Lowboy (12 page)

I
n 1985 Jacques Cousteau, the famous deep-sea explorer, was testing a diving suit off the coast of France. The suit was made out of pressure-treated bauxite and industrial steel and Cousteau believed it would let a man go past sixty meters, the world depth record at the time. A clear day in June had been picked for the test, the time of year when currents are at their weakest. The dive was planned for 3:00 p.m.

Cousteau was an old man by then, but he insisted on wearing the diving suit himself. A doctor and an engineer stood by on the
Calypso
and Cousteau’s son Émile manned the oxygen tanks. The only other witnesses were the
Calypso’s
crew, half a dozen merchant seamen from Marseille, and a reporter from the local Sunday paper. The sky was clear and blue. Some yachts were anchored close by, but nobody paid much attention. After the water temperature had been taken and the fittings on his helmet doublechecked, Cousteau had himself lowered into the water.

He was careful not to go too fast at first. Every three meters he’d stop and check each of his gauges, then make a note in chalk on a little
slate tablet. But at nine and a half meters—the world record for unassisted diving—he had a huge shock. A man was suddenly next to him, treading water and waving, dressed in nothing but a pair of cotton briefs. Cousteau decided to ignore the man and continue his dive. To his amazement the man followed him, and after five more meters they were side by side again. Cousteau did his best to push on, but when, at thirty meters—sixteen and a half feet past the free-diving record—the man was still with him, he gave in and wrote him a message on his slate, asking how he was able to stay alive at such a depth. The man took the slate from Cousteau, wrote down an answer, and handed it back.

“Well?” said Emily. “What did it say?”

“You asshole! I’m drowning!”

She put a hand over her mouth. “I don’t know about that one, Heller. It’s not very funny.”

“I know that,” said Lowboy. “I couldn’t even make jokes yesterday.”

“Good on the details, though.” She stubbed out her cigarette and pushed the hair out of her eyes. “What’s bauxite?”

“They make diving suits out of it,” said Lowboy. He pinched his nose and buckled at the knees.

“I’ve got one for you,” she said, passing him the lighter and the pack. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

They were at the corner of Christopher and Seventh and people and cars flew by like startled birds. She caught hold of his arm and stopped him, as though she could tell it only by standing still. A billboard behind her said meth = death. She took a breath and stared at him until he was paying attention, then let the breath out. A three-wheeled police buggy puttered past.

“A bear and a bunny are taking a shit in the forest. The bear asks the bunny, ‘Do you ever have a problem with shit getting stuck to your fur?’ The bunny thinks about it for a while, then says, ‘Not really, no.’ So the bear—” She squinted at him. “Still with me, Heller?”

He nodded. “Not really, no.”

“The bear wipes his ass with the bunny.”

Lowboy looked up at her. She was still a bit taller. Half an inch, he decided. She was standing flatfooted with Christopher Street behind her and her hair snaking this way and that like the hair of a woman possessed. A woman, not a girl. Smiling as though she’d known him since the day that he was born.

“Funny,” he said finally. “Poor rabbit.”

“You should laugh, then, Heller. It’s polite.”

She did his laughing for him and led him west between the parked cars toward the river. Past storefronts selling Greek food and fetishes and videos and haircuts and rubber suits and tarot cards and tapas and tattoos.

“Where are we going?”

She frowned and pursed her lips. He’d forgotten that too. “Nowhere,” she told him. “A place that I like.”

“A good place?” he said, but only to make some kind of noise. He could just as well have barked. He’d pissed out the last of his meds at the corner of Grove and Bedford but he felt happy and attached to things and not at all confused. If this is sick, then I’ll take a dozen, he said to himself. If this is sick, then meds are a sin. An evil worse than The Atomic Bomb.

Fat Man & Little Boy, he said to himself. Another perfect name for Skull & Bones. He thought of them now with a kind of affection. He wondered whether they’d given up yet and gone home. Maybe they’re having lunch somewhere, he thought. He pictured them eating pancakes in a diner.

“A good enough place,” said Emily. “I thought you said you didn’t give a shit.”

