“I could telecommute.”
Silence from Erin.
“If you were here,” I started, then dropped the thought.
She gave me a fake smile. I soaked up every ounce of it.
When I met Erin I was working at a statistics-processing firm, a small shop founded by a one-time major league pitcher named Dean Denny. He was a side-armer, goofy and mustachioed. After retiring at thirty-two, he’d run for office, lost, spent ten years as a lobbyist for everyone from Exxon to Greenpeace, then started the American Institute for Statistical Studies. The firm was located in a converted Victorian in Alexandria, catering to the nonprofits in D.C., some federal agencies, and those who wanted influence at either or both. The other two staff members were Michael and Derek, Michael being Dean’s son and Derek being Michael’s old friend and the former personal assistant to Alan Simpson, senator of Wyoming.
Two months after meeting Erin I secured a job for her at the AISS. I was afraid she’d hate Michael and Derek, that they would drive her away. For their own amusement, they had recently removed one letter from the firm’s name and had made business cards with A.S.S. on them. They were chucklers, they were assholes. They called me The Turtle.
Then Turtle-man.
Then Yertle.
Then Yentl. Then Lentil.
Finally they went back to Turtle.
They were funny and loyal. They laughed about Dockers but then wore pants shockingly close to Dockers. Sometimes they’d wear baseball caps to work, the bill carefully bent in an upside-down grin, the edges frayed. Their footwear was always perfect—old Nike hiker’s low-tops in earth tones, or white bucks flawlessly faded and scuffed. They dressed the way certain Cape Coddish catalogs tried to dress their models, but these two were better at it, effortless about it, tucking one side of their shirts in just so, their clothes worn in but never threadbare—
It sounds as though I was paying attention to their wardrobe but I don’t remember it that way. You know these men. They’re fine people, they know right from wrong. I had a strong feeling that, in a pinch, they would do more for me than I would for them. It was more in their blood; they were not people who would think twice.
The American Institute for Statistical Studies was the only one of its kind on the East Coast and therefore we were the best at what we did. We were the people who took the statistics— how many people injured on the job each year, how many boys fondled by priests every decade, how many cats declawed in urban areas every week, anything—and, among other services, extrapolated those numbers into the frequency per day, per hour, minute, whatever seemed most grievous. We knew all the pertinent figures—525,600 minutes in a year, 31,536,000 seconds—and so could always figure out how to make whatever issue or trend seem as menacing as possible. Three million squirrels poisoned by processed food a year is one thing, but if the public knows that one such squirrel dies every twelve seconds, well then, the reasoning goes, you have a populace motivated to act.
Given our physical proximity, the four of us knew an inordinate amount about each other. We could hear, if we chose to listen, every word spoken by any of the others, on the phone or otherwise. We quickly became protective of one another but especially of Erin, who we pretended needed our shielding. She had been raised as an only child outside of Asheville—she had the faintest accent—and now she felt, she often said, as if she’d inherited three brothers. When she first said that, after we’d been working together for a few months, we three coveted it, being thought of as her brothers—it prompted Derek, at least, to start lifting weights. But it made anyone’s romantic pursuit of Erin seem against nature or God. We’d all had, before that point, intentions of varying severity. My feelings for Erin were confused. I loved her.
She noticed things about me. When I sat across from her, at any meal, she would find a time, after looking at me for a few seconds, to make a declaration. “You have minnow-shaped eyes,” she said. “You smell clean. Like a little boy,” she said. It didn’t matter what she said, I was always grateful. “You have something below you,” she said to me, eating a hoagie one day, prying open my every pore and reading my every memory. “Like a bunch of teeth waiting to come through.”
I wanted to love her heroically, selflessly—to honor her and defend her, and punish people who looked at her stump in a way that displeased her. But soon I realized that she had more than enough suitors, and at least a few of them would be better for her. They all seemed to be quiet, uncomplicated men, who were usually older and who invariably looked older than they were, and wore wool. But occasionally we glimpsed an “old friend” or an acquaintance from this gym or that band—she went to a lot of shows—and these men caused us concern. These men were thinner, unshaven, wore boots.
