Beneath the Bonfire (10 page)

Having finished cutting the square in the ice, he began to cut that plug into smaller pieces. Men came over, carrying lanterns and pulled away the chunks of ice to reveal a portal into the lake, a door of black water. Everyone stared down into it. It was so odd, to hear water lapping in January, to see little black scalloped waves.

“Let's get the equipment and come back,” he said. Pieter shut the chainsaw off and reached for Kat's hand. Then he practically ran to the house, dragging her behind, the fire throwing weak shadows in front of them.

Pieter rented the middle floor of a turn-of-the-century Victorian right on the shore. A dump, really. Mice in the drawers and scurrying up and down the pipes, ancient registers pumping out hot steam, the windowpanes coated in complex matrices of frost.

“I think I'll need a drink,” she said at last as they entered his apartment. “Or a little weed, maybe? Something to calm me down.”

“So you're coming?” he asked, smiling, clearly surprised.

“Sure,” she said, feeling some kind of yoke drop away from her shoulders. “What the hell.”

“You've scuba-dived before?” he asked, unscrewing a half-empty bottle of red wine and pouring her a full coffee mug.

“Once,” she said, “in Mexico. Not like this.”

He nodded. “Well, we're going to stay close to one another. It's a lake, not an ocean. So you can't get into too much trouble. And there will also be a cord between us. That's crucial. Don't forget the cord. But inside the suits we'll be plenty warm.”

He stared at her as she sipped her wine.

“What?” she asked finally.

“I think we should probably fuck first,” he said, pulling off his clothes.

She finished the wine in a gulp, kicked off her mukluks. It was hot enough in the kitchen to break a sweat, a little linoleum-floored sauna. On her knees, she felt granules of salt and sugar bite into her skin, felt her nipples graze the floor before he placed his hands under them. He made her feel unfastened, her body weightless and unencumbered. She was another person while they were intertwined. When they were done, she stood, and outside, the bonfire looked like a raft of angry light.

They held hands as they went back out into the cold in their wet suits, their bodies tightly clad in black, the booties on their feet crunching the snow beneath them. He carried both tanks on his back, the other gear in a bag on his shoulder. Back out on the ice, they had the look of two people with a new secret. Some of Pieter's friends and neighbors hooted at them. He raised a hand in mock triumph; Kat felt herself blush. It was humiliating, this. And thrilling.

Pieter equipped her: tanks, belt, weights, flippers, gloves, a hood. For all the lunacy of this nighttime ice dive, he was scrupulous, his hand flittering all around her, cinching things, scrutinizing gauges and dials, facing her, saying, “How does that feel? You still with me?”

She nodded, thumbs up, watched as he suited himself up, came back to her and said, “We'll go for a half hour. Not long. I've got a rope. I'll tie us together. Keep your hand on the cord if you want to. You can keep us as close together or as far apart as you want. Sometimes it's better to drift a bit. You touch someone in the dark down there, it can give you a little scare. And remember the fire. If something happens, find the fire. The fire is close to our hole. Okay?”

He went first, waddling toward the hole as the crowd applauded, his hands in the air, riling them up, brandishing a huge underwater flashlight in one hand. He fixed his face mask, his snorkel, and then let his body drop through the hole. He was gone.

Suddenly she was unsure. She moved toward the hole. And then his gloved hand appeared out of the water, a few fingers motioning her down. The crowd once again roared. She mimicked his checklist, tightened her face mask and inserted her regulator, took a step and plunged down.

All around her now: darkness; and above, a ceiling of white-blue light, diffused. Just the hole there, the blurry light of a few lanterns and murky movement. She began to hyperventilate, unable to find Pieter, no bottom beneath her, suspended but dropping slowly. She kicked up frantically, only to bump her head on the ice, her hands on it now, searching for an edge that did not exist. She scratched at the ice with her gloved hands. Black creeping in at the sides of her vision. Then: a hand. Pieter.

