The photobooth in the Hampton Beach arcade has stopped working, she says. Well, when she and I were there the roads were tenuous with leftover rain, the coast clean grey. So was everything, except for the family in red parkas, orange by boardwalk streetlamps. We filled the meter with dimes found under the car seats. No waves hit the shore.
She stayed in the booth after I left. Fixer streaked the photos; they were only mediocre. She pulled the curtain shut at the edges. "Don't look," she said. I heard the stretch of cotton over hair before the shutter fired. When she pulled open the curtain, she was fitting her shirt's bottom button back into its hole. I didn't ask any questions.
2
Tire tracks have rumpled the snow like packing tissue. This place is far from beautiful. Why do we prefer things untouched? What is so wrong with the human touch? (What I mean is: Touch me. What I mean is: I want to touch you.) My toes are cold under these newspapers. James�s hand on the back of her thick neck. Something about Kleenex in the glovebox. I can see her face when she checks her blind spot. She's calm.
Amira calls from I-80 somewhere in Indiana. The couple in the front seat is silent. "I'm in Indiana!" she yells. "You're crazy!" I shout. The moon there is low, she says, and beautiful, probably. But here in Portsmouth the moon is not low, and nobody's crazy. They're only silent, fastening the plows to the pick-ups always at angles.
3
Today somebody has filled in the ice rink on the front lawn. Tomorrow, midday, somebody will sprinkle Cheerios into the cracks and wait for the surface to freeze again.
4
Remember when you were a genius? Remember when you were a communist? So do I, but I doubt whether it ever happened. There's a check from your parents; there's an envelope from me. When you're not looking, I take back the pictures you never took out of it. Remember when you were a scientist? Now you stare at tollbooth-keepers with wishes of faithless husbands and livid sex. You give them all crooked teeth and hairy legs. You're getting predictable. I heard a gurgle in your throat when I tossed my quarters and hit the clutch.
5
I will always sing in public. I will always go to bars alone. I will always slump my shoulders. I will probably not always wash my hands. I will always be touched.
6
Pennsylvania is desolate and Dutch. Grand Canyon moments and snow-filled gullies. (The stationwagon is waiting; the gas gauge can't.) It doesn't end til Hagerstown. I can't sleep and she can't stay awake. I'm doubled over in the corner of the room, waiting for the snow to melt. Amira's on the line. �Just pull off at the next exit, Amira. It's too dangerous.�
7
The pillow takes four minutes to warm up, eleven flips to fall asleep. After eleven she stops counting. She remembers the clock reading three-thirty eight. All these numbers; all this time. If it weren't for the numbers, then maybe. Maybe, but unlikely. Til somebody spills cranberry juice down the inside of the refrigerator, forgets to put the garage door down after the dogs come in and squirrels start racing up the walls. And the hoes and rakes clatter against the sheetrock in their racks five feet above the cement floor. And the lights come on above the hedge. They detect motion. It is only ice-laden twigs falling upon the driveway.
8
Cold eggs in somebody else's kitchen. I can't sleep and she won't wake. My hands on her back, hoping. With the driveway lights at the curtains' edges, four AM's as good as dawn. I'm saying useless things. And what more proof would she need? Five hundred miles from here some nameless harbor faced Canada. We hunkered toward each other in the front seat with the engine off. Lake Ontario in the peripheries, our stories told as secrets. The warm breath of sincerity. I'm pressing harder on her spine.
9
She blasphemes only to the wall. Pages torn from Hustler taped above the bed under the Virgin. (What I mean is: Touch me.) She wants it this way. She won't give up the car keys.
I know better. I take the telephone and close the door behind me.