The Email Drought

They have just moved to a new town.

Aaron works at home—he is an investor and he is excited about the war, which has created an uneasy market. This means that when the market is no longer uneasy he will make some money. With this money he will buy fishing stuff.

Amy is a ballerina, but she is new in town and is looking for other ballerinas to dance with, or to teach. She works at the local café—it is the café where all the farmers go. The farmers at the café argue about clouds—it is a summer drought. Amy comes along with coffee and they drink the coffee and argue faster about clouds.

At eight every night, Amy gets one hour of computer time. This is when Aaron eats dinner. During this hour, Amy checks her email. Now that she has moved away from her friends, she has time to notice that she doesn't get a whole lot of email. Aaron thinks she is a birdwatcher in a forest of absent emails. He stands behind her, eating his macaroni and cheese, and ridicules her empty inbox.

‘Jesus babe, you'd think that the server would send you some just to make you feel better,’ he says. He does not see that she is crying. She stands and walks past him quickly. She disappears. Aaron shrugs and sits down to check his ThunderRoll stock (bowling balls) when he hears something of glass—a plate, a shooter, a figurine—smashed.

‘What was that?’ he asks loudly.

The door slams. Aaron shrugs. He gets back to business.

Over the next three days, Amy breaks a chair, a candleholder and a glass-encased photograph of their dog that was hit by a mail truck only a month before they moved. Aaron says nothing. He knows that he can't simply post her an email, as she detests his pity and would probably fling him through the window. He's worried about her breaking their things, because they don't have many things and sometimes he thinks page 66 they might run out of things if she doesn't receive an email.

‘You don't understand,’ she says. ‘You get like forty emails a day. I don't get any except from that fucking sick shit,’ she says. She is referring to the persistent messages from Rape 187, which she immediately deletes. ‘This can't be my life. My life is not unanswered. My life is too fragile for this.’ She points at the computer. ‘Deaf, blind and pissing me off.’

‘You're crying over this? Jesus, Amy, there's wine to drink, or we could go for a walk. We could go to the river—it's always talking. Maybe it's talking about you today,’ he says.

Amy reaches over, flicks the wooden Pinocchio off the desk, and stomps on it.

‘Stop,’ he says.

‘I can't,’ she says.

Amy talks in her sleep.

Aaron stays awake and listens for clues. ‘Grandma make that molasses,’ she says. ‘I like sticky stuff in my toes,’ she says. Aaron has always listened to her at night. His favorite poem is by Tennyson. His favorite poem is about the dog that hunts in dreams; it's his favorite poem because Amy dances in dreams and tells him about it. She is a person that sleep doesn't stop and that is why he married her. ‘It's evolutionary,’ he tells his market pals. ‘I chose a mate that could raise my kids and still have energy for me.’ This was balderdash, beer talk. And they can't afford kids.

‘It's over there, over there by the pear,’ Amy says. She smiles, her eyes closed. He used to think she was faking all this. She isn't.

‘Come back!’ she screams. ‘Come back!’

‘Thank you,’ she says.

‘Well it's easy at the supermarket,’ she says.

Aaron has a plan. He slips out of bed. He doesn't turn on the light—this house is small and easily learned and is in his body. He uses her voice as a beacon, a lighthouse—a soundhouse, really—he orientates this way. Through the bedroom, negotiating the sofa, he sneaks into the other bedroom—what they call the study. He doesn't shut the door, just tilts it against the lock. As he positions his chair in front of page 67 the computer he steps painfully on a bit of Pinocchio. He grabs his foot, curses, but is determined: he awakes the computer. He logs on easily. Then he begins. He decides he'll do three. He chooses Excite and Yahoo and Hotmail. He opens accounts there under her friend's names: Anna Lime, Nicole Jackson, Sherry Thomas. Then he composes, addressed to her, as best he can. He closes his eyes and imagines what they would write. He thinks he is writing better messages than they would.

‘Grab that cat!’ Amy yells.

Then Aaron is done and he follows his wife's voice back to bed.

She is happy the next day, Sunday, though she doesn't check the email. He doesn't urge her. He thinks she is fragile now and if she were to find out what he'd done, she'd either break herself or break everything else.

She is happy when they go to the river, and he is happy to go to the river even if it is so low it's really more a stream. She will write poetry on the bank and he can fish.

The next day, Monday, and they always say the Lord's Prayer before breakfast, and always eat the same breakfast (bananas and strawberry and cornflakes and soy milk). Then Aaron goes into the study for work. He thinks today is the day that she will check her email. Today is the day that she will be happy. But there is a problem.

‘Babe,’ he says. ‘I can't get on the Internet.’

‘I took care of that,’ she calls from the kitchen. She is doing dishes but she stops and comes into the study. ‘I took care of it this morning when you were in the shower.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, it's been taken care of. I mean, the Internet is gone.’ She wipes her hands on her tights.

‘Gone?’

‘Gone,’ she says. She spins, right there, in the study. She is a ballerina and dressed like a ballerina. He stands from the chair, shaking his head, but before he can figure out what to say she grabs his arm and spins him across the study. When he stops spinning, she casually puts her foot on his shoulder without bending her supporting leg.

She smiles. ‘All the things we can do,’ she says seductively.

‘What do you mean, gone?’ he asks. He does not remove the foot. He does not smile. He does nothing except reach into his pocket for a cigarette. He lights it and smokes next to her foot.

