Stay Down and Take It

James is home early and he says we goddammit really seriously need to pack. Hup hup, time to go. It’s the weather again, and it bores me so. We live where the water loves to visit. Just a little rain off the coast, that’s all, and it’ll rise into our home. It loves to soak our rug and climb up the walls and, once, it seeped into our electronics, inside the TV cabinet, and destroyed our precious entertainment center, which keeps us—or me, anyway—from raiding the medicine cabinet at night for other pleasures. Otherwise, well, we have brilliant sunsets and the kind of grass that is absurdly tall, taller than you or me. I don’t know how it doesn’t just fall over. You’d think it had a long slender bone in each blade. Some original, beautiful creature that needs no head or limbs, because it has no enemies. Who knows.

James bustles around the house, grabbing what he can. He says to pack light and to pack smart. I like this military side of my husband. I almost feel charmed. The evacuation is mandatory this time—something mean and serious is barrelling down on us—and I almost wish we had a pretty siren in our little community for occasions like this one. A siren adds a feeling of gravity to a catastrophe, a feeling that something important is happening, which one so rarely gets to feel. James says that he’ll grab our “go bag,” which I didn’t even know we had. What has he put in it? Pears, medical marijuana, Percocet, and frozen Snickers bars? Something tells me that it’s more of a batteries-and-rope-and-candles-and-matches kind of bag. James is huffy and swollen and red as he loads the car. This is all a little much for him. Still, it’s nice to see him excited, in charge, alive. It’s been hard to watch a man his age slowly lose his sense of purpose, as he’s been doing, shuffling around the kitchen trying to perfect his long-simmering sauces, most of which get poured out on the back lawn when he’s done, since how much gravy-drenched flesh can the two of us reasonably consume?

There is only one road out of here, and everyone we know is on it, moaning silently, I imagine, gently rending their summer linens at this unwelcome disruption. It gets tiring waving at them all—stressed-out, wrinkled accidents of the human form, with white hair, or no hair, or nubby yellow sun visors, grimacing, hunched over their steering wheels, as if they were being chased by men with guns. We know these people by their cars, which are long and dark and quiet, just like ours. We could simply call one another, share information, and prop up one another’s nervous systems with voice-based medication, but people are saving their cell-phone batteries. We’ve been through this drill before. Also, James prefers that I not talk on the phone when he’s driving. He does his best to tolerate it, bless him, but he tenses up so terribly that I fear he will break open and spill everywhere, even while he insists, sometimes angrily, that he really doesn’t mind. Really, really, really, with spit fluffing out of his mouth and a look of murder in his eyes. I feel that he is daring me to make a call, but, when I consider the risk, I sort of daren’t. After all, I am a passenger in the vehicle that he is driving, and I must consider my own safety, too.

“This is the hardest part,” James says. “Getting out of here.”

Well put, and doesn’t that just apply to any old situation: a meeting, a party, a relationship, a life? Always that sticky problem of the exit and how to squeeze through it.

When I don’t respond, James says, “Do you agree?” It’s what he often wants and needs. Assent. I tend to pay out as much as I can, with my mouth and otherwise, but one must always monitor the personal cost, careful not to add to the deficit, which can build up and trigger a low-grade rage. Not my prettiest style. I never knew that I would be so relentlessly called on to agree with someone. Mother never said. Ask not, I guess, and I sort of haven’t.

I touch his leg. “Oh, I do. I was just thinking, in fact, how right you are. This is the difficult part. This right here.” I would so love to point at the two of us, the fact of us, here in this car, on this road, on this day, with a storm coming, in this particular life, to say that this is the difficult part. Because, well. But the precise gesture eludes me. Hands can signify only so much. Usually they should just rest in one’s lap, sneaking beneath the garment now and then for a wee scratch. This is possibly why one is supposed to use one’s words. I think. Plus, James is focussing all his energy on the road ahead, which is really just an endless line of cars pointing west, away from the storm. We will be here a while. We might as well table any immediate feelings.

