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Girl Beside Him

Cris Mazza

chapter 1 Ski season continues -- bunnies abound. Bouquets of grinning balloons. White teeth and sun-black skin. Pale raccoon masks tattooed by designer sunglasses. Tired muscles, vigorously content, or endorphins still surging in bodies hot enough to make fog with every breath on an alpine mountain in late spring. Fun recent enough to sustain a kick in those departing for LA or Dallas and beyond. Adrenaline-rush of anticipation fuels the shit-eating grins on those boarding for Vail, Snow Summit, Aspen, Jackson Hole. Nothing to you. You'll see none like them where you're going. But be careful, this time you're on your own, no one watching you but you. No one giving instructions and assignments to fill up every hour. Watch it -- with a change like this, the cold clot may rupture, questions get answered, hypothesis proven.
     Are you a sex killer waiting to happen?

The Denver airport sold cowboy hats in colors a cowboy -- or girl -- wouldn't be caught dead in. Brian fingered the hat bands made of anything from snakeskin to Indian beads to peacock feathers. He looked at baseball caps -- one for every Colorado brewery, golf course, ski resort and sport team, plus some with pictures of fishermen, skiers or golfers. Then under a leaning stack of cloth fishing hats with Denver or Colorado stitched on the brim, he found an army green Robin Hood hat with a rooster feather. Airport white noise was Country ... Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys, they're never at home and they're always alone .... He crumpled the feather, dropped it, and paid for the hat along with his USA Today. Final boarding for the commuter flight to Cheyenne had already been announced. He held the hat on his legs, under the newspaper, which he opened, holding the left-hand pages perpendicular to the flat pages in his lap, making a newsprint wall between himself and the woman in the window seat.
     The hair she still had was white blond, butch-cut, shaved up the back of her neck, little pixy points beside each ear, with a short soft cap of white hair like a toupee placed on the top of her head, the sides and back the exact same length as the bangs on her brow. Her neck was long and thin with skin like eggshell membrane, small throbbing veins under the surface. Earrings of clustered blade-shaped silver splinters tickled her throat when she tipped her chin down. Her nose small, upturned, pierced with a diamond. Her mouth full, as though swollen. Her teeth caught and released her lower lip over and over. Wrists cuffed with silver bracelets that looked like manacles for prison chains. Almost every finger sheathed in a silver ring.
     Okay, maybe you should take out the initial field report on the relocated cougars in south-central Wyoming, study the relief map, review the procedures for setting foot snares, preparing anesthesia, using a jab-stick, or testing blood for plague antibodies.
     He remained carefully in place. His knees balancing the hat and newspaper as though they were fragile. And as though turning pages under water, to keep them from ripping or disintegrating, he found the section where a news item from each state is reported. It was one way he tried to get his first feel for the places he visited for months of fieldwork, but invariably had little to do with his interaction with the locale.

Wyoming. Yellowstone National Park. AP  A camper was arrested early yesterday after park officials caught him urinating into a pool of boiling mud just off the walkway in the sulfur pits area. Jerry Jersey, 32, of Tallahassee, FL, was booked on suspicion of public indecency, public nuisance, and fouling a national park. No one was hurt.

