The Heaven of Animals: Stories (25 page)

The towel was bunched at his waist, and he smoothed it to his knees.

“Is that why you came?” she said. “To make us say it? To tell you how sorry we are?”

“Not you,” he said. “I want to hear it from him.”

Marisa looked away. Her hands clenched at her sides, and the material of her pants ballooned from her fists.

“You won’t,” she said. “You won’t, and, what’s more, you know you won’t. Joshua doesn’t work that way. Which is why
I’m
saying he’s sorry, so you’ll know. Because he can’t say it. And because that should be enough. For a brother. It should be enough to know.”

Knowing it, it should have been enough. And wasn’t. He didn’t know what would be.

“He cried, you know?” she said. “That letter? He wouldn’t let me read it, but I found it, and I read it. It was . . . awful.”

“I was angry.”

“You’re still angry. And none of us knows what to do. We can’t go on until you give the word, and you’re not giving it.”

Her hands relaxed, fell open at her sides. She turned and pulled the door shut.

He dressed quickly. The towel he left on the table folded in a tight, white square.

.   .   .

At the apartment, he showered. He wanted the smell off of him, the oil and the candle smoke. He stood beneath the showerhead until the door rattled.

“Hey, save some water for the rest of the planet,” Joshua called. “Okay?”

His brother, the park ranger who would save the Earth except for the million cigarette butts he’d add to it.

He cut the water off, dried, and dressed. The room was steam-filled, condensation collecting on the mirror, the faucet, the backs of toothbrushes. Everything glistened in the wet. Beside the toilet, a bin overflowed with the wavy pages of old
National Geographic
s. He left the bathroom damp, his brother’s shirt bunched at the armpits and plastered to his back.

He found Joshua on the couch. He was still in uniform, shirt tucked but unbuttoned to the belt, a white T-shirt beneath. Mercifully, the hat had been removed. It perched, wide-brimmed, beside him on the couch. Joshua held a controller and, on screen, a man in silver armor lunged and leapt. Joshua’s body bobbed in time with the little man.

“You want in on this?” he said. “I can make it two-player.”

“I’d rather go for a walk,” Mark said. “Clear my head.”

“Marisa will be back soon,” Joshua said. “If you wait, we can all go.”

But Mark didn’t want to wait. He didn’t want to be there when Marisa got home.

“I’m just going to go now, if that’s okay,” he said.

Joshua didn’t look up. There was a scream as the knight plunged his sword into a short, hobbity-looking thing. The creature collapsed, blood jetting from its chest, then it flickered and disappeared, a pool of blood left in its wake.

“Take the road down to Lincoln,” Joshua said. “The first side street will bring you to Baker Beach. It’s less than a mile. And be sure to check out the boulder end of the beach. Great view.”

Mark felt in his pocket. He was missing his phone.

“Really, though, Marisa should be home any minute.”

Mark moved to the spare room. He pulled the covers from the air mattress, one layer at a time, shook them, then lifted the mattress.

“Joshua?” he said.

He dropped the mattress. He patted his pockets, then pulled them inside out.

“Joshua,” he called.

He retraced his steps down the hallway to the living room. He shook each of his shoes over the doormat. He opened the front door and glanced outside. He shut the door. His hands shook.

“Goddamn it, Joshua.” He moved to the center of the room. He stood between his brother and the TV. Joshua craned his neck to see around him.

“Move,” he said.

“Help me.”

“In a minute. Move.”

A cord, gray and umbilical, uncoiled from a box on the floor and into the controller in Joshua’s hands. Mark grabbed and pulled.

Joshua stood. “Hey.”

Then his hand was on Joshua’s wrist and squeezing. The controller dropped, and he kicked it across the floor. He swung, but it was Joshua’s fist that found his face.

He fell, arms windmilling. There was a crash, and he was on his back, the TV beneath him.

“What the fuck?” Joshua said. He stood over him.

“I can’t find my phone.” He brought a hand to his eye, rubbed it, then blinked the world back into focus. “You hit me.”

“You took a swing,” Joshua said. “I swung back. It’s reflex.”

Joshua offered a hand, pulled him up, and, together, they turned to take in the damage. The TV was shot, its screen a spiderweb. The coffee table’s legs were gone, the gaming consoles crushed. Cords snaked out of the mess like intestines.

