I look up to see the businessman staring at me this time.
I say, “It looks like it will be a lovely day!”
He says, “It’s supposed to rain in the afternoon.”
I say, “Isn’t it always?”
Stanzi—Early Friday Morning—Fuel
IN THE PLACE OF ARRIVALS
In the middle of the night, something wakes me from deep sleep and a dream. It’s Patricia. She’s standing next to my bed, watching me sleep.
“I’m not watching you sleep,” she whispers. “I need you. Get up.”
I get up and slip my clothing on.
“Leave the coat,” she says as I try to slip my warm, slept-in lab coat back over my clothes. “It’s white. People will see us.”
I know I can’t leave the coat. She must understand because she waits as I remove my clothes and put the coat on, and then put my darker clothing back on top.
As we leave the tree house, she says, “We’ve been collecting fuel.”
I’m still just coming out of REM sleep. I think, We?
“We’ve been waiting for this day.”
“You waited for Friday?”
“We waited for the day we had a helicopter,” she said. “It’s my turn. We decided yesterday.”
“You take turns?”
“The helicopter can only handle so much weight,” she says. “We can’t all go at once.”
“I can see it on Tuesdays.”
“I know.”
“You can see it every day, right?”
“Yes.”
“What about the others?”
“They can see it all the time, too. But they haven’t found yours. Yet.”
“How do you collect fuel?” I ask. But then I look at Patricia and I see she’s crying and say, “I’m sorry.”
She removes a small jar from the pocket of her Windbreaker, stops and holds the open jar to her cheek, and lets the tear drop in. Then she replaces the lid and continues to lead me through a forest far below where the genius village is.
I wonder if she knows that Gustav and I are all the helicopter will carry.
“It will carry exactly one hundred and forty pounds more,” she says.
I wonder where our supplies will go.
“We can’t fit any supplies.”
I wonder if we will crash.
“We won’t crash. I know you worry.”
I wonder how she knows I worry.
“I know because it’s in your face.”
I wonder if I’m a human circulatory system, turning myself around over and over like China, my heart twisting in on itself.
“That’s a strange thought. I don’t know what that would look like.”
I say, aloud, “It would look like a crash. Or a bomb. Or a school shooting. It would look like a note that says, Gone to bed. TV dinner in freezer. Make sure you turn out the lights.”
At this, Patricia stops again and retrieves her jar. She collects her tears and asks me if I want to cry and I tell her I never cry.
I tell her about my dream—the one I was having when she woke me up.
There were two coffins this time. There was a small one and a smaller one.
She says, “What does it mean?”
I answer her in my head. It means it could have been worse.
At the Place of Arrivals there is a magical spot. I don’t believe in magic, so I can only guess that something geological or chemical has caused the magic. I’ll ask Gustav in the morning. For now, I sit and watch as Patricia and two others, the law expert and the mathematics genius, collect their tears in jars. Nothing was said to make them cry. No one hit them. No one sent them a dissolution of marriage. No one gave them a standardized test. No one set off a bomb drill alarm. They simply arrived here at this spot and they began to cry.
I wonder the obvious—if tears fuel the helicopter.
“Not quite,” Patricia says.
“I’m not sure what that means,” I say.
“Well, how did you get here? Why did you leave? What made you come to a place you didn’t even know existed?”
I think about this question for one hundred of their tears. I come up with many answers. Boredom, freedom, the drills, the answers, the bush man, Gustav.
Patricia says inside my head, It had something to do with your dream, didn’t it? The two coffins?
“My parents take me to weird places on vacation,” I say. “Sometimes the hotels have pools, but we don’t swim, out of respect for the dead.” I think of the dream and the two coffins—a small one and a smaller one. There is a feeling in my chest like someone is drilling.
The three of them cry for hours. After three full jars of tears are collected, secured, and buried, the four of us leave the area of crying. I’m relieved. I felt intense pain while I was there, but I didn’t cry.
The mathematician and the law expert go in different directions. Patricia tells me to wait outside until she gets into the tree house. She tells me to count to one hundred. Before I get to fifty, the door opens and Gustav comes outside.
He says, “We’ll leave tonight.”
He says, “We’ll take Patricia.”
He says, “We’ll have to make up our tests. Probably on Monday.”
The Interviews III—Friday
It’s first light Friday morning. The man rolls out of the king-sized hotel bed and walks to the bathroom and urinates so loudly that he wakes the woman still under the sheets.
Interview #1 Lansdale Cruise
“Don’t you like waking up early?” the man asks.
“No.” She squints and then covers her head with the sheets again.
“Do you want to order room service?” he asks.
“No.”
“The eggs Benedict here are delicious,” he says. “Should I order you a plate?”
She says something but it’s muffled by the sheets. He orders two plates of eggs Benedict and a pot of coffee from room service and then jumps on the bed until she finally pokes her head out.
