Nested Skins

Roger and I were at the beach when the fog came in. We had just finished eating. Everyone on the sand stopped what they were doing to marvel at the density and opacity of the fog, and how quickly the white mist rolled toward us over the water. And then all at once, we were in motion. Roger and I packed up our things. Mothers snapped at older siblings to collect the small children still splashing in the small waves. Across the bay, telephone wires and the lattice of the radio tower were made briefly more visible before melting away. The fog seemed to dissolve the world. Already, the horizon was gone.

Roger and I were on a last-minute holiday at a seaside town that had been a romantic destination in a bygone era. We were staying at an old white hotel, the only building of true size on the hillside. Behind the hotel was an old power station, and behind this the hill rose up steeply to become the local mountain, which had been worshipped as a deity in ancient times, by the people who lived there before the people who lived there now. I’d learned all this and it was only our second day in town.

We walked to the beach through the hillside town in the late morning. Mostly the going was easy, but some of the cobblestone passages were so steep, and the morning light so intense, that clomping down the narrow staircases and footpaths was like descending to the earth from the sun itself. The townsfolk walking uphill would wait until we were passing each other before greeting us, so they would not have to turn their faces up into the light.

By the time we got close to the shore the wind was blowing gently and the sky had grown pleasant and soft. Roger and I bought tacos from a vendor at the day market in the square across the road from the beach. The man had a portable gas griddle and everything you might imagine on ice in an aluminum cooler. Roger bought two tacos made with grilled cactus, and two made with chopped meat. (We had both spoken to the man but afterward neither of us were certain whether the meat was pork, or beef, or goat.) I bought an avocado at one of the stalls selling produce. The woman who ran the stall told me she was the farmer’s only daughter, apropos of nothing. She sliced my avocado in half, lengthwise, then used a metal serving spoon to deftly excavate the hairy green underside of flesh from each hemisphere of skin, which she then cut lengthwise into slices. Finally she put the sliced flesh back inside the hollowed-out skins, meaning I had to hold the thing with both hands, like a small bird I had trapped, so that it would not disassemble.

We ate, we swam. We lay out, but it was a little cold. Then the fog came in, prompting Roger to say we should hurry back, so we wouldn’t lose sight of the hotel. We hadn’t been in town long enough to learn street names, or the basic layout of the town. Halfway up the hill I turned to see that the fog had already swallowed the waterfront, the skeleton pier, and the newer, brightly-painted beach huts, spreading all the way to the old ramshackle houses, where the beach turned into grassy dunes.

I never saw any trash cans on the way back to the hotel, so I ended up hiking through the town with two empty avocado skins on my palm, nested like two cups, the shiny pit in the middle of the inner hemisphere, lolling around like a toy. I walked the whole way up the hill with the consolidated remains of the avocado balanced on my palm like that. I made a game of it, trying to keep the pit as still as I could. Under my other arm I pinched the folded-up blanket against my side. Roger had our towels and our beach bag, which held the rest of our things.

The sharp rise of the hill did not slow the fog. We would look back to see the mist rolling up the lanes below us, fingers of haze probing street corners where we had only just passed. I thought we might find a café or cantina where we could wait things out, but every place we passed had bolted their pink or blue shutters and doors, as if it we had wandered out in the dead of night. We didn’t see anyone, not even a cat.

As we slogged uphill and drew nearer to the hotel, I thought I saw a string of brightly colored flags along the railing of the hotel bar on the second-story veranda. For a moment I pretended that they were signal flags hung up to help us find our way back. But as we made it to the hotel driveway at last, the fog literally touching our heels, I saw that the bright colors were not flags but the shirts and blouses of the guests who had gathered to watch the fog slip up the hill. For some time they had been watching us, with the same dulled interest, their arms hanging over the railing above the portico, holding cigarettes and drinks. Later I would learn that a pair of guests had wagered on whether or not Roger and I would make it back to the hotel in time, before we were inhaled and captured by the mist. By the time we approached the front entrance of the hotel, nearly the entire hillside below us was whited-out.

A teenage bellhop saw us and opened one of the doors. Above us, a guest at the bar smiled at me and raised his drink in salutation. My first impulse was to ignore him. It bothered me that Roger and I had been observed in this way. Studied, without our knowledge. But just before I passed under the archway, I nodded back at the man. It would have been difficult to do much more than that, with the folded blankets in one hand, and the remains of the avocado still balanced on the other.

 

 

#

 

 

Roger and I had come from three hours away by train. We lived in the biggest city in our postal zone, which was also the seat of the provincial government. By the beginning of summer it had become evident that the new mayor was under the influence of a pair of outspoken conservative ministers. He’d gotten the police to raid a different gay bar every weekend, on the pretext of health code violations, or over-occupancy. Each time they came with the same photographer from a right-wing weekly, who flashed white light into what had been sacred spaces, and then ran the wincing faces in his paper. So we threw house parties, but small ones, quiet ones, like we were fugitives, like it was East Germany. Then even these gatherings got raided, not just downtown but out in the suburbs as well.

