Chimpanzee (25 page)

Sireen is the first to stop. On the way back. Dimitri is telling me about the albums he's copied for me. Most of them came from his students. I wonder who makes music anymore.

There are two white men standing between us and the trailhead, blocking our path. They're wearing ball caps and jackets. I move in front of Sireen.

“Afternoon,” the blond one says. He lifts a hand. I can't tell if he's waving or halting us.

I walk closer. Within ten feet. I can hear Dimitri, or Sireen, following me.

“Hello,” I say.

“I'm Ronnie,” he says, “and this is Ken.”

“Hello,” I say to Ken.

“You folks have a nice hike?”

Ken has a hunting knife on his belt. I can't see what's under Ronnie's hunting jacket.

I can feel the anger. Like that sim. It wants to reward me, but I have to earn it.

“Yeah. You two ought to head up,” I say. “It's a nice day.”

“We won't take but a minute,” Ronnie says. I can't tell what Ken is looking at.

“What can we do for you?” I say.

“We just want to extend an invitation. We've got a little place, outside of town. A bit of a farm—we're looking for workers.”

“Thanks,” I say. “We're taken care of.”

“Who are you folks?” he says, nodding past me.

I turn my head. Make a show of looking.

“I'm Ben,” I say.

“Steve,” says Dimitri.

Sireen tucks her hair behind her ears. “Tina.”

Ronnie and Ken don't move.

“Well, maybe you two'd be interested?” Ronnie says. He's staring at Sireen. “Y'all are all good Americans, aren't you?”

How much of Dimitri's accent could he have heard in “
Steve”
?

“Of course,” I say.

“
White
Americans?”

“Listen, friend,” I say. “We need to get back. The kids are at home with a sitter.”

“It's a safe place,” Ronnie says. “There's shelter and plenty of food. Plenty of protection. Your kids would be great there.”

The insides of my elbows are starting to ache. There's pressure behind my eyes.

“It's open to all of us,” Ronnie says. “You just got to invest whatever you've got. What you can afford, and we'll look after you.”

“The whole town's involved,” Ken says.

“There's no welfare bastards out there,” Ronnie says. “It's the way it's supposed to be.”

“Thanks, but no,” I say.

Ronnie holds up his hands. “Suit yourself. We didn't mean to go alarming you folks.”

They don't move.

“Maybe you'd care to make a donation, for our efforts,” Ronnie says. “Give a little to those as aren't
taken care of
.”

“We already put five dollars in the trail box,” Sireen says. Dimitri did. He insisted.

“Well, that's for the trail, Tina,” he says. “For good folks like you.”

“We're looking for the farm,” Ken says.

“We're not carrying any money,” I say. “We're hiking.”

“But you had money for the trail box? Gas for that sedan?”

Ronnie takes a few steps forward. Ken staggers himself a pace behind.

“Ben,” Sireen says.

I hold up a hand to her. This is a different me. There's a reason.

“I told you ‘no,'” I say.

“Now, Ben—”

It feels like the sim, when I bury my head in his midsection, like my reward for giving in, for being aggressive. Dominant. The sensation of his fingers tearing at my hair is like picking scabs. Relief. The rush of his air across my forehead, as the trail comes up behind his back. The breeze through the sweet gum trees. The handfuls of earth that I grind into his eyes. Dimitri hits Ken with the half-empty bottle of wine. It doesn't break.

I fill Ronnie's nose with the air that I scream. Creation. I am the darkness he cannot see, from which all important things come.
I am remaking him with God's earth, where it becomes red in the pockets of his bleeding face. I leave him choking and crawl towards Ken, where he has pinned Dimitri in the leaves. I am my own missing link, learning to walk again.

Ken gets his knife from its sheath, and Sireen's shadow comes between us.

“Stop,” she says.

“What are you doing?” Ken says to her. Dimitri cuts a glance at me.

I look at Sireen. She is brandishing her phone. Its camera lens.