“This is about the only time I hate this island,” James says. “When it keeps us prisoner.”

“Yup,” I say. “Me, too.”

It’s not really an island, or it wasn’t until some developers got clever. Because people love an island. I guess we love an island. I’m told they used explosives. They bombed a little spit of land that connected two bigger blobs of coastal blah, then built a baby road over the obliterated spit, the road we are now stuck on. And, poof, our little town became an island, and the houses suddenly cost more. The wind was arguably sharper and cooler after that, the light more intense, more light-like. According to the marketing, anyway. Oh, it was instantly spectacular, and all it took was some dynamite stuffed into the gaping pores of an old, rotted peninsula. “Blowing Your Way to Beauty” might have been a nice slogan. Island life.

“What’s strange,” I say, as we idle in traffic, “is that the sun is out. It’s such a fine day. So weirdly beautiful.”

James cranes his neck to look out the window, trying maybe to be fair, and he has that expression, as if he’d evaluated all the evidence but, still, he’s very sorry to say that he just cannot bring himself to agree. It would violate his deepest moral principles to cede any ground here. “I’m not sure that’s so strange,” he says, as if there were a superior adjective he’s reluctant to share. “Quiet before the you know, and all. Plus I see some . . .” And he points to nowhere, where there is maybe nothing, and I’m sure I don’t even need to look.

He’s probably right. What do I know when it comes to strange? Gosh knows I’m no expert on the uncanny.

“Yes, well, should we have music, or just listen to each other’s bodies complain?”

“You think I’m complaining?” James says. “Because I’m not. This is a little stressful. I’m trying to get us out of here.”

“I understand,” I say. And I do. It needn’t be said aloud, but I was referring to the sounds we make, each of us, which are whorishly amplified in the car, and not exactly my preferred music. Sounds of hunger, sounds of anxiety, sounds that have no explanation whatsoever—just the body at work, leaking and churning, groaning at a frequency that no one was ever meant to hear. Live with someone long enough, and you learn all his gruesome lyrics, all the squishy instrumentals that gurgle out of him, note by note.

I click on the news, and for a little while it’s just the sound of the storm elsewhere, where it’s ripened into a roar. We are told that the storm has paused in the lee of a fledgling mountain up north, where it’s gathering strength, pawing at the dust like a bull. They have a microphone embedded deep inside this poor storm, I guess, and I’d give anything to sound like that. So sweet and angry and brand-new, a kind of subvocal monster simply cooing at the pain and the pleasure of life. It’s perfectly beautiful and soothing, on such a nice day, until people start talking over it, explaining where this storm is from and where it might go, what it could do along the way, and then how it makes them feel. Feelings! Every one of them seems to be stirred up by this storm. By the time the newscast is over, I’m exhausted and confused. I examine myself for feelings, carefully checking in the usual hiding places, and there are simply none to be found. We aren’t kids anymore. We are old. Older. Nearly dead, really. James is nearly dead, at least. He shows it. When he went to the doctor recently, he hid the results from me, and I didn’t really ask, because I have to ration my concern. I can’t waste it on false alarms, and, even if it’s a genuine alarm, I must, I have come to believe, enact a protocol with respect to what I feel. James shows his feelings so liberally that they come at a discount, and their value diminishes. When he says he loves me, usually in a threatening way, the statement always seems to beg for reciprocation. I guess he cries wolf. More or less sobs it. One could argue that everything James says is merely the word “wolf” in one language or another. If he loves me, it is because that may open the portal for more cuddles and touches. That’s all. He needs to be swaddled, and I just happen to be nearby. If I ever dare to walk past him without touching his hand or stopping to outright kiss him, he pouts all day and looks up at me with mournful eyes. A husband is a bag of need with a dank wet hole at its bottom. The polar opposite of a go bag. I comply with James’s wishes when I can, but the day is long and I have other projects.

