Nine Island (15 page)

But then the noise began to lift from the air, to clarify itself in my ear. It was a voice. A man's voice. A man's voice shouting
Help
.

Stood and scanned the bay, darkening, the sun nearly sunk.

Tiny and distant:
Help!

In the bay's swift middle river, a coconut rolled. Far away by the verge, a Jet Ski bucked alone.

But no voice would rise from my throat.

Stone, a tree. Could not speak or move.

But as I stood frozen, from above:

Hold on!
I've called!
They're coming!

I finally jerked to life, ran down the dock, spiraled up to the pool, through the jungle and the glass doors, into the mezzanine, down the hall to Virgil, who was already running with his walkie-talkie.

I followed him back out, and we watched from the dock as a police boat whizzed under the drawbridge, then slowed, circled, and stilled, and a small man was pulled from the bay.

Lucky guy, said Virgil. Lucky somebody saw.

Rose to my twenty-first floor, not catching own guilty eye in the mirror. Then opened my door to see just the end of it: Buster spinning, nails scraping crazily at the floor, as if being lanced by lightning. Liquid flew from him—he'd flown right out of his diaper—his wild paws slid and he skidded and slipped, but clambered up because he had to keep spinning.

There's nothing you can do. Just wait until it's over, steer him gently from corners and table legs that could hurt.

Spinning, the sound of his panting, the clicking of nails on the cork.

Oh, baby cat.

Finally the lightning was spent and he collapsed, puddled black on the floor. I lifted him and held him close and warm in a towel, his little head slumped on my arm.

They don't know where they are after a seizure, the vet says. Even if they're not blind and deaf, too. Important to hold him awhile.

Sat on the sofa and stroked the wet fur between his long ears, down his knobby back, in his little underarms until he slept. Then put fresh tissue in his box and laid him gently down.

My mother's voice on the phone was soft.

Don't you think, darling, she said, don't you think all of this might be telling you something? Maybe—something might need to change.

W
ELL, IT WAS a long time, in Germany. You can't help but start to feel it: hundred percent an alien. Ten years there, five years staring out the greasy train window at dawn on my way to the
Frauenklinik
. Then the greasy train window home again hours later, the greasy window of the tram, and back to our bare apartment sixty-six concrete steps in the sky. Then the wall of windows looking out at the gray, when I'd come in with a fresh bag of vials and needles, to start a new month of trying.

Calendars kept count. First the calendar with a polar bear, lorikeet, pink-bottomed monkey; then the calendar with a ghost gum, baobab, poinciana; then the one with types of rock. I like metamorphic rock most, but you'd probably figure that.

Dry German sun came in the window, on days when there was sun. Otherwise lead air, lead sky, wet weighty cloud. Same ads each season at the tram stops, year after year for ten years, same glares from old men, old women, cigarette smoke in the sooty air, broken bottles, puddles of piss and beer and rain.

Schöne Schlitz
, a drunk once said, pointing between my legs. My husband didn't notice, maybe dreaming something else, but anyway, did nothing.

Schöne Schlitz, sure, I thought. Schlitz good for nothing.

In the summer, wisteria grew inconceivably huge from a small pot on the ground out front. It rose lush and weighty all the way to our floor and hung so thick across the wall of glass that it made our place a terrarium, green light. I'd hang little mesh bags of suet and seed in the leaves, bags I bought at Schlecker. Hung four across the wide glass, and sometimes two or even three little bandit birds would peck at a time, as I sat at the white table inside and watched. A pair nested in the leaves each year, those little bandit birds. Two eggs, sometimes three. Watched until they cracked and opened, noisy skinny chicks, and flew.

Buster watched the birds, also. Year after year.

And watched me, too, ears alert when I'd sit on the bed again, crying.

Down on the street, seen through a hole I'd cut in the leaves, my husband would sit at the tram stop. Sit on the dirty bench with his satchel, holding his face in his hands.

Maybe tomorrow, maybe someday, as the song says.

Finally, when there was just nothing left, I split up our things and flew over the ocean. Stayed a time with my mother.

Then, the hopeful tour of old boyfriends. Lurch, Mick, the Devil.

Then that month with Sir Gold.

And then, now.

