Viator

Five

When he called in his reports to Jochanan Lunde, as he did one sullen, gusty July afternoon not long after this conversation with Arlene, Wilander would usually take himself to Viator’s stern, where reception was the clearest. Approximately forty feet of the stern protruded from the forest, the ruined screws hanging like two huge crumpled iron blossoms above a shingle littered with weathered shards of trees that had been crushed and knocked aside by the ship’s disastrous passage, and strewn with mounds of dark brown seaweed that Wilander, though he knew better, often mistook on first sight for the bodies of drowned men. Standing by the rail that day, he felt exposed, vulnerable to the open sky and the leaden sea, its surface tented by innumerable wavelets close to land, but heaving sluggishly farther out, making it appear that a submerged monster was shouldering its way toward the wreck, and he had to repress an urge to duck back under the canopy of boughs, because the view from the stern was menacing in its bleakness—it seemed that the treeline marked a division between a lush green security teeming with life and a cold, winded purgatory populated by crabs and shadows. He gazed down at the shingle as he delivered to Lunde a litany of partial estimates and hastily conceived plans, responding to the old man’s terse questions, yet only half-involved in these exchanges; and so, when Lunde asked if he had noticed anything out of the ordinary aboard the ship, instead of offering his usual pro forma answer, distracted by a movement on the shore below and to the right of the hull (an animal, he thought; one whose coloration blended so perfectly with that of the motley pebbles and the shattered, silvery gray wood, he could not discern its shape), he asked, What kind of thing are you talking about?

Following a pause, Lunde said angrily, How can I answer that? I’m not there. I don’t know what’s ordinary for you.

—It’s all out of the ordinary, isn’t it? Living on a wreck’s not what I’d call normal.

—It bothers you? It’s becoming stressful?

—No, I’m not saying that. I…

—Is the job wearing on you, then? The solitude? If so, I can look for a replacement.

Wilander retreated from a confrontation. It’s just that given the context, I’m not sure how to answer your question.

—Well, let me ask it another way. Lunde’s voice held a distinct touch of condescension. In context of your experiences aboard Viator, using them as a standard for normalcy, has anything occurred that you’d consider abnormal? Anything unexpected? Anything startling?

Wilander would have liked to ask why Lunde wanted to know, what possible interest could such information hold for him, but he felt he had pushed the old man as far as he dared. Nothing startling, he said.

—Unexpected, then?

—Not really. There’s been some…odd behavior.

—Which is it? Not really, or there’s been some odd behavior.

The animal below cleared a cluster of wooden debris and crept across open ground, but its camouflage prevented Wilander from identifying it—it looked as if a portion of the shingle had become ambulatory. The other men, he said. They’ve developed hobbies. They don’t interfere with the job, of course, but…

—I should hope not.

Wilander peered at the animal—it appeared to be smallish, about the size of a badger, and moved fluidly, albeit slowly, as if sliding rather than walking.

—Are you there? Lunde asked.

—Yes. What were you saying?

—You were doing the talking. Something about the men’s hobbies.

—Right.

