The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories (58 page)

Lyle nodded. He reached into a different pocket and rummaging around in there, brought out a thick metal bolt about two inches long. “Here—keep this as a souvenir of tonight.”

Alan took it and closed his fingers carefully around the bolt. “I’ll treasure it.”

The next day at lunchtime he bought the GLIB camera. Walking into a camera shop near his office, Alan said to a salesman that he wanted a very good simple digital camera small enough to fit in a pocket. Without hesitating the salesman took a GLIB out of the display case and placed it on the counter. It was the size of a deck of cards and had only two buttons on the top. He said it was so simple to operate that anyone could be taking pictures within fifteen minutes. But because the camera used a precision Zeiss lens, the results were outstanding.

Alan sat on a park bench and read the instructions. With some time left before he had to be back in the office, he took the first pictures of the scaffolding that he had climbed the night before.

Later he shot some pictures of the building site from his office, then some more from down on the street after work. He photographed the scaffolding first thing in the morning, the afternoon, and at night when it was barely visible except for some glints and glimmers off the metal here and there.

The nice thing about a digital camera was it allowed him to see the results immediately. He didn’t like any of them. He took a picture, looked at it and erased it. Again and again and again. He did not have even one saved on his camera. This went on for days. He was not a photographer, not an artist and he knew it. But art wasn’t the point. Just once he wanted to take a picture of the scaffolding that somehow caught a small part of what he had experienced up there that night with Lyle. When he had taken
that
picture he would be content.

He had no idea why he was doing this. He was not an obsessive man. Orderly and pragmatic, yes, but even the word
obsession
he used only once or twice a year and never in reference to himself. In the middle of all these goings-on he even asked his wife if she thought he had ever been obsessive about anything. Unhesitatingly she said no. Perhaps he had grown a hobby. There was nothing wrong with a hobby. Perhaps he just liked taking pictures of scaffolding and men at work on it.

One evening after dinner at their favorite restaurant the couple were strolling in a section of town that had lots of art galleries. In one of them was a photo exhibit of an artist who took only black and white pictures of unsharpened pencils lying alone on square white plates. There were a great many of them but none were particularly interesting. How many ways were there to arrange a pencil on a plate? But Alan pulled his wife into the gallery anyway and spent a long time looking. Amused at this, she went along until finally enough was enough. Sidling up to him she whispered, “I’ll buy you any two pencils you want if we can leave now.”

He felt better after that. Seeing those photographs felt like a kind of vindication for what he was doing. There were people who took pictures of pencils, others of scaffolding.

By this time, the crew that originally erected the scaffolding across the street was gone and work on the façade of the building itself had begun. It was hard to clearly see what the workers were doing now. He saw some filling gaps with mortar while others scraped the surface with hand tools but not much else. Alan wanted to know more and to see things up close. One Friday afternoon he left work a little early and went across the street. A few minutes later he told his first lie about this matter.

A worker wearing a hardhat and carrying an orange chainsaw walked by and saw him taking photographs. “Are you the guy from the insurance company?”

Without hesitating Alan said yes.

“Well then I guess you want to come up and take some pictures. Come on.”

Those were the photographs Alan’s wife saw when she discovered the camera in their living room. They were not good pictures but they were the first ones he had been able to take from any height so he had not erased any of them yet.

It took some time for him to realize that there was too much hustle and bustle on a construction site during the day. Initially he got to see what he wanted—men working on the renovation. In fact he was so pleased with the other world up high on the scaffolding that he started going to other construction sites around the city. Pretending he was from ‘the insurance company’ and emanating an authoritative air, he was allowed almost free access to all levels. He climbed, he descended, he talked to the workers, and he took pictures. It was an invigorating contrast to the staid, airless work in a law office where most days were spent pursuing the ineffable or trivial, the clever loophole or the rare Kill-shot precedent buried deep in the law library.

