At Bess’s, Jack batted about the room like an agitated moth.*1
“You must’ve heard it.”
“I don’t hear the things you do.”
“But there was Something. He lobb’d something at us.” Jack rose from the daybed to lean against the wall. He threw the window towards the top of the sash for air— Too powerfully— He hadn’t meant to— Shards of plaster flew off the casing onto his hands and the floor.
Bess watched quietly. Jack’s Buzzing to and fro while she rubbed lavender oil the length of her arms.
“If the worst they do is lob things at us…” she said.
Her tone was Light, but something had changed—a Distance had dropped down between them.
Bess slipp’d into bed with the day’s broadside and a Candle on the night table. She had the frowning look of an accountant going over a bad day of receipts. Jack’s Guts were in a tumult, as they were anytime he could see her face—which he watched as attentively as a herdsman scanning the sky for thunderclouds—shift.
Jack pulled off his smish, then arranged himself under the covers beside her, staring at the ceiling in the flickering candlelight. He massag’d a lingering twinge in his arm. Bess tugged the covers closer to her chin, crinkling the pages of the broadside.
“I’m sorry,” he said finally.
“Sorry for what?” she said, turning a page.
“For…”
“Don’t say you’re sorry if you don’t mean you’re sorry.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again, foolishly.
“My God.” She put down the broadside.
“I’m sorry you’re angry.”
“You’re sorry I’m angry?”
“It wasn’t an easy scamp and now you’re angry and—”
“You presume everyone’s angry at you all the time. It’s bizarre and tedious. In any case, I’m profoundly sad.”
He sat up.
“I don’t believe you’re telling me ev’rything about the Lighthouse. About what you found there.”
“I am,” he said unconvincingly.
“Spinoza once ask’d himself the question of whether or not ’twas acceptable for a person to lie to save his own life. Do you know what he said?”
Clearly the answer was no.
“He said that it is immoral for free individuals to limit another person’s power to be free, to act freely, to make free choices. No matter the circumstances.”
“What if the person who lies isn’t, himself, free?”
She squinted. “You’re free. And anyway”—her voice caught, deepen’d—“I’ve seen people much less free than you hold fast to honesty. Even in the face of death.” Tears were beginning to plume at the corners of her eyes. “You’ll sow such distance between us—” She broke off.
Jack’s heart was racing. Was there no way out of having to Confess this now double Obfuscation—one that had begun for no good reason except that he wanted this thing and he felt he’d be punish’d for that wanting. It had occurr’d so quickly it was nearly an instinct. Jack was the arch-bilker, ferreter, sneaker of London, after all. And he was so because he’d sneak’d, bilked, and ferreted his entire life. He was miraculously good at keeping things hidden. And had an ability—he saw now—to turn that hiding into a weapon.
“If I tell you, will you tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
He should not continue—
—did anyway. “ ’Bout your nightmares—’bout Popham’s Eau.”
“That’s different.”
“So you won’t tell me.”
“No.” She blink’d. Crinkled her forehead. “But when I can, yes.”
Air ached in his lungs. He didn’t want to admit any of this. He briefly considered fleeing into the night. But he was tired, and then another feeling seiz’d him. One stronger than the desire to flee. A vision, really. He saw himself divulging to Bess exactly what he didn’t want to divulge. Saw them somehow sifting through the mess of veils together. He saw them coming out from under the fog of his panic and Hideyness on the other side, wisps of it blowing off them like clouds breathing off a lake at dawn. He un-held his breath.
He wanted to be known by her more than he needed to hide from her.*2
“I did find something. Something screaming worse than usual. It didn’t have a tale, a History, like the rest of the things that speak to me. I imagine it’s what Evans gave to me before the operation.”
“You didn’t tell me about Evans giving you something Beforehand.” Bess turn’d away. “You didn’t tell me about that either.”
Jack rubb’d at his hair. The distance between them bored a hole in his guts—like he’d swallowed one of those rhubarb and aniseed purges his mum used to give him when she felt he was being “splenetic.”
“But I didn’t know what it was.” This was true—he’d begun to put it all together only now. “A snuff of something right at the beginning of the luxuriating operation.”
“A cathartic elixir? You certainly did shite through your teeth much.”
“Didn’t give it by mouth. The nose. And it smelled something awful. I didn’t recognize it.” He corrected: “Well, it recall’d something. Death. The green scent of a rat left to mildew at the edge of a field. But”—he inhal’d—“I think it’s a kind of magic.”
“Was it coffee?” she said. “That isn’t magic. Coffee’s a bean they steal from the New World, grind up with what tastes like dirty stockings and soot, and sell down by the Royal Exchange.”
