The Best American Short Stories® 2011 (13 page)

"Earth to Rob," Bix says. His face is soft and his eyes are shiny and bewitched.

"I was thinking I might go home," you say.

"You can't!" Bix cries. Love for his fellow creatures pulses from within him like an aura; you can feel its glow on your skin. "You're central to the action."

"Right," you mutter.

Drew slings his arm around you. He smells like Wisconsin—woods, fires, ponds—although you've never been near it. "Truth, Rob," he says, serious. "You're our aching, pounding heart."

You wind up at an after-hours club Bix knows about on Ludlow, crowded with people too high to go home. You all dance together, subdividing the space between now and tomorrow until time seems to move backward. You share a strong joint with a girl whose bangs are very short, leaving her bright forehead exposed. She dances near you, her arms around your neck, and Drew shouts in your ear over the music, "She wants to go home with you, Rob." But eventually the girl gives up, or forgets—or you forget—and she disappears.

The sky is just getting light when the three of you leave the club. You walk north together to Leshko's, on Avenue A, for scrambled eggs and piles of fried potatoes, then stagger, stuffed, back onto the groggy street. Bix is between you and Drew, one arm around each of you. Fire escapes dangle off the sides of buildings. A croupy church bell starts up, and you remember: it's Sunday.

Someone seems to be leading the way toward the Sixth Street overpass to the East River, but really you're all moving in tandem, like on a Ouija board. The sun blazes into view, spinning bright and metallic against your eyeballs, ionizing the water's surface so you can't see a bit of pollution or crud underneath. It looks mystical, biblical. It raises a lump in your throat.

Bix squeezes your shoulder. "Gentlemen," he says, "good morning."

You stand together at the river's edge, looking out, the last patches of old snow piled at your feet. "Look at that beautiful water," Drew says. "I wish I could swim in it." After a minute he says, "Let's remember this day, even when we don't know each other anymore."

You look over at Drew, squinting in the sun, and for a second the future tunnels away, some version of "you" at the end of it, looking back. And right then you feel it—what you've seen in people's faces on the street—a swell of movement, like an undertow, rushing you toward something you can't quite see.

"We'll know each other forever," Bix says. "The days of losing touch are almost gone."

"What does that mean?" Drew asks.

"We're going to meet again in a different space," Bix says. "Everyone we've lost, we'll find. Or they'll find us."

"Where? How?" Drew asks.

Bix hesitates, like he's held this secret so long he's afraid of what will happen when he releases it into the air. "I picture it like Judgment Day," he says finally, his eyes on the water. "We'll rise up out of our bodies and find each other again in spirit form. We'll meet in that new place, all of us together, and first it'll seem strange, and pretty soon it'll seem strange that you could ever lose someone, or get lost."

Bix knows
, you think—he's always known, in front of that computer, and now he's passing the knowledge on. But what you say is, "Will you finally get to meet Lizzie's parents?"

The surprise lands cleanly in Bix's face, and he laughs, a big, billowing noise. "I don't know, Rob," he says, shaking his head. "Maybe not—maybe that part will never change. But I like to think so." He rubs his eyes, which look suddenly tired, and says, "Speaking of which. Time to head back home."

He walks away, hands in the pockets of his army jacket, but it's a while before it feels like he's really gone. You pull your last joint from your wallet and smoke it with Drew, walking south. The river is quiet, no boats in sight, a couple of toothless geezers fishing under the Williamsburg Bridge.

"Drew," you say.

He's looking at the water with that stoned distraction that makes anything seem worth studying. You laugh, nervous, and he turns. "What?"

"I wish we could live in that cabin. You and me."

"What cabin?"

"The one you built. In Wisconsin." You see confusion in Drew's face, and you add, "If there is a cabin."

"Of course there's a cabin."

Your high granulates the air, then Drew's face, which reconstitutes with a new wariness in it that frightens you. "I would miss Sasha," he says slowly. "Wouldn't you?"

"You don't really know her," you say, breathless, a little desperate. "You don't know who you'd be missing."

A massive storage hangar has intervened between the path and the river, and you walk alongside it. "What don't I know about Sasha?" Drew asks in his usual friendly tone, but it's different—you sense him already turning away, and you start to panic.

