M. Lynx Qualey

Lack

1.

The bartender stood by the cash register, poking his tongue against the inside of his cheek. He was middle aged and had recently been born again. He wore a large silver cross sometimes halfway in, sometimes halfway out of his shirt. Now, he held the phone against his belly. “That was the owner,” he said. “We’re going to have to close early.”
    Anne rolled her eyes and took another sip of her vodka and cranberry. She knew she didn’t have to hurry. She and Jolene came in this bar all the time. They liked the born-again bartender, the irritable waitresses, the two deer heads over the bar, and the fake tiger skin on the wall. Anne looked at her watch, but the hands blurred. Jolene had left about a half hour before—said her kids would be tearing up the place. You’re goddamn lucky, Jolene had said as she packed up. You know that? Anne nodded, her eyes closed. I think I’ll stay and finish my drink, she told Jolene.
    “Something like, I don’t know, ten, fifteen minutes,” the bartender called. He took the remote control in both hands and turned up the volume on the television that hung in the far corner, by the restrooms. A local reporter stood mid-screen in front of a large map. The map was covered with swells of red and orange and yellow. Anne had seen this reporter before. The man had a turtle-like face and a long, leathery neck. He advised listeners to stay in their homes and cover their windows with blankets.
    “What we’re hearing now,” the turtle-man said, blinking rapidly, “is the weather service can’t predict how cold it might get. Some cities along the border are already reporting temperatures in the negative sixties.”
    The turtle-man paused, and Anne reached for her drink. The turtle-man pressed two fingers against his ear and nodded, as if listening to voices inside his head. Anne snorted and then set her drink down and laughed. A few men by the door chuckled. They were pulling on giant winter coats and woolen hats. There wasn’t anyone else left in the bar.
    The door opened and cold air rushed into the room. A man walked in, rubbing his hands together. He had on an orange hat, and his cheeks were furred with a three-day-old beard. His skin was bright red, almost as if sunburned. He put an arm across his eyes for a moment, and then lowered it. “Car won’t start,” he said.
    The bartender turned off the television.
    “Where’d your friend go?”
    The man cocked his head at the door. He took a deep breath and blew out his lips.
    “Sorry,” the bartender said. “But this weather, you know. Maybe you could get a cab?”
    The man with the three-day growth stared at nothing. He was new to this place, Anne thought. His eyes had a kind of foggy newness.
    “I live near here,” Anne said, too loudly. She looked down at her drink and nodded slowly. “Around the corner.”
    She shoved herself off the chair and down to the floor. She felt seasick, the way she always did after a night with Jolene. They had smoked and drank and talked too much about how they were about to turn forty.
    She pulled on her coat, struggling to find the left sleeve. All the men stared at her. There were two or three of them still at the door, plus the one with the three-day-old beard and the bartender. She almost shouted at them, Very goddamned funny. But the man with the beard was nodding. He was different, somehow.
    “I have a fold-out couch,” she said, finally getting the left sleeve.
    The men near the door huddled there in a clump, like a single person. One of them opened the door, and they lowered their heads and rushed outside. A terrible cold washed through the bar. There was a long silence.
    “I could probably, I don’t know, give you a ride,” the bartender said. He fingered the cross around his neck. “My fiancée’s coming in a minute. I don’t think she’d mind.”
    Anne frowned. She concentrated on buttoning her coat and then picked up her purse. “My house is one block away. And I have a goddamned couch.”
    The man with the three-day beard nodded slowly at nothing. He put his hands in his coat pockets and jerked them up and down. “Well,” he said. “Shall we?”
    The bartender put things away. He sighed loudly.
    Anne’s heart beat faster. The coat was buttoned up wrong, and she flushed as she plucked out the buttons. The man didn’t seem to notice.
    “Ready?” he asked.
    She nodded. He opened the heavy wooden door, and the two of them pressed outside. The cold wrapped around her like a coating of plastic. She sucked in a breath, and her lungs froze. She tried to breathe harder, but she couldn’t get anything. She turned around, grabbed the door, and pulled herself back inside. The bar was warm. She could breathe again.
    The man opened the door and shut it quickly. He stood beside her for a moment, silent.
    “We have to.” He looked beyond her, at the wall. “Better now than in twenty minutes. Put your scarf over your mouth,” he said.
    She readjusted her scarf, and then he reached out and clasped her hand in his thick glove. Blood rushed to her heart.
    “What’s the address?” he asked, loudly, through his own scarf.
    “Twenty-seven Oakley. It’s the little red one.”
    His eyes looked past her, and he nodded sharply. “Ready now?”
    “Yes.” Her muscles bunched up.
    He yanked on her arm, opened the door, and dragged her outside. He didn’t run, but walked quickly, holding tight to her hand. She had to concentrate hard to keep up. He moved fast, and she had to watch her feet. After a minute, her head throbbed furiously. She wasn’t getting any air. All she was taking in was ice. They walked in silence, and Anne wished she’d worn thicker boots. A minute passed, or five. She was about to sink down onto the street. She couldn’t feel her feet. Her ankles. Her knees.
    “Which one is it?” he asked.
    “What?” Her eyeballs stung, and she blinked rapidly. She tried to swallow. He mumbled something and dragged her down the street, faster. After a minute, he yanked her to one side and pulled her up a few steps.
    “Keys,” he said.
    Was this her house? She almost started to cry, but, then, she wasn’t sure. She tried to get the purse off her shoulder. She couldn’t see anything. She wasn’t getting any air.
    He yanked off his glove with his teeth, grabbed the purse, and pawed through it. The large glove hung from his mouth. He picked out her keys. The purse dropped to the ground, and he shoved keys into the lock, one after the other. Finally, one went in. He turned it, and the door opened. He pushed her in, kicked the purse inside, and pulled the door shut behind them.
    He started stripping off his coat and gloves. She leaned against the wall and concentrated on getting a breath. Her body seemed to float beneath her.
    “I can’t feel anything,” she whispered.
    She shivered and tried to look at him through the pain. His hands were bright red and large, strong looking. Her hands reached up, but she couldn’t make them grasp the buttons. Nothing would move.
    “I’ll do it.” He unbuttoned her coat and pulled off her hat and gloves. He crouched down in front of her and took off her boots, one at a time. She almost collapsed against him.
    He stood up and grasped her bare hand in his. Her hand ached furiously, and she tried to shake his hand loose. He held on tighter.
    “Where’s the bedroom?”
    She nodded at the dark living room. “Back there.”
    He pulled her, feeling his way around the furniture. He bumped against the bedroom door, and then opened it. The bed was unmade. He stripped off the blankets and sheets and shoved the bed away from the wall. He made her lie down, and then he wrapped himself and the blankets around her. Her feet and hands burst with pain, and she struggled to get away. She screamed and kicked. But he held on tightly, his rough cheek against hers, his arms wrapped around her body.

