'And from Junieh to Beirut, what do I do?' Bill said.
'Taxi distance. Take a taxi.'
'Will they overcharge me?'
'Of course.'
'What about the holes in the boat? All repaired?'
A round of amusement here, the others sharing some joke without a word or glance.
'Don't worry about the holes.'
'All repaired?' Bill said.
'The holes are well above the waterline.'
'We don't speak about the holes,' another customer said.
'The holes are but details,' the clerk said.
Bill sniffed the grounds at the bottom of his cup, trying to outfox the pain, maneuver past it.
'Now what about the truce? Does it look serious this time?'
'They're all serious. You can't look at a cease-fire and say this one lasts, that one has no chance. They're all serious and they never last.'
'But does the truce affect the safety of the ferry? Do the terms of a truce include gunboats at sea?'
'The sea is nothing,' the clerk said.
'We don't speak about the sea,' the other customer said.
'The sea is a detail compared to the land.'
He paid for his ticket with traveler's checks and the clerk asked him if he had a visa. Bill did not. The clerk asked him if he had a waiver from the State Department and Bill had never heard of such a thing.
'Never mind. There is always a way.'
'What's the way?' Bill said.
'When you get to Junieh you go to passport control and you will see a man from the Lebanese Forces. Always there is someone. He has a uniform, a rubber stamp and an ink pad. Tell him you're a writer.'
'Okay, I'm a writer.'
'Tell him you would like press credentials. Maybe he suggests some money will change hands. Then he stamps something on a piece of paper and you are now under the protection of the main Christian militia.'
'And I don't need a visa to get into the country.'
'You are completely free to enter.'
'And how much money is changing hands?'
'If you are willing to pay to get into a city like Beirut, I don't think you care how much.'
He stood on deck and was surprised to see them come aboard, easily a hundred people, some with children, with infants pouched in sleep across a breast or shoulder. The gulls rocked high in the burning light. He thought it was touching and brave and these people were dear to him, families, cartons, shopping bags, babies, the melodious traffic of a culture.
He thought he ought to formulate a plan, maybe something along the following lines.
Take a taxi from Junieh to Beirut. Bargain with the driver. Pretend to know the area and the fastest route and the standard price for the trip. Find a hotel in Beirut and ask the manager to hire a car and driver. Bargain with the driver. Speak knowledge -ably about the layout of the city and try to give the impression you've done this many times. Show him your map. He had a map he'd bought after picking up his boat ticket but it was odd that he'd been forced to go to three shops before finding a map of Beirut, as if the place no longer qualified, or had consumed all its own depictions. Show him your map. Go to the southern slums, and this is where Bill's plan grew soft and dim but he knew he would eventually walk into the headquarters of Abu Rashid and tell them who he was.
Bill has never walked into a place and told them who he is.
They were still boarding. The light was the kind that splits the sky, a high sulfur spearhead fading into night. He went to find his compartment, which consisted of three wire hangers and a bunk. He grew dizzy again and lay down, his forearm over his face to keep the light out. The boat whistle sounded, making him think it was nice, inside the pain, that boats still have whistles that seem to call a song. He thought he was resting well, having a good rest. He thought the pages he'd done showed an element of conflict, the wrong kind of exertion or opposition, a stress in two directions, and he realized in the end he wasn't really thinking about the prisoner. Who is the boy, he thought.
It was writing that caused his life to disappear.
No blood to head.
He thought of the time, when was it.
Can you wait two shakes.
He fell away from the pain and tried not to return.
He thought of the time, when was it, sitting in a taxi on the way to Idlewild it was called then and the driver said, 'I was born,' right, and the point is that we were going to get there about two and a half hours before flight time due to some typical personal mixup and the driver said, 'I was born under the old tutelage the earlier the better,' and he told himself at the time be sure to remember this line to recite to a friend or use in a book because these were the important things, born under the old tutelage, and it made his heart shake to hear these things in the street or bus or dime store, the uninventable poetry, inside the pain, of what people say.
He wanted devoutly to be forgotten.
He fell away again, steeply this time, and changed his mind about not returning but he'd forgotten the line, never told it, never used it, maybe thirty-five years ago, Kennedy was Idlewild, time was money, the farmer was in the dell, so steeply it scared him, made him try hard to return.
His father. Can you wait two shakes.
His father. I keep telling you and telling you and telling you.
His mother. I like it better with the sleeves rolled down.
He could hear his breathing change, feel a slowness come upon him, familiar though never felt before, an old slow monotone out of the history of shallow breathing, deeply and totally known.
Measure your head before ordering.
His father. We need to have a confab, Junior.
He knew it completely. The glow, the solus. And it became the motion of the sea, the ship sailing morningward toward the sun.
The gashed hillside above Junieh was clustered with balconied buildings that looked red-fleshed in the early light. Down by the seafront a few open-sided trucks were parked near the disembarking point, stocked with food and drink. Once the passengers were all ashore the cleaning crew boarded and an old man with a limp took the cabins along the starboard side on the upper deck. When he came to the man lying in the bunk he looked at the bruised and unshaved face and the dirty clothes and he put a gentle hand to the pale throat, feeling for the slightest beat. He said a prayer and went through the man's belongings, leaving the insignificant cash, the good shoes, the things in the bag, the bag itself, but feeling it was not a crime against the dead to take the man's passport and other forms of identification, anything with a name and a number, which he could sell to some militia in Beirut.
He heard a car door slam on the gravel road and then the sound of the car driving off and he thought a moment before turning to look out the window behind the kitchen table. Because who could it be coming down on foot? The rare visitor drives in. He was at the sink doing a scouring job on a skillet and couldn't see anyone from this angle but didn't bother changing position because whoever it was would appear in the window sooner or later, somebody selling God or the wilderness or the end of life on earth, or they wouldn't. The rare visitor comes bumping down the dirt trail in a van or pickup to deliver something or repair something and it is usually a familiar face and scuffed shoes.
Scott did three or four more strokes with the scouring pad and glanced again and it was Karen, of course, looking not so different from the first time he'd ever seen her, a cloud dreamer on a summer's day, someone drifting out of Bill's own head, her tote bag dragging on the ground.
He remained at the sink. He ran the water over the skillet, then scoured some more, then ran the water, then scoured, then ran the water. He heard her come up the steps and open the door. She walked into the hallway and he ran the water, keeping his back to the room.
She said, 'I took the taxi from the bus station instead of calling.
I had just enough money left for the taxi and the tip and I wanted to arrive totally broke.'