He was in front of her now, both hands on her shoulders, the flashlight on a cord around his neck. His eyes wide but soft, happy. He took one of her hands and pressed it to his chest. She felt him breathing and it steadied her. Slow. She could feel his ribs and musculature beneath the wet suit. She knew the topography of his body. His heart beating slowly. There had been a shock at first, the water on her cheeks and into the wet suit, but now the shock was gone. It was warmer in the water than outside, above.

They remained that way for a minute or two, paddling their fins, floating, holding on to one another. She watched as the lanterns moved away from the hole and then there was just the flashlight around Pieter's neck, sending a single shaft down into the nothing. She felt better again, her muscles relaxed. She nodded at Pieter and he took the length of rope from off his belt, tying it to her wrist. At maximum, it was fifteen feet long. He pointed and they moved away from the hole, toward a dim light some distance away.

It was the bonfire, she realized, that they were seeing from below. From here, it looked like something in outer space burning, a distant collection of stars, though she knew how wide and tall the fire was up there, on the ice. But directly beneath it, the fire was its own strange aurora, expanding and contrasting, all the colors of the rainbow, roaring silently, the ice under the fire buckling at times and splintering. She was transfixed, wanted to touch it. Did touch the bottom of the ice. A translucent window. A forest of teenage trees, doomed from the start and piled lovingly for this end. She realized that in the spring, when the ice thawed, their skeletons and ashes would sink to the bottom of the lake, a strange aquatic burial.

They moved away from the fire now, away from the light, the cord attached to her arm growing taut as Pieter disappeared into the unknowable gloom that swallowed him. She followed.

*   *   *

They'd met in the fall, one of the last days of October. A few persistent leaves still clinging to the trees. Kat had agreed to watch her older sister's twelve-year-old, Harrison, for the weekend, though in truth she did not much like children. Her apartment was small, filled with books, and she owned no television. Her nephew was appalled to learn that she did not play video games. They spent Friday night and most of Saturday at the cinema, stealing from one movie theater to the next, taking breaks only to visit the bathroom or buy more popcorn. In the dark they did not have to talk. They watched whatever movies he wanted to see.

But on Sunday she awoke stiff and yearning for fresh air. She roused her nephew and they went out for waffles. Then she drove them south, away from the city, to a giant amusement park. It was the last day of the season and the parking lots were largely abandoned, not a yellow school bus in sight. The tickets were cheap, and they strolled right into the park without waiting, no lines for any of the rides.

She noticed Pieter as they approached the huge roller coaster. He was sitting at the front by himself, a few teenage couples generously spaced behind him. Some of the couples heavy petting, tonguing—no adult supervision at all. Pieter's face was red, as if burned by the wind. He wore a red scarf around his neck, tightly tucked into a winter jacket. His eyes were very dull and red-rimmed, his lips pursed together seriously.

“Aunt Kat,” Harrison asked, “can I have a few dollars to play video games? I need a break from these rides.” He stuck out his hand.

“Just call me Kat, please,” she said, giving the boy two dollars. He looked at her and then at the two dollars and then back at her. She realized two dollars would not last him long and gave him two more. The weekend had grown expensive. She watched the boy duck into a nearby arcade, also abandoned, the screens of a few video games flashing.

She watched Pieter ride the roller coaster repeatedly, the other riders disembarking each time while he remained motionless at the front of the car. She sat on a park bench, the day gray, a cold wind rearranging her curly brown hair, her cheeks pink. After a scant ten minutes, Harrison returned from the arcade and sat down close beside her. The roller coaster came to yet another stop and a few riders drifted off, giving each other high fives. Again Pieter persisted, just wiped his nose solemnly with a Kleenex. Harrison looked at her.

“You want to ride that one?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said at last, “why not?”

They ran to the snake of seats before the metal bars came down. Two protective harnesses swung down from above and rested snugly over and across their chests, Harrison looking small behind his. It was just the three of them. Kat and Harrison nine rows behind Pieter. The ride jerked forward, began to rise up its steep steel slope.

