The Reconstructionist (5 page)

Nearer in memory, however, were the movements of Heather’s ribs as she breathed, the touch of her fingers on his skin, the minty odour of her shampoo and her own human scent. She called his penis Detroit; her crotch was Los Angeles. And she called it the
recreational vehicle
in a tone that made it a double entendre. In memory, the RV meetings washed together warmly and settled into a few singular, wondrous impressions. She moved on top of him, and when he had come, she stilled him and held him inside her until he became hard again and she renewed her movements. He’d felt as if they might go on this way, the two of them, simply, lazily, forever.

‘Tell me something you don’t like,’ she’d said once, lolling beside him.

‘Moment.’

‘What?’

‘Just the word, moment.’

‘Why?’

‘It might mean a fraction of a second, or it might mean minutes, or days, or weeks. In a history book it might mean years. It’s totally imprecise. What’s worst are things like “a moment or two”, “a few moments”. I don’t know how anyone ever understands anyone else when we use words like that.’

‘You should let your inner dork out more often,’ she said. ‘It’s cute.’ She rolled over and grabbed his penis with both hands. ‘Just don’t get cocky about it.’

‘OK. OK,’ he said. ‘Let’s talk economics – I have a theory that Detroit is about to experience an urban renewal.’

She asked, climbing onto him, ‘What if joking is a substitute for real communication?’

‘Detroit doesn’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said, ‘and Detroit doesn’t care.’

Then, Heather’s father died. For years he had been in declining health, a decline that failed to halt his habit of burning and inhaling three or four packs of cigarettes a day. Ellis learned of the death in a brief phone call from Heather, and he ached that he couldn’t go to the funeral, couldn’t see her, couldn’t comfort her. She had not seemed especially close with her father, but he had been her only parent from the time she was four. When he did speak with her after the funeral, on the phone, she said that she was all right, more or less, that her father’s long illness had helped her to prepare for the end. But she was angry with Boggs; without consulting her, he had sold the RV.

June passed into July, and Ellis still didn’t have any opportunities to see her, until the company picnic.

The picnics were an annual, vaguely ritualised event where cold catered food lay on picnic tables and Ellis’s colleagues stood drinking beer from cans or shepherding their smaller children through the adjacent playground equipment and the company CEO stood on a cooler to give a short, vacant speech. Heather
generally
skipped company events, but this year she made an appearance, and Ellis smiled at her and said, ‘Hello,’ and added, ‘Boggs told me about your father. I was really sorry to hear about it.’

‘Thank you,’ she said.

Then he avoided her. Her presence made him anxious and wretched and a little ecstatic with secret knowledge. There were about thirty people on hand, most of the company staff. He talked and joked with the other engineers and the administrative personnel. He helped set up a volleyball net and hit the ball over a few times. He ate cold barbecued ribs, potato salad, and coleslaw with too much mayonnaise.

Boggs had wandered off and stood at the top of a grassy hill, alone, hands in pockets, looking away. The others had gathered in cliques of three or four, talking for some reason in hushed tones, and a half-dozen played volleyball. One of the newer engineers stood slouching at the edges, as if wishing someone would invite him to dance. Heather had vanished.

Ellis started up the hill, trying to think of something to say that would make Boggs laugh. Boggs seemed to be looking at his feet. ‘Hey,’ Ellis called, and Boggs looked around, with a peculiar twist in his lips. Then he smiled, but too widely. And Ellis saw that Boggs wasn’t alone, that Heather lay in the grass at his feet.

Ellis wanted to veer away, but it didn’t seem plausible that he’d been heading anywhere else. Heather raised herself. ‘Hi, Ellis,’ she said. ‘I was telling John that he should lie down and look at the sky with me.’

‘She claims that I’ve never seen it before,’ Boggs said.

Heather settled back into the grass. ‘I’m just saying.’

‘Come on,’ Boggs said to Ellis, grumbling, lowering himself. ‘Lie down. So I don’t feel like I’m the only idiot.’

