Swimming in the Volcano by Bob Shacochis Page A

maybe. Tight. Hard. I’ve been associating with slobs.”
    Mitchell had forgotten she chattered a lot, this inflated gaiety, whenever she was hyper or high. Whatever she read she was easily persuaded by. One month a Buddhist, the next a disciple of Ram Dass, a stretch of infernal depression instigated by Camus. Virginia Woolf and primal therapy. It had been difficult to keep his equilibrium with her as she exchanged one sensibility for another, a honeybee in well-pollinated gardens of thought. That was five years ago and more. He hated this reunion, hated everything about it.
    â€œYou smell like whiskey.”
    â€œMmm.”
    What on earth was she now, what trend or fad was she fastening on? She never made mention of her constant realignment of interests in any of her occasional letters, periodic updates of the trivial. Weather’s splendid out here, I’m doing fantastic, met a guy, moved to Montana, met another guy, I’m learning how to sail, moved to Honolulu, moved to the North Shore, moved to Maui, here’s the new address, come visit.
    â€œDon’t you smile now that you work for somebody’s government?”
    â€œI can smile.”
    â€œLet’s see you.”
    Mitchell bared his teeth.
    She did write that her mother drank herself to death a year ago. Her father was a child psychiatrist, now in Chicago. Was that right, Chicago? Minneapolis? Johnnie had nicknamed him Doctor Lick, the man who gave tongue to all hurt, all the hurt little boys and girls.
    He felt bad, making her jittery like this, but he couldn’t locate what it was he should be doing. All the lost days, like a stream vanishing underground, but resurfacing (to borrow from the current political rhetoric in fashion on St. Catherine) in this place, in this time. Unforgivable?—no, not quite that. Forgiveness might be efficacious, but it wouldn’t make a dent in the mystery of the deprivation, those irrecoverable days. They were terrifying, they were
ours minus us
, he said to himself.
    â€œYou really haven’t said anything,” she moaned, and though he couldn’t see he could hear the incipient tears. “I thought you’d be glad to see me.”
    Mitchell had to clear his throat to speak. “Yes, I am,” he rasped.
    She had a pack of cigarettes in her hands, fumbling with the wrapper, and she stooped to rake through one of the bags for a book of matches. He gazed down at the two hemispheres of her hair framed by the band of her sun visor, the brown undertones and wisps of blond, trying to recall the duties of each side of the brain. As much as one half of her favored him, the other half always had a way, an argument, a design, to undo it.
    â€œI’m sorry.” Her words strained through the constriction of her throat. She had stopped searching for a light but stayed down in her penitent’s crouch. “I didn’t think it would be this hard. Stupid me.”
    His head wagged no no no. “I’m a little drunk,” he blurted out.
    â€œYou’re being a shit.”
    When she said that, Mitchell knew he could afford to smile. He recovered enough sense to open the door and bail out, let the masochism of his memory plunge ahead without him, without hope. He now had the headache he had labored to earn but smiled through its stabbing pulse at Johnnie, who had stood up and taken the unlit cigarette from her mouth. It disappeared in her hand and both hands dived into pockets sewn near the waist of her skirt, her arms compressing her breasts, the nipples perked the shape of limpet shells under the cotton, rocking on her flat heels looking pleased and
there
. Mitchell had nothing to say, again, to this pleasure of hers. It was all so easy, yet he couldn’t stop himself from feeling inflamed and clogged.
    She nudged up against him, took his wrist, let her hand glide into his and grabbed when he wouldn’t. Her breath smelled of tobacco and peppermint. “Are