Construction work was noisy, straightforward, tactile, and visibly productive. Alan loved to dress in casual clothes and walk out into the morning knowing that in an hour he would be high over this city, seeing it from a perspective few people were ever lucky enough to experience.

But one day he realized after having done it six or seven times that what he really wanted now was to somehow recapture that magical night on the building with Lyle Talbot. That experience was akin to the first time he’d ever ridden a bicycle correctly. The miraculous moment when the boy discovered his own center of gravity and pulled away from his father’s guiding hand towards freedom. Seeing the city at night from on high with Lyle, drinking his coffee from a warm metal cup, and feeling fully aware and alive was one of his most memorable experiences in recent years. He wanted very much to repeat it.

Alan had not seen Lyle again after that night although he had passed the building many times since the night they met. He carried the thick bolt in his pocket that Lyle had given him and toyed with it constantly. He was a pragmatist and did not believe in magic, luck or religion. But the bolt was the closest thing to a talisman he had ever possessed. He would have been very disturbed if he were to lose it.

Weeks later his wife saw the camera on his desk a second time and once again looked at the photographs inside. What caught and chilled her were two pictures of their living room that Alan had taken by mistake. The camera was obviously his, not some client’s as he had earlier said. What was going on here? Why had he lied to her? Did these pictures mean something? For two days she thought about it, trying to decide what to do. Just ask him about it? Say straight out she thought it was very strange that he had lied and now she wanted to know if he was concealing things she should know? The possibilities frightened her. What could be so bad that this kind, straightforward man felt the need to lie to his best friend and partner?

He disappeared before she had a chance to confront him.

Alan Harris did not sleep well; he never had. Four or five hours a night and then his eyes would open for good to the day even if it was still dark outside. Fully awake, he would pad around the apartment in his pajamas, sometimes reading, watching television or making breakfast. She was used to it. If she felt him stir in the bed, she would pull a pillow over her head and go back to sleep.

He had come home from work glum and tired. They ate a quiet dinner together and then he went to bed at ten. She mentioned that if he went to sleep now he’d wake up very early but he shook his head and did it anyway.

At three he awoke and a plan jumped into his mind. Knowing he would not be able to get back to sleep, he’d put on his clothes and walk over to the Lyle site, as he called it now. Once there he would climb the scaffolding and stand where they had stood together that night. Why not? That’s what he wanted to do and that’s what he would do.

While dressing he glanced out the window and saw that the streets were glistening black. Did that mean the view from high up would be obscured by this bad weather? He hoped not but the thought did not deter him. Putting on his rain jacket and cap, he slipped out the front door, closing it behind him with a quiet metallic click.

The streets were wet and empty. Occasionally a cab hissed by. He passed a couple weaving down the sidewalk arm in arm, totally oblivious to anything but each other. It was not cold for that time of year but he buttoned up his jacket anyway because it would be colder up where he was going.

On reaching the site he looked left and right to make sure no one was watching. Then as if to reassure himself, he touched the metal bolt in his pocket and smiled, silently greeting the absent Lyle and explaining what he was about to do.

Everything on the scaffolding was slippery this time. More than once he made a slip or slide that set his heart thumping in his chest and adrenalin racing around his body. It was a rare feeling for him and he didn’t know if he liked or hated it.

Now and again he would stop to turn around and look at the view behind him. In the rain the city below appeared liquid, as if it had just been formed of meltable things like licorice or blown glass. It looked fragile, like all of it would easily break if tapped with a hammer.

When he reached the level where he had stopped with Lyle, Alan Harris turned to face the view, then squatted down on his haunches and put both hands up under his armpits for warmth. It was a favorite position that he took when he knew he was going to be somewhere for a while.

A few minutes passed and then a voice nearby said “Hey look, let’s get back to work, huh? Hand me that mallet.”

Taken completely by surprise, Alan looked to the right with very wide startled eyes. Standing at the other end of his level was a man wearing paint-covered overalls, a loaded leather tool belt and a yellow hard hat. It was not Lyle Talbot.

