Outer Banks (8 page)

—No.

—Right, right. 'Bye, then.

—'Bye.

Exit Egress cheerily. Naomi Ruth signaled for the driver to go on. Exit hansom cab.

6.

(A
T THE
P
LAZA
)

 

—Ah, you breakfast at the Green Tulip Room? I didn't realize…

—Well, yes, I've been coming here on Sundays for several months, all winter, in fact. It's a bit ornate, but quiet, peaceful, and of course there is the food, and the service…

—Yes, the Plaza…

—What about you, is this your first time, I mean, for breakfast?

—No, not really. I mean, not that I haven't dined here before, as you must remember… We stopped here many times together, for lunch, remember? Never on Sundays, though. Oh, will you listen to me, making jokes like that! It's so difficult, though, when you reach a certain age, I guess, to avoid references either to the past or to the popular culture … so difficult just to be personal and immediate. I'm sorry about that.

—You think it's
age
? That we've gotten so old, or so tired, that now our lives are either in the past or “public”…? I wish
I
believed that. I'd give up fighting it, if I thought it was an impossible fight to win. I'd let myself go, either into the past or into the public life, you know, that fantasy of one's life as a movie, or a TV series, or maybe a
Time
magazine cover story…

—Which appeals to you more?

—I don't know, to be honest about it. Today, seeing you, here, on an early spring morning, with all this hushed, tasteful luxury around us, I think I prefer the past. But any other time, when the associations aren't so strong and aren't especially pleasant anyhow, well, then I prefer the other.

—But never this, this life now, here, the real one…?

—No, I suppose not. But I can't
imagine
it any different from the way it is—I can only
fantasy
a different life, my old life, with you, or as someone else altogether, someone created by the public, as a kind of community effort, you know…? That's how bitter
I
am.

(Both Egress and Naomi Ruth break into nervous laughter.)

—Well, I don't suppose we should have breakfast together, do you? The pain…

—We might be seen by a columnist, you know. The Green Tulip Room is not exactly your cozy, little, out-of-the-way café. We don't need any more gossip than we've already endured, do we, now? As it is, by the time you get back to your apartment, or wherever you're living now, you'll flip on the radio or TV, only to hear that Egress and Naomi Ruth “accidentally” met in the lobby of the Plaza outside the Green Tulip Room, spoke quietly together for a few moments, and then went their separate ways, etc. Where
are
you living now, incidentally? In the city?

—Yes. As a matter of fact, I've been staying right here at the Plaza—all winter.

—Amazing.

—Yes.

—Yes, well, good-bye, now… It's been …
odd.

—
Hasn't
it! But pleasant, too. We'll have to do it again, sometime…

—Yes. Well, good-bye.

—Good-bye.

—Good-bye.

—Yes. 'Bye.

—'Bye.

—So long.

—
Ciao.

—
Ciao.

—Tra.

—La.

7.

(A
T THE
P
ARTY
)

 

They spotted each other at the same instant on opposite sides of the crowded, smoke-draped room and made their respective ways through the crowd, holding their cocktail glasses over their heads so as not to spill, excusing themselves with careful graciousness as they stepped on toes, crunched corsages, bumped breasts, kicked canes, until they finally were together, breathless, in the center of the room, light peck on the cheek, sip from the drink as eyes appraise each other's bodies, faces, clothes, cigarettes lit, puffing, smiling nod to acquaintance nearby, appreciative and only slightly critical analysis of the posh apartment's décor, and, at last,

—Well, I didn't expect to run into
you
here! Naomi Ruth said in a hard but gay voice.

—And I didn't expect to run into you
here
! Egress countered.

—Jesus, Egress, we can't seem to say anything new to one another, can we?

—Not at this level, m'love. There's lots we could say if we weren't so obsessively intent on discussing our failed marriage every time we happened to meet.

—I know, she said sadly.

—Too bad we can't fuck, he said.—By God,
then
we'd have something new to talk about!

—Yes.

—I know.

—Yes.

—Um. Well, it's been “real,” as they say…

—Yes. Did you come alone? she asked him.

—Oh, no, no, no. No, I came with a “friend.”

—Yes, she said, believing him.—The dancer. The young Russian girl. I remember.

—You alone? he queried idly.

—No, no. No, I'm not. Well, good-bye, Egress, she said hurriedly, and started to pull away from the center of the room.

—Good-bye! he called after her.

