The Bewildered Read online

  “It’s not like that,” she said. “Not like anything you think. It’s what you want, not me. It’s all right, you can touch me. There. I’m not asking you to sleep over, only to come into the bedroom with me.” She took his hand. “Come on. Everything’s been prepared.”

  9.

  CHRIS LAY FLAT ON HIS STOMACH, underneath the trailer. He felt Kayla’s leg, pressing against his; she climbed over his back, brushing against him, the pressure of her body, and then lay down next to him. Leon was on her other side. The three stretched out, silent, the floor of the trailer close to their faces. They listened to the footsteps, the muted voices, then the grunting and gasping.

  It was darker here, in the close space, than the darkness outside, the moonlight. Here, pieces of rotting garden hose, gravel, old tires and pieces of metal collected into the sharp dusty smell of things coming apart, breaking down. Chris tried to swallow, to clear his throat. It wouldn’t clear. He shifted, following Kayla, to stay more directly underneath the noise overhead. A knocking began, like furniture legs jumping on the floor, a bed frame squeaking. Then there was Natalie’s voice:

  “I’ll do what you want! This way? Should I bend my knees, more?”

  The three checked each other’s reactions, in the dim light; they screwed up their faces in exasperation and disgust.

  “Say it!” Natalie said. “Say it. Call my name.”

  “Patricia,” the man said, then louder, “Oh, Patricia!”

  Was there a third person in the trailer? Chris listened; he knew that was Natalie’s voice, whatever she was saying. The floor above his face was flexing, bending down in rhythm, as if it might not hold. Chris felt Kayla’s hand grasp his own, squeeze it, then let loose again.

  “Wait!” Natalie’s voice shouted, and then a door slammed.

  The three tried to follow the footsteps; they rolled over and crawled on their stomachs, to the edge of the trailer. Suddenly, five feet from where they lay, the man emerged—wearing only white socks and briefs, he stumbled toward his car, his clothes and shoes in his hands. He looked back, once, with an expression of perplexity or shame, as if escaping.

  “Let’s go,” Kayla whispered.

  They pivoted and slid all the way across the trailer’s width, to the back, and rolled out, bent over, dirt clapping from their clothes as they tried to cough without making noise. Leon was out front, then Kayla, Chris bringing up the rear. He saw Kayla stoop down, pocketing scraps of the magazines that littered the yard, and he caught up to her and Leon behind the abandoned house where they regained their skateboards and backpacks, their instruments in their cases. They did not speak. They kept going, running with the slick whisper of their nylon packs, the rattle and heavy thump of the pens and pencils and books.

  They didn’t slow until they were out on the road, beyond where they could even see the lights of Natalie’s trailer. Still they moved in silence, all thinking about what they’d just heard and seen. Chris looked at Kayla’s face; he wanted to reach out and take hold of her hand, at least to touch the skin of her arm. Things did not feel right since that day in Forest Park; balances were off. He felt that they had had sex, even if they hadn’t. They could have, and now he couldn’t tell if how he felt was Leon still acting weird or if it was what he, Chris, and Kayla had done together, or almost done. Should they tell Leon? Was it right for him not to know? Perhaps Leon should do it—or almost do it—once, to even it out, but then he’d have to do it with someone and probably that would have to be Kayla or Chris. And then that person would have done, or almost done it, twice. The balance would still be off.

  “Why did he have to show up?” Leon said.

  “We knew he would,” Kayla said. “That’s why we were there, remember?”

  “Not tonight, I mean. In general.”

  Kayla shrugged; she shifted her flute case to her left hand, her skateboard to her right. “We were only two feet away from where they were doing it,” she said.

  “But really,” Leon said, “so what? That’s their problem.”

  “Are you defending her?” she said.

  “That guy,” he said, “Steven. He’s the problem—he wants to make her like everyone else. You heard what he was saying before. She was playing with him, that’s all. That doesn’t really count.”

