The Unsettling. Peter Rock
Next to the jungle gym, the plastic swings were so gnawed they looked melted. When we bit into our sandwiches, shredded lettuce fell onto the ground, tangled with cigarette butts.
Marco stood and tried to touch his toes. He stretched his arms and grunted. All that work in the damp library tightened his joints.
I wonder, he asked, if you wouldn’t mind rubbing my knee a little.
I’d give it a try, I told him.
Not everyone would, he said.
If it helps, I said.
I kind of kneeled down and tried to get a decent hold, through the slippery Tyvek, using both hands. Marco picked up his sandwich, closed his eyes. He obviously shaved, but there were always these long whiskers along his throat, ones he missed. I rubbed his knee. The sun stayed where it was, straight overhead, stuck there.
You’re probably wondering what I’m going to do for you, Marco said.
I told him not really. My knees felt fine.
I live in a rowhouse, Marco said. So I share walls with my neighbors. Thin walls.
A couple lived there, and he’d hear their arguments—threats, recriminations, then the usual coming to terms. Marco would turn up his radio, or go out walking around his neighborhood.
Italians, he said, almost spitting.
I thought you were Italian, I said.
I am, he said.
There was an Indian spice shop near that park, so it always smelled a little foreign. The air was thick. Marco picked his teeth with his fingernail as he spoke.
Pay attention, he said. This won’t turn out any way you expect.
I told him I had no expectations.
Sometimes on the mornings after the arguments, Marco would run into the man from next door. You’re lucky, the man would say, you were safe—a wall between you and her. Pray for me, these nights! He and Marco would laugh together.
What happened to him? I asked, guessing ahead.
I just stopped hearing him through the wall, Marco said. Stopped seeing him in the front yard. He was gone.
And that was your opening, I said. Don’t tell me—she’s incredibly beautiful.
Yes, Marco said. But that’s not the point.
We took our time in the basements of the library, though we weren’t being paid by the hour. It wasn’t that I got a lot of thinking done, exactly; it was almost a different plane of some sort, listening to my own breathing, a kind of meditation. Sometimes I even thought of the people who would follow, who would be able to read the books because I’d saved them.
Sometimes people came down the stairs, descended by mistake, and I’d catch glimpses, twice-distorted by my face shield and the clear plastic barriers. The people seemed to have no feet, to move fluidly, as if they were growing their way smoothly upward again, beyond my sight.
Sometimes, on my break, I’d climb those stairs; I’d hold the door slightly open, my ventilator around my neck and the cool air on my sweaty face. I spied into the library, and it was quiet up there, just like it was supposed to be. A green and yellow parakeet hung on to its perch, inside a bamboo cage. I heard the sound of pages turning. If I held the door open a little further, I could see the desk where the librarian sat. She was about my age, with dark black skin, gold eyeglasses; her hair was braided close to her head, in curving lines, the loose ends like ropes whipping her shoulders. Her fingers were thin, her smile wide as she answered someone’s question. Whenever I turned away from her and began to descend into the basement, it was as if my body grew heavier with every step. I wanted her to know there were real people underneath her, that I was beneath her every day. I wanted to tell her I’d wiped mold from musical scores and hummed the melody, that I’d read a Russian story about grown men swimming in the rain, another where people could see into the future and still couldn’t change it.
If I could tell the librarian one story, it would be this one. And I would tell her only a little at a time, the way Marco told me, until she had to know what would happen next, until she couldn’t stand it.
He never used the woman’s real name, since he said I was his friend and he was afraid I’d try to track her down, once I’d heard it all, that I’d only get myself in trouble. Louisa—that’s the name he chose for her.
Their houses shared a porch, so all Louisa had to do was reach over the railing to ring Marco’s doorbell. She wanted to ask him a favor. Groceries. She had the list in her hand, and he took it when she held it out.
It’s my eyes, Louisa said. I can’t see a thing. She told him that the doctors had found nothing wrong, physically, but that didn’t help her.
Marco looked at her eyes, and she didn’t seem to see him. Her eyebrows had always been tweezed into a narrow arch; now they were returning, thickening. She stood there, barefoot on the concrete porch, the toenails of her left foot painted red. All the words on the list in Marco’s hand tilted, and some stretched off the edge of the paper, cut short. Others were written right on top of each other; he struggled to untangle them.
When he returned from the store, he offered to put the things away for her, and she said she could do it. Stay, she told him. You can talk to me while I do.
She held the door open and then led him, moving deftly around the furniture, hitting the light switch exactly and just for him. Later, he tried it in his own house, his eyes closed. He bruised his shins and tore his fingernails; he cursed and stumbled and wondered if she heard him, if she guessed what he was doing.
In the kitchen, she reached and found the knobs on the cupboards; inside, they were carefully organized, all the cans lined up.
I’ve got it all figured out, she said. I miss being able to read, but that’s about it. I was halfway through a book when it happened.
Marco asked if it happened all at once, and she told him she had one day where everything went dim—that gave her a chance to prepare—and then the next day that was it.
Is it just pitch-black? he said. Or is it like nothing at all? Marco wasn’t sure what he meant, exactly. He couldn’t stop watching her hands.
Somewhere in-between, she said.
He stayed until all the groceries were put away, and then said he’d be happy to help her again.
I remember what you look like, Louisa said, but do you mind? She reached out, and slowly her soft fingertips moved down his face.
Yes, I said, when he told me that. I knew this was going somewhere.
You know nothing, Marco said.
I learned not to say things like that, eventually; it only made him stop talking—it was as if I’d sullied the way it had been. If I asked, he’d say to wait, to be patient. He could only tell it a little at a time; otherwise, it made him too sad.
The conversation at lunch would turn to other things. We’d walk to the park, stripping off our latex gloves, the sweat between our fingers going cool, the zippers of our suits pulled down and their white arms dragging behind us. The weather turned hot and dark, overcast. Trains came and went, slowly, sat on the tracks behind the playground. We watched the dogs, betting on which owners would pick up after theirs and which would pretend oblivion. Down there they had dogs of all shapes, with their tails lopped off, their ears pinned up. Marco knew the names of all the breeds and what they were for. He’d have his arm across the back of the bench, fingers drumming next to my shoulder. I didn’t mind. Once we saw a guy crash his bicycle into a parked car as he tried to look behind him, to check the ass on a girl he’d passed. Marco got a good laugh out of that—a little shift like that would bring him around again.
All right, he’d say, turning toward me. Where did I leave off?
The next time Louisa rang his doorbell, she was holding a book in her hand. She asked what he was doing; when he said nothing,