     Brian's arm, holding the left side of the newspaper upright, was starting to tremble invisibly. Years of conditioning to be able to support a competition rifle with such sure steadiness that even a leveling sensor placed on the barrel couldn't detect any motion, suddenly didn't seem to extend to any ability to hold a sheet of newsprint.
     The cougar relocation area isn't anywhere near Yellowstone. No tourists. No skiers. And no one with you in charge of the fieldwork.
     It was Peter Gallway -- someone Brian barely knew -- who, about four years ago, had gotten a grant, along with the necessary permission and permits from Fish & Game and the states of Wyoming and California, lined up the participation or cooperation of whatever agencies or organizations would be helpful or mandatory; then, more than two years ago, trapped, tagged and sterilized a dozen lions in the back country of San Diego -- where some had been starting too frequently to come into close proximity with human habitation -- relocated them outside the most desolate ranch country in Wyoming, and stayed to observe their adjustment. Gallway's proposal had specifically stated its purpose was not to move the animals in an attempt to protect either the species or the human population of Southern California, but as a study to determine if such habitat relocations were a better option for wildlife management than killing.
     But a month before Gallway's scheduled follow-up field work to assess the progress of the relocated cougars, he'd broken both legs and his pelvis skiing in Switzerland, and was still there, demanding frequent faxes -- starting as soon as Brian arrived in Rawlins and then every time he observed anything, no matter how seemingly insignificant. Obviously it had been too late to find someone more experienced -- in either the terrain or the particular study, or even someone who'd worked with mountain lions before. Likely anyone Gallway would've thought of calling before Brian had his own field work, his own book to write, his own on-going grants and proposals and lifelong study. Brian never finished, never even started his own PhD in wildlife biology. Never either regretted nor congratulated himself for the decision. Didn't remember that it was a decision. Graduate study was flight school. An ability to fly both a small plane and a helicopter, combined with a degree in field biology, got him plenty of calls to work in the field for other people. And that was probably the real reason he had this job as well. Maybe there'd been a recommendation from a friend of an acquaintance. Someone from the tortoise inventory in the California desert. Remember that one? You lodged in Independence, the county seat where they'd first held Manson after the murders. Sound traveled forever on the high desert, a shot lasted literally minutes when you did target practice at dawn, shooting at fenceposts, never cactus nor Joshua trees, the first shot still quaking against the Sierra by the time you were set for the next. Then at dusk, jeep races across the desert, once stumbling upon a long-abandoned dune buggy, you all circled it, went over every inch like archeologists, wondering if it had been one of the Family's stolen lookout vehicles. You took your turn at the pranks and jokes. Once you covered yourself shallowly with sand and jumped up at a teammate like a sneak Indian attack.
     The girl beside him sighed heavily. Afterwards he could hear every breath she took. The fuselage vibrating through turbulence was like a jeep on a dirt road, with softer seats but a closer ceiling. The pilot announced there'd be a spell of medium chop so he was leaving the seatbelt light on. She was breathing hoarsely, through her mouth. Brian could feel the heavy metal buckle on his lap, under the hat. And then became aware of the entire oval brim of the hat, a warm circle on his thighs. He turned to the classifieds, the noise of the newspaper crackling like fire.

Help Wanted.
Year-long house-sitting position.
Sell Mary Kay in your own neighborhood.
Proofreaders needed.
Traveling companion for disabled elderly man.
Doctor wanted for small Texas town.
Address envelopes at home.
Female singer/bassist needed for steady gigging rock band in Tuscaloosa.

     One of your college buddies played drums. The first roommate? Maybe the second. Roadie for his rinky-dink top 40 band, your ears rang 'round the clock, a gig till midnight, up for shooting practice at the indoor range at dawn. That year it was difficult to hear a radio through the wall or pick up whispered conversations in the library. There was a new roommate every year as each abandoned the dorms for apartments, every year a freshman roommate, but what better way to learn to be the congenial college man? Spit and threw garbage out the windows at your roommate's passing friends, 3-day old pizza under the bed, Olympic sliding contests across the shower floor with a panel of judges lining the windowsill. Adopted by each roommate's circle and included. One year you all played PacMan and had Rubic’s cubes. One year beach volleyball. Year by year you filled the dorm room with sharpshooting trophies. Illegal to keep rifles in the residence hall, but you did anyway, locked in carrying cases. The rush of triumph after each trophy dissipated by the next morning. You had to start over, week by week.
     The girl gasped. Then the air came out of her with a low moan. The plane had hit an air-pocket -- the pilot said Whoopsie-Daisy, and people laughed. Something tugged gently, steadily on Brian's shirt sleeve. His temples pounding, he looked around the edge of the newspaper. There was a thin, curved scar on her forearm, seeming to originate from the inside of her wrist, snaking up and around, mostly concealed under her bracelet. She was gripping the arm rests on either side of herself, digging her fingernails in, the tendons in her hands straining under the skin. And she'd caught a little of his shirt by accident.
     He tried to move his arm off the arm rest. There may as well have been a knife jammed through his shirt and up to the hilt into the upholstery. His head bobbed with the turbulence, his eyes fixed on the newsprint. The girl was making a little dog whimper with each breath. The seatbelt buckle under the hat under the newspaper seemed heavier, hotter. His legs trembled. He realized he was holding his heels off the floor, tensing his calves, holding his breath, as though necessary to keep his lap level. As though someone were sitting there. Releasing the air, slowly lowering his heels, his chin dropped, his eyes cleared and continued reading.

Estate gardener, lives on premises, will move anywhere.
24-yr-old white male, educated, bright, works hard, teacher, nanny, clerk, secretary, chauffeur, junior executive, can learn.
Investment banker, stockbroker, looking to relocate.
SWF zoological animal trainer tired of the circus, looking for real work, from safari guide to vet assistant, can anyone hear me?

