5
After that things would roll forward swiftly and without further contradiction or hesitation, though no one could actually tell the difference. Before long one of Pierce's letters of application got a response; and when a couple of further letters had been exchanged, and a brief visit made, he received an offer of a teaching position at a private school for boys called Downside Academy.
"It would mean leaving,” Pierce said. “Leaving here. The Faraways."
She laughed. “Well, that's possible to do,” she said. “The roads lead out. As well as in. I,” she said, as though imparting a secret, “have been out before."
Here wasn't all he meant, of course, and she knew that too, and he knew she knew. He read the letter again, as though it were hard to understand, needed study; rubbed the paper, felt its watermark.
"How's the pay?"
"It's not good. No. But they give you a little apartment. You have to manage a dorm or something."
"Oh."
"If you're single. If you're married you get a house. Or a House. It's full of kids too."
"You like kids?” she asked.
"Well. I have experience with them."
"You do?"
"Yes. I was one. For some years, actually."
"So go,” she said with sudden force. “Go."
That night she lay still but sleepless in his bed. He had never known, among all the women he had lain beside, one who could lie so still, faceup on her pillow like a funerary sculpture, and yet project such a ferocious wakefulness. He tried to match her stillness, and his thoughts were addling into nonsense when she spoke.
"So do you get health insurance?"
"I don't know."
"You didn't ask?"
"No."
Deeper stillness, baleful.
"Pay scale?” she said into the dark. “Like is there a way of figuring raises?"
"I don't know."
"You didn't ask."
"Um no."
"Don't care?"
"Um well."
"What did you talk about? If it wasn't this stuff."
"Latin. Could I teach Latin."
Her scorn was so deep that at last it lifted him to his elbow to look into the mystery of her face. “Listen,” he said. “If you know so much about this, about about. Life. All the questions to ask. Then why are you, why. You yourself. I mean."
She didn't move or speak for a long time. He had no way to take back what he'd said.
"You mean,” she said, “why should I talk. Because I haven't got shit."
"No. Come on."
But it was so. He could see it even in her still body and the eyes that looked into the dark vacuity of the room; he could almost hear her thinking it. Like him she had somehow come to nothing. She had gone away and not come back, not anyway to the crossroads where she had turned aside; but nothing had become of her out there either, nothing that stuck or stayed. She lived in a room in her father's house, but that didn't mean she'd returned to him, or to it, not really. She had no job but selling cars part-time, which she usually got out of doing, preferring to sweep the floors and file; but she never looked at want ads, not as seriously even as himself.
"Just because,” she said, “you know how to get to the future. Just because you know it's real. Doesn't mean you think it can happen to you."
He had the illusion—maybe the soft passing of great trucks at regular intervals, like falling surf—that his cabin was beside the sea.
"But how can you know that it is, or could be, or anyway,” he started to say, meaning futures, their metaphysical or ontological unreality all he really knew about them; but she too now rose on an elbow and put her face pugnaciously close to his.
"You're a dope,” she said. “What made you such a dope?"
The way she said it made it seem not a mere rhetorical question, insult or upbraiding, and staring at her, searching for a comeback, Pierce for the first time in his life wondered if indeed there were a reason why he was such a dope, one reason, and if it could be known, and if so how, and if known at last, could be wrestled with, dragon or worm or slug at the base of his being, and defeated, or ousted. Would just knowing be enough? Probably not. Necessary, maybe, but not sufficient, and inaccessible to him anyway, right now and always so far, if not forever.
She had watched and waited for his answer for long enough, and turned back to her pillow beside his. She crossed her arms as though she were standing upright and confronting something, him forgotten.
"Any future that gets too close to me better watch out,” she said. “If it knows what's good for it."
He laughed then, at this, and after a moment and a sidelong glance at him, so did she. “Shit you know,” she said. “I have a really bad attitude."
"Yes,” he said thoughtfully. “I like that in a woman.” And he and she laughed more together.
Later though, very late, he rolled over toward her in the melancholy bed, and—as though she had not slept at all—she turned immediately to him and put her long arms around him and clung with the single-minded silence of someone who can't swim clinging to someone who has come to pull her out, clinging so fiercely that they might both drown if they don't both make shore together.
* * * *
After Downside's letter had sat beneath the ashtray on his pressboard dresser for a week, he suddenly (Oh well) wrote to accept. For some time he didn't tell Roo, for reasons he couldn't say, even to the other side of his self, the one that didn't show; that he thought didn't show. When he did tell her, she only regarded him for a long time without speaking.
"So when are you quitting at Novelty?” she said then.
"Oh God,” he said.
"If you quit they have to give you your vacation pay. A week's worth. Ten days. Maybe you should take a vacation. Before you start this job."
"Sure,” he said. “Take a jaunt to a tourist spot. Get a motel."
For a moment he perceived her head, like Oz in the movie, as though engulfed in affronted flames, and expected an awful curse. It might actually be nice to get away, he thought then, run and hide someplace right now, if there were someplace.
"Okay, well,” she said. She left with a curt goodbye.
When she came back a couple of days later, she said, “I got an invite.” She held out a typewritten letter, airmail stationery. “I'm going to Utopia. Maybe you'd like to come."
"To Utopia. That's Noplace, you know."
"It's real,” she said. “Really Utopia. The best place. I've wanted to go there for years."
"Me too,” Pierce said. “Years. So does everybody."
"Well, it can't be for everybody,” she said.
"No?” said Pierce.
"That's what ruins it."
"Ah,” said Pierce.
"The masses,” she said. “Then you get the Big Brother thing."
"Plus ungood,” said Pierce.
"You'll see,” she said. “If you want to come."
"You know how to get there? I thought there was a lot of uncertainty about that."
"I do,” she said. She took a thick book from her bag. “I've got a guidebook. See?"
A book, another book. A map, directions, commands. But this was a new paperback, and bright with color, and it said Let's go! in happy letters, and she proffered it with guileless delight, and the world right then unfolded and laid out the land that the book described, brightly colored and as real as real.