I guess I want James to die. I don’t want this actively. Or with malice. But in a dim and distant way I gently root for James’s absence so that I can proceed to the other side of the years I have left, get to what happens next. For a long time, James was what happened next for me. As a person, he was sort of a page-turner. I moved through parts of him and made discoveries, large and small, and he led me to places and ideas that I’d not seen or heard before. This looked and felt like life. And then, and then—even though I don’t think it happened suddenly—the story died in my old, tired husband. I knew everything there was to know: what the nights would be like, how the morning would feel. What he would say. What he wouldn’t. How I would think and feel around him. How I wouldn’t. Knowledge is many things, but it definitely is not power. “Dread” is a better word for it, I think, though I do understand how that ultimately fails as a slogan.

The hotels inland are full, so we follow the endless line of cars to the shelter. We are shown to two cots at the center of a high-school gymnasium. There must be five hundred beds here, maybe more, laid out in a grid. At midnight, the sleep sounds in here will be symphonic. The scoreboard in the gym is on, but it seems that no one has scored yet. Zero to zero. I’d like to feel that there is meaning in this, but such a desire is rarely satisfied, and, anyway, I am tired and hungry. “Voilà,” says the volunteer, who has a walkie-talkie on his belt that squawks out little birdcalls. He is a handsome young man and he seems unreasonably proud to be playing this role today. I picture him unplugged, powered down like a mannequin, maybe sitting in a small chair in a room with sports banners on the wall. James and I stare at the cots as gratefully as we can, and for a moment I wonder if we are meant to tip the volunteer, because he stands there expectantly, as wild children rocket past our feet.

“Just let us know if there’s anything we can do for you,” he says.

Anything? What a kind offer. A softer mattress, I think, and bone-chilling privacy, and a beef stew made with red wine. Some sexual attention would also be fine, if not from you specifically, because I fear you are too polite. Maybe you have a friend? After drives like this one, I often crave a release. But only a particular style of lovemaking will do. I have evolved a fairly specific set of requirements. If you don’t mind reading over these detailed instructions, briefing your friend, and then sending him to meet me in the janitor’s closet, that would be fine.

We tell him thank you, no, and we wait for him to run off before we start whispering our panic all over each other.

“Yeah, no,” James says, looking around, fake smiling, as if everyone were trying to read his lips. “No fucking way.”

“Maybe for a night?” I offer. I would like to be flexible. I would like to bend myself around this situation, which is certainly not ideal and is almost laughably experimental. One imagines doctors behind one-way glass somewhere, rubbing themselves into a scientific frenzy over the predicament they’ve designed for us—two aging soft bodies forced into an open-air sleeping environment. Maybe we are tired enough, and armed with enough pharmaceutical support, to render ourselves comatose on these trim little cots until it’s safe to go home? But will people fuss with our inert bodies? Will they see that we are so heavily tranquillized as to be unresponsive and then proceed to conduct whatever procedures they like on us? I surrender myself to my sweet medicines only when I can lock a door, because I hate the thought of being fiddled with when I’ve brought on elective paralysis and can’t exactly fiddle back.

“The storm hasn’t even touched down on the island yet. We are talking days, maybe,” James says, rubbing his face. He rubs it with real purpose, pulling the skin into impossible shapes, before letting it not exactly snap back onto his head—it takes its time, like the gnarled skin of a scrotum—and I fear for him a little, as if his hand might drag too far and pull his face free.

Together we look around, as we might if we’d just entered a party. There’s no one here we know. It’s just a crowd of ragged travellers, forced from their homes, with far too many children running free. The children seem to believe that they’ve been released into a cage match. Kill or be killed—that sort of thing. The cots, mostly empty, are launching pads for child divers, exploring their airborne possibilities. They leap from bed to bed, rolling into piles on the floor, whooping. A kind of topless nudity prevails, regardless, it seems, of age. Certainly there is beauty on display, but it’s ruined by all this noise. One might reasonably think that there should be a separate evacuation receptacle for children. A room of their bloody own. Answering to their special needs. Relieving the rest of us from the, well, the special energy that children so often desire to display. Lord bless their fresh, pink hearts.

