"Catena" (Mark)

Some hustler, one of the young wriggling newts of the New York art world, had coaxed Mark into sub-letting the cabin in the Adirondacks, where the newt had been keeping a studio through the summer and early fall. Mark had nowhere else in particular to go. There was no heat in the cabin and so Mark slept outside. There was nothing left to eat after three days and he had no provision for a ride to town. He dug up a last paint-flecked vodka handle and cradled it in his sleeping bag while dusk turned into night and the trees stood apart to let a chill breeze through. His body fell asleep inside a film of what seemed like July grease, and his sleepy mind troubled itself with recollected fragments of the lost summer. There was a pond in the clearing before the cabin, and he had spent the morning stagnating goldenly. At twilight an owl had flown out of the pines at the pond’s edge and given a sad cry, which was like a piercing call-to-arms.

He imagined taking out each perfect organ one by one, drawing each sphere or sac out through his navel, his pearlescent darlings, wiping them all around with a soft clean lens cloth, caring for them. Wiping each soft sphere clean of ichor and gently returning it to its foxhole beneath his ribs. (xx) His guts swam like fish through rotten logs. The fish spine, the smell of life. The ticklish pulse of piscine life, the glimmer of fish in an overgrown pond. Then all of a sudden it’s September. There’s all this ragged fiber and no rope to make a knot with. Miss Catena, her day-lit shoulders newly freckled, prods the sleepy, ropy form in its fish daze. He dreams on about snow in August, puns in the tabloid headlines about the aberrant weather and what it could mean for the commuter.

Mark came around again. A dog was barking, far off. He felt Catena nearby, peeing along the bank of the pond, obscured by reeds, clouds on the moon, low-shadowing pine boughs. There was a soft odor of urea and new menstrual blood rising through the golden, stagnant smell of choked aqueous dirt. He rolled over in his sleeping bag and studied the dark shape of the pond edge. He was drunk and the white moon reflected on the water’s surface fell and fell away each time he fixed it in his vision, like a hail of meteors streaking earthward. He rolled on to his back. There was the moon itself, if this was the real one, bobbing like somebody was rolling it around with a computer mouse, and there was no Catena. He closed his eyes again and wished for a great fish-hook to fall down and catch him up by the lip and reel him into the murmuring mountain clouds. He remembered the last time he had checked his email, the note from “CATENA & ALEX” and the jpeg he had opened, without really wanting to, and it had shown them cuddling under the doodle-scripty announcement. It didn’t change anything but what was the use of lying? It changed everything about the summer, because he had waited for her while she experimented with him, and now the summer had turned out not to be a wait after all, but a long empty time that he had spent drinking and getting high. It was dazzling how magnanimous she must be thinking she was, thinking she was going to invite him, and Alex was going to joke together with him, and they were going to be a bunch of cool friends like once upon a time, it was so dazzling, it defied credulity and it dazzled him.

Mark thrashed out of the sleeping bag and crawled to the bank of the pond to vomit. The crackers and vodka came up swiftly, tingled in his eyes and nose, splashed like frogs around the reeds. There was moonlit floating scum, sending a warm vapor up. He found himself standing up with his forehead propped into a tree trunk and he tried to pee. Only a tiny drip. He had dehydrated himself. Fragrant pine needles were in his mouth and he bit some to chew, that would freshen him. Like the gum. He hadn’t brushed his teeth in three days. He wasn’t wearing shoes; was he wearing socks? There was a bright light hitting him from the left side. He turned his head and blinded himself. There were voices, how many?

“What are you doing, man?” A car was idling. Daniel was coming down the hill at him and his form blocked the car lights, Mark couldn’t see his face. He tried to zip his fly and saw puke shining on his fleece. “Jesus Christ, you have like a bad trip?” Daniel’s big dark head came right up in front of him and a bird squawked.

“I’m fine, I got a little sick,” said Mark. “I got a little sick... I was laying here and I don’t know what happened, I started feeling...”

“Felt like yackin?” said Daniel.

“Looks bad?” said Mark. He brushed one of the stains with his sleeve.

“Looks like you’re not having a good camping trip man. Do you want a ride out of here? I got my car over there. It’s fuckin cold.”

There was still a wind. Mark fought the urge to hug himself. The surface of the pond was skittering. He wondered if there was food in the cabin. On the hill, the car’s interior light went out.

“Who all’s in the car?”

“Alex.”

Mark unzipped his fleece and dropped it in the leaves. Daniel craned his neck at the car. “Come on, man, leave your stuff here. We’ll come back. We’ll go fishing tomorrow.”

“Can’t,” said Mark, “it’s my sister’s birthday.”

“Come on. Get the sleeping bag. Get that stuff.” Daniel moved to pick up the sleeping bag, rolled the glistening bottle with his boot, then rushed back as Mark fell to his knees. “Hey. Hey. Hey. We’re gonna go for a drive, man, okay?”

“Can’t fuckin go,” said Mark. Daniel got an arm under his shoulder, began hoisting him, and gave a loud whistle. “Can’t fuckin go.” The car’s interior lit blinked on again. Mark cursed louder and louder until he coughed. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve as Daniel walked him up the hill in the headlights. Mark wasn’t wearing shoes or socks and his feet had gone numb and felt small.

“You’re being an idiot man. This is a bad vacation. Why don’t we go to your sister’s house and we can chill out there for a while. We’ll go for a drive, okay?”

Alex wore a thick flannel overshirt and a deerstalker cap with black furry muffs. He was moving junk out of the back seat. There was a pile of records and a bicycle wheel on the road by the car. Alex straightened up and offered his gloved hand to Mark, who leaned over to help so that Alex and Daniel had to stand him back up again and chuckle. “Looks like you had a bad camping trip, man. You feel okay?” said Alex.

“I think I probably drank to much and it’s fucking freezing,” Mark tried to say, but ‘fucking’ came out as a squeak and his teeth chattered involuntarily. Alex’s big blue eyes were shining with sympathy as he leaned a little to look at Alex. “Are you gonna be okay to ride?” Mark looked at the bicycle wheel and the empty cassette boxes. There was a Palmcorder and a tripod with stickers on it. Finally he nodded.

“Mark’s driving,” said Daniel. The trunk slammed.

Alex patted Mark on the arm. “I’m gonna call your sister,” he said slowly.