“It’s not coffee.” He turned towards her. “This ’s better than coffee.” Jack was gesticulating powerfully—too powerfully for sharing a small bed. “Or—it’s like ten coffees without the starts it gives you.”
Bess put her hand on his arm. “It does give you starts.”
But then again, it didn’t thin him like coffee would—in fact he’d thicken’d a bit after the operation. Had been starving all the time, too. So then it can’t be opium either. “Did it say anything?”
Jack rubb’d his chin. “Jus’ one thing, over and over.”
“What?”
“Nobody.”
Bess’s gaze turned inwards, that scientific look. He rolled towards her, propp’d his hand under his head.
Silence, then. “There’s something else. The count can’t be a coincidence.”
“What count?”
“The ships you saw in the Thames. Twelve unmann’d, abandon’d vessels?”
“Yes. What about them?”
“They’re increasing.”
“So?”
“I don’t think they’re Plague Ships.”
“What does any of that have to do with the Lighthouse Keeper?”
“I don’t know. But when there’s a quantity of strange occurrences, one becomes apt to regard them as somehow related.”
“So then what’s this about the count?”
“I am visited frequently by a Minister of Import/Export, and this Minister occasion’lly lets slip that the number of ships arriving has lessened of late.”
“Is this minister Handsome?”
“What?”
“No matter. Sorry.”
“The ships have lessened, he says, and yet you saw that they’ve increas’d. Somethin’s off.” She shook her head. “No, somethin’,” she continued, “is intriguingly off.”
“How so?”
“I don’t think they’re Plague Ships at all. I think they’re—most of them anyway—familiars.”
Quiet.
“Ghost ships that accompany trading and slaving vessels along their route,” she furthered.
Jack was recognizing that clogg’d, skittery feeling in his throat. It recalled to him the way he’d feel after his mother had several drams of whiskey. Numb and buzzing at his extremities. He was fighting the ball of Anxiety in his throat for breath.
Bess watched him struggle for some beats.
“You know that a ghost ship”—she lean’d towards him; their Body scent was ruffl’d up from under the coverlets—“is not actually a ghost.”
She waited for him to rearrange his face to feign prior knowledge of this fact, then lay against his chest.
“It’s an Abandoned vessel pulled by the deep sea tides along the trade routes,” she continu’d, mercifully pretending to recount facts known to both of them. But when she look’d up and they exchang’d a quick glance, Jack saw how many steps ahead of him she was. She anticipat’d his reactions to her—knew them before he did. She did this, he presumed, because his reactions occupied a spectrum she knew from other pale Anglos. She could anticipate what Nonsense was about to come out of his mouth and when. And for whatever reason, she had now deign’d to clarify to him the extent of his false presumptions. This Conceding to explain things was a kind of mercy. An opening she was offering.
“When sailors mutinied they’d establish outlaw societies in remote islands. The lascars and the Africans knew the best locations. They’d disembark and set their old vessel adrift to haunt—and I mean this as a figure of speech—the seas. Set them to sail free in the currents, disturbing the peace for the Royal Navy and the East India Company.
“All the lascar sailors ran that route. They’re the ones that knew the ghost ships best. And knew not to be afraid of ’em. Not like the British captains who cowered at the sight, scrubb’d references to ’em from the ship logs. Drank drams of whiskey to blur the Sight of ’em poking up at the horizons.
“My father was pressed to labor,” she spoke into his chest. “Sailed that route for the Company. Said he would see them in the shallow waters of Madras Port, banging in the undertows, slushing against the sands. When he ran the China route, he said he’d see a ghost ship tracking to the estuaries of Canton Port. He said the more mutinies there were, the more ghost ships would appear on the open ocean. Sometimes whole fleets of them like a pack of black-beaked dolphins breaking the waves. The lascars were never scared, because they knew when they’d see a ghost ship they were seeing a signal from freed comrades. The Anglo sailors—the ones that refus’d to listen—thought them supernatural emanations and just about piss’d themselves at the sight.” She laugh’d. “My father always said when the ghost ships came to the Thames, it would mean the South was rising.”
Jack imagined a fleet of ghost ships fording the high gray crags of the ocean, beating back Froth alongside the Trading vessels, salt crusting their masts, plunging bowfirst into the briny glens. Lurching out of the whitecapped pikes like Hounds, mouths full of limp duck, water streaming from their decks.
“I think it’s ghost ships come to flood the Thames, I think the Magistrates and all o’ ’em know what it means—and they’re in a panic about it and usin’ it to clamp down the Town harder.” She exhaled. “If it weren’t for the rogues I’d hate it here.”
