While touring the hedgerows we find a locked pump. It's been this way for a long time. there's a low stone coping where can sit and eat handfuls of warm blackberries. the wind reminds us of further discoveries: Apple blossoms, shriveling cherries waiting for their birds, and lower, in the canyons, the salmonberries, promising much but giving little. then it takes your hair and handles it, proffers it even, but I've learned; i find relief in the sun on my shoulders.
That was L minus day two. I have been counting down, perhaps you are looking forward. At times I hope you are. I try to imagine the washed sandstone, the prewar second-empire facades like wedding cakes in a forgotten shop window, lit by the glare of gargantuan plastic letters: WOM. MUSIK FABRIK. KIEZMARKT. 4711. BYRRH. Then you under them, another tiny human in the vast, ancient free city. A city before countries, a city, even, in most ways, before hope. And you alone but not for long. And what am I to you? I have answered this question in many different ways, all in outcomes favorable to me.
Now L minus day one. We join in the festivities at the Machinist's Hall, and there is a crowning moment while we dance to "True" and I feel the weight of your back through your acetate gown, the shift of your hips and smell the hot shampoo in your hair. The contact is casual to the observer; even, perhaps to you; it is a signal of our in-betweenness that I genuinely do not know. I do not ask, counting on the music and the memory of our mortarboards in the high school parking lot and the look of open joy when you kiss my cheek (I embroider the memory with a last-minute diversion from the track to my lips) to propel us to some ultimate reward. That it will be a reward I have no doubt.
My boon companion encourages me to ever-greater intimacies while we cram together into his rust-orange 240Z and go careening down old steeplechases and ever deeper into the subterranean canyons of the ex-countryside. Occasionally an old wooden barrier looms out of the black and my dueling partner always swerves at the last possible minute. You and I giggle in the back seat, you on my lap and another pair sometimes next to us, sometimes on top of us as the ride becomes more airborne. We emerge in a shouting knot to test the night clerk at the 7 Eleven with our eighteen-year-old obnoxiousness. We buy all the blocks of ice in his cooler.
Then we tear our gowns on the chipped green chain link fence around the municipal golf course and I watch you for a moment shuddering before me, belly-down on your beach towel and ice block, trying to hold the image of the valley of your gown sinking between your outstretched thighs and calves, before I myself am rocketing down the thatch to come to a bone-bruising landing just outside the sand pit. I chase you across the green, you joining the game and finally shrieking just before I catch and tackle you. You kiss me on the lips but it is chaste finally. There is a moment of terror, like seeing a ring bounce toward an open sewer grate and come to an ever-diminishing orbital stop just outside the iron rim.
Our gowns feel suddenly heavy, sticky, and we take them off and leave them on the hillside, where we sit and watch the sky turn a deep blue, then gray, then pale pink as the hills darken. For some reason I bought navel oranges at the convenience market and we eat them now, throwing the pith into the grass. Your hair turns its hazel; I see this first and realize you are silently crying. You glance at me and smile with one side of your mouth, then wipe the tear away quickly, almost angrily. You laugh shortly and say, "Yeah, I'm lonely too." I take your hand and you look straight at me, from under your eyebrows, as if you are asking me to see something finally, something so, so obvious. Now we are both crying. "Why the fuck did you drop German?" you ask. I have no answer to give. Somehow you end up in my lap. You are wearing your uniform of men's white oxford, two sizes too big, and khaki shorts. I have to hunch a bit to see into your eyes. You wrap your calves around me and we feed each other the rest of the oranges, eating, kissing and crying. We agree mutually, silently, to tell each other it will be ok, whatever the outcome, it will be ok. We find the others, taking our time, like visitors to an old battlefield.
The ring was never mine, I realize as I release your hand at the terminal and I watch you walk through the metal detector. I watch your plane until it's a speck. On the way home I lean my face against the window of the train. The cool glass is a blessing.
When I get home the machine is blinking. There's a message from my dueling partner. His girlfriend is late.
