By the third night he was certain he’d never sleep again. She lay there breathing just inches from his side. She pulled the blanket away from him and turned toward the wall, and the dogs in the alley were barking again. He listened to them and waited for the sun to rise, and he wasn’t entirely awake and he wasn’t sleeping either. He was deep inside that fog. Three days it had followed him to work. It hazed his vision and nothing helped, not the treadmill and not the energy drinks he’d started buying. He’d never liked coffee or soda pop, and now he was drinking things that tasted like chemicals and burning hair. He couldn’t focus anymore. The spreadsheets all looked the same. He’d sit at the keyboard and try to clear his eyes, but the clouds stayed even after the second can.
He went out to the living room and turned on the TV. Today they were hunting black bears. Somewhere in central Oregon. He watched his shows every day. They were recording while he worked. They’d be waiting for him when he got home, and it didn’t matter if Becky complained. He’d watch them anyway. Accounting theory and business law couldn’t compete with survivalists who ate lichen and those guys in Idaho who’d stalked an elk for days. They were wild-eyed when they came back across the ice. They looked like visiting prophets.
The sky was always gray in Oregon. This was how it seemed. A gentle drizzle was always coming down, and the hunters went along the clearcuts and fields of blackened trees. The bears liked the damp ground where the huckleberries grew. They liked abandoned orchards and acorns from the tanoak trees. Another month and they’d be sleeping. All that work overturning logs and looking for grubs, finding the last of the berries and fallen fruit, and they’d sleep it off. If they weren’t fat enough by November, they’d die in their dens. He closed his eyes and lay back against the chair. He covered his legs with the chenille throw.
She’d started talking about his birthday this week. She loved having something to plan. It’s coming up, she’d say. It’s just around the corner. What do you think about Toscanini’s? They do a nice job with the platters.
She meant well, but all her talk about parties just made him nervous. Forty-three wasn’t a big year. There wasn’t any reason to celebrate, and she went on and on. She was thinking of a carrot cake and bottles of the house merlot, and was there anyone from work he’d like to invite. There was space for twenty in the big room, maybe twenty-five. She was sweet the way she smiled. Her front teeth overlapped a little, and her hair never stayed the way it should, and all these things she hated were the ones that he loved best. He should go back to bed. He should lie down beside her and pull her against his belly, but he stayed in front of the TV. He lay there, and it pushed down on him. The weight of all that air. He felt it and he closed his eyes, but he didn’t fall asleep.
The city was its own wilderness. It was wild like the forest or the mountaintops, and they’d need equipment to survive. Last August a transformer blew on the corner, and the power crew didn’t come when he called. No electricity for three days, and by the end the apartment smelled like garbage and sweaty socks. All their food went bad, and they had to toss the top tier of their wedding cake she’d been saving for years. That was when he started with the catalogues. Really started. He applied for a Cabela’s charge card. He bought hand-crank radios and water purifiers and bear spray because it was on sale. The gear outgrew the hallway closet. Boxes sat on the kitchen table and behind the bedroom door, and Becky wasn’t happy. He’d started watching his shows in a camping chair, and she looked lonely on the sofa. Sometimes she even cried. I got you one, too, he told her. Look how nice it is. It has these cup holders on each side, but she looked at the piles and the new Pertex sleeping bags and stayed just where she was.
Four days without sleep. Four days and his eyes were gritty. It hurt to blink, and his throat had that metallic feel. His boss Marshall was waiting for him to finish the boxes. Thirty-six boxes still needed coding, and the interns in the conference room looked lost behind the papers. Marshall wasn’t happy. Fish, he said, you’re taking too long. You’re making it much too hard. And what good did it do to explain, when Marshall hadn’t done any real work in years. It takes time to build a database and to review all those company files. Time to find the things that matter, and Marshall didn’t understand. He sat behind his desk surrounded by pictures of his cranky children and a wife with beetle eyes. All around him people were moving rocks. That’s how Fish thought of it, moving rocks across a field from one end to the other. He sweated and worked and carried those rocks, and there were always more. They grew and multiplied.
Snake boots were on sale. Upland vests and blizzard hoods, he marked these down for later. He wanted cold-weather gear. It wasn’t even the middle of October, and the peaks were already white. Every time the catalogues came he found more things he needed. He tabbed them like college textbooks, and he tried to ignore her when she came into the kitchen. She was watching over his shoulder again. She was waiting for him to finish. She opened the fridge and looked inside. She opened it a half dozen times a day, but she usually shut it without taking anything out. She was on Weight Watchers again and careful with her points.
She took a diet Sprite and popped it open. “Maybe your mom can come.” She sat down beside him. “I think she’s in town this year. Her cruise isn’t till December.” She tucked a curl behind her ear. She was always careful when she brought up his mother. He could see how she hesitated, unsure of what she’d find when she pulled that curtain back.
“Sure,” he said. He closed one catalogue and reached for another. “She’d love to see you.”
