I hoped when we got to the hunt, everything would be better. That I could make it better and she would accept that. I lay there and tried to think of all the clever things I could do to make her happy, but all of them were fantasy and I knew none of them would work.
We had a private car on the train with food and alcohol and most anything that we seriously needed. There would be the hunting car later, but on the way out and back, when we weren’t stopped along the way at some site or entertainment that was planned, we had the room and a fold-down berth, and it was all nice and clean and private.
The humming of the train over the tracks had become soothing, and maybe that was why Livia was able to talk about it. She came at me with it out of nowhere, and it was the first time she hadn’t yelled at me when she brought it up.
“Was it because I didn’t satisfy you?”
I was sitting at the fold-down table with a drink of well-watered whisky. I said, “Of course not.”
“Then why?”
“I’ve told you, Livia.”
“Tell me again.”
“I’ve told you again and again.”
“Make me believe it.”
I sat for a moment, gathering my energy for it. “I suppose it has to do with getting older. I don’t feel all that attractive anymore. I’m a little heavy, going bald. I wanted to feel that I could be with another woman.”
“But that woman . . . That doesn’t work, Frank. She didn’t want you back. She was paid for. And she was . . . ”
“I know,” I said. “But it was the fantasy that she was someone who cared for me and that it was a secret rendezvous. It was the idea of it more than the actuality of it. It was stupid, but I did it and I’m sorry, and I am so sad it ever happened.”
“Childish.”
“Yes,” I said. “Very much so. I know that now. But I just felt it might give me a boost, so to speak.”
“I don’t give you a boost?”
“You do.”
“I know I’m older—”
“You look fantastic,” I said. “It wasn’t that. It was me.”
“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“I don’t think that—no. It won’t make you feel better. But it’s an answer, not an excuse, and it’s the only one I have. There is no good answer. I was foolish. It’s just that . . . I love you, Livia. But I just wasn’t satisfied.”
“It wasn’t like I didn’t make love to you.”
“No,” I said. “You did. But . . . it wasn’t all that passionate.”
“We’re not eighteen anymore.”
“I guess that’s what I wanted, something more passionate. Something that would make me feel eighteen again.”
“The only thing that could make you feel eighteen again is being eighteen,” she said.
“I know. I just wanted something besides the usual, you know. I don’t mean that offensively, but I wanted to feel something akin to the old passion.”
Livia turned her head away from me when she spoke. “Why didn’t you ask? We could have experimented.”
“I hinted.”
“Hinted?” she said. “Isn’t it men who always say that women don’t say what they want? That they beat around the bush? Don’t you always say: ‘How am I supposed to know what you want if you don’t ask’?”
“I suppose it is.”
“No supposing to it.”
We sat silent for a long time. I didn’t even pick up my drink.
“Do you think you can ever feel good about me again?” I asked. “That you can ever trust me and feel that things are right again? Can we ever be okay?”
“I don’t know,” Livia said.
She went to the cabinet and pulled the latch and took out a glass and a bottle of some kind of green liquor. She poured herself a drink and put everything back, and went to sit on the fold-down bed.
“You’ll try?” I said.
“I try every day,” she said. “You don’t know how hard I try.”
“This trip . . . was it a mistake?”
“I don’t know. I’ll see how it makes me feel when it’s all over.”
I nodded and drank the rest of my drink. I couldn’t think of anything else to say or do, except get another drink, and I didn’t even do that. I just sat there, and in time Livia took a magazine from her suitcase and lay on the bed and read.
I finally got up and got another drink and sat down at the table with it. I sipped it and thought about how I had ruined everything that had ever meant anything to me for a piece of overpriced heavily lubricated ass.
I began to hang all my hopes on the hunt, and that the enthusiasm of it would excite her as it did when we used to deer hunt together. That had been years ago, and this was different, but I think, except for those times when we had been young and in bed together, it was the time when I felt the most bonded to her.
I suppose it was the thrill of the hunt, and mostly the thrill of the kill. I never deluded myself into thinking hunting was a sport. Killing was what it was all about, and to kill something was to satisfy something deep in the soul, something primal. And it was a strange thing to see that primitive nature in a woman, and to observe her face when she stood over the body of a dead deer; her eyes bright, the deer’s eyes dull, and on Livia’s face an expression akin to the one she had when she had an orgasm and lay in my arms, happy, satisfied, having experienced something that was beyond intellect and rationalization.
It was a cool, crisp morning when we reached Montana. The air felt rich with oxygen and the sky was so blue it was hard to believe it was real. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. By midday it would be relatively warm, if still jacket weather, but we would be in the hunting car, perched at the windows with our rifles, so it would be comfortable enough, stuffed as the car would be with other hunters, adrenaline and passion and the desire to kill. Though, perhaps, kill was the wrong word here, and that’s what made the whole thing somehow acceptable. You can’t kill what’s already dead, but you can enjoy the shooting, and maybe it wasn’t as good as a live deer brought down and made dead, but to shoot the living dead, a human, and not have any remorse because it was all sanctioned, there was something about that, something about the fantasy of killing a human being instead of just bringing down a walking thing that was the shell for someone who had once lived.
The train parked on the tracks and some of the guides went to the storage car where the dead people were kept. They would let them out and drive them to the center of the plain, and they would throw sides of beef in the dirt to keep them in that area, bloody beef that the dead could smell and want.
When they went for the beef, when the guides said it was time, we could point our guns out the window and take them as fast as we could shoot. Sometimes, the guides said, the dead would come to the window, and that you had to be careful, because you could get so caught up in the shooting, you could forget that they wanted you as much as you wanted them. If you’re arm was out the window, well, you could get bit, and the waiver we had signed said that if that was the case, we went out there with them. We wouldn’t necessarily be dead, but we soon would be, so there was a chance to shoot someone who was actually alive; someone already doomed. It was considered practical and even humane, and it was covered by insurance money that your family would receive.
Livia and I settled into our shooting positions. We had benches by a long window, and the window was still closed. We were given our rifles. They were already loaded, and we were told to keep them pointing up, which, of course, we knew without being told. Everyone here had gone through the program on how to handle the weapons and how to deal with the dead, and Livia and I were already hunters and we could shoot.