At the top of the incline, the park spread out beneath them, her Subaru visible far away in the white crosshatched parking lot. And then the rush forward. Kat watched as Pieter disappeared down and away and felt her stomach lurch forward as the cars gained speed and the world slipped out from underneath them. She screamed and clutched the steel brace pressed to her chest. The rushing wind cut her face as they tore through the route of the coaster, metal on metal impossibly loud and her head jarring constantly so her perception of the world was as though she were watching a bad home recording, images jerking and bouncing. She stopped screaming and focused on breathing. Beside her, Harrison was cheering. The ride spun, as if a corkscrew shot from some giant cannon, and they twisted upside down repeatedly, Kat's hair in her face, spare change dropping out of her blue jeans and plunking loudly against the steel car.

And then the ride slowed and came to a stop at the same platform where they had boarded.

“That was amazing!” Harrison said.

The harnesses all lifted in a hiss of hydraulics and they were free to depart, but she could see that the lone rider up ahead remained where he was.

“Want to ride again?” Kat asked.

Harrison smiled, punched her lightly in the arm. “You're kidding me, right? You were, like, dying back there!” He laughed.

“Well, anyway,” she said, ignoring him, “I'm staying.”

“Seriously? All right! All right! All right! Awesome!”

The harnesses dropped back down into place and they rocked forward. She was focused on Pieter's head, his rigid shoulders, the hands she could not see, but knew must be resting in his lap, as if he were at church. The roller coaster began its climb, then rattled down and around its course, Harrison giggling and screaming, his voice high-pitched as a girl's. Kat's eyes remained trained on the back of Pieter's head. He never moved.

It wasn't as bad the second time around—the loop-de-loops, the hairpin turns, the three-g drops. And it wasn't long before the roller coaster returned to its station; Pieter unmoving.

“Come on,” Kat said to Harrison, “we're moving up to the front, where it's scarier.”

“Awesome,” he agreed.

As they installed themselves immediately behind Pieter, Kat leaned forward before the braces came down and said into his ear, “You all right up there? You haven't moved in a half hour.”

He started, which had the effect of startling her too, and turned to look at her. He was very handsome, the bones of his face well-defined. There were tears on his face.

“Oh, you're crying,” Kat said. “I'm sorry.”

“It's okay,” he said. “It's just the cold. I can't help it.” And then “I'm also a little high.”

The harnesses came down again and they were off, racing through the pale slate sky, their voices alternating between shrieks, obscenities, and laughter. The world began to slow as they became accustomed to the reckless speed of the ride. Kat watched the landscape below: janitors chasing blowing garbage, vendors eating clouds of cotton candy, security guards smoking cigarettes. She watched Pieter's head: his thick hair, the corded muscles of his neck, his perfectly shaped ears, like the shells of some beautiful species of snail.

Finally Pieter rose from the ride, his legs for the briefest of moments wobbly. She watched him go toward a bathroom, where he disappeared. Harrison, beside her, almost uncontrollable with glee.

“I heard you say
fuck
!” he said, punching her stomach and laughing. “You're the best aunt ever!”

She watched the restroom pavilion, its door marked
MEN
. Her heart, suddenly light, lost, unbound—how?

“What?” Harrison asked. “Think he's gonna puke or something?”

“Let's go see,” she said. They walked toward the restrooms, sitting on a bench, Harrison's body beside her, electric with excitement and trembling with the cold. She felt his yet-boy body beside hers.

Pieter came out of the restroom, wiping his lips and forehead with a sheet of brown paper toweling. Kat stood from the bench but did not approach him. Suddenly her voice would not work and she could not recall her own bravery on the roller coaster, her ability there to speak to this beautiful man.

“So, did you ralph in there or what?” Harrison asked.

Pieter looked at them and smiled easily. As he approached them, she fell in love with his walk too. He seemed to move side to side even as he strutted forward, his knees more like leather hinges than bone, his narrow hips swaying, stomach flat as a barn board, beneath a wider, flat chest. He moved casually toward them, as if wading through a Floridian pool, gin and tonic in hand.

Pieter looked at her and then down at Harrison, “All over the place,” he said after several beats. “Go check it out. But don't slip.”

Harrison ran off.