Lying side by side on the grass, Heather and Boggs looked as if they’d fallen from the sky. Boggs twitched his legs around. Ellis glanced back toward the picnic site, but then he lay down, beside Heather.

‘I haven’t done this since I was seven,’ Boggs said.

Heather said, ‘Just, quiet. Watch.’

The grass bristled coolly on Ellis’s back, and the air here smelled wormy and sharp. In the south a rough head of cumulus expanded rapidly, changing form with unnerving speed. Below it, and all across the sky, scrims of haze moved from west to east. After a minute the entire sky began to advance and recede slightly before him.

‘You can’t paint it or photograph it,’ Heather said. ‘Canvases aren’t big enough, and it’s all about the third dimension anyway.’ She moved her arm slightly, and the back of her hand came into contact with Ellis’s hand.

After a minute Boggs said, ‘Hey, Ellis, you’ve read Chekhov?’

‘A few of the stories,’ Ellis said.

‘His plays are better,’ Boggs said. ‘
Uncle Vanya
is on the schedule at the university, in a couple weeks, three weeks, something like that. I’m going to make Heather come with me. You want to see it? For you, it’s optional.’

‘I don’t know –’ Ellis said. Then he began coughing, hard, for time to formulate an excuse.

‘Inhale a grasshopper?’ Boggs asked.

‘It would be great if you’d come,’ Heather said. ‘It’s running for a couple of weeks. I’m sure we can find a day that works.’

Ellis, set aback, said, ‘OK.’ Then he lay transfixed, waiting with shallow breaths for the next thing. Heather’s hand still touched his.

‘Good,’ Boggs said.

A grass blade niggled his ankle, and a breeze shifted over his face, but these were only background to the touch of her hand on his, the point of pressure and warmth.

‘I’m still pissed off about that depo last week,’ Boggs said. ‘Have you read the transcript?’

‘Not yet,’ Ellis said.

‘I’ll let you try to guess the point in there when he threw his pen at me. The fucker.’

Ellis pressed her hand. She, almost imperceptibly, pressed back. The grass clutched at him while the hillside careered.

Boggs said, ‘When the wind shifts, I can smell the stink of that barbecue.’ He sat up. Heather’s hand departed. ‘I need to stop at the office for a file,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you at the airport tomorrow?’

‘Tomorrow’s Monday already,’ Ellis said.

From the ground he watched Boggs and Heather rise. Their faces appeared against the sky. He couldn’t read Heather’s expression. ‘I’m going to stay here,’ he said. ‘I like this.’

‘Right on. Sleep here if you want,’ Boggs said. ‘Just be sure to get up in time to get to the airport. We’re only doing inspections. You don’t need to change clothes or anything.’

Heather gestured with one hand. Ellis listened to their steps in the grass until even that faint sound was lost.

His inspections with Boggs the next day went fine. One of the accident’s victims had been killed by a burning semi-trailer loaded with Life Savers candy, which inspired a few jokes. Life Takers. Life Enders. Life Whackers. Boggs claimed that the name and the hole in the candy had been inspired after a candy-maker’s kid choked to death on a mint.

ELLIS PLUNGED DOWN
a ramp into interstate traffic, merged left, and was moving with the great flows of red and white lights when his phone rang and Heather asked from it, ‘Where are you?’

‘I’m coming.’

‘Are you going to be late?’

‘I won’t miss the start,’ he said, although, when he glanced at the glowing digits of the clock in the instrument panel, he wondered. ‘I have my ticket. You and Boggs can go in.’

‘John isn’t here either. His plane was delayed.’

‘Then why are you yelling at me?’

‘I’m not yelling. It’s only that I hoped to see you first.’

‘OK. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’

As they hung up, he came off the interstate and when traffic slowed he made himself keep away from the bumper of the car ahead. Over the right side of the road floated an enormous sepia-toned semicircle moon. Chekhov. Ellis didn’t care about the play, and he didn’t like this arrangement – his sense of guilt was curling itself tight at the prospect of seeing Boggs and Heather together.
But
Heather had re-expressed that she wanted him to come, and when he thought of skipping the event entirely his guilt wrapped around and urged him onward. He approached down into the city on a road with two lanes in either direction, and he drove in the left lane. Passing clusters of houses and apartment buildings made orangey by sodium lamps, his phone rang, and he thought it would be Heather again, but when he looked at the screen he frowned. On the third ring he answered. ‘Boggs, are you with Heather?’

