They gagged him with duct tape, then bound his hands and feet with electrical cable. The old man offered no resistance. With obvious pleasure, Horowitz set him in the middle of the front seat and took over the wheel. They hadn’t gone very far when Verrazano asked Horowitz what they were going to do with him. We’re going to maroon him on an island. Then we’d better hurry, before the traffic picks up. They took the next left. Drake stopped the truck in the middle of the road. Between the two of them they carried the old man to the bushes. I’ll let the police know you’re here, Verrazano promised when he was sure that Horowitz was out of earshot. Before starting the truck again, Drake took a black flag from his duffel bag and tied it by two of its corners to the antenna on Outrageous Fortune.
What followed was barbarous depravity and cruelty: hot pursuit, ramming and boarding, assault, robbing and setting fire to a liquor store. Their broadsides against three parked minivans earned sufficient notoriety that for weeks afterward, housewives in the D.C. metro area would panic at the mere sound of a garbage truck rumbling by. Their spree lasted only a few, short hysterical hours. By noon they were already prisoners of their own catastrophe.
Heading north on a lightly traveled road with Verrazano at the wheel, they moored the ship on a backwater bend. Drake offered the only gambit he was willing to play: With what we’ve done today, you’re gonna spend the rest of your life in jail, he said. He unfolded the chart and indicated a salt marsh in Chesapeake Bay. The only way to get there, he continued, is by following neighborhood streets. We can probably reach the place before they catch us. There’s a big old marina, sticks way out into the sea. It’s not used anymore. My dad took us there fishing sometimes. The fat man gathered what was left of his wits: I’ve got friends in prison. I’m sure I could make others once we’re inside. Besides, I promised the Captain I was going to let someone know which island we stranded him on. Drake shrugged his shoulders. His companion added apologetically: There’s nothing else we can do, Horowitz, my sympathy for your pain only goes so far. Then help me pilot the ship until we get there. I’d be delighted. Without saying another word, Horowitz left the forecastle and climbed the ladder to the poop deck. After bringing the ship about, Verrazano set a northeasterly course under full sail. For Drake the highway was the fresh, clean, wide-open sea. Tightly gripping the deck rail, he felt the sun on his face, the wind against his chest, and breathed the putrid smell of corruption rising from the bilge.
FILTH
Long smooth slow swift soft cat
What score, whose choreography did you dance to
when they pulled the final curtain down?
Can such ponderous grace remain
here, all alone, on this 9 × 10 stage?
REFRIGERATION
After reaching a certain size, a secret generates a zone of silence around the one who carries it. Like a refrigerator, it has its own microclimate that people can poke their heads into but where no one else can remain. Every so often someone opened the door, the light would go on, and he would smile — his teeth like Tupperware containers — waiting patiently for the door to close again. What he wasn’t sure about was whether he viewed reality as he did, like some prerecorded event, because he was leading a double life, or if his divergence from the world he inhabited since moving to the suburbs had led naturally to the strange condition of his feeling as though he were hiding in plain sight, the result of spending a certain amount of each day in secrecy. The question was: had his deficiencies led him to become a refrigerator or were they one more eventuality in his destiny as a refrigerator?
It came out during one of his first Thursday therapy sessions: The suburbs serve to protect the rest of the country from the peculiarities of the city, so those of us who live in them can’t escape our own insulated condition; we’re the martyrs of refrigeration, we cut a swath of mediocrity, and the daily commute from home to the city and back again allows the values of the rest of the country to remain exactly as they were when the Puritans stepped off the Mayflower to found the nation.
He didn’t mention the part about feeling like a refrigerator; it was such a silly simile that he was a bit embarrassed about it, but sometimes he could feel the water pitchers, the vegetable crisper, and the slightly rancid cheese all sitting on his shelves. Nor did he mention it to Rob, his neighbor, the day when they discussed the problem of the suburbs. The weather was so hot that he felt like he was trapped inside a bubble from which it was impossible to make himself understood.
It went like this: he was crouched down planting belenes when he heard Rob say his name — or rather, that hollow, tortured sound he was now accustomed to identify with himself. He didn’t raise his head because he didn’t feel like it. Nor would he have done so at all but for the sweat dripping into his eyes; the moment after his neighbor insisted on tormenting the vowels in his name, he happened to have to wipe them with the back of one of his gardening gloves.
He lifted the hand he’d just used to wipe his eyes and said: Hey. Then he asked Rob how he was doing. Good, he answered him, what’re you doing. I’m planting flowers. Each one waited for the other to say something else that had not yet occurred to their heat-addled brains. What kind are they, Rob finally asked. Impatiens, he replied, because that’s what belenes are called in English. As it was obvious that his neighbor wasn’t going to move from the spot until he got what he wanted, he asked what he could do for him. Can I borrow your mower? Help yourself. You know where it is. He turned his attention back to the soil, the flowers, and the slightly ridiculous trowel he was using to plant them.
He had always been a somewhat self-absorbed person, which is why he enjoyed the garden; during the time he spent working there he could forget about the ferocious competition at the office, the needs of his little girls, and the identity problems that so unsettled him, and which he didn’t exactly understand. But since he had begun to lead a double life — maybe he had always done so, but without any palpable proof of its existence — he tried to practice as many solitary activities as possible: he spent more time swimming, tending his plants, watching TV.
What were you thinking so hard about, said Rob as he came back, pushing the lawnmower along the little tiled path that led from the garden to the street. I was thinking how the suburbs are the antidote we gringos whipped up for slavery. The other man thought about this for a moment then chose a noncommittal answer: You’re not a gringo, he said. I am now, was the reply. Did you apply for citizenship? Yeah. And they gave it to you. Uh-huh. You swore on the flag and all that? Along with about four hundred Koreans. Congratulations. That’s nice. I’ll bring the mower back in a while. There’s no hurry, I’m not cutting the grass today.
He waited until his neighbor had moved on before going into his house so that he wouldn’t have to invite him in, and then he ran to the kitchen. The soft gust from the air-conditioning felt like a blessing. He was home alone — his wife and daughters had gone to a children’s party and wouldn’t return until the afternoon — so he slipped the cell phone out from his briefcase by the front door where it had been sitting since Friday evening when he got home from the Bank. He punched in the number he had decided not to store in its memory to avoid uncomfortable questions if his wife happened to find it. The answering machine took the call; as usual, she had her phone switched off whenever her husband was around. He didn’t leave a message. He cracked open a beer and stood sipping it, staring out the window: the whole world outside wilting from the heat and him watching it like it was something on TV. He decided he couldn’t stand another brush with reality, so he made himself a sandwich, then ate it, with a second beer, while watching baseball.