Beyond the Sea Ch. 02

Arkady is not a popular person, and she loves it. It gives her time to read.

Arkady is the best forensic language analyst in the blue states. Her time is occupied with codes, patterns, research, and puzzles. She is not capable of anything else. At a younger age she was thought to have a learning disability, but to her great luck, her mother called bullshit, loudly: "Nothing wrong with my daughter but she likes to goddamn read. Don't you have drugs to say no to? Leave her the hell alone!"

Arkady is looking at the notebook Graham has brought over. He tried to give her photocopies at first, wanting to keep the notebook for himself, but she insisted that if he wanted a decent profile of the author, she needed to see the pressure-depths imprinted in the pages to account for stresses in the handwriting. This is partly true, but there's also the reality that she does what she does because she loves it, and there's an immediacy that gets lost in a copy, a connection: from my hands to yours. It's intimate, this reading and knowing of a stranger, and Graham's not going to take that away from her.

Unlike most of the force in the city, Arkady rarely speaks to Graham and is fascinated, not afraid, of his talents: tonight she wants to get to know the writer of this book, and she has a stack of reference materials at the ready, and a notepad and a pen, in case anything really striking pops out at her. At first glance, the handwriting is neat, but the pages have disintegrated with wear, some dog-eared and dappled with coffee like holy water over a congregation, some edged with smeary fluorescent cheese powder thumbprints.

For now, she is enjoying it. Having turned down the lights, a soft glow fills her office of metal and glass, and she stretches out her legs for a good long read, pausing only to sneak a small handful of jellybeans from her desk drawer. The black ones are her favourite, but mostly because nobody else in the office likes them, and so if she had to share, she'd still have her favourites all to herself.

Snapping on some latex gloves as she chews, only dimly aware that she's actually enjoying the red jellybeans more than the black ones, she flips open the book, idly noting that it seems to fall open to a page near the middle. Her eye glides down the page, noting the advanced yellowing from finger oils, more so than the other pages.

The room may as well be empty. It's the backdrop to anonymity. The pictures on the walls are something everybody's seen, but leaves you feeling nothing. It's like every other hotel room I've ever seen. The only difference is the bedding. Nice places have better blankets. This place has scratchy blankets, polyester with polyester thread, clear and plasticky, poking up through the tufting where the threads have broken after being washed hundreds of times. I can't help but wonder about what this room's seen, and how it still manages to be so blank. Blank eyes on a dead world.

I guess it's paranoid, since I already look pretty different with it short, but I can't take any chances, so I'm dyeing my hair. The dye burns my scalp—it still hasn't healed, and the fact that my hands were shaking so bad that I jabbed myself a few times when I cut it doesn't help. I think of my hair in the fountain, and how bitter I felt, how lost, as the clumps sunk to the bottom.

I wait without a clock, pretending I know how to measure time by the movement of the sun, and probably waiting too long, staring out the window from my spot on the sagging bed. There's a spring jammed into the back of my leg, and I could move, but it wouldn't matter. The bed's all springs. I won't sleep very well tonight, but I rarely do anyway.

Outside, I can see the traffic sliding by, becoming nothing but strings of diamonds and rubies as the sun sets. There's a flower box on the windowledge that nobody's been tending to. I think the flowers are crysanthemums, but it's hard to tell. They're nothing but brown stalks now, their petals dry like fall leaves. Like miniature trees, I think, watching the light change on the dead plants, casting long shadows that turn the flowers into a forest on my floor.

It must be time by now.

I go into the bathroom, not looking into the mirror as I take the towel off my head, and rinse the dye out of my hair. I put the conditioner in, and knowing I have to wait, I take my chances with the mirror.

I used to have long black hair. I was probably a little vain about it back then, but I really liked my hair, the way it looked in the sun. It was a strange thing to see myself with short hair. I don't think I'd had short hair since I was really little and my mother would pin my hair back with plastic lamb-shaped barettes. I'd always had it long. Cutting it felt like cutting off a limb, and I hated that I was doing it because of him.

