But really there was just one moment, a moment that all the other moments kept getting sucked back into, the moment before Liza Hatter went underwater. It was a moment that seemed to hold itself in suspension, isolated from time, as if it hung just briefly on some precipice before dropping. There was Liza Hatter’s face above the water, there was the moonlight. There were her glowing eyes, there was the word she said—
Tristan?
He couldn’t think of anything else for very long.
Two weeks after Liza Hatter’s disappearance, he came back to the lake house from a trip to town for groceries. He loaded up the refrigerator and the pantry and then headed to the dock. It was the last day of May, not a cloud in the sky, and the air felt warm enough to be called summer. There was barely any wind. The knotty pines on the surrounding cliffs were vigilant and still, like silent witnesses. The sun on the water was blinding, the popping of a thousand flashbulbs. He stood mesmerized by the dancing of the lights, and he was thinking of Liza Hatter, almost remembering right then the sound of her voice when she’d said his name—
Tristan?
—so softly. He could almost catch the sound, almost re-create it in his head, but something was
pushing at the edge of his thoughts, his vision. He cocked his head slowly, and, down at the waterline off to his right, there was Liza Hatter. His hands trembled, though he could still feel himself breathing evenly, the draw and release he watched in the mirror. Liza Hatter, her bare feet on the rocks of the shore, her red hair adrift in the lapping waves. For some reason, he looked around at the trees and the cliffs of the cove, the sun high in the sky, its reflection in the water, the tree-covered hills leading up to the road, the house nestled there, and then Liza Hatter’s body at the shore, as if he could make an engraving of all this somewhere in his head.
But soon he stood ankle-deep in the cold water, monitoring himself and her for several minutes. In one sense he was strangely calm, in another strangely agitated. His body seemed to work fine, the trembling stopped despite the cold water, as if it had passed out of him in that first moment, but his mind insisted on playing tricks. Several times he thought she moved voluntarily. Each time he bent toward the water, as if to lend her a hand. Once he said something to her—“Liza.” But she was simply moving on the waves. Nevertheless he thought of other things to say:
I’m sorry
.
You
are
actually very pretty
.
I understand about the dog
.
He had not touched her yet. To touch her, it seemed to him, would represent the crossing of some plane. He didn’t know right now if it had to do with time or space, whether he would be reaching across to the past or to the future or to the other side of something more physical. It wasn’t a violation of time or space that he felt willing to make. And yet he had to move her. There was something in the world that insisted on it. He couldn’t leave her body on the shore. For a wild moment he
considered not doing it—he considered, instead, going to the lake house and calling the police. Female body washed up onshore, no knowledge of the victim. He gripped his forehead tightly, closed his eyes, tried to explain to himself once again why it wouldn’t work, and even though he couldn’t, he knew better than to try. Sadly, in trying to consider such an action, he felt like the old Tristan again, the one who felt compelled to do things he didn’t want to do.
But Liza Hatter herself was pure. She was beyond any compulsion. After a while he grew calm again looking at her. He knelt and turned her body over. The arm he held felt clammy and cold, barely registered with him, not the sort of violation he’d thought it would be. But it was as if he saw her again for the first time—saw
her
, the Liza Hatter who had called his name. Her eyes were as large as he remembered them, maybe larger. There was a film over them now, a veil. He felt the trembling start again, a panicky reaction that had already started to seem ancient, part of him for a long time. He did his best to gather himself. He had, after all, prepared himself for this. The preparation was as old as and fully equal to the panic.
So there she was. He tried to look at her scientifically, the way she said she’d been unable to look at the dog in the class. He’d criticized her, secretly, for not being able to achieve that inner calm. There was no color in her face. She looked as if she’d been preserved in formaldehyde. But the face was bloated and sore-looking, the body bloated and sore, her thin limbs warped somehow, her belly thick and distended. He made his eyes move away from the erect nipples, the strip of pubic hair. He was glad that there wasn’t an overpowering smell. He thought of his mother and father and sister and his grandfather, and he
thought of the years he’d spent in college and the plans he used to make, even though he had never wanted to make them, not really. Now he was into something different, there was a different life he was living here, and he wasn’t sure to what degree he’d chosen it. But he knew no matter what it was that it was going to be hard and that it would take everything he had and that it wouldn’t go away. He’d better get started living it.
