The World Is a Narrow Bridge Read online

  Once again, she is not afraid. Her only thought is to put some distance between herself and that orange car. This is why she decides to flee—for this reason and no other—and yet when she thinks of this evening much later, out there on the great American road, under the pale sky of the high plains or the sugar pines of the Sierra or the mists and fog of the Pacific Northwest, she won’t remember the moment of decision or the sounds of lawn care or the light in the palm trees. What she’ll remember is the box of latex gloves.

  Eva rolls the window down and commands Murphy to return to the car. Then she eases the Prius up onto the median, reaches out to fold the side-view mirror back, and passes with an inch of clearance between two young mahogany trees. Murphy, to his credit, says nothing, and moments later they’re back on I-95, northbound this time, the city disappearing behind them, the sun setting like a piece of pink candy over the Everglades.

  Pieces of a travel poem by Weldon Kees tumble through Eva’s mind as she drives. My hair fell out in Santa Barbara. Summer light and dust. And possibly the towns one never sees are best.

  She chooses to say nothing about Yahweh. It’s a lot to explain, and it’s outrageous, and already she wonders if she imagined it. Instead she says that she’s had enough of the traffic and has decided, in a moment of inspiration, that they will take a diverting weekend trip. Why not visit St. Augustine, where Murphy frequently says he wants to go (“We could move there. It’s much cheaper.”), or Savannah, where Murphy frequently says he wants to go (“We could move there. It’s much cheaper.”), or even distant Charleston, where Murphy frequently says he wants to go (“I guess we could move there. It must be cheaper.”)? Murphy, for his part, has accepted Eva’s decision without question and almost without remark, which is remarkable in itself, and he seems amenable to any and all of these destinations. He reads out a few road signs: “Educational Schools/Institutes. Who do you call for your bail bonds?”

  There was a landmark, I remember, that was closed. And sometimes, shivering in St. Paul or baking in Atlanta, the sudden sense that you have seen it all before …

  She slides into the high-occupancy vehicle lane and accelerates to eighty-five miles an hour. She tells herself that it could not have been Yahweh in the orange Lamborghini. Why should an ancient Near Eastern storm god be sitting in traffic on the Dixie Highway in Miami? Why should he require that she, Eva, a secular humanist and poet, function as a prophet of Israel? It’s an absurd and laughable conceit, and in short order she has convinced herself, or she believes that she has convinced herself. It could not have been Yahweh. It was only some crass banker or fruit company executive.

  “But what’ll we do about our library books?” Murphy says.

  “We’ll return them when we get home.”

  “But what if we don’t return home?”

  “Why would you say that? I guess we’d have to pay the replacement fees.”

  “We don’t have our checkbooks or anything.”

  Eva turns to look at him. He’s slumped in the passenger seat. He’s all teeth and sinew in the flickering light.

  “Why are you worried about your library books?”

  “It’s a social contract. Everyone has to behave responsibly or the library system doesn’t work.”

  “I guess you can use your banking app to send a check, and you can have them include your library card number on the memo. You could also send cash.”

  “I don’t like to send cash through the mail.”

  “Have the bank send a check, then.”

  “I’ll send a check.”

  “Okay?”

  He nods. Once again he says, “It’s a social contract.”

  They drive north—the only direction available. They pass out of the tropical monsoon climate zone and into the humid subtropical climate zone (Köppen climate classification Cfa). They learn about the existence of an organization called the Robert E. Lee Junior Varsity Cheerleaders. They see billboards declaring that “Christ Is Lord” and other billboards advertising strip clubs and gun clubs and senior living communities. They see one that says “Mermaids … Wow!” The coconut palms and sea grape give way to palmetto and longleaf pine, and the live oaks get bigger. They decline to purchase ceremonial fireworks (“mortars, rockets, and mega-boomers”), but they do stop at a Walmart, hated place, where low prices come at such a high moral cost. Here they each buy a package of underwear and a toothbrush. They already have soap and some purportedly “natural” toothpaste from the trip to Whole Foods. They buy a cooler to keep the milk cold.