     His body jolted but absorbed the silent impact without movement, as though still set for the next shot, ears insulated with noise protection headgear, but adrenaline flooding like oil spreading on water, waiting the hiss of a lit match. You don't suffer from impaired memory. Hadn't she wanted to grow up to be a vet and go to Africa and work at a compound in an animal preserve, like on her favorite show, Daktari? Your big sister Diane took you to the zoo on a bus when you were 3 or 4. It must've been a howler monkey. Like an air-raid sounding off right beside you as you, as always the rogue, bent to scare some newborn chicks in the bushes. You screamed and ran, but she caught you and held you to her body and you were like a monkey yourself, watching over her shoulder as she carried you through the zoo's streets, watching the zoo unroll backwards, rows of primates and birds in cages. It was still an old fashioned zoo and she was just a skinny girl of maybe 7 or 8. She kept having to re-hoist you, but didn't put you down until your distorted face relaxed and only the hiccup of fear remained. She said the howler monkey must've wanted you for her baby, but you were already Diane's. Not your mother's. Hers. She taught you to tie your shoes. She played school and made a reading book with a picture that said "See Bob, Bob is a boy." That's the first thing you read. You and 6 or 7 stuffed animals sat at upside-down cardboard boxes and learned to add. When they got in trouble for passing notes to you, they got the dunce hat, you didn't. You could throw spit-wads and make dirty noises and never sit in the corner. But mostly you played Daktari and all the stuffed animals were in the veterinary compound in Africa, hurt or sick. You were one of the animals too and she gave you candy pills and bandaged one leg. Naturally you decided to also be the hungry leopard or cheetah that came prowling at night, and Daktari would come back to save the compound, pinning and tickling the cheetah.
     His arm snapped off the arm rest as though it had been restrained there by elastic which suddenly broke. The girl's hands were at her face, clutching her own cheeks in each fist. Her mouth moving like a fish gasping. Under the roar of engines and rattle of carry-on luggage and mumble of other voices, Brian could hear her little voice saying "no, no, no, no, no ...." until his pulse tapped the same rhythm in places all over his body—his gums, his fingertips, his stomach, his lap. And, throbbing in time with the practically imperceptible cadence, thready, ghostly, faraway, ... now you don't talk so loud, now you don't seem so proud, about having to be scrounging your next meal ....
     On your way for the first time to do field work alone. This time no other guys around in the communal setting with a common time limit and single purpose ... do your part and the whole project will wrap up ... social needs crunched to an hour of cards around a Coleman before zipping the mosquito net of your tent behind you, or go as a group to a tavern for a beer and discuss the project, discuss tomorrow's tasks, discuss the findings, discuss the problems, discuss solutions. Your input as crucial as anyone else's, so you can't allow yourself to be sidetracked. You don't stray.
     The pilot said, "Now folks, if you can picture a water skier bouncing across the wake of another boat, this isn't anything more than that. This little plane isn't concerned in the slightest -- she's fat, dumb and happy, having the only fun she has all day. We'll just humor her for a little while and keep our seatbelts on until we get out of this choppy air."
     The terrain, the scope of the project, the lack of a large team of field worker had made it almost necessary for Gallway to have a helicopter, unflown now for over a year, still hangared in Rawlins. Actually, a 2-seater plane would've been cheaper, and in this case more appropriate, since homing was done without the need to buzz or hover close to the ground. Why Gallway owned a chopper instead of a Cessna was a guess Brian hadn't bothered to make. He'd told Gallway he hadn't flown a helicopter in a while and asked if Gallway's pilot would be returning to Rawlins to help gather data, but was told he was two-birds-in-the-hand, the chopper was his partner. Receivers mounted on elongated antennas on either side of the chopper sped up the ability to locate cougars, assess their general health, determine their individual territory and diet, pinpoint any problems. It reduced the amount of range to cover on foot looking for scat and scratch-mark territory markers, deer carcasses covered lightly with leaves and twigs, an occasional print in the mud beside a creek to tell him all was well. Cougars disappear when they're adjusted and thriving, and when they're dead. The chopper couldn't find remains of a skeleton scattered by coyotes -- for that it would take an FBI crime task force to comb the area -- but besides aerial homing, a view from above provided information on rugged or inaccessible areas, showed where the water was and where deer ranged, moved the biologist quickly through the square mile sections marked in a grid on his map.
     Her flexed and rigid hands moved slowly down her face, pulling her eyelids down so the red showed like blood, leaving a trail of parallel white scratch marks on each cheek. Below her chin, her hands clumped into a single fist over her heart. The bracelet fell toward her elbow, leaving the scar alone to decorate her forearm. Then her fists dropped and dug into her lap, burying a deserted set of earphones and cassette player between her knees. The tracks of scratch marks filled in pink. Appearing from beneath her rubbed-away and melting make-up, fine etched lines, under her eyes, around her mouth. The whine in the girl's throat resumed, became louder every time the plane hit a bigger bump, sometimes Oh was jolted out of her mouth. "Miss? You OK?" His voice. Then a faint, tinny verse from the abandoned headset ... how does it feel, to be on your own, with no direction home, a complete unknown ....