As Wilander described Arnsparger’s passion for rust, Halmus’ obsession with glass, the animal passed into a clump of ferns at the verge of the shingle, leaving him disquieted, and when Lunde expressed impatience with his recital, stating that such eccentricities were to be expected among men dwelling in solitude, Wilander, annoyed, no longer so concerned with placating his employer, felt inclined to elaborate upon the unexpected, to tell of his recurring dream, the pictures materializing on the walls, the mirror, the unseen bird with the metallic cry that hooted incessantly in the crown of the linden tree, this nearly invisible creature on the shingle (a porcupine, perhaps?), and the forest itself—now that he thought about it, wasn’t such temperate growth so close to the Arctic Circle not merely unexpected, wasn’t it implausible, impossible?—but before he could begin, Lunde said he had business to attend to and reminded him that they would talk the following week, saying he hoped Wilander would have something more substantial to report, and ended the call, his bluntness giving Wilander cause to wonder if he had misjudged him, if the kindly old fellow he remembered from Fairbanks had only seemed kind in contrast to the unkindness of the shelters and the streets. That question, and the question regarding the overall reliability of his perceptions, nagged at him as he headed toward Kaliaska, and, taking into account his reaction to the forest, reminiscent of the reaction he had displayed after his talk with Mortensen, a feeling of unease growing stronger with every step, a pleasant walk evolving into a nervous, hurried flight, stopping now and again to mark an unfamiliar cry that filtered down through the boughs, glimpsing furtive movement in the undergrowth, sensing enmity in a place that had often nourished him with its dark green complexity, he revisited the notion that his problems might not be due to business failures, to failures of character, but stemmed from a physical condition that provoked intense mood swings. Since his arrival, he had more or less succeeded in dismissing this concern; yet now the idea had resurfaced, he fell victim to it as though to a sudden onset of illness, a sweat breaking on his brow, his hands trembling, unsteadiness infecting his thoughts. He decided to turn back, but, realizing that he had come over halfway, he went forward again, going at an erratic clip, briskly for a minute or two, then pausing, detouring around a suspicious hollow, a forbidding bush, and when at last he left the forest behind and reached the rise overlooking Kaliaska, he felt ambivalent in his relief, like a sailor who has survived a disaster at sea and swum to landfall on a hostile shore. The streets were empty of traffic, pedestrian or otherwise. Smoke trickled from chimneys; a few birds circled above the dock, keening. Wind struck cold into Wilander. Something was wrong. The wasted town and the barren earth beyond testified to wrongness as might an unfavorable array of cards; the line of the mountain peaks graphed a feeble vitality and its decline. Weakness pervaded his limbs, tattered his thoughts. He imagined he was fading, his colors swirling, his form blurring, drifting on the wind. Somebody fired up one of the Caterpillars parked behind the trading post; a gout of black smoke gushed from its exhaust, and a dog that had been sleeping beneath the vehicle slunk away, casting rueful glances back at the rumbling thing that had disturbed it. As if this had been their cue, two paunchy Inupiat women in jeans and sweatshirts, their hair loose about their shoulders, stepped around the corner of the post, walking at an angle that would carry them past his position. One waved with a hand holding a paper sack, the sort that generally contained a pint bottle and shouted, Hey, Tom! He returned a wave, but he didn’t recognize them. They veered toward him and stumped up the rise. Their chubby, lined faces seemed like those you might find on copper coins of great antiquity, well-worn images of glum, inbred, unlovely queens. He still had no clue as to who they were. They smelled of whiskey and that smell sang to the weakness in him. The heavier and older of the two had matronly breasts, gray flecks in her hair, a Seattle Seahawks totem emblazoned on her sweatshirt; she asked what he was doing standing there.

—Hovering, he said. Feeling a little betwixt and between.

—Don’t tell me there’s trouble in paradise?

He realized she must be talking about him and Arlene. I’m just pulling some things together in my head.

She held out the paper sack. Want a swig?

His hand twitched toward the sack, but he said, No, thanks. The younger woman, her sweatshirt sporting an American Idol logo, squinted at him; her lips were badly chapped and a shiny pink scar, at least a centimeter wide, roughly paralleled the curve of her right eyelid. Man, you look sad, she said.

The older woman gave a sardonic laugh and the younger, angry, pried the sack from her grasp. Well, he does! she said. Look at the guy. He’s fucked up! She drank and wiped her mouth on the shoulder of her sweatshirt.

—I’m fine, Wilander said.

—It ain’t love trouble, what do you figure it is? The older woman reached for the paper sack, asking this in a murmurous voice, not making it clear whom she was addressing, but leaving Wilander with the impression that the subject of discussion was of little consequence to her, and she felt compelled to placate the younger woman with a response, otherwise she might hog the liquor.

Wilander’s instinct was to reiterate that he was not fucked up, not sad, but then he remembered the women—mother and daughter, Roogie and Cat by name, they ran the coin laundry on the edge of town, and were genial, hardworking types except on the weekends, which they habitually spent drinking. He suddenly perceived them to be wise fools, like drunks in a play, existential savants capable of delivering a profound commentary.

—The thing that’s bothering me, I get these mood swings, he said. One second I’m okay, I’m happy, I’m going about my business, and the next I’m paranoid. I think it might be something chemical.

The women stared at him, perhaps surprised that he had confided in them, perhaps too drunk to understand what he had said, and then Roogie, the mother, gave her daughter a nudge and said, Sounds like your cousin Alvin. What the judge told him before he went to rehab. Judging by her baffled expression, Cat did not recall the event, and Roogie went on, About how he had a syndrome from his drinking?

