Stray

They live in a museum, their studio a converted storage closet with a double bed, microwave, hotplate and refrigerator. The bathroom and shower are on the third floor, past the Juan Boza gallery. Life there is not comfortable, but it’s cheap, and at night they can roam the darkened galleries, drunk among flag-sized canvases of political fables, a three-foot wooden sculpture of a kneeling woman with a shock of real human dreadlocks and, in the gallery closest to their room, a lone Kandinsky in blues and greens, a woman with insect wings dropping down on an unassuming man in a brown bowler.

Katie imagines the bedroom as a tipped-over cardboard box. Three dark walls are spotted with mold, the ceiling sags and the floor is overlaid by a brown mat carpet that squishes underfoot. But the fourth wall is a floor-to-ceiling sheet of plexiglass, and pulling the shade up is like opening a giant eye over New York Harbor.

Below, sailboats and harbor cops, cruiseliners, the Staten Island ferry, catamarans, garbage scows, barges and freighters, the waterway traffic even at four am crawling like cockroaches in an alley. The Statue of Liberty stands like a green dwarf before the slab faces of Wall Street. Seagulls, sky, the Verrazano and the glowing minarets of Jersey City spewing black magic, incinerators stretching their infernal fingers over the flickering face of the water.

She stands staring out the window, dressed for the club, but not wearing the proper expression. Black water drips from her eyes. Gray cheeks flank red lips. Her heels are red patent leather.

At her feet, Remy sleeps like a puddle of cognac, the muscles in his butt twitching as he dreams of bearkilling. With his stress-free life and relatively low levels of alcohol consumption, the pit bull is the healthiest of the closet’s occupants.

“That was always the deal,” she repeats. “I’m free to see whoever I want. We’re both completely free.”

Clay glances up, then returns his concentration to the scotch in his lap. He sits cross-legged on the bed, and the glass shapes his hands into a perfect circle. A single malt yogi in boozy meditation, made holy by virtue of the fire that softens and helps him to accept.

His response—“I don’t want to be free”—goes unspoken.

Katie arranges the silver bangles which slid up her arms when she covered her face with her hands. Retrieves her drink. Washes out her mouth, crushes the last slivers of ice as her eyes move over the river. When she turns back it is without passion, without fire to color her vision, to make things shimmer and live. Not even the predatory look she sometimes gets during fights or sex.

He fears the orderliness of her thoughts. The efficiency with which she weighs her options. The terrible clarity with which she must see him.

“Do whatever you want,” he tells her. “I don’t care.” Four fingers of scotch, no ice. His only remaining method of attack. To make himself so pathetic that to leave him would be an act of murder. “What is freedom, anyways?” he slurs. “Huh? And how many dicks do you have to get stuck in you before you’re free?”

She’s not shocked. They’ve almost finished the bottle; the malice is right on time.

*

Katie’s job is to take out young lawyers, eat lobster and drink champagne, watch Yankees games from a club box, attend cocktail parties uptown and generally be attractive.

Sometimes she’ll date them, most of the time not. But eventually she finds one she likes.

“He makes me feel things I haven’t felt in a long time,” she tells Clay. “He took me to a protest this weekend, and we’re going to a town hall meeting in Hoboken on Tuesday night. You should meet him. You’d like him.”

She goes out, and he stays in bed reading, shooting tequila and chewing on the same half lemon until his teeth ache. In the silence he considers breaking out the wall of windows, standing on the ledge, eyes all full of water and air, the lights of the city winking from the black and broken bay.

She doesn’t come home that night, or the next day, or the next night. Monday night she calls. “I’m at Mark’s place. I didn’t want you to worry.”

When she returns, she is wearing new clothes, smoking Marlboros and talking about the ballet. He sees himself next to her. Decrepit, a drain. He fills himself with bourbon to simulate verve, wants to speak, preferably to say something shrewd, passionate. But there is nothing inside him except drear and Old Crow.

“You should go out. Meet people.”

“I know people. I don’t like them.”

“Mark is taking me to dinner tonight.”

“Golddigger.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Are you coming home?”
“We’ll see.”

Mark takes her to nice restaurants, brings her gifts, pays her compliments. He is funny, he is handsome. He is going to The Hague to defend Ecuador in a dispute with the United States. He talks about the promise of socialism, drinks two glasses of wine with dinner and always drives her home.

“Do you love him?”

“I don’t know. We’ll see.”

“What about me?”

“Of course I love you.” She presses her cheek to his. Even while he thinks she’s doing it to hide her eyes, he falls into a painless sleep.

*

The paved world is too hot by early June. The first fringe of wet heat is already soaking into the air, up pant legs and dresses, radiating from the pavement, muscular and foul as a tongue.

