“I just found out today, how are they treating you here?”
“All right, I mean, what can they do?”
“Do you need anything?” I looked for her in her face, a face that was almost gone, glimpses of laughs and shrieks. She could have been fifty years old.
“No, I’m okay, what are you doing in Spain?”
“Work, they sent me over for a few weeks.” There was nothing to say, but to say goodbye was too defini-tive. I wanted to leave and forget her. The years were too many, our time together too frivolous for their to be anything to say. A nurse mercifully came in. “I’d bet-ter get going. I’ll come back before I leave.”
“I hope you’re all right.” Suddenly the fear ex-ploded in her face. I tried to put on a smile because the words didn’t come out. I felt her on my back as I walked out of the room, unable to turn around.
The mass of families in the hospital cafeteria com-forted me, their raw smells and cheap clothes a link to someplace where life and death were less dramatic. I was grateful that I had to see a salesman that afternoon. The solace I had always preferred now gave me panic, anything but being alone. My eyes jumped from side to side and my arms tensed, too close to the limit, think about your odds, they’re good, calm down, think about the debts.
CHAPTER 12
A generic hotel lobby, the European edition of TIME, pathetic articles that read like music videos. There had been a time when the international business environment had mystique, but I felt like a toothbrush peddler and to sell you need energy, lucky for me in this meeting I was the buyer. I couldn’t imagine talking to this guy after the morning, a gorgeous creature passed, no reaction, I had always been able to reach out for something, an excuse, an escape. So much was the same, the world had continued as before, no blemishes, no health problems, Madonna and Bill Gates fighting for headlines; maybe I too was the same, maybe I was OK. I wanted to believe that if something was drasti-cally wrong with me, there would be a noticeable change in the world. The worst part of leaving is know-ing your exit will go unnoticed.
The hair clumped together in strands of shiny black, the light fabric of the suit bounced with an air of quality. A young cocky smile put the finishing touches on what was sure to be a real prick. “Would you like something to drink?”
I wasn’t going to let wise guy give me any attitude. “A Jim Beam on the rocks.” He came back with a cof-fee for himself, handing me the drink without a smile. I felt it all come back into perspective; he began to speak, my head leaned back, eyes spun taking in the whole room. The terror was now an experience, a drug, the words were noise, the shaking in the arms faded before beginning. I suddenly felt good, almost euphoric. The fear stared but I was able to stare back. I rose, knowing I would fall back, enjoying it all the more.
“Our paprika is the most consistent on the market, it gives the constant color you need for you snack cus-tomers while adding flavor.”
“We’re not interested in flavor.” Inside a business skirt moved an alluring body, the Achilles tendon tight above the medium heels. I felt her, knowing what came after her created more tension. I wanted her before I returned to dwell on what I would have to dwell on. For the first time since that morning alcohol brought solace. Brochures opened on the table. I knew I had to let him add quality to his product before talking about price, he was doing his job. “Do you have samples with you?”
“Yes, I have samples of the 55 Asta and of the 130 Asta.”
“It looks like you have a good quality product, the ISO 9000 is a good selling point, we’ll need four con-tainers, if we can agree on price and if the samples meet our specs.” A young waitress moved her bare legs quickly across the lobby, the heavily embroidered bra was visible behind the white shirt. I had visions of her pregnant.
“You can’t compare are prices to the Moroccan prices, this is a different product.”
“We need to carry Spanish product because some of our clients require it, just give me the best prices you can.” It was a lie, if they wanted Spanish or Hungarian paprika we sold them Brazilian and they never knew the difference. Stroke the kid a little, it was a way to lose myself. Once into the hard numbers I did forget, when I returned I was disappointed that the price of paprika could take precedence over my life. I stroked enough so the kid invited me to another drink. I was practically guaranteeing to buy a few containers. Once I got back it would be the buyers problem. I would never have to hear from him again. The light had turned orange on its merciful trip to blue, comforting me in with the imminent darkness, a darkness spread over all of us, a fear and mystery that no one escaped. I would become less different, only to have the morning reveal my plague and my shame.
