Our Country Friends(96)
He mounted the cab and took a look at the body next to his. Just a body like his own, a florid respirating thing with its temporary leasehold on life. There were features to be sure, ginger muttonchops surrounded his simple cloth mask, what could have been a keloid scar peeked out long beneath one collar, but it was difficult to assign an age to the truck owner—forties? fifties?—who possessed a kind of indeterminate Danish blondness beneath a red cap that did not signify politics, merely a stump-grinding service up by the state border. They did not say a word to each other. The driver pointed to his mask. “Oh, I think I’ve had it already,” the Actor said. The driver remained silent and stared ahead, until the Actor slipped on his paisley mask, a gift from Dee. The engine started, firm, powerful, dutiful, an American valediction. They drove to the House on the Hill in silence, slid effortlessly across the grass of the front lawn. The Actor did not make eye contact as he climbed out of the cab. That would be offensive given their silence. But the driver turned on the dome light and finally spoke into the air before him, his voice a product of cigarettes, his body cradled around the wheel, pinched by rheumatism. “I didn’t tape you that night with your friend,” he said. “There’s a guy across the river who does that.”
“I’m glad it wasn’t you,” the Actor said.
The driver looked ahead with the low beams of his sleepless eyes. He spoke slowly, as if practicing a foreign language in front of the mirror, accents sometimes falling on the wrong word. “The early stuff, that’s what I like the most,” he said. “When you still wanted it. When you were young. The joy on your face back then. It was a blessing. You had been blessed. The universe celebrated the way you came together, your talent, your hunger, your smile. The way you let us know you were in pain. Honesty and grace. You can try to find something better beyond that, but you won’t. When something extraordinary happens, you don’t let go. Not for another person, not for the world. But that’s what people do. They forget. They let go.”
The Actor nodded. He saw the lights coming on in the main house and the bungalows. Before he slammed his door shut, he bowed shortly, stiffly, like they did on the Japanese reality show. Once, twice. Thank you, good night.
* * *
—
The colonists were witnessing two separate events. First, the rearrival of the Actor after another long absence. He stood before them at the head of the drive, his beard floodlit to religious proportions, the bag from the California vineyard Ed despised static by his feet.
The other event consisted of the black pickup truck thundering through the grass to reconnect with the road beyond, its high beams already writing the next chapter of its odyssey. Nat’s terrific eyesight could make out the single word SUPERDUTY stenciled across its rear.
“Put your mask over your nose!” Masha shouted to the Actor. “Don’t come close!”
The Actor adjusted his mask, his eyes still skirting gravel. He looked out onto the audience and found Dee, who was dressed in a tiny satin blue slip Ed had bought her because it matched the color of her mask. Backlit by the halogen outdoor lights, her hair haloed, her body slight and trembling, she should have been unbearable for the Actor to see. But he merely smiled, the cover of near darkness preventing the colonists from enjoying his laugh lines, the handsome erosion of his face. “Dee, I feel nothing!” he shouted. “Dee, I’ve been working on myself.”
Nat leaned out of her window to better hear the Actor’s apologies. She wished to run down and throw herself into his arms.
“Who was in the black truck?” Senderovsky shouted. “Is that who’s been watching us?”
“He’s a good person,” the Actor shouted back. “He helped me. He means no harm.”
“How can we trust anything you say?” Ed shouted.
They all stood there, frozen, at an impasse. The Actor wanted to draw nearer. These were his friends, after all. They had spent most of quarantine together. “I came to make amends,” he shouted. “To each of you.” He did a head count. “Where’s Vinod?”
The silence continued, the stillness, followed by the crunch of sneakers against gravel. Karen was running just as her trainer back west had taught her, crisp, elegant propulsions, her hands at her side, until she made a hook of the right one, which she would connect, full square, with the Actor’s jaw.
He had been at the receiving end of mock punches behind the camera, and at first joyfully perceived it as such, a prank, an acting-out between pals, between equals, really, given Karen’s lofty successes in the world. But suddenly his head was positioned at an unruly angle to his neck and to the rest of him, and his feet performed a quick tap dance up and down the driveway until they stopped, the known universe tilted, and his head joined his feet on the ground.
As he was recalibrating his consciousness, he heard the little girl running toward him, crying, and just feet away, her mother grabbing her, spinning her around, her shout deafening and rising above the confused susurrations of the small but rapt audience: “Natasha! NO!”
And he thought: I am still loved.
* * *
—
Several days after the Actor’s second (and final) reappearance and his resequestration inside the Petersburg Bungalow, Karen was feeding Vinod gossip and dinner. Ed claimed he could not make a proper dal or anything Gujarati or southern Indian, but he did spice up a consistently brilliant vegetable biryani to Vinod’s standards (he made it with both yogurt and milk in the Lucknow manner), and now his taste buds craved it for every meal, since he had, luckily, never fully lost his sense of taste or smell. What wouldn’t he give for parathas and pickles, though. To Karen, his appetite signified he was “turning a corner,” though he coughed with regularity and exhibited a smudged blue pallor like the electoral thumbprint used to prevent double voting in a poor country. He also had loose motions after every other meal and presented to her loving gaze a set of tired, drowned-looking eyes. Once, after he tried to wipe the toilet seat down after he had made a mess of it, he had fallen and banged his spine hard against the bathroom wall and had sat there stunned for most of the day. Since then, Masha and Karen kept him in bed, budding appetite notwithstanding, and Karen accompanied him on his bathroom runs.