She spread her attention between the three of us with maddening equability. We usually all ate together, but occasionally, in a casual but calculated rotation, we ate with her alone. For a time, Michael and Derek stepped into an area where they were permitted to make ribald jokes about her missing arm. I never followed, nor did Dean. Derek she allowed to call her Lefty, but at some point Michael lost his license to kid her about the arm, I don’t know how. I rejoiced.
Michael, Derek, and I, each unsure of the others’ intentions and of our own, agreed, drunkenly one night, never to touch her, not even in a state like the one in which we currently found ourselves. Everyone had their intimacies, though. Derek took her on motorcycle rides, Michael taught her how to roast a pig. I was the one—either because she loved me more or because I was the least virile—she told about her men.
She claimed never to want to talk much about them, but she did, with little provocation. Hearing their names, or the nicknames she gave them—Fingers, Señor con Queso, Mr. Robinson—made me uneasy; it was clear that many of them were still lurking nearby, and that she was not adept at or willing to cut them loose. She lamented the fact that she seemed to attract men who wanted to
extract
something from her. She used this word,
extract
, often, when talking about these unnamed men. I considered her flawless, though I wished she were more careful, or better able to keep herself out of the path of these bad men. The bad men, I told her, were not always obvious at first, though I wasn’t sure that was true.
“I can’t worry about the intentions of everyone I know,” she said.
“Wrong,” I said. “You
have
to worry about their intentions. Within three minutes of meeting any man, his intentions toward you are decided, completely.”
“I don’t believe that,” she said.
Stopped at an outcropping, a mist swirled around us as if it were going to leave a genie in its wake, and when it lifted, I hugged Erin, my front to her back. I buried my head in her neck. She accepted this, and turned to face me, and then held me with a quick intensity—and let go. She knew I was weak and stupid. But when she released me, I pulled her into me again, and indicated with the tenacity of my embrace that I’d like to hold her for at least a full minute or two, binge on her now, and thus be left sated. I was overcome: I coveted her and the world in that order.
I kept a close eye on the side of her head, to see if she would turn her face toward mine. If that were to happen I would kiss her for a short time and then stop, and then laugh it off, pretend that we were just being dopes. I would kiss her long enough to satisfy my curiosity about kissing her but briefly enough that I could dismiss the kiss—ha ha what a riot, couldn’t matter less.
But it would always matter! I would always think of this time, of these hugs, of a kiss, should it come. I would catalog it and reference it frequently, and I hoped that in the short term gorging on this kind of platonic affection would prevent me from doing something more drastic later. Faced with a radiance like here, a clear air of rightness, it took so much work to avoid doing something wrong. We held each other for three minutes and then pulled away and I kissed her head while she stared into my neck.
We got back in the car.
It was 8 o’clock and underwater blue when we rolled over the bridge to the Isle of Skye. There was fog, a hazy condensation that cast everything in gray. We had a map, but it was much too vague and soon we were lost. There was a profound sort of quiet to the island, and I wanted nothing more than a small warm inn, with only one room left, no doubles, sorry—so we’d have to share a bed.
We stopped at a small bed and breakfast, with a sign saying “Mrs. MacIlvane’s”, to ask about a room. There were luminaria guiding visitors to the door, a huge and scarlet door, with a knocker in the center fashioned from antlers. A large pale woman, who looked so much like Terry Jones in drag that I almost laughed, opened the door. I wanted her to speak in a chirpy falsetto but her voice was surprisingly nuanced, smoky even.
Erin asked if she had any rooms, and I saw that the woman hadn’t noticed Erin’s missing arm. Erin had a way of standing, which she’d used—she told me later—the first time I’d met her. It was an undetectable three-quarter stance, giving people a bit more of her right shoulder than was customary.
While the woman was telling us her son was home and occupying the one available room, the man of the house, round and with a leftward brush of gray hair, came up behind her and kicked the back of her knee, throwing her balance off. She turned, slapped his shoulder and they both grinned, bashful and proud, at Erin and me.
