Orbit 9 Read online

  They have taken the car. Dragging it away across the fields of broken cornstalks and through the snow. It left a thin trail of oil behind.

  One of her breasts is set lower on her chest than the other. Lower and slightly off to the side, towards her arm. The nipple of that one is inverted, the other 3/4 of an inch long. The obvious facts, of her jumper. Both breasts are small. And solid under your hand. Her husband would have strong fingers.

  I am burning the book. It is snowing into the sea. The radio is on. I drop the last match and look up at her. Why do you keep coming back here. They are talking about the weather again.

  * * * *

  rotation

  The pills. A white one, a green one, a red one. They are lined up as always on the bedside table. Each night beside me. And the light. In the room, si légère.

  She is wearing grey slacks tonight. When she comes. Of a thick material that follows the taper of her legs down, to fit close about the ankle. Where there are white socks. The tops turned down, and loafers. Brown. Her legs are crossed at the knee. Feet at rest sur le coussin. A band of skin on the left one showing which reminds him what he once said to her, cuisine à cuisse à toi. She is always smoking. Her breasts move in the light cashmere as she inhales. Rise, then sink. With his eyes. You smoke too much.

  Some instants a man knows, even as they occur, at the very moment of occurrence, he will never forget. He will carry this with him through the rest of his life. It will always be beside him. A second shadow. And the life will seem longer, or shorter, because of it. He will never be able to make it go away. Or himself from it. And he knew, now, even before the words, when he looked up and saw her there. This was one of those times.

  Cher, Je lutte avec les anges de ta lettre, Jacob.

  Kind of you to notice. No, Hell, I meant that. Who really cares how much someone smokes, who gives a damn, really. You do. I meant it.

  Living together off and on. For twenty years now, and she hasn’t changed. Nothing about her has changed. She looks the same as that first time, twenty years ago. At the party they left together. And three days later thought to ask one another’s name. While his own age rattles inside him. Like a turtle’s blunt head. Butting dumbly, again and again, the glass slabs. That contain him.

  Tu, Bientôt une réponse. Tant bien que mal. Et dès maintenant, jamais, garderais l’oiseau.

  Other times she would dress in black and move about the house, moving the furniture around inside the rooms, and he couldn’t see her. Just the sound of her breath in the dark. The rasp of legs that don’t want to be changed. And once. Late, lying in bed, her plan to have a peacock tail tattooed on her bottom, in full colour. When she felt he was losing interest in her. Or she would turn up some day, maybe she’d been gone for months, with her pubic hair shaved down till just two initials remained. And maybe they would be his and maybe they wouldn’t. But he was pretending sleep. Just the sound of her breath in the dark.

  Réponse. Judas was a moral man. He did what he had to do. A vous.

  I don’t like, no, the States. We all know now it’s a failure and we’re ashamed. That’s what the French, the Polish, reading, that’s what it all means. I feel I’m spiritually European. Or want to be. Then why do you stay here. Why did you come back. Because I belong here.

  Artaud. Giving his reading. In Paris, he’d been locked away in mental asylums for nine years, all the Paris élite came. And every few minutes he’d stop and look out at the audience, out at Gide and Breton and Jean Paulhan and Camus and Pichette and his friend Adamov and all the others. In despair. And he would try to explain, When you come round you simply cannot find yourself again. Life itself has been permanently debased, and a portion of original goodness and joy lost forever. He would say, I have agreed once and for all to give in to my own inferiority. He would stop and look around at all the faces and surrender. Give up in the middle of a poem, Putting myself in your place I can see how completely uninteresting everything that I am saying must seem. What can I do to be completely sincere? And then to go back and read L’Inconditionné. She is sitting up in bed. As he tells her this, again. Naked. Her breasts are larger than you think, perhaps in contrast to the smallness of her body in the tall window now. The motel sign red on the glass. Or the weight she’s lost. She has seen a story of his in a magazine. Though he has been careful never to show them to her. And asks about the title. That Buddhism sees the Self, Etre, Being as a bubble. Nothing inside. Nothing at the centre. And Sartre’s Cartesian phenomenology too but go ahead and call it existentialism if you want to. Sartre doesn’t care. And I don’t. And so there are just gestures, that’s all we have. And the bubbles are all the time going higher and higher, getting larger. Like lies. Which essentially they are of course. And soon to burst. She hated it when he talked like that.

  Do I. Belong here. Yes. Quel sens. Then to ask another name. To watch her. To turn her face away.

  She would come back with her body bruised and torn. No explanation, I am doing what I have to do. And nothing else would have changed. Or had the power to change. Effects. And that pale residue of sadness inside. Somewhere.