     Coming from behind your soon-to-be dead sister's bedroom door, after she started locking herself in there. You could hear the radio when you paused in passing. But you were getting older. Between 9 and 13. Did a little surfing. Had a gang of friends. Threw rocks at the nude sunbathers from the cliffs at Torrey Pines. Tried to sneak down the bluff with binoculars to get better looks. Didn't -- as most of your friends also didn't -- talk to your mother much either. You never had, and it hadn't mattered, because you'd had Diane, until, apparently, you'd become grown enough to be on your own, given more and more independence, as nearing-adolescent offspring usually are. Your mother stayed in her room, often sick or tired, or was she praying or meditating?, the radio softly playing, but you always had clean clothes, fresh sheets, new socks and underwear, paper and pencils for school, soda in the refrigerator. Cans of chili or spaghetti some nights, but other evenings gourmet meals with all three of you at the table. Your sister becoming lanky and gaunt, pimply. A sullen, ugly teenager with no use for her rude little brother. You tried to avoid looking at her. She smelled sour. She apparently no longer hoped to become a Daktari in Africa.
     Going with the grain, the newsprint tore straight and even, but the other way ripped jagged like a row of pointed teeth. The SWF was in the middle of the piece he tore out, folded and put into his shirt pocket.
     If the girl made a sound when the plane dropped like a stone for several full seconds, Brian wouldn't have been able to hear. A chorus of whoa, oops, oh my god, laughter, and the pilot's bland voice, "Sorry, folks, if I could see 'em comin' I'd sure avoid 'em," were too loud. His ears continued thundering, thudding, like the inside of a conch shell. Miniature speakers in her lap singing ... everybody knows that baby's got new clothes .... The girl puked quietly into a bag. The smell of her sweat was freshly acidic. She came up for air murmuring oh no, oh no. A drop of perspiration hung on the point of hair beside her ear, then fell. The paper was folded on his lap now, on top of the hat, on top of the seatbelt buckle. Like the weight of a dentist's lead protection bib.
     "We're starting our descent," the pilot said.
     The girl was hyperventilating. An asshole in the back of the plane was doing a falsetto imitation of a crowd on a roller coaster, wheeee, ohhh, ahhh. The plane tipped sideways, banking in a turn. Brian's ankles, calves and knees squeezed toward each other to keep him upright. Stay calm. Calm. Get in the zone. Remember target practice in a rowboat, shooting at buoys, using leg and back muscles to maintain vertical equilibrium. Or the other exercises: rifle in place, body positioned, eyes squeezed shut -- tight, so colors swim -- open the eyes and squeeze the trigger simultaneously ... did you maintain the image of the target successfully in your mind? Did you maintain your body's steadiness, the aim, the focus? Or your slightly skanky shooting coach's favorite invention: two TVs on either side of you, each showing a different blue movie, volume up, move them gradually closer and closer to the target until they flank it. But your eyes must never see the bodies, your ears never hear the moans and whispers, the slushy sound effects, the cries. Your own voice counts silently, STEADY, ONE TWO THREE ... your own breath is hypnotic ... the target waits for the bullet without fear.
     He hadn't even started target shooting until he was in a foster home at 17. National championship and a money prize just in time to pay for flight school. Passed up the FBI, big-city SWAT units, FDA, Secret Service, US Marines. Shooting was a cool precision exercise, meant to soothe, not agitate. You can't be stimulated and a sharpshooter at the same time.
     "There's one real quick way outta this mess, folks," the pilot said, and the plane continued the steep bank while it dropped in altitude. "There's our target right below, runway one-and-only at Cheyenne International, we'll just take a little shortcut while no one's looking." The girl moaned, oh god, oh please. If his ankle and knee bones had been eggshells, they would've crushed each other. Try to count. See the target. You've never used a body outline target. Never competed at any level in any event that used one.
     His hands tucked under his thighs, pressed flat, knuckles against the seat fabric. ... and your long-time curse hurts ... but what's worse .... He swallowed, and something the size of a light bulb moved down his throat, into his chest, sinking lower, heavier and brighter as it dropped. Until it reached the logjam where his body bent, where the seatbelt held him, where the hat and newspaper had become deadweight, the light bulb disappearing into a no-man's land, dwindling to a spark, a pinprick inside the rest of the numb, cold flab of his body.
     At their tips, the plane's wings flexed like a bird flapping. The fuselage groaned and creaked and rattled. A plastic cup rolled down the aisle and the girl drew in a long sputtering suck of air. When we meet again, introduced as friends, please don't let on that you knew me when .... then the cassette player clattered to the floor, severing the headset's cord. The plane leveled for landing. Brian's buttocks started to slowly relax. But gusting ground wind made the plane sway, roll and pitch as it descended, and the air coming out of the girl was two whispered words, please stop. His upper body bent forward then fell, dropping toward his knees, like an old skyscraper imploding, as the dying pinprick spark of light in his gut flared, a sudden gush of flame where there had only been the charred remains of a fire long extinguished, as though the last ember had finally worked its way to the undiscovered, hidden cache of gunpowder in the rubble.

