The Bend of the World: A Novel (30 page)

BOOK: The Bend of the World: A Novel

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Speaking of your pal Johnny, Ben David said, any chance you can get him to ease up on the weirdo quotient just for the time being? I’m happy that he’s committed to sobriety or whatever, but he seriously pissed off the wrong people with that idiot blog he was running, and they’re leaning on that faggot prosecutor to drive a hard deal. I’ll do what I can, I said, but I can’t promise anything. Fucking Pittsburgh Democrats, he said. The worst. Yeah, I said. You don’t strike me as a GOP type, though. Ben David snorted. Republican? he said. Not likely. I’m a libertarian. Since before there
were
Libertarians. I voted for Hospers and Nathan in ’72. Tonie Nathan, he said. Now, that was a woman with balls.

We went through the iron gates and past the gothic gatehouse and through the row of gingkoes that were turning golden already and past the mausoleums of millionaires’ row, the alternatingly reserved and gaudy tombs of all those Fricks and Browns and Benedums and Wilkinses and Morrisons and so on and over the rolling hills and lawns between the sycamores and beeches and horse chestnuts and buckeyes and the few big cedars and the fields of ordinary graves through the several hundred acres until we came to the Jewish section on the far eastern edge where the cemetery turns over a slow hillside into the thick trees of Frick Park. And we all got out of our cars. But there were so many of us that it took quite a while for all the cars to pull up and park and for all the guests and mourners to make their way to the graveside. The sun was getting low in the sky. It really was almost the fall. It was cool. A breeze lifted men’s ties and women’s shawls. I didn’t get too near to the grave. I didn’t want to get too near to Mark. I didn’t want to be there, really. I wanted to go home and pour myself one glass of red wine, to stand in the kitchen at the window and let the night come, to drink that one glass of wine and go to sleep. I wanted to feel the cool night coming through the screens while I fell asleep. I wanted to wrap myself in a blanket against the breeze again. I wanted to dream about Winston Pringle one more time and tell his fat ass to fuck off. I wanted to wake up with nothing to do but determine what it was that I ought to do next. One of the New Yorkers was saying quietly to another, Definitely going to drive up the value, and there’s not that much work to begin with. There was the sound of a distant lawn mower. Tom was whispering something in Julian’s ear. Both Arnoviches were playing indiscreetly with their cell phones on opposite ends of the casket. Beyond the crowd, along the road where the cars were parked, I could have sworn I saw Lauren Sara with a couple of prominent-looking older people beside a long dark Mercedes, but then some people got in the way, and when they moved again, the car was driving off, and she was gone. The rabbi was saying again, O God, full of mercy, Who dwells on high, grant proper rest on the wings of the Divine Presence, in the lofty levels of the holy and the pure ones, who shine like the glow of the firmament, for the soul of Helen Witold, daughter of Joel and Marion Witold, stepdaughter of Barbara Witold, who has gone on to His world. May her resting place be in the Garden of Eden; therefore may the Master of Mercy shelter her in the shelter of His wings for Eternity, and may He bind her soul in the Bond of Life. Adonai is her heritage, and may she repose in peace on her resting place. Now let us say: Amen. Then everyone was pushing forward, a gang of the criminally well dressed, even falling in some cases like fools to their knees in order to get their own handful of turned earth, as if it were in limited supply, as if there weren’t enough dirt to cover every one of us.

I wandered off. I sat in the grass at the edge of the cemetery. The sun was going down behind me. I could hear a few evening birds calling in the woods in the park. I thought, I’d been wrong. We would not end as a ruin. Well, in a thousand years we might. In ten thousand, there wouldn’t be any ruins. There would be trees and birds and insects. A brief heartbeat of the world. Long enough to heal itself of all of us. Let the aliens arrive then, and see how little the sparrows and the earthworms and the squirrels and the field mice care. Then I saw that Mark was standing next to me. You are one sneaky fucker, I said. You said it, he said. Well, I said, condolences and so forth. Yeah, he said. Thanks and back at ya. So, I said. So, he said. He sat in the grass beside me. So what’s so interesting in there? he asked, looking toward the trees. I was just thinking about global solutions, I answered. Oh yeah? he said. Yeah, I said. Long-term, strategic solutions. Your next career, he said. Another life, I said. There is no other life, he said. So I’m told, I told him. How about that funeral? he asked. I let myself look at him. He seemed smaller, softer, as if he’d just shed his skin and hadn’t quite firmed up yet. Can I ask you something? I asked. Other than that? he answered. What did you say to her? I said. When? he said. Over the phone, I said. That night, I said. Nothing she hadn’t heard before, he said. You know, I told him, I’ve come to the conclusion that you’re a real asshole. He stood up. He brushed some grass from his pants. You’ve come to that conclusion? he said. You’ve examined the evidence, arrayed the facts, done the regression analysis. Fuck off, I said. You know, Peter, he said. It was, I think, the first time he’d ever called me Peter. What? I said. Actually, he said. Nothing. Nothing. Yeah, I said. Me, too.

Then he put his hands into his pockets. He whistled tunelessly, a few high notes that seemed intended to answer the whistling birds. It was almost dark. He didn’t look at me. He walked in a straight line through the grass toward the tree line. He paused there briefly, and I thought he might turn around, but he didn’t. He walked right into the woods, right into the shadows between the trees. I stared after him for a while. And then I thought I saw a light in the woods. Something glowing. Something that moved. Maybe I saw it rise toward the treetops. Maybe I saw it fade as it reached the last daylight above them. But you know, if there was something there, then it was not so bright, nor was I so sure that I’d seen it as I’d been six months ago.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First, thanks to Will Menaker, my editor, who saw this book drinking alone at the far end of a dingy bar and sidled up to it and bought it a drink and took it home, and then to everybody else at Liveright and W. W. Norton who welcomed it into the family despite its appalling lack of pedigree. Thanks to my agent, Gail Hochman, who not only took me up for no good reason but also worries whether anyone is meeeting me for dinner when I’m visiting New York. My parents, who still ask me, “Are you writing?” Thanks to Josh, Nate, Alex. and the other residents and transients of the apartment above the satanic daycare, who both read and inspired the early drafts of this book. Last and most, to John Allen, without whose friendship and insatiable interest in everything weird and appalling and otherworldy I never would have written this at all.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jacob Bacharach is a writer and nonprofit administrator living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He has a BA in English and creative writing from Oberlin College and an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh. He is not, to the best of our knowledge, a shape-shifting reptiloid or a descendent of the Merovingian dynasty. In his spare time, he cooks, rides bikes, and occasionally plays the violin badly. He prefers “experiencer” to “abductee.” This is his first novel.

First Edition

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Illustrations by Edith E. Newman.

Book design by Lovedog Studio

Production manager: Anna Oler

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Bacharach, Jacob.

The bend of the world : a novel / Jacob Bacharach. — First Edition.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-87140-682-8 (hardcover)