2.

In the morning, Anne’s head and neck ached. It felt as though someone had been pushing down on her forehead all night. She didn’t want to open her eyes. But the television muttered in the other room, and there was the faint smell of instant coffee. She remembered the man, and shut her eyes more tightly. Hadn’t he left yet? She tried to remember what exactly had happened the night before.
    The television got louder, and then quieter again. She held still and thought she’d just stay in bed. She sneezed, and then pressed the blanket to her cold nose. She sneezed again, silently. Her head throbbed.
    “Get up,” the man’s voice called from the living room. “You need to move.”
    For a moment, she stopped breathing.
    “Get up,” he called again. His voice was bored, as if he were talking to her while watching television.
    She sat up and pulled the blankets around her torso. She looked at herself in the mirror and smoothed down her hair.
    The living room was bright, and the place was a mess—newspapers and mail and underwear and coffee mugs everywhere. He was hunched in front of the television, sipping coffee. She walked a little ways in, picking up dirty clothes and tucking them under her arms.
    “I washed a mug for you with some bottled water,” he said.
    She nodded and went to the kitchen, dragging the blankets behind her. She tried to ignore the state of the kitchen. She picked up the clean mug, shook a little instant coffee out of the canister, and poured in bottled water. She stirred it with her finger and put the mixture into the microwave. She went to the bathroom and pulled back when she opened the door. It was about twenty degrees colder. But God, she had to pee. She took a deep breath, dragged her blankets behind her, and closed the door.
    “Water’s out,” he called. “So is the phone.”
    She sat on the freezing toilet. It took her a while to get control of her bladder and release the urine. Then she stood and turned on the tap, but it only made a terrible, airy sound. She turned it off and turned it on again, hoping for just a few muddy drops, but there was nothing. She took a hairbrush and managed to get her hair back into a pony tail. Her hair seemed to have gotten grayer overnight.
    She got her coffee out of the microwave and went back into the living room. She sat on the couch, near the man. He smelled like coffee and soap.
    “Already thirty-seven people dead.” He shook his head, eyes fixed on the television. “Most of them standing at bus stops. They’re like glass coffins right now. And the weather service says it’s going to get even colder.”
    The man lifted the remote and turned off the television.
    She pushed back on the couch and smiled at him. “What’s your name?” she asked.
    He sniffed, and then pinched at the end of his nose. “Do you have a cell phone?”
    Her head throbbed, and she felt annoyed. “Why? Do you have to call your girlfriend?”
    He didn’t say anything.
    “Sorry.”
    He started to say something, then stood up and rubbed his hands together. “Do you have plastic? For the windows?”
    She stared at him and shrugged. She felt good there on the couch, wrapped in blankets, a warm coffee mug in her hands.
    “We’ll have to start weatherproofing. The electricity might go out. God knows.”
    She swallowed a mouthful of coffee and laughed, a hand to her mouth. “God knows,” she said, and then was quiet. She looked down at her lap. There were dots of coffee on the yellow blanket.

