Bridge of Clay(18)

What can we say about him?

Where and how did life begin again the next day?

It was pretty simple, really, with a multitude lying in wait: He woke up in the biggest bedroom in the city.



* * *



—

For Clay, it was perfect, another strange but sacred site: it was a bed, in a field, with the ignition of dawn and distant rooftops; or, more accurately, it was an old mattress, lying faded in the earth.

In truth, he went often (and always on Saturday nights), but it was many months since he’d stayed till morning, in the field behind our house. Even so, it was still an oddly comforting privilege; this mattress had survived much longer than it had the right.

In that spirit all appeared normal when he’d first opened his eyes.

Everything was quiet, the world was still as a painting.

But then it all came stumbling up, and falling down.

What have I gone and done?



* * *



—

Officially it was called The Surrounds.

One practice track, and one adjoining stables.

    But that was years ago, another life.

Back then, this was where all the cash-strapped owners, struggling trainers, and two-bit jockeys came to work and pray: One lazy sprinter. One honest stayer. Please, for the love of God, could just one of them rise above the heap?

What they got was a special gift from the National Jockey Club.

Foreclosure. Devastation.

The plan was to sell it off, but that took the better part of a decade, and typically, as far as the city went, nothing yet had come of it. All that remained was an emptiness—a giant, uneven paddock, and a sculpture garden of household waste: Troubled televisions. Battered washing machines.

Catapulted microwaves.

One enduring mattress.

All of that and more was stationed, sporadically, across the terrain, and while most people viewed it as just another scene of suburban neglect, to Clay it was keepsake, it was memory. After all, this was where Penelope had peered over the fence and decided to live on Archer Street. It was where we’d all stood together one day, with a burning match in a westerly.

Another point of note was that ever since its abandonment, the grass at The Surrounds hadn’t much grown; it was the anti–Bernborough Park: low and gaunt in some areas, knee-high and stringy in others, the latter of which where Clay had just woken up.

Years later, when I asked him about that, he stayed silent for quite a while. He looked over, across this table. “I don’t know,” he said, “maybe it just got too sad to grow—” but he cut the idea off there. For him that was a tirade of sentimentality. “Actually, forget I ever said that.”

But I can’t.

I can’t forget, because I’ll never comprehend: One night he would find pure beauty there.

And commit his greatest mistake.



* * *



—

    But let’s get back to that morning; the first day beyond the Murderer, and Clay lay curled, then straightened. The sun didn’t so much rise as carry him up, and there was something light and lean, in the left-hand pocket of his jeans, beneath the broken peg. He chose for now to ignore it.

He lay across the mattress.

He thought he felt he heard her—

But it’s morning, he thought, and Thursday.

At times like this, thinking of her ached: The hair against his neck.

Her mouth.

Her bones, her breast, and finally, her breath.

“Clay.” A bit louder now. “It’s me.”

But he would have to wait for Saturday.





In the past, she’s there again, utterly unknowing—for Waldek Lesciuszko didn’t so much as breathe in a way that might suggest what he was planning.

The man was meticulous.

Absolutely dormant.

A concert in Vienna?

No.

Often, I wonder what it must have been like for him—to buy the mandatory return ticket, knowing she was only going one-way. I wonder how it was to lie and make her reapply for her passport, as had to be done, every time you left, even if briefly. So Penelope did it, like always.

As mentioned earlier, she’d been in concerts before.

She’d gone to Kraków. Gdańsk. East Germany.

There was also the time she’d traveled to a small city by the name of Nebenstadt, west of the Curtain, but even that was spitting distance from the East. The concerts were always high but not-too-high affairs, because she was a beautiful pianist, and a brilliant one, but not a brilliant one. She usually made the trips alone, and never failed to return at the allotted hour.

Until now.



* * *



—

This time her father encouraged her to take a bigger suitcase, and another jacket. In the night he added some extra underwear and socks. He also fed an envelope inside the pages of a book—a black hardcover, which was one of a pair. The envelope held words and money:

    A letter and American dollars.

The books were then wrapped in brown paper.

On top, in weighty handwriting, it said, FOR THE MISTAKE MAKER, WHO PLAYS CHOPIN BEST OF ALL, THEN MOZART, AND BACH.

When she picked up her luggage in the morning, it was immediately, obviously heavier. She’d started to unzip it and check, when he said, “I added a small gift, for the road—and you’re in a rush.” He hurried her out the door. “You can open it on the train.”