Slices (8 page)

The
car crashed and shook. It had
moved
— it was no longer straight in the lines, but tilted at a harsh
angle.

“I
can’t stand listening to that noise any more,” Gary said.
“It’s getting right into my fucking head. I just can’t
take it. I’m going to go make it stop.”

He
got out the keys, and his gun.

Craig’s
eyes were wide. “Listen. That guy said no matter what, not to
open the trunk, so — ”

“Well,
since you killed the sonofabitch, I don’t think his opinion
really matters anymore, now, does it?” He flipped the safety
off and started walking toward the car. “I don’t think
his opinion counts for shit.”

“Gary.
Gary, listen,” Craig said, following him. “I don’t
think that’s just some guy in there — ”

“I
don’t, either. I don’t give a shit what’s in there,
I’m gonna put some bullets in it until it stops moving. With
me?”

“Jesus,
Gary, please don’t — ”

Craig
couldn’t even watch — he just turned away, screwed his
eyes shut tight, and clapped his hands over his ears.

But
he could still hear every sound —

Gary’s
footsteps as he walked over to the car. Sounds from inside like
sledgehammers. The jingle and rattle of the keys; the trunk opening.

He
never heard the gun go off — just a scuffle and a snap, and the
trunk coming back down, like thunder, louder than bombs.

His
eyes opened. He stared for a moment at the suitcase full of money,
where they had left it.

Silence.

Without
turning around, he called out, “Gary?”

He
turned, and all he saw was the car, the keys swinging in the trunk
lock, and something on the ground, half in shadow.

“Gary?”

He
walked over, and saw that the thing on the ground was one of Gary’s
boots.

The
sounds from inside the trunk now were wet and red.

He
picked up the boot — it was too heavy to be empty — and
he sat down on the ground and waited. Waited for someone to come.

Nathan
was certain, this time. He’d seen them moving.

Hot
summer night and the curtains were drawn back, the window open. His
wife Sammy had kicked off the blankets and was lying in moonlight,
thin nightgown damp with sleep sweat and slicked to her body. He
couldn’t sleep in this heat, but the same heat had made her
drowsy, typically contrary, and he was lying awake and staring at her
fast asleep when it happened.

A
shifting. A subtle movement under her skin. Like a muscle twitching,
at first, then a larger shape, definite and solid, like a fish just
about to break the surface of a river. A rise and fall across her
stomach and then gone.

For
a moment he just watched, not moving. Eyes dead wide open and intent.

Then
a second swelling under her skin, a smaller one, its movement less
steady and certain, and this time, his arm reached out, almost
automatically; the hand hovering just above her skin to get a sense
of what lay below, not quite daring to touch her, to wake her.

She
stirred and murmured a little, and his eyes shot up to meet hers, his
hand hesitating, sure that any moment her eyes would drift open.

They
didn’t. They just shifted back and forth in their orbits, under
their lids, as she slept and dreamed. He felt sure he knew what she
was dreaming about.

He
might have thought he was dreaming himself, once. Or he might have
convinced himself it was a trick of the light as he watched the
second shadow under her skin slide back out of sight —
something his tired eyes just simply invented. But not now. By now
he’d dreamed too many times himself. He was used to it, and
he’d developed a taste for what was real and solid.

He
lay awake for a long time after that, waiting for the room to cool
down, waiting for them to show themselves again. But he didn’t
think they would. Eventually he fell down into a shallow, restless
sleep, and hoped he would dream, but if he did, the memory had faded
by morning.

She’d
wanted him to be happy when she told him she was pregnant. More than
five years had gone by since that moment, and he could still call
easily to mind the exact expression of disappointment, of badly
concealed hurt. When she had realized that his smile was starting a
moment too late, that he’d hesitated before reacting, her own
smile died alone.

“I
thought you wanted children,” she said, before he could say
anything.

“I
did. I do,” he told her.

They’d
been married for four months, and were both living tight together in
the too small apartment that had once been only his. He’d just
started at the architecture firm, and his salary was reasonable but
not impressive; she was still months away from finishing college.

It
wasn’t a good time for them to have children. They both wanted
children, very much, some day. But not yet. He didn’t remind
her of any of this just then. They’d talked about it enough
times before. He thought they were in agreement, and he thought she’d
been still taking her birth control pills, although for one sick and
dizzy moment he doubted it.

“It’s
not a good time,” was all he said, and he expected her to argue
about it, for them to drag out all their reasons and finances again.

But
her expression, while still sad, was curiously flat and calm. “I
know,” she said. “You’re right. We shouldn’t.”

“No,”
he agreed slowly, at odds with himself. This time, the conversation
wasn’t theoretical. He’d always been sure he could be
ruthlessly practical, but it was a little harder to be right about
this, now. He would have felt better if she’d argued.

They
did talk. They did argue, over the next several weeks. They talked
about terminating the pregnancy, and they talked about it just like
that, their words hospital-cold and clinical. They talked about
putting the child up for adoption. All the same conversations they’d
had before they got married, now with a new sense of urgency, as
Sammy’s belly began to gently curve.

They
had very few friends to talk things over with. They’d been so
different, his light to her dark, and they had very few friendships
that survived their marriage. Neither one of them wanted to tell
their parents about this, and they faced it alone.

In
the end, they didn’t even face it together.

Their
discussions turned to disagreements turned to arguments, and Sammy’s
darker moods turned to silent ones. They didn’t talk at all for
several days, communicating only in furtive looks and sullen glances.
Nathan threw himself into his work, bringing home blueprints and
legal agreements, losing himself in the dream of houses.

When
he couldn’t stand it any longer, Nathan finally came to her and
said, “We need to talk.”