I text Lettie, because there’s no way she and Richard would put up with this sort of bullshit. Are they here? In what quadrant? Could they issue a specific cry, maybe holler my name?

“Airbnb!” she texts back. “Headed to Morley’s for clams and bloodies. Where r u?”

Oh, Jesus, right. People made plans. People thought ahead. I think it’s best not to mention this to James, because that’s something I could have been doing while he drove—securing our safe, private, cozy lodging and making dinner rezzies and otherwise running advance recon for this sweet adventure of ours.

James has curled up on the cot and is staring into space. He looks so tired. His color is James-like, which is never that great. I worry that he’s parked for good now, that the powerful laws of the late afternoon, which seem to visit men of a certain age, are pulling him down into some bottomless, mood-darkening sleep, from which he will wake crankily, trumpeting his exhaustion, denying that he ever slept.

“Are you going to be napping?” I ask him, as neutrally as I can. “Because . . .”

“No, I’m not going to be napping. Are you kidding me? Here?” He has a way of shouting in a whisper. It’s his evacuation-shelter whisper, I guess, although it has caught the attention of certain of our neighbors, who might want to scooch their cots somewhere else, come to think of it.

Yes, I want to assure them. We will be like this all night, whispering our special brand of kindness at each other, so pull up some chairs and put your heads in our asses. That’s where the view is best. Perhaps that’s one way to secure our area and erect a kind of privacy barrier.

“Maybe you should get up?” I say.

“Jesus, Alice, I’ve been driving for hours. I can’t relax for a minute?”

“Yes, you can, and even longer. Take all the time you want. I would just like to know your plans so I can plan accordingly.”

“What?” he hisses. “Are you going to go out and meet some friends? Go out for coffee, maybe?”

We have a different strategy when it comes to the timing of our emotional broadcasts. James buckles in public, and a hole opens in his neck or whatever, and out comes his sour message for me and the world. One feels that he is emboldened in a crowd. It is possible that he does not see other people as human, and thus fails to experience shame when he debases himself in their midst. Like masturbating in front of a pet. Whereas I frequently wait until we are alone, and then, in the calmest voice I can manage, I quietly birth my highly articulate rage in his direction. I certainly have my bias, but it is possible that neither style is superior, and that a steady silence in the face of distress or tension is the ultimate goal. Silence, in the end, is the only viable rehearsal for what comes after, anyway. I mean way, way after. And one certainly wants to be prepared. One wants to have practiced.

“Not here, James,” I say, as brightly as I can.

“What you mean is not anywhere, right, Alice? Not anywhere and never?”

Not bad. He is learning. Although I do not doubt that he will share his feelings with me when we find some privacy.

We decide to go to the car and talk this through. The cots will be here as a last resort, although it feels odd using the word “resort” with respect to such a location. James feels that we should start driving, because there will be plenty of other people with the same idea, all of them racing to find the closest hotel room. It’s kind of like the plot of “Cannonball Run,” except that these people are old, they drive very slowly, and some of them just might die tonight. Eventually, James explains, if we go far and fast enough, we should find some part of this hellish country that is not affected by this storm and has plenty of empty beds. He would like to express confidence now, I can see that. I imagine that he wants me not to worry. If only he could do it without making me worry so much more.

The roads may still be packed, he says, and who knows about the weather. Around us there’s a fringe of rain and the sky is black, and there’s that sound, a kind of pressurized silence, as if the orchestra were about to start playing. The conductor will tap his baton and all hell will break loose. We figure we should get out of here, head further inland, and maybe there will be some food and a nice clean bed in a room where we can lock the door. It sounds decadent and delicious to me, and I sort of cannot wait. We are a team, and it feels as though we’ve just broken out of jail together.

We pull onto the highway and I check the news on my phone. “They are calling this storm Boris.”

“Boris,” he says flatly, as if I’ve just told him the name of a distant star.

“What’s the thinking there?” I wonder.

“They needed a B name.”

“Yes, well then, Boris, of course.”