—Oh, yeah. Cat squinted up at Wilander once again. Maybe you oughta cut back on the booze.

—I’ve been clean and sober for over a year.

—But you was a drinking man, right? Maybe you caught the syndrome, too, and it stuck with you.

From somewhere in the town came the flatulent noise of an unmufflered engine starting up.

—Sounds like Bert got his truck going, Roogie said.

Cat grunted. Big fucking deal! That worthless son-of-a-bitch never’s gonna give us a ride.

—Well, he might if you was nicer, if you didn’t call him names everytime you see him.

—You want me to sleep with him? That’s what it’ll take. I’m not gonna sleep with him just so he’ll carry you around to wherever you want.

—Only thing I’m asking is you treat him like a human being!

—He ain’t no human being! He’s a filthy old dog who owns a truck! Why you want to ride with him in the first place, I’ll never know. Damn thing smells like he sleeps in it.

Someone—the malodorous Bert, if Cat and Roogie were to be believed—began gunning the engine, racing it. The women glared at each other, and Wilander, hoping to steer the conversation back on track, said, I’ve been thinking my problem, the mood swings, they might have to do with me living on Viator.

—Bitch! Cat said to Roogie. What do you care what he does to me? He could knock my eye out and leave me crawling in the mud, that’d be all right ’long as he drives you over to Anchorage once a month.

—I should smack you for saying that! Hands on hips, Roogie faced down her daughter.

—Go ahead! Wouldn’t be the first time!

—All I done for you, how can you accuse me of not caring?

—It seems I’ve always had them, Wilander said. But since I came here, it’s like moods that used to last for months come and go in a matter of hours.

Scowling, Roogie swiveled her head toward him. What the hell are you talking about?

Cat said, You done so much for me, how come I’m still living in this shithole?

Wilander decided to try another tack. Either of you ever hear any rumors floating around about Viator. Anything strange.

—I hear there’s a buncha queers living out there now, said Cat.

—I don’t know where you get your mouth, Roogie said to her. You didn’t get that mouth from me.

—Naw, I musta got it from my real mother!

The engine shut down and, as though its operation had been tied in with the functioning of the weather, the wind died. In the quiet, Wilander heard waves slapping against the dock. There aren’t any scary stories about the ship? he asked. Ghost stories…anything like that.

Cat scoffed at this. You seen a ghost, didja?

Wilander said that he had not.

—Then why you going on about ’em for?

Roogie put a hand on Wilander’s shoulder, her expression a parody of sympathetic concern. Whatever your problem is, Tom, there’s an easy solution. All you gotta do is do right by Arlene, and everything’ll fall into place.

—How am I not doing right by her?

—Arlene’s a good woman. You need to get off the fence and commit to her. You take care of her, she’ll take care of you.

—A good woman don’t charge six dollars for a pack of smokes, said Cat.

—That’s the tax! She can’t help that!

—Did Arlene tell you that? asked Wilander. She’s looking for me to commit?

—She don’t know her ass! Cat said. She makes up shit all the time!

Roogie folded her arms, affecting injured dignity. Matter of fact, I did talk to her. Even if I didn’t, it’s plain how she feels.

Cat took a long swig of whiskey, too long, apparently, for Roogie’s tastes—she snatched the bottle back and lifted it from the paper sack to check how much was left.

—That guy who came off Viator after it crashed, Cat said, he acted like he’d seen a ghost. Walked around staring at shit and giving a jump whenever you come up on him. He was here for a day about…then they came got him.

—Like you remember! You were twelve years old! Roogie said.

—I remember better’n you! Cat turned to Wilander. She was drinking so much back then, she didn’t know about the crash ’til a week after it happened.

—What guy? Wilander was startled not just by her statement, but by a recognition that, until now, he had only considered in passing what must have transpired with the crew.

—The captain. Roogie re-sheathed the bottle in the sack and had a delicate sip, as if she intended to ration the whiskey from that point on. I heard it was the captain.

—How about the rest of the crew? What happened to them?

—He’s the only one I know about, Cat said, and Roogie chimed in, Mark Matchett, that’s the doctor we had back then, he told me the guy was telling some kinda wild story about how come he ran the ship aground, but wouldn’t nobody believe him.

—Mark Matchett’d tell you anything to make your eyes get big, Cat said. So when he slipped his hand in your pants, you’d think it was all part of a story.