He grabbed Liza Hatter’s ankles and pulled her all the way onshore. He looked at her there on the rocks. Those eyes—almost the same as he’d remembered them. He touched the lids and closed his own eyes while he tried to close hers. But they wouldn’t close, the eyes too distended, the lids no longer pliant. He heard himself breathe in through his teeth. Not looking at her, he began to drag her up the rocks, onto the dirt of the trail, up the thin path through the weeds and the wildflowers and the underbrush. He was aware that her ass and her back made a scuffing sound. Partway up the trail, he paused to consider. “Liza,” he said, still not looking at her, “what to do with you.” He spoke to her as he had in the library. He couldn’t take her any closer to the road. He couldn’t take her any closer to the house. He couldn’t bury her along the path. Up the cliff then, partway between here and the neighbor’s property. But there was no way to drag her there. He’d have to pick her up, carry her.
He was surprised to find himself crying, suddenly—nervousness, a sense of something lost. The sun was high in the sky. It was, by all conventional measures, a perfect day, and he tried to think of that, how there was this business to dispense with and then he could return to being himself, the self he’d enjoyed being lately. He finished with the crying.
But when he tried to lift her she was impossibly heavy. Fluid leaked from her, in ways he didn’t want to imagine. She was a
human-size sponge, the body slick and not slick, the flesh cold and, he had to admit, a relief from the heat and exertion. At one point he lifted her cold hand to his cheek and then dropped it. Finally he went to the house for a blanket and came back and wrapped her in it. He pulled the ends of the blanket together and squatted and lifted as hard as he could, until he stood there trying to balance with Liza Hatter slung over his shoulder. He proceeded uphill, falling down often, landing on his knees, sometimes his elbows, sometimes resorting to dragging her, though he feared leaving a trail through the undergrowth. He stopped when he dared go no closer to the neighbor’s property. The lake house was below him, the cliffs of the cove below him, the water far, far down there. “Liza Hatter,” he said, as if he would ask her a question.
He left her in the blanket and went to the shed behind the house and grabbed a shovel. In the midday heat he cleared a small space and dug a grave, a shallow one. It was hard work. He dug it just deep enough to bury her in, and it took a long time.
He took the blanket off and laid her as gently as possible in the earth. There was a kind of turning. Of what, he didn’t know. His thoughts, the time. And there she was, Liza Hatter. Her reappearance would be an ending and a beginning. “Stay calm,” he said, to her or to himself. “We’ll get through this.” You were worth it after all, he wanted to say to her, and he wasn’t sure later whether he didn’t or he did. Everything was as still as a painting in the hot afternoon. He looked up into the sunshine. He looked far down at the water. He took notice of the trees.
El sol
.
El agua
.
Los arboles
. Now there would be new words for everything.
Stupid Assholes
Bleeding like a motherfucker
Vince Thompson walked into the low light of the 321, keeping his head down. Fucking bartender, Bill, would kick his ass out in a heartbeat if he saw him all bloody. Make his way quick to the bathroom then, look at himself in the mirror. A black eye tomorrow, probably, a cut on the upper lip—it didn’t show up so much with the stubble, though—that made Vince Thompson wince at the feel of the cold water he ran from the tap, the hot water not fucking working, of course, nothing happening when he turned the knob, so he had to use this freezing shit to get the blood off, and then the lip didn’t want to stop bleeding and the goddamn bloody nose to deal with too, so he had to grab paper towels and stuff them in his pocket, the one with the drugs, not the Beretta, and he ran a hand through his thinning hair and tried to get the swollen eye to open all the way but it wouldn’t, no big deal considering he couldn’t see out of the son of a bitch anyway, and then, looking more like shit than he usually did even, definitely not the sort of person anyone would want to talk to, would they, it was his own fault in some ways, his goddamn solitude, he pressed a paper towel to his mouth and went back out into the bar, looking every direction for trouble.