3.

For lunch, she dug two soup cups out of a cupboard. She peeled back the paper lids, poured in bottled water, and put them in the microwave. As she stood there, watching the seconds tick down, she felt more and more uneasy with the mess in the kitchen. Globs of food were crusted onto the counter. The dishes were stacked up and sitting in stagnant water.
    She and the man drank soup on the couch. It was awkward, and she wanted to explain why things were this way. But she couldn’t. All she could do was sit there and drink her powdery soup.
    After lunch, she was exhausted, and when she woke up from a nap, it was nearly dark. She went to the freezing bathroom and peed. There was a bottle of water on the sink, and she washed her armpits and between her legs, rinsed her mouth and brushed her teeth. She dragged the blankets back to the bedroom and stood there for a while, shivering. Then she changed her clothes and put on a little makeup. She sprayed perfume into the air and walked under the tiny, falling drops. Her reddened hands shook, and she stared at herself in the mirror.
    Out in the living room, it was dark. She couldn’t see him for a minute, and when she found him, he looked shadowy, half-human. He was sitting in the middle of the couch, rubbing his hands together. “They’ve asked people to use as little electricity as possible,” he said. “So, unfortunately, we’ll have to get used to sitting in the dark.”
    The television was blank. A small radio—one she barely remembered owning—sat in the middle of the coffee table. An announcer was reading off the names of various places where people could go for help.
    “But please,” the announcer said. “What they’re telling us is, please, don’t take risks. If your heat is working, if it’s not an emergency, just stay put.”
    “I couldn’t find any candles,” the man said. His voice sounded strangely flat. He wasn’t looking at her.
    “I can go get them,” she said.
    In the bedroom, she grabbed the blankets and wrapped herself back up. In a bureau drawer, she found a bag of tea candles. There was a half-used bottle of lubricant underneath them. She flushed, and was irritated with her embarrassment.
    “No larger ones?” he asked when she got back into the living room.
    She shook her head and knelt down. She took the tea lights out of the bag and set them, one by one, on the coffee table.
    “These won’t last very long.”
    She shrugged and stared at the candles.
    He sighed, and then put his hand over hers. Her whole body surged. His hand stayed there for a long moment, thumb caressing her skin. She held absolutely still. Then he rubbed his hands together, picked up a matchbook from the coffee table, and tried to strike it. It took a few tries. He lit the candles, moving quickly from one to the next.
    “Do you mind eating out of cans?” he asked.
    She smiled at the coffee table. “Why?”
    “That way, we can save on electricity. I think I spotted a few cans of ravioli in one of the cupboards.”
    “Sounds romantic.”
    She looked up at him, but she couldn’t make out his expression in the darkness. He stood and brushed down his pants before he walked into the kitchen.
    “Really?” she asked, too quiet for him to hear. “You’re kidding.”
    She switched off the radio and rearranged the candles. A minute later, the man came back. He held two open cans, one in each hand. A spoon protruded from each of them. He seemed to smile.
    “I didn’t want to waste our bottled water on bowls.”
    He sat down beside her on the couch. He smelled like soap and sweat and something else, something dark and musky. She took her can and ate a few bites. She shifted closer to him on the couch.
    “One hundred and forty-nine people dead,” he said. “And there must be a lot more who haven’t been discovered. Worse, they say people are still going out to bus stops.”
    Anne stood up and touched his shoulder before she went to the kitchen. She opened the fridge and was stunned, for a moment, by the brightness. She took out a bottle of white wine and unscrewed the cap. She went back into the living room and took a swig from the bottle.
    She offered it to him, and he smiled—she couldn’t quite see his smile in the darkness, but she could feel it—and he took a few swallows. They sat on the couch and shared the bottle until it was empty
    She touched the edge of his sweater. The ribbing was soft. “Hey,” she said.
    He didn’t say anything.
    She shifted closer, until her hip was nestled against his. She was close enough to lay her head on his shoulder. They sat like that for a few minutes, in the dark. Then he put down his ravioli can, and she put hers down, too. She took hold of his shoulder and pulled herself toward him. Her mouth was against his and he tasted like ravioli, like cigarettes and wine, and then he jerked away.
    They both breathed hard. He didn’t move, and she touched his knee. “Hey,” she said, her blood pounding. “I know what you’re thinking. But I don’t want that.”
    “It’s okay,” he said.
    “It doesn’t even matter, does it? This is an emergency, right?” She put her hand on his leg and rubbed. Her hand moved toward the inside of his thigh.
    “It’s okay,” he said again.
    She pulled her hand away. She picked up the empty wine bottle and set it back down.
    “It’s okay,” she mocked, her voice high-pitched and nasal.
    He was silent.
    She moved closer to him, feeling slightly drunk. He smiled tightly.
    “Are you gay?” she whispered.
    He shifted away from her on the couch. “We just met.”
    “We just met?”
    He nodded. He kept nodding. Her cheeks felt hot, and she stood up. Her shin banged against the coffee table. She cursed.
    “You know what?” she said, her head throbbing now. “You know what? Maybe you should get out of my house.” His hand was sitting there, against his knee, and she picked it up and pulled at it. Her blankets fell away. “This is my house.”
    She yanked at his heavy body, twisting his arm over her shoulder and dragging him to his feet. She got behind him and gave him a shove toward the door. He walked halfway, and she turned and dropped back onto the couch. After a minute, he walked back and sat beside her. He picked up his spoon and ate his ravioli. She waited for a moment, her muscles hardening, before she took her ravioli to the bedroom.