A friend, a man obviously attracted to Naomi Ruth's not inconsiderable beauty, happened to be standing just behind Egress, and, recognizing his bluff voice, punched him affectionately on the shoulder, and said to him,—Hey, ol' buddy, who's that fine-looking woman you were just propositioning?

—Oh, that's just … that's my ex-wife.

—You sound regretful, ol' buddy.

—Naw. Not regretful. The wages of sin, you know. Wistful, though … and something else. But not regretful.

8.

(A
T THE
C
ASINO
)

 

—Stay close, m'love. I started winning the second you entered the room, and I'll have to quit if you leave.

—Do you think there are some sort of house rules against…?

—Against what? Luck?

—I thought it was slightly more than that, luck. I mean, the way you carried on…

—Well, it is more than luck, of course, but we don't want
them
to know it, because, yes, there is a house rule against magic, another against divine intervention, a third against astral projection, and so on. Your usual house rules.

—Which one are
we
breaking, confidentially? Whisper it.

He whispered into her diamond-encrusted ear. She shuddered down into her furs. He turned back to the table and continued winning.

It was quite a night, for both of them. They had such a good time together that on several occasions, half a dozen, at least, the pain brought one or the other of them to his knees. They were almost relieved when it was over and they could go back to their respective hotels along the Strip.

9.

(A
T THE
B
ANK
)

 

—Making a deposit or withdrawal? she asked him.

—Oh! I almost didn't recognize you in that business suit. A withdrawal, as it happens. What about you?

—Deposit.

—Neat, he said appreciatively.

—What?

—Oh, you know, the balance of payments, as it were. It's almost cosmic. I
love
analogies, as you well know, he reminded her gently.

—I don't need to be reminded, she informed him.

—Yes, I remember your telling me that, too. And just about everything else we say to each other as well.

—It's not exactly an opportunity for adventure, is it, being one of a pair of parallel lines? We stayed together too long, Egress; she reminded him again.

—Yes, I know, I know. I've been thinking about that a lot lately. Remembering it, I mean.

—What's the solution?

—Infinity, he laughed.

—No, be serious, Egress.

—I am, I am. We're a pair of parallel lines, you said it yourself, and if that's become a problem, as it most evidently has, then the only solution is “infinity,” which is where they meet, finally.

—Or diverge.

—Right, or diverge. Of course. But we're not Greeks, nor were we meant to be, so we ought to be careful not to get our ethics mixed up with our mathematics. We're neither of us skilled enough a mathematician to accomplish it with anything like grace or good feeling.

—Don't worry about me, she said.—You're the one who loves analogy, remember?

—Yes, yes, of course. But you're the one who brought the parallel lines into this, which I've merely accepted as an indication of how you perceive our lives, past, present, and, presumably, future.

—I can't stand this quarreling. It's all so familiar to me, she exclaimed.—So
déjà-vu.
Good-bye, she said to him, and hurried from the bank.

He finished his transaction with the teller and left also, feeling no stranger to his anger with himself, even taking perverse pleasure from the familiarity.

10.

(I
N THE
C
OCKTAIL
L
OUNGE
)

 

—H'lo again.

—Again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And
again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again.

—Been here awhile, eh?

—The better part of a season, I'd say. I thought I'd found a place you'd not found and wouldn't. But here you are. I see I should've kept moving, should've kept taking those chances instead of this one…

—I'm sorry.

—
Don't
be! No, it's not
your
fault! None of it. Not a bit.

—I've changed.

—I know it. I can tell that. I know you've changed. Trouble is, I've changed too. And you know where that puts us? I'll tell you where it puts us! It puts us right back where we started. What we've got to do is change, all right, but only one of us at a time!

—Right. Well, don't let me interrupt you. 'Bye.

—Yeah. G'bye. Too bad for the bartender, though.

—Why?

—Wal, y'see, he just lost
two
customers. A “regular” and a “potential.”

—Oh, I know. Well, don't worry, someone else will take our places, I'm sure.

—Yeah, sure, the world is full of people running away from each other.

—Right. 'Bye.

—G'bye.

11.

(A
T THE
H
OSPITAL
)

 

—Are you a patient?

—Here for tests.

—Really? Anything wrong?

—No, I'm sure it's nothing at all. A little innocuous bleeding. A lump or two, shortness of breath. But still, one has to treat these things as if they were serious…

—I know.

—What about you?

—The same. Tests, X-rays.