I
N THE SKY
this evening, as the sun set, as colors arced from shale far at sea, up to deep blue, then falling through sheer blue to pure glow to lime, coral, and rose, there was suddenly a radiance high in the clouds to the north: light struck clouds far higher than sunlit clouds can ever be. I leaned out on the balcony, looking. The glow intensified, became a small bright sun that rose and rose, trailing a thin darkness beneath it. In the park below, a man pointed up for his little girl to look, and both tilted back their heads. A boy on a scooter stopped, too, leaned on one leg to watch. And at Costa Brava, one of the runners stopped running and pressed against the chill glass to see: the shuttle's final launch.

We all watched as that small sun rose and then split in two, and half fell away, and the single flame rose and rose until it was gone in space.

A
T LEAST I CAN
s
till try to save the damned duck. It is so hot, nearly August, blistering scorching
shattering
hot, and from ten until six she huddles in the sea grape waiting for water, for the day to die. I see her there at midday when I can't stand being inside anymore and can't stand transmuting and looking for messages, so go outside in the flaming heat under my hot pink umbrella.

The duck
is
thinner; she trembles.

Enough. Today I am going out with the net. If she's weak and addled I'm more likely to catch her. I am determined to catch her. Will hydrate, put on the big visor, gather Grape-Nuts, water, and net, and head out to capture this duck.

—four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve—

N
O DUCK. THREE cars slowed down to watch me try. She waddled toward me as usual, thinking I bore only Grape-Nuts and water, then spotted the net and fluttered hysterically around, hopped down the rocks, sailed into the bay.

I stood roasting with my net. A car pulled over, hand out the window taking a photo. Outside the bridge house the bridge lady watched.

Am done. No more trying to save the duck. Just bring her food and water and let her live her stranded life.

When I got back to the Love Boat, two police cars idled out front. I went around to the trash containers to ask Tina what was happening.

She looked up from writing down the numbers of packages with her pungent black marker and said, Blood. On the wall.

Really!

She nodded, eyes stern. Things are getting ugly. I've been here twenty-five years and thought this building was as crazy as it could get, and now this.

But where?

The steam room.

Whose?

The men's.

No, whose blood?

She opened her eyes wide. No one's saying.

After stowing net in Mini, went dazzled out to the dock, picturing two eighty-year-old men slamming each other into the tiles, one breaking a fragile beaked nose. Or one of those stealthy playboys pummeling another one's head in rage, or someone else pummeling the playboy? But no, surely then there'd be an ambulance, too. Blood extracted some other way and smeared on the wall? The mirror? Inside the steam room, or the sauna? Was the men's spa just like the women's?

I hurried along the dock, up the spiral staircase, past the diving girl-tree, over the cracked concrete path, through mahoganies, bottle brush, slim Manila palms, past the pool to the spa rooms.

Virgil was standing at the door with his arms crossed and shook his head when I asked.

Bad things happening in there these days, he said.

Actually dangerous?

He looked down at me gravely and said, Yes.

All because of the pool?

A lot of money involved, he said. And you know people are wicked about money.

But, he said after a moment, rubbing his neck and squinting, it'll all be over soon.

H
AVE WALKED OVER to the Beach, but this time went south. Past Flamingo Park, black-and-white balls being kicked on the grass beneath she-oaks, past neon balls being hit in clay that's often an inch of red liquid. Past the old buildings that old Fran helped save, the salmon or lemon Deco buildings now a-throb with the young in one another's arms. Over the sinuous pink sidewalk to the low dunes, the beach, the lines of lounge chairs that once were not there, and the plastic bottles left in the sand, waiting to join their friends at sea, pioneering a brave new island.

Men-of-war, too, are stranded on the crusty sand, their fabulous bodies not single islands but archipelagos: pink crests, blue balloons, long, virulent strands. Also moon jellies and regular jellyfish, too. In some places, they're all called medusas.

Okay, why not: Medusa. One of Ovid's girls whose name has lived on. She's another one raped! So many raped! Why are so many girls being raped! In this case, a girl whose greatest beauty was her hair (says O), which, like a glittering gold-sequin swimsuit, caught the bad attention of a monster of the deep. A god, again, or so you think, you're looking at him full of awe, so hard to believe that a god could be there, standing on the sand and studying you, so beautiful, you just can't believe it! And the world you've known until then might have been a bright thing, seashells and sky and water lapping your toes, and who knows what you might find in it: marvels. Then suddenly he smiles and steps toward you, does not care about the film of air you still need around you, pushes his hands right through it and throws you down. All the pounding, the salt, so hard to breathe, your skin ground into sand. Then he goes striding back where he came from, but you—everything around you turns to stone.

