Stranger Things Happen Read Free

would you go to bed with me?
    I write you letters with my right hand, and I do the other thing
with my left hand that I used to do with my left hand, ever since I
was fourteen, when I didn't have anything better to do. I seem to
recall that when I was fourteen there wasn't anything better to do.
I think about you, I think about touching you, think that you're
touching me, and I see you naked, and you're glaring at me, and I'm
about to shout out your name, and then I come and the name on my
lips is the name of some dead person, or some totally made-up
name.
    Does it bother you, Linda? Donna? Penthesilia? Do you want to
know the worst thing? Just a minute ago I was grinding into the
pillow, bucking and pushing and pretending it was you, Stacy? under
me, oh fuck it felt good, just like when I was alive and when I
came I said, "Beatrice." And I remembered coming to get you in the
hospital after the miscarriage.
    There were a lot of things I wanted to say. I mean, neither of
us was really sure that we wanted a baby and part of me, sure, was
relieved that I wasn't going to have to learn how to be a father
just yet, but there were still things that I wish I'd said to you.
There were a lot of things I wish I'd said to you.
    You know who.
    #
    The dead man sets out across the interior of the island. At
some point after his first expedition, the hotel moved quietly back
to its original location, the dead man in his room, looking into
the mirror, expression intent, hips tilted against the cool tile.
This flesh is dead. It should not rise. It rises. Now the hotel is
back beside the mailbox, which is empty when he walks down to check
it.
    The middle of the island is rocky, barren. There are no
trees here, the dead man realizes, feeling relieved. He walks for a
short distance—less than two miles, he calculates, before he stands
on the opposite shore. In front of him is a flat expanse of water,
sky folded down over the horizon. When the dead man turns around,
he can see his hotel, looking forlorn and abandoned. But when he
squints, the shadows on the back veranda waver, becoming a crowd of
people, all looking back at him. He has his hands inside his pants,
he is touching himself. He takes his hands out of his pants. He
turns his back on the shadowy porch.
    He walks along the shore. He ducks down behind a sand dune,
and then down a long hill. He is going to circle back. He is going
to sneak up on the hotel if he can, although it is hard to sneak up
on something that always seems to be trying to sneak up on you. He
walks for a while, and what he finds is a ring of glassy stones,
far up on the beach, driftwood piled inside the ring, charred and
black. The ground is trampled all around the fire, as if people
have stood there, waiting and pacing. There is something left in
tatters and skin on a spit in the center of the campfire, about the
size of a cat. The dead man doesn't look too closely at
it.
    He walks around the fire. He sees tracks indicating where
the people who stood here, watching a cat roast, went away again.
It would be hard to miss the direction they are taking. The people
leave together, rushing untidily up the dune, barefoot and heavy,
the imprints of the balls of the foot deep, heels hardly touching
the sand at all. They are headed back towards the hotel. He follows
the footprints, sees the single track of his own footprints, coming
down to the fire. Above, in a line parallel to his expedition and
to the sea, the crowd has walked this way, although he did not see
them. They are walking more carefully now, he pictures them walking
more quietly.
     
    His footprints end. There is the mailbox, and this is where
he left the hotel. The hotel itself has left no mark. The other
footprints continue towards the hotel, where it stands now, small
in the distance. When the dead man gets back to the hotel, the
lobby floor is dusted with sand, and the television is on. The
reception is slightly improved. But no one is there, although