that most people do not come equipped with a map and some cutting tools. So much time would be saved. Instead of saying, “Pleased to meet you,” we might make a small incision in the chest, wide enough for us to slip inside if the air will no longer tolerate our presence, if the population in the room is just asking for our omission.

In the current era, the male treasure hoarder uses someone else as storage space for his spoils, in case his own body is looted while he sleeps, a violation certain Americans still refer to as dreaming. There will then be bodies that carry his assets after he has been found out. This grouping was once known as a family. People produced families to disperse the treasure and keep the sniper, who was once mistaken for a bird, guessing. In some American dialects, the word
family
means “scatter.” Having a family increases the number of targets, cuts down on the father’s risk. With more people for the sniper to shoot at, the father has a better chance of getting out alive. His wife and children function as his bodyguards. This is also probably why relationships are referred to as “bulletproof vests.”

I had been advised by the Authority that a ritual at the outset of our union would create a relationship, which was then seen as a preferable condition. So I sent her some of the water I had blessed for the dedication of our relationship, telling her to have some of it to drink and to apply some as a lotion to the place she least wanted me to discover, so long as this place occurred on or near her own body. The water might protect her, even if I repeatedly touched her or looked at her, which was admittedly going to be my early plan. But if she spilled the water on her father, there would be a chance that I would kill him. It was a favor to warn her against my worst intentions. I wanted to show her my unsatisfiable side, to get the worst part out of the way, but it turned out that it wasn’t just a side, but my entire body, and even the space around it that was unsatisfiable. Wherever I put my body, I left behind areas that could not be fixed. In a relationship every person gives a gift, usually by leaving something out. The best and most cherished gift is to give her the first clue as to why she should begin plotting her escape.

There are men blessed by water, whom women cannot see. This is the only favor water can grant, to cloak our mistakes by adding a layer of reflection to our skin, which helps other people take more responsibility for us, once they see how horrible they can look when we reflect them. We have bodies of water, known also as failures of land, to show us where mistakes are made, because water gathers near error, to magnify it and make everyone feel responsible. This quite natural atmospheric process was once understood as guilt. The apologetic men are laid out flat, ashamed to have ended up a mirror to other men. Dry men have made no mistakes. To look at water is to admit the possibility of error. Some men are still shy around water.

It was her belief that water, taken in drink form, would provide the necessary ballast for her to remain with me. But Americans believe it is unlucky to drink water, because those who do so will live. The body will thrive and grow; and growth, particularly in English, implies movement away from others. The first word for it was escape.

Commitment, on the other hand, is an abbreviation for an inability to move, which is why couples often become heavy together, stiff and slow-moving, eating pounds of food to ensure each other’s immobility. Feeding a lover is like making her swallow an anchor. This is why getting married is described as swallowing iron. Marrying is never referred to as “casting off,” although sometimes the phrase “taking on a passenger” is used.

Relationships fail when the mouth is too small or refuses food. Touching one’s own mouth is the first gesture of masturbation, because it explicitly advertises self-sufficiency. Men grow mustaches and beards to become less attractive to themselves, to decrease the chances of making their partners obsolete. Cultures that eat with their hands are boasting about their lovemaking abilities.

I hoped to find the place she wanted to hide, and I suspected her place was hidden on another woman’s body, someone who sulked in her shadow and answered to a different name. Thus an investigation occurred that featured me, in full color, sounding various skins for her secret place, an action more technically known as intercourse, because the man uses his entire body to listen against the skin of another. Often I was obliged to make lust applications to those host bodies that were possibly storing her mystery. Because I was intent on making the future come true, I looked for examples of her everywhere. The bodies that hosted my intercourse often overlapped with the bodies of the people she called friends. They made altogether different sounds and words, and none of us could produce the sound that, in America, had come to pass for her name.

She sent back some of the water she had swallowed and it was clear that she had related to the water by letting it down her throat. This was water that had trafficked through her person to a place I had not been allowed to see. It had more access. I was jealous of everything she ate and drank. The water she sent back to me came in the form of rain. This was when changes in the air were known as weather, when low-flying bullets were still called friends, and periods of suffering were broken up into intervals called days. Back then, the sun still honored the world’s objects by letting them contribute the occasional shadow to the surface of the world. Every day something fell on me and my temperature changed. Temperature was another way to remind you that you weren’t dying quickly enough; it let you feel too viciously alive. These changes of temperatures were called moods and they had interesting foreign names, but I no longer recall them. I have no memory for anything that happens outside of my body.

I cannot recall the precise words for the phrase: “I’m sorry.”

When I learn these words again, I will never stop saying them.

H
is name had been scratched off his documents years ago. There had been little reason since then to refer to himself, and his rigorous daily schedule kept him from thinking what he might be called if someone addressed him.

In the morning he would make a plate of eggs and dot it with hard cheese. He ate until he was tired, then put his plate in the sink, combed his dry, curly hair until his scalp hurt, then put on his long coat and went out for his tour. Every day the tour followed a different track away from his house, sometimes climbing a hill, other times descending one. He did not wish to see the same people. Their faces troubled him. Any one of them might be the very person waiting to replace him. If he could not avoid a greeting, he said “Hello,” and breathed down at his feet while he walked, listening for their departing steps behind him.

