Hellgoing Stories Part 3

Want some hot sauce? They said. Free hot sauce!

Marco took one and handed it to Sam, who put it in her purse.

Hot sauce? Another of the girls said to Sam.

I just took some, Sam told her.

Have some more, insisted the girl. She was overtanned and grinning away, making a point of meeting Sam's eye as if they were flirting with each other. She'd been told to do this, Sam realized, had probably been staring into the eyes and grinning into the faces of countless strangers all day long. The girl was on auto-pilot.

So Sam accepted another bottle as Marco and the editor brushed cheeks goodbye. As the editor pulled away, a girl tried to give her hot sauce.

No, no, said the editor, moving down the sidewalk. Sam admired the easy way she held up her hand; easy, yet with authority - That is the way you use a hand, thought Sam - stopping the girl mid-proffer.

But Marco accepted the hot sauce on the editor's behalf and handed this one to Sam as well.

Moments after they'd disentangled themselves from the girls in white, Sam looked back to see a young policeman approaching the group. The girls fluttered whitely to intercept him like seagulls expecting to be fed.

Put the sauce away, girls, she heard the young cop say before she and Marco rounded the corner.

No kites and no sauce, Sam remarked as they approached the car.

Pardon? said Marco.

She shouldn't have said it out loud. It was the kind of thing she would have texted to Marie.

That cop, said Sam. He made the girls put away their sauce.

Well, thank G.o.d for that, said Marco.

THERE WAS JUST one more interview and then Marco was allowed to go back to the hotel for a nap or whatever he wanted to do before meeting up with everyone at the restaurant.

I hate when they make you have dinner before giving a talk, he told Sam when they were back in the car.

Sam herself was looking forward to the dinner because the restaurant was new and the fish was supposed to be insanely fresh and even the drinks would be paid for. That showed how impressive Marco was.

Best seafood in town, she told him.

Marco blinked his great, sad eyes. His eyes were so large, he seemed to blink in slow motion.

Those eyes, Marie had texted the day before.

I think he's gay, though, Sam told her. He doesn't give off any heat.

But you can't stuff yourself with seafood and then talk about the human soul, said Marco.

No? said Sam.

And the other thing, said Marco, is I won't be able to drink. Sorry to whine - I know I'm whining - but it's good to be a bit of a brat between interviews; to misbehave before I have to be all gracious and wise. I just like a gla.s.s of wine with meals.

You can't have a gla.s.s of wine before the talk?

I don't like to, no. Marco was gazing up at the building before them. Weren't we just here this morning?

That was live, Sam told him. This is taped. It'll be more in-depth, too, like a couple of hours give or take.

The police are out front now, observed Marco, noticing cruisers all along the street. They're going to fence off the broadcasters. Smart move.

Sam gave a neutral smile.

HER PHONE HAD been vibrating intermittently in her purse like some tiny panicked creature and the technician frowned at her for taking it out because the three bottles of hot sauce made such a racket when she did. There's no microphone in here, Sam wanted to bark at him. Radioland can't hear my sauce. So keep your frowns to yourself.

There was a text from Marie wanting to know, Did you text him back? And a text from Alex saying, Where are you living these days? Which was a way of asking if she still had a roommate. Because all Alex ever had to say to her was a form of the question: Where can we f.u.c.k? Or else: When can we f.u.c.k? Or the statement: I a.s.sume we will be f.u.c.king shortly. Which was usually correct. And as she was pondering these questions and statements a message popped up from her brother which read: Procedure complete, now undergoing post-maintenance testing.

The interviewer was a woman this time, a woman with one of the best voices on the radio, a voice like nougat. She did not look at all like she sounded, which shouldn't have bothered Sam, she knew, but which did. The interviewer, who sounded like a s.e.xy professor on the radio, looked like somebody's mad aunt in real life. She wore pink Crocs and velour pants covered in cat hair. Sam never thought of being middle aged - she tried not to - because it made her weepy, which in turn made her feel guilty. She knew she, herself, could easily give in to velour and Crocs, she knew how happy she might one day be made by cats, she knew how simple it would be to let go, to have wrinkles appear on her face and say: Oh well - to h.e.l.l with it then. She could do it in a heartbeat; she could give up on youth like it was nothing. It was the easy way out, like a gun was, kind of. Terrifying in the same way.

So she didn't think about it.

Marie kept texting in an effort to be a good friend. She was texting: Remember you are blameless. And a couple of minutes after that: You made no promises or vows to anybody. And then: No one expects anything of you.

Sitting in the booth with the technician, Sam just wanted to close her eyes and visualize the s.e.xy professor as the interviewer spoke, but her phone kept jumping and the interviewer kept asking Marco questions and Marco kept saying things like: We live in torment at our own carnivorous nature. We are divided beings. We are shaped to feed upon our fellow creatures, just as they are shaped to feed one another. We tie ourselves in knots to avoid the reality. We keep our butchers in the backroom, where we don't have to view their work. We treat the people who feed us like pariahs. We don't want to know. We are ashamed. We can't abide the sin. We dress our dogs in clothes, like us. To convince ourselves we are confreres.