  “And another thing,” Murphy says. “I think I left my computer on.”

  “It’s fine sleeping like that for a few days.”

  “But if it’s on, can hackers infiltrate it?”

  “Maybe. Did you read that thing about how they track UPS drivers?”

  “I didn’t read it,” he says with apprehension. “I was afraid to read it.”

  “They know how long it takes them to deliver each package, and how fast they drive, and whether they’re wearing their seat belts. The seat belts slow them down and they get penalized, but if they don’t wear their seat belts, they get penalized for that too. There’s no way for them not to get penalized.”

  “Who tracks them? The NSA? The Russians?”

  “UPS tracks them. That’s what I’m saying. It’s all to maximize shareholder value.”

  Murphy considers this. “So of course someone can hack my computer while it’s asleep.”

  “Luckily you haven’t got anything anyone would want.”

  He nods. “Just drafts of restaurant reviews. ‘The server put his whole thumb in my goulash.’ ”

  They stop for the night at a Super 8 in Lantana Shores, Florida. They pay cash for the room and then Murphy tries to give the clerk a credit card for incidentals, but the man won’t take it.

  “You need it on file,” Murphy says. “Don’t you?”

  “It’s not necessary.”

  Is it madness to insist? The clerk sits under a pair of long fluorescent bulbs. He’s like a person in a tanning bed, or a mirrored enclosure designed to focus the moon’s ethereal glow. He’s looking at Facebook on his phone. Eva, likewise, is sending someone a message. Murphy stands on the green carpet with his hands at his sides and it’s as if he’s all alone. He wants to check his own phone, but then UPS will know where he is.

  They’ve got room 210, which has an excellent view of the parking lot and the highway beyond. It’s stuffed with furnishings and devices manufactured all over the world, at who knows whose instructions. There’s a king-size bed, a big Sharp Aquos TV, plastic cups in individual wrappers, an ecru ice bucket, and sturdy brown motel carpet. The towels are cobweb thin. There’s a Magic Chef minifridge and microwave. There’s also a tiny Cuisinart coffee maker with a pouch of Guest Choice Café Collection Regular coffee and a 4 Cup Filter Pouch of Select Decaffeinated 100% Arabican [sic] coffee (Cuisinart Private Collection). There are packets of NROOM nondairy creamer with red stirring straws. The heavy green curtains have white liners and Murphy has trouble tugging them open. Then he discovers that the window is jammed closed. Then he also discovers that the air conditioner turns on only when he turns on the lights in the bathroom. Eva is still fussing with her phone. Down there in the parking lot, the cars and trucks glow in the harsh white light, and the sound of traffic is like the sound of the ocean, and it’s all very beautiful, very beautiful, and very peaceful too.

  Now it’s time to discuss their itinerary. Murphy is especially interested in St. Augustine, which, he says, is the oldest continuously occupied European city in the continental United States. This is a tantalizing claim, and Eva immediately contests it. She believes that the honor belongs to Santa Fe. They consult the Internet, but they are not able to resolve this question, and neither are we. In any case, they agree to go there, to St. Augustine, and then to Savannah as well. They’d like to go to Charleston if there’s time, but Eva reminds him that they’ll need to return home on Sunday so that
she can teach on Monday morning. Murphy nods and repeats the word home in a neutral voice, thinking of their temporary furnished apartment.

  Who makes NROOM nondairy creamer, and where, and by what alchemical process? The corporate world is a vast entangled ecosystem. Consider the motel itself. Super 8 is not a thing in its own right, but a subsidiary of Wyndham Worldwide, which also owns Days Inn, Howard Johnson, Knights Inn, Microtel Inn and Suites, Ramada, Travelodge, and many other brands. The only motels here in Lantana Shores are the Super 8 and the Knights Inn, and they’re just two aspects of the same hospitality group. That’s how it is with so many things: You try to make a choice, but there’s nothing to choose. Wyndham Worldwide has motels and hotels on every continent except Antarctica. They own ten billion dollars in total assets. “The roads end,” wrote Weldon Kees, “At motels.” But they don’t. They end at the New York Stock Exchange.