“And they practice a kind of diversity.”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t know. I’m sure they want to be inclusive.”

“Not to trigger anyone by using a regular name?”

“Boris is a regular name,” James says. “In several parts of the world. With huge populations. Possibly more regular than John, worldwide.”

“Then let the storm go bother them.”

“I’m sure there are people named Boris over here.”

“Oh, I’m sure. I can smell them from here.”

“What is wrong with you?” James is grinning. I don’t think he minds my moods when they’re not directed at him.

“Plenty. I’m hungry and you won’t let me eat. We just have to drive and drive. I’m going to hurl myself from the car.”

James smiles, and he pretends to do math, wetting his finger and tabulating an imaginary problem in the air in front of him. “Fifty,” he says.

“What?”

“I definitely think that’s at least fifty times that you’ve threatened that. At least since I’ve known you. I can’t be sure about the time before that, but something tells me you had a penchant for it in your early years, too.”

He may be right. I don’t care to reflect too far back, particularly on the threats I may have needed to utter as a girl in certain stifling situations, which, unsurprisingly, very often occurred when I was a passenger in a car. I used to think about it more seriously, imagining myself rolling like a weevil along the edge of the road, finally free of torment. And of course the most delicious part of the fantasy was what would happen in the car after I’d ejected. The shock, the panic, the deep, abiding respect. Even the jealousy. Someone had finally done what everyone else could only dream of.

“Booyah,” I say. “Perhaps a more intuitive name.”

“Beelzebub.”

“Bitch Face.”

“Bronwyn.”

“Bald Mountain.”

“Boredom.” And we both laugh.

“Boredom the storm is barrelling down on the coast. Boredom brings destruction in its wake. Coastal villages are still recovering from the deadly effects of Boredom.”

The road is kind of gross. There’s a wild, erratic rain, as if some man with a bucket were hiding in a ditch and occasionally hurling water at us, like on an old film set. A series of men, I suppose it would have to be, since we are puttering forward, however slowly. It all rings false to me. We have the news on, and we’ve texted some friends. Everyone is everywhere. A few of them did opt for the cots back at the shelter. “What could it hurt?” they wrote. “And they’ve come around with snacks!” Our plan is to push on to the next town, but it’s hard to see how that will happen in this rain, in this darkness. It’s two hours or so in normal driving conditions, and when I look at James, squeezed into an awful, tense ball behind the wheel, gnashing his teeth like a cartoon character, it’s hard to believe that he has hours of driving left to give. Poor thing. This is the statistic that is looking to claim our aging, musty bodies: the danger that befalls people in flight from other danger.

“I’m happy to drive,” I say.

“You don’t like how I’m driving?”

“I’m offering to help.”

“I’m good. I’m great.”

Sure you are. James is like some harassed sea creature, hiding behind a rock. I rub his neck, smooth down the back of his hair. I need my driver alive. My poor, poor driver. By taking care of him I take care of myself.

“Thanks,” he says. “That feels good. If only I could see. I mean, right? I feel like I’m playing a broken video game. What you could do is call some hotels or motels up ahead, to see if we can get a room.”

There’s a Holiday Inn and a Motel 6 in the next town. Both lines are busy when I call. I keep trying, and meanwhile I pull up the map on my phone, but my signal is getting spotty, a single bar flickering in and out, and the image of where we are never quite comes through. It’s loading and it’s loading and it’s loading. I see our blue dot, moving slowly over the screen, but there’s no terrain beneath it, just a gray block, as if we were floating in space over some bottomless void.

James pulls over at a gas station and we get chips. Lots of them, the sort we rarely allow ourselves at home. All bets are off. I would inject drugs into my face right now. I would drink gas from the car with a straw. Inside the store, the single-serving wine bottles look exceptional to me—golden bottles in their own gleaming cooler, a shrine to goodness—but it’s not fair to James, who has to drive. I don’t want him jealous. I’d prefer to keep his feelings to a minimum.