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Sometimes it seems a camp, with its bunks, its Spartan showers, the light breeze blowing the smell of cleanser down the hall. Other times it's a Motel 6, the meatloaf-colored carpet, the dull thump as you ascend the stairs, the spoiled-mayonnaise color of the textured walls, the blinking smoke detector above the door, the extinguisher patiently waiting in its little glass guard shack. Either way, it's not home, and I feel it keenly. I sleep with a third pillow against my belly, trying to conjure some memory from that night and somehow contort your body so that it was back against mine, in some sexual contrapposto; could it not have been so? Sometime that long, long night at the Machinists Hall? I know we never did this. At some point it seems indecent, embroidering in this way. You will return, you will return! And I will have been at least emotionally and fictionally untrue. I have already been intellectually untrue, and in an important, irretrievable sense, physically, though I'm alone in this room. Spoiled, that's what I am, and there is no real reason for heartache. Here I am in my own room my first year of college. Unheard of. And what were we to each other then? And more importantly, now? So early in our romantic careers? I come back over and over to the shampoo in your hair, the hot acetate fabric. At some point I can finally sleep.
She is shy and profane at the same time and owns an old Saab 900 Turbo. She knows a place where she can get in despite her terrible, terrible fake ID. She makes me one. It, too, is totally unconvincing. The place is a wedge-shaped building on the same lot as a body shop. "I've never seen any of them here," she says, talking of the dour mechanics that we see on daylight runs, mournfully exhibiting heat-brittle U-joints or filthy air filters to contrite housewives. The shop has parked a mangled wreck of a car under their sign stanchion and propped a sign against it that reads in dated sign script: "PLEASE.... DON'T DRINK AND DRIVE!"
Friday. I am wearing a jacket that came in a too-large box from my dueling partner. It is the first piece of mail I've received since I left home. It is long and decades out of date, all black leather, with leather buttons, gigantic, sharp lapels that are a 1970s grotesque of those on a sport jacket and a leather belt with odd, octagonal buckle. When the belt is fastened I look like the villain from a Japanese scifi opera. The rest of my outfit I procured from El Matador de la Dama, a men's shop in a strip mall staffed entirely by men over 65 who dye their hair with something that looks like lamp black. The shirt is electric blue and rayon, with buttons also covered in rayon. The pants are bell bottoms, black with white top stitching, and the boots are black harness boots, the only expensive item. They cost $80. I have squelched almost a whole tube of Brylcreem into my hair. Ada puts her hand in it-- the first time she has touched me and the second time we've met-- and says in a kind of dreamy whisper: "It's so gross! I love it!"
I wink at her and say "Howzzis?" and open the jacket to reveal an inside pocket, loaded with a silver cigarette case that springs open like a jack in the box to reveal a row of coconut-scented cigarillos. I light one up. The flame on my black Zippo is extra high. I manage to take my first puff just as Bryan Ferry shouts "So look out sailor when you hear them croon/ You'll never be the same again, oh no/ That crazy music drives you insane!/ This way..." and during the Mackay sax solo I do a kind of reverse locomotive while imagining I'm wearing a gaucho hat with the brim pulled down, though my head is bare. A question mark of hair works loose and tickles my brow. Ada shrieks and claps. We try to tango to the music but it's no use. We end up glued together face to face. She smiles crookedly and puts her palm on my face and shoves it back, but slowly and very gently. Then she holds one finger up. She walks out the open door and the last thing I see is her finger wagging back and forth. Then it disappears behind the door frame. "Fuck," I say and sit on the desk and smoke to watch her cross the street to her dorm.
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She has suddenly become all heft and sex, in a black strapless party dress with a broad, u-shaped neckline that ends in two points, like the mouth of a manta ray. The fabric has a slight shimmer. On her feet are black and white checked Van loafers. I squint through my cigarillo and look her up and down. She twirls and the hem of the dress flares out. Her legs are bare.
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She drives us through the countryside, past hop fields and chipped white salt cellar styles, fading blue Fordson tractors, a Kubota dealer. She cranks up the moonroof and pushes a white cassette into the player. I can't see her eyes behind the wraparounds but her eyebrows go up and she smiles with half her mouth again. "I tried but I could not find a way," Bryan Ferry shouts, over a factory scream of guitar and drums. She twists the volume; then her hand drops to the shift knob while her feet work the pedals. There's a sound like an angry dog and I feel us pulled through the curves; momentarily we are aloft, then down with a final crash, like a longboat on a mountain swell.