‘She’s already at the theatre,’ Boggs said. ‘We drove separately. My connecting flight was late. Actually, I think she probably could have given me a ride, but she said she wanted to stop at the store.’

‘I could’ve picked you up. I can’t believe we’re all driving to the same place in separate cars.’

‘Welcome to America. Where are you?’

‘I’m just passing University Street.’ He had almost reached the theatre, but he would have to circle past to reach the parking lot. ‘Should I be wearing a tie for this?’

‘I hope not. I’m not wearing one. You’re running a little behind me. Look for us in the lobby.’

‘Sure.’

‘Bye.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Oh, wait, wait, Ellis,’ Boggs said.

The light turned yellow, and in front of Ellis an older model C/K 1500 pickup began braking. Ellis cursed under his breath and glanced to the right lane for an opening. Mud was spattered over the rear of the pickup, so that the brake lamps glowed a strange, irregular pattern through clumps of earth. Then the driver changed his mind, and the pickup accelerated. Ellis, muttering again, followed through the intersection as the light went to red.

‘What are you mumbling about?’

‘Traffic,’ Ellis said.

‘On the Matteson job,’ Boggs said, ‘I was asked if we can calculate the Volvo’s speed at the time he passed that thing, the warning sign –’

In later memory the instants now began to stretch apart, as if
someone
had touched a finger on a turning phonograph. On either side of the street people moved along the sidewalks, and, although Ellis didn’t see Boggs’s tall shape, through the phone he heard vehicles passing near Boggs. The columned face of the theatre imposed itself into view on the right. The mottled brake lamps of the pickup lit again. Ellis grunted, ‘Turn signal, jerk.’ He glanced over his shoulder and swung into the right lane to pass. His car hesitated for a few tenths of a second before it gave a rush of acceleration. In the left lane the pickup continued to slow, and Ellis glimpsed an unusual motion ahead. Unsure of what he had seen, of size or shape or location or direction, he lifted off the gas.

‘– with the flashing –’ Boggs said. Traffic noise cut sharply behind his words.

Ellis still trailed to the right of the pickup when the motion appeared again, ahead and on the left, nearer now, on the edge of the pattern of pale light cast by his headlamps, a moving object, a figure, hunched, walking rapidly into Ellis’s lane. A sudden sensation of hopeless drowning seized Ellis – he fumbled for the brake pedal, turned the wheel to the right, not too hard, aware of people on the sidewalk. He could see that he didn’t have nearly enough distance to stop. But there remained a chance, if the shape in the street stepped back.

But the figure moved, head down, with deliberate speed. A tall, thick male figure in dark clothing.

‘– light –’ Boggs said.

‘Boggs!’ Ellis screamed into his phone, as he at last was able to get his foot down on the brake pedal. The pace of the pedestrian in the street faltered, his head turning, his mouth glinting. ABS kicked the brake pedal up against the pressure of Ellis’s foot. He dropped his phone reaching to put both hands on the steering wheel and fought down against the ABS. The figure in the street leaned back the way he had come, but nothing could be done now. Ellis already could not see the man’s feet, obscured by the hood of the car.

With a crack of breaking bone and plastic and a slight shudder
of
the car – amid the continuing ABS-driven stutter and squall of the tyres – the pedestrian swung sideways, pivoting unnaturally at knee height, and came down on the hood, striking sheet metal with hip, elbow, shoulder, a calamitous metallic noise, and he balanced there an instant that went long, one leg up in the air, ribs and shoulder on the hood, an arm thrown out, his head approaching the windshield. Then Ellis shut his eyes. He also began to scream. But over his own scream he heard the violent pop of the windshield, chased by the patter of glass on his hands and chest. A shard bounced off the closed lid of one eye. An impact sounded on the roof.