We can hardly see anything save the lights and the black slashes of rain streaking past, but the same sign keeps appearing on the side of the road, every mile or two: “EXIT 49 FOOD.” The third time it crawls past, close enough to grab and shake, to possibly dry-hump, I start to salivate. I picture plates of unspecified steaming goodness. Salty, crunchy objects littered over wet mounds of something achingly delicious, with sauce, with sauce, with sauce. Polenta with stinking Gorgonzola, maybe, and a fork-tender bone of meat from some brave animal. A shank, a leg, a neck, cooked for four years in a thick mixture of wines. With tall drinks that fizz a little and quiet down one’s noisy little brain, or perhaps even a warm cloudy drink you pour directly into your eyes. James seems to register my reverie and insists again that we keep driving. Have to have to have to. He slaps the steering wheel. “That’s why we bought chips!” he cries, trying perhaps to sound like a real human being who feels enthusiasm. It’s sort of awkward. “We have chips,” he says more quietly. “If we stop now we’re goners.”

“It’s just that it’s already kind of late, and I’m pretty hungry,” I tell him.

“What are you saying?”

“That it’s late and I’m hungry?”

“If you’re not prepared to offer a solution then maybe you should not speak.”

Well, it’s an interesting rule, and I do enjoy constraints around what can and cannot be said. The deepest kind of etiquette. But if you applied such a standard to everyone, there’d be very little speech. The world would undergo a near-total vow of silence. Perhaps that would be a desired outcome. Perhaps a special island could be set aside for the solution-proffering people, who would slowly drive one another to murder.

“O.K., sure, I will restrict myself to a solution-based language. Here’s a solution: let’s go to a restaurant. That would solve so many problems. The problem of hunger, the problem of exhaustion, the problem of claustrophobia in this goddam coffin, and the very real threat of escalating discord between driver and passenger.”

“Go to a restaurant, and then what? Eating will make us tired. Where will we sleep? I hate being the only one who thinks about these things.”

“Oh, is it not fair?” I say. And I will admit that my voice dips into a pout here.

“That’s right,” James says. “It’s not fair. I didn’t want to put it that way.”

“Because it makes you sound like a sad baby?”

“You’re the one who said it. You said it. How does it make me sound like anything?”

“Yes, let the record show that I controlled your words and rendered you helpless and unaccountable. I am all-powerful.”

James is quiet for a while. The rain is thundering down on us. The wipers are going so fast across the windshield it seems they might fly off the car. When Exit 49 suddenly appears, James veers cautiously down the ramp and pulls the car over in the grass of an intersection.

“The record won’t show anything, Alice, because there is no record. It’s just us. I’m worried about getting stuck out here. That’s all this day has been about. I’m trying to get us somewhere so that we can get a room and then we can worry about everything else after that. Could we maybe fight later, when we get home?”

“Oh, I’d like that.”

“I mean, I don’t really feel well, and the fighting is not helping.”

I look at him. So much of our relationship depends on him being alive. Almost all of it.

“Darling,” I say. “Let’s just go sit and eat and relax for a minute. We can still drive after that. We just have to get out of this rain for a minute. And, after dinner, I’m driving. No arguments.”

We find the restaurant and get a table near the fireplace, which turns out to be just a storage nook for old copper pots. The waiter is a boy. Not an infant, but not exactly a man. Somewhere in that intermediate gravy. “Are you all weathering the storm O.K.?” he asks us, grinning.

Can one say no? I wonder. No, thank you, we are not. We have failed to weather it and now we are here, in your restaurant.

The food that comes out is not disgusting. Sweet and hot and plentiful, moist in all the right places. It goes down pretty heavily, though, and I feel the day starting to expire, begging to end. James was right. The druggery of road food. We eat in silence, listening to the rain. Both of us look forlornly at the bar, thinking that we shouldn’t, we mustn’t. On the other hand, we could simply pass out drunk here and maybe they’d take us to jail. There are beds in jail. Soap. New people to meet.