Joshua cradled his right hand in his left. The human hand had a bunch of bones—Joshua probably knew how many—and Mark wondered whether one or two had snapped.

He left Joshua standing over the TV. In the bathroom, he touched a fingertip to each of his teeth. He felt the bridge of his nose. Nothing bled. No, the fist had caught him in the eye socket. Even now, blood surged to the surface. By morning, there’d be a perfect ring.

Something else in the mirror caught his eye. Past his reflection, on the windowsill, beside the toothbrush his brother had given him: his phone.

.   .   .

Dark water, blue sky, and already the sun was setting, just enough light to whiten the sand. A few beachgoers lingered, umbrellas bent to block the wind. One couple sat side by side reading books. Another dipped hands into a shared bag of potato chips. Another walked the shore. A dog, white and brown, raced seagulls up and down the beach.

Mark stood at the water’s edge. To his left, the land curled into a point. To the right, a rocky outcropping, the boulders he guessed his brother had been talking about. Beyond the rocks rose the giant legs of the Golden Gate Bridge. He counted cars. There were hundreds, so many traveling at high speeds, neat and safe in single-file lines. He wondered how many cars crossed the bridge each minute, then thought how that was exactly the sort of thing that Joshua would know.

He’d made it out before Marisa made it home. But what came next? Maybe Marisa would say nothing. Maybe she’d take one look at the television and tell Joshua everything. Either way, Mark would be asked to leave. This would give him two days to kill. He pictured himself cross-legged on a motel bed, Chinese takeout in his lap. Or else a Thanksgiving dinner of Heinekens and mixed nuts in a hotel bar. Whatever came next, he knew he’d brought it upon himself.

He pulled off his shoes and socks and rolled the cuffs of his pants to his knees. The sand underfoot was cold. He stirred the surf with a toe, and the water was colder. He couldn’t tell whether the tide was going out or coming in. He walked up the beach. The sand was scooped out in places, hollowed by wind, and he tucked his shoes into one of these hollows before returning to the shore. He picked the rocks and the bridge as his destination and walked toward them.

The beach was a confusion of seaweed and cracked shells, twigs and clear, bulbous sacs, like jellyfish minus the tentacles. He knelt, picked up one of these, and weighed it in his hand. The thing was cool and rubbery. He squeezed, and a stream of water shot from the sac’s middle. He tossed it into the water and walked on.

By now, the sun had set, but he could see people gathered at the rocks. A tent glowed yellow, and a couple moved in rhythm to music that emerged, choked and reedy, from a radio. A small fire in a rock-lined pit shot orange sparks into the air.

He was cold and growing colder. He sat and felt the sand wet through his pants. He pulled the phone from his pocket. He lived with the fear that if he didn’t listen, saving and resaving it daily, the message might be lost.

He pressed a button, and there it was, her voice on the phone, her last words:
Mark, this is silly. When you’ve calmed down, call me. Please. I may be a while. The roads are ice.
There was a long pause before she said:
For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.

How long had it been? How long between the message left and the bridge? Seconds? Minutes? Had the first car struck her hanging up?

Quickly, is how it would have happened, over before she had time to be afraid. Everyone said so, and he wanted to believe them. Wanted to, and didn’t. What had she thought, seeing the guardrail, then going through it, ice rising to meet her, then opening to let her in?

Had he been the last thing on her mind? Had she blamed him or forgiven him?

He saved the message and flipped the phone shut. He stood. He could whip the phone into the ocean and be free, but that was just another impulse. He’d long since memorized the message, heard it with or without the phone pressed to his ear. He’d never be free.

And say he did it, say he managed somehow to forget her words, there were still home movies, photo albums—her picture to stare at and how, accusingly, she stared right back at him—still the old house to drive past. He’d wept to see Lorrie’s flowers dug up, her gardens turned to grass.

He moved down the beach. At his approach, the campers stirred. The two dancers separated. The woman moved to a sleeping bag on the sand beside the fire, and the man joined another man at the water’s edge.

When he was close enough to see, Mark stopped. The men were naked.