"She was a hooker," you say. "A hooker and a thief—that's how she survived in Naples."

As you speak these words, a howling starts up in your ears. Drew stops walking. You're sure he's going to hit you, and you wait for it.

"That's insane," he says. "And fuck you for saying it."

"Ask her," you shout, to be heard above the howling. "Ask about Lars the Swede who used to play the flute."

Drew starts walking again, his head down. You walk beside him, your steps narrating your panic:
What have you done? What have you done? What have you done? What have you done?
The FDR is over your heads, tires roaring, gasoline in your lungs.

Drew stops again. He looks at you through the dim, oily air as if he's never seen you before. "Wow, Rob," he says. "You are really and truly an asshole."

"You're the last to know."

"Not me. Sasha."

He turns and walks quickly away, leaving you alone. You charge after him, seized by a wild conviction that containing Drew will seal off the damage you've done.
She doesn't know
, you tell yourself,
she still doesn't know. As long as Drew is in sight, she doesn't know.

You stalk him along the river's edge, maybe twenty feet between you, half running to keep up. He turns once: "Go away! I don't want to be near you!" but you sense his confusion about where to go, what to do, and it reassures you somehow.
Nothing has happened yet.

Between the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges, Drew stops beside what might be called a beach. It's made entirely out of garbage: old tires, trash, splintered wood and glass and filthy paper and old plastic bags tapering gradually into the East River. Drew stands on this rubble, looking out, and you wait a few feet behind him. Then he begins to undress. You don't believe it's happening at first; off comes his jacket, his sweater, his two T-shirts and undershirt. And there is Drew's bare torso, strong and tight as you'd imagined, though thinner, the dark hair on his chest in the shape of a spade.

In jeans and boots, Drew picks his way to where garbage and water meet. An angular slab of concrete juts out, the failed foundation of something long forgotten, and he scrambles on top of it. He unlaces his boots and removes them, then kicks off his jeans and boxers. Even through your dread, you feel a faint appreciation for the beauty and inelegance of a man undressing.

He glances back at you, and you glimpse his naked front, the dark pubic hair and strong legs. "I've always wanted to do this," he says in a flat voice, and takes a long, leaping, shallow dive, slamming the East River's surface and letting out something between a scream and a gasp. He surfaces, and you hear him trying to catch his breath. It can't be more than forty-five degrees out.

You climb the slab of concrete and start taking off clothes, sodden with dread but moved by a flickering sense that if you can master this dread it will mean something, prove something about you. Your scars twang in the cold. Your dick has shriveled to the size of a walnut and your football bulk is starting to slide, but Drew isn't even watching you. He's swimming: strong, clear swimmer's strokes.

You make a clumsy leap, your body crashing onto the water, your knee hitting something hard under the surface. The cold locks in around you, knocking out your breath. You swim crazily to get away from the garbage, which you picture underneath, rusty hooks and claws reaching up to slash your genitals and feet. Your knee aches from whatever it hit.

You lift up your head and see Drew floating on his back. "We can get back out of here, right?" you yell.

"Yes, Rob," he answers in that new, flat voice. "Same way we got in."

You don't say anything else. It takes all your strength to tread water and yank in breath. Eventually, without your noticing, the cold begins to feel almost tropically warm against your skin. The shrieking in your ears subsides, and you can breathe again. You look around, startled by the mythic beauty of what surrounds you: Water encircling an island. A distant tugboat jutting out its rubbery lip. The Statue of Liberty. A thunder of wheels on the Brooklyn Bridge, which looks like the inside of a harp. Church bells, meandering and off-key, like the chimes your mother hangs on the porch. You're moving fast, and when you look for Drew you can't find him at first. The shore is far away. A person is swimming near it, but at such a distance that when the swimmer pauses, waving frantic arms, you can't see who it is. You hear a faint shout— "
Rob!
"—and realize you've been hearing that voice for a while. Panic scissors through you, bringing crystalline engagement with physical facts: you're caught in a current—there are currents in this river—you knew that—heard it somewhere and forgot—you shout, but feel the smallness of your voice, the seismic indifference of the water around you—all this in an instant.