One second’s gone by, he thought. Less than a second. How could I have had all of those thoughts? He held his hands out in front of him, palms upturned like a saint’s, admiring their squareness and their weight. He could have run a marathon on those hands. He could have rearranged the cars like three-card monte cups. The city was newlooking, glistening in the daylight, an onion with its outer
skin sloughed off. He saw dimes in the pavement and vinecovered housefronts and old useless flagpoles and shopping bags hanging like vampire bats from the trees. He saw awnings and bellpulls and limos and dogs dressed in parkas. There were so many things to see that he got dizzy. Babies see the world this way, he thought. Then they forget.

“People are after me,” he said finally. “Two of them.”

Emily didn’t answer. He took a breath and decided to try again.

“From the school,” he said, watching her. She was walking with her hands in her back pockets. “From the place that I got sent to. Skull and Bones.”

“They sent you to a place called Skull and Bones?”

“I’m seeing the world the way a baby does,” he said, covering his face and looking out between his fingers. “It’s interesting.”

“I used to think that you looked like a baby.” She grinned bashfully down at the pavement. “I don’t think so anymore.”

He wanted to shut his eyes tight, to have her lead him through the city like a Seeing Eye dog, but he had to look to see where he was going. She was standing a few steps ahead of him, turned halfway around, looking back up the street for enemies. His father had once shown him some Red Chinese money and the way Emily was standing, with her chin held up high and her mouth slightly open, reminded him of the girl on the fifty-yuan note.

“You should have army pants on,” he said. “You should have an Uzi.”

She heaved a sigh and took his arm again. “I probably should,” she said. When she said it herself it stopped being a joke. They were at the corner of Christopher and Hudson and the traffic was sliding by them without any sound at all, as though the city had been tipped and everything with wheels was rolling down to Chinatown. She looked ten years older now than when they’d sat together on the stoop. She looked committed to a great and hallowed cause. Suddenly he was afraid that he might still be too young.

“Emily,” he said faintly.

“Don’t worry, Heller. You’re not a baby.”

How did she know what I wanted, he thought. How did she know what I was going to say. “How warm is it right now, Emily, do you think?”

She smiled at him. He hadn’t told her yet about his calling. “It’s the middle of November, Heller. It isn’t warm at all.”

“It is,” he said. “It’s fifty-nine degrees.”

“Fifty-nine doesn’t count as warm, you retard. And it can’t be more than forty-five right now.” She shook her head and steered him out into the street without waiting for the light to change. People from the city could do that. When his mother crossed the street she kept her eyes fixed on the cars, looking straight at every driver, so that her face would haunt them if they ran her over. Sometimes she cursed or said a prayer in German. But Emily looked like a freedom fighter, like someone with a bomb hidden under her clothes. She didn’t have to look at the cars to stop them. None of them even came close to her.

“They can’t touch you,” said Lowboy. “If they came close to you they’d melt.”

She tugged at his elbow. “Watch out for the curb.”

“They’re made out of wax,” he said, not because he believed they were made out of wax but because it was simpler. “I don’t really believe that,” he told her. But then he thought: That would explain about the quiet.

Emily looked up the street and shrugged. She seemed unexcited.

“How many boys have you done this to before?”

She made a face. “Done it
with
, Heller. Not to. I’m not going to take your tonsils out.”

He nodded slowly, touching a finger to his neck. No need for any operation, he thought. This is the opposite of what happens in hospitals. But the question still stuck to his lips like a piece of dead skin. At the corner he stopped short and planted his feet. Behind them the cars were still rolling downtown, veering and guttering like badly cast marbles. It took him a long time to reshape his question, to take
it apart and put it back together, but Emily didn’t seem to mind. She thinks I’m like everyone else, he thought. Maybe a little slower. Not sick. The idea bothered him somehow. For a moment he found himself missing his doctors.

“What I mean to say is, have you done this before?” He took a deep breath. “Have you done this with anyone else?”

“It’s safe to say, dumb-ass, that I’ve never done this before. Never skipped school with an escaped mental patient. Never hid a fugitive from justice.” She smiled at him. “And I’ve definitely never held
hands
with somebody I was going to put out for.”

That satisfied him. He was different from the others, exalted, distinguished, if only because he was sick.