The room got colder then. Not between, but around, them. There was an unheldness to them both in the world—and though differently felt, it was a certain shared Aloneness. Some utter Bereftness—of kin, of home—they recogniz’d in each other. It was in the way their bodies clawed towards each other. Diving deep into the solitude, finding each other there. Waiting, open, given over—*3
“I’d hate it here too,” he said. He’d never even thought this before. But the lens of Bess’s hate had shifted something in him.
She pull’d him in for that kiss that was Language between them.
Jack was already unbuttoning his trousers when it began to rain, flicking in the open window and onto the sill. Bess cross’d the room to shut the pane.
Jack began wrestling his trousers to his knees when his hand glanced on an edge of something poking from his pocket, slicing a small Fissure into his finger. He jumped—look’d down. There in his uncurling palm, a roll of raw pickled flax paper.
He’d forgotten about the bill of lading.
He unscroll’d the paper—at least at first glance quite like any other bill of lading he’d nick’d from other trunks and casks. On one side, fees and duties for items. On the other, tho’, something altogether else.
He press’d the note flat into his palm, and was staring down at his hand when she returned.
Payment for whatever quantity of silks had been crossed out with deep, messy scratches, over which were words, carved in dark ink, shaky and rough-edged.
Granulated Strength Elixir
Available exclusively at Mr. Jonathan Wild’s House of Waste
He frowned. Looking up.
“Have y-you heard of the H-house of Waste?”
Damn, his stutter was in fine form, filling his throat with hiccups and impossibility. Jack cough’d—just to make a sound that wasn’t himself stammering like a slouch.
“Like a pub?”
“I mean The. The House of Waste.”
“What house of waste?”
“Waste like this.” He placed the bill of lading on the bed.
She lean’d over, silent for a moment, reading.
“You robbed Wild?”
“Uhmmm—”
“You robbed Wild,” she said again, breathing out slowly. “Jack, you’ve choused*4 the most vexacious chouser in London. Stolen from the Thief-Catcher General himself.”*5
*1 ME: As it is Friday, I notice I have not received payment for the most recent editing work. A mix-up with the bank? Please advise.
SULLIVAN: UNTIL SATISFACTORY RESOLUTION IS REACHED REGARDING THE MISSING PAGE, PAYMENT IS WITHHELD.
ME: There is no missing page. I would appreciate prompt payment or I will be forced to contact my lawyer.
SULLIVAN: NO PROBLEM! SHALL WE HAVE OUR LAWYER CONTACT YOUR LAWYER? OUR LAWYER IS EXCEPTIONALLY GOOD.
ME: I should have clarified. Once I obtain a lawyer I will be forced to contact that lawyer regarding payment. In the meantime, I have no recourse but to withhold footnotes.
SULLIVAN: MEANING?
ME: I hereby declare an ad hoc strike until payment arrives.
SULLIVAN: LOL!!! A STRIKE OF ONE!! GOOD LUCK WITH THAT.
*2 Dear Reader: Well, I’m broke again. But hey, I’ve been living off credit cards for decades now. What’s the difference between no money and negative money, I always say. At least, thankfully, we’re alone again. I’ve missed speaking more frankly to you.
*3 See, this is what I’m fucking talking about, Reader. This is why it’s good to be just you and me again.
What would P-Quad even do with this material? Call me thin-skinned, but I can’t handle it with the badgering, prurient questions. Not about this. Not about Unheldness. I’m not breaking this shit down for some manager of a private testing corporation. I’m honestly—quite honestly, if you want to know the truth—not even going to do it for those queers from “nice” families. You know, the ones with supportive, rolling-in-the-dough, loving parents chauffeuring them to the mall to fulfill whatever sartorial needs they have, etc.! I mean, good for these people, obviously. But then: Where are my people? Am I the only one who’s been puked up by the bowels of history?
On the very good chance that the answer is no, I’m editing this for us—those of us who’ve been dropped from some moonless sky to wander the world. Those of us who have to guess—wrongly, over and over (until we get it right? Please god)—what a “home” might feel like. So forget the held ones just for a second, they’re doing fine; I’m speaking to you—to us—to those of us who learned at a young age never to turn around, never to look back at the nothing that’s there to catch us when we fall.
*4 Robbed
*5 Speaking of revolutionaries and love, I suppose it’s about time to tell you about her. My ex.
Our first date was technically our second date, but it was the first one I could remember.