—I taken all your mouth I’m gonna take! You don’t know nothing about me and Mark!

—I know he’d give you a wink and you’d drop to your knees! I musta walked in on the two of you a dozen times.

—Goddamn you!

—Him with his back turned, fixing his zipper, and you wiping your mouth off. Didn’t take a genius to figure out what you was up to.

Roogie made to punch her daughter, and Wilander, trying to stop her, catching at her arm, sent her off-balance; she slipped and sat down hard, fell onto her back, somehow managing not to spill the whiskey, and, after giving him a look that went through quick stages of bewilderment, hurt, and rage, finally settling on despair, she began to sob. He bent to help her stand, but Cat pushed him away and shouted, Keep your fucking hands off my mama!

Wilander attempted to explain what had happened, but she screamed at him and Roogie’s sobs escalated into a wail, as if she were encouraged by Cat’s solicitude.

—See what you done! Cat shoved him hard in the chest and he reeled backward a few steps. You keep the fuck away!

Tears leaking from her eyes, she kneeled to console her mother, putting an arm about her, joining her in a community of grief that was founded—Wilander knew—upon no specific ill, but was informed by the sense of impermanence that tars the human spirit, the stuff that glues it to the flesh, a sticky emotional ground where drunks and addicts and other fools are prone to wander, mistaking it for evidence of a grand significance in their lives simply because it’s something they can feel through their self-imposed numbness. She took Roogie in her arms, rocked her. I’ll kill you, she said in a shaky half-whisper, as if the words were an endearment. Touch her again, and I’ll kill you.

The wallpaper in Arlene’s bedroom, a gold foil-like material with black bars of sheet music printed across it, clashed with everything else in the room, but so did each object in the room clash one with the others, and thus from a jumble of color and shape and function was yielded if not a harmony, then a discordant uniformity: a brass bed piled high with pillows and a wine-colored satin spread; a teak armoire hulking up at the foot of the bed, like a beast gloomily observing the activity thereon; curtains of Belgian lace that, when blown inward, reminded Wilander of filmy sea creatures gathering food from a current; a leatherette recliner nearly buried beneath laundry; candlesticks of brass and silver and crystal and pewter, oddly paired, no two alike; glass jars filled with agate pebbles; a dressing table of age-darkened cherrywood covered—as was every surface—with a dozen varieties of clutter, its mirror wreathed by a string of Christmas tree lights; the sixty-inch television set, a different sort of beast, sleek and blandly modern; clothes and books and shoes and change and magazines and toiletries scattered across the floor (Arlene had foresworn the art of housekeeping); and, on the bedside table, a lamp with a lacquered green shade whose dim emerald glow lent a transitory unity to these disparate objects, hollowing the night shadows into the semblance of a mystic cave, an underwater place where might dwell a sorceress who had removed herself from the world in order to master some contemplative discipline. You could not simply enter the room, you were absorbed by it, becoming an element of its dissonance, and Wilander had occasion to think that the decor might not be, as it appeared, haphazard, but rather was so designed to accommodate the haphazard collection of men who had slept there.

That evening, the town still awake, music from the Kali Bar (so named not due to any devotion rendered unto the Hindu deity, but because the owner and a hired sign painter had squabbled mid-job, a slight disagreement escalating into a feud as yet unresolved) squealing in the distance, he sat in bed and tried to sound out the melody of the wallpaper, whistling it under his breath—it was as chaotic as the room itself, a tune such as a child might produce while banging on opposite ends of a keyboard. Arlene, lying beside him, asked, What are you doing?, and, when he explained, she said forlornly, as if the oversight were a sorry judgment on her, It’s never occurred to me to do that.

—You’d think the manufacturer would have used a famous piece of music, Wilander said.

—Maybe it is famous. The wallpaper’s Chinese. Some Chinese music sounds all fractured. Atonal.

He shifted so he could lie propped on an elbow, looking down at her body, her belly and breasts pale and unblemished, but the rest of her, even the insides of her thighs, patterned with freckles, a patterning so heavy and distinctly stated in places, it made him think of a leopard’s spots.

—What sort of music do you like? she asked.

—I’m not much of a music lover.

—You must like something.

—I don’t mind music, I just can’t relate to it the way other people do. He pointed out the window, indicating the faint music from the bar. But I like hearing it from far away. Even if it’s just a bar band, it seems to promise something good.