4.

The next day, her head was still throbbing. She groaned and pressed her face against the mattress. The radio played loudly in the other room, and there was the smell of coffee.
    She struggled out of bed and went to the living room, where the man was sitting near the radio, writing on a small notepad.
    She sat down opposite him, in the old chair with broken springs. There was a day-after-canned-ravioli taste in her mouth. She smiled brightly.
    He put down his notepad. “Two hundred and fifty-seven dead,” he said. “And people are still going out to the bus shelters.”
    “Jesus,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Morons.”
    He stared at her, his mouth pursed in a frown. “Can’t we turn on the TV?” She asked sweetly. “Just for a little bit?”
    He shrugged. She kicked things over until she found the remote control. Some station was playing a clip of the president. He stared at the camera, jaw tight. “We are doing everything, I mean everything we possibly can to help,” he said.
    “Jesus,” Anne said again. The man picked up his mug and looked down at his coffee.
    Anne wrapped the blankets around herself more tightly. She hated when men were like this. “We’re living through history,” she said. “That’s exciting, isn’t it?”
    He stared at her, then turned away and smiled, like he was happy about how stupid she sounded.
    “At least it’ll be something to remember,” Anne said loudly.
    After a moment, the man raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “No,” he said. “You won’t.” He shifted back on the couch. His voice was tired.
    She looked back at the television for a while before she went into the kitchen to make her own coffee. When she came back into the living room, he was sitting in a corner, scribbling in his little notebook.

5.

The next morning, her body was heavy and warm. She lay in bed for a long time without lifting her head to look at the clock. Again, the radio was playing loudly in the next room. She smiled and flopped over to her other side. She was getting used to him. The night before, they’d laughed at something. They’d been listening to a radio program and the announcer said something stupid—and they’d laughed. He had touched her hand, gently, and she just let him touch it. She hadn’t tried to touch him back.
    Now, she wanted to see his furry face. She gathered the blankets and walked into the living room. The radio reporters were talking excitedly about how it had warmed up to thirty-four degrees.
    She looked around, then walked slowly into the kitchen. She put a hand on the fridge, and opened and closed it. She walked into the bathroom and drew back the shower curtain. She stood there for a moment before she backed up, walked through the kitchen, and climbed down into the cold, damp basement. She looked near the old washer and dryer. Before looking behind the furnace, she paused for a moment and listened. A faint ticking seemed to come from behind the walls.
    Of course, she hadn’t loved him. It wasn’t like that. He was just someone who appeared and disappeared. Came, and left. She climbed the wooden steps back up to the kitchen. Her knees ached as she climbed, and she had to grip the banister. She stepped back up into the kitchen. The sink was still full of dirty dishes.
    She didn’t stop to put on a coat or shoes or gloves. She just walked right outside in her thin cotton socks. She left the front door wide open. The sky was bright, and there were high, wispy clouds. A few birds flew by. Everything smelled new, and drops of water were falling from the eaves. A large, warm drop fell on the top of her head.
    There were people across the street. The houses seemed closer together, and she saw neighbors she didn’t recognize. She could hear them talking, see their hands. She left them, for now, and walked around to the back of her house. The outside faucet had broken off, and it was lying on the ground. Water gushed out of the side of her house. It looked as though a vein had been punctured, as though the house were bleeding to death. She reached down but didn’t know how to turn it off.