One morning at breakfast Roger dropped the newspaper onto the table and said we needed to get out of town for a few days. He had a feeling things were getting worse. I pushed back, but only because I was in the weeds at work, with four clients in various states of legal vulnerability. But the next day, a lunatic robbed our bank, and went out of his way to assault a female cashier for no discernible reason, not long after Roger was there to pull out some money his mother had deposited into his account, in disobedience of his father’s directives. That Sunday, while we had our usual late breakfast, a bird flew into the living room window, startling us, and leaving a mark on the glass. Then my dry cleaner gave me someone else’s sport coat, and was unable to locate mine. Roger affirmed that these events were connected, a series of alarming omens that we ought to respect. I disagreed, but I didn’t really protest. I wasn’t the one who’d had his face printed in the newspaper.

 

 

#

 

 

Upstairs in the hotel hallway, I tripped on the deep carpet and the avocado pit lurched out of the nested skins and fell onto the floor, where it rolled surprisingly far, then caromed into a guest room through the partly-open doorway. I followed the pit into the room, in time to see it roll up and into a whorl of white Christmas lights, which had been coiled and plugged in, just at the foot of the bed. The pit lay in the center of the ring of light, difficult to see, like a dark egg in an illuminated nest. My eyes went to the bed, where there were two people. I had not meant to look, and instantly I wished that I had just let the pit go and not barged into some stranger’s room.

On the edge of the bed, a middle-aged man lay across the lap of an elderly woman. Her face lined with exhaustion, the skin of her arms and hands was mottled and crepe-y, her wiry hair brittle and gray and levitating with static electricity. The man lying across her lap was fussing at her, irritable, shifting around as if uncomfortable. I guessed he was in his sixties or late fifties, with his balding head and the faint but evident liver spots on his hands. In his button-down white shirt tucked into gray trousers, and his thick-framed glasses, he looked not unlike my father, in the years before he died. Just like my father, this man kept the vinyl case for his glasses clipped over the lip of his breast pocket. He shouted up at the even older woman across whose lap he lay, Goddammit, Isabel, I’m trying to fall asleep! But every time I get close, you move, or cough, or make some noise!

Distantly, I thought to apologize and excuse myself, but when I tried I found I’d lost my words. Roger popped his head in, to see what was taking so long. I turned back and saw his eyes go wide. The man ignored us, but the woman had been looking straight at me since I’d come in. The man began to berate her again. He said, For the love of God! Every time you breathe it wakes me up!

I stooped quickly to retrieved the avocado pit where it lay in wreath of white Christmas lights, then Roger and I darted out into the hallway.

Back in the room, we agreed that we had seen the same thing. There was a knock on our door. I whispered, Do we answer? But Roger was already up and unhooking the chain.

It was the woman from down the hall. She wanted to apologize for not speaking to us earlier. I told her no, it was my fault for barging in. She seemed to agree, but I couldn’t be sure. The hallway light by our door was out and I could not see her clearly in the dark. Actually, I now realized, most of the lights were out.

She said, When you came in before, chasing your ball, I was trying to get my baby to sleep. He’s so fussy. He startles so easily, from the tiniest sound.

Your baby? Roger said, incredulous.

Yes, she said. Any little thing sets him off, so I do nothing, until I’m sure he’s asleep.

Roger scoffed. Is this like, a role-play thing?

The woman stepped toward the doorway and her face came into the light from our room. I might have gasped. The woman we had seen a few minutes before had been elderly, her face carved with crow’s feet and lines. This woman was far younger, her face and neck smooth with youth. And she was stunning. Like those misplaced dark-haired girls you see sitting alone in bus stations and all-night cafes, washed up in those places after drifting away from fairer climates.

She looked past us, into the room. I had booked a double. The woman asked if either of us had children.

No, I said, and she smiled back with her entire face. Her skin was soft, and velveteen with fine hairs. She could not have been more than twenty-five, and yet I was certain this was the woman I had seen earlier.

She said, Then perhaps you don’t know how strange things are, when you have a baby.

Roger said, By your baby—you mean the full-grown man you had over your lap?

She tensed, glaring at Roger as if he were insane. She said, I’m talking about my baby, Uli. He’s ten months old!

When it became clear this exchange was going nowhere, she walked away, beckoning us down the darkened hallway. We followed her silhouette back to her room, where she opened the door just wide enough to peer inside. There, on the bed, was a baby, swaddled in a light-green blanket, peacefully asleep in the glow of the Christmas lights.

Lamp light is too much for him to sleep, she said. So, I bring the string lights everywhere.

Where is the man? Roger asked, after she’d gently closed the door.

