Before, During, After

Islands

1

He offered her more, and she took it, gazing at the slowly vanishing lunar radiance on the water. You could still see small glimmering traces of it on the shifting surface, thousands of white wings. Marijuana after alcohol made her woozy, as if she had just awakened from a long sleep. But her vision seemed sharper, and her senses, her nerve endings, were tingling. She thought idly of the phrase having a buzz on.

He was talking, going on about something.

Food, she realized.

“I like things cooked dark. Crisp and brown.”

She looked at the side of his face, a handsome Latin face, with a sharp nose and high cheekbones, and coal-black hair. She felt nothing. Yet when she handed him back the joint, and he rested his other hand on her shoulder, she did not remove herself. The moonlight was dying, shrouded in folds of cloud. She put her knees up and rested her head on them.

The other took a hit and said, “I did not speak English until I was ten years old.”

She sniffled. “You told us that. Please leave me alone.”

“I think if you talk to me you will feel better.”

She did not speak.

He went on smoking, holding it in, then letting go, blowing the smoke. He held the joint out to her. “I am a dancer.”

“You told us.”

“I never liked it as a child.”

“Dancing.” She took another toke and handed it back.

“I did not like America. In my country there was a very strong official hatred of it. But my father felt differently. He worked for Americans before the revolution. My mother was Canadian. He wanted to go be an American or a Canadian. But I was a boy and I had friends. I did not want to leave my friends. In the house, when I was small, as long as I can remember, he talked about going to North America, and I have memories of them fighting about it. And then my mother died. I did not know when we went to Canada to visit her family that it was to go to America to live. A friend in America helped him.”

She could think of nothing in response. And then she simply dismissed the worry about it. Mentally, she dismissed him. “Do you still hate America?” Her voice was flatly automatic.

He appeared momentarily affronted. “I am a citizen.”

“Ever heard the phrase America, love it or leave it?”

He laughed. “I could have made that up. It could have been me. Because I love America. It gave me the chance to be a dancer.”

“What kind of dance? Ballet?”

He shook his head. “Modern dance.”

“Yes, well, I had ballet in school.”

“Did you like it?”

“Not especially, I’m sorry to say. I wasn’t any good at it.”

They were quiet.

Presently, he said, “It’s hard to be good at something you do not like.”

“Well, I wasn’t very good.”

“I was not good in school. My wife helped me study and do better and now she is gone. The woman she is with — I thought this woman was my friend.”

“I’m sorry.” The dope was not making her feel anything. She had no sense of well-being or of the jollity it usually occasioned and, looking out at the seascape before her, she wished for solitude while lacking the will to do anything to achieve it. She sat quite still, her distress having shaded into this drowsy gloom, this sour observing.

“Where are you from?” he asked. “Your voice is different.”

She told him.

“That is in Shelby County.”

“How did you know that?”

“I had a friend I visited in Memphis. The second day terrible thunderstorms came and they kept saying the counties and we listened because it was a tornado and the storm hit Bartlett in Shelby County. I remember that. Because I thought of pears. We watched it on the television. It knocked down trees. I went to Graceland.”

“Almost everyone who visits Memphis goes there. A lot go there because of Graceland.”

He wrote in the sand. “That is my address in Orlando, Florida.”

“Please. I’m really not up for talking.”

“It feels good to carve it in the sand, after today. My place on earth. And I mark it here. Like a sign for everyone to see.”

“People will walk on it.” The idea struck her as funny. She laughed softly.

“Here.” He offered her another hit.

“Okay.”

They smoked. Somewhere behind them was the sound of a steel drum. It went on awhile and then died away. A girl laughed, and a man laughed, too. They spoke in German, and after a few moments you couldn’t hear them anymore.

“Write yours,” he said.

“At present, I have no address.”

He stared.

“All right. Here’s where my grandmother lives.” And as she scrawled the number and the name of the street, she did feel strangely as if she were claiming something in defiance. The idea made her pause. Then she swept her hand across all of it. “This is what happens, isn’t it.”

“Why did you do that?”

“Because I’m not superstitious.”

He wrote his name and wiped it away. “Neither am I.”

A moment later, he said, “Why do you have no home?”

