The Invisible Circus - Jennifer Egan [115]
And he was. Gone. Lost—in her. In bed he gathered Phoebe’s long hair in his hands and moved close to her face, watching the movement of her eyes. “You do what you do” was the nearest Wolf came to explaining all he’d jeopardized to be with Phoebe now. But it was less an explanation than an assertion of the pointlessness, the self-indulgence of attempting one. At times a certain wry fatalism would overtake him, a brooding ill humor whose basis, it seemed, was the belief that everything was lost. These moods terrified Phoebe at first, but their only effect was to drive Wolf back to her with even greater abandon, as if, by surrendering to Phoebe anew, he were proving that this—she—was worth the loss of everything else.
Asleep, he thrashed beside her, often yelling out in terror, but Phoebe had only to gather him into her arms to deliver Wolf from these agonies into far more exquisite ones. Afterward, still clinging to her, he would slide into a deeper, drenching sleep, one hand clutching her finger like a tiny child, and Phoebe would stay awake as long as possible, guarding his sleep, secure in the knowledge that she alone had the power to save him.
Eventually they would have to rejoin the world, Phoebe supposed, but when she tried to imagine it, herself and Wolf sharing a life like normal adults, no picture came to mind. But that was because of the newness, she reasoned; though it felt like ages had passed, it was really only days. They needed time to grow into this thing, would be guided through its later stages as naturally as they’d been led to this first one. Besides, her own future had always seemed unreal to Phoebe when she tried to imagine it.
When several days had passed, they decided to take a short trip, a day trip into the world to remember what it felt like. “Reassimilation,” Wolf said. “Rehabilitation.” He suggested Lucca, a place he’d not seen himself but heard was lovely.
It felt odd, getting back in the car. A week and a day had passed since their arrival, Wolf said, though Phoebe would never have known. The morning light astounded her eyes. Olive trees shook silver. She felt like an invalid emerging from long convalescence. The world’s resilience impressed her, its ability to proceed, unhindered, despite her own lapsed attention.
Maneuvering his car on the curved roads seemed to make Wolf lighthearted. Phoebe wondered if he’d missed it. The last time she’d ridden with him was before, when it seemed, looking back, that they’d hardly known each other. Phoebe sensed she should act differently now, some way that reflected the changes between them, but she wasn’t sure how. You couldn’t hold hands with someone driving a stick shift.
“Don’t you think it was fate?” she said. “How I found you?”
“It was lucky,” Wolf agreed.
“But not lucky. You know, predestined.”
She explained how she’d come to Europe knowing there was something she needed to find, how she’d flailed, grabbing at possibilities until finally, in the depths of despair, she’d stumbled on Wolf.
“I see your point,” he said. “But don’t things always look inevitable in retrospect?”
“Which is how you know there’s fate.”
He said nothing. Phoebe sensed Wolf was letting her think what she wanted. “You don’t believe in it,” she said, disappointed.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “I used to. That’s what I liked about getting high, feeling all those connections—a bell rings, the light falls a certain way, a song comes on the radio and you look around and think, Dig it.”
Phoebe nodded appreciatively.
“Maybe it just got dull,” Wolf said, “having everything sort of converge into one pattern, the Buddhists, the Egyptians, the Apaches, hell, why not the Christians, too—it’s all one groovy thing, man. It’s all, like, spirituality …”
“Stop it.”
She’d startled him. “I’m making fun of myself, Phoebe,” Wolf said. “Not you.”
“Things were a lot more spiritual back then. Period,” she said.
Wolf glanced at her. “You mean objectively? As in, God was more present?” He looked incredulous.