  “We can hope,” she said, “but Natalie was still doing it. We can still be wrong about her, you know. I mean, I hope she didn’t mean it, too, but I don’t know. If we really expect her to show us some new ways to be, if she’s some kind of example, that doesn’t mean we have to accept everything she does. That would be pathetic. Mindless.”

  The three kept walking. Lights shone in the windows of the houses they passed, televisions flickering, dogs barking behind fences. The moon, not quite full, slid down through the tall trees.

  “For instance,” Leon said. “How she was using another name—that was her controlling it, playing with him. Or maybe that’s her real name, maybe Natalie is just one she gave us.”

  The road beneath their feet turned to blacktop, and they set down their boards, the clocking of their tails and then the dull ricochet of the wheels, dropping, and then the three were pushing off, rolling past parked cars, under the tree branches and the dim stars.

  They timed their trip to the bus stop perfectly, rode in silence for ten minutes, then were out again. Skating the long hill toward Leon’s house, they carved long S-turns, crossing each other’s lines. They cut in and out of the yellow circles the streetlights cast down. At the corner, they slowed, picked up their boards.

  “Are we still studying biology tonight?” Chris said. “We still could, for a while.”

  “Cell division,” Kayla said.

  “I’m tired,” Leon said. “Too tired.”

  “Tired?” Kayla said.

  “And my parents are being weird, too.” Leon scratched at the bristles of his head; the streetlight above made his round face shine, turned his eye sockets into dark smudges.

  “Weird how?” Kayla said.

  “They say I’m sneaking out at night, when I’m not. They say my clothes smell funny; they want to get me tested.”

  “For drugs?”

  “For everything,” he said. “Forget it.”

  “Parents,” Chris said. “They don’t know anything.”

  Leon shuffled off, not looking back. Kayla and Chris glanced at each other, watching him go, not calling to him.

  “You want to go somewhere and study?” Chris said.

  “Did you hear him?” Kayla said. “Are you seeing him like I’m seeing him?”

  “It’s because of us,” Chris said. “He knows we’re keeping a secret from him.”

  “Us?” she said. “No. We’re not Leon’s problem.”

  “So what is?”

  “We’ll find out,” she said.

  “I hope it’s not too long.”

  “We’re the answer,” she said. “We’re not the problem.”

  “You still want to study?”

  “No,” Kayla said, zipping her pack. “I think I’ll head home, too.”

  She dropped her board, pushed off, and slid away, in and out of the streetlights, toward the bottom of the hill. Chris could hear her wheels after he could no longer see her, and after a moment the sound was gone, too.

  10.

  NATALIE STOOD IN HER KITCHEN, one finger against the exposed wire of the outlet. It shocked a spark hot and sharp inside her arm, up past her elbow, through her rib cage, straight to her heart. And yet, despite the pleasure, the fuse had blown again; she headed toward the bedroom, the fuse box, to replace it.

  Next to the bed, the unzipped boots lay like sections of snake, cut open. The silk sheets were on the floor, the tall wicker chair tipped over on its side. What had happened here? What was his name? Steven. When had it happened? This was evening—she could feel that in the air, the faltering light of dusk through the windows—but which evening? Turning, she picked up the phone. She dialed the number written on the wall to call
for the time, and waited for the woman’s voice. And the voice told her that two days had passed. Where had the time gone? She had lost it, not that it mattered; perhaps she had been sleeping. Forward, she was moving forward.

  Patricia McClain’s blond hair, her wig, lay forgotten on the bed. Natalie picked it up and carried it into the workroom, where she set it back on its styrofoam head. The chair, the boots—she set to retrieving and putting away the rest of Patricia’s things. As she did so, she thought of Steven, the things he’d said. Had she quit her job so suddenly? Had she been somewhere she was not supposed to be?