She told him about leaving the job in Washington and was surprised to find that she felt friendly toward him; something in her nerves, below the level of thinking, was actually responding to the cool night breezes and the quiet talk.

“I have never been to Washington and I would love to see it,” he said.

“You should go.”

“But you are leaving it.”

“I’ve left it. When I get out of here, I’m going back to Memphis. A small truck with all my belongings in it is headed there as we speak. To Twenty-Three Bilders Street, Memphis.”

“It sounds like a number of workers. Twenty-three builders.”

“It does. We have twenty-three builders waiting to build this building on this street lined with buildings.”

He laughed, and it went on. It was the reasonless laughter of dope.

“Lot of buildings,” she said. “Count them.”

“Twenty-three,” he said, and his laugh went off at the night sky.

“It doesn’t have a u in it. Bilders. It’s a man’s name.” She sputtered, nearly choking with her own laugh. “I think he was a banker. So my belongings are headed to this street with a little house on it built by builders, and the whole street has buildings on it now, probably built by this banker named Building. No, Bilders. Off High Point Terrace.”

He paused, wiping his eyes and his mouth with a handkerchief, which he crushed in his fist and jammed into his shirt pocket. “Do you believe in fate?”

It seemed that she couldn’t move the muscles around her mouth. “Explain.”

“That everything was leading to this.”

“And what is this, exactly?”

“We two, here, on this beach.”

“I don’t believe in fate,” she said to him. “So, no. But hey, thanks anyway.”

“I feel something led me here. Something in a past life.”

She flicked the roach off into the sand, and he got to his knees to retrieve it. “It’s done,” she told him. “There’s just the ash left. We’re done. All the fun’s gone out of it.”

He sat back and rolled another and lit it while she watched. The little residue of pleasant feeling had dissolved inside her.

“Do you feel it, too?” he said.

She sighed. “I feel dizzy and full of anxiety. And I don’t want to be with anyone. Please.”

“I only want to help you. And be helped.”

“Let’s talk about something other than ‘fate’ then.”

Behind them someone was crying, and someone else was singing. It struck her all over and yet as if for the first time that she was thousands of miles from home. “Your wife is a dancer, you said.”

“Yes.” He looked absurd sitting there hugging his knees, talking about fate, his dancer wife gone off with another woman. “I cannot help this feeling that I have,” he told her. “That the universe brought you to me.”

She had to suppress an urge to laugh again. She watched him breathe out the smoke. When he offered her still another hit, she accepted.

“I guess it is stupid,” he said.

She took the hit, handed the roach to him, and leaned back on her hands. The clouds over the moon were darker but still quite thin, moving faster than she thought clouds ever moved. The world was spinning. Everything was dissolving, going off.

“I believe the universe intends changes for us all,” he said.

“All us builders?” She giggled, and it took hold and grew deeper.

“I am serious now,” he said. “Hey, I am. I am serious.”

“Sorry. Strikes me funny.”

“I do believe the universe intends changes.” And now he laughed, too.

“This isn’t the best time to talk about the universe, is it. Or maybe it’s the only time to talk about it. Right? Isn’t that it? You get stoned and you talk about the universe? Only I don’t want to talk about the universe, man. Truthfully, I am so fucking averse to talking about the fucking universe.” This brought still another laugh out of her, and she looked at the fact of it, like marking the date.

“I am only trying to divert you,” he said. “I do not like such language.”

“Oh, God. Forgive me. I fucking didn’t mean to say averse. That was very fuckingly rude and vulgar of me. Pure fuckery and I do apologize.”

“I am not prudish.”

“Oh — well, thank you for the smoke.”

“That is helping?”

She saw the anxiety in his face. He was quite good to look at. “Listen, I don’t want to hurt your feelings. Really. I’m sorry, okay? I’m drunk and stoned and sick and panicky and I hope you don’t take it personally but I really don’t want company anymore. So why don’t you leave.”

“You cannot even bring yourself to say my name.”

“Oh, shut up!” She kept laughing.

“Say it, then.”

“Please leave me alone.”

He took another pull, inhaled it deeply, held it in, then sighed it out, offering her yet another hit. She took it. “Okay. Now. Please leave me alone. Nicholas.”