She’d
been sitting in the darkened living room by the open window, watching
the traffic go by and sipping a glass of red wine. Singing to herself
something that might have been a lullaby. She’d let all the
heat bleed out of the room into the night. She looked at him with
wide dark eyes and asked, “About what?”

“About
— ” The word came out of him as one exasperated burst of
breath, and then he was completely derailed. He recovered his
composure and said, “What we’re going to do about the
baby.”

“Oh,”
she said, and for a moment, didn’t say anything else. Then,
“I’ve already taken care of it.”

“You
— what do you mean?” His chest felt suddenly tight and
breathless, his heart like it might refuse to beat again. “Taken
care of — ?”

“I’m
not pregnant any more.” Her voice was dead calm again, as
smooth and implacable as waves lapping against the shore. When he
didn’t say anything, she reached out and took his hand, placed
it against her stomach, pressed it flat. “See?”

He
did. It was flat and smooth again. She’d — without him,
without his help, she’d — “When?” was all he
could ask.

“Does
it matter?” Her eyes were dark and distant and seemed to look
right through him. “It’s taken care of. You don’t
need to worry about it.”

She
turned away from him and went back to looking out the window, and
that was the last they spoke about it for years.

It
was years, as well, before the dreams started.

Even
though they still lived side by side in the small apartment, close
enough that her scent was always on his skin, Nathan knew, over time,
that he’d lost her forever.

He
tried to make her happy, and for all he knew, sometimes she was.
She’d smile at him, sometimes, a smile as bright as a full moon
breaking free from the clouds, sudden and dazzling. But more often,
the smiles he saw were small and hidden and private, and he never
knew what prompted them. He eventually stopped asking.

He’d
find her sometimes, alone and whispering. Sometimes out on the street
at night, pointing up at the stars and naming them. Or sitting, more
than once, alone and cold on a child’s swing in the playground
behind their apartment building. She answered to her own clock and
rhythms, followed her own seasons.

She
dropped out of school, despite his protests. He tried endlessly to
reach her, and worried more than once that maybe this had all been
too much for her mind. If he’d had close friends to advise him,
maybe he would have known to insist she get help, tried to fix her
with more than just love and patience.

Instead,
he worked. It was all he knew how to do. He’d never been much
in love before Sammy and for all he knew, this was what it was like.
But his work he understood, the abstract and the ideal and the
pursuit of a perfect line, existing somewhere in the unreal,
unhindered by pen and paper and his hands. He worked harder and
brought home a little more money and knew that he could just fix
their life if he kept trying.

A
couple of years had gone by since that strange cold night by the
window. He announced that they were moving. He’d found a larger
apartment they could afford now, a too-small two-bedroom apartment
instead of their too-small one-bedroom one, and he hoped that he
could lure her out and into somewhere new and bring her back to the
world.

For
a while it almost worked. She was happy and excited for a time, took
more interest in her life, and more interest in him, covering him at
night in their new bed with soft kisses and her softer body. For a
while, he thought it was all going to be all right.

Then
for a small matter of weeks she was distracted and pale again, and
came to him asking, “Do you think it’s time now? For a
baby, I mean?”

He
blinked. And hesitated once more. “I’m not sure,”
he said, thinking about it. “We are in a slightly better
position financially, and you’re not in school any more.”

“ …
But?” she asked, when
he didn’t go on.

“Well.”
He felt awkward, didn’t want to say anything. “We still
don’t have any savings to speak of. And I’d been hoping
that, well. That you’d go back. To school.”

“Oh,”
she said. A slight puzzled frown creased her forehead. “I don’t
think I will.”

“But
you still might,” he said.
When
you feel better,
he almost added, but didn’t. “And I’ve been very
busy at work, lately. I wouldn’t be much help with a new baby.”

“It’s
still not a good time, then,” she said slowly, saying the words
carefully, as if making sure she had them right, like a ritual.

“Not
in my opinion,” he agreed.

He
watched her unreadable face for a long moment, until it changed to a
calm smile.

“All
right,” she said at last. And never asked again.

It
wasn’t long after that that Nathan started to dream.

He
wrote it off at first as stress, overwork, guilt at having put her
off again. But he kept having the same dreams, seeing the same face,
impossible to ignore:

His
daughter, his own daughter, happy and warm in his arms. Watching her
take her first steps, feeling tiny hands wrap around his fingers.
Taking her out to a park, around the lake in a stroller, sunlight
streaming down in ribbons between the branches as she tried to catch
falling leaves.

She
always looked the same. He wondered about this, by day, about why his
mind had latched on to one particular image of the child he’d
never had.

Sammy
was almost never in these dreams. But he never wondered why.

He
would lay half-awake in bed some weekend mornings after these dreams,
sometimes for nearly an hour, not quite willing to leave the warm
haze of sleep and rejoin the world, missing his daughter already.

He
tried talking to Sammy. Not about the dreams; never about the dreams.
Instead, he talked to her about having changed his mind, about
realizing how important to him children really were. They could work
things out, he told her, reprioritize their lives and tighten their
spending habits and make room for a baby, if she was still willing —

She
wasn’t. She didn’t talk much about why not, just turned
some of his own words back at him evasively, a reasonable, calm
Giaconda smile on her face the entire time. It was like seeing his
own resistance from before reflected back at him, a mirror image
glimpsed through smoke. No baby. It wasn’t time for one.

Nathan’s
life inverted, crystal-clear and brightly colored visions at night,
and a dream-like fog of wavering waking hours, drifting his way
through hours at work and silent evenings at home. He felt like his
home was haunted, but watching his wife, seeing her as if from a
distance, he couldn’t be sure which one of them was the ghost.

And
watching his wife, an idea began to grow in his mind.

He
first saw it one day when she stood in the morning, naked and
unselfconscious, by the side of the bed. She’d just woken up to
the morning light and was facing the window, stretching.