Issue 37.2

by Evan Iseli

The Same Schedule as the Stars

As Emmanuel careened down the highway, the distance between streetlights grew, to the point where it felt like he was jumping from one projected light swath to the next like they were lily pads. The bursts of darkness in between, inwhich he could not even make out the distinction of the sky, frightened him. It was the dead of night, and the road was monochrome under the glow of the moon—which was as harsh as the streetlights themselves. Despite the highway’s sterility, Emmanuel knew that it connected warm towns, brilliant cities, places that were the cocoons for people’s lives. Each car streaking by was simply a lone vessel in a tangible, more earthly cosmos, ushering time’s most important person to their next destination. The highway may as well have spanned different worlds.

Broad road signs rushed above Emmanuel and counted down to his exit. As he quit the highway, familiarityquietly set its hand upon his shoulder. The stark lights faded, and before he could blink tall stalks of grass and corn lined his vision and replaced the gray brick sound barriers. Reclaiming its bearing on the world, the cloudless night sky flourished above the farmland and promised to reveal even more of itself in the morning. Emmanuel could barely wait to see it from his family’s house, where he could step from the third floor balcony onto the flat ledge of the roof and see the earth divided into thirds: first the beach, then the sea, then the atmosphere.

He continued along the road and found that his memory was starting to kick in, so he switched off his GPS and followed the route that old routines had ingrained in his mind. His thoughts wandered back and forth through his life until they settled themselves fifteen years in the past. The present night may as well have been one of those nights from years ago, and now it surprised Emmanuel that his car didn’t smell like liquor. But the silence—the absence of voices and of music and of blaring wind passing through rolled-down windows—mounted until Emmanuel’s ears felt muffled, and he found himself hurtling forward fifteen years and reentering the current drive.

As he took the next exit, his entire body began to buzz with the distinct sensation that he was travelling in the right direction. He had something of a compass in his soul, and to him it was palpable that everything about this trip—from the job prospect to his familiar lodgings to the area itself—aligned with more divine notions of how his life should progress. His job interview at the health center was not for another week,but he wanted the time to settle back into a house and a town that he had not lived in since he was eighteen. His parents had bought the vacation home when he was a child, but it ended up being paraphernalia for a life that they were never living.

The only vacation that Emmanuel could remember was when his parents had flown across the country to attend to asupposed family emergency, yet had packed scuba diving gear and a beach umbrella. To his knowledge, the only person who had ever spent any significant time in the house was him.

As he drove down the last stretch of highway, he thought about the colossal bridge that was only a few miles from the house. It was a brutalist matrix of concrete slabs, yet it lit up at night, brilliantly, in red, white, and blue, theneon of its pillars reflecting off the blank sky and giving the effect of perpetual evening. Emmanuel wondered if it still bathed the shore in its glow.

The road on which he drove narrowed, and indeterminate wisps of light in the distance began to clarify and take shape. Fainter beams shot towards the sky, while more concentrated brilliance took the form of a bridge, its distinct columns and the baubles atop presiding over the highway and the sea. Emmanuel could also make out the silhouette of his home, which like a dormant sentinel watched him in turn. They exchanged a silent greeting when he approached the placid string of duplexes. The tires of Emmanuel’s car emitted a hollow crackle as they glided across the small parking lot, a sound that almost echoed, that tickled the stillness. When he disembarked, the air embraced him as it would an old friend, and on its stinging fall breath were traces of the past season.A thin but distinct layer of sand coated the lot, and the crisp edges of the homes scraped against the night.

Fifteen years ago, he had made this same drive in the haze of early summer. Emmanuel recalled standing in his parents’ driveway, prepared to blaze off to the shore, sifting through the last of the legal notices and letters that had been accumulating on the floor of his car for months. His mom had taken to piling them there so that she wouldn’t have to think about them. Or perhaps to somehow involve him, in hopes that he would become entangled and have no choice but to stay. And yet it had been her idea to send him to the vacation home while she and Emmanuel’s dad continued their arduous battles. For months his dad’s proclamations that Emmanuel’s mom was a liar and that everybody in the world knew it rang out through the house, assertions matched in ire only by the prosecutor in the courtroom as he set out to prove that Emmanuel’s mom had built her legal career on bribes and compromised evidence. Amidst the concurrent criminal trial and divorce proceedings, a teenage son had been too much to handle, so Emmanuel’s mom had slipped the key to the vacation home onto his key ring and told him to pack a suitcase.

It was the onset of summer when his parents had sent him away, and when Emmanuel had arrived at the beach years ago, the pang of his soul’s compass told him that his exile was provident. A fuzziness swept across the coast andobscured thought from the thinker, which in turn made it easier for Emmanuel to embrace the distance. He had spent the first week on the house’s balcony, staring out into the thick, granular air and forgetting that time was passing. One night he discovered that he could climb onto the roof, and spent most of his next week up there, observing the sea by day and the lit up bridge by night.

