There were times when Rem thought the boy wasn’t right, that somewhere along the spectrum of normal and crazy Fatboy pulled up short. When he noticed how poorly the boy looked after himself he took on duty of care and presented him with food, fruit, nuts, things he thought would be good, and sat with him as he ate. Fatboy, for his part, began to open up.
‘There’re these marsh Arabs. They live east of here between the Tigris and the Euphrates, and they build these huts out of reeds on these stilts. Real small. And there’s one big hut, this place where everyone meets. You just go in and you ask anything you want to ask, like, where are all the fish, and someone will tell you. Or you go there because you’re troubled, or you want an answer to something, and someone always has an answer. Someone always knows what you’re supposed to do.’
Rem thought the boy was homesick, but not for home. ‘You’ve seen these people?’
‘I will do. Some day.’ Suddenly the boy choked up, and Rem wondered, if he ever made it to this place, this raised hut set above the marsh, what question he would ask.
‘You have someone at home?’ the boy asked.
Rem said yes, he had someone. ‘My wife comes from Texas,’ he explained. ‘A place called Seeley.’
‘Same as the mattress?’
‘Same as the mattress. I think she’s happy to be out of there, but I think she misses Texas.’
‘You think you did the right thing coming here?’
Rem shrugged. ‘My mother had these ideas. She’d say something like: everything you do puts you one step forward. Some things are better not known.’
‘You wish you hadn’t come?’
Rem looked up and took in the sky, blank because of the light-spill from the compound. Fatboy came from a small town himself. He never could have imagined these things or such a place. This wasn’t their home.
* * *
The idea that Rem Gunnersen should take employment away from home came from his wife, Cathy, because, she said, she needed a vacation.
Cathy Gunnersen’s realization came to her after her sister’s wedding. This being no special night and no special occasion, except Rem had started drinking at midday as a party of one and left a full beer in the utility room right on top of the washer, so when the spin-cycle kicked on, the can tipped over and the beer saturated the laundered clothes. She found him splayed across the couch, feet on the armrest, heels digging a groove, with another beer gripped between finger and thumb, jiggling to some rhythm or some other agitation. Cathy wanted to know was wrong with the first beer. Hey? And the second? What was wrong with that? Come on? An open can on the kitchen counter, another in the fridge, another beside the couch — she could map his afternoon. Did he have any clue how much he was drinking? Seriously, was anyone keeping track? It wasn’t the drinking that bothered her, no, what angered her was the idea of him drinking while she worked. And why, could he please explain, was the dog out in the hall?
‘Listen to me,’ she said. ‘Listen. I need a vacation. OK? I — need — a — break.’
Rem understood the distinction: her disagreement wasn’t about the event, per se, it was about the timing. And hadn’t he felt wrong-headed all day? Besides, it wasn’t about the beer, it wasn’t about getting drunk, but some continuing aggravation set against him: a bad curve to the day of nothing being in place, of everything beginning to prickle. Another Gunnersen self-detonation
‘You — Rem Gunnersen — need — to — work.’
Cathy Gunnersen could wrastle a problem until it became unbearable. Formerly these situations were managed with sex. Rem would just unbuckle and they’d have at each other. These days, right now, that possibility was spoiled by her habit of closing conversations with a monumental sulk, which demonstrated nothing but disappointment. Most times she walked off in less and less of an act.
‘Get over this,’ she said. ‘Start over.’
Rem held his tongue. It’s always the people who don’t have to start over who speak like this.
* * *
The wedding party had ended badly. It wasn’t that Rem disliked his sister-in-law’s partner — a fashion buyer for a high street chain Rem could never remember — he just couldn’t stop needling the man (Don’t worry, you’ll always be her first husband). In return the groom preened at the news from Cathy about Rem’s business not doing so well. Everything was headshakingly ‘too bad’. But times were tough for everyone, right? At least Rem still had a business, right? However diminished. And he could always go back — where was it now — to I-raq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, wherever it was he’d gone that first time, and earn some more? Right?
Cathy wouldn’t hear of it.
Rem’s speech, volunteered without request, included a joke about men who design women’s clothes and another about sodomy. A couple, newly-wed, come into the doctor’s office, and after a thorough examination the doctor finds the woman to be a virgin, despite her husband’s claim that he ‘puts it to her’ every night …
Cathy repeated Rem’s jokes to Maggie at work. She specified the targets, punch by punch, the blows levelled at the groom’s faith, his occupation, his sexual prowess (about which, she had to admit, her sister never expressed enthusiasm). It wasn’t embarrassment or humiliation she’d felt as Rem slowly pumped his hips in demonstration: this crudity, these dim thrusts meant nothing. Cathy drew a picture of Rem looming acute over a long table loaded with plates and glasses and lit candles, a table dressed with flowers and napkins, with creams and fleshy pinks — and this she found inexcusable. Rem, top heavy, ox-like, boxy, overburdened, ready to topple, slake off and hammer down like some great hunk of glacial ice. It was this: his pure force, his size against the delicacy of the table which she found humiliating, and how the entire room remained silent for the duration of his speech, listening to his Continental English, aching for him to hit the deck and take out the cake.
As it happened, Cathy was the one to fall over. Not one drop of drink in her, she flopped to the floor. Couldn’t remember catching a heel in the carpet, but one moment upright, the next, prone, knees spread, and a feeling afterward of indigestion, a low-grade bellyache stuck to the gut that lasted too long.
* * *
Rem slept with his head on one arm, the other tucked under the pillow. Cathy spoke to the back of his head. The vacation became a simple matter. She didn’t want to go anywhere, she wanted to stay home, in any case she couldn’t leave, not with her work. They could spare her, sure, but her last break had resulted in Maggie receiving the promotion to shift-supervisor — and wasn’t that the start of everything going wrong? No, this vacation would come under a different arrangement. Rem, who wasn’t doing much except a whole lot of moping around, would have to find a real job that paid real money, and send the money back. He could use this time to consider his drinking, his attitude, his habit of grinding people down, of riding someone’s back until they were just plain tired of carrying him. Better than sun beds, a Mexican beach, an ocean of mojitos, this vacation would cost her no effort and no expense. Which is exactly what made it perfect.
Rem sat up and turned on the light — which improved nothing.
Cathy drew herself to her elbows. Looked about ready to say something she’d been saving.
‘This isn’t a discussion.’ As Rem left the room he felt it drag after him. Nut followed in a sympathetic sulk.
Maybe going someplace else was a good idea. He looked out the window at Clark. A subterranean night, yellow and dim. The changing stoplights. The lack of traffic. The taqueria, open and empty.