Man? What man, she said, her confusion gradually bleeding into contempt. She said, Sir, no one has been to my room except for me and my baby. We’re here waiting for my husband.

She explained that her husband was a captain in the army, and that this seaside town was the halfway point between his base and their home in their city, which happened to be our city. Her husband was a veteran, she said, decorated for valor, with men under his command. And he would be disconcerted to hear that a pair of—here she hesitated—that a pair of guests were making up rumors about strange men visiting me at night. She added, If I told him—let’s just say he would insist on getting to the bottom of it.

I wished her a good evening while pulling Roger away by the elbow. Back in our room I got the avocado skins and the pit out of the trash can. Roger was still annoyed but he watched patiently as I performed various experiments. In a few moments I had it figured out. I re-coupled the avocado skins and placed the pit inside the innermore hemisphere. I paused, balancing the consolidated remains on my flattened palm. I tilted my hand at the wrist until the pit fell out and rolled across the carpet and into a ringlet of two lamp cords.

Outside our window, the hillside looked different, although this impression dawned on us only gradually, because of the fog and darkness. The town was now much larger, with new quarters and little pockets of modern houses where previously there had been intrusions of jungle. I could see a terraced garden at a place where I had walked earlier in the day, when it had been a bus stop strewn with litter and condoms and overgrown with nettles. We also saw where whole entire neighborhoods were now in rubble, and already overgrown with vines, as if there had been a war, or calamity, followed by an interval of germination. Roger said, Look up there, and pointed to where the top of the mountain was now gone. I had not realized we were on the slope of a volcano.

And then the world went back to the way it had been. We concluded that tipping the pit out of the hollowed skins and into a makeshift electrical field gave us a glimpse into the future. About fifty years into the future.

Do me, Roger said. I want to see what I look like. Wait—should I get undressed?

I said No.

Why not?

Because I don’t want to.

Why not?

Because—I don’t know. Because I’ve seen enough today.

He smirked and said, Then close your eyes. You don’t have to look.

I gave in. Roger was still in the trunks and white t-shirt he’d worn to the beach. He undressed and stood before the mirror. He did not bother closing the curtains, because of the fog.

Later, when he said, Okay, that will do, I tilted my head down before opening my eyes, and I did not look up at him or the mirror until I had placed the pit back inside the nested skins, which I noticed were beginning to dry out. When I finally looked, Roger seemed distracted, a little shaken. He leaned against the dresser for balance when he stepped into his boxers. I placed the skins on the TV stand and asked him what he saw. He shook his head. He said, You could have looked.

 

 

#

 

 

We had dinner at the hotel restaurant. All the lobby windows were whited out, the dense fog made luminous by streetlamps. Roger hardly touched his food, but my appetite was enormous. I ordered mussels, steak, roasted squash, grilled potatoes. Everything took longer than usual to come out because the restaurant was so busy, with everyone trapped indoors. I drank too much of the local beer at chatted up the people at the tables around us, pausing to surveil each new man who arrived at the front desk, assessing his clothing and bearing and haircut for indicators of military careerism. Again I wanted to ask Roger what he had seen in the mirror, but I sensed that I should not. The longest sentence he spoke at dinner was, I don’t suppose I’m any different than how I was this morning.

Our waiter was in his forties but still lean, his thinning hair shellacked to his skull. He was talkative, going on about the strangeness of the fog, how atmospheric conditions along the headlands made it nearly impossible for fog like this to develop. I guess when you live long enough, he said, but did not finish the thought. When he brought our check he told me about the two guests on the terrace bar who had wagered whether or not Roger and I would make it back that afternoon, or whether we would be disappeared by the mist. The man who saluted me with his drink, it turned out, had lost. The waiter said, I never doubted your ability to find your way.

An hour or so after we went to bed, I woke up needing to pee. Roger was still awake and breathing heavily. I nudged him. He didn’t turn over, he just lay there with his back to me. I asked him if he wanted to leave town early. He said, That would be tremendous.

I stood up and switched on the smaller of the two lamps. To make the room less bright, I hung my shirt over the lampshade. When I finished pissing, I said from the bathroom, There’s a milk run that stops here in the middle of the night. If we pack now we can probably make it.

What about the fog?

I told him we’d find our way. Back in the room I saw how my shirt clung to the lamp like a shroud.

Roger said, We don’t have to leave right this instant. If you need more sleep.

No, I said. I’m fine. I switched on the other lamp. Tempus fugit, I nearly said, but stopped myself. It was just one of those automatic responses. Something my mother used to say. She thought it meant “Time is money.”

 

 

#

 

 

At the train station Roger and I had a brief argument when he realized I still had the avocado skins, and the pit, in a paper bag.

You were planning on keeping that?

I told him it felt strange to just throw it away. I did not include that I wondered what else I might be able to see.