“Emily,” he said, and laid his right hand flat against her belly. There was nothing sly about her anymore. He was old enough now and she knew it. Both of them did. It seemed incredible that she’d helped him cross the street.

“What is it,” she mumbled. It wasn’t a question. Her stomach was shivering under her clothes. She had on a red shirt and a purple thriftstore sweater. His little finger traced her bottom rib.

“I know you didn’t mean to push me, Heller.” She was leaning into his hand and her hair was in his eyes and he could feel her heavy breath against his face. “I know you didn’t mean to. But I want to hear you say it.”

“I told you I was sorry.”

“I don’t care about that. Sorry only matters if you
meant
to.”

He forced his eyes shut but her outline persisted, the afterimage bright against his brain. A green girlshaped pillar rose through the veins of his retina like ivy twining through a chainlink fence. As soon as his eyes were closed her beautiful face began to disassemble. He’d suspected it would. Her features came apart like knitting.

“I drew pictures of you, Emily. I drew one every day. In the end there was just a house: a house with a hairy roof. I didn’t know that you were still inside it.”

“That’s not an answer, Heller. Answer me.”

Her stomach pulled itself back from his fingers. He was old
enough to know that her question was a sign of love or at least of passing interest and he struggled to find an answer that would please her. What he wanted most was to not answer at all, to bring his second hand against her ribs, to hold her there until the next thing happened. To not have to remember the flat time or anything like it. There was nothing there that he cared to recall.

“I wouldn’t have done it if you hadn’t touched me,” he told her.

She nodded and let her shoulders slump toward his. Her hair hung dark against his face but her eyes shone on him like stagelights through an old motheaten curtain. That was why her stomach had pulled back: she was bending down to meet him, folding over. All at once her face was under his. “You were frightened of me,” she whispered. “You thought that I’d become another person. You told me so.”

“I didn’t know what you wanted to touch me for.”

“I was frightened too. That’s why. To keep you quiet.”

“It was hot in the station. Hot and wet, like in a greenhouse. A policeman was coming up the platform to catch us. A highpressure system. You’d gone flat, playing tricks, not like Emily at all. I wanted to cool down. I wanted to take my clothes off. Then you came and wrapped around me like a blanket.”

“I touched you,” she said. “You didn’t recognize me. You thought I was some other person. Not Emily anymore.”

He felt her cautious breath against his neck. Her breath smelled of licorice and cigarettes and fetid greenhouse air. Her ribs were suddenly back against his knuckles. Everything’s happening suddenly lately, he thought. Emily bit her lower lip and started walking. Not taller than he was anymore. After three short steps she stopped and waited for him.

“You’re Emily now,” he said, taking her compliant hand in his.

Some time later they passed the window of a bakery and stopped in front of it and looked inside. She appraised the shelves of bright potbellied jars and he shifted and blinked and sidestepped his reflection.
With his head behind hers they looked like a twoheaded baby. He liked the idea of that. “What’s in there?” he said to Emily, but he’d already seen for himself. The wall behind the counter was graced by a menagerie of pastel forms. Green and pink clots cupped in pleated waxpaper. Green for her afterimage, pink for his skin. He could tell by her expression that she was inspecting them closely.

“This place only makes cupcakes,” she murmured. “Sometimes there’s a line around the block.”

He leaned back on his heels. “Cupcakes?”

“Not worth waiting in line for,” she said. “Too much frosting.” But her forehead was pushed flush against the glass.

“You want one,” he said.

She stuck out her tongue. “To be honest with you, Heller, I couldn’t—”

“Wait here.”

Before she could answer the powderblue shopdoor was closing behind him. People were standing alone and in clusters, sighing and whispering, running their fingertips along the glass. Across the top of the case sat the row that he’d seen from the street. That part of it was easy. A girl behind the counter smiled and asked him what he wanted.

The rest of them are thinking, he said to himself. Thinking it over. They’re having a hard time making up their minds.

“What can I get you?” the girl said again. She was taller than he was by at least half a foot. There was some kind of construction underneath her: some sort of a platform. To lend stature or the illusion thereof. He decided to keep the conversation brief.