After an interval she said, But when you get close, it’s not so good?

Alerted by a fretful hesitance in her voice, he said, That’s right. What I said…it’s a metaphor for how I relate to everything, not just music. Places, people. At a distance they’re fine, but up close—he made a sour face—eventually they become intolerable.

—Don’t tease me!

—Weren’t you trying to read that into what I was saying?

Another pause, and then she said, I know so little about you. Most of what I know doesn’t apply anymore. You don’t drink, you don’t work in finance.

—The last months haven’t counted for anything?

—Of course they have. But ever since I’ve known you, you’ve always been going through some change or another. I’ve never seen you solid.

—I’m not sure anybody’s ever solid.

—Solid’s your term. When you said you wanted to stay aboard Viator awhile longer, you said you weren’t feeling solid yet…or something like that.

—I was speaking about relative solidity.

—Okay. I haven’t seen you relatively solid.

He laid his head on her belly, looking past her pubic tuft toward the freckles that spread across her the tops of her thighs, tiny brown splotches like, he thought, the remnants of an island continent flooded by a milky sea. He felt the heat of her sex on his cheeks. He studied the freckles, wondering whether—if he were to stare at them long enough—an image might emerge, as from the splotchy walls of the ship.

—Thomas?

—Yes.

—What do you want after you leave Viator?

The prospect of leaving the ship seemed silly for an instant, like the idea of unscrewing one’s arm or building a house out of cheese, and he thought he must feel this way because his time aboard Viator had permitted him to gather sufficient strength and confidence to look beyond himself once again, to be here, now, with this woman, and to recognize her needs and his responsibilities toward her—it was daunting to (consider) doing without the perspective Viator had afforded.

—Is this something you have to think about? she asked.

He moved up beside her and threw an arm across her chest. Not the way you mean.

She angled her eyes toward him, waiting for him to go on.

—Nothing’s changed, he said. I want to be with you. If things were different, I might choose to live somewhere less desolate. But that’s not a real issue.

—You haven’t spent enough time in Kaliaska to know it. You only know the post, the pizza place, the bar.

—There’s more? He chuckled, gave her a squeeze. Kaliaska has a secret life? A hidden culture?

—There’s the people, for one thing.

—Oh, yeah. The people. I talked to a couple of the people this afternoon.

—You can’t judge everyone by Roogie and Cat, especially when they’re on a drunk.

—They’re not the only drunks in Kaliaska.

—Certainly not. People drink, they do drugs, they fight. When the fishermen come back after the season, it gets worse.

Seduced by the smell of her hair, Wilander inched closer, sinking back into a heady post-coital torpor; he rubbed the nipple of her left breast between his thumb and forefinger. She stirred at his touch and he wondered what she was feeling—she was ashamed of her breasts, thought them too large and pendant, insufficiently firm, incompatible with the slimness of her body, and was at times discomforted by his attention to them, but he loved their soft, crepey skin, their heft, how they dangled when she was astride him.

—Why do you like it here? he asked.

—Because I know where I am. When I lived in Detroit, I was always confused about what was happening around me. Anxious all the time. Now I’ve been here for a while, I understand the same things go on in Kaliaska that went on back in the States. Detroit’s just a big Kaliaska. People coming in from all over. The difference is, in Detroit I’d never think to talk to those people. I wouldn’t want to, I’d be afraid of them. There were too many people. I couldn’t get a feeling for them, and so I didn’t trust them. Here the ships drop anchor, ships from everywhere. Japan, Russia, Norway. The crews come ashore for a day or two, maybe a week if the weather’s bad, and they tell me about themselves. It’s a richer life. And it’s less confusing, less fearful. Everyone’s so frightened down in the forty-eight. Maybe they’re right to be frightened. Life is frightening. But here…Okay. She turned onto her side, facing him, earnest, one hand touching his chest. Sometimes when they wheel out the big TV at the Kali and show a movie, I’ll be sitting there surrounded by thirty or forty people. Some don’t like me, because we’ve had business problems or whatever; some of the guys like me a little too much. But I know what to expect. I’m not worried. Knowing where I am, having that clear a view…It gives me a freedom I never felt in the States. It allows me to appreciate the people around me in a way I couldn’t before. And they’re not all like Roogie and Cat.

—No, some are like Terry.