“You were not enjoying this?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“It is only a little kindness between friends.”

“I’m sorry. You’re right.”

“We were laughing beautifully.”

“Right. Okay, sure. And I fuckishly said averse. And you forgave me.”

“I do not know what you mean, now. I wish you would not use that language. It is impolite and unladylike. Not worthy of you.”

“Hey, fuck you, sarge.”

“Sarge.”

“Forget it.”

He leaned over and lightly kissed the side of her face, then moved a little farther away. “I mean nothing unfriendly. I have some other things to take.”

“No,” she said.

“Do you know about Special K?”

“The cereal?”

He smiled. “It is called that. Is there a cereal? I have it in pill form.”

“The cereal?”

“Ketamine. It makes things happen.”

“No,” she said.

They went on smoking. She felt the drug moving through her, numbness running along the nerves of her face. Time seemed to grow elongated and strange. She let him talk, and he was very willing to describe for her everything he was going through. It occurred to her that he was just an insecure, nervous boy.

In a little while they were talking about the day, the trauma of it, and the way everyone seemed to tumble off some private deep end. “I do not even drink,” he said. “I like other things. But now I think I am drunk.”

“You keep talking about your big drug habits. Are you trying to impress me? Because it’s not working.”

“I was not trying to impress you. Only to help relieve your worry.”

“That’s sweet. Thank you for it. But I really just want to sit here by myself.”

He was silent. Perhaps a full minute went by.

“It has felt a little less awful,” she told him.

“I’m glad.”

Another pause.

“Suppose we are on a deserted island,” he said. “From a shipwreck.”

This seemed very amusing. There was a bleak something in the laughter now, and the fact that the laughter itself felt so mirthless made it all that much deeper. “Deserted desert island, right?” she said. “Oh, that’s perfect. That’s rich.”

“Not a desert, no.”

“That’s hilarious. Not a deserted desert island?”

“The dope is making you hysterical,” he said.

“Yeah, perfect. Hysterical.” She saw moving light on the water. The clouds were opening again.

“I think we should be as if no one else will ever come here. This is the first place. Adam and Eve’s garden.”

“Adam and Eve’s deserted desert island.”

“I am drawn to you. Very much. You are very beautiful. May I simply touch your face?”

She watched his hand come up to her cheek. The touch was tentative and gentle, and she felt a little sorry for him. He let his fingers move carefully, slowly down to her chin, and under her chin. He turned her face up and leaned down to kiss her. She let him and then watched him sit back and regard her. The world was coming to an end. And then once more everything shifted: there was not the sense of this being anything but a small, desolate pass, one of the nights of her life before. She had no sense of a self, of herself, as more than a set of floating impressions. She wanted sleep. The effects of the alcohol and dope she had ingested seemed to be growing more profound. She lay back, and he was leaning over her, supporting himself on one elbow. I am not the type, she thought. What type. Why is it a type? The words went through her mind. You are, she thought. You are, now. You were, then. What were you? She thought of Faulk. She saw him riding home on the train. He was probably all right. All her irrational fear was leaching out of her as the night cooled.

“Michael,” she murmured.

“What?” the other said.

“They don’t let people in before nine-thirty. That’s the hours. You wouldn’t stay and wait for an hour. Not in New York.”

“I do not understand you,” Duego said, gazing down at her.

“Please leave me alone now.”

“One kiss?”

She let him, opened her mouth with the tactile pleasure of it. “There,” she told him. It was as though Faulk, so far away, were a child, and she belonged to the world of adults.

Duego put his mouth on hers, caressing her breasts, and then her lower abdomen, moving his hand down. His touch was insistent, and there was something hurried about it, as though he expected to be stopped or was afraid he would be. She was dizzy, eyes wide open, looking at him. His breath smelled of the dope and what he’d had to drink, and there was the thinnest displeasing redolence of fruit in it, too. She had a sensation of sudden clarity: this was actually happening. It was as though what had begun to unfold had just now become visible to her. She pushed on his shoulders as he got over on top of her.

“No,” she said. “Get off.”