There's hay in our noses and a faint smell of cowshit, then a shriek as we open the windows. I risk a glance and her hair is whipping behind, in fact everything is pulled back and she's a figurehead, made improbably top-heavy and smooth-skinned by some lonely ship's carpenter. She gives me the Mona Lisa again and I catch it and give her one back. I snap open my case and she offers the glowing cylinder. I lean into it and give her a glance, the Ss and Os of her face, neck and breasts. She nods briefly and I give her one. She squints through the smoke while she downshifts expertly and there's a gut-lifting curve into a long straight stretch past a grass seed farm and a shooting range.
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We park in front of the darkened newspaper building. Out of an outsized silver vinyl purse she produces a gold cylinder. She leans her right shoulder toward me and I see her blue-grey-green eye in the rear view mirror, then the familiar race course of her lips painted a brilliant carmine. She shoulders her purse, checks the doors, then holds out one hand.
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I spare a thought for you in the Berlin night (morning)?, perhaps taking a hand of your own. I massage Ada's knuckles with my thumb and she smiles for me. Her expression is that of a little girl walking down a carnival midway. We swing our hands back and forth, back and forth. The smell of carnitas is borne to us on the exhaust of a greasy blower and Ada is the first to speak. "Jesus, I'm hungry. Can we get some tacos?"
The blower is over a taqueria in an old Woolworth's. On the glass is painted, in garish yellow and red script, "La Pantera," with a crude but vital portrait of the namesake, in mid-leap over a deer. There are a few tables of woodgrain formica, a few covered with green, white and red tiles. Along one side is a bar, easily the most respectable piece of furniture in the place, with great fluted columns at the corners and a brass bar for the spattered boots of the plasterers and painters, who seem to be the only ones that walk in before six. And improbably, in the back wall, an arch with the word "Jardín" painted in a semicircle. At first we assume the whole thing is a trompe-l'œil painting, but then a hummingbird slashes across the opening and we notice a giant black bee loop around a fuschia in the background.
The heavy glass door thumps behind us and instead of the loud ranchera I expect there is the sound of a marimba from the garden, playing a light and quick-stepping folk tune. The kitchen is on our left; there is a heavy smell of roasting pork with an edge of cilantro and lime. An old woman with a face like a walnut occasionally appears, barely, over the bar, depositing plates heaped with fresh salsa, corn tortillas and roasted pork shoulder. A tall, thin man with a shock of tightly curled gray hair and glasses takes the plates through the garden doorway.
At the bar sits a man with cropped black hair, grading to white at the sideburns, sipping a glass of juice. He is small and compact, and seated like that at the bar seems not so much to be giving all his weight to the stool as he is in another working stance, as if, if it were required, he could be on his feet in less than a second. The tall man wipes his hands on his apron as he reaches behind the bar for a pair of glasses. "Anyplace, amigos," he says. We nod our thanks and walk into the jardín.
We're standing in a patio of giant terra cotta tiles surrounded by a high garden wall of raked brick, pierced in random places by built-in clay planters that overflow with succulents, fuschias and other colorful plants. A fountain occupies a back corner, inside a low turret of brick surrounded by concrete benches. A concrete spire topped by something that looks like a pineapple gushes clear water that spills into the basin, which is filled with pond lilies. The marimba player occupies the opposite corner. He is another tall, thin man. I assume he's the waiter's brother. He wears a tunic and tight pants of some kind of polyester, goldenrod. His shirt is a pale yellow with a central ruffle. Now he is playing "Ghost Riders in the Sky."
We take a white ironwork table close to him. The old cafe chairs are spare but comfortable, and light, so as not to damage the tiles. The waiter sets down our glasses. There are no menus. Ada tilts her wraparounds up and shakes some hair out of her eyes. I lean back in my chair and rest my hand on the table, then point at her. "Mezcal," she says to the waiter. I frown my approval and say "Make that two." He glances at us both, sizing us up, then says to himself "Mezcal, si," and disappears.
At a table across the patio lounge several young men, looking like earlier versions of the waiter, bouncer and marimba player. They have cards and mezcal and are already a bit loud, but not so much that they earn any glances. At the center is a young man with a younger face, wearing an orange motorcycle jacket and black shirt. He is talking to his drink while a bigger man on his left remonstrates. He squeezes his friend's shoulder. The first looks at him doubtfully, then shakes his head and pounds his fist on the table. The glasses clank.
