The Box

Chapter 18

With unusual suddenness the white light of day had changed into the yellow light when siesta is over. Okar was no longer quiet, empty-looking, but full of voice sounds, feet sounds and motion. But Quinn heard mostly the sounds inside: indecision like a squeak, anger a noisy scratching getting louder, and the hum, the constant hum, of his tenacity. To stay put and not jump.

But this is the time to decide, he thought, and please, Bea, do not interrupt me. To leave or to stay. And to go with Cipolla means no new change at all.

They walked down to the quay, saying very little.

Once he said, “Maybe I look like a bastard-”

“I think you act like one, yes.”

They walked the length of the quay, away from the warehouse and the town. Quinn remembered having been that way once, with Turk.

“You want to know something, Bea?”

“Yes.”

“Sometimes I don’t enjoy any of this, you know that?” She nodded, which was enough.

They walked through the rocks and then on the pebbles. He held her arm and said there was a scorpion, she should step around it. They walked around it and when they were by the water the reflections jumped and darted at them and they turned away. There was a rock big enough for a black hood of shade and they went there and sat down. The water had been full of sun flash but on the rocks which tilted away the sunlight seemed gray. Sun-gray, he thought. All day long like a heat death under the light and now everything is ashes. I’m tired.

“Quinn?”

“Yes.”

“You asked me if I thought you were a bastard, you remember? I don’t like the word and feel awkward with it and only used it because you did. And to tell you that I don’t think you are now.”

“I don’t feel like one now.” And he looked at the rocks and they did not remind him of ashes any more. They were just rocks. “And I want to tell you something else,” he said. “Not for apology or anything like that, because what’s done is really done, but that thing I did to Whitfield, using him like that, it happened so smoothly and I did it so well I’m frightened about it.”

“Why frightened?”

“Because I didn’t like it. Not even when I was doing it.”

She looked at him but said nothing.

“I hurt him and didn’t care. All the circuits were set, and then after pressing the button it’s out of my hands, because that’s how I’m set up. You know what I’m talking about?”

“No. Not yet.”

“I’m talking about Remal. I’m set for him, all set up, to get him down and out of my way, and then I press the button and after that nothing can be done about it.”

“And tonight,” she said, “you’ll take the boat to Sicily.”

“Yes,” he said. “For the same reason.”

She saw now that he had never acted from nastiness or because he was stubborn, or from total blindness, but that this was something else.

“You sound like a condemned man,” she said.

He waited a moment, not looking at her, and then he said, “Yes, that fits.”

She said nothing else to that, though she wished she could tell him, there are other ways, even better ones maybe, and why don’t you try-She dropped that, because it made her feel like a hypocrite. How much did she herself try, and still ended up with the same things she had done before, a hundred or more times.

She took his hand and put it over her breast, holding it there. They sat like that and looked at the gray terrain tilt away.

“You know what will happen to you, if you go through with all this?” she said. It was a real question, the way she asked it, not an admonition or a trick introduction for working up to a lesson.

“I probably do,” he said, “because it’s happened before.”

“Back into the box,” she said and gave a small, disconnected laugh.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been out of it.”

He got up and brushed at his pants. Then he held out his hand for her and helped her up. When she stood next to him she put her hands on his arms and her face into the side of his neck. If there were nothing else now but to feel the skin warmth there, she thought, his and mine, and other simple things like that “You’re wrong,” she said. “Once, at one point there, you were out of it.”

She stepped away from him a little, to see his face when he would answer, but he did not say anything. He isn’t saying anything, she thought, because he’s afraid to say yes, I’ve been out of it, I can be out of it.

Her hands were still on his arms and she curled her fingers into him very hard for a moment and said, “Please stay.”

It was as artless as anything which comes at the wrong moment, which comes too late.

His face was in the sun now, the sun yellow now and his face looking not very alive. His eyes were closed. “And what do you want from me?” he said, but even when be opened his eyes he was not looking at her.

For a moment she did not know what to answer, feeling helpless trying to make sense.

“What?” he said and looked at her.

“I don’t want anything, Quinn,” she said. “I love you.” He held her for a moment. It was as artless as the phrase she had used.