Ghost Lights by Lydia Millet (classic fiction txt) 📕

least. I don’t know about this.”

“You know how you could help?”

“Just tell me.”

“If you could arrange for the flight out, a couple days down the road, that’d be great. I was thinking of walking, but now I have other plans.”

“Ha ha.”

“No, really. I was going to try to walk home, at one point.”

“In delirium, I assume.”

“I just wanted to do it. But now I think we should maybe go ahead and get back, if that works for you.”

“Good thinking.”

“Mr. Stern?”

Jorge was at the door.

“We can move you on now, sir.”

Hal stood, scraping his chair back.

“I’ll keep close tabs on you,” he told T. “That’s for sure.”

“I appreciate your concern, Hal. I do.”

“Tomorrow,” he said.

“See you,” said T.

9

The young lawyer had told Brady about a party, and Brady told Hal. There was always a party, apparently.

Brady called the hotel room and invited Hal to join them. He himself was not driving back to Belmopan, but staying overnight in Belize City. It was a party held by a company, a company that had just opened a Belize location and was looking to make friends.

This meant, Brady explained, there would be ample libations. Hal was welcome to come with them.

Could they promise, asked Hal, a supernumerary nipple?

But he had nothing better to do. He was waiting for them in his room, bored, freshly showered, flipping through channels, when the telephone rang.

“I talked to T.,” said Susan breathlessly.

“They’re letting him make calls, then,” said Hal. “Good sign. Glad to hear it.”

“Hal, he’s crazy. Do you know what he said to me? He wants to dissolve the corporation. He wants to give away everything.”

“I told you he would need some adjustment time. Didn’t I?”

“Adjustment time? He’s delusional. Hal! I don’t know what to do!”

“Just wait till he gets back. There’s nothing you can do till then anyway.”

“He wants me to start right away. He wants us to pull out of everything. I mean it’s crazy. I don’t even know if it’s going to be possible. Or legal. Seriously.”

“Just sit tight till we get back, OK? He’s being detained. He needs to get home and get his bearings. Regroup. I warned you about this, honey. Right? Just try to be patient. I have us on a return flight the day after tomorrow.”

“You do? When?”

“We get in late. Evening.”

“I can’t believe this. Hal, he’s raving.”

“Actually, he seems fairly rational to me.”

“Are you kidding? Hal! Seriously. Are you kidding?”

“Different, but rational. In his way. I mean, he can still string a sentence together. He doesn’t foam at the mouth or anything.”

“Well, but you don’t even know him. I mean, from before. Hardly. You wouldn’t know the difference. You said yourself, he had a breakdown. He had a near-death experience!”

Someone was knocking at the room door.

“Just a second.”

Brady, holding car keys.

“Phone with my wife. Give me a minute,” said Hal, and stood back to let him in. “Susan? I should go. The, uh, the man from the embassy is here. I need to talk to him.”

“He was going on about animals, Hal. Wild animals dying? I’m worried. What if he does something to himself before we can get help for him?”

“He won’t, Susan. It’s OK. Just sit tight. Can you try to do that for me?”

Brady patrolled the hotel room, picked up the remote and flicked off the TV. There was something overbearing about him, it seemed to Hal. He carried himself as though it was his own hotel room.

“I’m worried. He just doesn’t sound like the same person.”

“Maybe he’s not, Suze. Maybe he’s not. But does that have to be so threatening?”

“I’m talking about mental instability. You remember Eloise? Her son went down to the Amazon on a photo safari and took some malaria drug? He was like twenty-five and getting a Ph.D. in biology. Anyway the drug or the sickness drove him crazy. Forever, Hal. Forever. He had a psychotic break. He dropped out of grad school and his girlfriend left him. Now he wanders around Malibu carrying sand in his pockets and calling people ‘nigger.’”

“In Malibu?”

“White people.”

“You should chill out, honey. Stop worrying. There’s nothing you can do, he’s safe and sound, we’re both coming home soon. And listen, I promise. He’s not going to call anybody ‘nigger.’ I’ll go out on a limb and guarantee that.”

Brady was impatient. He was not paying attention. He stood with the room door half-open.

“OK,” said Susan, in a dissatisfied tone.

“OK. I’ll call you in the morning.”

•

As they drove to the party, Hal in the passenger seat wrestling with a broken seatbelt, it became clear that Brady had an agenda for the evening. It was unclear to Hal what that agenda was, but clearly there was one. He was purposeful in his movements. He drove fast. He was out for more than just a good time; he had a mission.

“You think T.’s doing OK in that place?” he asked, as Brady lit a cigarette at a stoplight.

It was already dark and the streetlights were on, surrounded by circling insects. Staring at a single light, he could see hundreds of them, possibly thousands.

His eyes smarted with the brightness. He turned away, blinking, and saw stubborn afterimages.

“He’ll be fine, he’ll be fine,” said Brady dismissively.

Hal found him irksome. Most of his smoke went out the window, but not all of it.

The afterimages of the streetlights were fading slowly.

“You ever spent the night in a jail around here?” he asked.

“It’s a holding facility,” said Brady, accelerating with a jerk.

“But how can we know what the conditions are? There’s no transparency! What if it’s a whole, you know, bitches-and-shivs kind of situation? Bend-over, rusty-razorblades-in-the-shower-type scene?”

Brady looked at him sidelong, one eyebrow raised.

“Relax. He’s going to be fine. You know, you seem a lot more uptight about it than he was, you realize that? Guy didn’t seem that worried to me.”

The cigarette dangled and jumped precariously as his lips moved.

But it was true, seemingly. No argument there.

Hal should have had something to drink before he met up with Brady. He didn’t like him, he realized.