Players

5

They discussed the sunset awhile, sitting on the deck with junk food and drinks. It was better than the previous day's sunset but lacked the faint mauve tones, according to Ethan, of the day before yesterday. They went inside and ate dinner, slowly, an uncoordinated effort. Jack complained that they were talking about the food while eating it, that they talked about sunsets while looking at them, so on, so forth. It was beginning to get on his nerves, he said. He used his semihysterical voice, that exaggerated whine of urban discontent. They sat by the fire after dinner, looking at magazines. Jack found a six-month-old New York Times. He read aloud from a list of restaurants cited for health code violations, chanting the names and addresses.

'We need wood,' Ethan said.

'Wood.”

'Bring in wood.”

'Wood,' Jack said.

'In bring,' Pammy said, 'Put pile.”

'Wood, wood.”

'Fire come,' she said. 'Make big for heat the body.”

In the morning they drove over the causeway, their hair flattening in the wind, and then across the bridge to the mainland. The sky was everywhere. Pammy sat behind the men, smiling at the backs of their heads. Weathering had given the houses a second, deeper life, more private, a beauty that was skillfully spare, that had been won. Boulders in brown fields. The kids here, on bikes, barefoot. She scanned carefully for traces of water, eager to be surprised by it, to have it come up suddenly, an avenue of hard blue between stands of pine, sunlight bouncing on the surface. The kids on bikes were lean and blond, a little less than well-fed, a certain edge, she thought, to the way they returned her smile, looking hard at the car and the travelers, eyes narrow in the sun.

In Blue Hill they visited a married couple Ethan knew, three children, a dog. Leaving, she and Jack waited by the car while Ethan exchanged prolonged goodbyes with his friends. Jack was looking at her.

'I'm not really gay,' he said.

'If you say so, Jack.”

'I'm not, it's true.”

'It's your mind and body.”

'I should know, right?”

Late that afternoon she stepped out of the shower and felt pain, momentary pressure, at the side of her head. She would be dead within weeks. They'd force her to go through a series of horrible tests but the results would be the same every time. She was depressed, standing in a towel, her body slowly drying, dying. Waste, what a waste. She felt awful about Lyle. It would be easier for her to accept if she weren't leaving someone behind. Thank God no kids. She dressed and went outside.

After dinner they took the remaining wine and some brandy out to the deck. It was the mildest night they'd had. Jack was restless and decided to take the garbage over to the dump instead of waiting for morning. He got a flashlight and went up the path to the car, dragging two large plastic bags.

'He's right,' Ethan said. 'We can't seem to do anything without discussing it at the same time.”

'Vacation,' she said. 'That's what people do.”

'I hadn't realized we were doing it to the extent we were.”

'Your German mouth is so serious.”

'Maybe that's the secret meaning of new places.”

'What is?”

'Quiet, I'm working it out.”

'I don't want to hear.”

'It concerns self-awareness,' he said. 'I'll give you the rest later.”

'God, stars.”

'The clearer everything is. That has something to do with it too.”

'Look at them, millions.”

'I am.”

'Talk about them,' she said. 'Quick, before Jack comes back.”

Much later there were long silences between periods of conversation. Jack brought out extra sweaters, then three blankets. When the wind rolled through the tops of trees, Pammy had trouble understanding the sound in its early Stages, that building insistence of surf.

Later still, in some perfect interpenetration of wine and night air, she drifted through a more congenial region, a non-space, really, in which immaculate calm prevailed. Between moments of near-sleep she felt her mind alive in the vivid chill. Clarity rang through every sparse remark. When Ethan laughed briefly, an idiot grunt, she felt she knew what tiny neural event had caused that sound. There was total order in the night.

Then she was sluggish and dumb. She wanted to be in bed but hadn't the will to get up and go inside. She kept edging into some unstable phase of sleep. Her elbow slipped off the inside of the chair arm, causing her to snap awake. Everything was different after that, a struggle.

'God, the stars,' Jack said.

It occurred to Pam that Ethan rarely talked to Jack. He addressed Jack by talking about furniture, movies, the weather. That, plus third person. He said things to Pammy that were meant for Jack. Sometimes he read an item aloud from a newspaper or repeated a phrase spoken by a TV newsman, repeated it in a certain way-meant for Jack, some fragmentary parable. She didn't think this revealed as much about the two men involved as it did about people living together, their lesions of speech and demeanor. Pammy and Lyle had their own characteristics, of course. Pammy and Lyle, she thought. We sound like a pompom girl and a physics major. Or chimps, she thought. The names of chimps learning language with multicolored disks. She drank more wine, watching Ethan make a series of preliminary hand flourishes.

'New places, when they're really new, really fresh and new, make you more aware of yourself. This can be dangerous.”

'I want my sleeping bag,' Jack said.

'All this stuff is flashing your way. It's like a mirror, ultimately. You end up with yourself minus all the familiar outward forms, the trappings and surroundings. If it's too new, it's frightening. You get too much feedback that's not predetermined.”

'Want sleep out,' Jack said. 'Air, wind.”

'Fear is intense self-awareness.”

'Like today, earlier,' Pammy said, 'when I thought I had something wrong, I thought me, me, my tissue, my inner body. But it's easier to die alone. Kids, forget about.”

'Ground,' Jack said. 'Sleep, earth, creature.”

Ethan ran the side of his index finger along his throat, thoughtfully, and up over the point of his chin, many times- an indication of ironic comments in the offing, or pseudo wisdom perhaps, or even autobiography, which, in his framework of slanting planes, was itself determinedly ironic. They both waited. It was the middle of the night. Water closed around the rocks near shore, audibly, finding lanes.

'You people here.”

Jack went inside, returning with a sleeping bag, which he tossed on the deck. Everything was happening slowly now. Jack went around lighting candles. Jack paced, imitating a tiger. Pammy was aware that he was seated again, finally. They drank awhile in silence.

'I'm slightly lantern-jawed,' she said.

They seemed to laugh.

'No, really, people, I'm slightly lantern-jawed. It's all right. It's, so what, no problem, long as I accept it.”

'Pam-mee.”

'So, you know, so what? When you think of other people's, what they have to accept type thing. And it's slight, just hardly noticeable, I know that. So you accept. And you live. You simply everyday live.”

'She's not about to blow her cookies, I hope.”

'Your sleeping bag gets the brunt if I do.”