—Terry’s a good kid. You have to get past the attitude. Look, I’ll admit the range of people here isn’t what you get in a city, but some of them are remarkable. It just takes time to see it.

—You’re very persuasive, he said.

—Apparently not. I can’t persuade you to come live in town.

She tried to make a joke of it, but there was an undercurrent of tension in her voice, and Wilander, recalling what Roogie had said about Arlene needing a commitment, found it strange that he was unable to give that commitment, because when he looked at her, he felt something that wanted to commit, something that once declared would bind them more tightly, and he saw the clean particularity of her spirit, her soul, whatever you preferred to call the light that flashed from her whenever the incidental clutter of her mind cleared sufficiently to let it shine through, the bright flash of her being, and he knew that despite the superficially facile nature of their connection, lonely man, lonely woman, there was something between them that seemed ordained, something he had encountered only once previously and then with a college girl named Bliss, Bliss Giddings, a tall, slender, quiet brunette who was studying to be an astronomer and was devoted to the poetry of Cavafy; poems that, when he read them to himself, communicated a haughty, defeatist sensibility, but when she read them aloud rang with a lovely sad romanticism, and everything was going splendidly for them, they were inseparable, intoxicated with each other, until one day she vanished without a warning, dropped out of the university and returned home, leaving him shocked, deranged, in agony—she refused to take his calls, refused every effort at contact, and he soon learned that she had married a wealthy businessman, a wine importer twelve years her senior, so no astronomy for her, no meteors, no pulsars, no distant suns, no erudite speculation upon whether the shape of the universe, as recently opined, was similar to that of the Eiffel Tower, shattering the reality of those who had based their faith on the theory that it resembled a football, and there would be no hazy unfathomable astronomical objects named Gidding, no prestigious international conferences in Lucerne, no moments of transcendent solitude at the lens of Palomar, the cosmos spread out before her as if she were a spy for God, just lots of expensive grape juice; unless, to humor her, the importer, one Adam Zouski (the cacophonous sibilance of Bliss Zouski an abomination by contrast to the liquid asymmetry of Bliss Wilander), bought a telescope and placed it on the penthouse roof of the New York City castle where she was kept, allowing her to revisit her quaint, childish ambition; and years afterward, many years afterward, she began to email Wilander, gloomy, self-absorbed emails that professed love for him and dissatisfaction with her life, with her husband, a correspondence that grew over the months in intensity and frequency—they talked on the phone, spoke of getting together, made plans, shared sexual fantasies, yet nothing ever came of it, their plans evaporated, their fantasies remained unreal, the emails and phone calls stopped, and he still could not understand why she had left him; the reasons she gave were so flimsy, as if she herself did not understand, and though it wasn’t until he met Arlene that he was able to put that episode in a drawer and lock it away, though he recognized how rare it was to feel this close to someone, the only way he could think to explain his reticence about moving into town, an explanation that would have a tired ring to Arlene’s ears, was that he was not yet secure in himself, not yet solid. Finally, without attempting explanation, he told her that however the job was going, he would come to her after a month or so, when the first snow fell, early September at the latest. She said, All right, but she wasn’t pleased; he could tell as much from the compression of her lips, the deepening of a frown line, and recognized that his indecisiveness (that, he knew, was how she perceived it) bordered on rejection, and might be more painful for her than rejection. He started to offer an apology, but knew it would sound inadequate.

—I don’t get it. I don’t get any part of it. This Lunde gives you a meaningless job, and you…She made a fuming noise and turned her back to him. What do you know about this guy? Nothing! You don’t have the slightest idea what he’s up to!

—It’s only a month, he said, pressing himself against her from behind. A month! That’s no time at all.

He continued to reassure her, kissing the nape of her neck, touching her breasts; and, his erection restored, he started to push inside her, but she restrained him, twisted her head about so she could see his face, and said, I don’t want this to be an affair! Don’t move in unless you love me! And that was the perfect moment for a declaration. She was inviting him to declare himself, making such a declaration easy, an informality, and he felt the words and the will to say them taking shape; but then she opened her legs and, as he glided into her—that’s how it felt, a glide, like the splashless slipping of a diver into a medium wherein his weight was taken away, his thoughts stripped by the purity of entry, not only his flesh but also his mind immersed, drenched in her—all he managed to say, more an expulsion of breath than a commitment, was, I won’t.