This does earn a look from the waiter, who appears then in the doorway, wiping his hands. He pretends to watch the great black bees on the fuschias. The man in orange-- Chucho-- seems to relent. He sighs, then nods in a conciliatory way and pats the big man's hand in an oddly feminine gesture. The waiter turns to go. I look at Ada but she is still looking around the jardin, as if we had just sat down. "Can you believe it? There's a fucking jungle in here!"
The waiter brings a couple green delmonico glasses. "Will you order food?" he asks. The phrasing is ambiguous: we can't tell whether he's impatient for us to order the food or if it's simply an attempt to divine the future. "Oh yes, please," Ada says, suddenly hard and smooth. "Al pastor, corn tortillas and some black beans. And another round of mezcal. Thank you so much." The waiter nods crisply-- I almost expect him to click his heels-- and he turns. "Oh-- and tortilla chips," Ada adds. "Right away, señorita," he murmurs. Once he's gone I scoot back and rise, then approach with my hand out, index finger pointing down with the other three bent back and the thumb out, poised to take her hand. "Hullo," I say, low and sweet. "May I join you? My name is Rex Harwood. I hate drinking alone." Instead of laughing Ada gets up, sweeps her dress in and holds out her hand.
We dance to "My Shawl"- and as we turn I admire the marimba player's technique; he holds four mallets, two in each hand and they seem to bend languidly as he strikes the bars. I feel Ada move under me, then against me, then against, then with, and I find that in each instance she is leading me. I know that Chucho and the Big Man are watching, perhaps with a jealous contempt, but I don't care. "Have you seen a film called The Big Knife?" I say. "Shelley Winters!" Ada shouts. "I watched the Poseidon Adventure on Channel 12 when I was eight and Shelley Winters was my favorite. I was so sad when she died. But wasn't she kind of loose in The Big Knife? Wasn't she a prostitute?" She has backed away so she can see my face. I look at the fountain over her shoulder while I talk. "Well, no, I think she was a secretary? Or she wanted to be an actor? She wasn't a prostitute... She wore a black party dress, though, when she came to Palance's house and they were both drunk. She did a little dance for him. It was the first time I saw a young Shelley Winters and it rocked me." Ada draws closer so that I can see the manta ray's mouth, the pale arc, the dark line. She looks at me from under. "Am I rocking you Rex?" I feel the mescal then and the marimba player inserts a rill. The wooden notes feel like bubbles in my chest. I don't even hear the horn players and the guitarist walk in. All I can see is Ada, that manta ray, the whirling tidepool of her eyes. "Ada," I say. My throat is dry, so dry.
I can smell the mescal now: on her breath, on mine. I'm caught in the maelstrom. Her mouth is open. "Rex?" she says. Her lower back and buttocks are a rumor through the axis of her spine. Our vapors are mingling when there's a clash of glasses and a shout.
"Cabron!" The Big Man is rolling his eyes and holding a hand up in resignation. Chucho is holding a knife; no butter knife, but a stout, lethal-looking camp knife, and he's gesturing with the blade, wagging it in our direction. The Big Man is talking to Chucho but looking at the knife. Something he says makes Chucho slam his other hand on the table again and gesture wildly with the knife. The Big Man sits back, quickly but fluidly: he is already at combat readiness. He sweeps his hand in our direction and says something to Chucho. Chucho just puts his face in one hand. The other still holds the knife point-up. The knuckles are white.
Ada is watching and breathing heavily; whether she is scared, aroused or both, I can't tell. My hand is still on her lower back, my other hand gripping hers. Our knuckles look like Chucho's. Then, in my mind's eye, I'm sitting in the darkness back of the stage and watching Ada tango with Chucho, sliding my glass back and forth to write juju in the sweat on the table, slumped, staring, burning. It is a long shot, I know. I cross to the band-- the guitarist is still tuning up-- and ask them if they know "Love is the Drug." The guitarist smiles without looking up. "Si, si, muy bueno," he murmurs. The marimba player plays the drum roll and they all start swinging back and forth. I bring my hand up like a shovel pitching earth over the edge of a pit. "It's lonely up here," I shout.