His weight was stopping her breath. She protested with as much force as she could muster, and he rolled off, making a sound she thought at first was more laughter. He was crying.

“Don’t cry,” she said, and patted his arm. The little smoldering roach lay between them. She threw it off into the night, then leaned down and kissed him. The kiss lasted a long time, and he put his hands on her lower back, pulling her closer. She was falling through some field of being that was far from herself, spiraling down, a darkness born of the waste of everything that this day had been. Some part of her — off in space, despairing — watched it all, believing that she was alone, that Michael Faulk was gone, that everything was gone.

They stopped for a moment, lying there out of breath, and for a while that was the only sound — their breathing, mixed with the low roar of the surf.

When he bent to her, she put her hands on his shoulders and pushed and made the word no out of the movement of his tongue in her mouth. She pushed hard. Repeatedly. And at last he lay over on his back, making the sound she now knew was crying.

“Please go away from me,” she heard herself say. “I’m sorry to hurt your feelings, but I don’t want this. I do not want this. I’ve told you. Please. Please leave me alone.”

He didn’t answer. He was passed out, mouth open, eyes squeezed shut as if he were facing into high winds. He looked to be suffering some kind of pressure inside, the veins of his neck showing.

Getting shakily to her feet, she stumbled to the water, splashed in, and pushed out to where it was up to her thighs. Then she dove under, suffering the shock of it like a slap to her face. She swam for what seemed a long time, away from shore, into the rising and sinking surf, feeling the pull of the tide and the weight of her jeans and blouse. Suddenly the tide gripped her. The thought rose to the front of her mind that she was going to drown. She swam parallel to the beach, working it, near exhaustion, keeping on, until the ocean began to let go.

At last, turning, going under, and coming up to gasp for air, she made her way back in and reached the shallow water, where she could get to her feet, standing while the waves pulled and pushed at her knees. She coughed and sputtered, shaking, then got down in the water and urinated, looking around at the sand, the sea and sky. The water jostled her. She finished and rose and walked, splashing and reeling, out of the waves and on up toward the line of palm trees bordering the wide half circle of the beach. Lying down in the sand, still out of breath, she looked up at the moonlit clouds in the sky, the sparkle of the stars across which they sailed. It felt as though the beach were moving. She lay there shivering. In a moment, she would get up and go back to the resort, to her room, and lock the door. In a moment. But it was good here, too, being alone. The waves came in with their shuddering, murmurous whoosh, and the sound lulled her. She felt a strange, empty kind of deliverance; that nothing, finally, had taken place. She looked down the beach in the direction of where she had left Duego but couldn’t see him. Lying back, staring at the shapes in the silvery mists over the moon, she began to feel almost pleasantly sleepy.

2

The train made every stop heading south. At the Thirtieth Street Station in Philadelphia, it sat for more than an hour without any apparent cause. When Faulk asked one of the porters what was going on, the porter said, “Got me, sir.”

“Is there something wrong with the train? Has something else happened?”

“Don’t know, sir. I think maybe they waitin’ for son’thin’ down in the District.” He was very dark and had a wide mouth that looked like a cut in his lower jaw.

“Thanks — if you hear anything, I wish you’d let me know.”

“I doubt I’ll hear anything, sir. But I sure will if I do.”

“Which way is the dining car?”

“Both ways,” the porter said. “Equidistant, too.” He smiled.

“Thanks.”

“Food ain’t much good, though, I gotta tell yeh. Sammitches mostly. Process meat.”

“Well.”

The young man shook his head, wringing his hands. “Before today, I don’t know that I would’ve felt the need to tell you that.”

“I know.”

“That boggles my mind, man. You feel how different it is now?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe something good can come of this misery.”

Faulk decided to take the opposite direction from where the Asian boy had gone, believing that an encounter would produce pressure in the other for some kind of response and be a source of further unease. He stepped out into the cool vestibule and pushed the panel that would open the door into the next car. This one smelled heavily of perfume, mingled with some kind of cleanser. A man was sleeping in the first row, legs draped over the arm of the seat next to him. Two elderly women were at the far end, talking quietly, and they studied him as he passed them. The dining car was empty. At the food counter in the little vending area a middle-aged woman sat, reading a thick paperback. Her tight-curled hair was red, and many freckles dotted the light brown skin of her cheeks. There was something puffy about her face. “Hello,” she said, putting the book down.