Under the coat was a naked body that he fussed at with a special lotion. He thought of it as his own body. A pocket of the coat was torn through at the bottom, allowing his hand to spread lotion while he walked. If he saw a person, his feeling faded, no matter how fast his hands moved. People were no good for his feeling, but he could not have the feeling alone at home, either, so he risked sighting them at large in the world around his home. He preferred to see trees, but forests were no good. Too many trees suggested too much possibility, and his feeling faded. He had to be moving along at a swift pace, with trees looming in his periphery but not surrounding him, clusters of green growth like clouds of algae bursting in the air. Then he could massage his area until his stomach steamed with friction and he became hungry for lunch.

He took his meals in the center of town. Ham was his preferred dish, especially in the winter, when it was shaved transparently thin and rolled inside flavored paper straws. Usually he washed it down with a steeped citrus drink, depending on the season. He liked berry drinks, but his town rarely produced berries, and if a berry-flavored water was ever made, it was bitter and gritty in his mouth. Mostly his town sold long hollows of bread lathered in fruit. The meat was flown in from the north. He ate a meat that had traveled high in the air.

After lunch, he walked home for his appointment in front of the television, where he watched a daily show that concerned people who fought to board a very small boat. Once aboard, they had to row themselves to a pre-agreed target, often an island, but sometimes a town that fronted a river. He had his favorite characters, usually the redheads, because they were seaworthy and never backed down from a fight. But he was more interested in the water and how the water made everybody on the show look sleepy. He liked to see people bursting out of it, scrambling onto the lip of the boat, having their hands beaten by the passengers who had already secured a berth, then slipping back into the water. Sometimes the people said things just as their heads entered the water, so the words were partially muffled, and he tried to give his words that same kind of sound. When he filled his mouth with bread, he could sound like one of the strong redheads slipping underwater after a struggle.

In the unspoken-for hours in his afternoons, he delivered phone calls from a hard, gray phone that had been carved into his wall. There was a code he could press into his phone that changed his behavior when he talked. If he prefaced the person’s number with this code, he could speak smoothly and at length from a set of feelings that were not his own. He never wanted to forget these three numbers, so he wrote them on a little white sticker and stuck it to his phone. The numbers he dialed were from a special phone book purchased at a store outside of town. He believed it gave him access to more extraordinary people than the ones he had to see on his morning tours. When someone answered on the other line, he opened the conversation by apologizing to them, using their name and a special, sorrowful voice, which often led them to believe he was someone else. His phone book seemed to have many numbers of people who were waiting by their phones for a man to call and apologize to them. In the afternoons, before his special dinners, he was often this man. Minutes would go by before the people discovered he was someone else, and even if this made the people angry, he often learned about who he had been, and he felt like someone else for a little while, which was so hard to feel for very long, and always made him a little bit hungry.

He had to signal for his dinner with a special light he pointed from his window. Then there might be a crackling knock at the door, as if someone had stepped on a small bird. Sometimes the knock on the door came before he signaled with the light, but he knew at least not to eat his dinner until he flashed his signal.

Dinner was never much other than a plate of potatoes run under a broiler until it blistered with heat. The woman who brought his food stood near him and touched his cheek, and he would endure this gesture until she had left the plate on the table and closed his door behind her.

Once he ate his potatoes, he knew that very little could happen, and that, with some special effort, and much thought, he could arrange things so that even less might happen, until possibly nothing would, a circumstance he might very well be rewarded for. It was a matter of skill. He would perfect this skill until he had arranged for a situation that would go on for as long as he wanted it to, in which absolutely nothing occurred. Even if people defied his wish, and walked the streets and roads in greatcoats spreading lotions over the territory, he knew that no one would see them, or, if they did, they would never remember it. The disruption would seem dreamlike, with artificial colors. The people would be made of bark.

His bedtime came when the potatoes still sat high in his stomach but he could not keep his eyes open. He unrolled a flannel sleep shirt. He ran a toothbrush through his mouth. He coughed his special words into the speech hole in his bedroom.

Last came the only ritual that might help him disappear. If he pressed the three-digit code into the phone again, he could, with any luck, become someone else before he went to sleep, which meant he could give the gift of rest to his other person, the one that he secretly oiled with his hands while out touring, the one he was seducing into taking his place in the great world. He could give his other person a chance to dream and sleep and wake up and toss and turn in the sheets. Then maybe there was a better likelihood that, instead of himself, it would be the other person who would wake up, and something different might happen, something that had not happened yet. He would know what to call himself then. His name would sound very much like an engine does. The other person would be in charge now, and he’d have a very different idea of how things should be done. In this way, he, the first person, the one who had started this, and kept it going day after day with almost no help from anyone else in the world, with the small exception of the woman who brought his dinner, could take a break himself, and hide out close to the new man’s skin, right there on his body, under the long coat that moved near the world’s trees, where the lotion was smooth and soft, and no light could get in. This was where he wanted to be. This was why he entered a code into the phone and slid deep into his soft, clean bed, waiting for morning.