In the fantasy she would play out for herself Lyric found them like this. Or better still, found Robert fucking her with her dress hiked up on the log. And Lyric watched, dismayed, entranced, relieved in some way perhaps, or just submissive to the actuality before her, the new order spread as creaselessly as linens on the sovereign bed. She would go down on Robert, yes, with Zeke watching — that was good — and her father, their precious flower, defiling herself and for nothing, for no more than the monstrousness of their own vanity, the wild-burning ego that had to vindicate itself in the ashes of all it laid to waste. She, the daughter of a goddamn Indian ambassador, wed so regally and for all to see, front and center in the Times notices, like a fucking princess! Look, Daddy! Look, Zeke! Look … But even as she entertained the wish, she felt the gap between the fantasy and reality like a plummet in the mist, a fall awaiting her, a dizziness, a despair. She would come back to herself, she and the dream would fall apart. And there she would simply be, bereft of even shame and anger, bereft with only her life before her, all the things that made it up, her job and few friends, the rental, the cottage, the knowledge that it would all be there waiting for her tomorrow and the next day, and through all the days ahead. Days demanding to be filled, because even if you got rid of the stuff there would still be days. Time had to be filled, one way or another. And what an obligation it was! There had once been places for people like her, hadn’t there been, walled off in the countryside or mountains, where you were spoken to in a soft voice and spent your days beneath arbors, wandering garden paths, stilled in the lovely sedation of pills from tiny plastic cups? Yes, that sounded right. And Daeva would come visit once a year, citing concern but really there to gloat, to delight in her sister’s ruination. “If only you’d been less sure you were special,” she would say. “Less certain that the world cared. But you were always very self-involved, weren’t you?” And Hara would smile and nod agreeably, lost to the wondrous indifference — that’s how it would feel — the delicious peace of no longer having a life to fight for, an identity to pretend was hers.
* * *
Hara did not remember getting home. She remembered very little, in fact, when she heard Lyric speak and felt the project of locating herself in space and time crash in on her with such violence it seemed she might never pull clear.
“Hey, are you all right?”
She was in the living room, her own living room, that seemed true. Yes, on the sofa; she could feel it now as more than a cloud holding her aloft. Was it daytime? It was. Lyric sat facing her, a magazine open on her thigh.
“I think … I’m alive,” Hara said. “You look like a friend of mine, but of course the devil takes many forms.” She tried to catch Lyric’s eye. “Joking.”
“I’m leaving soon.”
“To town, or…” Lyric was silent. In the stillness Hara saw something flash at the periphery of her consciousness, something awful. She squinted. She couldn’t quite make it out, darting and flitting among the trees. Another flash. It nearly gave itself up, dodged away, dashed this way and that, almost at hand.
Then she saw it.
“Ah,” she said. She hoisted herself up — it took some effort — and went to the kitchen to make coffee.
“Where will you go?” she said. “Do you know?”
The girl shrugged.
Hara shook her head. “Just friends,” she said under her breath, too softly, she thought, for Lyric to hear.
But the girl said yes and laughed once. “Just.”
It was Robert’s car Lyric piled her stuff into. Well, that figured. Hara couldn’t see into the driver’s seat and she didn’t go out. She stood in the doorway with her coffee and watched Lyric carry out her bags.
“Well,” Lyric said when she was done. “Bye.”
“Bye,” Hara said, feeling that crippling dignity hold her in the doorframe and seal her lips.
But the things she could have done, the things she could have said!
She watched the car drive away and listened until the sound of the tires faded on the drive. Then she took her coffee to an armchair. She didn’t move until the sun began to dip in the sky.
By evening she felt better. She got up and wandered around the house. How big it was! How quiet. Had it always been so big or was it bigger in the silence? The lights were off and shadows lengthened across the room. The early evening had turned a golden color outside; the light seemed to burn as it fell, catching on the lawn, scattering on the ocean. There was the puzzle. Her hand had fallen on it without her realizing. God, she had been truly crazy to think Lyric wouldn’t leave until it was done. She touched it tenderly for a moment, the stiff-edged cardboard, the soft joints where the pieces met. Then on an impulse she swept it to the floor. The sun pulsed. Good riddance, she thought. The sun pushed into the clouds, good riddance, pushed through the clouds, and she saw them, the wolves. Out in the meadow the pack was running. The sun caught their backs as they tore across the grass. They reminded her just then of the golden jackals she had heard calling from the grassland in her youth. On the darkening porch she heard the jackals calling and her mother calling—“Haaaaaaara”—summoning her to another of their prim, stately dinners. She strained for a moment to hear the jackals. She wanted to join them, as if such a thing were possible! They were deniable, she supposed, the wolves. But then who was to say? Who was there to contradict her now? The trees around the yard were so much fiber and pith. Milkweed and primrose flowered here in spring. The moon was rock, Hara thought. The ocean so many particles of water. And people — what did they say? — minerals and proteins, was it? Minerals and proteins who ate to persist. Who slept to persist. Who fucked to persist. At some point the stories had to stop. At some point the wolves died, the people died. The alarm clock went off. The particles did what they did and at times, out of chaos, suggested order. And at times, out of chaos, dashed order. And at times, who knew? The facts were stubborn. They were also stories. Quite a lot, in other words, was left to interpretation. But moments continued to come, this one on the last one’s heels. And a new one. And a new one. And a new one.
Dynamics in the Storm
The storm was coming. The storm was coming. For days that’s all we heard. How big it would be. How the colliding systems might encounter each other. How long power could be out. Towers would come down and houses too. Lives would be lost (about that we heard less). About how to protect ourselves we heard a lot. Residents stockpiled candles, batteries, and canned food, cleaning out stores. Critical patients were flown to hospitals inland. Those who could, left. Most stayed. They had nowhere to go. And could they leave every time, could they make it a habit? Train and bus stations were mob scenes. Flights were canceled en masse. Grounded fliers camped out in airports, amateur survivalists. We saw them on TV. Going nowhere in an airport was now news. I was still brash and foolish enough to wait for the day of the storm to drive south. I had a car, the storm wasn’t due until evening, and I had no interest in cutting my visit short. It wasn’t often I saw my old friend Mark and his wife, who had once almost been my wife long ago.