Faulk sat at the counter. “Hello.”

“Slow trip.”

“Do you know why the delay?”

She shrugged. “Something about D.C. They got hit there, too, you know.”

“I heard.”

“You coming from Boston?”

“I got on this one in Newark. I was in New York.”

“Oh, Lord.”

“Didn’t hear a thing. I was uptown. My aunt called me about it from Washington.” He gazed toward the small window into the next car, which looked empty. “There were so many people on the train out of New York.”

“I don’t think I ever seen it this empty on this one.”

“How long have you worked here?”

“Eight years. Got the job when my husband passed. Raised four kids and never worked outside the house.”

“I’m sorry to hear about your husband.”

“Well.” She gave him a forbearing look. “Eight years ago. You notice how this kind of trouble makes you want to tell people—” She stopped and seemed to have reminded herself of something. “Well, it does me, anyway.”

“I know what you mean.” He gazed at the menu card.

“You married?” she asked.

He looked at her.

“Sorry to pry. I just feel this need today to know everybody I meet.”

“It’s fine. We’re all going through it.”

“Right. You got that one right for sure.”

“I’m divorced.”

“There’s a lot of that, I guess.”

“Fifty percent of the time, I believe.”

“Guess I read that somewhere.”

Presently she said, “They all begin in hope, though.”

“That’s true.”

“All that happiness and celebrating.”

“Right.”

“Nobody does it planning to get miserable.”

“No.” He liked her. He felt a surge of grief for her troubles, whatever they were. “Actually, I’m getting married for a second time. If she can get home from Jamaica.”

“Jamaica.”

“She was vacationing with an old friend. Now since all the planes are grounded — well, today I was stuck on one island, and she was stuck on another. She was supposed to fly home tomorrow.”

“Well, I hope you can get together and be happy.”

“Fifty percent chance.” He smiled at her.

“I wonder what gets into people,” she said. “My husband and me, we were happy as kids together right up to the end.”

“You were lucky.”

She nodded emphatically. “We were that. We felt that.”

The door of the car on the other side opened, and a man entered, carrying a small brown briefcase. He sat at the far end of the counter and placed the briefcase in front of him. He looked to be in his late fifties or early sixties, with a drooping, pale face and light blue eyes that had shadows under them. His hair was dark gray with white streaks, and it was disarranged, as if someone had ruffled it. He smoothed the hair down with one hand, leaning forward to look over the varieties of snack foods in the baskets on the wall behind the counter.

“Hello,” the woman said to him.

“You have fresh coffee?”

“Sure.”

The man turned his attention to Faulk. “You live in Washington?”

“No, but that’s where I’m headed.”

He seemed satisfied with this.

“You?” Faulk said.

“I live there.”

When the woman put the coffee in front of him, he took her hand. “I wonder what you think of all this.”

“Oh — well. I–I can’t — I don’t know what to think. I was just telling this gentleman I feel like I have to get to know everybody I meet.”

“Yeah.” He let go of her.

“You got a family?” she asked.

“Four grown kids. Three girls and a boy. A nice friendly wife. Like that.” He smiled. “They’re all waiting for me to get home and try to explain this day to them, you know? They’ve all gathered at the house.”

“I think the Lord works in mysterious ways.”

“Yeah. His wonders to perform, right?”

“Mysterious.”

“Okay.”

“I think maybe it’s like this,” she said. She appeared to be trying to formulate the idea as she went on, hesitating. “It’s like we all — flowers, and — and the Lord is like the gardener. Right. We all flowers in his garden. And sometimes he needs one flower, or maybe two or three, and then sometimes, you know, he needs a whole bouquet of them.”

“You believe that.”

“I hope so.”

“And you’re happy.”

She stared at him. “Yes, sir.”

“And today was just a gardening day for God.”

“Will there be anything else, sir?”

“You know the suicide bombers over in Jerusalem. They believe that when they blow themselves up and a lot of innocent men, women, and children die, they themselves are going straight to paradise for it.”

