Man V. Nature: Stories (11 page)

The door cracks ever so slightly, slowly, as though it relishes these final moments. Our protective stack of garbage tumbles. “Remember, on three,” someone chokes.

Then Roger says, “Wait. Here's an idea.” He steps off the ledge and faces us. “Imagine.” He holds his hands out like he's positioning a portrait; a portrait of his idea
.

We're trembling. We're wetting ourselves. But we're listening.

“Ask yourselves this: Does it really want to kill us?”

Harsh orange light from the stairwell seeps into the gray sky as the door opens more. It seems to be there, just behind shadow, gathering itself.

Did you see the stairwell?

The new hires are just fluid now.

Roger puts a hand up to quiet us. “I know, I know. But we're top tier. Up here.” He plateaus a hand above his own head. “We're executives.”

So were Stan and Susan.

Roger shakes his head. “They lost focus. They lacked leadership. Now look at them,” he says. “Trust me. We've got something it can use. We're golden.” Then he humbly scrunches his shoulders as if to say,
But what do
I
know?
which is pure Roger, because he can clearly hear the murmur of dissent he has sparked. He rocks back and forth on his wing tips, smiling. Roger loves mixing it up.

Someone starts the count.

“One.”

We clasp hands. Some of us squeeze our eyes shut.

“
Wait, let's think about what Roger said,” a voice pleads.

It's quiet up here on the roof above a city with no people. The only sounds now are its harsh breath behind the splitting door; the creaking of city buildings that, lightened of their human loads, now sway easily in the wind; and Roger, whistling.

We hear someone say “Two.”

Now, hold on.

We want to be sure.

Blood-slick talons curl around the door. But thanks to Roger, some of us can only see them as friendly talons, potential-business-partner talons. Our hearts bassoon in our ears. There is movement on the ledge. Some fingers are panicking out of the hands they're holding, while others are scratching to hold on. Our exhales are ponderous; they churn the wind. Down the line, negotiations begin. Will some latent instinct kick in before our bodies meet concrete? That is our hope; but there is no guarantee. And if we survive the jump, will life in this new world be worth living? Hard to say; we'd need some polling done. Will we be one last flesh dinner for it if we stay? There is always that risk. Is Roger right? “I'm right,” says Roger. Then what should our course of action be?

Well?

It'
s coming.

Let me think.

We surprise ourselves by wishing Stan and Susan were still here. Roger claims they lacked leadership, but they went with their guts. They took risks. They yearned and they followed through.
They
ate the noodles
, we realize, and are pleased with our metaphor. Sure, they came to a terrible end, but under all that blood and those tears, we swear we saw a peace like nothing we've ever known. We would have loved to feel that kind of peace. But look, now the door has opened, and it's coming fast.

METEOROLOGIST DAVE SANTANA

More than once when watching Dave Santana give the local weather report, Janet put her hands in her pants. On the day he introduced the new weather screen—over which he smoothed his hands, bringing clouds in from the west or heavy rains south instead of moving Velcro-backed pictures of happy suns or mischievous-looking puffy clouds—Janet imagined
she
was the weather screen as she bounced astride the arm of her sofa.

But during the winter's first nor'easter, Dave Santana was on the air five whole days, in hourly updates and long talk spots during the regular news. And Janet's slender vibrator waited in her robe pocket or under the band of her underpants: at the ready, both necessary and a privilege, like a limb.

He'd carried them through the storm. From the first weather watch, through preparations, to the storm itself and its sad aftermath. Sad because people lost their homes, some even their lives, but Janet thought Dave looked sad because it had to end. As if he was thinking, as he recapped those tragic days, about getting into his car and going back to the condo he'd bought with his meteorologist's paycheck, which was big enough to support a family though he was a bachelor, and making some macaroni and cheese and watching reruns until he fell asleep. A moment of greatness he'd commanded was over through no fault of his own. She could relate. She tried to guide her students; she was a paragon in the area where their mothers had failed them—how to really have it all. But she could only teach them so much. When a few of them inevitably got pregnant by senior year, it felt like a personal blow. This disappointment that she and Dave shared—this synchronicity—aroused her.

Though he was classically unattractive—short and balding, his light-colored skin and hair hardly distinguishable from one another, and his eyebrows almost nonexistent—he
was
a New Englander. She appreciated the spirit of men from the Northeast. They didn't have the dreaminess of men from the Plains, where the sky was so big they got lost in it; or the lethargy of men from the Northwest, whose brains were rotted by rain; or the Southwest, where men strove to be coarse and dry. She'd been with them all. Men from the Northeast were practical, they could handle anything because they lived through the worst winters, hottest summers, and most beautiful falls. New England men bore all things. There was nothing quite as exciting to her as when Meteorologist Dave Santana let the word
nor'easter
roll out of his mouth, all juicy with meaning and menace, like a slick tongue. Plus, he was her neighbor.

