The Remote Island by Bryan Christian Today on Hooksexup's TV blog: Don't make Charlie Sheen angry, Candy Man. You wouldn't like Charlie Sheen when he's angry.
She had felt a peculiar kind of exhilaration since early April. It was that heady uneasiness that came with the first stages of being madly in love, only she wasn't madly in love. Not with anyone at least. She had actually just ended something.
She felt that she was flying off the handle, falling to pieces, but rather than distress her, it made her giddily amused. She pictured herself careening around, floating off maps.
It seemed as though the old prescriptions no longer held.
She was keeping odd hours, taking baths in the morning, then doing laundry. Standing in the light of open windows and folding it. Not starting to work until six p.m.. (She was a graphic designer and worked from her home.) From far away, she felt that she should be concerned. But it was some other presence saying that. She pictured a woman sitting in a blue armchair by a window saying that. Who was she? But she didn't want to listen. She shut the door to that room. She suddenly didn't mind, she found, behaving somewhat rudely.
When would the old stipulations fall back into place? She imagined them like wooden slats, clattering down into place again, partitioning and making sense of things.
Surely things would get back to normal soon. And then she'd return to the old concerns, finding a man so as to settle down and have children, getting ahead with her career. She had always been very ambitious. Why wasn't she thinking about the old concerns? These were the things that used to keep her up at night. She'd be plotting and planning, calculating years, her age — she was now thirty-six — what she wanted to have accomplished by when.
Had there been one moment that had flung her off?
Looking back, she thought of the trip to Spain. She'd gone in February to meet her married lover. She'd taken a hotel room. He was there on business and would be staying in another hotel for appearances' sake, but would meet her in hers. She arrived after the long flight and, before calling him, lay down for a moment on the bed. Eyes open, she listened to the sounds coming from the street, new sounds and different kinds of voices. She was in Barcelona. She'd never been here before. The room was spare and plain. One half of the window was taken up by the wall of a building, the other half by a rosy winter sky. Still lying on the bed, she gazed out the window. The radiator hummed slightly and trickled water. The room was warm. The combination of strangeness and familiarity pleased her. To have come away from her life, to be here on her own pleased her very much.
But I should call, she thought. He'll be wondering where I am. She raised herself on one elbow and looked at
She thought of the imminent encounter with her lover, and what it would surely bring.
the phone, then fell back again. Not just yet. She'd lie here a little more. She had the right to, she thought, she'd come all this way. But this desire, she knew, had little to do with rights. It was simply what she wanted. To lie here, lingering, listening to the sounds from the street, the day winding down.
The rosy sky grew deeper, darker. She went on lying there, dozing off slightly — she hadn't slept much on the plane — and then waking again. When she woke, she felt thoroughly delighted, remembering where she was. I should call now, she thought, I really have to call. But she didn't.
Wasn't this the time in the city when everyone took naps? She thought she'd heard that. Then they got up later and went out to eat. She liked the luxurious thought that everyone was napping, behind all the walls, in her hotel, behind that wall she saw there outside her window, resting, maybe stirring. She thought of the imminent encounter with her lover, and what it would surely bring, a racing of her heart, that gripping and clutching that came with desire, and then amusement afterwards, a conversation, a meal, a few unsettling comments, doubts, lots of doubts, that would lead once again to desire.
There had been a little restaurant she'd seen at the end of the street. Those places always had newspapers. Or she could stop by a newsstand. She thought she remembered seeing one on the corner. Although she wasn't actually much of a reader of newspapers, in this moment the combination sounded perfect. She could have a bite to eat and read the newspaper. Her lover suddenly wasn't figuring in her plans at all.
The street was chilly, though less cold than New York. She bought a paper at the newsstand. The food in the restaurant tasted delicious, and the wine. She browsed through the paper. She was at a round wooden table in the corner, an upright piano behind her that, hedged in as it was by other furniture, must have rarely been played. She lingered. She finished the wine and had coffee afterwards. When the time came, she was delighted to return to her room, to find again the spare furnishings, the bed, the mirror, its glass slightly uneven, so that now all that showed of it in the dimness of the room was one bright slice. She saw her face in that bright slice as she sat down on the bed. Then she lay down. The sky now had a mauve city glow. She drifted happily in and out of sleep. At some point in the night, she didn't remember, she got up and took off her clothes.