Just east of the Verrazano, though, there is a point where the sea wind, funneled between Staten Island and Brooklyn, is pushed back by the river’s exhalation of city air. Here, salt wind whips off the thick seeping. This is Remy’s place of recovery. Between the strip of cement devoted to pedestrians and the strip of pavement for bicyclists, a strip of grass for dogs and pigeons, pigeon shit and potato chip bags.

Remy off-leash would chase off the pigeons, roll in the shit, then bark at the foil wrappers. If he must be tied up, he best likes to stand on the stone wall to look towards the sea. He doesn’t track the freighters or sniff the wind, doesn’t lunge at passing gulls. Whatever he dreams about the sea, it draws off his mind but brings him no peace. For a half hour at a stretch he stands taut, expectant, wary.

His humans are quiet here, too. Or when they talk it is not the kind of sound that offends the ear.

“My check-up is on Thursday.” Behind black glasses, her eyes could be unguarded.

“I know. I already took off work.”

“You don’t have to come.” Katie glances out at the ocean, up at the sky, at Remy, then at Clay, who is staring back at her.

“I like your dress,” he tells her. “You look good in blue.”

“Thanks.”

“Did Mark get it for you?”

“Yes.”

“It suits you.”

“Thanks.”

They stand for a while, still as Remy, staring into the sea wind. It is almost noon, the sun throbs, the pescaderos are packing up their tackle boxes. They’ll return after their siesta, closer to dusk when the fish have also napped. The joggers and bicyclists, rollerbladers and powerwalkers are gone. Katie’s hair dances.

“Are you scared?”

“No,” she says. “No more than usual. You? Have you heard anything?”

“Not yet. Maybe they forgot about me.”

“Maybe the war will end before your deferment does.”

“Hm.”

“I still don’t see why you don’t just go back to school. Get a masters in something or other. So what if you have to take out a hundred grand? It’s better than the alternative.”

“Hm.” He looks up to the sky. A gull stretches its wings against the wind, hovering, motionless but striving to make some progress until eventually it wheels like a white kite circling back towards the city. “Sometimes I think I want to go. To see it, you know. If I live, my debts are clear. I’d be free. I could come back and write about it. And if I die, I don’t know. That’s their problem.”

She watches to see if he’s cleaning his thumbnails or staring too earnestly into her face. No. He’s leaning loose against the wall, legs splayed out. His face is relaxed, rather than slack with booze, and cocked to catch the sun.

The minutes pass, and bring with them no particular revelation. “I don’t see how anyone loves anything anymore,” he says. The lack of bitterness in his voice alarms her.

She breathes his despair, recycles it into measured words. “After the second time, I hated my body. Hated the stomach that tried twice to kill me, hated my legs as they shriveled up under the covers, hated my back for aching all day. I hated my scars for healing halfway. I hated my heart because it wouldn’t stop beating. But I never hated life. I cursed it, despaired of it, and I feared nothing more than losing it. Every part of my body wants to live. Don’t you feel that? Do you not love it? Do you not love being alive?”

“This isn’t living. Working all day so we can buy things? That’s not life.”

“What do you want then?”

“I don’t know. Revolt.”

“Why don’t you come with me to law school? There are people who are fighting, Clay. Just because it’s not with bombs and guns doesn’t mean there’s not a war going on. There are armies of people who feel like we do. Human rights, civil rights, labor rights. Economic reform, government reform. Corporate responsibility. Consumer protection. There are fights over fair trade agreements, intellectual property laws, technology transfer, food security. Don’t just sit here rotting. It’s not doing anyone any good. Especially you.”

“Yeah.”

“So?”

“So I don’t feel anything. Anything except disgust, anyways. I don’t want to fight those people. I don’t want anything to do with them. They’re sick. The system is sick. Fighting it, I’d soak myself in sickness, and my despair would eventually outweigh my anger. I just don’t have enough anger in me.”

“Then what do you want?”

“To disappear. Preferably with you. Preferably to Spain, or the south of France. Seriously. I want to apply for political asylum. I’m a refugee. I’ll learn their language and pray to their gods. I don’t care.”

“You don’t have enough money to leave.”

“Stop clogging my pipe dreams,” he smiles. It’s his first smile of the week.

“I could go to school in London. You could live with me, get a job as a waiter or something. What about that?”

“Ugh. London is New York without the sun. I want to go somewhere where the people have some fire in them, you know? When the French got sick of their rich people, they cut off all their heads. I want to hang out with people like that.”

“Well, I could go to culinary school instead, to learn how to carve them up. We could solve world hunger while we’re at it.”

“The rich are too fatty. But I’m sure with some Mediterranean spices you could make them palatable. Lemon juice and capers, a little white wine.”

“Or spicy people fingers with fries and a cold beer.”

“That’d be good. But I don’t think there are even enough rich people to feed the hungry for a day.”

“They’re high in calories. We could serve small portions.”

“True.”

“So let’s leave together. When your deferment is up. I’ve got enough money for both of us to live for a while. When the war is over we can come back, and I can do law school then.”