When you say "sin" - began the nougat-voiced interviewer.

Sin! Interrupted Marco. And you've hit on it exactly. It is the first sin, the ultimate sin. Historically, in religious terms, we've supposed that sin was s.e.x, but s.e.x is just the smallest part of it. The real anguish resides in our break with the animals. We don't want to harm them; yet we're made to harm them. This is why they are innocent and we can never be. We can never be. This is what it is to be human - to be human is to be fallen.

I'm not sure I get it, confessed the interviewer.

Sam, however - shifting forward, hot sauce chattering away in her purse - Sam got it.

BACK ON THE sidewalk, three policemen stood together watching them walk past.

h.e.l.lo, said one to Sam.

Good afternoon, said Marco as Sam stalked past all four of them.

HE ASKED TO use her phone in the car, and then had to ask how to use it, and Sam wondered if he was one of those people who held up cellphone usage as an example of how the world was going to h.e.l.l and vowed to never succ.u.mb, unlike the brainless ma.s.ses, to such foolishness. Like the courtly CEO where Sam worked who had never not had secretaries to make his phone calls anyway. She tried not to stare at Marco while he spoke to whomever he was speaking to, but she wasn't succeeding. She just gave in and stared at him. She was getting the feeling that everything Marco said - be it to interviewers or the editor or the party on the other end of the phone - was the same thing. Was part, that is, of one long, unspooling thought that never ended, that had no paragraph breaks, that refused to naturally conclude, as in polite conversation. And n.o.body asked him to give it a rest, n.o.body ever said, Yeah, okay, Marco, but we are talking about going to the beach now. n.o.body broke in to ask what he wanted on his pizza.

Or if they did, Marco did not let himself get sidetracked.

Marco was saying, Don't give him that. Lovey, don't give him that. I know he wants it, but don't give him that. It's bad for him. No, it's up to you. You are the one in charge and it is bad for him. Don't argue with me, lovey, this is your responsibility. No, no, no. Okay? No. No no no.

Now Marco was noticing how Sam was neglecting to pretend not to listen to him. She was driving, but she kept looking over at every other word.

I hope that was okay, said Marco when he was finished, holding the phone out to Sam. It was on my calling card.

Can you just stick it in my purse, please?

Marco opened her purse.

Look at all your hot sauce! he exclaimed.

SHE DROPPED MARCO off after battling the traffic and negotiating countless new detours, and now only had an hour until she picked him up again. So Sam walked to the back of the hotel, where there was a park with benches for people to sit and watch the ferries chug back and forth across the lake.

She brought Marco's book along because she was supposed to have read it weeks ago.

She found a free bench and texted Marie.

Someone is messing with me. Someone is rattling my cage.

Then Alex wrote, as if in response, I thought I'd go to the Marco thing tonight.

He was one of those men who didn't wear deodorant and somehow got away with it. Or maybe he wore some kind of natural deodorant that didn't really mask his sweat. The point was, Sam could always smell him. It was not a bad smell; it was just entirely him, his bodily self-announcement. It was his presence; fulminating beneath his skin and emerging from his pores. You knew when he was there, and when he had been there.

Whenever that smell hit Sam, her uterus would contract with sudden violence. Like it was hurling itself against her abdomen in mute, uterine frenzy.

At the next bench, a man was seducing a woman and Sam could hear the occasional low-voiced inanity. I am the kind of person, he was saying to the woman, who is very aware of his energy.

A policeman on an actual horse appeared out of nowhere and clopped his way past Sam, claustrophobically close, a liquid wall of chestnut haunch.

This world brings ent.i.ties together so they can feel joy, the man on the bench was saying.

The cop on the horse slowed its clop as he approached the couple. He was wearing a helmet, which Sam thought made good sense. It struck her that probably everyone who rode horses should wear helmets. Because who knew what a horse might do?

A text from her brother read: Unfortunately it looks like - before Sam stopped reading it and put her phone away.

She picked up Marco's book and opened to the first page. The cop was murmuring something to the man - the seducer - and what the cop was saying was making the man surprised. The seducer started speaking in high-pitched exclamations. Sam held the book in front of her face. After a moment or two she saw from her peripheral vision that the man, still exclaiming and gesturing, was getting to his feet.

The cop made some small, indeterminate movement - Sam couldn't say if it was a gesture or if the cop had physically made contact of some kind. Either way, the seducer sank back onto the bench.

SHE ORDERED ONE gla.s.s of red wine and one gla.s.s of white and carried them across the room to Marco. Then she had to stand there awhile and wait for him to distinguish and differentiate Sam's expectant presence from all the other expectant presences that had cl.u.s.tered around him after his talk.

Eventually his eyes did a tour of the circle of faces. Sam! he greeted.