In the middle of the third week, he had remembered that his parents had a runabout moored to the dock behind the house, just beyond a belt of eclectic foliage. He took the boat out on the water, but it was difficult to maneuver amid the strong afternoon winds and choppy waves. Far from the shore and barely able to control the craft’s direction, he decided to sail it back in. He carefully retied it to the dock cleats, straining to fasten the knot as tight as he possibly could. Tense, he sat curled up on the dock, the wind roaring at his back. The runabout began to drift, tugging at the rope as if it wanted to sail off of its own accord, and Emmanuel hurriedly untied and retied the cleat hitch to secure itto the dock. Sensing the temptation of the horizon, he feared that the boat would meander on its way in search of something greater and strand him on the beach. He told himself that if he remoored the boat fifty times, this would not happen. And so, he untied and retied the knot fifty-one times, because he believed in good luck.

Now, he stood on the balcony and tried to make out the forms of the dock and the boat in the pitch-dark. Nestling his foot on top of the railing and in a corner where the exterior walls of the house met, Emmanuel hoisted himself onto the flat portion of the roof. Remembering the way he used to situate himself when he was younger, he sprawled out across the ledge and tucked his hands under his chin. Night warily approached morning, and the shingles were already dewy. From up on the roof, Emmanuel could see every shadow that the bridge cast with its radiant light. The bridge was on the same schedule as the stars, beaming to life when the sun set and powering down when the sun rose again.

Emmanuel slept until noon the next day, and when he groggily rolled out of bed his surroundings disoriented him:the soft walls engulfed in sunlight, the docile paintings tastefully arranged on the walls, the smell of an old, scented candle pervading. Taking a walk around the house, he noticed that in the light of day it appeared lived-in. The couch cushions were awry and had retained an imprint from someone sitting on them. The coffee table sat crooked and too far off to the side of the living room, and upon close inspection, the coasters on top of it had faint rings. Emmanuel, conscious not to fix the cushions, sat down on the couchand turned on the TV, finding that it was paused in the middle of a movie. He thought this curious, and began wandering about the rest of the house and searching for any other signs of life. He explored every room, looking throughdrawers and cabinets. When he opened the door to the fridge, a pungent smell wafted out, emanating from the host of bottles populating the shelves. Emmanuel noticed a small, shiny object lying inside and reached in for it—it was a bottle opener shoddily engraved with the name “Byron.”

Now Emmanuel was certain that his parents had not visited the house since his stay fifteen years ago. The memory of Byron bumbling about the room and boasting about his engraved bottle opener rushed back and made Emmanuel chuckle. A group of people—Emmanuel could not remember exactly who—had challenged Byron to try to open a beer with his bare hands, and Byron, never one to turn down a challenge, ended up slicing into his palm with the bottle cap by accident. Amidst the fray, hehad tossed his bottle opener into the fridge, where it was to remain for a decade and a half.

Each time Emmanuel stumbled across a stray item while exploring the house, he wondered if it was a relic from the constant stream of people that had come and gone from the home during that summer. Thinking back on it, he could not even hazard a guess as to how many people had frequented the place, and he certainly could not remember all of the names. He had met Byron a month into his stay, when Byron had been an ever-roving reveler. Ambitious and eager to get away from his controlling parents, Byron had left home as early as possible to pursue photography, thoughhad discovered a penchant for partying. He could not afford an apartment in the town and had been going between couch-surfing and sleeping in his car, so Emmanuel let him stay at his family’s vacation home in exchange for whatever rent Byron could pay, which was never much. Without warning, a bevy of the ever-charismatic Byron’s friends began showing up to the house en masse, drinking and hollering and phoning even more people. This continued for the rest of the summer.

Emmanuel collected all of the miscellaneous items left by his past guests and put them all in a cardboard box, before deciding to take each article out and put it back exactly where he had found it. He paced around the house for a good hour, making sure everything was in its proper place before the growls from his stomach got the better of him, and he decided to drive to a restaurant. Pulling away, he could see clearly the house in the rearview mirror and the bridge up ahead. As he crossed it inthe daylight, its thick beige facades seemed stark and unwieldy, and its sagging cables seemed a blight. Juxtaposed with the twinkling, ebbing water below, the bridge was an imposition, flat and lackluster compared to its nocturnal alter ego, which may as well have been the town’s nexus. To Emmanuel it was fascinating that something’s function and significance could change so drastically depending on which cosmic orb lit the sky.

The highway took him past long stretches of shore before depositing him in the heart of the town, where he found a parking spot and walked to the restaurant. Inside, it was dim and humid and loud, the punk rock blasting over the speakers keeping rhythm with the movement of patrons and waiters. Thebustle comforted him, and he eased over to a seat at the bar. He sat there for a few minutes fidgeting with a toothpick before the bartender finally made his way over. The man was about Emmanuel’s age, with a faint beard and a hardened face.