  A quote for you. Like many young men in the South, he became overly subtle and had trouble ruling out the possible. C’est moi.

  Living now in this house in Pennsylvania. And she comes round. All the questions unanswered. Or unasked. Peirce’s old house down the road with a little plaque out front to tell everyone who he was. And Peirce who once wrote, Actuality is something brute. There is no reason for it. For instance putting your shoulder against a door and trying to force it open against an unseen, silent, and unknown resistance.

  So let me tell you how it will be. The end. One night you will be lying alone in bed. You will hear sounds downstairs. You will hear feet coming slowly up the stairs. You will hear them pause at the door. You will hear the doorknob turning. You will hear the door open. You will hear the footsteps again. On the rug now. You will be lying alone in bed. You will never see his face. You will never know his name.

  <>

  * * * *

  Lee Hoffman and Robert E. Toomey, Jr.

  LOST IN THE MARIGOLDS

  “Don’t be myzled by the cultural imperative,” the image on the vidphone said as the colors flowed and the face turned into polychromatic knotty pine.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Murdock asked. He felt desperate. His head ached. He massaged his temples and leaned against the desk. “I just want to know if the deal’s gone through,” he said. “Now, please. Have we got the bulkhead rights or not?”

  “Hard-boiled haddock is up two points,” his partner said with a thin green grin. The image split; two faces grinned at him.

  And the line went dead for the third time that afternoon.

  Murdock considered smashing the phone with his fist, then thought better of it. The damn things were expensive as hell.

  He looked down from the blank screen. His monogrammed marble egg lay atilt in the white bone china eggcup on the dark blue desk blotter. The egg was rose-colored, veined with gray and black. The very sight of it comforted him.

  He brushed his fingertips across it, closed his hand around it, rubbed his thumb against the cool smooth surface. He held it and gazed at the ornate initials.

  His.

  His marble egg, his mahogany-topped desk, his lushly carpeted office paneled in polished brown silitex, his aquarium, his deluxe model 5472 vidphone.

  Scowling at the phone, he punched0 for operator.

  A girl’s face appeared on the screen. She was young, red-haired, efficient. “Your call, sir?” she said briskly.

  “I’ve been disconnected.” He worried the monogrammed marble egg as he answered.

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “This is the third time this’s happened in the last two hours. I’m paying plenty for service and I expect—”

  “Did you dial directly, sir?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “What is your number,
please?”

  “MOrris 54692.”

  “And what number are you trying to reach, please?”

  “I haven’t been trying to reach him. I’ve been reaching him and getting disconnected.”

  “His number, sir?”

  “DEsmond 69969, Punta Gorda, Florida. That’s on the West Coast. Area B813.”

  “Thank you, sir. One moment, please.”

  Murdock clutched the marble egg. He stared at the ONE MOMENT, PLEASE sign on the screen and tried to ease back into the depths of his chair. His back was beginning to ache. His eyes watered. The operator appeared on the screen again, slightly blurred.

  “Sir, service has been temporarily disrupted in Area B813. Shall I call you when we regain contact?”

  “Disrupted? By what?”

  “Hyperactive sunspots, sir.”

  “Let me speak to your superior,” Murdock said. “This call is of the utmost importance to me.”

  “Certainly, sir. One moment and I’ll connect you.”

  This time, instead of the ONE MOMENT, PLEASE sign, a beautiful girl with a dazzling smile came on the screen.

  “I am a recording,” she announced happily. Then her tone became sterner. “You have dialed a wrong number. Please disconnect and dial again.” She smiled the dazzling smile. “I am a recording,” she repeated. Then, with a trace of disappointment, “You have dialed a wrong number. Please disconnect and dial again.”

  She smiled dazzlingly and Murdock hung up.

  The operator he reached this time was a brunette. When he’d finished his story, she connected him with a motherly middle-aged supervisor who heard it through again. Her superior was an owlish woman who listened with an intent expression of disinterest.

  The marble egg warmed to the heat of his grip. His fist felt clammy. He waited as the supervisor made connections with her immediate superior. The screen blinked twice, dimmed, then revealed a dour-faced executive with a black carnation pinned to his lapel.

  Murdock fixed his attention on the flower as he launched adroitly into his story. He’d reduced the telling time to ninety-four seconds, including dramatic pauses.

  “I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do, sir,” the man said.

  “I can’t stress the importance of this call too highly,” Murdock said.

  “I appreciate your plight, sir. However, sunspot activity is beyond the control of The Phone Company. I sincerely regret any inconvenience this interference may have caused you, but you must understand that we can take no responsibility for the interruption of service due to natural causes.” The man inserted a dramatic pause of his own. “I’m certain you understand.”

