Marina felt as if she would catch fire at any second. What was I supposed to do? Not show her the message?
Bingo!
She bit her lip. Having moved two blocks in ten minutes, she was growing attached to the people on the benches, the young couples, the geezers, and if given a sack of pebbles, she knew just which heads to fling them at first.
He’s her cousin! Anyway, you’re taking it far too seriously.
Tell me one thing, said Levik, just one. What did you think her reaction would be? What did you want to happen? Did you expect her to just let it go? Were you even thinking? And how—
You know how she is. By next week it’ll be ancient history.
A Hasidic family crossed the street in front of them, four men in tall white socks and sleek black coats, followed by two women of venerable bosom, then three girls pushing baby carriages, bony legs scissoring, and finally a wild tail of children, which, like all tails, relayed the secret message of the beast. The light turned green.
I am in no mood, said Levik.
Why are we in the car, then? You had to wait until Avenue N to tell me?
Only at Avenue H did Levik deign to speak. With utter serenity he explained that he was dropping her off at the restaurant. She could get a ride back with the Plyazhskys, and if they wanted to leave before she was ready to wrap up, Vitalik surely wouldn’t mind giving her a lift. She shouldn’t worry; he wouldn’t be waiting up.
Once again with the Vitalik! Would it never end? Miron, just for example, was far more touchy-feely, yet never a word about him.
Miron’s that way with all the girls. Vitalik just with you.
Oh, please. Are you kidding? What are we talking about here? I’m an old lady! Marina flipped down the mirror and began contorting her neck, able to appraise herself only from the oddest of angles. Look, she said, wrinkles, brown spots, splotches… But I do have nice lips.
In no mood, repeated Levik.
Where are we going, then? For a little ride?
I’m dropping you off at the restaurant.
Not a chance. If I were you, I’d turn the car around right this second. Your job here is done, my dear.
Levik appeared to suffer a small seizure, then regained control. They kept driving in the direction of the skyscrapers and lights. The highway opened out underneath them, smoothing away the last hour of staccato torture. Soon they were rubbing shoulders with the Hudson, so behaved and placid on the surface, obviously full of its own thoughts in the depths. The great thing about the skyline was that you could say it was beautiful in ideal visibility, everything so strict, intimidating, and contrasted, and you could say it was just as beautiful in fog, such as lay over the city right then, with the Chrysler Building creating eerie patterns of smudged light. If Marina were for some reason forbidden to comment on the view from that one spot on the highway, below the overpass, about four minutes at sixty-seven miles per hour from the Brooklyn Bridge, she almost certainly would’ve either had to leave the city or go insane. Even now, when they rode past, Marina muttered in amazement. And Levik, by reflex, glanced to the left at the glowing island of Manhattan.
Breath held at the entrance onto the bridge, which their Honda Accord took swimmingly. Silence was maintained for the rest of the drive. At one point, after making a few unhappy circles, Levik pulled over in front of a garage entrance, was honked at, drove a little ways, and pulled over again. Reaching for the glove compartment, he accidentally brushed Marina’s knee and recoiled. A second attempt was maneuvered with caution. The GPS was installed in a few spasmodic motions. Suzanna guided the rest of the way to the opera restaurant. A crowd had already gathered. Levik slumped as if he were sitting in his office chair and said, Davai.
Marina didn’t respond. She sat in dire fear of being spotted by one of her friends.
Please go, said Levik, receiving no reply, which, after a few seconds, became a reply. An increasingly desperate barrage of appeals followed. Get out of the car, he beseeched. Just go! Marina maintained the silence on her end. Levik’s back rounded like a tire. Propping his elbow on his thigh, he gently tipped his cheek into his hand and shut his eyes. Through heavy lids, in a whisper, he said, Marina, are you going in there or not?
Take me home, she said.
Why are you being such a — a stubborn! he screamed. His foot slammed on the gas, and the Honda nearly missed a passing car. An explosion of honks almost kept Marina from noticing that Asya Brukhman, whose anniversary it was, was fast approaching with a giant smile, a hand raised in greeting.
The ride back to Brooklyn was calm. A resigned air set in, Levik’s preferred atmosphere. They were going home — was that such a terrible thing? He became so relaxed that after recrossing the Brooklyn Bridge he began to whistle softly, not quite noticing it himself. The truth was that he hadn’t wanted to go to the anniversary party, sitting for hours on end in a restaurant, making tired conversation while his wife pranced about, getting progressively drunker and more unruly. Now they could go home, he could go back to part three of the Nostradamus docudrama. He let himself believe that Marina’s anger was mild and fleeting, that she, too, was enjoying the languor of the drive.
The situation became delicate as Brighton neared. Levik slowed to a crawl when it came time to contemplate parking. It wasn’t in his interest that they vacate the vehicle. Only then would he learn the extent of the damage. A performance, he knew, was unavoidable. What he expected: a quickened pace, more ignoring, perhaps taking different elevators and forgoing inquiries as to tea/coffee preference. What he didn’t expect: Marina dashing off in her strappy heels in the direction of the beach, over which an impenetrable fog had settled, the kind of raw, curdled air that made fiery Saturns out of streetlamps, a field day for slugs, a density of atmosphere that in the past few years had become synonymous with late springtime in Brooklyn and which was portrayed far too romantically in Italian cinema classics.
Either Marina was deliberately not responding to frantic shouts of her own name or she was outside hearing range, having dashed farther than Levik could imagine anyone dashing in those shoes on a night like this. Though, knowing his wife, she’d already kicked them off. The ocean became fantastically loud when you were deprived of the sense of sight. Levik heard its roar to every side of him, which meant he was already disoriented. He realized that he wasn’t moving but standing in one spot, shouting Marina, Marina! and at the same time holding out his arm, not entirely convinced it was his. There was an echo, Marina, Marina! And then he was no longer shouting her name, his throat refusing to project a voice. He pushed, but the voice got snagged on something in his chest. He held out his arm and let it drop and hang limply, hoping his legs didn’t cave. It was funny when you thought about it: fog. That’s all it was, soft, harmless fog. And yet Levik couldn’t force his feet to move or chest to steady or throat to produce a sound. This was what they called terror, and it was seizing him for no identifiable reason within several blocks of his home, where he would’ve killed to be right then, stirring two spoons of instant coffee into Marina’s cat mug and pouring freely the nonfat milk. Reminded of Camus’s The Stranger, a book he’d read as a foolish young man with lots of brown curls and the inclination to like things he didn’t fully understand, and even so he hadn’t liked that book. Why, then, was it so often on his mind? The accompanying image was Munch’s The Scream.
Suddenly his arm came into view, as if someone had blown the dust off. It was thin and smooth, with a cold, even shine. Someone kept blowing, and the arm kept extending, growing longer and thinner while remaining defiantly rooted in murk. Levik shut his eyes and heard the chaotic ocean, opened them and saw a railing, an empty trash can, slanted boards intersecting his feet, a bench, then two, then three…. The fourth bench had knees and a messy blond bun. He was able to gradually reduce the distance between himself and that bench.