NOVEMBER 20, 2011
Vale buys a Sharpie and writes notes in the places Bonnie might go: in gas station bathrooms, on lampposts, on the stone pilings beneath the railroad bridge: BONNIE COME HOME. THE MOTHER IS THE LOVE FACTORY. MY BONNIE LIES OVER THE OCEAN.
She pictures Bonnie hitchhiking to California. She pictures Bonnie in a cave somewhere, living off roadkill and scavenged nuts and herbs. She pictures Bonnie, mercurial, nocturnal, good at going unseen, making her way through the backstreets of town.
There’s another gray hair on the bed at the back of the barn. The rock moved. The note gone. Bodily smells. Cat piss. Swallow shit.
Vale writes on the wall: MY BONNIE.
NEKO PICKS HER UP AT THE END OF THE DRIVEWAY IN HIS mother’s car.
“Do you ever break into houses?” he asks, opening the passenger side door for her.
“No,” Vale says, eyeing him suspiciously, sliding in.
Neko pulls out onto the gravel road. Accelerates too quickly.
“What’s up, Neko?” Vale asks.
“Nothing. I want to take you dancing,” he says, smiling.
“Okay then,” Vale says, reaching for his hand. She loves his hand: its heat, its thick fingers.
It’s a short drive—ten minutes or so.
A one-story house up a long driveway, made of wood and light—built in the sixties, large panes of glass, no cars in the driveway. “Summer house,” Neko says.
He checks the windows until he finds one, in the basement, that slides open.
“Señorita?” he says to Vale, pointing the way through. The strange ways we find solace and joy, Vale thinks, hoisting herself inside.
They find the stairs to the first floor. Neko turns on a handful of lights. The house is all straight lines, dark wood, bookshelves. New Yorkers, Vale guesses: clean, spare, simple sophistication, dripping money. Though she’s discovering that money is relative—that the people her mother called “rich assholes” her whole childhood—academics and artists—are both rich and not rich, in the strange twist of inequity, at once.
Neko flips the kitchen track lights on, pours Vale a glass of wine from a bottle on the counter. Catalunya, the bottle says. Garnacha. Vale runs her fingers across the label, breathes in—smells the earth of those mountains in northern Spain. Dry and ancient—she can feel it on her tongue. She closes her eyes and pictures herself in some Spanish city, cobblestones beneath her feet.
Neko smiles. “Beautiful here, no?” He looks around the room. Then steps toward Vale and touches the rim of his glass to hers. “Dance with me,” he says, holding his arms out to her.
“Why not,” Vale says, smiling, and they dance, to no music, around that room. They tango. They salsa. They crash into a bookshelf, spill wine on an Oriental rug. “Shit!” Neko says, wiping it with the sleeve of his sweater.
“Talk to me in Spanish,” Vale says. “It turns me on.” And he does: Te quiero. Bonita. Quitate la ropa. Huir conmigo.
Vale laughs. Neko kisses her throat, pulls her to him, spins her in tight circles. Tiny kisses, from the hollow between her breasts to the tip of her chin. Whispers into her ear: Me hace feliz verte reír.
Vale smiles. “You have to translate.”
Neko puts his lips against Vale’s ear: “It makes me happy to see you laugh.”
Vale pulls Neko’s body to hers, collapses onto the couch.
He finds her there. Puts his face into her stomach. Whispers, “Have me.”
LATER HIS EYES ARE CLOUDED, ON ANOTHER CONTINENT. He tells her that he will go back. Needs to. That it feels imperative: documenting the true terror that is war.
Vale rolls away from him. Eyes the dark mahogany of the ceiling.
There is a grand piano in the corner, books scattered all around. Vale nods toward the piano. “Play for me.”
“Of course,” Neko says, standing, going to a pile of records. He scans the labels, pulls one out, slips it onto the record player.
The needle touches down, that high, rotating hiss, and then solo piano rises into the air. “Bach’s Piano Concerto no. 5,” Neko shouts from across the room.
He sits down at the piano with his back to her, moves his hands back and forth a quarter inch above the keys. Vale smiles. Closes her eyes.
The music escalates, trembles, stops abruptly and suddenly in places, midair. Then resumes, slowly, bringing her back to solid ground. She’s never listened closely to Bach before. Never listened to it with eyes closed like this—letting it wash over her body. It’s beautiful. The humor of Neko’s motions fades and something else enters. Vale sees mist rising. Smoke. The air punctured with bullets, with stars. An unbearable grief settles in her chest, brought in by that piano: Neko’s bent shoulders. Neko’s Iraq, and Vale’s mother. War, heroin, hurricanes: all symptoms of the same illness, Vale thinks. Corporatization, militarization, greed.
Neko stops moving his fingers. Bends over the cream-colored body of the piano. Rests his arms and head there. After a few minutes Vale sees he is sleeping, eyes twitching in a dream.
She pulls on her jeans and sweater, puts Lena’s hat on her head. Unlocks the front door, slips through, and starts walking. She doesn’t want him to leave her. She doesn’t want to have to beg him to stay. She doesn’t want him to look up from that piano and into her eyes and see whatever lies there.
It takes her an hour to walk, the flashlight of her phone leading the way: back roads, fields, Silver Creek.
She’s shivering. The night colder than she expected. The walk longer. But she’s grateful for it: the sting of cold, the ache of muscles.
A branch breaks above her, followed by a whipping sound, and Vale looks up to see the wings of a large bird taking flight overhead. Owl. Lena’s owl, Vale thinks, her breath catching, her eyes following its wings into the ink-blue sky.
“Hello, Barred,” she says, shivers up and down her spine.
She read a few days ago that they inhabit dense forests, swamps, and streamsides. Of course they are here, Vale thinks, standing in the cold, the sound of that bird’s wings still ricocheting in her ears. Along this creek bank, tucked amid tree branches, seeing me long before I see them.