She took up a rag and began to wipe the counter. She lifted his cup and wiped under it and then set the cup down with a little force.

“They believe deep in their hearts that they’re going straight to paradise where they will be greeted by virgins. Virgins. Think of it.”

She said nothing.

“And for us it’s gardening.”

“Excuse me,” Faulk said. “There’s really nothing to be gained by haranguing someone at this time of night and in this situation, is there?”

The man did not answer but opened the briefcase. For the moment his head was obscured by the open lid of the case. Both Faulk and the woman watched him. Then she turned to Faulk and said, low, “You want anything to eat or drink?”

“Thought I was hungry,” Faulk said. “Feeling’s gone.”

She said, “Terrible day.”

The man closed the lid with a snap and lifted his coffee cup. He sipped from it. “I was in Boston at a funeral,” he said. “Business associate of mine. We were in ’Nam. He got wounded, and I pulled him onto a chopper in a firefight. Bullets ripping the air all around us and pinging on the metal. All hell breaking loose. I pulled him in. Nice guy. Another war altogether. Jungle rot and little people hiding in the leaves, some of them just kids. Kill you quick as look at you. I’ll tell you, lot of gardening going on in that war. And it’s one goddamned war after another, isn’t it.”

The woman did not respond, standing by the cash register looking at him.

“Wish I could see the world like you do, ma’am.”

“Excuse me, but you don’t know how I see the world, sir. You don’t know the first thing about me.”

He raised the cup as if to toast her. “To gardening.”

“Maybe I said that to make you feel better.”

“Well, it did that, all right.”

“What’s your point, anyway?” Faulk said.

“Pardon?”

“What’re you getting at? What’s the point of bothering to be so unpleasant tonight?”

“And what are you, a lawyer?”

“I happen to be a priest.”

Both of them stared.

“Now, you want to start in on me?”

“I didn’t know I was starting in on anybody. I was just talking. Seemed odd, that’s all — that business about God the gardener. I don’t know how anybody can think anything positive after today.” His voice broke. “I’m sorry.”

After a little pause, the woman, in a soft, ameliorative voice, said to him, “You want more coffee?”

“Yes, thank you.” He held out the cup.

Faulk said good night to them and went back through the vestibule and the door, the mostly empty car, to the next vestibule and his own car and along the aisle to his seat. The train rattled and tossed, and then it entered a tunnel, the dark at the windows becoming blackness with intermittent rushing lights. He sat down and saw his own reflection in the glass. So, he thought. I happen to be a priest.

3

She woke in bright moonlight, wrapped uncomfortably in the wet clothes. She sat up and had a shaken realization of the whole long day. It played across her memory in an instant. She saw the couple, looking so small, leaping from the hole in the massive burning side of the building. She saw the slight, brave, doomed, waving woman with the smoke coming from her hair and back. And she thought of Michael Faulk. “Oh, Jesus God.”

The sea made its steady rushing. She could not see the resort nor anything but empty beach with the blackness beyond it and the moving whitecapped waves. She sat up, shivering, the residue of the dream playing across her nerves.

Suddenly, with a strange forceful slow assuredness, someone was upon her from behind, hands on her breasts.

She yelled and tried to turn, swung her elbows back to strike. Reaching over her head, she got ahold of hair and pulled and was pushed forward until her face was in the sand. The other was heavy on top of her, knee in her upper back, one hand pressing her head down. The sand was in her nose and mouth, and this was going to be her death. But then he let go enough for her to turn over, and she saw Duego and kicked at him, attempting to rise, the sand choking her. “Stop it! Get off me! Are you — get off!”

“You — are — beautiful,” he groaned, moving back on top of her. “We both — want this. You — know we both want this.”

