He might have said Shut it off, out of some kind of disgust, or shame; or he might have been turned on by the sad ordeal of watching her dead husband doing it to her; she might have stood up tearfully and shouted Look at what the world took from me, but instead there was the soft clatter of the storm widows catching a hard burst of wind from the north; there was the background hum of the camera motor’s resonating off the Spanish dressing table; the soft clutch of two people reaching an early orgasm against their wills; her legs clamping tight around the back of his thighs; nothing funny at all this time; it seemed a vastly different tape than the one she’d viewed with Ron on the small television in their apartment in the city. (The current television was twice as big.) Hugh sat back watching and didn’t say anything. He did so partly out of a politeness for her feelings; to stand and walk away — considering the sanctity of the situation — wouldn’t be kind; he had to at least see a conclusion to the night, so he watched for four minutes until the awkward disengagement after the orgasm, the parting of flesh from flesh, and saw the pixels of light add up to what seemed to be a template for the home-brewed porn tape. (He’d never rented one of those amateur porn tapes from the video store before, but this was exactly what he’d expected.) He watched the end and sat still while she shut it off, drew both hands through her hair, and told him he’d better go as she led him down the stairs to the mudroom door where he left his boots, and thanked him for the wonderful night while he tied his laces. Then, as she held his coat for him, he urged his arms through the sleeves; and she spoke the whole time about the breaded pork she’d had for dinner, and how nice the Hudson House atmosphere was, until he turned and said, “Hang in there,” and gave her a little hug, making out through his down coat the softness of her shoulders. He then trudged his way up the hill to the main street, turned left, and walked through town. His hood was up and the asthmatic seethe of his breath kept him company. He was a scientist, used to looking at facts, but he wasn’t hard-hearted. He knew what was up. The game was clear. She wanted to nix it, to throw it at him, her life before Ron’s death. She wasn’t ready to love again. It was too early. Her heart was still with Ron, as it should be. She was perfectly normal. Nothing was wrong with what she did, showing him the tape like that, acting out a commendable faithfulness to her past; it was the kind of impulsive, perhaps deranged action you’d expect from a widow. Strangely, he thought, it was (he was now hiking up the hill in jerky, quick strides) what you want from a widow. You want that soft sadness. You want the strange behavior — wild, passionate moodiness. You want pain manifested in deviant acts. There was a fine snow falling, melting as it hit his face. Grief seemed to crunch beneath his feet. The whole planet was a matrix of movements, he knew, causing irremediable change. He thought of Iceland, of the wild surges of gradient heat buried beneath the sea — of the long fissures of magma basting into the immense pressure of the depths, just twelve feet of water equaling the pressure of miles of air, and deeper still into a fantastic weight. In a week, back in Iceland for the conference on plate tectonics, he’d relax and think things over. He’d think only about geothermal system problems, precise yet still earthly and ultimately ungraspable. He’d take the boat out to the site of their study and dive with his colleagues. He’d gone down before in the Alvin — the only thing between his life and those tremendous pressures, a rubber gasket on the door. Pure titanium walls, five thick feet of it, but all that came between life and death was that gasket. He loved Iceland. There was no end to the amount of warmth they could tap from the earth — absolutely free. It was never cold inside a home in Iceland. The price: fantastic volcanic instability, the insecurity of knowing that at any moment, any day, the whole place might go up in a blast. He was at his door. His hand was on the knob. He had so much to do. He had to think it all over and come to some conclusion.
The boys were asleep. Upstairs he undressed in the dark and left his clothes on the floor. He didn’t brush his teeth. The cognac buzz was wearing off, and there was an aftertaste of dinner in his mouth. He lay and watched the dark shadow branches on the ceiling. There was a steady, hard wind. He kept his eyes open for as long as he could. When he closed them, he saw floating behind his eyelids the shadows from the videotape, half formed, Grace’s knees and the back of Ron’s thighs, blended through the light and the lens of that afternoon in Madrid; although he couldn’t precisely identify the sound, he could hear the buzz of the motorbikes winding through the narrow, ancient streets.
TAHORAH
HE WAS in the CCU and sick of all the barbaric grunts and cries coming from next door and out in the hallway. What name to pin them with he wasn’t sure, something foreign because the lingo they were speaking made no sense and got on his nerves almost as much as the crying and sobbing and all that, but he couldn’t do anything about it because he was soaking in morphine and wasn’t concerned about the details; he gave up on the details after the second heart attack, all that pain, big walls of it, like in the movies, groaning and trying to guide the truck over to the side; where was this? A hundred and fifty miles outside of Altoona? Almost home? Somewhere in Jersey? No one on the medical staff seemed to know, or care. The crunch of gravel on the breakdown lane, the smooth, low scrape as he hit the guardrail, the scream of plastic bumper stuff peeling off — and then skidding like that, rolling partway over, up on the side, his cab, deep crimson red, while the trailer ripped loose and flipped and tumbled down the hill. The babble of prayer — that’s what was coming from next door, he knew, at least some little part of him knew. Some of them were jawing away at it right outside his door. And here’s the guy Angela sent saying Our prayers are with you and talking, his lips close to his ear, Listerine breath, one of those huge brows — a real caveman, this preacher from the Bethel First Christ down in Rutherford, or near there. It’s Angela’s idea of a bad joke, a last hurrah, knowing damn well he wouldn’t want it, probably making up a long story about her ex-husband and guilt and how she felt he needed consolation and affirmation in what were surely to be his final hours. Now along with the carrying on in the hall there was the mumbling pious tones of this guy’s voice to contend with, too, talking something about the narrow way of Christ; funny that it was the only thing he knew, or felt like knowing, about his heart, the narrow closing of that artery clogged with too many donuts and too much coffee and long hours on the road popping crank, mixing vodka with whatever the hell he got his hands on the last few years doing transcon runs of whatever freight he could land. Hitch your cab to the trailer and ask no questions.
When they tried to get the shunt in, the artery collapsed on itself, final and for good, and he had a second coronary right on the table. Nothing to do now, the doctor said, except wait out the twenty-four-hour grace or lack of grace period, the rough time, and hope for the best, because no matter what, part of his heart was permanent dead matter. “If you’re gonna die,” the doc said, “it’s most likely gonna be in the next twenty-four hours.”
Now this dwarf priest or whatever lecturing him on Christ’s narrow way.
“What do you want, Father?” His lips would barely open, corrugated with dryness. His mouth had been dry all night, dry into the day, and was now dry in the afternoon no matter how many of the little plastic cups of cranberry juice he sucked down.
“Father?” the guy said, softly. Then he cleared his throat. “You don’t have to address me that way.”
“What are you doing here, Father?”