Chucho and the Big Man are shaking their heads and laughing. The Big Man says something. It looks like "Shit, man." They walk up, not too steadily. I push my hand out palm up and switch it back and forth between Ada and Chucho. He bows solemnly and offers his hand. Ada laughs and takes it. The Big Man and I look at each other and shrug. He lets me lead. I'm surprised. "You ok, flaca," he says. "Chucho just broke up with his novia. When he gets sad he gets drunk and when he gets drunk he wants to stab." We pivot. "He ever stabbed you?" I ask. The Big Man laughs. "Almost, man. How did you know he loves Roxy Music?" Now we're both facing each other, shaking it. I'm starting to sweat a little. The sax player does a mean Andy MacKay. "I didn't," I admitted. "I just had a feeling."
The Big Man's gestures are more abbreviated now. He's distracted by Ada and Chucho. Or maybe just Ada. I watch her and realize what a mistake it was to bring her here. "I got it flaca," the Big Man mutters. He makes a grand gesture: how could you injure me in this way? "Eyyyyyy, none for me?" he shouts over the horns. "Oso, mi amigo. How could I forget?" Chucho says. He bows and mutters a flowery excuse at Ada. Then he's sloppy drunk again, cackling at Oso. They boogie, just clowning, but then they actually tango a bit. Now it is the turn of Ada and I to rock distractedly. "Damn," she says, "they're pretty good." Pretty soon Chucho angles himself so he's facing me and he cocks his head. "Hey, flaca," he calls. I maneuver us closer, careful to hold onto Ada tightly. "Hey man, I'm sorry. I just lost my novia to some cabron and, uh..." They draw closer. Oso is holding his breath. I can see the tension in his neck, his shoulders. "I had some.." Oso's tension releases in a hissed warning. "Chucho, man. Estas loco?" Chucho rolls his eyes. For the first time I notice his pupils. They're dilated, but they're also the wrong shape. They're oblong with the points up and down, as if, if the distortion continued, Chucho would have the eyes of a cat. He points at me in a pistol gesture. While they're close he jams something in my pocket. When I look at him he slits his eyes and nods rapidly while pursing his lips. Ada and I pivot and I see the waiter is standing in the doorway again, looking on and absently wiping his hands.
While we're dancing I can feel the package rub against my appendix, like a tumor. I see Ada look at me in a new way and wonder if my eyes are turning catlike, as Chucho's. I try to remember if Oso looked the same way. I want to say no, but we are very drunk and the music is loud. The combo is playing "Little Green Bag" and Ada is swaying to some music playing in her head, off the beat. I see her in the valley below the admin building, swaying and twirling, now black, now white with moonlight, and far below me. She looks at me and gives me another Mona Lisa and I understand it is all the invitation she can give and that she is fighting a powerful magic. Then we are sweating and the backdrop is all jungle plants and the yellow mariachi band and pink lights strung in place of stars. I pull her close and can feel the dankness and the heat coming off her body. "Let's go incognito," I say. She looks into my eyes and her expression is like the mask she wore when Chucho was ignited. I can't decide if she's looking into my eyes or looking at my eyes. "Down the Lido?" she says, low enough that I can barely hear her above the music.
I leave a monstrous tip because I'm not sure what we owe-- the bill is european style, scribbled figures with no explanation-- and I see the waiter salute briefly and know it must be in the ballpark. I turn for a last look at Chucho and Oso and they're back at their table. Oso is looking at Chucho and Chucho gives me the pistol. Then Oso leans in and says something to him. He nods perfunctorily and waves his hand in a gesture of dismissal.
The front room is silent in its world. The arch now seems a portcullis to hold in the jungle of noise and clanking violence. The quiet man at the bar is still sipping his juice, but now there's a cutter-style hat sitting on the stool next to him. And for the first time I notice, on his belt, a bone-handled hunting knife in its sheath. I push the door open and smell exhaust and the greasy blower and beyond, the brown hills, still angry from the long day. "Amigo," the quiet man calls. He twists on his stool. His body is still coiled like a spring but his face is bored. "ten cuidado, huh?" Then he holds his hand up palm down and pantomimes legs walking. Behind him, the waiter leans in the archway, drying a glass. I salute them lazily and the waiter nods once. Then the door is closed and Ada is pulling me.
