Blue Field(9)

I’m not shouting. But if you want me to I will.

They stepped aside to let a dishevelled man pushing a cart of rags pass. Fast-moving figures like wasp-filled jars buzzy with energy approached and vanished behind. Some enchanted evening. The drink, but maybe also labyrinthitis. Or cerebellar tumors like the diagrammed nodules she needed to spiff pronto in the next week for a particularly picky textbook-consortium client—just thinking about the job wearied her to the point of exhaustion so she let Jane grip her hand and tow her through the wait-line at the taqueria counter, past the carts selling pirated handsets and off-off medications, the vegan automat. Near the pocket-library Marilyn managed to loop her arm through Jane’s and halted, halting Jane. The sidewalk continued, though—it appeared to eddy out from under them while Jane appeared to feign ignorance. Above and beyond the nearby bridge the freeway splashed more traffic and, higher still, dragonfly helicopters slalomed among the condo sky-plinths. Barges slid below on the oily river. Anyway, Jane said, with her free hand scooping Marilyn’s curls off her clammy forehead. It’s you and me now.

He was being polite, Marilyn said. Giving us our space. Or do you not even know what polite is?

Smatterings of applause like firecrackers broke out and a group of buskers began to crackle notes that sounded like glaze cracking on a cup. Marilyn, Jane said with a laugh. Are we having a f*cking fight?

No we’re not. Wait, I’m sorry. Yes. Yes we are. Fuck yes.

Jane’s arm slackened in Marilyn’s. A falsetto of sirens sang out on a nearby street and she recalled another busy sidewalk, five years ago, just before Jane high-tailed it out of town for thirteen months, lank with misery. Some trouble—pregnant? Hard to hear. Too much noise. Marilyn had coughed and excused herself. You bitch, Jane said after her as Marilyn scurried off. Call me. But Marilyn had work and more work and her Amir-trouble too—Amir the poet-painter, sweetheart of several seemingly serene co-habitation months before he transplanted to the West Coast with a clean-break vengeance of which she hadn’t thought him capable. And before Amir she’d had her Stephen-months. But she’d always had Jane. Right? Jane pregnant? Not possible. And then not possible but somehow cowardly true Marilyn’s not calling. Jane’s counter-silence lasted a month—crazy, impossible—which stretched to seven weeks then the time away that Rand had just questioned her about. Call me, you bitch. But in the end it was Jane who’d called.

The street sirens neared and a security pod whipped past on their PTs. Jane gently unhooked her arm from Marilyn’s. Unsupported, she swayed on her feet. What if Jane had never called? Marilyn’s mind suddenly foamed. Panic flooded her throat.

Wait, she said again. I’m sorry. Really sorry.

Liar, Jane said with some tenderness, and added a conciliatory hip-check. You’re a menace, Marilyn.

A menace all right. Each day during Jane’s absence had increased Marilyn’s paralysis. Six months after their meet-up on the sidewalk it was Jane’s older sister, running into Marilyn in a coffee shop, who’d finally alerted her. Jane in the Pacificas while Marilyn mostly squirrelled away in her hidey hole, in thrall to a mercifully dispassionate precision regarding the articular capsule and sacral nerve. Until Jane initiated the truce. Back from her adventure, her good works, but the same-Jane in that—with the exception of their soon-to-be shared unremarkable Greg—her guys bore names and faces Marilyn rarely troubled herself with except maybe over popcorn before the start of a movie. How’s Colin? What’s up with your Magana? And Jane would only clam.

Now Marilyn’s head reeled. She needed to lie down. I’m a f*ck-up, she said. I know it. But can we please just keep going?

Two laughing girls sheared by and a filthy child darted after them, shaking a cup. The buskers resumed busking and Marilyn imagined each musician beneath their clothes, tambourining their bone suits. With a sudden massing of helicopters above the river, light strewed on the festive filthy current and crumbling aqueduct. Marilyn pictured herself and Jane as old women hunched like aged crows on the river’s far bank, eyes hooded and watching—ruthlessly watching—their younger selves preen past.

Sure, Jane said. But you better crash at my place.

Jane and Jane and Jane, Marilyn thought. She’d let her parents go as if they were strangers, unaccompanied and uncomforted to their deaths. Her mother in intensive care, alone except for medicals in the middle of the night. Marilyn’s father frantic with grief and beelining unattended to the nearest crowd for cold solace on a rush-hour subway ride he otherwise had no need of taking. And Jane—Marilyn had abandoned her once too.

Marilyn slunk forward, hoping her friend might follow for a change. Right, she said, mimicking an airy tone. She hoped! She said, Let’s just not talk about what I never did.





      Part Two





9


Jane knelt on the rollicking deck and pulled an item from her toolbox. She reached out her hand. A small silicone ring studded her palm. Here, she said. Allow me.

Bile clawed Marilyn’s throat. A tangle of grey messed the horizon and screaming gulls lurched in the wind. Save it, she said.

Jane’s torso seemed to flick back and forth as the boat bucked. She stretched her arm farther in Marilyn’s direction and shook it. Just take it, Jane said.

Only a few excursions left—maybe only today’s—before the late season slammed shut the whole enterprise until next summer. But Marilyn’s planned big dive now looked like major asshat. What couldn’t go wrong? Motion sick. A blown O-ring in one of her tank valves and lucky her she’d failed to restock her kit. A loud round with her husband over her apparent unprepared bullshit before he skulked into the cabin where the crew and other divers congregated out of the bluster in a space so tight it seemed teeth might knock. Leaving Jane to the rescue. Although something of a novice still, she was fully suited already, her black hood pinching her face and whitening her lips. Unlike Marilyn’s, Jane’s rig was ready and lashed to the boat’s hull with bungee cords. Jane closed her fingers now on the proffered ring. You’re right, she said. Call it. You’re stressed. Or dive with me instead. Very chill, like yesterday. I promise.