So far, so good, except there was no Russell Harmon. Not anywhere at the front of the bar, and so he took a peek around the corner toward the dartboard but no Russell Harmon there, either. Maybe he’d figured wrong, maybe Russell Harmon was even more of a pansy ass than he’d supposed, but then coming toward the front again he saw him out the window, talking to his goddamn friend Matt, some sort of heated conversation concerning Vince fucking Thompson, no doubt, whether Russell Harmon should risk getting his ass shot or no, the two of them huddled there under the awning like fucking bridge trolls, Matt taking a hit off the old nose spray, his back turned toward the camera, so to speak. Nothing to do but wait it out, then, let them stand out there in the rain. Vince Thompson pressed the paper towel to his bloody lip and pulled it away and looked at it, still bleeding profusely, more or fucking less, and he pressed the towel against his lip harder and made his way back toward the dartboard, not even bothering to order a drink, like they’d give him one anyway, the fuckers. He sat in a corner out of the way. Reconnaissance, that’s what the asshole father would call it, check out the space and determine the general fucking flow of the action, the potential traps, the land mines waiting for you at every turn, because Vince fucking Thompson definitely didn’t belong here, not in this place, not ever since the night he’d caused the goddamn supposed commotion during their weenie-ass open mike night a few months ago, got his ass kicked out by Bill when all he was trying to do was suggest that
maybe
, just
maybe
, it might liven up the quote “show” if they introduced a little goddamn electric guitar, you know, a little fucking honest-to-God rock and roll, and OK, maybe the nature of the suggestion was a little bit disruptive, he could
maybe see his mistake there, how he’d stood up from the bar during the hippie dickwad acoustic player’s set and started wanking on his air guitar, going
wow now now now wee nee nee neer neer wow now
really loud to the tune of something he can’t remember but it sure pissed people off at the time, especially when he wouldn’t stop and kept on going
weer neer neer
on the fucking air guitar all the way out of the bar with asshole Bill shoving him, and especially not tonight with the half-wiped blood and the pieces of paper towel he was stuffing up his nose now and pulling out when they got all saturated and shit with his fucking blood and dropping them on the floor and how he was all wet and shit and dripping everywhere, but fuckin’ A, was it his fault all hell had broken loose with the goddamn rain, were we going to start blaming him, Vince fucking Thompson, for the fucking weather along with everything else, let’s hope not, although in his estimation it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility, and then there was the fact that he wasn’t even drinking because he was too afraid to walk up to the goddamn bar because of goddamn Bill and was still maybe considering it best to just sit here in his corner out of sight. Anyway, the thing to do while waiting for Russell Harmon to reappear was a little fucking reconnaissance, take stock of the situation and formulate a plan, because how did he figure he was going to shoot Russell Harmon anyway on Thursday night at the 321, what with all the stupid assholes hanging around, let’s see, you had the open mike guy who he could hear at the front of the bar going
testing, testing, fucking testing
and Bill the goddamn bartender and the eight or ten yuppies he’d passed up front on his way in, all real estate agents or builders most likely like practically every other person or so in the whole goddamn town was
now, if he was to take his fucking Beretta out on the street at noon on any weekday and start taking potshots with his fucking eyes closed he’d hit a goddamn real estate agent within 7.5 seconds, everyone in town, every lame-brain jerk-ass he’d known for half his life getting their fucking real estate license for the money, money, money,
Come build your goddamn mansion on the lake! Piss the whole town to hell, who cares!