  Murphy says that St. Augustine will be great, but could they not also go anywhere else?

  “We’re adults. You said so yourself. We could do anything. We could eat candy for breakfast if we wanted.”

  “But we never would.”

  From St. Augustine to Anchorage is only eighty hours, which is less than four days if you’re really committed, and at that point Fairbanks is just another six and a quarter hours, a brisk morning’s drive. Eva wants to know how long it takes to drive from Fairbanks to Patagonia, but they discover that it can’t be done. It isn’t the canal, like you’d think. It’s the Darién Gap, a famously treacherous part of the Panamanian rain forest. There are no roads through the Darién Gap.

  “I think the Scots tried to found a colony there,” says Murphy, “and everyone died of malaria or something.”

  There’s a plastic sign on the bedside table that reads “This is a non-smoking room. When smoking occurs during your stay a $150 cleaning fee will be billed to your account.” But the clerk doesn’t have Murphy’s credit card on file! Lucky for him, it’s unlikely that smoking will occur.

  If you think you’d like to become a motelier yourself, you should know right away that there are two basic options. First, you can purchase a franchise. This gives you a recognizable brand name and some financing options for your equipment and furnishings, although it also comes with some obligations, including an annual royalty. Alternatively, you can try to do it on your own, in which case there are plenty of Internet wholesalers from whom to buy supplies. National Hospitality Supply has everything you need. They sell a Trevira Quilted Polyester Bedspread Symphony (“The comfort of a 100% polyester front is joined with the strength of a 50% polyester/50% white cotton backing”) for only $45.95 per king-size unit. Keep in mind that you have to buy at least forty-eight bedspreads to get this price. They come four to a carton.

  Does the NSA know where Murphy and Eva are? Does UPS? Does Yahweh? Maybe not, that is to say not now, but anyone with access or expertise could locate them in short order. Like all of us, they leave a crackling data trail behind them wherever they go.

  While Eva takes a shower, Murphy tries to watch a little basketball. It’s the first round of the playoffs. The Eastern Conference game is ending; the Western Conference game is about to begin. An important player tells the courtside reporter, “We’ve got to stay aggressive.” Another tells his teammates to think of every game as a game seven. Next there’s a commercial for a small Audi SUV. It’s a darker color than the cars the other moms are driving. If you buy it, therefore, what you’re saying to the world is that you do things differently. This is followed by a beer commercial, but here the idea is not to do things differently but to do things with your friends. The implication is that if you have friends and you take time to drink beer with them, you might not be haunted later by the fear that you’ve wasted your life. Then the basketball game returns. The starting lineups are just what you’d expect. Thousands and thousands of fans in matching yellow T-shirts clap and shout. Murphy has tears in his eyes. The traffic sounds like the ocean. The shower sounds like rain. He hasn’t been so happy in a long time.

  Yahweh doesn’t return in the night, nor does any dream of Yahweh, and Eva wakes the next morning to the pristine beauty of a godless world. Naturally her thoughts turn to the baby question, and although Murphy is barely conscious, she delivers a speech on this subject. First she discusses the theme of money, or rather their lack of money. Then she touches on the instability of their domestic situation, the devastations of climate change, and the incompetence and cruelty of the new presidential administration. But then, speaking in a rapid and expansive manner, she moves on to what she calls the “practical reality.” She isn’t getting any younger, and it’s safer for both mother and child if the mother is young. In sum: The future is always uncertain, and it may be more conspicuously uncertain now than ever before, but one cannot argue with Mother Nature. If they have decided to have a baby at some point, and they have, then it makes sense to do it now. She doesn’t mention her conviction that having a baby is an insane and hubristic thing to do. That concern is irrelevant as long as the decision to have a baby at some point has already been made, which it has.

  And also, she adds, her voice easy and fluent, her posture casual, also, no big deal, but she doesn’t have her birth control pills with her.