‘This is good for the hamstrings,’ she says.

‘Gone,’ he says. ‘Did you check it? Did you check your email?’

‘No,’ she says. ‘What's the point?’

‘Gone,’ he says. He shakes his head.’

‘It was bad for you, now it's good for you. Or,’ she laughs, ‘or, it was you for bad, now it's you for good.’ She takes her foot off his shoulder—she has to go.

‘Where?’ he asks.

‘I'm being screened to be a ballerina teacher,’ she says.

‘Where?’

‘I found a place,’ she says. ‘Guess where I found out how to find it?

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At the library! I asked someone,’ she says. ‘Can you believe it? But now I have to go,’ she says. She bustles about—it really is a small place—then she is dancing and twirling and leaping and gone.

He stands there, smoking, where she left him. Then he goes to the computer. Connect. Connect. Connect. There is a dial tone, then a car wreck within the computer. ‘Jesus,’ he says. He calls the server help number. There is a guy there—an engaging and confident guy who assures Aaron that everything is fine with their account. Okay, cheers then. Connect. Connect. Connect. ThunderRoll certainly needs monitoring. And Slickskin was falling and falling at last glance, and Aaron has been poised for the sudden turnaround. It is how he makes money. It is his life. Waiting and waiting and then the pounce! Timing. Connect. Connect. Connect.

‘Fuck!’ he screams. He throws his coffee mug against the wall.

‘Amy, what did you do to the computer?’ he asks when she returns.

‘I made it,’ she says. She spins and leaps. ‘She said I was over qualified.’

‘Yes, babe, but the computer? What did you do to it? What do you mean that it's gone?’

‘I played with it,’ she says.

‘How so?’

‘You know, screwed with it.’

‘Changed the network settings?’

‘No, like screwed with it. With a screwdriver,’ she says. She is chewing on her index finger. She is nervous. He walks over and lifts the monitor off and sets it, carefully, beside the console. He lifts up the console.

The back wall is gone. The modem is there and green and hurt. The modem has been stabbed. They don't have much money. They don't have enough money. She giggles behind him.

‘Amy,’ he says quietly. ‘Why did you do this?’

As an answer she puts a foot on his back, right behind the neck. He freezes when she does this. He always freezes, though sometimes he smokes. This time he doesn't. Today he's smoked enough.

‘I'm losing money right now,’ he says to her foot.

‘Shhh,’ she says. ‘There's too much of that. Wednesday, at the café, page 70 a man called me a unit. Me, a unit. Not like that, but like this: he called his coffee a unit. He called everything a unit. He's the guy who does our fridges, and he's been doing it for so long everything is a unit. He would call you a unit. I have been dreaming in units,’ she says.

‘You have been dreaming about pears, Grandma, molasses, cats and supermarkets,’ he says.

‘Yes, and doing so in units,’ she says. She takes her foot off but before he can move her other foot is on his back. ‘Good. Now … listen. I'm thinking about a whole new way of our life,’ she says. ‘We'll live in this house. We'll change this house to the way we want it. We'll build it ourselves, the way we want it. We'll do it by hand. We'll dig a pool. We'll capture the rain water. We'll heat bathwater on the stove. The farmers say we have good dirt. We can garden. The phone, of course, will be disconnected. Letters, handwritten, will be sent. Wood cut and gathered. I will teach ballet and write poetry. We have so much free time when we get rid of the things that make us wait.’

‘What will I do?’ he asks.

She switches feet again.

‘Limitless,’ she says. ‘There are limitless things to do.’

‘Anything?’

‘Of course,’ she says.

‘I wouldn't mind fishing all the time,’ he says. He laughs.

‘Well there you go! What else?’

‘I wouldn't mind making a movie about fishing,’ he says.

‘Good!’

‘Well, I guess I could make my own fishing rods and sell them. And I could tie some flies. I could start a fly-shop. Probably write some books about fishing.’

‘I could be a fishing guide,’ he says. His eyes are closed.

‘I could build fishing boats,’ he says.

He is laughing. She can feel his laughter go from his brain to his belly to his spine, then up through her foot, through her leg, through her hips, through her abdomen, through her chest, through her throat and up into her brain, where it slowly loads.

‘And nets,’ he says. ‘I could patch waders. And do photographic page 71 essays on different rivers. I could do fish studies in the mountains. I've done a little bit of that, remember? Back in the States? And I've been thinking about fishing expos, and then there's casting demonstrations, which is a whole ‘nother kettle of fish, isn't it? And then promos and, yeah sure, Amy, I could even be a casting double for the movies, couldn't I?’ He laughs and shakes his head. ‘Ridiculous.’

She takes off her foot.

He doesn't see she is crying when she leaves the room; if he did, he would go after her. If he saw her crying he might take her out for drinks, or dinner and drinks, or even dinner and a movie and drinks. Later, when they returned, she might be drunk enough to read him her poems, or to dance to her own poetry, laughing at her stumbles. The living room is too small for her to dance in, especially when she is drunk. Then she will fall asleep and he will stay awake and listen to her talk in her sleep and he won't know what she's saying but somehow he will think he knows her better than any human in the world knows any other human in the world.

But he doesn't see her crying. So he sits in the computer chair and in his head tallies up how much a new modem will cost. There just isn't enough money.

The sudden explosion of glass surprises him.