W
ELL, LOTS OF
us have woken with everything wrong. Naked
in a swimming pool, barefoot on an icy street. No panties, on a curb somewhere. Or in a grassy field, a field one might have loved that could have been Arcadia once, alone, back scratched, stinging bloody mess between legs.

“Regrettable sex.” Is that what they call it now?

Yeah, well. Who told you to ride the shark?

H
AVE DRIVEN TO the Everglades. Am in excursion mode. Over the MacArthur to I-95 and then west to the last road between so-called civilization and ruin. Then on until ruin gives way again to something good, long grass and runnels of water. Best things in the Everglades—aside from waving liquid grass and owls whose heads turn slowly, owls O knew well, owls always watching when things are bound to go wrong, crying warnings when girls in love with their fathers slur toward their fathers' beds—best things are tree snails whose tiny clean shells look painted, and solution holes.

Solution hole
.

Where limestone's been cratered by acid in rain.

Solution hole.

An oxymoron?

Or maybe, instead, an answer?

Soluere
= solve, dissolve.

When I came home, walked around back and saw P by himself on the dock. He lay on his back on the wood planks, late afternoon light slanting upon him. He'd rested one bare foot on a knee, his skin lit and lovely. He held binoculars and scanned the sky, scoping the deepening blue and tropical clouds. His bare toes clenched once or twice, his foot waggled—a little boy's delight.

W
HEN ARE YOU coming? asked my mother on the phone. You're still coming, aren't you?

Of course!

One doesn't turn eighty every day, she said.

Exactly why I'm coming. Wouldn't miss it.

And what will we do?

We will have
fun
.

Two ladies, she said, on the town.

Across the way, at Costa Brava, on the corner balcony of the seventeenth floor, that young woman who has people come drum is sitting surrounded by paper. Origami paper, maybe, the colors of parrots, poincianas. She sits with one foot planted on the seat beside her, doing something I can't make out. She seems to be folding the edge of each sheet of paper, gluing one to another. Creating something that is starting to look large.

Floors above her, people still run. The tall girl and the boy who times his visits to the gym so he can run beside her, though he, like she, stares ahead through the wall of glass to the western sky.

Are they running together?

Are they really either of those words?

A
PERSON, IN FACT, not only can live perfectly well alone but also does not need pleasure.

Other, maybe, than the sort she might get watching a rainstorm sheet through the sky, or going out on the town with her mother.

Or swimming.

Because there you are in the dark beneath the popcorn ceiling, wearing a silk nightie with straps that can be slipped off the shoulders as if by someone else's hands, silk that can feel marvelous when drawn slowly across small pink portions of flesh; there you are, ready, having looked forward to this moment of small pleasure after a day of Latin and changing diapers on a cat and feeding an impossible duck and getting no messages, nothing, from no one, not on your screen and not in a bottle, which does, yes, make you drink wine until you start to slur some over the oceanic cork floor in a mirrored box floating high in the sky, the spinning cold sky, and drinking alone is not a good idea, I
know
, but what the fuck when there's no one else there, which takes us back to the problem. So there you are, hankering for a small moment of pleasure of the sort you once had with a husband you really did love as well as you could and with a devil you should never have touched but he was hard to refuse, and of course with the
one
, the one who first split open your stupid young heart and you have never, ever, forgotten him, especially when he sailed back your way thirty years later and said Ahoy!, making you think that just maybe a miracle could happen and you would not remain the single-celled freak you seem to be, the paramecium or euglena you seem to be, something you so much don't want to be that you contrive fata morganas of rationales for why it's right to be alone, fata morganas that shimmer positively as you walk and walk alone on the Venetian but then when you are back in the musty old Love Boat, in this mirrored and corked box high in the sky, and have locked the door behind you, those fata morganas do what they do: dissolve into the stratosphere. Anyway. It's the end of a day, and there you are with
the silky straps in the dark, and you shut your eyes and begin to play the fantasies that will help. Fantasies of the men you've been gathering to pretend there's something real here. Lying on the board of that tall stern man as he rows . . . Drifting down to the boys in the speedboat . . . Stealing at night aboard the small red boat and finding the wet-suited man, both surprised and waiting, and it's dark but
with gleams of light coming off the water, and you stand as if fascinated by the glimmers through the gently rocking window, and he comes behind you and very slowly runs his hands all along your curved silken sides and then lifts the back of your nightie . . .