"It feels like we're supposed to go somewhere," Ada says. She whirls and the hem of her dress becomes a roulette wheel. She's smiling and the little girl expression is on her face. "Don't you think so? That we're supposed to go somewhere?" I already know where we're going. I say this. "You do?" she says, half incredulous, half interrogative. "So do you," I say. She pulls me closer. I feel her weight against me. "And where's that?" she says. I try it out in my mind and it sounds predatory: "Behind admin, by the creek." While I'm trying out different answers she says: "There's a place behind the admin building. I've always wanted to go there at night." she puts her other hand on my hip, the one covered by the package, and massages the package against my side. Her expression is blank and intent at the same time, an erotic mask. "Don't you want to?" she says. I pull her to me. "Let's," I say. My skin is tingling. There's a sympathetic pain in my appendix. She tests my hair again. "It's so weird! What is it? Wax?" I'm annoyed at her for breaking the mood but caught in the undertow. With an effort I say "It's a creme. I don't know." She keeps her mouth open. I can see her tongue, like a polished pink stone.
In the car her face is lit green by the dash lights. She looks like a John Alvin poster; "Hanover Street" maybe. Bryan Ferry is crooning "I'll use you and I'll confuse you/ Then I'll lose you..." Andy MacKay's fluttering oboe rises with the oaks of the campus in our headlights. She parks in the roundabout below the administration building and sets the E brake. It seems loud.
She takes her shoes off and carries them in one hand, takes my hand in the other, and we go running across the walk, between some daylilies, across the access road and into the damp grass and the land of the atlas cedars and oaks.
She breaks away-- now it's a race-- and I pace myself. I can still feel the packet Chucho gave me in my pocket. Could it have grown? The danger that hummed over our heads at the cantina is near, I can sense it. It is farther away now but still very near. And I still don't understand quite how Ada is connected with it. A slashing pink bar of sodium lamp highlights her white calves, the fluttering skirt, her blond hair. I want to catch her now and I could, but I know that I have to wait til we're in the canyon behind admin.
I'm not sure why I have to wait; that's what worries me and brings the heat in my appendix.
I can smell the creek. The scrub willows, alders and broadleaf maples that line the bank protect the surface and lock their pale pink branches like bayonets. We cross the bridge, one made of cables and loose treads that creak and pop. Then we can take the trail up to the old railroad tie stairs and so to the sidewalk above, or we can turn right and down, to the creekside and the old Oly cans and bleached newspaper and jagged white logs.
We turn down. By now we are walking again: at the bridge, a chain ahead, she turned and held out her hand, as if she had reached sanctuary and so could claim a right. So as we pick our way around the bleached river rock and partly-buried beer bottles she is leading me. She laughs, a laugh part exhaustion, part elation, and sprints ahead into a patch of bluish grass and turns and turns. I want to put my arms around her waist but instead I take her hands and we whirl each other around. Then she laughs and releases one hand and pulls me in with the other. Now we can join. We pull each other in and kneel at the same time, then tip like old monuments and stare at each other through the bars of grass. Then she's on top of me and there's a confusion of hair and hot bare skin and tongue and teeth.
Over all this I smell exhaust, then hear a heavy truck door slam. It sounds so close we both look up toward the source: the sidewalk above. It's the Quiet Man. I can see the outline of his cutter style and the orange point of his cigarette. And it's bad because there's no time to explain: the orange dot disappears and he shouts "Flaca! Get down!" then his head ducks and his outline alters in a subtle way and there's a flash and something smacks a log behind us. A few woodchips hit us.
I hear a surprised cough and smell the danger before I see it: a hot, stuffy smell, with a sour edge. There's a crashing rattle and I twist to see the tail and flank of a cougar loping into the trees downriver. Then there's another drumroll of snapping crashes and the Quiet Man is hurrying down through bars of black and pink towards the clearing. His expression is a mask of sadness, a sequel to the face he showed me in the cantina. He lays down his rifle and squats without taking his eyes off the hachure of black, orange and blue that conceals the cougar. "You ok Flaca? Senorita?" I feel clammy and my heart is racing, but I see the Quiet Man is quite dry. He could still be in the cantina with his pineapple juice. I look at Ada.