—Nothing serious, I hope?

—Not really. A cough, occasional pain, a cut on my wrist that won't heal properly… Probably coincidence.

—Of course. Like our checking in here at the same time, eh?

—Yes, sure. Just like that.

12.

(A
T THE
O
PERA
)

—No?

—No.

—Right.

—Right?

Chapter 1
   By Way of an Introduction to the Novel, This or Any

Chapter 2
  The Matrix: In Which Certain Geographic, Historic, Economic, and Ethnic Factors Get Described and Thence Enter the Drama; Also Flora, Fauna, and Other Environmental Marginalia; Some Local Traditions; a Fabled Place and an Early Murder There

Chapter 3
   Three Tales from His Childhood

Chapter 4
  Her Mother Speaks to Her of a Man She Calls “Your Father”

Chapter 4
  Addendum A

Chapter 4
  Addendum B

Chapter 4
  Addendum C

Chapter 5
  Back and Fill: In Which the Hero's Ditch, Having Got Dug and the Pipe's Having Been Laid Therein, Gets Filled; Including a Brief Digression Concerning the Demon Asmodeus, Along with Certain Other Digressions of Great and Small Interest

Chapter 6
  Chapter Beginning as “His Second Wife Speaks of a Man She Calls ‘Your Father' (from a Tape Recording)”

Chapter 7
  Ausable Chasm

Chapter 8
  100 Selected, Uninteresting Things Done and Said by Hamilton Stark

Chapter 9
  The Uroboros: Being a Further Declension of the Central Image

Chapter 10
  Graveside

Chapter 11
  An End

I
T DIDN'T OCCUR
to me to write a novel with A. As the prototype for its hero, Hamilton Stark, until fairly recently, a year ago this spring, when I drove the forty miles from my home in Northwood across New Hampshire to his home outside the town of B. Upon written invitation (via post card, as was his habit), I was on my way to visit him for the afternoon and possibly the evening. The post card read:

Typically, he had typed his message, and the four-color photograph printed on the reverse side was of a building he had helped construct, in this case a Tampax factory in the southwestern part of the state. A. was a pipefitter with a wide range of
practical engineering skills, and on that job he had been the foreman for all the plumbing, heating and air-conditioning systems.

After leaving my home around noon, I stopped in Concord, the state capital, and as instructed, purchased a fifth of Canadian Club whiskey and a case of Molson ale, which also happens to be Canadian. A. loved practically everything Canadian and thought Canada a truly “civilized” country, especially its far northern regions, where no one lives. “Up there,” he once told me, “there's so many rocks and so few people, the people act like rocks. There aren't even any goddamn trees up there, once you get far enough north! Now that's
class
,” he pronounced.

I had nodded my head in agreement, as was my habit, but I wasn't actually sure—wasn't sure that I agreed with him, of course, but also was not sure that he had meant what he had said, that he hadn't been criticizing the Canadian landscape and people rather than praising them. I didn't bother to pursue the subject; I knew my confusion at his ambiguous tone would only have been compounded by the further, inclusive, ambiguously hostile pronouncements that he would have heaped upon my head. He was like that. Once he perceived a crack in his listener's confidence in the meaning and intent of his remarks, he gleefully hurled himself like a boulder against the crack until he had split the egg of assured understanding wide open and had it lying in pieces like Humpty Dumpty at the bottom of the wall. And like a fallen Humpty Dumpty, the listener always felt foolish and guilty, as if the fall and the consequent shattering were all his own fault, a just punishment for his exceeding pride.

In many ways, A. was a peculiar man.

I was saying, though, that I had left Concord, and a half-hour later, as I was driving past the pink and aqua house trailers along the road, the two-room shacks with rusted stovepipes poking through the roofs, the old farmhouses boarded up or half-covered against the winter with flapping sheets of polyethylene, the fields compulsively cleared by long-dead generations of Yan
kee farmers gone now in this generation to scrubby choke-cherry and gnarled stunted birch, saw the gap-toothed children with matted hair and dirty rashes on their round faces playing by the side of the road, glimpsed in windows the blank, gray faces of young women and the old men's and old women's faces collapsing like rotted fruit, the broken toys and tools and ravaged carcasses of old cars lying randomly in the packed-dirt yards, the scrawny yellow mongrels nastily barking from the doorsteps at my passing car—as I drove through this melancholy scene and thus neared the home of A., it occurred to me for the first time that I might write a novel with A. as the prototype for its hero.