  Footsteps! Someone was coming; she could hear footsteps outside, through the open window. It sounded like a three-legged person, or a person with a cane. Natalie went to the window. It was a boy, one of the boys, walking alone through the day’s last light, aimed right at the trailer. He held a skateboard by its front wheels, its tail touching the ground with every other step. Spinning, Natalie grabbed Denise Michele’s hair, the closest wig to the workroom’s door—long and straight, slippery black. Asian hair.

  Before he could knock, she jerked open the front door. That startled him—he took a step back, switched his skateboard to his other hand. Shorter than she was, barely, unsteady on the rickety porch, blinking his eyes, waiting for her to speak. His hair was shaved to black stubble, his body still holding on to its baby fat. He licked his lips. His eyes jerked around, his stubby fingers clenching and unclenching.

  “Which one are you?” she said.

  “Leon.”

  “Leon,” she said. “You’re alone.”

  “Yeah.”

  She looked past him, out into the darkness, not quite ready to take his word for it. “I didn’t call Kayla,” she said. “I don’t have any work for you—there are specific times, you know. If you want money, I expect Kayla is giving you your share. That’s how it has to work. Tonight I don’t have anything.”

  “No,” the boy said. “That’s not why I’m here.”

  “And why are you here?”

  “I don’t know. I just wanted to come, so I did.” Now he looked behind himself, as if she were looking at someone, as if he worried about being followed. “Was I wrong?” he said.

  “I don’t think so,” Natalie said. “You better come inside; we’ll try to figure it out.”

  She turned and he followed her, easy, as if this were familiar, as if they’d done it before. She could sense his body, sympathetic, behind her.

  “I’d offer you something to eat or drink, but I don’t have much right now. A glass of Tang?”

  “Too grainy,” he said. “Water, maybe.”

  He sat down in the only chair free of magazines, the chair where Steven had sat. He did not look down at the magazines; instead, he glanced carefully around the room, down the hallway and out the windows, as if memorizing it. When she handed him the glass of water, she stayed stretching across the table. She flipped open a couple of the issues in front of him, straight to the centerfolds. He sipped at the water, watching her. She unfolded the extra panel, and there her girls were, happy to be let loose. Daina, Karen, Hope, all their skin.

  “Is this why you’re here?” she said. “How would you like to see me? What do you want me to do?”

  “I just wanted to come here, so I did,” Leon said.

  “Who do you think is the prettiest?” She pointed to her girls.

  “The prettiest?” he said.

  “Just choose one,” she said, “and I’ll be her for you. Just like her.”

  Leon swallowed, set the glass down on the March issue. “Don’t you have a boyfriend?” he said.

  “Not that I know of,” Natalie said. She saw how he wasn’t nervous, apprehensive; he was hardly looking at the girls. He seemed to be patiently waiting, almost humoring her.

  “Can’t you tell?” he said.

  “You want something else.”

  “I don’t know exactly what it is,” he said.

  “But you think I do.”

  Leon shrugged, his eyes darting toward the ceiling.

  “We’ll have to drive to get there,” she said. “Maybe. If you think so.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  Then they were in the truck, the engine chortling, smoothing itself, the trailer sliding away behind them. Leon sat next to her, checking over his shoulder.

  “No one’s following,” she said.

  “I know. I’ve just never ridden in front. There’s no one in back.”

  “Of course not.”

  She turned left on Johnson Creek just as the #75 bus came the other way, its windows alight, no one but the driver visible inside.

  “I always wish it was seventy-six,” Natalie said.

  “Why?”

  “Bicentennial,” she said. “What year were you born, anyway?”

  “Nineteen eighty-five.”

  Natalie drove, easing down the on-ramp to McLoughlin. “When I was a girl,” she said, “we had the Bicentennial. That was different—everyone was really excited about the freedom it meant. It was wonderful, hopeful.”

  “That was really a long time ago,” he said. “Wasn’t that disco and everything?”

  Static played low on the radio; neither of them moved to change it.

  “The map!” she said.

  “What?”

  “In the glove compartment,” she said. “There, unfold it.”