On that date, which was either the first or second depending how drunk you were on the first, my ex spent the entire evening grilling me about world history, current affairs and the hidden stakes of seemingly innocuous state-level legislation. It was clear that she was in possession of the answers, whereas I had fumbled my way into a decent but unglorious position as a literature professor at the flagship campus of a demoralized and floundering public institution.
It was a night of being endlessly harangued by a beautiful woman. Not unpleasant but a bit exhausting. She had asked me if I wanted children. I shrugged, but it was a shrug of: Kind of, yes. Which she had opinions about too. Something to do with the narcissism of how all of our hopes and dreams for futurity had been funneled into the project of children: mini reproductions of the self, she called them. Her point was, what ever happened to throwing your hat in the ring with masses of people who you didn’t, couldn’t know—who would never know you by name, but towards whose better good you would devote yourself. I’m talking about the future of all of us, she said. Not just some little family unit.
I realized then she was handing me something bigger than her, me and a kid.
And we both knew that it was practically a crime to be childless in this day and age, which perhaps accounted for why she’d suggested we go to the Villa Papyri Lounge, a restaurant I was quite sure had been closed for decades, vines growing over its gray-shingled face in that inauspicious bend in the road on Route 17. It wasn’t closed. But it wasn’t exactly open, let’s just say, either.
What she was offering me would involve a sacrifice of the desire for a family, but I was getting the impression that the payoff would be huge. Revolutionaries. Comrades. Lovers.
She played an old Smiths song on her phone. Yes we may be hidden by rags, but we’ve something they’ll never have, she crooned. And then: If they dare touch a hair on your head I’ll fight to the last breath.
Well, I was sunk. This whole time I’d been trying to imagine being a parent and here I was being offered a partner. We were back at my place by then. I was getting kind of drunk off Old Grand-Dad bourbon.
She was sitting on that old desk of my grandmother’s—the only thing she left me, and my only inheritance in the whole world. Her ass was on my inheritance. It seemed appropriate.
Time got extremely slow. She was wearing this black pencil skirt. It had a small pull up near the waist. Gray thigh-high stockings. Her eyes were bright and dark. I looked at her for some time.
She opened her legs a bit, twitched them open, really. I caught my breath, audibly.
“Oh my god,” she said, “you’re such a lesbian.”
She didn’t mean it cruelly. And she didn’t mean that I wasn’t passing as a cis-man, either. Although, since according to her we’d fucked the night before, she knew exactly how un-cis I was.
She meant that she saw something about the quality of my desire: that I could feel her even before I touched her. And that this was part of what it meant to be—or to have been, before my tits became the property of the California Municipal Waste Department—a lesbian. That a woman moving in your line of sight could have an effect that was total, atmospheric. That you could be hesitant, incapable and not particularly interested in establishing a line between touching and seeing. That you would indulge a dead love, dead in the eyes of the world, and valueless. A love that choked and burdened the mind, that might even be the very foundation of melancholy and despair. But, oh Reader, looking at a woman you really get a feel for the way that fire is a phenomenon of touch. And my point is, if you have ever been a lesbian, you will not even have to touch a woman to know that.
But I did touch her. We fucked for what I was told was the second time, and this time it was the fuck you can never get away from.
She let me see her in all her historicity, all her ages at once. Her Before. A cold house on the edge of a field. She had not been cared for. Let’s just leave it at that.
She had hidden in the house’s corners. Taught herself Marx, Mao and all the revolutionaries in a drafty, wood-paneled addition that poked like a bunion off the main frame. By day she was a high school girl learning how to draw the interior structure of combines and backhoes. In her own time, she was slowly becoming the woman who had come to straddle my hips, with my cock still inside her, looking down at me—inscribing me, casting my body anew—saying, There’s something wrong with your political worldview. Let me fix it.
I don’t want to dwell on what happened. Everything ends. Who knows why. I mean, she was forever being pursued. Ex-boyfriends. Potential new boyfriends. Persistent motherfuckers. Was everyone in the world trying to take care of this woman. I couldn’t be one of several, though I tried.
You—if you are reading this?—know I did.
Well, so that’s one big why. There were others though.
But I’m not going down that road. Because I’m reminded of the epigraph to this manuscript: “Love’s mysteries in souls do grow, / But yet the body is his book.” And the point is this: when a woman touches you, when she recasts your body in the flame of love, that fire is itself a spark thrown off a much larger blaze. Some distant incandescence called history. Some history of which, it turns out, you are a part. Some history to which you’re responsible.
I’m still thinking of the promises we made to one another.
If they dare touch a hair on your head I’ll fight to the last breath.
What should I do with those promises now.