I will tell you how I arrived at such a notion.

It fascinated and amazed me that a person born into squalor such as this could grow to his adulthood in that same neighborhood and yet could possess qualities which, upon close examination, could be seen as both wisdom and passion.

How was that possible? I asked myself.

And then I asked myself if A. possessed these qualities (wisdom and passion), in fact, or if he were merely peculiarly mad. But on the other hand, I countered, even if he
were
peculiarly mad, and if his peculiar madness, which sometimes took forms that could be construed as wisdom and passion, happened to be a condition necessary for the man's mere survival—after having been born and raised in social circumstances that ordinarily dun a human being to death, turning him wormy with passive, quiet desperation long before he reaches adolescence—why, then madness was indeed wisdom, and to cling to such madness was passion!

That way, spiritual survival became, in my eyes, self-transcendence, practically an evolutionary move on the part of the organism. The question of love, its mere possibility, a question that had haunted me in my long consideration of A.'s character, thereby became wholly irrelevant. He was beyond offering love, above it and superior to it—at least the kind of love that I,
from my indulgent background, had learned long ago to value in myself and seek from others.

This was, for me, a welcome series of insights, and I felt greatly relieved, as if from a dreaded, demeaning chore, like cleaning out a septic tank. I thought: Any person whose life provides us with that particular relief is worth writing a novel about. For who among us has not wished to be freed of his need to love and be loved?

 

I
T WAS WITH
considerable excitement, then, that I approached the turnoff from the paved to a dirt road, practically a trail, that led through a quarter-mile of approximately flat and unkempt fields to A.'s home. The fields on both sides of the deeply rutted road, lined with slowly collapsing stone walls, had retreated to furzy bushes and scrambling tangles of wild blackberries, sumac, and poison ivy. Scattered over the fields in no discernible pattern were ten or twelve rusting shells of windowless cars and trucks, some of them further decomposed and more nearly destroyed than others, also several farm vehicles—harrows, plows, cultivators—a one-handled wheelbarrow, an outhouse lying awkwardly on its side, rusty bedsprings and swollen mattresses spitting yellowish stuffing onto the ground, a pile of fifty-gallon oil drums, an engine block and a transmission housing, both lying atop a child's crushed red wagon which lay atop an American Flyer sled in splinters, next to a refrigerator (with the door invitingly open, I noticed), and a red, overstuffed couch which had been partially destroyed by fire. None of this wreckage was new to me. I had observed, enumerated, and reflected on all of it many times, both alone and with friends, especially with my friend C. (about whom more later).

The fields and the road were all part of A.'s property, but a stranger, noting the broad, carefully maintained lawns, gardens, house and outbuildings which spread out from the closed gate at the end of the cluttered fields, would surely infer two separate
and probably quarreling owners, one for the fields and badly maintained roadway, another for the house and grounds. But that was not the case. A. was fastidious and energetic, even compulsive, about the maintenance of the house and the yards, gardens and outbuildings that surrounded it. The region that lay beyond the white, iron rail fence, however, he cared for not at all, even though some seven hundred acres of that region was his private property, had been deeded to him with the houses and outbuildings by his parents.

Actually, it was fortunate that so much of the world beyond the fence was A.'s private property, because for years he had been tossing his garbage over that fence, throwing his rubbish, all his used-up tools, vehicles, furniture, even his old newspapers, over the fence and into the field. Every now and then, perhaps once a year, depending on domestic changes, he rolled out his bulldozer, took down a section of the fence, and shoved the rotting garbage and trash roughly toward the main road and away from the house, to make more room near the fence. It was a casual operation. The vehicles stayed pretty much where he had left them, and he usually left them where they had got stopped, either because of running aground on a huge boulder, of which the field had an abundance, stalling or coughing out of gas, getting stuck in the mucky, tangled ground, or ramming into another car or truck from a previous year's trash. He used his vehicles until they were too weary and broken to drive any farther than to this odd burial ground, and he always tried to make that last drive as exciting as possible. Then he would hitchhike twenty miles to Concord, where there were half a dozen automobile dealers, and buy a new vehicle, usually a different type from the one he had just interred—a pickup truck if last year's had been a sedan, a station wagon if a convertible. Because of the intense way he drove them, his new vehicles rarely lasted longer than a year.

