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night sweats feels like someones splashed me with a bucket of water lightheaded low on $$$ will wire you for more from train station in lumding be watching ok? — love me
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my
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parted ways with driver the fucker good were getting somewhere striking off on foot today up trail maybe 6 hrs 6 or 7 to border amazing blue sky u should see
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blood in stool bees in hea
[NOTE TORN, TEXT MISSING]
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sky like turquoise ice
[NOTE TORN, TEXT MISSING]
October
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It was lunchtime and they were all standing in the sunny kitchen watching Estelle put the finishing touches on their spicy-apple-and-turkey salad, pretending Naomi hadn't just said what Naomi had just said.
Jean had been describing her latest series of watercolors. They consisted of greenblue abstractions of coastlines and marshlands seen from the air. Leaning back against the marble countertop, Dan sipped his gin and tonic and listened. Naomi's new boyfriend, Ron, a dumpy stockbroker with rabbity veneers, was talking sports with Robert by the large windows with sheer curtains overlooking Central Park. Outside the Indian summer was a motionless hazy orange. Somewhere in the background the air conditioning kept clicking on and off. Coolness gusted through the room and then almost at once it started getting uncomfortably warm and dense again.
From what Dan could pick up, Ron used to work as a legal aid on the Lower East Side, but the pay wasn't any good. He quit the day he turned thirty and went back to school. Now he was a stockbroker specializing in the water sector and had more money than he knew what to do with. Dan only spoke with him a minute or two when they were introduced, yet already didn't much like him. Ron tried to disguise his ambition with fake affability. He seemed to think he was getting away with something when he merely looked obvious and pushy.
How about that baseball strike, huh? Dan heard Ron say to Robert at full volume across the room and decided to exist as far away from him as possible this afternoon.
At the counter Jean explained: I wanted to create the same sense of shift in perspective the first people who went up in hot air balloons experienced. You know, like the whole world changes from trees and roads and buildings and cars and ponds to this pastel patchwork of rectangles, squares, and circles. You suddenly perceive everything completely differently.
They sound amazing, Estelle said. She was slicing a surreally red tomato with a big German knife. When do we get to see?
Oooh, what's this? Naomi asked, picking up a spice bottle full of bright yellow powder off the geometric black metal rack that looked like it had been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
I'm not exactly sure, said Estelle. I swear it must have come with the place.
Maybe we could wear it instead of eating it, Naomi proposed.
It's an incredible color, said Jean. Why don't they make summer dresses that color?
Naomi put back the bottle and crossed to the refrigerator. She poured crushed ice from a bag in the freezer into a sleek Finnish pitcher, then crossed to the sink and began filling the pitcher with water through a Brita filter. She used to wear a different-color wig every day of the week. Last spring she stopped, cut her hair short and spiky like Laurie Anderson, and dyed parts silver blond, parts black.
You know who I saw last week? she asked, her tone downgrading into confidentiality.
Do tell, Estelle said.
Estelle didn't look up from her work until Naomi pronounced Jerome's name. Jean glanced over at Dan. Dan examined his drink and took a self-conscious swallow. On the wall behind the dining nook hung a smallish Motherwell ninety percent golden yellow and ten percent black blob in the lower right corner. Dan studied it, resolving to enjoy the experience.
At the CVS on Bleeker, Naomi said.
It's the saddest thing in the world, Estelle announced, slicing the surreally red tomato into surreally red wedges.
I knew he didn't want me to see him. So you know what I did? I ducked around to the next aisle. Am I pathetic or what? I felt like crap, standing among mouthwash products and floss. But, Jesus, he's aged so goddamn much. You wouldn't believe. He shuffles around with that cane like a little old man, cheeks all sunken. And you should see how much weight he's lost. What do you say to someone like that?
Where was Jarmo? Jean said, concerned. Jarmo should have been there. He should be with him everywhere he goes these days.
Maybe he was writing, Estelle said. Running errands. Who knows?
I already miss him, said Jean. He's not even gone yet, and I miss him like crazy.
We should call, Estelle suggested. This afternoon. You know, all of us. Just pick up the phone and say hi. Gossip a little. Get his mind off things.
Hey, Ron said, strolling over with Robert. Ron flaunted the kind of low paunch that makes some middle-aged men appear to be in their second trimesters. He was stiff-kneed, flat-footed. Dan couldn't help thinking of Donald Duck. Any of you guys happen to catch Forrest Gump? It's one of those movies that's funny as hell and yet sends you away thinking all at the same time.
Yeah, Robert said, deadpan. You mean like about when we decided to make the village idiot with a box of chocolates our national hero?
Ron bobbled his head like one of those baseball dolls in car windows and silently impersonated a laugh, raising and lowering his shoulders, but no sound came out. I know exactly what you mean, he said. That's what I thought when I saw it the first time. Only, trust me, it's about so much more.
Really?
Robert held the vowel cluster an extra pulse.
Oh, sure, Ron said. Like how the innocent can have this major impact on other people with their, um, innocence. And how we all need to have, you know, better outlooks on life. Sometimes we need to be reminded. We take so much for granted in this country. It's a cliché and all, but it's true.
Everyone stopped talking temporarily to ingest this, trying to figure out the degree of irony Ron was utilizing.
Did you happen to notice the shrimp-catching scene? Jean asked.
What shrimp-catching scene? Estelle said.
The one after the hurricane, where they're dumping their full nets onto the deck of that boat. Take a look. The shrimps are all headless.
They're not, Estelle said.
They are, said Jean. No kidding. Fresh from Safeway.
With that, they launched into a conversation about the strengths and weaknesses of the film, even though Robert and Estelle admitted immediately that they hadn't seen it, had no intention of doing so. Robert dismissed it as shallow, glib, and monotonous. Estelle said she hated movies that manipulated audiences into experiencing a sense of reckless comfort about life. Ron looked cornered and confused. He tried to defend the work on the grounds that it was complex in its very simplicity, only he had a difficult time citing specifics and he kept contradicting himself. Soon he fell back to saying it was all just this feeling he got.