“Fuck off!” she says.
“Oh, come on,” he says.
She stares at him. Oh, come on.
“Don’t be such a spoilsport.”
“Spoilsport?” she says. “What are you, ninety? Nobody says that shit anymore.”
“I do.”
“Fuck off,” she says again.
“Oh, come on,” he says again.
She sits up with difficulty. Her hair is tangled around the pillows and has grown like creeper around the bed frame. As she unwinds it from around the bedside table lamp, she says, “Oh, come on? Isn’t that what you all say?”
The man looks confused.
“How else would you get anything if not for Oh, come on?”
“You told me last night that you wanted to settle down,” he says. “Remember?”
“And my hair is now ten feet longer than it was then, isn’t it?”
Lansdale picks up her phone and takes a picture of the man in his underwear. She smiles. When breakfast comes thirty minutes later, she decides he is probably not the man she wants to marry. He blows his nose in the shower and his hair is thinning. I could probably do better.
Interview #2 The secretary at the high school
There is a sign on all entrances to the school. They read: NO ENTRY. TESTING IN PROGRESS.
The secretary will not let the man into the building. When he presses the buzzer on the intercom a third time, she stands up at her desk and mouths the words Go away. He holds up his press credentials.
“What do you want?” she asks, through the intercom.
“I was here yesterday and the day before. I’m doing a story about the missing kids.”
“Somebody found them. Now go away.”
“Somebody found them?” he asks. “I need to know more about this.”
“Then read the damn newspaper,” she says.
Interview #3 The old man at the convenience store
“Do you have a paper with the story about the mis
sing kids being found?” the man asks. “I tried looking it up on the Internet on the way, but I couldn’t find anything.”
“I don’t read newspapers,” the old man says. “And I sure as shit don’t look at the Internet.”
The man picks up the local paper and starts to go through it.
“This ain’t a library. You either buy it or you don’t. Then you read it.”
The man sighs.
The cameraman asks, as he films, “Do you know anything about Gustav or his helicopter?”
“I might,” the old man answers.
“You know Gustav?” the cameraman asks.
“I know everyone,” the old man says. “I’m the neighborhood know-everyone man.”
The man puts the newspaper on the counter along with a dollar.
“It’s a dollar thirty-five,” the neighborhood know-everyone man says.
The man slaps down two quarters and goes out to the SUV. The cameraman stays and keeps rolling.
“Do you think Gustav built a helicopter for real?” the cameraman asks.
“That boy could build anything he wants. He’s a genius.”
“We’ve heard that. We’ve heard that ____________ and Gustav flew away in a helicopter on Tuesday. Some people say they were invisible.”
“Invisible? Naw. I saw Gustav fly over with my own eyes. Girl in the science coat was with him.”
“So the helicopter is real?”
“But you can’t see it,” the neighborhood know-everyone man says. “Not unless you need to.”
The SUV horn is loud. It makes the cameraman jump. He stops recording and holds the camera to his side.
“Thanks,” he says. “I appreciate you talking to us.”
“I wasn’t talking to him,” he says. “I was only talking to you.”
The horn honks again.
“I apologize for his lack of patience. He’s from LA.”
“I heard he was from Ohio,” the know-everyone man says.
When the cameraman gets back into the SUV, the man says, “I wanted to be back in LA by now.”
“Why don’t you give up on this story?” the cameraman asks. “It’s not like we’re actually getting anywhere.”
The man says, “We should find that Kenneth guy. He can probably tell us everything.”
Interviews #4, #5, #6 & #7 Kenneth’s neighbors
The man asks, “Do you know where Kenneth lives?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me?”
“No.”
The man asks, “Do you know where Kenneth lives?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me?”
“No.”
The man asks, “Do you know where Kenneth lives?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me?”
“No.”
The man asks, “Do you know where Kenneth lives?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me?”
“No.”
Interview #8 China Knowles’s mother
China’s mother is dressed in a lavender velour track suit. “She’s gone. Left this morning.”
The man looks concerned. “Is she looking for her friends?”
“What friends?” she asks.
“Gustav? ____________?”
“Oh. I doubt it. The police say she took the bus to New York City in the middle of the night.”
“Do you think that’s where Gustav and ____________ are, too?”
“China was looking for a place to blend in. Those two were looking for a place to stand out,” she says. “Is that camera rolling?”
“Yes,” the cameraman says.
“Don’t you have to ask permission before you film me?”
Just as the man begins to explain, she slams the door.
Interview #9 Stanzi’s parents
Stanzi’s mother opens the door and she is covered in blood. Stanzi’s father stands behind her and he is holding a small stuffed rabbit.
“What happened?” the man asks.
Stanzi’s parents answer, together, “What do you mean?”
“Has there been an accident?”
