one seemed terrified of him or angry or alarmed. No one seemed to think that guy better get out of there or that he was some sort of sexual deviant. No one changed tables or moved farther down the bar at his approach. He wasn’t peculiar. He was normal-sized, normal-voiced, normal, not eccentric. Myers’s wife was normal-sized and normal-faced as well. And Myers too, normal. You never saw so many normal people sitting around calmly looking and not looking at each other.
They walked up broad streets, then narrow ones, fire escapes hanging overhead, water dripping from windows. And they walked by the opera house and the symphony and other cultural spots, museums of various sizes, some small enough to fit in a storefront window, some that took a block to approach and another to leave behind, a band of yammering tourists stamping outside. Inside—once Gray tramped them through some large art edifice—were the regulation objects, bottles and pictures, shipped in and stood up at intervals, identifying haiku on a tag below each one, telling what each one was in desponding abstraction. They wove through rooms, Myers a room or two behind. He stifled his own breathing, which had a distinguishable jagged lag due to a childhood accident. He thought she might recognize the sound and go back. It felt like they were walking through the maze of their own graves at that point.
If she no longer said it, that implied she was saying she didn’t.
She never said she was saying that. She never said she didn’t love him anymore.
Then what was she saying?
She didn’t know, she just didn’t know, and could they go one day, one hour , without an extravagant fight?
That, then her, walking out the door.
After that he didn’t say it anymore and neither did she. Its absence entered and chilled him.
He had a very penetrating stride, this guy. The most varied step Myers had ever seen, as if he suspected there were people trailing him and he wasn’t going to make it easy on anybody. The man continuously changed his pace, sped up, paused, raised an arm to his hat, examined the lines of newspaper machines or looked into a store window, then abruptly broke into an even step. Who knew just what this was about. He’d begin down a long street, then he’d stop, reverse himself as if he’d just remembered some smashed sandwich on his desk and meant to go back and retrieve
it. This set off a whole chain of reactions down the street with her hurrying out of the line of vision and Myers as well. Then just as suddenly the guy would change his mind and go back the other way.
The man left work between 5:25 and 6:10 and to get himself awake he would take a brisk walk. Myers and his wife would follow along. He’d go just about anywhere—by either river, under overpasses, it didn’t matter. He could go on for hours that way.
One night he was walking and he was going on and on, through the turns and sway of the vast park (the one dark blot in the middle of the city, yes, let’s have a stroll there by all means, why not, sure, his wife alone-ish, unprotected), and they went on and on and it got probably to be about eleven at night, and Myers fell asleep. As a matter of fact, before he fell asleep he thought to himself: My God, I’m going to fall asleep, and he did. He just kept going along, dozing, he must have, because the next thing he knew, he crashed into a park map-board and woke up. He didn’t know how long he’d been walking or where he was or how long he’d been asleep, but his wife was gone and Gray was gone. Somehow the man had led her out of there and somehow safely home.
The ground froze. It chipped under their shoes. Gray remained in the Battery area, moving in swift circles until the streets emptied and the place took on an industrial sheen. Dark shapes patched the sky. The street shone like a river. The posters were coming off the walls in paper flakes. Gray walked ahead. Only her shoes made sound—a light squeak now and then,
They walked up broad streets, then narrow ones, fire escapes hanging overhead, water dripping from windows. And they walked by the opera house and the symphony and other cultural spots, museums of various sizes, some small enough to fit in a storefront window, some that took a block to approach and another to leave behind, a band of yammering tourists stamping outside. Inside—once Gray tramped them through some large art edifice—were the regulation objects, bottles and pictures, shipped in and stood up at intervals, identifying haiku on a tag below each one, telling what each one was in desponding abstraction. They wove through rooms, Myers a room or two behind. He stifled his own breathing, which had a distinguishable jagged lag due to a childhood accident. He thought she might recognize the sound and go back. It felt like they were walking through the maze of their own graves at that point.
If she no longer said it, that implied she was saying she didn’t.
She never said she was saying that. She never said she didn’t love him anymore.
Then what was she saying?
She didn’t know, she just didn’t know, and could they go one day, one hour , without an extravagant fight?
That, then her, walking out the door.
After that he didn’t say it anymore and neither did she. Its absence entered and chilled him.
He had a very penetrating stride, this guy. The most varied step Myers had ever seen, as if he suspected there were people trailing him and he wasn’t going to make it easy on anybody. The man continuously changed his pace, sped up, paused, raised an arm to his hat, examined the lines of newspaper machines or looked into a store window, then abruptly broke into an even step. Who knew just what this was about. He’d begin down a long street, then he’d stop, reverse himself as if he’d just remembered some smashed sandwich on his desk and meant to go back and retrieve
it. This set off a whole chain of reactions down the street with her hurrying out of the line of vision and Myers as well. Then just as suddenly the guy would change his mind and go back the other way.
The man left work between 5:25 and 6:10 and to get himself awake he would take a brisk walk. Myers and his wife would follow along. He’d go just about anywhere—by either river, under overpasses, it didn’t matter. He could go on for hours that way.
One night he was walking and he was going on and on, through the turns and sway of the vast park (the one dark blot in the middle of the city, yes, let’s have a stroll there by all means, why not, sure, his wife alone-ish, unprotected), and they went on and on and it got probably to be about eleven at night, and Myers fell asleep. As a matter of fact, before he fell asleep he thought to himself: My God, I’m going to fall asleep, and he did. He just kept going along, dozing, he must have, because the next thing he knew, he crashed into a park map-board and woke up. He didn’t know how long he’d been walking or where he was or how long he’d been asleep, but his wife was gone and Gray was gone. Somehow the man had led her out of there and somehow safely home.
The ground froze. It chipped under their shoes. Gray remained in the Battery area, moving in swift circles until the streets emptied and the place took on an industrial sheen. Dark shapes patched the sky. The street shone like a river. The posters were coming off the walls in paper flakes. Gray walked ahead. Only her shoes made sound—a light squeak now and then,
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