He thought he ought to formulate a plan, maybe something along the following lines.
Take a taxi from Junieh to Beirut. Bargain with the driver. Pretend to know the area and the fastest route and the standard price for the trip. Find a hotel in Beirut and ask the manager to hire a car and driver. Bargain with the driver. Speak knowledge -ably about the layout of the city and try to give the impression you've done this many times. Show him your map. He had a map he'd bought after picking up his boat ticket but it was odd that he'd been forced to go to three shops before finding a map of Beirut, as if the place no longer qualified, or had consumed all its own depictions. Show him your map. Go to the southern slums, and this is where Bill's plan grew soft and dim but he knew he would eventually walk into the headquarters of Abu Rashid and tell them who he was.
Bill has never walked into a place and told them who he is.
They were still boarding. The light was the kind that splits the sky, a high sulfur spearhead fading into night. He went to find his compartment, which consisted of three wire hangers and a bunk. He grew dizzy again and lay down, his forearm over his face to keep the light out. The boat whistle sounded, making him think it was nice, inside the pain, that boats still have whistles that seem to call a song. He thought he was resting well, having a good rest. He thought the pages he'd done showed an element of conflict, the wrong kind of exertion or opposition, a stress in two directions, and he realized in the end he wasn't really thinking about the prisoner. Who is the boy, he thought.
It was writing that caused his life to disappear.
No blood to head.
He thought of the time, when was it.
Can you wait two shakes.
He fell away from the pain and tried not to return.
He thought of the time, when was it, sitting in a taxi on the way to Idlewild it was called then and the driver said, "I was born," right, and the point is that we were going to get there about two and a half hours before flight time due to some typical personal mixup and the driver said, "I was born under the old tutelage the earlier the better," and he told himself at the time be sure to remember this line to recite to a friend or use in a book because these were the important things, born under the old tutelage, and it made his heart shake to hear these things in the street or bus or dime store, the uninventable poetry, inside the pain, of what people say.
He wanted devoutly to be forgotten.
He fell away again, steeply this time, and changed his mind about not returning but he'd forgotten the line, never told it, never used it, maybe thirty-five years ago, Kennedy was Idlewild, time was money, the farmer was in the dell, so steeply it scared him, made him try hard to return.
His father. Can you wait two shakes.
His father. I keep telling you and telling you and telling you.
His mother. I like it better with the sleeves rolled down.
He could hear his breathing change, feel a slowness come upon him, familiar though never felt before, an old slow monotone out of the history of shallow breathing, deeply and totally known.
Measure your head before ordering.
His father. We need to have a confab, Junior.
He knew it completely. The glow, the solus. And it became the motion of the sea, the ship sailing morningward toward the sun.
The gashed hillside above Junieh was clustered with balconied buildings that looked red-fleshed in the early light. Down by the seafront a few open-sided trucks were parked near the disembarking point, stocked with food and drink. Once the passengers were all ashore the cleaning crew boarded and an old man with a limp took the cabins along the starboard side on the upper deck. When he came to the man lying in the bunk he looked at the bruised and unshaved face and the dirty clothes and he put a gentle hand to the pale throat, feeling for the slightest beat. He said a prayer and went through the man's belongings, leaving the insignificant cash, the good shoes, the things in the bag, the bag itself, but feeling it was not a crime against the dead to take the man's passport and other forms of identification, anything with a name and a number, which he could sell to some militia in Beirut.
He heard a car door slam on the gravel road and then the sound of the car driving off and he thought a moment before turning to look out the window behind the kitchen table. Because who could it be coming down on foot? The rare visitor drives in. He was at the sink doing a scouring job on a skillet and couldn't see anyone from this angle but didn't bother changing position because whoever it was would appear in the window sooner or later, somebody selling God or the wilderness or the end of life on earth, or they wouldn't. The rare visitor comes bumping down the dirt trail in a van or pickup to deliver something or repair something and it is usually a familiar face and scuffed shoes.
Scott did three or four more strokes with the scouring pad and glanced again and it was Karen, of course, looking not so different from the first time he'd ever seen her, a cloud dreamer on a summer's day, someone drifting out of Bill's own head, her tote bag dragging on the ground.
He remained at the sink. He ran the water over the skillet, then scoured some more, then ran the water, then scoured, then ran the water. He heard her come up the steps and open the door. She walked into the hallway and he ran the water, keeping his back to the room.
She said, "I took the taxi from the bus station instead of calling.
I had just enough money left for the taxi and the tip and I wanted to arrive totally broke."
"The wind blows the door and look what walks in."
"Actually I have two dollars."
He didn't turn around. He would have to adjust to this. He'd naturally fitted himself to the role, for some years now, of friend abandoned or lover discarded. We all know how the thing we secretly fear is not a secret at all but the open and eternal thing that predicts its own recurrence. He turned off the water and put the skillet in the drain basket and waited.
"Ask me if I'm glad to be back. I missed you. Are you all right?"
"Run into Bill?" he said.
"I sort of kept seeing him, you know? But not really. Did you hear anything?"
"All quiet."
"I came back because I was afraid you wouldn't be all right. And I missed you."
"I've been keeping busy. I've done some things, some organizing."
"You always put a premium on that."
"Same old Scott," he said.
His voice sounded unfamiliar. He thought it was because he hadn't spoken aloud to anyone in some time. But maybe it was the situation. It was dangerous to speak because he didn't know which way a sentence might tend to go, toward one thing or the logical opposite. He could go either way, one reaction as easy as the other. He was not completely connected to what he said and this put an odd and dicey calm in his remarks.
"Of course you might want to be alone," she said. "I know that. I know I left at probably a bad time you were having. But I honestly thought."
"I know."
"We weren't the old dependency."
"It's all right," he said.
"I'm not very good at this type conversation."
"I know. It's all right. We're embarrassed."
"I didn't call from New York and I didn't call from the bus station."
"It's not a station. You always call it a station. It's a little ticket booth inside a drugstore."
"Because I don't trust the telephone," she said.
He turned and looked at her and she looked like hell. He walked over and put his arms around her. She began to shake and he held her tighter and then stepped back to look at her. She was crying, making the motion or taking the shape, but without tears, her mouth stretched flat, the animated light missing from her eyes, and he put his hand behind her head and drew it softly toward him.