The force of it amazed and bewildered her. He was very strong. She kicked twice more at him, gagging, coughing, and when she reached for his eyes, he took her wrists and forced her over and held her, so that once more the sand was in her mouth. She had to use her hands to keep her head out of it, to breathe, and now he was pulling at her jeans, the sand choking her. She lost consciousness, her mind buckling. She was elsewhere, her hurting body separate from her, something not hers, and his hands were at her hips, pulling her up and toward him. “You know you — want this,” he breathed. “Come on.” She was sick, coughing deep, spitting, trying to scream and gagging, crying. He was ramming himself at her, thrusting at her and then into her with what felt like a tearing. He held her there, by her hips, rigid, pressing tightly and then moving, murmuring something about fate, their fate. It went on, hurting, wounding, until she lost consciousness for another moment, drifting off in a terrible asphyxiating fog, her face down in the sand. Everything was blank, gone, nowhere, and suddenly she was awake, him pushing in and pulling out and pushing in, gripping her at her hips. “Oh,” he said. “God.” Then there were the little spasms. He held her even tighter to himself, shuddering, moaning.

Finally he moved away from her, lying once more on his back, making the crying sound of before, arms flung out, looking like someone who had been knocked down.

Struggling to her feet, she kicked him in the side of his chest. It hurt her foot, and she shouted in pain and rage and then couldn’t get sound out anymore, still choking on sand and blood where she had bitten her tongue and her lip. She kicked at his groin and fell back. He did not seem conscious. But then he was up and upon her. “You should not have done that,” he said, holding her down with one hand on her chest and with the other taking hold of her jaw. She flailed, and gagged, and his knee came down on her middle, both hands at her head. He took a fist full of sand and thrust it down in her face, then took more and held her jaw tight, squeezing, jamming the sand at her mouth, packing it in, and pressing it, and grabbing more and pushing it at her, while she tried to bite at the fingers and coughed and the knee was pressing her chest, the one hand pulling her jaw down, the sand going in. He rolled with her, was back on top, ranged across her lower spine, his palms on the base of her skull, forcing her face down into the wet sand. Her vision blurred and ended, was all black. She was gone and nothing, no sound and no sensation but the choking and no air at all, and the heaviness on her chest, and this was death. This was the last of life.

But she rose from the dark, awake, still choking. He had fallen from her. She got to her knees, gouged at his eyes, spitting, the sand coming up in a clod with the contents of her stomach. He pushed her aside and stood up, taller than she could believe, as if he had undergone some elemental transformation and had become more than human, taller than anything. He would surely kill her now, and now all she wanted was to keep breathing, to be alive, away, and quiet. She watched him stagger away with his long shadow in the moonlight, on down the beach, crying that he was sorry and that it was something meant to be. Apologizing. Apologizing! She tried to scream but was too woozy and sick. The sickness kept coming and coming, mixed awfully with the sand. “Oh, God!” she screamed, choking. “Help me.”

She managed to get briefly to her feet, sought to bring forth another scream, nothing coming but more heaving. She was on her knees again and then on all fours, head down, sputtering, gagging. The sand burned in her eyes, the grains of it scraping the iris, stinging, and she couldn’t get it out of her nose and mouth. It came rushing out of her with the whiskey she had drunk. She could not breathe in, kept trying to, hearing the whooping sound that came from her.

At last, slowly, with great difficulty, as if having to break through something heavy and solid in the air around her, she rose and moved to the shore, tottering into the surf, falling to her knees, the waves crashing over her. She put her face down in the water and ran her hands over the grit of sand in her hair and along her hairline. The water seemed colder than it had been earlier. There was so much moonlight now. She got down, so that the water was just below her shoulders. It jostled her, but she remained crouched there, shoved by the motion of the waves, looking at the clean white moon surrounded by shadowy clouds.

The moon of any night on earth.

She kept her arms wrapped tightly around herself, sobbing, coughing, hacking. The tide seemed to be rising, the waves growing stronger. She let the waves come over her. The beach was empty, and she could see her clothes lying there — the jeans, with the panties tangled in them.

She did not know how long she stayed there, afraid that he might return. The moon went away and then came back again. She could not stop the crying or the gasping for air. A few hundred yards up the beach, a couple walked to the water’s edge and in. She knew the tide would carry them this way. And she felt fear of them. Gathering all her strength, she rose and left the water and made her way to the little sad pile of clothes. She managed to get into her jeans, still feeling where he had pushed into her, the pain there and across her lower back and along her jaw. She kept looking down the beach where he had gone, but there were only the looming palms.