“You’ll have a bit of trouble finding a room tonight,” the man said.
“A load of birders up this weekend,” his wife said. “Someone said there were puffins here, so they’re all in search.”
“Are you birders?” the man asked.
“Yes,” said Erin. “Completely.”
“Well, I’m sorry about the room,” the man said. Now he was starting to close the door. “We’d invite you in, but you’d be sharing our bed.”
“And we don’t do that anymore,” the woman said, out of view, laughing. And the big scarlet door closed on us.
Driving aimlessly, we speculated about their sex life. At some point I said something to Erin about her possibly wanting to have a three-way with the older couple.
“Sounds like you wanna go bump in the night with Terry Jones and her husband.”
I think that’s what I said. It was a joke, but I delivered it wrong and it sounded nasty.
Erin said, with all the cheer available in the world: “No thanks. Not this time.”
I asked her what she meant by that.
“Nothing.”
“So you’ve had a threesome!”
She was quiet.
“Erin! You dog.”
More quiet.
“Who with?”
Nothing.
“Tell me. You have to tell me.”
A sigh. “It was nothing. It was weird. Forget it. You see any more places to stay? On the map? I don’t want to have to go back to Kyleakin.”
This exchange was itself a level of intimacy we’d never had. When we’d shared stories before, it had always been voluntary—titillating but unchallenging. Now I was pushing her and I felt we were very close.
“Tell me who! Another girl, or a couple or what?”
“I don’t know. Just stop.”
“Who were they? Anyone I know? I bet it was two guys!”
We were having such a good time. At the same time, I felt like I was sticking my head ever-deeper into an oven.
“It was nothing. It was weird.”
My mouth dried and I pretended to keep smiling. Why do we pursue information that we know will never leave our heads? I was inviting a permanent, violent guest into my home. He would defecate on my bed. He would shred my clothes, light fires on the walls. I could see him walking up the driveway and I stood at the door, knowing that I’d be a fool to bring him inside. But still I opened the door.
“You know I won’t stop until you tell me,” I said, still trying to be jocular.
A fog threw itself over our car and Erin turned on the brights.
“Who was it?” I asked, knowing. Almost knowing, as my eyes adjusted to the dim light now between us.
“Where is this coming from?” she asked. “Why are you obsessing?”
She looked in the side-view mirror and then rolled down the window to readjust it. I already knew I was right.
“Tell me,” I said, hushed.
She stopped the car and turned to me. “You’re being an ass. I thought you knew.”
“Let me drive,” I said.
We both got out silently and passed in front of the car, steam rising from the hood, our faces in the headlights white and terrified.
I drove faster. She was execrable. They were villains, the three of them. Vermin in Dockers. And liars. I closed my eyes and no colors appeared.
The black road devoured our headlights. I wove left and right with the double lines; they toyed with me. I couldn’t imagine a time when I’d want to talk to her or to them again. It was almost a relief.
“Tom.”
I didn’t answer. I’ve wanted to be in a war. Or a box. Somewhere where I would always know what to do.
I didn’t want to be in Scotland. Just getting off of Skye would mean something, having that bay between us. I’d go to Muck or Eigg or Benbecula or Rhum. How was it that I’d known? Far before she’d given me a hint I knew. I decided that yes, I wished she’d lied. I didn’t like her face anymore. It had reddened and dropped—she almost had jowls, didn’t she? Who was this person? She was an animal.
Two flashes of white and a boom and something black and two eyes—we hit a living thing. Erin gasped quietly, and I immediately had the strangely satisfying thought that she was so cowed by her sins to stay silent during a car accident. She couldn’t scream.
I stopped the car.
“A dog, I think,” she said.
I backed up. In my side-view mirror, a black mound marred the road, resting precisely on the divider. The brake lights were not enough to illuminate it. I turned the car around to shine the headlights on it. It was not a dog. It was a sheep.
Its wool was black and its eyes were almost white but also gray and blue. They reflected the car’s lights flatly. There was blood coming from its mouth. Its head was twisted. Oh God, said Erin.