"
Help! Drew!
"

As you flail, knowing you're not supposed to panic—panicking will drain your strength—your mind pulls away as it does so easily, so often, without your even noticing sometimes, leaving Robert Freeman Junior to manage the current alone while you withdraw to the broader landscape, the water and buildings and streets, the avenues like endless hallways, your dorm full of sleeping students, the air thick with their communal breath. You slip through Sasha's open window, floating over the sill lined with artifacts from her travels: a white seashell, a small gold pagoda, a pair of red dice. Her harp in one corner with its small wood stool. She's asleep in her narrow bed, her burned red hair dark against the sheets. You kneel beside her, breathing the familiar smell of Sasha's sleep, whispering into her ear some mix of
I'm sorry
and
I believe in you
and
I'll always be near you, protecting you
, and
I will never leave you, I'll be curled around your heart for the rest of your life
, until the water pressing my shoulders and chest crushes me awake and I hear Sasha screaming into my face: Fight! Fight! Fight!

FROM
The New Yorker

W
HEN THE EGYPTIAN PRESIDENT
Gamal Abdel Nasser took control of the Suez Canal, threatening Western access to that vital route, an agitated France shifted allegiances, joining forces with Britain and Israel against Egypt. This is a fact neither here nor there, except that during the 1956 Sinai Campaign there were soldiers in the Israeli Army and soldiers in the Egyptian Army who ended up wearing identical French-supplied uniforms to battle.

Not long into the fighting, an Israeli platoon came to rest at a captured Egyptian camp to the east of Bir Gafgafa, in the Sinai Desert. There Private Shimmy Gezer (formerly Shimon Bibberblat, of Warsaw, Poland) sat down to eat at a makeshift outdoor mess. Four armed commandos sat down with him. He grunted. They grunted. Shimmy dug into his lunch.

A squad mate of Shimmy's came over to join them. Professor Tendler (who was then only Private Tendler, not yet a professor, and not yet even in possession of a high school degree) placed the tin cup that he was carrying on the edge of the table, taking care not to spill his tea. Then he took up his gun and shot each of the commandos in the head.

They fell quite neatly. The first two, who had been facing Professor Tendler, tipped back off the bench into the sand. The second pair, who had their backs to the professor and were still staring open-mouthed at their dead friends, fell face down, the sound of their skulls hitting the table somehow more violent than the report of the gun.

Shocked by the murder of four fellow soldiers, Shimmy Gezer tackled his friend. To Professor Tendler, who was much bigger than Shimmy, the attack was more startling than threatening. Tendler grabbed hold of Shimmy's hands while screaming, "Egyptians! Egyptians!" in Hebrew. He was using the same word about the same people in the same desert that had been used thousands of years before. The main difference, if the old stories are to be believed, was that God no longer raised his own fist in the fight.

Professor Tendler quickly managed to contain Shimmy in a bear hug. "Egyptian commandos—confused," Tendler said, switching to Yiddish. "The enemy. The enemy joined you for lunch."

Shimmy listened. Shimmy calmed down.

Professor Tendler, thinking the matter was settled, let Shimmy go. As soon as he did, Shimmy swung wildly. He continued attacking, because who cared who those four men were? They were people. They were human beings who had sat down at the wrong table for lunch. They were dead people who had not had to die.

"You could have taken them prisoner," Shimmy yelled. "Halt!" he screamed in German. "That's all—halt!" Then, with tears streaming and fists flying, Shimmy said, "You didn't have to shoot."

By then Professor Tendler had had enough. He proceeded to beat Shimmy Gezer. He didn't just defend himself. He didn't subdue his friend. He flipped Shimmy over, straddled his body, and pounded it down until it was level with the sand. He beat his friend until his friend couldn't take any more beating, and then he beat him some more. Finally he climbed off his friend, looked up into the hot sun, and pushed through the crowd of soldiers who had assembled in the minutes since the Egyptians sat down to their fate. Tendler went off to have a smoke.

For those who had come running at the sound of gunfire to find five bodies in the sand, it was the consensus that a pummeled Shimmy Gezer looked to be in the worst condition of the bunch.