In the end, she'd stayed for three days, as planned, Friday to Monday, going out on her own for meals and to walk around and then returning to her room, and had never called. On Monday she'd taken her plane. Her lover had left messages everywhere he could think of, though of course within the bounds of discretion. They had to be discreet, for his sake.
Could it have been that trip that had thrown her? But that had been back in February. Plenty of other things had happened in between. But maybe, she thought, still baffled, it just takes a moment for these things to sink in.
Theirs had been an obsessive relationship, at least on her side. He was married with children; she was single. She had pretended to think he was leaving his wife, that he'd settle down with her. She'd made plans for the future, lots of them, of how she'd be with his kids, just wonderful, and then of course they'd add a few more children of their own. She thought of the houses they'd live in, one by a lake, and the dinner parties she'd give. He liked dinner parties, and his wife didn't do nearly enough of that. Having never had an affair like this before, she'd watched herself with amazement slip so smoothly into the role. She'd clung, pleaded, gotten angry, broken up with him and returned. She'd been desperately jealous, of his wife and then of another lover she'd suspected him of having. The fantasy of the other lover was never confirmed. But it had taken her off track, she'd followed it recklessly for weeks, sleeping poorly, in a wretched state. Oh, but how wonderfully gripping it had been, the constant dissatisfaction, the constant bewilderment as to his thoughts and intentions.
At first, in April, she hadn't identified the change. It had begun with a strange feeling of empty space all around her. She pictured floating as a child in an inner tube in the middle of a huge lake. For a moment, she'd felt frightened, even grief-stricken. Where had this emptiness come from?
Was it her lover? Was she missing him? She made a few attempts to get in touch again, only when he called her back, she found she wasn't riveted as before. And even when he offered to come see her — a very rare offer — and she agreed, the emptiness continued to stretch around her. She called off the meeting. She phoned him from the bath. Something had come up,
She looked at herself. Whom would she dance for now?
she said. After hanging up, she floated there, wondering. She had left the bedroom windows open. April light flooded in. The loss she had felt, she realized, was not attached to him, but rather to this lifestyle. Obsession was a way of life. I'm dancing for you. No, no, for you. No, for you. A bit later, she was standing in front of her mirror, trying on newly washed clothes. There was a whole pile to be folded on the bed. She looked at herself. Whom would she dance for now?
She felt dizzy.
It was like a boat being let loose from the shore, the rope unraveling, tumbling into the water, then the boat rippling off on its own, unsteered, purposeless, foolishly free. Now she was really veering into dangerous waters. Who knew where she'd end up?
It was as if she'd been held under a net all these years. Or held under water. But who had been holding her down? And what had suddenly released her? Maybe it was just mysterious. Maybe she would never know.
It felt absolutely revolutionary to think that, that things were maybe just mysterious. She had always thought before, or at least clung to the belief, that she could understand things, if she examined them closely enough — she went to a therapist, even read self-help books — that eventually she would understand everything about herself, and then she'd be happy.
She took to going and sitting in churches. She didn't believe in God. That was too preposterous. But she liked to be in a place that acknowledged at least that there might be a number of things we couldn't understand. Sitting there, she felt sometimes a very pleasant feeling of water gurgling up in her chest.
She would still have the old thoughts: she must meet someone, be with someone. What was she doing here wasting her time? Then its opposite. This solitude was lovely.
Suddenly it seemed, according to this new way of living, that you just woke up each day and saw what happened.
She even felt sometimes now a reckless disregard for her future, this future that she had agonized so painstakingly over for so long. She had thoughts of jumping off bridges, of flinging herself in front of cars. But these fantasies amused her, not as morbid longings, but simply possibilities. The world seemed full of all sorts of possibilities.
Even having babies. She suddenly thought of a baby in a new way. Not as a thing she would have with someone in the obligatory fashion, that she would therefore be justified, they would make a triad. But as a person to whom she could show this glorious world.