A television above the bar shows a woman in a raincoat being blown off her feet. The clip must be on a loop, or else she keeps getting up, saying something desperate into her microphone, and then falling back down again. I’d like to tell her to stay down, just stay down and take it, while the wind and the rain lash at her flapping back, but she gets up again and the wind seems to lift her. For a moment, as she blows sideways off the screen and surrenders herself to flight, her posture is beautiful, absolutely graceful. If you were falling from a cliff, no matter what awaited you, you might want to think about earning some style points along the way, turning your final descent into something stunning to watch. On the TV, there is nothing to learn about the storm, nothing to know. The number that scrolls across the bottom of the screen is long, without cease, maybe the longest single number I’ve ever seen. Does this number describe the storm? What are we to make of it?

In the car, we think it over. We are too far from a hotel—plus, the hotels aren’t answering their phones. The driving is dangerous, if not impossible. It’s not really even driving anymore; it’s like taking your car through one of those car washes. We are exhausted beyond belief. I suggest, as tentatively as I can, that it is not unreasonable to think that we could sleep in the car. Our seats recline, like easy chairs, and if we found somewhere safe and quiet to park we could ride this out until the morning, maybe even sleep well. Then we could drive all day and maybe get to somewhere where they have rooms. We’d be rested. The sun might be up. The world might have ended. But at least it would be tomorrow. Tomorrow seems like the only thing that will solve anything, ever. Along comes tomorrow, with its knives, as someone or other said. That’s not the exact quote, I’m sure, but the bones of it sound true.

It seems as though James may have given up. “Is that what you want to do? Sleep on the side of the road? In the car?”

“What I want to do is to be alone in a hole, covered in dirt. But sleeping in the car is the next best thing right now.”

“Yes, that is often the second choice after live burial.”

It starts to sound nice to me, really appealing. Like going to the drive-in, but without the movie. Like going parking, which we must have done once, in another life, before our bodies took on water and started to sink, before the spoil grew like mold in the backs of our mouths. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with sleeping in the car,” I say. “It’s going to be more comfortable than a motel, that’s for sure, not that there even is an available motel, and plus we won’t have to worry about the cascade of ejaculate that’s been literally sprayed from human appendages around every single motel room in the country. Purportedly.”

James seems to think about it. “When I stay in a hotel,” he says, “I do my best to ejaculate on the walls. It’s a civic obligation. You have to pull your weight.”

“That’s a lot of pressure for a man.”

“Sometimes I’m not in the mood. I’m cranky and I’m tired.”

“That’s when you bring out the jar from home?” I ask.

He laughs. “It’s good to have it with me. Who’s going to know, you know, if the product is older?”

“More mature, in some ways.”

“Must. Broadcast. Seed,” he says, like a robot, and then he mimes the flinging of the jar, splashing its imaginary contents out into space.

It’s not really a rest area that we find. It’s a scenic turnout, and the view—of the black, bottomless abyss—is pristine. You can see all of it, every dark acre, and if we don’t see our own ghostly faces by the end of the night it’s because we’re not looking hard enough. We park a bit out of the way, under the branches of a mammoth tree, and when we quickly realize that we’ve just increased our risk of death—because trees seem to seek people out in these kinds of situations—we move over to an open parking space, with nothing threatening above us.

“Fuck that tree,” I say. “Way to try to hide your intentions.”

We put our seats all the way back and James pulls out a bar of chocolate from the go bag. I want to rub it all over my face.

“Oh, my God. Oh, my God. You are a genius,” I say. “Certifiable.”

“I like to think that I have an elusive, almost unknowable sort of intelligence.”

“What else is in there?” Now I’m excited.

James peers deep into the bag, rummaging around with his hand. “That’s the end of it,” he says. “The rest is just sadness. Sadness and real life.”

This is my sweet man. So weird sometimes. So uncommon. And he steered us here, to safety, where we can eat our sweets and surrender to the night and everything will be so goddam swell in the morning. Even as the rain seems to be crushing the car, one hard bead at a time. Not the rain. Boris. Boris is doing this to us, the motherfucker.