so that even if he did find a way to shoot Russell Harmon’s ass and get away with it he’d have to drive fucking fifteen miles out of town just to find a decent place to dump his fat ass, whereas twenty years ago he could have practically just dragged his carcass out the back door and dumped it in the goddamn weeds next to Sand Creek and nobody would have found his fucking corpse till Christmas, and when you actually thought about it, it was
him
, Vince fucking Thompson, who should have been the fucking real estate agent anyway, it was him who knew every goddamn square inch of this town, but oh, they’d say, you’ve gotta get your goddamn license, like you need a fucking license to show someone around a goddamn house, here’s the fancy fucking kitchen, here’s the goddamn toilet where you piss, you rich California motherfuckers, and oh you’ve gotta cut your hair, Vince, you’ve gotta shave more regular and quit carrying a gun around and scaring the shit out of people and acting antisocial and shit, and oh by the way what about that felony conviction and oh by the way would you please piss in this jar. Assholes. But goddammit keep your mind on what you’re doing, performing that reconnaissance, boy, like the old man would say. So you had your two losers over there on the far side of the back room, faggots probably, look at the way they were sitting so close, there was a time when there wasn’t a fucking fag in the
entire town of Garnet Lake, Idaho, but not the case today, no, they’d probably start groping each other any minute, and then there were the six or eight freaks with their silly dart shirts and their little pointy darts—Vince Thompson could beat their ass, he’d played some darts in his day—tossing them and saying shit like, “Nice grouping, James,” and “Where’s Russell?” and shit, well, he could tell them where the fuck Russell was probably, still out in the fucking rain getting his ass wet, that’s where, trying to decide whether to be a chickenshit, and Vince fucking Thompson was still guessing that his little dart match was more important to Russell Harmon than a small consideration like a bullet in the fucking eye socket, and then there was that Tristan dude sitting at the table with a dark-haired chick with nice hooters and
holy shit
he was seeing ghosts now, it was the ghost of fucking Vicki Ashton from down at the beach twenty-five years ago, Jesus Christ, he could feel his eye going crazy right now just with the memory, Vicki Ashton’s daughter, it must be, son of a bitch. Take a look at those legs take a look at that hair take a look at those knockers. My God, you didn’t get that kind of quality entertainment even on the Internet, hardly, not the sites Vince Thompson looked at, anyway, before he laid on his bed and jacked off, where he could imagine the moment he looked at the women actually taking off their clothes in front of him, actually putting their naked bodies against him in the bed, a soft thing, really, nice and slow and talking to him sweetly,
You’re a good man Vince
and shit,
There’s a side of you people don’t see
and shit, he didn’t even want to think about it it made him feel so pathetic, older women, women his age, the pictures of them undressing from their fancy clothes in fancy houses, jewelry and shit, he liked the
classy-looking older women because, come on, really, the younger ones wouldn’t ever want anything to do with his fucking ass anyway and with the older ones he could at least pretend,
I love you Vince
and shit, taking their clothes off and then spread naked with the soft skin of their kind of saggy breasts and the little paunch and the loose skin of their legs and then their pussies spread open with their fingers, their asses bent over waiting for him, their eyes closed like they were coming or smiles on their faces like they were glad to be with him, Vince, he was making them so fucking happy, and he could memorize every fucking tiny detail, the mole just to the left of the vagina, the red stretch mark on the left tit, and while he lay in the bed after looking he could feel himself running his hands over them, soft, it was an intimate thing, not dirty at all when he did it, not dirty at all, and now, son of a bitch, he was almost crying, wasn’t he, thinking about his pathetic life and how he loved those women on the goddamn screen and looking at Vicki Ashton’s daughter and how the line of her tits showed from her shirt and Russell Harmon, too, goddamnit, how he didn’t want to shoot him but he
had
to somehow, because Russell Harmon wasn’t his friend anymore, because not a goddamn person in this bar was his friend, not a goddamn person in this town, not one fucking person in the town he’d lived in all his life to say that Vince fucking Thompson was fit company, but he could have been one of them, he could have been one of them except for his asshole father and his fucking supposed friend Chuck with the goddamn iceball, and except for all the fucking choices, all the fucking wrong decisions such a long time ago, maybe he had to admit, and then the fucking thing in his brain that made him think so much and fucking
hate everything, no, you couldn’t bring him around nice people like these. Then a booming sound, shit, and he about jumped out of his skin, fucking thunderclap, more fucking rain and so much sadness, looking at Vicki Ashton’s daughter and watching her smile a sweet smile for someone else, and now there he was,
there
he was, finally, Russell Harmon, goddamn right he’d been, old Vince, there was Russell and oh, now they were all so glad, now they could get their little dart match rolling again, Russell and Matt were back, fucking hallelujah, and Russell laughing laughing laughing, the jolly fat boy, but peeking at Vince fucking Thompson out of one eye too, which made Vince laugh right along, quietly, to himself. And here was how he’d do it—make Russell think everything was cool, say he had some coke for him, he was back in Vince’s good graces, whisper to him to wait five minutes and meet him at Russell’s truck, no one would see them leave together that way, then tell him the coke was in his car down the street, have him get inside to do a line, drive someplace quiet and shoot his ass right then and there, plaster his fucking dimwit brain all across the window, then drive his dead ass out of town and dump him. Vince Thompson could fucking
feel
it. His finger squeezing that trigger, the blast as big as thunder. No time for crying. Vince Thompson, the bringer of the lightning and the light. Let the stupid assholes see.