She found herself having dreamy thoughts, wild meandering thoughts, that led her to the most peculiar places, weedy byways. She thought things that interested her in a new way. Or images came meandering into her mind unannounced and she followed them, of roots growing underwater, a building shifting, the upper part of the trunks of trees in a wood. Or for long moments she'd think of nearly nothing at all. Oh, but surely this was not okay. There was some terrible punishment that came with such things. Something terrible was in store. This is what the woman in the blue armchair had to say — she was small, short-haired, somewhat stocky — even just with her silence, her sturdy, disapproving looks.
She panicked then again. She caught herself looking around for an object of obsession. The capacity was still in her. It could alight on anything. She watched it trying to alight — over an old boyfriend, for example, who left a message on her answering machine, back in town, "it would be great to see you" — trying to perch and get a grip, but each time, astonishingly, it wouldn't hold. But maybe, she thought, what she needed was to be extravagant again, to have another affair. Yet it seemed to amount to the same thing. Even the woman in the blue armchair would approve of that, reckless extravagance, much more than these drifting thoughts into weedy byways. But why, she wondered, was the woman so afraid of these?
Was she done with love? And this so early? She wondered as she was crossing the street, on the way to buy detergent and bubble bath. She was done anyway with this approach to love. A truck passed, its back open, containing stacks and stacks of lettuce heads. Maybe I should just hurl myself in front of that truck, she thought. What, and then miss all this strange careening?
She invited him up to her place, pointing to her open window.
What she wanted, she decided, was the experience of hurling herself in front of that truck. But not to die. No, no, least of all right now, when each day had suddenly lost its predictability. The end of the story was inscrutable now, no longer fitting, she felt, either of the two endings she'd had in mind before — loneliness and solitude, birthdays with girlfriends, the occasional affair, or, on the other hand, the house with husband and a set of tousled children tumbling down the lawn. She waited, breathless, to see what would occur.
She saw a man out her window one day. She had just gotten out of the bath. He was sitting at a table on the street in the café across the way. He was alone. She could watch him. She had a good view. He had brown hair. His face looked a little smudged in the distance. She felt she wanted to meet him. Well, I can, she thought. I'll just go down there.
It had been raining and then stopped. There were drops on the windowpanes. She rubbed her hair somewhat dry with a towel, then got dressed as quickly as she could and went down there. He was just leaving.
"Hey," she said, "I was watching you from my window."
This was the strangest thing too, that she found herself suddenly blurting things out, honest things, the truth, that she would have never dared say before.
"Oh, really?" he seemed surprised.
"Yes. And I felt I had to meet you."
For a moment, her boldness, offhandedness not only unHooksexupd him, but was even disturbing to her. She invited him up to her place, pointing to her open window — he couldn't come right then — so they settled on the next afternoon.
He came by the next afternoon. She opened the door. He looked even nicer than he had the day before, amused, a bit surprised. She had never actually slept with someone in this way before, an utter stranger. It was interesting to her how quickly they were comfortable, how in the touch of his hands on her body, there was already, beneath the strangeness, a kind of familiarity. His face, even close, seemed smudged, his slightly blunt nose, low eyebrows. Afterwards, she got up and brought them both ice tea.
Once he'd gone, she waited for the tugs, the first aches. Nothing. She had never even had a flirtation before, without turning it into a set of wild equations, projections into the future. They were madly in love. They would marry, buy a house on a lake.
But it seemed that this was no longer the thing that gripped her. This was not what she was after.
Then what was she after?
The woman in the blue armchair gave her a warning look. She folded her load of laundry, whites, then lay down on the bed. Water, in the background, was running into the bath. Her thoughts went meandering. She enjoyed the feeling that this more than anything, simply lying there thinking, was a wildly dangerous move.n°
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Maxine Swann's short story "Flower Children" won the Cohen Award, the O'Henry Award, and the Pushcart Prize, and was included in The Best American Short Stories (1998). Swann received degrees in literature from Columbia University and the University of Paris. Her first novel, Serious Girls, was published by Picador in 2003. Swann is currently at work on a second novel.