  They get dressed, they toss their things in the car, and they confront the continental breakfast in the lobby. Breakfast on the road is a challenge for people like Murphy and Eva, whose political and ecological concerns limit their food choices so dramatically. They enjoy some passion fruit and milk from the cooler, and they’ve allowed themselves some Guest Choice Café Collection coffee, which Eva justifies as a “medical necessity,” but they don’t want to eat the poisoned fruit or synthetic egg. They pile into the car and drive ten miles up the road, where there’s a Saturday market in the parking lot of a strip mall.

  And here they are, drinking their coffee and luxuriating in the heavy damp air of the Florida morning, when it occurs to Murphy that they have just decided to have a baby. How could he have missed it? Shouldn’t life’s big moments ring like the blow of a hammer? He makes a self-conscious attempt to give this moment the gravity he feels it requires. He says to himself, “That was when we decided to have a baby.” But it’s as if the decision has simply overtaken them, and what he’ll remember is this, right now: a quiet parking lot next to a six-lane state road—the moment when he realized that he didn’t notice the moment when they decided to have a baby.

  Certainly this is an inauspicious place to reflect upon so important a resolution. It’s hardly even a place. There’s a Jiffy Lube, a McDonald’s, and a Laundromat, but it’s as if these establishments simply appeared. As if they erupted like mushrooms from the salty soil. In the west, beyond the highway, beyond the unassuming stalk of another Super 8, a forest of slash pine and saw palm stretches away to the melting horizon. In the east, the forest gives way to sandy scrub and then, presumably, to the sea, because the trees in that direction are standing to their ankles in brackish water. An ominous sight.

  There are only three vendors here so early in the morning. Two of them are selling jewelry, but the third is a real farmer. He isn’t set up and he doesn’t look like the kind of person you want to rush, so they wait as patiently as they can. For Murphy, who’s had too much coffee and missed his morning run, this means a mobile, bug-eyed pantomime of patience. Eva lets him be and takes a turn around the parking lot. They’ve left Lantana Shores behind, but there’s some lantana growing here anyway. She admires the geometrical exactitude of its flowers. She breaks a leaf and sniffs it and rubs it on her arms. Murphy often says that lantana is a natural mosquito repellent, and there’s no reason to imagine that he’s lying outright, although he might be deceiving himself. As she strolls along, she becomes conscious of her gait and recalls a trio of models she saw walking on Miami Beach earlier in the week. She tries to imitate their distinctive strut. She takes long, bouncing strides, swings her arms extravagantly, and keeps her head and face absolutely still, chin
lifted, eyes closed, lips pressed together in a rictus of neutral sensuality.

  Meanwhile, Murphy is entangled in a discussion with a creased and weathered old woman in a blue parka and hospital slippers. She has been sleeping by the Dumpster at the eastern extremity of the parking lot, where he’s gone to examine the flooded forest.

  “It’s because the moon is getting closer to the earth,” she says, gesturing at the salty water, which has already killed much of the undergrowth.

  “The moon again.”

  “It’s pulling the seas close, like a blanket.”

  He turns to look at Eva, a tiny figure in the distance. She sees him and waves.

  The woman says, “But it enables you to envision a real estate opportunity.”

  Murphy’s legs and feet hurt. His heart is racing because of the Guest Choice Café Collection coffee. He wears a look of hunted alarm. He doesn’t want to hear about a real estate opportunity.

  “Just let me ask you one question,” she says. “Just let me ask you this. Do you think the water’s just going to go away somehow? Every day the moon gets closer. Every day it gets closer! Now let me ask you to answer this provocative question. What is the highest point in South Florida?”

  “Forty-two feet. Near Jupiter or something.”

  “Very good!”

  He knows the answer because he has spent many hours brooding on the problem of sea level rise. The highest natural point in Miami is only twenty-four feet. It’s close to their apartment in Coconut Grove, which sits on a limestone outcropping called the Miami Rock Ridge, but that’s an exceptional, almost alpine environment, relatively speaking. The average elevation of the Florida peninsula south of Lake Okeechobee is only six feet, and many areas are much lower. Miami Beach is just a mangrove spit enlarged with fill from the bay.