  She switched on the overhead light, squinted sideways—it was a street map of the city, an X marking where she lived, another over the place where they were going.

  “Good,” she said. “Thank you. Now put that away.”

  “You’re welcome,” Leon said.

  “Where are your friends, do you think?” she said.

  Leon rode calmly, staring straight ahead, his hands in his lap. It was as if he hadn’t heard her question. They rattled north on MLK, past the Mexican restaurant on the right, La Carreta, past all the billboards of boring, hard-bodied girls in bikinis.

  “You’re wearing a wig,” Leon said. “I know that.”

  “They’re natural-hair wigs,” she said. “All of mine are.”

  “From people’s heads?”

  “They’re very expensive,” she said. “Don’t look surprised—just because I live in a trailer doesn’t mean I have no money.”

  “That’s not what I was saying.”

  Still south of Burnside, she hung a left, veering away from all the traffic, into dark, abandoned streets. High, high above she could already see the Towne Storage sign, the lion looking down. This was a risk; she had a feeling it was right, but she had been warned not to come here like this. Now that they were close, she remembered the warning.

  “Are we going to the skatepark?” he said.

  They were jostled together, the truck lurching through the cobblestones. She drove around parked trailers; the fruit wholesalers had all gone home. She dimmed her headlights, then parked a few blocks away, being careful. They left the truck next to a dumpster, under a door suspended in the air above. ‘Well-hung Doors,’ the lighted sign said. She had no time for that.

  “Leon, where are you?”

  “Here.”

  “Stay close. Take my hand.”

  She liked the feeling of him, anticipation coursing through his fingertips.

  “What are we doing?” he said. “I won’t do just anything, because you say.”

  “I know that,” she said. “Trust me.” Now she was pulling on his arm, making him keep her pace. She was stronger; he had to know that. “I’m impatient already,” she said.

  They’d reached the loading dock. She climbed up, lent him a hand. She stood at the door, keys trembling in her fingers as she tried to find the right one.

  “Where is this?” he said, whispering.

  “There’s times I’m supposed to be here,” she said. “This isn’t one of them.”

  And then the door was open, shut behind them, and they were in the dark hallway, the fire safety lights spaced every thirty feet, dim, the on
ly illumination, and she was counting down the numbers and he followed, since he didn’t know which number it was. For a moment she thought of all the rooms they had passed, and all the cubicles above and below them—people’s things, dead parents’ furniture, photographs, secrets—and then she looked up and the number stared right at her, right there on the door. The key! Her fingers would not be still; she made them work. She turned the key. She pushed the door open and the air smelled of metal, ferrous splinters, sharpened dirt.

  “Ready?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  She hit the lights and the small room was there, instantly in front of them.

  “It’s the wire,” Leon said.

  She had seen the room when it held more. The wire was still wound in balls, like giant skeins of shining, bristly yarn. It was divided into two piles, right and left. The pile on the left was much smaller. Loose strands covered the floor, like in a barbershop where hair was metal. Natalie closed the door. She breathed in the thick smell of the copper, raspy in her throat. She did not want to take the time to teach him—could it be taught?—or to explain; she wanted to cross the room and take hold of it, to press it to her skin.

  “Touch it,” she said, nudging him to step closer.

  He went to the larger pile first. He put his hand on a ball of wire, shifting it on the floor. He looked up at her.

  “Is this all the wire we collected? Is this all ours?”

  “Maybe,” she said. “Some of it, anyway. Try the other.”

  Leon stepped sideways. He seemed tired, bored and impatient, ready for something to happen. Bending down, he placed his hand on a skein of wire in the smaller pile. He smiled and closed his eyes. He placed his other hand on the wire. His eyes opened, tears thick in them.

  “This is different,” he said.

  “I knew you’d know it.” Natalie hit the light switch and immediately dropped to the floor. On all fours she crossed the space, collided with Leon, went over the top of him, took hold of the wire.