“Now you’re just being sour. You’re always happy afterward. It’s only before when you make a fuss.”
She took out her planner and wrote down some more names. Things were coming together. She’d ordered a cake from the new bakery down on Platte, and she could tell him the flavors but not the decorations because those were a surprise. Even Marshall was coming, she said. It wouldn’t be right to invite the associates and the interns and not to invite the boss. He looked up from the catalogue then because she didn’t know. She lived with him in this tiny place, this third-floor apartment with its sloping floors, and they were mysteries one to the other.
His father died at forty-three. Peacefully, in his sleep. That’s what people said. They told him to be thankful because at least his daddy didn’t suffer. There’re worse ways to go, they’d say. Car accidents and dismemberments and serial killers, fires and creeping disease. Better to close your eyes and not open them again. That’s the way for me. They were wrong, of course. They had no idea. Even two doors down he could hear the gasps and that strange rattle. His father’s heart must have been thrashing behind his ribs. It was struggling to break free.
The ambulance came with all its sirens going. Get back to bed, his mother shouted when she saw him standing by the door. Get back inside your room. Her eyes were bright and hard, and she frightened him more than his father, who lay unmoving on the bed. He saw the shadows of the paramedics beneath his door, walking in thick rubber boots because it was raining outside. It was coming down strong and steady. He heard them yell and one of the vases broke in the hall, and his mother wasn’t crying anymore. She wasn’t talking at all. They left together, his mother and the paramedics and his father on a stretcher. In her panic she’d forgotten him, her only child who wasn’t even eight. She left him alone inside the house. The ambulance didn’t run its sirens when it pulled away. It went slowly in the rain, and that was when he knew. He stayed in his room until she came back. He waited beneath his blankets.
Five days, six days, seven, eight. He slept an hour or two at most. He slept and woke, and the neighbors were arguing. They slammed their cupboard doors, and the wife was crying. Cars drove by with their radios too loud. Power ballads and Johnny Cash and rappers he didn’t know. The sounds came through the floorboards and the cracks around the window air conditioner. They filled the room, and Becky sighed sometimes, but she didn’t wake. She was talking to the people inside her dreams. Her voice was gentle. She sounded like a mother talking to her baby.
It wasn’t good all his reading about night diseases. He surfed the Web too much looking for symptoms. Bangungot in the Philippines and the Japanese called it pokkuri and there were more names for it, this strange disease that killed young men in their sleep. People over there blamed the angry spirits. A fat ghost lady of the forest who sat across men’s chests and kept their hearts from beating. An old man who smothered their faces out of spite. It was easy to laugh at those explanations, but in the end they were as good as any. What could science say, what comfort could it give when sometimes a heart just stops? It stops at night when you’re forty-three and your wife is sleeping beside you. When your son is two doors down in his Spiderman pajamas. It stops, and staying awake wasn’t the answer either. What about fatal insomnia, now there was a disease. It killed those Italian families by keeping them awake. Strange curling proteins tangled up their brains, and maybe that’s why Becky was sleeping and he was listening to cars. She turned and threw her arm across his chest, and she opened her lips the way babies do.
Sonata, Ambien, Lunesta, Ativan, Becky knew all the names. She knew people who slept the whole night through with only a single pill at bedtime. Make an appointment with Doctor Tischmann, she told him. Go see him for a prescription. Maybe it’s your thyroid. You ought to have it checked. She bought him melatonin drops in the meanwhile. Chamomile and kava kava and strange little scented pouches. Lemon balm and lavender and Saint-John’s-wort and other witchy things. She set them on his nightstand, and that was where he left them.
They had the party the Saturday before his birthday. She’d hired mariachis to play even though Toscanini’s was an Italian restaurant and people were eating pasta. The band strolled around in their charro suits and sashes, and even he had to laugh when his mother set down her beaded purse and danced with one of the interns. And he’d never have guessed old Marshall would be out there in the middle. He was flapping his arms like a German at an Oktoberfest. He was doing the chicken dance. It’s a great party, Fish, he was saying from across the floor. His face was pink, and there were sweat marks beneath his arms. Your wife is really a prize.
Fish moved away from the group. He had a piece of cake, and it was frosted in a camo pattern. She’d chosen Mossy Oak, and there were plastic bears on top and little men with guns. She’d given him a certificate for wing-shooting classes. He’d have an instructor who’d show him how to mount a gun and how to follow the clays. What’s the point of watching all those shows, she’d wanted to know. What’s the point if you’ve never even held a gun? Sporting clays were okay, but she didn’t want him to kill birds. He could tell it made her sad to think of them falling in midflight. She liked a steak every now and then, but at heart she was a vegetarian.
He finished his cake and used his fork to scrape the last of the frosting from the plate. Becky and his mother were standing beside the platters. His mother was talking. Becky tilted her head the way she did when she was really paying attention. She was looking over at him, and even from across the room he saw something in her face. Disappointment maybe or surprise.