  “Yes, but do you understand that I’ll be ruined if I can’t get in touch with my partner?”

  The man gave him a long look of sympathetic skepticism. “We will endeavor to connect you as soon as possible, sir,” he said with a wilting smile. “However, if you will refer to your contract with our organization you will find that The Phone Company cannot take any responsibility for, or be adjudged liable for—”

  “Paragraph seven,” the executive said.

  Murdock gave up. “How soon can you put me through to him?” he asked.

  “As soon as possible, sir. Sunspot activity, as you are no doubt aware yourself, cannot be controlled. However, if you will give me the name and number of the party you are trying to reach . . .”

  “His name?”

  The egg slid from Murdock’s grip. He snatched at it. Still juggling, he faced the vidphone again.

  The executive said, “As soon as we regain service, sir. If you’ll give me the name of the party you are trying to reach and his contract number . . .”

  Murdock scowled. He couldn’t remember his partner’s name. All the years they’d been together, and now he couldn’t remember. ... He dropped the egg.

  “Sir?” the phone asked with concern. “Is there something wrong?”

  “I’ll call back,” Murdock mumbled as he reached for the disconnect button.

  Blood rushed to his head as he bent to pick up the monogrammed marble egg.

  * * * *

  Frowning at his reflection in the dark face of the phone, Murdock considered the situation.

  He’d been away from home only once, twelve years ago. He remembered that trip vividly—starkly. A strange place—a strange bed—strange people. None of the warm, familiar comforts of home.

  He looked around the office he’d built into his lovely multilevel house. All the fine particular things. The plush red sofa vibrant against the pea-green patterns of the rug. The mellow glow of the armadillo lamp—Irving had been such a good pet; too good to give up just because he’d died. Tammy had been a good pet, too. He smiled at the stuffed tabby standing on the mantle of the electronic fireplace. So had Wallace, the parakeet that perched in eternal silence on the edge of the aquarium, one glass eye alert to his every move, the other fixed on the three Siamese fighting fish who, at the moment, seemed to be engaged in a mutual nonaggression.

  Home.

  And he had to leave them again. Leave Savannah and go to Punta Gorda himself. Get this mess straightened out with—hell, he still couldn’t remember his partner’s name. Well, it’d come to him.

  Had to see the man, find out what was wrong. Those goddamn bulkhead rights had to be cleared before his option on that stretch of Charlotte Harbor ran out. Already the dredges and draglines were contracted to start filling.

  Penalty clauses.

  Forfeiture.

  Every cent he had tied up in the project.

  Dammit. Move fast, his partner had said. Act quickly or somebody else would grab the ball and run with it. Half the Harbor was already filled. Not much left to be developed. Get everything ready to move the instant the bulkhead rights were approved. Sure. He’d done it: put up all his capital, signed papers, made commitments. And now the option was about to expire. The deadline was less than forty-eight hours away.

  There was no way out of it, around it, over it or under it. He’d have to go to Punta Gorda himself. And he’d have to fly. He shuddered at the thought.

  Still clutching the marble egg, he got to his feet. He stood there.

  “Jean!” he called.

  “What?” His wife’s voice came thin from the distance, softened by the acoustic ceiling.

  “Where are you?”

  “In here, dear.” She sounded very far away.

  He walked to the door. “In where?”

  “The living room. I’m polishing the bronzed baby shoes.”

  Stepping into the hall, he closed the office door behind him. The house was very quiet. He walked down the hall and into the

  . . . kitchen.

  “Jean?”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “Where are you?”

  “In the living room, Shelly.” This time she sounded closer.

  He walked through the door and across the hall to the

  . . . downstairs bathroom.

  “Jean!”

  “What is it, dear?”

  He started to say that he couldn’t find the living room, but that was ridiculous. He was upset. He’d taken a wrong turn. He’d been living in this house for fifteen years.

  He opened the medicine chest and took out a bottle of blue pills. Vitamin C. Good for the nerves. He swallowed three, then remembered it was calcium that was good for the nerves. He added three bonemeal tablets to the C he’d swallowed.

  “Shelly?” his wife called.

  “I’ll be right there.”

  “All right.”

  He walked down the hall and turned left. That felt wrong. He kept turning in a one-hundred-eighty-degree arc, then he turned right. It felt right. The living room was there, just where it always had been.

  Upset, he told himself. Damn whatsisname. Needed to increase his calcium intake. Maybe take more lecithin, too.

  “Jean,” he said.

  She set the bronzed baby shoes down on the pre-Colombian coffee table and turned to h
im with a pale lavender cloth in her hand.

  “Yes, dear, what is it?”

  “I’ve got to go out of town.”