Stanzi’s parents answer, “Yes. Yes.”
The cameraman has his phone in his palm. “I’ll call 911.”
Stanzi’s parents say, “It’s too late for that.”
“You clearly need help!” he says.
“Yes. Yes, we do,” they answer. “But there is none.”
The man inspects them and wonders if the blood is fake. He says, “Is that blood real?”
Stanzi’s parents answer, “No blood is real blood unless someone cares.”
Interview #10 The school principal
The man and the cameraman have parked the SUV in the faculty parking lot. They hope to catch a teacher willing to talk on the way to lunch.
A piece of macadam moves and shifts until a perfect circle of it lifts from the ground. The principal climbs out of the hole and when she stands in the lot, she brushes the dirt from her pantsuit and heads toward her car, three spaces from the hole.
The man says, “Can we talk to you once more about the missing kids?”
“Who are you?”
“We were in your office on Wednesday. Remember? We’ve spoken to several of your teachers, too.”
“I have to get to lunch,” she says. “It’s testing day.”
“Just two minutes?” the man says.
“Fine,” she answers.
“Has anyone heard from them?”
“Who?”
“Gustav and ____________,” he says.
“No.”
“What about the helicopter? Did your science department know he was building one?”
“Who?” she asks.
“Gustav. He built a helicopter.”
“That’s what you think.”
“That’s what everyone tells us.”
“Not me.”
The man flips through his notes. “That’s true. When you talked to us last we were talking about the bomb threats.”
“We haven’t had one in two days. It’s a miracle,” she says.
“But we were here yesterday. The drill came as we talked to your health teacher.”
“Rosemary?”
“Yes,” the man says, checking his notes in his notepad.
“That woman puts condoms on bananas for a living. I wish I had it so easy.”
“So you haven’t had a threat today?”
“Not that I know of. I’ve been in my office. They removed my phone so we could fit more paper onto my desk.”
“You don’t have a phone?”
She looks at the man like he is stupid. “Who wants a phone when all it ever does is ring?”
Interview #11 A mother who’s come to pick her son up from school
The woman is in workout gear, sitting in her car, which is parked in the pickup zone.
“I just got back from the gym. I look a mess.”
“We won’t take long,” the man says. “Just a question about the school and some—”
When the woman opens her mouth, the story comes out in one long string. She doesn’t even have to move her lips. She just opens wide, and her mouth is like a radio. “Someone sent a bomb threat to the school board meeting last night. It was spelled out on the assorted melon plate. It said, Tomorrow. The board debated what this could mean for forty-five minutes. Some thought it was a threat. Others thought it was a message from their respective gods to remind them of what power they have. Someone thought the melon cubes could have shifted in transit. Someone asked if the melons were American melons or imported. The meeting adjourned to a board member’s house, where they were going to plan a trip to shoot turkeys with bows and arrows.”
She closes her mouth.
The man asks, “Are you on the board?”
She says, “Oh, look! There’s Henry now! Looks like the board was wrong! First day without a bomb threat since September.”
As the kid gets into
the passenger’s seat he says to his mother, “You went on TV in your gym clothes?”
The man and the cameraman arrive back at the hotel, and the man goes directly to the bar and orders a double. The cameraman orders a soda. The police chief sits in the corner of the bar with four men from the school board. They’re talking about shooting turkeys.
The man grows angry as he eavesdrops on the conversation. He tells the cameraman that he’s going back to his room.
There he finds Lansdale Cruise freshening up at the vanity in the bathroom.
“You’re still here?”
“It was testing day. You didn’t think I was going to that, did you?”
“I’m busy now,” he says. “You’ll have to go.”
Lansdale says, “My father beats me.”
The man says, “I don’t think that’s true.”
Lansdale says, “I’m the one sending the bomb threats.”
The man says, “I don’t think that’s true, either.”
Lansdale says, brushing a new lock of hair that has fallen in front of her face out of the way, “I’ve got superpowers. You’ll see.”
“You weren’t that great of a lay,” he says. He opens the door.
Lansdale gathers her things. On her way out the door she says, “You’re not so great of a lay, either. Plus, your hair is thinning and your balls smell like dog shit.”
China Knowles—Friday—Tidal Wave
I am China, right side in. I’m in New York City. Shane isn’t answering his phone and he didn’t meet me at Port Authority. The old me—a stomach, a colon, a rectum—might retreat now, but instead, I know I will find him if I look hard enough.
My mother has called me three times but I didn’t pick up. Then she stopped. She texted to say the police know where I am. But I’m not a criminal, so I’m not afraid as I step onto the uptown A train. I’m not afraid as I step out of the subway station and walk up Broadway. I’m not afraid when I ring Shane’s old door buzzer. I’m not even afraid when no one answers my buzz.
I buy a juice at the juice bar downstairs.