He has a slow-motion way about him, moving with his eyes closed like someone sleepwalking, acting out a dream. She finds herself lulled into unthinking response, mirroring his movements. Maybe because his eyes are closed, she has the sense that she could be anyone—that she is a temporary body in his arms. She is not even sure that he remembers her name. There could be something liberating about this, but the bourbon flame has died down and been replaced by her usual, maddening caution. She watches Chris’s face as he moves his hands over her body like a blind person.
She thinks of Amos, wills back to mind the sharp immediacy of the look on his face when he noticed his pocket watch was missing. She feels an ache, a pining for the bright and precise black-and-white lines of this face. She understands exactly, painfully, who he is.
A rhythmic rattle comes through the walls of the tent from outside. An instrument being shaken in another continent. A rising moan.
Chris is at the zipper of her shorts now. It is a ridiculous zipper, no more than an inch long, but he fumbles at it regardless. Instinctively, she stops him, puts a hand over his hand, and he withdraws it obediently like a redirected animal. Now he is at his own zipper. It is suffocatingly hot, and the ground has begun to rock. More mysterious sounds drift over from the yellow tent—lower moans and strange barking noises. More than anything, Bethany does not want to go outside. She would rather be done with this and go to sleep right here. Whatever caused her to follow this man into this tent she doesn’t remember, but now it is a job she has gotten herself into. It seems absurd, even funny, that she should put her face near this stranger’s open zipper, a ridiculous posture for any person. But once she has consented, once she has begun, she realizes that she can’t exactly, politely, just stop. Slowly, a tickle develops in her throat. It creeps down through her esophagus and grows, until she comes up for air, gasping. Chris puts a hand to the back of her head, pressing gently. She braces her hands on either side of his hips and takes shallow breaths. A drop of sweat falls from the tip of her nose. Unmistakable sounds of violent heaving are now entering the tent from outside. All at once a dirty wave swoons up in her and she retches and vomits in place.
The next few moments are a confusion of mopping and swearing. The tent is tropical, noxious with stink. Chris bundles his soiled camping pad and sleeping bag together with his shorts and underwear. Bethany watches, prone on the damp nylon floor, as he crouches around, naked from the waist down. Finally, he pulls on a pair of cotton pajama pants and looks at her with a kind of flustered reverence. “Are you all right?”
She nods, her head rubbing the ground, the nylon making static in her hair. He nods back and ducks silently out of the tent with his bundle. Relieved depletion overtakes her. She falls asleep to the lullaby of the susurrating chakapa.
In the morning—much too early, only a hint of daylight through the moldy tent walls—there is a stir at the campsite. Bethany lies, stiff and cotton-mouthed, upon a circuitry of roots and stones. Through the hammering of blood in her brain she hears agitated voices. “I don’t know, I don’t know,” someone is saying over and over.
She crawls to the tent door and peers out. There is a bleak indigo cast over everything, and it seems that objects have been rearranged in the night: the propane stove and log and plastic cups on the ground. Rebekah is standing outside the yellow tent, arms hanging at her sides. When she notices Bethany, she stares at her for a long black moment. Even at this distance, Bethany recoils from what she sees in the gaze.
“Only three people ended up drinking the brew,” Rebekah tells her when she comes into the white tent. If she notices the rancid smell, she does not mention it. Her fingers knit and unknit themselves as she speaks, as if deciding whether to pray.
“Rufus was hysterical the whole time, rocking back and forth and trying to run away. That took up most of my energy, just trying to keep him calm. Then Holmes kept puking, like three or four times, and I had to deal with that, too. Stooge just kind of fell asleep, so I thought, Good, I don’t have to worry about him.”
“Rebekah, what happened?”
Rebekah looks at Bethany. “He never woke up. He hasn’t woken up.”
“But you tried . . . ?”
Rebekah’s mouth pulls downward. “I knew the tent was too hot,” she cries, and bangs a fist on the ground. “I fucking knew something was going to happen.”
When they emerge from the tent together, Chris is outside with Rufus and the other one, Holmes.
“He was probably on something else, man. We should’ve asked,” Holmes is saying.
Rufus does not respond. He turns to look at the girls.
“What are we going to do?” Rebekah says calmly.
Rufus stares at her. His face is pale, and he is wearing a shirt now. The shirt is white with a big blue eyeball in the middle of it.
“I think we should go to the medical tent,” Rebekah answers herself.
Rufus stares another moment, then says, “No, they’ll send the cops.”
“What else are we supposed to do, Rufe?”
“All right, I’ll go to the medical tent,” Rufus says quietly. “Let the cops come.”