Hell by Robert Olen Butler Page B

not knowing who you are and the hell of suddenly knowing.

    The Parkway is stalled, dense with naked bodies, their private parts jammed
into the private parts of whatever body is pressed against them, wedged there
and flaming. Nighttime is the wrong time for this journey, Hatcher realizes.
And the sadness of George Bush and the anguish of the jihadists and the priapic
pain of the crowd before him turn Hatcher back toward his own neighborhood
: Hatcher McCord understands that sometimes the time is right for a particular
news story, and sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes larger issues present themselves. He is,
after all, spending eternity in the same place as George W. Bush. Who can tell him
why? George certainly has refreshed this question, and in spite of the din of
voices all around Hatcher and the sucking sounds and the fleshy squeegee
rubbing sounds, when his voice-over pauses for dramatic effect, Hatcher’s
head goes utterly silent for a long moment. Then: Naomi can. Wife number
three. And Deborah. Wife number two. And Mary Ellen. Wife number one. They all
would have thoughts on the subject of why he’s here. He might deny the reliability of
these sources, but obviously he didn’t get it right, either. Here he is forever with Osama
and George and all the rest. And with Naomi, surely. And Deborah. And Mary Ellen.
Surely these women are somewhere in town as well, or soon will be. If Hatcher McCord
approaches the Big Why? as if it were a news story—and it is, in a certain way—the
instinct he has to track down his former wives is a natural one, journalistically. But by
now he knows this instinct in himself as something else: seek the fresh torture. Yes, he
will try to find his ex-wives. He is the very model of an intrepid newsman. But also he
is driven to suffer. There is a swelling of cheesy music in Hatcher’s head, and
he is glad the voice-over is finished. That voice was right, however. He squares
his shoulders. Okay, Old Scratch. You’ve got some new thing in mind for me. Scratch
the Hatch. Hatch the Scratch. But fuckitfuckitfuckitfuckit, I’m going home to Anne
first. He squeezes into the near margin of the crowd, his back to all the naked
suffering, and he creeps off, thinking that Satan even wants this, of course,
for him to go to Anne, old torture before fresh.

    Anne is naked and whole in their bed in the dark, the TV and the hanging, bare, low-watt lightbulb both turned off, and she looks up at Hatcher as he crosses to her, her eyes so dark they register as light in the lesser dark of the room. As soon as he sees her, he is wanting her, wanting to touch her and finally finally die with her, but with the step before the step before the last step, he thinks how he is wanting her, wanting to touch her, and wanting finally finally to die with her but how this always goes wrong, and with the step before the last step he thinks how thinking about how the wanting her, wanting to touch her and wanting finally finally to die with her is often the very thing that makes it go wrong, and with the last step all he is doing is thinking about thinking about wanting her. And his body is no longer wanting her.
    He stands there. She lies there. They look at each other.
    “It went away,” she says.
    “Yes,” he says.
    Her eyes are so beautiful, he thinks.
    “For me too,” she says.
    “Yet again,” he says.
    “I was in my mortal life a woman of strong will,” she says.
    “Yes.”
    “And you were a powerful man.”
    “So I thought.”
    “You still are.”
    “No. Even on earth, I observed power. I spoke of it. Merely that. My own power was celebrity.”
    “That is great power.”
    “Only an illusion of power.”
    “We are ourselves illusions now, forever.”
    “And even those who had true power in life,” Hatcher says, “it was in a narrow alley and for a passing moment. They’re all here now, I think. All of them.”
    “But I remember what it feels like, to have a strong will.”
    Hatcher