The dye is because of him, too, but it feels different. Like an empty motel room, with a freshly made bed and clean towels. No identity, no past. No sense of who was here, and who is here now doesn't matter much either. I am this moment and this moment will disappear, too, nothing left but the future, one empty motel room after another, stretching out before me like possibility.

I don't know if I like the colour or not, but it doesn't matter. I am a blank room now. That's what matters.

Arkady stops herself, chastizing herself to start at the beginning. Turning to the front page of the notebook, she can't help but smile at the odd doodles: in the margin, dogs like Russian nesting dolls, infintesmal to massive, crawl out of one another's mouths, the tail of the last dog curling absurdly around the bottom of the page like inky blue smoke.

The page begins, and Arkady follows it.

Sometimes when I wake up, I forget where I am, and how I got here. It's my senses that bring me back, though. The bus engine rumbling through my seat, the industrial feel of the upholstery, leaving funny pebbly marks on my cheek. The smell of the toilet at the back of the bus. The stale breeze from the vent at the window. The scattering of small lights on above seats, whether it's day or night. I can sleep any time, though. I prefer to sleep during the day. It keeps people from talking to me, from asking questions I've got no intention of answering. At night, the only ones awake are trying to lose themselves, like me: playing solitare, reading a book, or staring out the window. There are so many stars out here. I never saw this many back home. It's like they were hiding, and out here, where nobody's looking, they dance namelessly. Out here on the road, at night, there's nothing but stars. Especially on the back roads. I'm always glad when we take those. It means we don't get to stop for coffee as often, but what the hell. Road coffee usually tastes like shit anyway.

There's something different about the world at night, when all I can hear is the snap of a playing card and the occasional turning of a page. Mostly I like it, but when the playing cards stop and the book closes, and it's just me and the driver and the stars, I feel very small and unsure. I look out the window, and it's like falling into a black hole—just a sea of nothing out there. And sometimes I wonder if I did the right thing when I'm surrounded by all that nothing. All that space, all I can think about is the times when it was okay. When it was even kind of good. How happy I was sometimes. Mostly at the beginning.

What if I was wrong? And I have to play back all those old scenes to remind myself of why I left. I hate that I need that. It makes me feel weak, that I can't trust myself, that I almost need to let him hurt me again, if only through memory, so I can believe in myself and my decisions.

I hate him. Well, I want to. I think. I don't know. Hating takes so much energy, and all I really want, what I really want, is to forget. To become someone else. And it isn't enough for everyone else to see me as someone else. I need to be someone else to me. I want to undo myself and start again, really forget everything.

But mostly I want to forget the sadness, the hurt of being let down so bad. I never want to feel that again. I want to be able to wake up in the morning and not hate the beginning of another day in my own skin.

Arkady looks up from the notebook for a moment, staring out the window without registering anything beyond the speckles of light on the skyline. A tower in the distance blinks over and over again. Pursing her lips in thought, she considers the differences between the first entry she read, and the one at the beginning of the book. The one at the middle is different. The crossings of the t's are at the same height as the first entry, with the same slightly downwards-and-to-the-right tilt, the d's with the same deliberate stem that dips only barely under the lines, but the angle of the letters changes partway through the entry, as though she was rushing to make sure her pen kept up with her thoughts. The ink skims across the page in that later entry, the pen barely denting the paper. The first entry seems to have the same pace throughout, an almost flat affect, an even and ponderous pressure to the letters. Strange.

She takes a deep breath, trying to prevent her mind from jumping to the conclusions it's already going towards. The girl will unfold herself to me in good time, she thinks. All I have to do is read. She glances at her mostly-empty coffee cup, and decides she'll fill it after she reads a few more pages.

We've been following the 94 for what feels like weeks now, stopping briefly in little podunk towns along the way. At least we're finally out of Minnesota, though Wisconsin's not much better. Just one little town after another, lots of farmland in between, not much growing yet. The little dirthole we just left was called Woodville. Sign boasted eleven hundred people. I thought I came from a small town, but this place made it look like a sprawling metropolis. It wasn't all bad, though. I got a danish inside the coffee shop we stopped at, and it was a little stale, but it was blueberry, with lots of that white sugary stuff on it, which makes up for it. The grannies were all waiting inside the shop for the driver, blowing on their tea, and talking about their churches' rummage sales, so I went outside with my danish, thinking I'd sit near the little pond I'd seen as we were driving up. There was a picnic bench near it, so why not?