It was strange seeing them together. Becky who was older now than his mother had been that night. How young she’d been and he didn’t notice. A widow at thirty-four. All those years and she hadn’t remarried. Clyde the banker and old Jerry the retired school principal and Daniel the rare gun dealer who wore a turquoise bolo and more that he couldn’t remember. She was nice to them one after the next. She invited them in for drinks but turned down all their offers.
His mother came over just as he set down his plate. Her hands were shaking from the wine. They’d be shakier still before the party was over. It can’t be right, she said. My boy is forty-three. You’re making me feel old. She reached for him. She pulled him close, and she felt light in his arms. Tiny as a bird that was only hollow bones and feathers.
He saw angels in the streets. Gold-colored birds flew upward into the branches, and everywhere there was a pattern to things. Old women were beautiful with their shopping bags. They were beautiful how they closed their collars against the chill. The sky was clear because the wind was blowing hard, and the sun shone, but it gave no warmth. He needed to close his eyes. He needed to rest before he could walk again, but he kept going because he was late and Marshall would be waiting. He passed the old Antlers Hotel and then the Holly Sugar Building, and there were men up high on a tiny platform washing down the windows. A girl walked in front of him. She was wearing a down vest. The wind caught her ponytail and blew it upward like a fan. He caught a glimpse of her face reflected in the window, and she was another angel. He wanted to fall to his knees.
There were patterns in the shadows of the branches. In the starlings that flew and the spreadsheets, especially the spreadsheets. The numbers were their own language, and he spent hours watching them move. He kept his wool coat on because it was cold inside the office. He shivered at his keyboard. He trembled and laughed, and the tears rolled down his cheeks. Marshall came and stood beside his bay. He looked a little worried. Sweet Marshall with his moon face. Fish laughed even harder. He held his stomach and set his head between his knees the way passengers are supposed to when their plane is about to crash.
She was waiting for him by the door. Marshall must have called her. She took his coat and his laptop bag and set them on the coffee table.
“You need to go to the doctor. We’ve waited long enough.”
“Tomorrow,” he said. “Tomorrow I’ll go.” He really would. Tomorrow was his birthday, and he’d call at least and make an appointment. That’s what he told her, but he didn’t know if it was true. He said it without thinking. His voice didn’t sound like his own.
She relaxed a little. She turned on his shows and set the table in front of the TV and not in the kitchen where they usually ate. He took his plate to his camping chair, and she didn’t grumble for once. She tucked her feet beneath her and ate on the sofa, picking at her chicken and the broccoli florets. She rubbed his shoulders when he finished. She really took her time. I can feel the tension, she was saying. Right here in your neck. He shivered under her fingers. He felt it all the way down his arms, and it was how his mother had touched him the morning she came back. She’d held him by the scruff, as if he were a kitten. His father was dead, and all the softness was gone from her face.
Becky left the dishes in the sink and came with him to bed. She’d cleaned out the bedroom. The bicycle was gone and all her nursing books. The laundry was sorted and the hampers were closed, and there were new shades on the windows. She’d bought vinyl black-out shades and screwed them into the frames herself. She’d gotten the holes off center on one of them, and he felt a surge of gratitude when he saw how it hung crooked. His eyes welled up, and he didn’t know why.
She waited until his spot was warm, and then she moved in close. “I’ll stay awake until you sleep. We’ll stay awake together.”
The artists on the second floor were having another party. A woman was shouting over the music. I knew it, she said. I knew it all along. Something broke, glass shattered, and people clapped and laughed. He met them sometimes on the stairs, his neighbors, and they never said hello. He was invisible to them. He was just another pale guy in a suit. They wore their youth like armor.
He rolled onto his back, but he didn’t let go of her hand. They’d gone to the badlands once together. In her peacock blue Chevy Cavalier. They took the trip right after she’d finished nursing school. He’d dropped out of law school and was waiting for the next thing, and it was the last time they’d both be free. He didn’t know it then, of course. Back then he didn’t know much except that he loved her. Ten days driving the desert up through Nevada and Utah and back into Colorado. They stopped at the Green River and looked at the dinosaur bones. At night they rolled the windows down and opened up the sunroof. There were no lights anywhere, no cars and no people and nothing outside but rocks and the wheeling stars.
Her breathing was deep and steady, but she was still squeezing his hand. She was telling him she was awake. He squeezed it back. The rocks had looked like shipwrecks in places. It hurt to look at the sky. They’d stood together by the bank and watched that slow green water. He’d wanted to buy a canoe right then and follow where it went. Even now he felt its pull.
The party downstairs was winding down. The music stopped midsong, and the door opened and closed and opened again. The guests were laughing as they went down the stairs. They talked in loud drunken voices. He should have told her. She shouldn’t have to hear things from his mother. He squeezed her hand again. He closed his eyes and waited.