“Let’s worry about your check-up first.”

“I’m not going to worry about it, Clay. I’m done worrying. I’m just going to live. You do enough worrying for both of us, anyways.”

Clay says nothing. It’s too nice a day.

*

It’s six-thirty on a Saturday evening when Mark comes to the museum. Clay answers the door in a shirt, tie and boxer shorts.

“How do I look, eh?” he besieges the guest. “Upwardly mobile?”

“You look drunk,” Katie answers. “Put your pants on, and take off that tie. It’s creeping me out.”

“It’s important to maintain a professional appearance. Appearances,” he mutters, but loses the thought in a drink. “How’s about a round?”

“No, thank you,” Mark answers. He is calm, sober, and his tie does not seem to give Katie the creeps. He smiles, tries to be a good sport. When they leave he will ask her any number of questions about why she lives in a closet with a raving drunk.

“Mark. Nice tie. You have a very professional appearance.”

“Thanks.”

“It wasn’t a compliment.”

“Let’s go,” Katie cuts in. Gathers keys, wallet, phone, slams them singly into her purse.

“But you haven’t told me yet if you like my professional appearance.” She ignores him.
“Well, you look like a professional, anyways,” he mutters into his drink.

“What?”

“I said you look like a slut.” She’s wearing a sweater, khakis and black flats. They’re going to a gallery opening.

“Simmer down, pal,” Mark inserts, looming, if not with extra height, than with the authority that comes of not being an utter degenerate. Clay looms back, his authority derived from a half bottle of Clan MacGregor.

Then, through the fog, Clay sees the brilliant hilarity in the situation. Mark and Katie want to bang their genitals together, and it’s killing him. He could solve the problem with the turn of a doorknob, maybe a plane ticket. But this is impossible. All Katie has to do is stay. Equally impossible. So in a storage closet in a museum, a ridiculous non-problem with at least two simple solutions is quickly becoming a crisis. He has to laugh.

Because it’s absurd that people who love each other know best how to cannibalize one another. Silly that the person inside and the person outside could resemble each other so little. Funny that he can still laugh and laugh and laugh. He laughs, and sees that misfortune is not an impediment to joy, just a distraction from it.

Laughter because Remy is licking his own ass, and he’s still the most intelligent person in the room.

He laughs because when he stops laughing, he’s going to kill someone.

Still chuckling, he picks up a butcher knife from the sink and shows it to their guest.

Mark begins edging towards the door. Katie glowers.

“Clayton. Hathaway.”

He stops laughing, the mania leaves his eyes. That’s all he wanted. To hear her speaking his name, endlessly repeating it, bringing it to life.

Precisely the sort of existence she intends to avoid.

“Give me that.” He does so unthinkingly. She puts it in her purse, point out so as not to damage the printed canvas. He wants to shred the little bag before it funnels off any more of her care and attention.

“Go,” he mutters. “Don’t come back.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Guess.”

“I’ll be back in three hours. We can play cards.”

“Yeah. See you Monday.”

“After the show I’m coming right back. I promise. Hear me? I said I promise.”

“Fine.”

“Promise me you’re not going to hurt yourself.”

“Define hurt,” he says, one eye closed to pour a precise four fingers.

“You’re not going to kill yourself.”

“I promise no such thing,” he answers, though he knows the moment has already passed. When she leaves he will lie on the couch, drink his drink, and another, if necessary, and that will be that.

“I hate you,” she says.

“Mark, nice to meet you. See you again, gonna stab you right in your stupid pink shirt.”

Mark scowls, but says nothing. Katie pats the dog and leaves, and Clay whips his tumbler into the window. The plastic wall is shatterproof and the tumbler strikes on edge so the only result is a thump and an unsatisfying bounce to the floor. An asterisk crack in the window, whiskey soaking into the carpet.

He retrieves the glass and finds it unchipped, a well-made thing.

He sits on the bed holding the empty, well-made glass. It pleases him. Pleased, waiting, he is sure that something will happen. Soon he gets up, pours and drinks a shot, cracks ice from the tray, fixes a reasonable drink and returns to the bed. Something, something will happen.

Remy gets up to make room for him. Though it’s past his bedtime, he allows Clay to fondle his ears, flatters him with a few thumps of the tail. A young dog, he doesn’t know much yet of the psychological effects of disability, but he is empathetic, and has protective feelings for the two-legger who fills his bowl and shares his walks.

When Clay puts down his full glass and looks towards the window, Remy knows how far diminished are his chances for a restful night.

But he is patient. Katie will come home. They will drink their drinks, make their sounds, shed their false skins and wrestle and moan until they fall asleep. Tomorrow will come to the tiny room, and tomorrow night all three will return here to rest, all three of them wound up together.

He understands that we love what is nearest, that we must love the people we have on hand. He knows because he was once a stray himself.