I was going to eat it right away, but when I came out, there was this guy standing by the side door of the shop, looked like a staff entrance. I could smell it right away—pot. Fairly good stuff, too. He saw me pretty much right as I saw him, and he gestured in my direction with the joint, quietly asking me if I wanted some in that tight voice that potheads use when they're holding a lungful.

Sure, why not, I said, figuring it'd make the next little while more pleasant. I took the joint and drew a haul off it, savouring the taste as I inhaled. I passed it back, not wanting to be greedy, and he shook his head no, raising his hand to tell me to hang onto it a bit longer. I exhaled, nodding my thanks, and took another haul.

"Where you headed?" he asked, smiling, a little pie-eyed.

"Not sure yet," I lied, making like a chimney before I passed the joint back.

He laughed a little. "You're just going?" He sucked back three hissing tokes from the tiny roach, pinching it between his nails to keep from burning his fingers.

I nodded. "Yeah."

"Cool," he said, knocking the heater off the roach and tucking it into a piece of foil he produced from his vest pocket. "I always wanted to do something like that, but never got around to it," he said, a little wistful, looking off towards the pond.

"You should. Travelling's good."

"Yeah."

We fell silent as the stoned feeling came on. I heard the hiss of the bus door opening behind me, and the sqwaking of the old ladies. He glanced over at the bus. "That yours, I guess."

"Yeah."

He nodded. "Travel safe."

"Thanks," I said, "and thanks for the smoke."

"No problem."

I began to walk away, and then I heard him call out from behind me, "Hey!"

I turned around.

"You ever been to Sacramento?"

I shook my head.

"That's where I wanna go," he grinned, nodding slightly. "See you."

I grinned back at him as he went inside the shop, and got back on the bus, dragged myself back into my seat and nestled in, and began tearing apart my danish as the bus pulled away, tearing off one layer at a time, balancing gooey blueberries on my fingertips before licking them clean, thinking about Sacramento. I don't know what's there or what it looks like, but I can see why it'd be stuck in his mind. Sa-cra-mennn-to.

Everybody wants to be somewhere other than where they are, I guess.

Graham is writing in the margins of his legal pad. He is mapping out the route Ruby took from Chicago to Plano, getting as many names and times as he can infer from the short list that Arkady gave him after she scanned through the notebook the first time. Every town is on the crisply-printed list his officers have prepared. He closes his eyes and watches the connections be made, glowing like LED tubes, colours mixing, creating a perimeter. He is asleep in seconds, and a dream takes the reins, showing endless loops of entwined, cartoonish dashes, pushpins, and unmarked graves Ruby Daniels may have left all over them.

When the call comes through from Plano that they have found Ruby's jacket, Arkady leaves the phone off the hook, runs by Graham's desk and tells him to pick up. He listens to the Texas cop and follows her to the bus station in his own car, cherries flashing bright.

Funky Latin Subheader

Having collected Ruby's jacket from the lost and found, latex gloves in place, Arkady walks back to her car and Graham. Pulling out napkins one by one, shredded carefully into strips of four, she sees each one is covered in a specific colour of ink, handwritten words that either do not make sense, or are familiar – every high school class reads Hamlet. Idling outside of the passenger door, she makes no sign of noticing Graham, who waits impatiently to touch them.

A businessman staggered out into the parking lot, tripping on the torn tarmac. Graham couldn't tell if he was screaming drunk, or agitated at a phone call. He hated the earpiece phones with all of his soul, and the skips on the surface they cause. Graham likes things he can count on. Everything in its right place.

Arkady leans up against her car, parked parallel to his, considers propping up her feet on his door to sit and stretch, and decided against it. His car is cherry in every way – clean inside and out, washed, waxed. He would not be happy, and she doesn't want to disturb her train of thought with an apology. Putting the napkins together was her only focus, clumsily as she was accomplishing it. She could tape it together later. For now the girl's words were the only thing she cared about.