With the storm pushed out, the winds flattened, and the skies no longer in need of interpretation, Janet waited for him to return to his town house, so torturously close. She hoped he'd still be bearing the disappointment that any end brings. She knew she could make him feel better.

 

When Dave Santana arrived, Janet slipped into her robe and opened her front door to icy air; she watched him gather his things from his blue compact and cleared her throat.

Dave startled. Then an expression settled on his face when he saw her—one she would have liked to think was mild pleasure, but she knew better; it was a mild something else. She had been to the door many times in the past year, inviting him in for drinks, to change a lightbulb, to kill a field mouse. Mostly, she tried to force herself upon him and each time was rebuked. “Janet, I'm tired,” or “I have to wake early for the fisherman's forecast.” Once he grabbed her wrists angrily, saying, “I'm a
meteorologist
,” as if that alone should explain some principle to her. Was it that he was too good or too lowly for her? But the last time, after liquor was plied, something more happened. A fondle, a kiss, timid at first, then lingering, as if Dave Santana was deciding something. Then he scrunched his face and left. For weeks after, she stopped trying, told herself she wasn't that pathetic, and romped with some easies from a bar she liked in the next town. But this nor'easter and Dave's commanding presence on her television night after night after night broke her. She yanked the neck of her robe so it was loose and low.

“Janet,” he said. “It's a little cold for slippers.”

“Don't worry about me—I'm always hot,” she said, sliding her hand up the door and easing her hip out. No change, not even a twitch of his lips. “Listen, I'm dying to ask you about those wind gusts we had. Just how fast are we talking?” she asked in her best fascinated voice. With
wind gusts
, she saw a slight smile.

“And just how scared should I still be? Because you know how scared I get,” she said. She let the robe slip off one shoulder, then drew it back up and shivered so her hips shimmied. She wanted him to note how vulnerable she could make herself. Then he could decide to protect her or fuck her. Protection was fine, fucking better, but both was best.

“Janet,” he repeated, but his edge softened. “I know how scared you get.” He came inside, saying, “But the weather is nothing to be scared of. Even storms like this.” He accepted her gin. She had high hopes.

After dropping a coaster and bending toward him to pick it up, her robe opening slightly, she felt him relax. She knew he had looked, heard his voice catch in his throat as he explained how he measured wind speed. When she reached across him to retrieve a magazine for that article on Atlantic currents she'd saved for a moment like this, he subtly copped a feel. Finally, with a deep breath, knowing this would be the end of the evening or the beginning, she went for it; she slipped her hand between his legs during an extended lesson on atmospheric pressure—
Air has weight, like a person, weight that is pushing against us all the time, even now
—and after a look of surprise, he tore open her robe. He scanned all of her like a scientist. She reclined, traced a finger down herself and watched his eyes follow to where it disappeared. She thought she saw that slight smile play again. Then he flipped his belt open, slunk from his khakis, and fell upon her. They bumped to the floor, pushed the coffee table away, their limbs a puzzle until he flung her legs wide and fit himself in.

She didn't need to act; it was good. But still she did everything a little louder, breathier, rougher, just to be sure he got the message:
You are important to me. Even after the storm, I need you.

They continued in the bedroom. And when he finally slept, she smoothed down his chest and back hair. “So passionate,” she murmured.

In the morning, she watched him sneak out. He closed the bedroom door gently, but by the time he reached the front door his mind was elsewhere and he let it slam. If she'd been asleep, it would have jolted her awake; she'd be disoriented, wondering what had happened. But instead she anticipated it, felt the soft tremble through her body.

 

Janet tried to run into Dave again, somehow get him over to her place. But he never answered when she knocked. Didn't respond to the notes she taped to the door or his car windshield. Sometimes she glimpsed his back as he entered his house, or his shoe as he got in his car, his face obscured by morning glare upon the windows. It began to feel as if he'd never existed. Except when she watched him nightly she remembered his weight pushing against her.

One morning, Janet noticed a woman leaving Dave's town house. Then on several more mornings after that she saw her again. The woman was mousy; her limp brown hair hung straight down her back unless she had it pulled up in a thin, messy ponytail. She always left early, clearly needing to return to her own home to get ready for work. They were not serious enough for her to keep her things at his house, Janet decided.

 

And then it was spring.

Janet won another teaching award: Teacher of the Year, five years running. It was like a perfect school-year farewell from the girls, who adored her. It's never a landslide, but the girls outnumber the boys, and, well, the girls love me, she'd say when her fellow teachers unenthusiastically congratulated her. The teachers all disliked her, she was certain. In their opinion Janet was scary. That was their word for people who were better than them. At everything. And always had been. She'd stopped playing humble years ago, and because of it adults avoided her. They didn't know how to be around someone with no secret shame, guilt, trauma, or self-hatred.