Faltering in the loose sand, she walked, tottering, back to the resort, and in, toward the elevators. A few people still lingered in the bar. At the elevators, she pressed the button and waited. Smoothing her hair, she kept back a scream, looking to one side and then the other, fearing the sight of anyone, wanting more than she had ever wanted anything to get to her room and be quiet there, safe, door locked, all the lights on. She heard a man shouting in one of the first-floor rooms. The words were not distinguishable, but the tone could not be mistaken: someone was being mocked and belittled. She thought of men beating up their wives.

The elevator door opened, and she stepped in, and as it began to close, the fingers of a brown hand grasped the door and pulled it back. Nicholas Duego got on, looking soiled and ill, his shirt open, his hair wild and full of sand. He simply looked at her, where she had backed to the corner away from him, arms crossed over her chest. He would kill her here. Yet she wanted to fly at him, too, wanted to find the force within herself to obliterate him. She was crying. “Please,” she said. “Don’t. Don’t.”

“I am a nice man,” he said. “You will know that about me.”

“I’ll scream. I swear I’ll fucking scream.”

“I have never—” He stopped. There were actually tears in his eyes.

Suddenly she felt power, unreasoning strength. Some part of her knew that it was the last thing she would do or say. “Keep away from me, you fuck.”

“My unhappiness and anger made me cruel.” He lifted one hand.

She pressed against the railing, turning from him. “No.”

“I am not unkind. I would not take what was not given.”

The elevator door opened. He had pushed no button. “Keep away,” she managed, backing out. “I swear to God I’ll scream.”

He followed. There was an aluminum trash can with an ashtray full of sand by the elevator door. She picked it up — it was surprisingly light — and backed away from him, down the hall. He kept coming, but he was holding his hands out in a pleading way. When she got to her door she held the thing up level with her shoulders, as if to throw it. “I’ll hit you with this,” she said. “Get the fuck away from me. Goddamn you.”

“I did not mean to hurt you.” He seemed incredulous. “It made me mad when you kicked me. We were together on the beautiful beach, you and me.” He turned and looked behind him and then moved to the next door down — Constance’s room.

Natasha got her door open, scrabbled inside, and closed it. She set the ashtray trash can down with a loud metallic thud, and fumbled with the chain lock. She couldn’t get it, couldn’t make it work, but a moment later, just in time it seemed, she got the dead bolt to click into its socket.

His voice came, too loud, from the other side. “I do not take what is not given. It was ours.”

She put her ear to the wood, listening for a moment, and when she peered through the peephole she saw that he was still there, head down, one hand out leaning on the frame of the door. “Oh, please go,” she said, with a loud whimpering cry. “Please. I won’t say anything. Just please. Please leave me alone.”

Nothing. She waited, afraid to look. The nausea was returning. She went to the window and looked out at the light on the water. Back at the door, she put her eye to the peephole, and, seeing the long prospect of the empty hallway, turned around and sank slowly to a sitting position, knees up, crying and retching drily while the night breezes came in. The air itself felt dirty, stained. Time went away while she half lay there. It might have been hours. The hands of the clock were dead. Finally she made her way into the bathroom and ran the water, all the water — hot and cold, in the sink and in the bathtub. She tore the clothes off herself and threw them to the floor, shuddering, but then gathered them and put them in a plastic bag and stuffed the bag into the trash can that was still by the door. In the bathroom, avoiding the sight of herself in the mirror, she got into the tub and plugged it with the shiny metal lever, then sat down in the hot water and watched the swirls of it, blood streaked, at her ankles. When the water was near the middle of her calves, she turned the spigot off and unplugged the tub and let it all run out. Then she reseated the plug, adjusting the water so that it was even hotter. She soaked a washrag and put soap on it and went over herself, crying and scrubbing, hurting.

All this time the spigot in the sink was running, too. The room was steaming up. She stood up in the soapy water of the tub and turned the shower on. The shower water was losing its heat, but she remained under it, letting the stream of it run down her body. There was so much sand in her hair. She washed it, stood, head back, under the flow. The mirror and the window were a blank fog. The steam rose and curled about her. She turned the water off, thinking of fire and death. The attacks in the far-off cities of home.

Oh, yes. That.

She could not get clean. There was not enough water in the world.