The seats are a little bit divine when you tilt them all the way back. A little bit like first class on an airplane, which we experienced only once, and by accident, because of a mistake by the sweethearts at the gate. It remains a sort of benchmark for comfort outside the home.

“I’m sorry you don’t feel well,” I say. “Is it related to . . .”

“What?”

“I mean, is it related to anything? I know you went to the doctor.”

“I did go to the doctor.”

“And?”

“It was really interesting. Really surprising. I found out that he thinks I’m still alive.”

“He sounds like a smart man. I would like to meet him. Maybe shake his hand.”

James is quiet, and I’m not sure I really like it. I listen to his breath and it sounds all right. But then he coughs, and it’s such a feeble cough, as if he barely had the energy for it. I don’t like it.

“But now?” I ask. “Are you still not feeling so . . .”

James laughs softly. “Oh, now. I’d like to say that I’m fine now.”

“Well, don’t hold back, mister. Say that. Make it so.” I take his hand.

“I’m fine,” he whispers. “I feel wonderful. Better than I’ve felt in a long time.”

His voice is too weak for me. The fight has gone out of him.

“Well, don’t go and die on me tonight,” I say, and I kind of want to punch him.

“O.K.”

“You know that’s what everyone’s thinking, right? Everyone who’s watching this at home? That the couple who’ve been bickering all day will start to get along, but it will be too late, and then the man will die. That’s such a classic plot.”

“Oh, is that what they’re thinking?”

“That’s what all the betting sites say. That’s where the odds are.”

“Does the woman ever die?”

“In situations like this?”

“Are there any other kinds of situations?”

We settle in, and I guess we are maybe trying to fall asleep, but I feel too vigilant. James’s hand is warm in mine. It doesn’t feel like the hand of a man about to die. It is big and soft and I pull it over to me, get it in close against my chest.

“I can’t see you, James. What is the look on your face? What are you thinking?”

“No one is watching this but you, Alice. You’re the only one here. No one knows about us. People can’t really know.”

“Sweetheart, are you O.K.? Should I be calling someone?”

“I guess I’m a little more tired than I thought I was.”

“You must be. You’ve done all the driving. You got us out of there. You saved us.”

He must think I’m joking with him. I wish I knew how to say it better. How come so many things can sound mean and nice at the same time?

“Could we lie together?” he asks.

I crawl over the seat, wrapping up against him. “Yes, of course. Let me settle in here with you for a bit. Why not?”

It feels good to snuggle him. Warm and just right. James is thinner than I remember. I can feel his bones.

“Why don’t we do this more often?” I say, nuzzling against him.

“Because we haven’t wanted to?” James says. He’s drifting off. I can hear his voice grow thin. I’m not ready to sleep. Not ready to be alone.

“Hey,” I say to him.

“Yeah?”

“Stay awake with me for a little bit.”

“O.K.”

“Breast Cancer.”

“What?”

“Breast Cancer is picking up speed. Landfall is expected at twenty-one hundred hours.”

“Oh. Ha. Yeah. I almost forgot about that. Boris. So weird. Boris.”

When James is silent for a while I nudge him. “Your turn,” I say.

“O.K. It’s so hard to think.” His voice trails off and I nudge him again. Then he says, “Maybe we’ve thought of the best ones already.”

“No, we haven’t, we haven’t. I swear. There are so many more.”

“O.K.,” he says. “But this one isn’t so great. Are you ready?”

I say that I am. I lean in close.

“Balls.”

I squeeze his hand. “There you go.”

“Balls is blowing at seventy-five miles per hour.”

“They sure is,” I say. “Hurricane Balls rolled in this morning and people are afraid to leave their homes.”

James doesn’t laugh. I need to leave him alone. He needs his space.

“Beloved,” James whispers, and it’s the last thing I hear him say to me before he falls asleep.

“Beloved is coming,” I say to no one, listening for his breath. “Close your windows. Go down into the basement and don’t come out until she’s gone.” ♦