“Taking pictures,” she says, “of you.”

Ronnie coughs behind me. She moves the phone, and it clicks him, too.

“I can send these to Renewal,” she says, “with our location, or we can be on our way.”

Ken lets his head fall against the earth. “You're a fucking monitor.”

“Throw your knife into the woods,” she says.

He does.

“Yours, too.”

Ronnie does.

These two, fishers of men.

                
This is my girlfriend, Sireen.

                    
My director nudged her in the ribs when he shook her hand. It took a strange geometry to pull it off.

                    
Do you want to hear a joke? he said. He gave me his tobacco-toothed grin, like we'd planned this.

                    
Sireen tucked her hair behind her ears, and he was excited because she was already smiling. If he only knew. I don't remember when I gave her the pearl earrings she was wearing. It was to commemorate something. I wore my sport coat, which my parents bought for me as an undergrad. This was an important lecture. The speaker was from                                  . There was a reception afterward, and we made fun of the wine and the other graduate students. Sireen drank four glasses.

                    
Yes! Sireen said.

                    
How do you find an old man in the dark?

                    
How?

                    
It's not hard!

                    
She laughed so hard she planted her palms on his shoulders. As if it might have knocked her over, and he took hold of her thin wrists gracefully. A gentle catch the way he might have held a door for her or led her through a waltz.

                    
Nice to meet you—I'm Sireen, she said. Ben says so much—

                    
Ben knows more about            -                                                than any of my other students. I'm so glad he brought you.

                    
They looked at me.

                    
Well, she said. I always wanted to know more about                              and                -whateveryoucallits.

                    
                  '  ! he said. Right, Ben?

On the way back through town, there is still kudzu. Still handicraft furniture and rusted antiques. I can see now, between the buildings, that the houses on the adjacent avenues have all been boarded up. They work here, it seems, the old and the infirm, but they sleep where it's safe, at that farm. I wonder where the young are hiding. Watching. What would Zoe and her friends think about this?

It's a good idea.

“You shouldn't tell strangers your real name,” Sireen says.

“I needed to,” I say.

“I know,” she says.

“The phone was a good bluff,” I say.

“I know.”

We dropped Dimitri off at our bar, down the street. He wanted to go inside, dirty, scratched, to grab a drink and write. He smirked at me as he got out of the car.

Sireen didn't say anything as we drove up the hill.

I stand in the shower. I feel hung over. Heavy. The water runs brown as it carries the earth out of my hair, out of the tiny hollows in the skin on my arms.

My arms.
That used to amuse me. Owning arms.

The tub beneath me is white. The tiles at my shoulders, white. There is nothing of liminal sunlight and grunting men in the earth, here. There is nothing here but white light—a clean space at the center of my universe.

Sireen steps into the shower, and I surrender the water. She looks at me, a white washcloth in one of her fists.

I don't know what to say.

“I don't know,” I say.

Beads of clean water gather along her dark hairline.

“I'm not stupid,” she says.

“I don't think giving them money—”

“I said I'm not stupid.”

She dabs at the lacerations on my forehead. Ronnie became desperate as I piled the earth into his eyes. Trying to make him see. His fingernails were long and hard.

I think about the shooting outside the grocery auction. About Sireen screaming my name. It is a new feature of our lives together, like catching episodes of our favorite shows, or discovering a new restaurant. We scream now.

“Dimitri's doing a study,” I say. She takes my hand, to dig the earth from beneath my nails.

“I know.”

“About me.”

She smiles. “What else?”

There is nothing but vapor between us. Thin and hot and white in this clean light. I think about the trail. About the dark mountains, the beech trees and the staring hawks. About everything outside this house—our life together.

In the woods, her skin looked like it had grown pale, but here, she is darkness. An evening-toned woman, a thing made of ribs and exhalations. The water in her hair smells like clay, and my fingers leave shapes where I press them against her shoulders.