Was it her perfume, or the sweat of her fear? Your self-surveillance on-going for over 23 years, but you’ve entered new territory this time. Why the sudden memories? What makes it different? Half a day into your first unaccompanied job, you prove how much you need to answer to someone daily, nightly, to adopt the quirks and jokes and recreations of your assigned buddies. A solitary life already proves too dangerous -- you just verified an important presumption: that you need to be watched, in order to stay alert, to stay focused, to concentrate, to keep track of everything that's going on or even possibly going on. Plus you've just confirmed a hypothesis of much broader dimensions: that it's probably still alive somewhere ... the animal in you whose adrenaline gushes when it hears the deathcry, the scream. Can't just feed its hunger on the carcass, is driven by another need: to be there, to feel and hear the last gasp leave the throat. And after so many years -- after you long ago stopped fearing you'd hear her familiar cries again, as though soaking through some thin apartment wall, through bathroom pipes or the ventilation, echoing and ghostly, your sister's thin wail followed by long minutes of muffled faraway whimpering, accompanied by a one-speaker radio. If it had ever found you, the sound would've most certainly thrown an image of your banished self -- with your already sick fourteen-year-old dick in your fist -- like a hologram into the air in front of you. And then you were fifteen. And sixteen. Getting better and better at timing, timing, timing, and finishing with her scream ... on the other side of the bathroom wall. Then, finally, not a scream but a gunshot. The biggest bang yet. The come you could've died from. Or died for. You never let go of that dick. But was the last time you held it. The jump of adrenaline -- head crashing back against the bathroom wall like a marksman who shoots before being set, kicked in the face with his own piece. Didn't your shot put the hole in her? Now she never would become Daktari. Maybe you don't know why she lay bleeding from a mangled gap in her face, the smell of a pistol so close to your nose. Still not able to produce a conclusive explanation. But never ask yourself if she's better off nor mourn her. Objectify your questions. Continue to observe and note behavior. Keep your own surroundings safe. And research similar animals. Know their patterns and M.O., know their warning signs, their mistakes. Study their past crimes and what's been learned about why they are who they are.
     But, today, have answers already begun to form as twenty years of controlled environment and observation went down a stinking cesspool? Do you want to test it or hide from it? Either way, there's no cure, only prevention. Continue celibacy. And sustain the relentless scrutiny, re-establish the controlled environment. No women.
     And for once, dig in and find some satisfaction in the assignment. Let it be as though it's your project. Prove you can sink your complete involvement into something far more worthwhile than obsessing over what kind of tragedy you may be responsible for and how to keep yourself from repeating it. These abandoned lions should be all that matter to you — after all, you, if anyone, should understand their condition. In case their inappropriate behavior enlarges to new dimensions, they've been sent to a more desolate place where it won't matter or no one will notice.

Copyright © 2010 by San Diego State University.

Authors of individual works retain copyright, with the restriction that subsequent publication of any text be accompanied by notice of prior publication in Fiction International.