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Kinkajou

VIVIAN IS STANDING NEAR THE BACK of her camper van, by the sink, tearing a stack of tortillas into pieces and throwing the pieces against the opposite wall of the van while also screaming at me.

I can see her, in my mind, tearing a clump of tortillas into two half-clumps, then tearing the half-clumps into quarter-clumps, and so on, until she can’t tear the tortillas into any more clumps, the clumps are too thick to be torn, at which point she begins throwing the clumps against the wall of the van, or rather against the window of the van, for there’s a window there, now that I think of it, where she’s doing all this throwing.

I can’t remember what she’s screaming, specifically. All I know is that it’s dark and that I’m concerned that someone will hear her screams and call the Madrid police, who will then come and shine their flashlights into the van and inform us that we can’t park anymore behind the used auto parts store, and so we’ll be forced to drive to the next little New Mexico town and search for another suitably isolated spot to park – a nearly impossible task in the dark.

Or no, I do remember what she’s screaming, or rather part of what she’s screaming, she’s screaming, “I’ll fucking scream if I want to fucking scream."

Naturally she’s screaming this after I asked her to stop screaming.

In point of fact, I refused to discuss whatever Vivian was screaming about until she managed to get a grip on herself, as I put it.

This only made her more upset, my insistence that she get a grip on herself, and of course I had said it to upset her.

Similarly she screamed because she knew how much I hated it when she screamed.

We both did what we did to provoke the other, both feeling provoked.

Which explains everything, pretty much, while explaining nothing.

However, I don’t believe that we even considered breaking up this night as we were to meet Georgia the next morning at the Albuquerque airport, then drive together, the three of us, back home to San Francisco. So our shared commitment to Georgia kept us together for the time being.

But only for the time being. Because three days later we broke up in Kirstie Alley’s shower, of this I’m certain, for I distinctly recall arguing with Vivian while still in the shower about who was going to go out of the shower and break the news to Georgia, who was lying on Kirstie Alley’s couch with an ice pack on her nose, having been bitten that morning by one of Kirstie Alley’s kinkajous.

The kinkajou. Kirstie Alley owned an entire menagerie of rare and exotic animals, including seven Kinakjous, I counted them, Kirstie Alley being a fanatical animal lover.

However, Vivian and I must have reconciled immediately after our shower break-up, for we’re back together in my mind as we drive up the pacific coast to San Francisco.

Or perhaps we’re just acting like we’re together for Georgia’s benefit, who after all is stuck with us and even has to sleep with us, head to foot and foot to head, in Vivian’s fold-out bed.

Most likely, Georgia had no clue what was happening in Kirstie Alley’s shower since Vivian didn’t scream or even raise her voice this time.

She did cry, however, Vivian did, although not so loudly as to be heard from the couch.

Actually we both cried – first Vivian, then me. I cried in response to Vivian, who cried because we were really breaking up this time.

I know it’s crazy, but I can’t remember if we were naked in the shower or what were we. Because I have this strange feeling that we stood in the shower without actually showering, that we never bothered to turn on the water or to wash ourselves, although admittedly I have trouble explaining why we would have done this.

I should say that we never actually met Kirstie Alley while staying on Kirstie Alley’s estate. Not that we so much wanted to meet Kirstie Alley.

The fact is, Georgia’s cousin Skye, who was Kirstie Alley’s estate manager at the time, had to explain to us who Kirstie Alley was, as the three of us had never before heard of Kirstie Alley.

Well, that’s not entirely true, for Vivian thought that the name Kirstie Alley sounded somewhat familiar, although she wondered if this wasn’t a trick of the mind, to think you remember something when what you’re really remembering is having just heard it.

I try to conjure an image of Vivian, to see what if anything she is wearing in the shower, but all the images that come to me seem to come from other times, other showers.

Skye considered this charming, the fact that none of us watched television or read certain magazines or had any way of knowing who Kirstie Alley was, and so she, Skye, promised to tell the whole story to Kirstie Alley, for Kirstie Alley was oppressed, as Skye put it, by her celebrity.

Eventually Vivian ran out of tortillas to throw and things to scream and then at some point we folded out her fold-out bed and went to sleep.

Not that I specifically remember these things. No, it’s more a matter of what I don’t remember. Because if for example Vivian continued to scream half the night, then this would be what I would remember from that time, the fact that Vivian screamed half the night, so that whenever I thought about Madrid or the used auto parts store or Vivian’s van or any number of things, I would remember how much Vivian screamed that night, as opposed to remembering, say, what she did to those tortillas.

I loved Vivian, I know I did, I just don’t remember loving her. Or I remember it in a general sense of knowing something to be true without knowing, or remembering, the specifics of it, how it felt to feel that way.

Strange as it seems, the kinkajou that bit Georgia on the bridge of her nose is so much clearer in my mind than anything else.

It resembled a raccoon, an abnormally long and skinny raccoon with large lustrous eyes.

Skye removed it from its cage and passed it to Georgia, who for some reason wanted to hold it. The animal appeared comfortable there, at peace, and then without warning leaned over and bit Georgia on the bridge of her nose.

Skye tended to the wound, then called Kirstie Alley at the hospital where Kirstie Alley’s father-in-law was dying of cancer to tell Kirstie Alley what had happened.

No doubt I remember this part because Skye used a cellular phone to make the call.

It was the first time I’d ever seen a cellular phone, and naturally I considered it ridiculous.