“Excuse me?”

“Hup hup—there’s work to do, man. We ain’t getting paid to sit around. Hand me that mallet there.”

Alan looked down in the dark and shadows at his feet and sure enough, nearby was a wooden handled mallet with a thick rubber head. Even in the dark he could see that the tool had been well used. Hesitantly he stood, picked it up and walked down to the end where the other was standing.

“I don’t—”

The man shook his head and turned to face the building. Sliding a short steel chisel out of his loaded tool belt he pointed it at the facade. “You see this layer here? It’s gotta all be knocked off before we can re-face it. This whole section has to be chiseled down to the base. You understand? Do it like this.”

For the next few minutes he demonstrated what he wanted Alan to do with the mallet and chisel. The lawyer watched and remained silent. What could he say? What was this guy doing up here working in the middle of the night anyway? Alan had so many questions but he was the trespasser here, but had obviously been mistaken for one of the night work crew. He would just wait until the guy was done talking and after he’d left, Alan would sneak down to the street again and take off.

“Here, now you try it.” The man stuck out both hands holding the tools.

Taking them tentatively, Alan put the chisel against the building face and gave it a good whack with the mallet.

“Harder! That stuff’s been up for years. You’re not gonna get any of it off by petting it.”

Alan hit the chisel another shot, much harder this time. A small chunk of façade broke off.

“Harder, man. It’s not a woman—it’s a wall.
Hit
it.”

Smiling at the image, he hit the chisel with all of his might and this time a sizeable piece came off.

“Good, good—that’s the way to do it. I’ll be back later.” Wiping his hands on his overalls, the worker walked to the edge and swinging to the outside on one of the poles there, began to climb down the scaffolding. He jingled as he moved because he carried so many different kinds of metal on his belt.

Alan thought it best to wait a while before descending. With nothing else to do, he started back to work with the mallet and chisel on the building.

It did not happen until he had been working for another quarter hour. It was satisfying invigorating work and although he wondered about the noise he was making, he figured that being this high up absorbed most of the sound. He was unused to hand work but it felt very good. While hammering away, he thought I must find a hobby where I do things like this on a regular basis. Maybe take a course in furniture making or even sculpting. The tools he held were formidable and bluntly honest. What a gratifying change it was to work with his hands and a mostly empty mind.

As his thoughts wandered around in that direction, he hit the chisel a ringing blow that sent a piece flying off the face but it did not drop like the others. This white bit, about the size of a pocket knife, simply hung in the air between him and the building. It did not fall. Alan’s hands holding the tools slowly dropped to his sides as he stared at it in disbelief, but the piece of building remained suspended near his chest.

“Take it. Break a little bit off and eat it.” The voice came from behind. Turning, he was almost face to face with a hefty middle-aged woman in black glasses and work clothes. He had not heard her come up. He pointed to the floating piece and she nodded. Reaching out, he took it from the air and did as he was told. Breaking off a small piece he hesitantly put it on the tip of his tongue and closed his mouth. He chewed.

His wife never saw him again. After the fear and worry, anger and utter confusion, her heart and mind were almost ruined by his disappearance.

In the end she was saved by a good man—A professor of Hebrew at the local university who lived in their building and courted her in a shy but determined way. Their relationship began by her pouring out her heart to him and his wisely saying nothing. Jews are used to mystery; often it is their third parent. They know there really is nothing one can say about it and the only response when mystery flattens others is to nod and show compassion. So many Jewish lives and frequently the way they die makes no sense at all, as history has shown. Fully aware of this, in the midst of her suffering the professor handed her a piece of paper that began her healing. On it he had written, “The world is not yours to finish, but neither are you free to take no part in it.” She read it and did not even get a chance to ask who had said this before a wave of grief swept over her and made her sob. But for the first time since her husband had gone, she was crying to cleanse rather than to hold and although it took a long time, that moment marked the beginning of her recovery.