She nods quickly and smiles. She wears the expression of one who is learning an unfamiliar game and has just had a stroke of luck. The Quiet Man rises and picks up his rifle. He faces downriver and says "Did Chucho give you something Flaca? A little bag maybe?" Ada grabs my hand and I say, "Yeah, here," and fumble in my pocket. All I feel is the rayon lining. Ada shifts her grip. "I must have lost it in the clearing," I say. The Quiet Man stares into the darkness for a beat. "Good," he says, without turning. He holds his right hand knuckles down and flicks his fingers impatiently. "Come on, andale," he says, "before the cops come." We follow him up the hill. He looks over his shoulder frequently.
He puts the rifle into a narrow crate in the back of his '65 Chevy and hurries around. The grating squawk of the passenger door seems deafening and I look down the street, expecting blue and red lights. "Andale, andale," he whispers fiercely as Ada climbs in. I slam the door while the truck is in motion and the smell of the hot vinyl and dusty instrument panel is blown out as the truck whines and we pick up speed. He takes a service road and a chain link gate comes up yellow in his headlights. He douses them and climbs out to open a padlock. I realize we are behind the physical plant and try to remember if I've ever seen him in any of the crews that maintain the college. He pulls into the parking lot on the other side and locks the gate behind us.
The running lights discover daylilies and snapdragons, like the feet of watchers in a darkened theater. The low whine of first gear brings back the disappearing cat, its startled cough the peak of a low purring just under the surface. Under the smell of cut grass and spent exhaust I can feel Ada's warmth, the dull smell of her perfume. She puts her hand on my thigh and squeezes. The Quiet Man parks on a sleepy back street behind the school. He pulls the headlight knob.
A housecat crouches in the glare and sprints across the street. "Flaca," he says. "You sure that package is gone?" I look at him. He's staring out the windshield, watching the cat sniffing under cars. "Yeah, I'm sure," I say. He reaches over us and yanks the door handle. "Vaya con Dios," he says. I put a hand up and take Ada's hand as she steps down. "And Flaca," the quiet man says, leaning into the pink glare of a streetlamp. "Stay away from Chucho. Él es una mala noticia. Comprender?" I nod and wave at him again. He drives slowly down the street.
Ada is tugging at me. I walk quickly with her, looking over my shoulder. I notice she is only looking ahead. We pass under some firs outside the student union and she releases my hand and turns, quickly walking backwards. She holds up the little bag, dangling it as you would dangle a treat above a dog. "Throw all your precious gifts into the air," she whispers. I don't smile, but on the other hand, I follow her. She heads toward my dorm. She starts running. I run after her. This time I take her around the waist. We are under a rowan tree by the front walk. She backs up against me and wraps my arms tighter around her, lays her head back against my chest. I can feel the warm plastic of the bag against my hand. She turns abruptly and takes my head in her hands. Her kiss is urgent, almost exasperated, a call to action long overdue.
I watch her on the way up the stairs. The oatmeal walls and the dusty fire extinguisher look on like old guardians whose charge is beyond them finally. Her dress glitters in the brighter lights of the hallway and I'm not even aware of opening the door to my room. In the corner is an old floor lamp with an illuminated base. I turn this on and she cues the album in the player. "Somebody special/ Looking at me," Ferry yelps. She takes off her dress. She is careful about that.
There is a prowling ache in the basin above my appendix. I even touch the skin there when she takes off my A shirt. She ignores this gesture and pulls me closer, as if I were stalling. In the indirect light from the lamp base her eyes glow green. She watches me from under her lids while I tense my thighs. As we close I can smell the heat, the bleached logs, the grass, the startled fur. I realize she had never left that spot, that the Quiet Man was no deliverance but an annoyance.
After that all I can see is her body suddenly free, the ovals and bars of light and dark. I glimpse some sweetgum trees stirred by the breeze and with difficulty realize they were there six hours ago, watching Ada cross the street to her dorm. Somewhere in their branches a weak prayer to you in Berlin struggles like an empty plastic bag before it is released by the wind.