Meanwhile, the teen girls experienced awe. They didn't know yet to be afraid of people like Janet. They looked at her and thought, Beauty! Brains! Confidence! Now here's something I can aspire to. They were one step away from adulthood and needed that extra push, and Janet was happy to give it to them, to keep them smart and out of trouble. She'd even designed special after-school sex-ed classes just for girls, and they were grateful. If it meant a lesson in the perfect blow job so sex was unnecessary, or inventive ways to put on a condom so it seemed like a treat to wear one? She knew several tricks. Tips on how to be the seducer so as to control the proceedings? Seductress was her middle name. Be the parent signing off on birth control? Why not? She felt they were all her daughters.

The men in her life said she was too bossy in bed, always repositioning them and sighing when they did things wrong—There. No
. There
. But really, how hard is it to please a woman? Had they ever even tried? Even
she
had tried. Certainly it wasn't always easy. And so many women were so needy, then overly grateful. Especially the mothers. Like Mrs. Howard from parent-teacher conferences. Those aching eyes. Janet had thought, Why not? It had to have been this woman's first orgasm—or first good one. After, she curled into Janet's body and cooed until Janet finally said, as kindly as she could—she wasn't cruel exactly—“Enough,” and began to dress. The look on Mrs. Howard's face: like she'd seen a ghost, maybe two. Janet avoided her calls after. There were only a few.

One man, some years ago, she'd been very optimistic about. He was a teacher; smart, sexy in a blazer, no tie; his shirt was always unbuttoned an extra button to display a manly spray of hair. He didn't mind her in bed; he was responsive. He pepped up when she boxed his ears with her legs and yelled, “Faster!” He got harder when she insisted, “Deeper,” and he said, “Yes, Janet,” as if he were saying, “Yes, ma'am.” And he could do it too, huffing and groaning as though summiting a mountain while he pumped: his forearms and biceps tight from the strain of pulling her hips higher and toward him. A wild fear would rise in her that he could break through whatever barrier existed between them and lose himself in the mess of her intestines. It was the best sex she'd had up to that point. But soon he began to reveal his disappointment in life. He'd always thought he'd be in politics, attending dinners with the president or accepting senatorial bribes. He never imagined he'd be a teacher in a small city that wasn't even coastal, though it was close. He got glum and expected comfort, for her to say he was special, could do anything—whatever women were supposed to say to men who'd been told to expect big things from life. They usually never considered that
big
could simply mean a stable job, mostly happiness, occasional good-to-great sex. She'd never been told to expect anything, and so she just did what she wanted and told her students to do the same. She'd won her teaching awards because she did what she loved and did it well, not because she expected to be rewarded. Dave Santana was important not because he thought he should be but because he did important work, and he knew it. It's one more thing they had in common.

She broke it off with that teacher. Later he became a state assemblyman. Janet saw a campaign poster of him stuck in someone's lawn. He looked good. Even more handsome; he wore a tie. She'd never thought to insist he wear one; she had been so sure he looked best tieless. He posed with a wife and two kids. She'd never heard him talk about either a wife or kids. The wife looked long-suffering, not fresh and new, and the kids were high-school-age, though Janet had been the man's lover four years ago. Five, tops. Oh, the havoc she could wreak with a simple phone call. But it wasn't her style. And if anything, that he'd kept a secret like that made him more interesting.

The spring storms were harsh that year. She watched Dave tame the weather and it thrilled her more now that she knew what he was like. When he told the region not to be afraid of this unusual weather, she felt like he was saying it just for her.

The mousy woman stopped leaving in the mornings; now she came and went all day, and her car occupied a guest parking slot, which, Janet noted, now had a number on it instead of
Guest
. As spring became summer and jackets were shed, Janet observed, happily, that the woman had gotten fat. Janet was certain Dave would dump her now, until she realized the woman wasn't fat, but pregnant.

 

On the last day of summer, Janet smelled smoke as she sunbathed in her backyard. She stood up, sniffed and stretched, and saw Dave pacing his yard, sucking frantically at a cigarette. She skipped over to her fence and tippy-toed on the wooden ledge that ran along the bottom so her chest was visible and she could rest her arms casually along the top.

“I didn't know you smoked,” she called over. Dave jumped as if her words were a hot prod. He regarded her and then the cigarette with shame.

“I don't.”

Janet tugged at the strings of her bikini top nonchalantly, jiggling her breasts. He wasn't looking. “What's with the cigarette then?”

“Janet,” he said, as in
not now.

But yes, now, she thought, and began to tingle. She waited a beat. “I'm not going anywhere.”

He shook his head. “It's embarrassing.”

She smiled. “I'm good with embarrassing.”

He stared at her suspiciously, then shyly. He sighed. “My wife is so pregnant. We can't. You know.”

Wife? When did that happen? Janet winced, but recovered quickly.