Similarly, whenever he disposed of furniture, tools, garden implements, waste or rubbish of any kind, he took from the act
whatever last pleasure he could wring from it—making bets, and usually winning them, that he could lift and throw a sofa over the fence, or hurl a transmission housing from his pickup bed onto a pile of old toys, and then an engine block onto the transmission housing; or that he could carry a refrigerator in a broken wheelbarrow for a quarter of a mile over a rough surface under a hot August sun. Afterward, to complete the act, he liked to sit up on his porch, usually in the admiring company of a friend or one of the local adolescent boys he permitted to hang around him, and while guzzling Canadian whiskey and ale, fire his rifle at the new trash. He shot his rifle at many things, animate and inanimate, but he always seemed to enjoy it most when he was shooting at the things he had used up and thrown out.

On this particular day, a blotchy, glutinous gray afternoon with a cold rain lightly falling, as I neared the gate where the road ended and A.'s wide, paved driveway began, I noticed a high, wobbling stack of what appeared to be new furniture—a Formica-topped kitchen table and four chairs, a double bed with bookcase headboard and matching dresser, several table lamps, and two or three cardboard cartons filled with pastel articles of clothing and possibly curtains and bedding. This carefully constructed stack, with all the articles balanced and counter-balanced, was located a few feet from the fence and about twenty feet from the roadway, and I had never seen it before. I assumed, therefore, that these were his fifth wife's leavings, her effects, an assumption which later proved correct.

I got out of my car, walked up to the gate, unlatched it, and swung it open. I could see A. in the distance, sitting on the porch of the house at the far side, swinging slowly in the wood glider. Neither of us waved or signaled to the other. That was customary. I returned to my car, drove it through the gate, got out again, and closed the gate behind me, as I knew I was supposed to do, and then drove up the long, curving driveway past the smooth,
freshly greening lawns to the house, and parked next to the house on the side opposite the porch, where the driveway ended, facing the entrance to the small barn, which under A.'s care had been converted after his father's death into a modern garage and workshop. Behind the house loomed the humpbacked profile of the mountain, Blue Job, adding its shadow to the day's gray light and casting the darker light like a negating sun across the house and onto the fields in front.

 

I
T OCCURS TO
me that I really needn't bother with all this. Certainly not at this point. Perhaps later in the narrative such descriptions will be of significance, but here, now, I'm merely attempting to explain how I came to write a novel with a hero whose real-life prototype is my friend, my own “hero,” as a matter of fact. And though that notion had
occurred
to me barely moments before, by the time I had parked my car and had started walking around the front of the house to greet A. at the porch, I had already completely forgotten the idea. I was worrying over whether or not I had properly secured the gate at the end of the driveway.

We spent the remainder of the day and most of the evening cheerfully drinking, first out on the porch, where until dark we sat and took turns shooting at the furniture A. and his fifth wife had bought as newlyweds the previous November. After dark, we lurched into the house and sprawled on the floor of the kitchen (the chairs and table were all in the field, ripped apart by high-powered rifle slugs), finishing the bottle of whiskey and the case of ale. I remember that A. had recently installed a central vacuum-cleaning system in the house, so that one could simply plug the hose into outlets located in the baseboard of every room without having to drag a heavy cannister or tank along from room to room, and he was quite proud of the system. He said to me, “I've got a dishwasher, a clothes washer and dryer, and a microwave oven that bakes a potato in forty-six seconds.
And now I've got this vac' system. Now, you tell me, what the hell do I need a
woman
for?”

I said nothing. I was too drunk to speak clearly, and also, his question had seemed rhetorical.

Then he said, “I can get laid when I want to get laid. And if the day ever comes when I can't get it, it'll only be because I don't want it enough.”

This last statement seemed wise to me then, and it does now, too.

I was quite drunk, naturally, but I somehow got myself safely home, and that was the end of the day last spring when it first occurred to me to write a novel about A., or rather, about someone very much like A., so much like him that I would have to give him the name of Hamilton Stark, or A. would know that the novel was about him, a thing he would hate me for. I did not want A. to hate me. Luckily, he is no longer alive, or naturally, I would not be writing this introduction.

 

(I
SHOULD SAY
that I
believe
he is no longer alive, and although technically he does not exist, that is, his body has never been located, it would certainly be strange and ironic if the publication of this novel brought him out of a hiding place. I can imagine the letter I would receive, postmarked in some tiny, far-northern Canadian village where he is thought of as a hermit: