tonight.''
''Yeah, we have a
''Then maybe you can tell me the name of a young woman who was in here a few weeks back. Long hair, just came in that one night. Local girl.''
The bartender looks at me, then down at his own hands that lie on either side of my drink. Hands gray from rinse-water bleach, the skin riddled with bloodless cracks.
''We don't much deal in names around here,'' he says. ''Girls like that are better off without names, don't you think?''
I give a slight nod of thanks, pick up my glass, and take a long gulp. Four stools down from me the only dancer of the evening pushes herself off her seat and pounds over to the stage while a new tape is clicked on, and through the speakers' hiss comes the acoustic guitar opening of ''Stairway to Heaven.''
''Oh, yeah!'' someone shouts out from the darkness at the side of the stage as Turniphead heaves herself up the small set of stairs that elevate her onto the stage. ''Oh, yeah!'' to the pointless grin that appears on her face, the hands that stroke over shifting hips as she stalks the stage's perimeter. ''Oh, yeah!'' to the breasts that awaken beneath the housecoat's loose folds, to the flash of dimpled ass afforded by an awkward lift of terry cloth. When the heavy-rock second half of the song kicks in, the housecoat drops in a lumpy ring around her feet and the patrol continues, now in glaring, wobbly nakedness.
Clomps to the edge and pulls up a furry white rug, shaking it flat. With some difficulty she bends over at the waist to undo the straps on her high heels, letting each of them fall with a strained grunt. Looks my way for a moment and summons a smile of invitation before lowering herself to her knees on the fake polar-bear fluff.
I try to do the courtesy of returning her smile but cannot. Cannot take my eyes from the different parts of her rolling around on the rug and then coming together to be wrapped up inside it. That's when the sadness comes. A sorrow that exceeds the spectacle before me, shot directly into the blood, swift and paralyzing. ''Oh, yeah!'' the call goes out when the fingers go down, a parted flash of inside shown to the drunk and afflicted outside.
''You want another?''
The bartender's voice to my left but I can't turn to respond. Somewhere above me Robert Plant delivers the lines that, if played backward, say something about Satan leading everybody to hell.
''Hey, pal, you want another of these?''
''No more,'' I say without turning, holding my hand over the empty glass. When the song ends the audience provides a dozen smacks of applause and rises up to the bar, having decided it might do them good to have another before the next show.
The following afternoon I go down to give the Lincoln a look-over. It's in as rough shape as I would have expected (the front hood folded in complicated patterns like unfinished origami, the windshield serrated around the edges with glass teeth) but remains unticketed out front of the hotel. It also starts, but with a new sound now warbling up from below the floorboards, a screech of mechanical grief that strikes an identical timbre to that of a Yoko Ono performance from the late seventies. Give the gas a couple of hits to clear the valves and the engine bawls in response as though expressing its concern that I'm behind its wheel once more. Stroke the top of the dashboard to provide it some reassurance and after a time the car lowers its complaint to a weary gurgle.
It's a Sunday morning (the dispiriting clang of church bells to the west, the murmurs and tweets of an externally amplified organ to the east), and despite the sky's burdened clouds, the rain stays where it is for the moment. Roll up Ontario Street and make the turn heading out of town, the wind funneling in through the missing windshield in bites and stabs.
Right onto Fireweed Road and around to its end. Frayed bits of yellow police tape still flapping off a few trunks and the tree that brought the Lincoln to a stop now showing a hacked circle of white flesh, but the place is quiet, returning to itself. While I could just as easily crawl out over the front hood I kick open the driver's side door with my heel and set off on the trail that circles the lake, noting the now familiar landmarks as I pass: Mrs. Arthurs's place, the skeleton of an old sedan tucked among the ferns. It's a long walk, but without the rain less disorienting. The jumble of spruce, birch, and black maples on one side and the lake's scudding brown on the other to let you know where you are.
Take my time, stopping along the path to listen for what the forest would sound like if it didn't know I was here. There's the ridiculous desire to hide in the squelch of fallen leaves and wait for metamorphosis into--into what? Something simple. To live the life of a nut hunter, web builder, berry gulper. To wish never to go back. A man in need of a shave but dressed in clothes exclusively designed in Milan, standing on a mud path passing through a threadbare forest. Making wishes.
I move down toward the lake, every step sending bubbles farting up through the deadfall. When I'm near enough to the water that I can hear it I crouch down behind a low chokeberry bush and look through its hairy leaves. See myself as I would actually appear from the stony beach: a man bundled in a soiled overcoat, peering out white eyed from the bushes. This is what the Lady would have seen had she turned from her daughters bathing in the shallows, her skin puckered from the chill and arms held above her as she wrung out her long hair. She would turn but she wouldn't have to look to know she was being watched. Who was it this time? It never mattered. She'd given up on names a long time ago.
A man with needs, watching from his hiding place. A gentleman this time, perhaps, one who could offer her help, shelter, protection for her children. Or perhaps he could offer her nothing at all. Nothing but the single thing he'd come for, in secret, ashamed at how low he'd allowed himself to stoop and the lies he will later have to tell to those he claims to love. But still he'd come.
And she will let him watch. Let him approach, too, if he has that kind of courage. And if he appears kindly or strong or well off she will send her girls back to their place in the woods and let him speak to her in his lowered voice, although she won't understand the words. But this won't matter either. She's looking for other signs now, the setting of the frame, the light and play of the face that could signal the possibility of truthfulness. Even here in the New World she has no trust of any but her own daughters and herself--no--she's not sure she could even include herself among the truthful anymore. So she'll go with him even if none of the signs are there, and in fact they almost never are. They came only for her silence and her beauty and for the things she will allow. It's not even their brief attention or corner-store gifts that she cares for. It's that after seeing how dark the hearts of men can become she's simply grown too tired to hate them for something so common as this.
I watch her too. Then, when the awareness of the thing exchanged between us finally arrives, I close my eyes and push myself to my feet again, turn, and lurch back up toward the path.
The abandoned cottage, obscured the last time, has even in the few intervening days been largely revealed, the cover of vines, leaves, and creeping shrub now browned and fallen. Slip down to its front deck, where I stand for a moment in the lamenting wind. Everything--the water, the trees, the sky--yielding to a blanketing of winter shadow, a wash of gray you could almost mistake for smoke. It strikes me again that, outside of the dozen or so weeks of overwhelming beauty each year, this country can be ugly as hell.
The front door pushes open as it did before, the floorboards, bookshelves, and walls shuddering as I enter as though a chill has set upon them. Maybe I've been recognized. That Crane face, no question about it. The mildewed couch, amputated dining table, wagon-wheel coffee table, and every book on the shelves seem to lean in a little closer to get a better look.
''It's me,'' I say, and the silence is like an intimate welcome.
I take a seat on the sofa's thinning cushions, the foam stuffing bulging like yellow custard out of holes in the seams. From here the lake looms through the cracked front window, the intervening growth of skimpy evergreens unable to entirely block the view. The same view as my parents must have had, sitting here waiting for a thunder- storm to pass or meal to be prepared. A small living room but large enough for the playing of cards, board games, or chess. It would have been warm in the summer, of course, although it's frigid today, the collected moisture from the cushion beneath me already creeping through overcoat, pants, and boxers, quickly bleeding toward bare bum.
Step over the garbage on the floor and into the galley kitchen. On the counter there's an empty bottle of aspirin, bag of charcoal, a tourist brochure for ''Bobby Orr's Birthplace: The Home of Hockey,'' and a foam box that once contained a Big Mac (how far must it have been transported before being consumed here, in an abandoned lakeside retreat?). There's also, curling and bubbling next to the single sink, a University of Toronto alumni