Indeed, I thought many things on that estate ridiculous, without mentioning these thoughts to Skye, who after all was Georgia’s cousin and who may very well have liked the estate and Kirstie Alley and even Kirstie Alley’s surreal collection of animals.

Many of which, I should have said, were locked in cages, presumably to keep them from attacking each other, while others, including a pack of lion-like dogs, wandered freely.

I watched these dogs from Kirstie Alley’s living room window as they sauntered past the swimming pool.

In memory, they have become more and more like lions, until what I see now are dog-like lions as opposed to lion-like dogs.

Now that I think of it, it wasn’t a shower at all but a sauna. Yes, it was a sauna with a door with a little window and Vivian and I sat on opposite benches and were fully clothed. We had been fighting and had gone into the sauna in deference to Georgia, who was sprawled on the living room couch, holding an ice pack to her nose.

Judging from what Skye was saying in response to what Kirstie Alley was saying, Kirstie Alley was more concerned with her kinkajou than with Georgia, despite the fact that it was Georgia who’d been bit. Evidently kinkajou’s rarely bite except in self-defense, so Kirstie Alley wanted to know what had made the kinkajou feel threatened.

Not to harp on the kinkajou, but why do I remember that creature so distinctly, as though it were here now before me, yet cannot recall what Vivian screamed in her van, nor anything of what was said in Kirstie Alley’s sauna? It is curious.

It is curious, too, that the only two scenes I can still recall with any clarity – the one in Vivian’s van and the one in Kirstie Alley’s sauna – took place in such confined spaces.

I say this because our final break-up – our only true break-up, really – also took place in a confined space, that being the space of our closet.

Here I exaggerate, for the entire break-up didn’t take place in the closet, just the part near the end when Vivian wept and said that I had forgotten her heart and so I wept and said no, no, no, I could never forget her heart because her heart was with me always and always would be.

That part.

The closet was quite large for a closet.

Actually it wasn’t a closet in the strict sense of the word but simply an enclosed space under the stairs in which Vivian would store things, lacking enough closets in the strict sense of the word.

Soon after we returned to San Francisco, Vivian moved all of her things out of the closet and transformed the space into a bedroom of sorts.

I can still see her folding her futon into thirds so as to fit it through the narrow doorway.

This is really the end, I thought as she struggled to shove the futon into the closet – or rather the bedroom, I suppose.

Naturally I’d had similar thoughts in Kirstie Alley’s sauna, thinking that the end too, but had been mistaken.

For the life of me, I cannot recall what happened between this shoving incident with Vivian and her futon and the earlier scene in Kirstie Alley’s sauna.

In my mind Vivian and I are sitting in the sauna arguing over who’s going to go to the living room to break the news to Georgia, and then suddenly we’re back in our loft in San Francisco and Vivian is straining to wedge her futon into the closet slash bedroom and I’m thinking – correctly, as it turns out – that the relationship is really over this time – only I can’t remember now why it’s over, which is to say what inspired or rather provoked Vivian to try to cram her futon through the doorway of the closet.

Instead all I can think of is Kirstie Alley’s kinkajou – meaning the one that bit Georgia on the bridge of her nose.

Each time I try to remember this period, the stretch run, so to speak, of my relationship with Vivian, I remember that kinkajou.

Admittedly I also recall the scene in Vivian’s van behind the used auto parts store, and yes, I also remember something of our failed break-up three days later in Kirstie’s Alley sauna – but it is the kinkajou that dominates my memory.

I try to recollect what Vivian screamed in her van, but all I can see in my mind is the kinkajou. I try to reconstruct our fight in Kirstie Alley’s sauna, and find myself thinking instead of the kinkajou, its soft woolly fur.

I lived for three years with Vivian. We were lovers, best friends. I would prefer to not dwell so much on the kinkajou.

We went on a van trip, and then once we returned to our loft in San Francisco, Vivian began sleeping in what had been our one and only closet. You would think I would remember something other than the kinkajou.

I have discussed this with Georgia, who remembers the kinkajou as well as I, although in her case it makes more sense, since she was the one it bit.

Naturally Georgia knows nothing of what Vivian said in the sauna, nor anything of what Vivian screamed in her van, having been elsewhere on both occasions. It is up to me to remember and I have forgotten.

Skye took the kinkajou from its cage and held it as one holds a baby.

I felt that this was unnatural. I felt that Kirstie Alley, to the extent that I knew her, was unnatural. I felt that it was unnatural when Skye called Kirstie Alley on her cellular phone. I felt that it was unnatural that Kirstie Alley wanted to know what had made the kinkajou feel threatened.

Vivian may have seemed out of control, but still she was careful to lay the remaining clumps of tortillas to one side, on the edge of the sink, so that she could return to these later.

The kinkajou had the kind of tail that monkeys have, the kind that curl and in doing so grip.

The kinkajou had been flown in from South America, so that it could live with Kirstie Alley on her estate.

I don’t know why the kinkajou bit Georgia. I don’t think anyone knows why the kinkajou bit Georgia. But this is what happened, I saw it happen, and then I saw Georgia’s nose.

Vivian saw it as well, for she was there, although I don’t specifically recall her being there.

I recall the kinkajou, though, and also Skye, and of course Georgia. All of the principle players, as it were.

Except Vivian.

So what I keep asking myself each time I think of the kinkajou, not intending to think of the kinkajou, is this – What would I remember had the kinkajou not happened to bite Georgia on the bridge of her nose? What would I remember had the kinkajou missed?