“What’ll it be, my friend?” the bartender asked. “Can I take a look at themenu?” Emmanuel replied.

The bartender gave a slight nod, then dashed off to the other end of the bar. On his way back with the menu, thebartender was stopped by another customer, who quipped something to him and made him guffaw. That same laugh had echoed through Emmanuel’s house years earlier, and there, under the faint lights and amidst the blaring music, Emmanuel recognized the bartender as one of Byron’s old friends. Clear as day, he could remember the man’s booming voice as he dared Byron to open a beer with his bare hands.

When the bartender returned with the menu, Emmanuel wagged a finger at him. “I used to know you,” he said matter-of-factly.

The bartender rocked his head back and grinned, wiping the inside of a glass with a towel as he spoke. “Oh yeah?” he replied.

“Across the bridge, that’s where my house is. Right near the shore. I think you used to hang out over there.”

The bartender cocked his head as if trying to remember. Finally, the memory sparked. “Yeah, oh yeah, okay,” he said, nodding.

“We used to pull our cars onto the beach and light fireworks,” Emmanuel said. More memories began to fall into place for the bartender. “Emmanuel, right?” Emmanuel smiled. “Yeah.”

Nodding for a moment, the bartender supplied, “Marvin.”

“Marvin, yes.”

Marvin excused himself to attend to something in the kitchen and disappeared.

Emmanuel tried to peruse the menu, but thoughts of the past occupied his mind. When Marvin returned, Emmanuel asked, “Does everybody still get together?”

“Not really, we’re all kind of busy these days,” he replied, chuckling. He glanced around. “You know, I like my job. I’m trying to hang onto it while I can. It’s turned out to be a pretty good thing.”

“I’ve got a job interview next week. At the medical center. I just finished my M.D.” Marvin raised his eyebrows. “You can do a lot with that.”

Emmanuel shrugged. “They don’t need any more general practitioners at the medical center right now, so I’ll start at a lower position.”

“Still, good money. Wish I had been able to do that.”

“It’s been fifteen years, but this place is pretty much just how I left it.”

Marvin turned his head. “The way someone put it to me recently was that the people here change more than thetown does.” He thought for a moment, then continued, “If the hospital isn’t offering the job you want, why did you come all the way down here to interview?”

Emmanuel began taking toothpicks from the plastic cup in front of him and laying them out on the countertop. “Itjust feels right, you know.” He arranged them in a continuous line, the end of one toothpick just barely brushing against the beginning of the next. “Whenever I see a compass,” he continued, “I always think of that feeling, you know, when something feels like it is as it should be.”

“Because a compass tells you where to go?”

“Yeah. I like to think of it as a compass in my soul. That’s what guides me.”

Marvin raised his eyebrows pensively. “I’ve never thought about what guides me.

Whatever it is, it’s different now, probably, then whatever was guiding me back when we used to know each other.”

Emmanuel wiped his hand across the bar and ruined his line of toothpicks, then began rebuilding it again.

Marvin continued, “I’m also not sure I believe in there being one set direction for my life. I like to think I have many roads before me.”

He looked at Emmanuel. “Emmanuel, think about all the other places you could get a job. With an M.D., you can go just about anywhere.”

Emmanuel simply nodded. The alarm on Marvin’s watch sounded, the shrill beep cutting through the noise of the restaurant.

“Emmanuel, it’s been great catching up with you. It was truly good to see you, my friend, but I’m going to have to cut things short. My shift just ended. I’m going home to see my kid.”

“It was good to see you, Marvin.”

Marvin straightened up a few things behind the bar, then departed with a curt wave. Emmanuel nodded back, then glanced back down and began destroying and rebuilding his toothpick line once again.

He returned to the house later that evening and grabbed a stale beer from the fridge. Slipping Byron’s bottle opener into his pocket, he meandered up the stairs and onto the balcony, waiting for the sun to set and for the bridge to light up with its red, white, and blue. The wind picked up and then calmed again, and the nearby pines oscillated in solidarity with the lapping, foaming tide. The deeper blue of afternoon paled to a gray as the day waned, and as the sun charted a course that would lead it below the horizon, the sky began to acquire a deep red. Emmanuel retrieved the bottleopener and lined it up with the cap. It popped off crisply but hit the deck almost silently.

The red of the sky became darker and darker until the atmosphere was a shadow above the sand and sea. Patient and stolid, Emmanuel waited for the bridge to ignite in neon. The wind subsided, bathing the night in silence, and with silence came stillness. The hours wore on, and the bridge remained as it was during the daylight hours: dormant. Emmanuel longed to see it light up one last time, because he knew he would be leaving in the early morning. Somewhere in the recesses of his soul lay the remains of a compass, and he would need the bridge’s light to guide him.