The salaryman walks towards the two cars, still sputtering. Graham flattened himself against his car door to let him pass, not making eye contact as he stumbled through the small space between the cars. Angry with some response from the sky, or the caller, he shoved Arkady as he passed.

She collides with Graham and he grabbed her shoulders.

Their hips twitch together in shock, relax, then apart in greater shock. He will tell himself later she needed a moment to regain her balance. His breath is heavy: the air is thin. Her head swells with blackness. Her body blushes.

Trying to look away, they look at each other.

Pause.

"I. Ahem." Graham is flustered, but not willing to play pretend. "Words. Words go here. Uhm."

"Words?"

"Words."

Her hips trembled again, the signal coming from a deep, night place.

He could not move until she did, and realizing this she stepped back too quickly and coughed.

"I…"

"So…"

Words. The thought nagged again.

A broken machine makes only echoes.

Words. Words. Words.

"Echoes."

"Of?" Composed. It's forgotten.

"Things that've already been said. Or sounded. Or made."

"Viruses? Loops?"

"Quotes."

Pause.

"Writer's block?"

"No…but…"

"Plagiarism." His affect is sour.

"Words, words, words."

The sky darkened. She had lost time.

"Hamlet."

His face twitches. That same small tic. He is unaware of smiling. She had pleased him more than she could know.

"My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go."

Her skin reddens again. Her face is full of blood. Breathing in deeply, she sloughs it off. There will be time.

"I need…we need to look at that notebook again. And a quiet place. The basement evidence room should do it." Nothing else matters again. The quarry is the carrot and her body is the stick. She will not eat for another two days, nor will she know it.

"Take your car," he waves dismissively. "I'll meet you there. I have to go get some things I need."

Nod. Her gaze drops to the car door. He walks away from it awkwardly, leading with his chin. She waits for him to be two arms-lengths away, then turns her head on her left shoulder.

"You're twitching." He slows, does not stop or turn. "Are you cold?"

She knows it is quite the opposite, and wonders if he does.

Driving back to the office, Arkady hears his heavy breath around her head, and permits herself the first smile in three days.

*

There were no things to gather. He had his briefcase, and his laptop. After Arkady's car disappeared, Graham pulled into the parking garage and masturbated furiously, eager to start the research. His head had to be clear. When he finished, he did not think of Arkady.

*

"So…is she Ophelia, or Gertrude?" His eyes are tired but his mind is electric.

"Depends on who's Hamlet and who's Polonius."

"And what does that make us?"

"You. Horatio."

Her attention hurts. A small welt raises on his stoicism.

"What? How so?" Trying to keep his tone even, he betrays himself with a tic.

"Horatio…understood. And to the end, tried to make everyone else understand too."

Humming, he turns to the wall. She regrets her tone, but not the truth. He is going to explode.

"I don't-"

"I KNOW."

The room fills up with static. She can feel her energy brush against his, oscillating crazily. He stalks the rows of cheap folding tables, like a golem in a maze. His eyes are magnificent, shining like magpie treasure.

"I've done what I can, here…to help. Helping the victims, their families, his family – someone out there is caring for all those people, though. Someone wants them to be saved."

He turns to her, into the static field, his hand on the table; a pivot, a force of physics. A lion would roar.

"Yes. I want to save him. I want to stop him. But I want to know him. That's true. Yes. Bad men aren't born bad. They're made. And the more we know about how they're made, the better-"

"The better we can know ourselves."

No magpie could resist. He turns to hot stone. The energy does not drain from him. It settles in his shoulders, in his trunk; it hums like current. It pricks her neck.

She was not afraid of Graham. He would not hurt her, cross her, unless she trespassed on his rules. The rules were very specific for pain; his was not for her consumption. But it had to come out, and better now than later.

"I'm sorry…no. No, I'm not. If you're going to do this with me, I need to know you won't fuck up, and you won't bleed all over your badge. Whatever he is, he's murdered someone. Slaughtered them. Someone who had every right to wake up in the morning and eat breakfast and go to work, who has as much right to live her life as the rest of us." Worked up now, she pushes things to the surface that must be put down every day. His chest is rhythmic, the hum everywhere. He wants her; he wants this more. Nothing will be gained by lying, things might be missed should she hold back.