Red or white? she mouthed.

Very kind, said Marco, allowing his soupy brown eyes to pour appreciation into hers. He reached for the white.

Sam blank-smiled and brought the red to her own lips, holding his eye as she receded from the cl.u.s.ter. Marco, looking stymied, watched her go. He was paying extra attention now because of the way she had behaved in the car and in the restaurant. She hadn't said much. But she'd said enough to let him know her feelings toward him were taking on a purplish tinge of the unprofessional.

Sam, called Marco before she had completely receded from the circle. You don't have to disappear.

The members of Marco's conversational klatch were now gazing like cows back and forth between Marco and Sam with a total lack of interest. Waiting brainlessly for the exchange to be over.

I'm not going anywhere, Sam a.s.sured Marco.

She turned and walked directly into Alex's looming chest. Her wine sloshed and some of it splattered to the floor, but somehow didn't get anywhere on him, which was so typical. The smell - like fresh pelt - hit her hard. She craned her neck to peer up at him and her uterus shook itself awake like a dog.

Clumsy, said Alex, whose one-note mode of flirtation had always been personal insult. She understood then the whole affair had been about efficiency. This was how you sinned and took your punishment all at once.

He smiled down at Sam, allowing his smell to settle all around her.

What? Sam said.

What? said Alex back.

Here was yet another easy way out - like stepping off a cliff. Sam cleared her throat in order to be heard.

"When can we f.u.c.k?" she said.

Alex's eyes actually bulged and he hunched forward, abruptly telescoping his height in a way that appeared spastic and involuntary. Whoa, whoa, whoa! he whispered. If he had been carrying some kind of sack around with him, he might have thrown it over Sam's head.

She turned away from him to check her phone, ignoring the howls from her lower abdomen. There was another text from her brother, starting Did you - so she put it away and moved toward the bar.

MARCO IS AN animal, she had texted Marie during the talk. She'd been thinking he had eyes like moose: puzzled and stupid and bulgy. And his silky curls shining under the spotlight made her think of the poodle she had growing up; a poodle named Arfer. Do tell! Marie wrote back. Marie had her own interpretation of everything. Transmitting her thoughts to Marie was like cutting the string off a kite, allowing the wind to yank it around in any and every direction; relinquishing ownership.

And after they arrived at the dinner, the blowsy editor had approached her and said, Sam, I was trying to get in touch with you for the last hour to drop off something for Marco but I wasn't able to get through on your phone.

And Sam, who'd had her ringer turned off since the moment on the park bench with the police horse clopping past, stared at the editor's swelling jowls and told her, My father was having his heart taken out. And that was all she had to say, the editor didn't even let her finish. The editor's jowls drooped another couple centimetres - she was almost not middle-aged anymore, Sam abruptly realized; the editor was almost actually old - and she terrified Sam by lurching forward and holding Sam in her billowy arms a moment.

IT WAS VERY late in the evening when Marco sought her out. He had made it clear all day he wanted to be rested for the flight tomorrow morning. Don't let me linger too long, he instructed. And for the love of G.o.d, don't let me drink too much. Two, three gla.s.ses of wine. Don't let anyone put a gla.s.s of scotch in front of me, or I'm toast. I can't handle the jet lag the next day - at my age it's just crippling.

And Sam had ignored him for most of the night.

He found her at a table drinking with a couple of interns from another house. He had to lean past her chair and insert himself into the frothy, college-girl conversation, which was mostly gossip about older - but not too much older - colleagues where they worked. I think it's time to go, said Marco, sounding as if he was the one minding Sam instead of the other way around. She got up without a word - busily draining her drink as she stood - and followed him to the parking lot.

I shouldn't drive, I am completely s.h.i.t-faced, explained Sam. But how about I call you a cab.

She grabbed her phone and saw there was a voicemail from her brother.

Actually, she told Marco, it's pretty easy to flag one down.

He gazed down the street. The hotel sign was blazing in the distance like a signal fire. It might be nice to walk, he said.

Oh, they'd kill me if I let you walk home by yourself.

Then, Sam, said Marco. Please don't let me walk home by myself.

They walked. Sam hobbled along for a moment, taking off her high heels, and went from being about even with Marco's armpits to meeting him at mid-chest. Now she was at nipple height. Psychic text to Marie - Hey Marie: nipple height.

I want to say, Marco told her once Sam had worked her shoes off. I appreciate your care these past couple of days. I'm sorry, if I ever seemed distant at all.

Oh - distant, repeated Sam.

These junkets, continued Marco, they actually require a great deal of energy and concentration for me. I'm an introvert by nature. To be chauffeured around, speaking into microphones, getting up in front of crowds - it's wearing. I feel I have to conserve energy at every spare moment.

Uh-huh, said Sam.

Marco turned his liquid eyes toward the looming hotel sign, which didn't seem to be getting much bigger as they advanced. I'm saying if I was rude to you at any point. Or inconsiderate.