she said. “It seems like no one realizes what’s happening. Like they all have this terminal illness they don’t know about, or like there’s a tsunami behind them and they haven’t noticed it yet.”
“Really—people try to wear all these hats but there’s nothing under them.”
“Yeah, I think we might need to get berets,” she said, squinting at his head for a few seconds. “Or maybe you might prefer an admiral’s cap.”
He burst out laughing and she smiled her perfect smile and then he smiled right back without the slightest reservation, like a goofball.
She took a deep breath. “Is it weird that I want to know why?”
“Why what?”
“Why he did it.”
“You mean my dad?”
“It’s just that I really want to know right now. It’s like killing me. I promise I’ll give you your arrowhead back if you find out why.”
He shrugged and wiped his hands on a napkin. “Well, I really don’t… I’m really not too crazy about this right now. I really just want to forget about it. For now.”
“It’s OK, I’m sorry,” she said. It was sincere, almost timid. “I know you’re upset. I understand your pain. I’ve felt pain like this before.”
“Well, you can talk about it. If you want. Your pain.”
She smiled and took another deep breath, as if she were about to tread on some holy ground. “You know, my dad believes we have power animals that guide our spirit.”
“You think so? What would you say mine is?”
“You’re a panther if I’ve ever seen one.”
She pouted her lips in this goofy way. He thought it was fascinating, the way she tried to make herself seem less attractive and in doing so made herself more attractive.
“So what does that make you?”
“Well,” she said, “I’ve been told I’m a wolf, but tonight? Tonight, I’m pretending to be a panther.”
The waiter brought out the mukhwas and Sara said she didn’t want to put a spoon that had been in some stranger’s mouth into hers, and he laughed and told her she didn’t put the spoon in her mouth, and for the first time she laughed and he liked it and asked how her food was.
“I thought the vindaloo was really, really… you know,” she paused, “good.” She looked down at her iPhone and seemed to think there was a Christmas pharm party at some squat, 337 Broome, an old event space that a Wall Street Robin Hood had bought and given to UHAB, and asked if he wanted to go.
He murmured, “We can. I don’t really care.” His tone changed. “I said you could talk about your problems. Are you gonna tell me or like what’s the deal?”
She smiled a sad smile. “I’m sure I’ll tell you all about it someday.”
Much later that night, in his apartment, she moved closer and whispered, “You’re so lonely,” with a sad expression that made her irresistible, and then she kissed him and whispered it again and he said, “Sara…” and she pretended not to hear him and then she went under the sheets and took him into her mouth and as her throat relaxed he groaned with relief as he shot into her throat. He turned out the light and held Sara and then tried to sleep, but the music playing next door, “Empire State of Mind” by Jay Z with Alicia Keys, reminded him of something and then the feeling disappeared and he started to wonder if he could go back, if he could simply get up and go home. He looked down at Sara and wondered what she’d do. He knew he couldn’t go; he knew he shouldn’t, but he wanted to go. But first he needed his arrowhead.
He went into the living room and noticed Sara’s purse, which she’d left on the futon, and looked through it. There were a lot of cigarettes in it and tampons and the usual crumpled dollar bills. There were pictures of her family, her mother and father. He was picking up an invoice from a garage when he saw his arrowhead at the bottom of the purse, just within his reach. He grabbed it and felt, despite his anxiety, deeply calm and glad to be holding it again. He went back into the bedroom and got dressed, and he didn’t know what he was doing and then he looked down at Sara, who was smiling dumbly in her sleep, and for a moment felt a slight dizziness. He walked outside and felt something in him collapse, and it was so cold that everything—the air, the music around him—felt frozen, and for some reason the people passing by looked like translucent goblins in the fluorescent lighting. Walking to Astor Place and unable to shake the feeling that he was afraid of the constricted space, he took out his iPhone and opened the Amtrak app and bought a ticket to the station in Prince, West Virginia, and then he hailed a cab and got inside and was gripping his iPhone so tightly he could barely feel his hand and a moment of doubt arose as the shadow of the city loomed against the window.
And then he told the driver, “Penn Station.”
HEADING SOUTH THE NEXT MORNING, Jamie watched through the window of the Amtrak and saw the skyline of New York and its steel skyscrapers disappear—the city turning into country. Later, he noticed the piles of snow blanketing everything and there was a darkness to the world as the train turned west and left Washington, DC. He thought about how his life seemed like a terrifying series of smash cuts, and, after a twelve-dollar personal pizza and a cup of black coffee in the dining car, the tracks wavered slowly ahead past Charlottesville and the landscape closed off. The train continued through it in the general direction of West Virginia until the markings of civilization ended in acres of dark woods and hollers and freshly dug strip mines resembling, he thought, enormous graves large enough to bury a race of ten-thousand-pound people. In the dark, he couldn’t make out the mountains, only black, asymmetrical varieties of shadowy apexes, and when he was the last person left in the car after thirteen hours, the train’s lights lit up the next stop and he finally saw the rickety mid-twentieth-century lettering erected across its roof, identifying it as the Prince, West Virginia, station.
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