Bugs in the System

Marie sits at her desk, holding a pen, hunched over a notebook in an uncomfortable position she looks forward to shifting once she gets just one good sentence down.

Several minutes pass. She leans back, flings the pen onto the notebook, and exhales loudly. The pen skitters across the paper and over it, makes a clacking sound when it hits the polished wood table and then another clack as it hits the floor.

She goes into the kitchen and Duane follows her. He sits in the doorway and watches her as she fills a glass from the sink and then slices a cucumber into cookies and eats them standing by the dining table. She gives the dog a cucumber slice, which he slides down onto his belly to eat, clasping it between his forepaws.

It is eight o'clock in the evening and the light is beginning to fade. There isn't electricity in much of the hotel, but the lights work in the kitchen and in her bedroom, and she avoids the lightless areas after sunset. She feels uneasy about the encroaching darkness in a way she never did when she lived in cities.

There are three black labs that had once belonged to the hotel gardener, and two of them are outside. When Marie opens the door to call them, Duane pushes past her and runs out toward the forest, disappearing into the dark. She calls him but he ignores her, and she sighs and thinks that it would be nice to have the internet sometimes. If there were an internet connection, she could look up dog training advice and maybe convince the three wild beasts she lives with to occasionally do what she would like them to do.

She washes the plate she ate the cucumber slices off of and looks out the window above the sink. There isn't much to see, just a few tall pines made silhouettes by the pink dusk light and some gentle grey clouds in the distance.

She goes to the kitchen table and sits down and pours herself a small glass from a bottle of locally fermented wine. She picks up the book she is reading, scans a few pages and tries to wait patiently for the dogs, but she cannot focus and so goes outside holding a few chunks of bread rolled into tight balls to offer them as treats if they come when she calls.

Sixteen years earlier, at half-past four in the morning mere weeks after an eighteenth birthday spent traveling by Greyhound to New Orleans, in a bar on Decatur Street, Marie met Leo the same way she met most of the people she knew at the time—she turned in his direction on her bar stool and spoke to him. He had just ordered what he called a poor man's martini, which was two fingers of gin over ice with three olives and a twist of lemon.

He did not pay for his drink with money, but instead took a bar napkin, wrote a few lines on it, and passed it to the bartender when she brought his drink. The bartender read his note, smiled, kissed her fingers and touched them to his forehead.

Marie stared at him. He took a sip of his drink, felt her eyes on him and looked over. He laughed at the expression of surprise on her face.

"What?" he asked. He sipped his drink, eyes ahead, not looking at her, but a grin had hooked the corners of his mouth and was trying to reel them into a full-fledged smile.

Marie said, "I have seen that woman make grown men cry for not leaving her a good tip, and you just paid with a napkin."

"This will not be my last libation of the night."

"Your last what?"

"I'll pay, at least for most of my drinks, eventually."

Leo was wearing a dress shirt and slacks, the only kind of clothing she would ever see him in. Even at nine in the morning, so hung-over that he wouldn't speak to anyone, just glare and drink coffee, even then he would look polished and neat, and his long and wild hair would be pulled back into a smooth ponytail that sprung out like a chaotic halo in back.