Get rid of it, he said. Please.

I acquiesced. When he left to use the bathroom, I dug a little divot in the soil of a brick planter box on the platform, where some rose bushes were growing. I buried everything, scratching my forearms on thorns.

The train arrived at two-thirty, a few minutes behind schedule. We made a brief stop at the next station and were rolling again before a conductor came to our car. He said there were no sleepers available, and told us the price for the second-class seats we were sitting in.

Roger said, No sleepers at all? They’re taken?

The conductor sighed. His eyes were red-ringed and unfocused. He said, The local overnight is only for mail and soldiers.

Where do the soldiers sleep? he snapped back.

Roger—

Soldiers, the conductor said, can sleep anywhere.

I handed the conductor the money, and he took the bills with a condescension that was so familiar that it felt like a balm after the strangeness we had endured at the hotel. The conductor left and Roger sat silently, trying to look out the windows on the other side of the car, but the fog had blanketed the coast in this place, too. I folded my sweater into a pillow and went to sleep against the window.

 

 

#

 

 

Shortly after we got home, Roger moved out and we went our separate ways. Three weeks later, I realized we were pretending not to see each other whenever we were both out at the same bar or coffee shop. In a few months we were strangers again. And then my life entered a strange period, when I experienced a series of premonitions.

At work I was unofficially reprimanded for declining to represent a prospective client who was obscenely wealthy and politically connected. I claimed I was too busy, but I’d had a hunch that something ominous, something oily was pursuing the man. That’s all. A few months later, he was arrested for embezzlement in a wide-ranging fraud case that put him in prison and ended the careers of a number of elected officials, including our city’s mayor. Belatedly, I found I became the moral conscience at my firm, and soon the partners were giving me all of the ethics cases. Colleagues came to me like I was Solomon, contributing to my belief that I had become—if not prophetic—prescient, at least.

In early October I met my sister for lunch. She came downtown to meet me at a sidewalk café near my office, since I was too busy to come to her. From the moment I sat down I could not shake the impression that she had cancer. It was in her color, her demeanor, the way her hand looked gray against the white of the menu. I ruined our lunch and later harassed her over the phone until she saw her doctor. He looked her over and said she was fine, but that he’d refer her to the radiologist if it would make her lunatic brother relax. All this led to an oncologist diagnosing a cloud-like mass on her left lung. A carcinoma, clearly, but at an early stage, still easy to remove. In the end she needed only minimal chemotherapy and quickly made a full recovery, because they’d caught it so quickly.

Around this time a realtor friend had me leave happy hour so she could show me a high-rise apartment that was for sale, but not yet listed. One of those once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, she’d said. The unit modern and spacious, with high ceilings and enormous windows, on the twenty-third floor a new building downtown, walkable to my office. The view from the living room made me stop every time I looked. But I kept smelling smoke. It put me off. I kept thinking how Roger would have said this was an omen not to be ignored, and I declined to make an offer. My realtor friend was astonished and severely annoyed—until Christmas Eve, when that high-rise caught fire. Floors twenty through twenty-six became an inferno. Dozens of residents were trapped and killed, along with three firefighters.

After the fire I called Roger. I described my premonitions. I asked him if he had experienced anything like that, since our trip to the coast. He said he had not, and also that he had not eaten any of the avocado. He said, You know me. I’m a texture person.

It might have been the fog, I said. Or the meat we ate. Or the mountain.

Or the full moon, Roger said. At first I didn’t realize he was being sarcastic. Then he made a sound that was difficult to translate. It might have been a sad laugh, muffled. He said, Take care of yourself, and hung up on me.

That February I was rushing to leave work one night, to get home before the arrival of a thunderstorm. Already the wind was making the building sway. On my way to the elevators something told me I should stay where I was. There was no sound in my ears, no language at all in the transmission, but nonetheless I heard an unambiguous message to remove my overcoat and go back to my desk, to work until the storm had passed.

It was past nine when the worst of the weather had finally blown through. I got to my subway station to find the entrance cordoned off by the police. A young patrolman in rain gear said that a lunatic had pushed a man in front of the six-twenty Q-Line, the train I normally took home.

That was the last of the premonitions, although there was a delay before I understood this, during which time I misinterpreted a series of ordinary impressions. On Easter weekend I placed my hand on my neighbor’s risen stomach and proclaimed she was going to have twins. Twin boys. She was incredulous, but I assured her that I was clairvoyant. Later I heard she was not even pregnant. She had been swelling up from an abscess. At her first sonogram she was rushed to the other side of the hospital, for emergency surgery. I sent flowers, but told the florist to just write on the card that they were from me. I could have dictated a longer message, but there was too much to say.

Ben Reed grew up in coastal Northern California, where avocados grow easily, and now lives in East Austin, where they do not. He teaches literature and creative writing at Texas State University.