One, the man who’d been dancing, was maybe twenty. He had a potbelly and the jowls of a bulldog. He kept his gaze steady on the horizon. The second man was older, tall and thin. His hands were on his hips. His elbows stuck out like trowels. His hair, brown shot through with gray, was long and tied back in a ponytail. The tail touched the small of the man’s back. A beard, tied in a matching tail, hung from his chin. The wind pressed the man’s beard to his waist, a waist not indicated by tan line or pants.

The older man turned only his head in Mark’s direction. The beard was bunched in places, banded by silver coils.

“It’s not polite to stare,” he said.

Mark hadn’t meant to, but it had surprised him, the sight. He’d heard of nude beaches but thought they were a myth, like those highways out west said to have no speed limits. If those highways existed, he’d never seen them.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s the beard. It’s impressive.” This was true. The rest of the man was unimpressive, shriveled, pinkie-sized in a pocket of dense, gray hair. He’d imagined nudists were nudists because they had something to show off, but he guessed not.

The man nodded. “I have a deal with God,” he said. “I won’t cut my hair until the war ends.”

“Which war?” Mark asked.

The man smiled. “All of them.” He brought a hand to his chin, scratched, then ran his fingers down the rope of hair. With its bunched bits, it reminded Mark of sheets knotted together, the kind children in movies tied to bedposts and hung from open windows to run away.

“If it’s world peace you’re after,” Mark said, “I’m thinking you’ll have that beard awhile.”

The naked man frowned. “You’re one of those.”

“One of what?”

“A man who believes the way things are is exactly the way they’ll always be.”

The younger man at his side laughed. His belly trembled. But the bearded man turned and shook his head, and, wordlessly, the young man about-faced and made his way up the beach.

The sky was black, the bridge above brown. There was the rush of cars overhead and the whine of night insects turning on. The nudists, maybe ten of them and in various states of undress, watched him from chairs and sleeping bags around the fire. A topless woman dropped a log onto the flames, and there was an eruption of sparks. Embers feathered, then settled on the sand.

“That’s quite a shiner,” the man said.

Mark felt his eye. The skin hurt to touch, and he realized that he was shivering. He was used to cold but hadn’t expected it in San Francisco, hadn’t realized California wasn’t always hot. And here stood this other man, still, at peace. He wondered how, without clothes, the man kept warm. He asked.

The man smiled. “Cold is a state of mind,” he said. He bowed his head and closed his eyes. A gust of wind grabbed his beard and twirled it about his stomach. The man lifted one leg, drawing his knee almost to his chest. His penis poked forward, a cocktail shrimp from a Brillo pad. His arms stretched behind him until the hands met and his fingers interlocked. The man resembled a heron or else some prehistoric shorebird, long extinct.

Mark watched the water. The tide was definitely going out. The sand was stained where the water had been, and the surf no longer swallowed the stain.

After a time, the bearded man opened his eyes. His leg dropped, and he turned to face Mark.

“My state of mind has changed,” the man said.

“I’m sorry?”

“I’m freezing my ass off.” He winked. His beard swung. “There’s a place for you by the fire, if you’d like.”

The man joined the others by the fire, then looked back. He waved. A second hand beckoned, and then it seemed that all of them were waving.

His pants were the first thing to come off, and then his shirt. His boxers dropped, and the men and women around the fire cheered.

He wanted to go to them, to warm himself by the fire. But there was a better place for him. He felt the tug and turned to face the bay.

The water on his legs telegraphed the terrible mistake, but he didn’t stop. He fell forward, and the cold took him. He went under. He pushed against the bottom. His face broke the surface, he breathed, and, soon, the water was warm.

.   .   .

The four of them had shared a Thanksgiving, once, years before. Joshua and Marisa were a new couple when he and Lorrie had traveled to Tucson to see them. Joshua had given them all a tour of the Sonoran Desert, with its fierce, chalky landscape, its cactuses that stood, arms out, like tellers in a bank heist movie.

On Thanksgiving Day, Lorrie set the table. Marisa made a turkey, and Joshua carved. He cut into the bird, then proceeded to mutilate one of the breasts. Mark tried to help, encouraging Joshua to draw the blade gently over the meat and not to chop. “It’s not a machete,” he said.