Circus of the Grand Design
Point Elizabeth
Commuter trains always cut through the ass-end of things, wastelands of urban and suburban sprawl. Lewis stared out the window at a surrealist cast-off, juxtapositions of crumbling warehouses, vacant lots, ornate brick apartments, junkyards piled with crushed automobiles. Farther out (he had been assured), Long Island becomes an oasis of vineyards, organic farms, and quaint fishing villages. And why were fishing villages always described as “quaint”? Fishing had to be one of the hardest jobs on the planet.
A sign proclaiming Tucci’s Auto Salvage flashed past. The train jangled to a stop at a town called Wantagh, and several passengers got off. Lewis hoped his destination, Point Elizabeth, was well past this swamp of over-congested desolation.
Picturing fishing boats and clam bars with nautical names, he had rented a house in Point Elizabeth for a few days as a refuge from the city. The only thing he knew about the place was its reputation as a center for scallop harvesting. The house belonged to an artist who called himself Are No; Lewis had found it through an ad in an arts newsletter subscribed to by Martha, his girlfriend.
Across the aisle, a woman leaned over to kiss the shoulder of the man beside her.
“You’re kissing my fabric again,” the man said.
Romantic fishing village weekends weren’t meant to be taken alone. Lewis thought about Martha, seeing her face and long blond hair spray-painted across the back fences of the houses that the train shook past. Instead of coming with him, she had taken an extra assignment for her magazine, an interview with a famous underground film director’s mistress. November was a stupid time to go to the ocean anyway, she said. They had argued about it and hadn’t spoken to each other since, now two days.
A young girl behind him bounced in her seat, squealing, “Wanda wants a wild wombat, Wanda wants a wild wombat.” Did the kid’s mother think everyone wanted to hear? Haughty Martha would have turned around to glare at them.
He and Martha had met in college. They dated some, shared a house with several others, and split up after graduation. She moved to New York and he wandered, living for six months to a year in successive cities, uninterested in permanence. They had reunited at a party in New York a couple of years ago and decided to try living together. In arguments, she always claimed that her New York apartment was the reason for his being there.
Paths, journeys, destinations… sometimes moved in harmony, sometimes not. His life (peripatetic was the word his mother used in a letter forwarded by one of his sisters), his life wasn’t governed by the places he went to or the jobs he found there, but by the act of going. What then, this dismal passage to the place called Point Elizabeth? Beyond the fences and hedges, anything could exist. He had always made these journeys alone—and that formed the root of his present discontent. Journeys intended to be solitary could be enjoyed in solitude or in the company of chance companions, but solitary journeys planned in tandem begin with a loss, a void difficult to fill on one’s own.
Wombat girl and the mother got off at Fanshaw’s Leap. The fabric couple remained for several more stops, then he was alone in the car. The sun set, and the sign for each stop became difficult to make out. The conductor wandered up and down the train, calling out names, but he didn’t make it to every car in time to warn the passengers, though most seemed to sense theirs by instinct or ingrained repetition. Worried that the conductor wouldn’t warn him when they reached Point Elizabeth, Lewis pulled out his train schedule and checked each time they stopped.
And finally, the conductor called “Point Elizabeth!” It beckoned, mysteries to be explored, charms like soft merino blankets to sooth his city-induced tensions.
Stepping down from the train, Lewis shivered. After the three hour ride, the sodden landscape depressed him. Rain had been falling all day in the city, but he had somehow expected it to be different here. Worse, the temperature was supposed to drop below freezing that night.
Two taxis waited in the parking lot. He got into one and gave the driver the address. Though Are No had said it was a ten minute walk, he didn’t feel like trying it in the rain.
They turned down a dark street, and the pavement ended, giving way to gravel. The only light came from the cab’s headlamps. The road began a gradual upward grade that soon steepened. When the cab reached the summit, the driver yelled and braked, the unexpected force throwing Lewis against the door. The car slid sideways and stopped. Sudden thoughtless random action interposing molecules of surprise, fear, heart speeding on to unknown destinations, farther farther. Where to, brave heart? Don’t leave a poor man alone…not here, amongst the debris, the detritus, the unwashed ass-end of nowhere.
The driver’s face appeared, wrapped in fog, framed by blue and orange lights that clung to his eyebrows and oozed from his nostrils. “Sorry. Sorry,” the driver said. He reached toward Lewis as if to comfort him.
Lewis yelled—“What the fuck are you doing?”
