Page 38 - WTP Vol. VIII#2

Cape Wind (continued from preceding page)
Their voices rose and fell in the night as I tried not to hear, sequestering myself in the bedroom. Reading was out of the question. Instead of the words on the page, I kept seeing the poor, dead bird in the plastic bag. The minutes crawled.
I had this whole evening planned. We were going to drink rosé together, and talk about my trip to Rob- ben Island and his day in the editing studio, and make plans for our trip this weekend to see the whales at Knisna.
And now everything felt about as fucked up as it could possibly be. Why, in the name of God, couldn’t Ian manage his life? How had he gotten involved with someone like Celeste?
Finally, he came back inside, found me in the bedroom.
“I’m driving her home,” he said. “I’ll be back in about twenty minutes.”
“You’re driving her home?”
“It’s late. She walked here. It’s dangerous.” Ian said, each phrase punched out as if from a staple gun. He stared, as if daring me to say more. I waved him off, literally, unable to offer anything at that point but a borderline cliché hand gesture.
It was nearly midnight when he returned. Hearing his car pull up, my brain made a lightning calculation of how things might go if I just pretended to be asleep. We could start fresh in the morning. Maybe things would look different. I decided I’d never be able to pull it off. I got up and found him in the kitchen star- ing into the fridge, his hair standing up on end like he’d had the car windows wide open the whole way. He popped the lid of a Styrofoam takeout box and pulled out a piece of fried flounder. He gobbled it while pouring wine into a half-pint glass. He knew I was there. He just didn’t want to turn around.
“So. Celeste, huh?” I said.
“Listen, I’m sorry she wrecked your night. But I don’t control her. And I’d really rather not talk about it. It’s been a long day.”
“For me as well, man.”
“Well, I suppose the difference is, only one of us is on holiday. And it’s not me.”
“What are you being so defensive for? I’m just curi- ous, that’s all.”
“Yah, you’re curious. The tone in your voice just oozes intellectual fascination.”
“What I mean is...her? I mean, seriously? What...?”
Ian wheeled around grasping the wine bottle by the neck, sort of pointed it at me as he threw back a gen- erous gulp from the glass.
“Excuse me, but I don’t think I owe you an explana- tion. Do I? You’re a guest in my house, and you know you’re welcome here, but this is my fucking life, last time I checked.”
There was a sudden change in his voice. The intona- tion had shifted to something both flatter and more melodic. I could hear echoes of his Boer ancestors, their voices chanting in prayer to a merciless god, yet stringent and clipped in conversation. As if all breath must be saved for battling the hostile land, forcing it to bear them fruit. I felt the space stretch between us, myself diminishing.
“A guest in your house? Is that what I am?” “Just...just, fuck.” He strode out of the room, still
grasping the bottle. “I’m not doing this.”
I turned to follow, but a thud and tumble of things falling echoed off the walls.
“Shit!” he yelled out, in a cry of rage and pain. I rounded the bend and found him grasping his ankle, having toppled his surfboard from where it had been leaning in the hallway. It had torn a pretty good gash across his leg.
“Let me see. You have disinfectant?” I asked, kneeling down to see the wound better.
“I’m alright. You know, this is all just so fucking American of you.”
“What?”
I was genuinely baffled. I thought he meant my want- ing to tend to his injury.
“Why is it that wherever you people go in the world, you think your rules apply to everything? That you can call all the shots? You think you can make what- ever you want to happen, but you don’t know shit. You don’t know the terrain, you don’t know the his- tory, you don’t know where the fuck you are!”
“Well then tell me, Ian. Where am I?”
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