CHAPTER 13
The orange curtains flickered with the light of a television, well formed legs crossed to sustain the clip-board for a fortyish presenter. Her apparent function to heat up the emotions of the old and bearded intellects debating unemployment from behind their stability and respectability. I had tried to drink in a bar but it was too lonely, better alone than lonely. She turned, lifting the bottom leg over the top one, the skirt resting on the middle of the thigh. “In the United States there isn’t an unemployment problem because there is a free labor market. Our laws to protect the workers only wind up leaving them on the unemployment line.”
“We don’t want the savage capitalism of the Amer-icans, with enormous class differences. That’s what will happen if we free the labor markets, no health care, no job contracts, we’ll be working 12 hours a day to just get by.” They began to talk over each other, the legs tried to regain order, she was exciting me. What a piece, you knew she couldn’t get enough, she was at that age, she loved it. The young studs were starting to turn her on. She’d have preferred a debate about football.
The weight didn’t let me think, I tried tentatively, relieved that nothing could get through. I knew it would, but somehow the night protected me from it, the morning light would bring the terror, six hours. I was afraid to sleep, letting go of my mind was not advisa-ble; the uncontrollable terror of the dream world was an enemy to be avoided at all costs. Legs would go out tonight, dinner, a few drinks in the world of money and success, to worry over her problems. To live.
An American TV movie, the breakfast with orange juice, the kisses and big cars in suburban bliss, all to be shattered than put back together; learning something along the way of course. My movie wasn’t going to have a happy ending, and it didn’t start with orange juice for breakfast. CNN at 7:04 am, I had an hour and a half before getting the taxi to the airport. The smiling voice described a massacre in Africa, their day hadn’t started with orange juice either. Light melted my shield, I had drunk my self sober. I couldn’t bring my-self to shower; the daylight would accompany me across the world and I didn’t think I would make it.
The sunglasses couldn’t resist the glare. I felt pale and dirty, the words echoed in my head as I spoke them. The taxi driver’s eerie silence threatened me, and though I didn’t want to talk I asked the right questions to get him going. “Unbelievable, how could Barcelona play so badly with so many good players?”
“Mira,…Van Gaal…Nuñez,…Catalanes…! Mo-mentary interruptions kept him going, the city became country and then appeared the airport and the end of the monologue. Maybe I should have tried to enjoy the silence. The world was far too alive for my liking. I fell into myself and into the plane seat. “The flight to Madrid will take 50 minutes, pleas buckle your seat belts.” Yes, time to buckle up.
Two hours in Madrid Barajas. I suddenly didn’t want to leave. America is a place to live, not to die. The can of beer was fighting with me, a young girl, the skin on the shoulders tan under the thick flesh, long moist kisses with her boyfriend. She was definitely where she should be, and so was he, I would never be there again. I rolled my eyes to a mother feeding a ba-by, trying to control the toddlers by her side. She was a machine carrying out her duty
, unaware of her futile fight to keep the genes alive, but fighting nonetheless. I didn’t envy her, though I would have liked to have her. Were they all his? Maybe.
The steady studied walk of the stewardess, the uni-form tight were it should be, the tap of her shoes filling the silence of the long corridor. How many men lusted for her every day? I was just one more. I’d try anyway. I kept the eyes away till she reached the critical dis-tance, a calculated turn of the head and a long stare which she met instantly, for a second I had her full at-tention. She was mine only to continue her rhythmic stride down the hall and through the gate. Those were the instants that I would live for. From behind her skated a mop pushed by a wide blue uniform with painted nails and bright pink lipstick, her neighborhood reflecting off the institutional floor, the chunky body heating up the young lads and the old ones as well. A princess for a few years till she assumed the destiny of her bodily functions, the small hot apartments, the odors of sweat and baby shit, it would come and her reign would end.
The over-worked faces of flight attendants passed seemingly unprepared for a transatlantic flight, the plas-tic of the seat backs, the carpets; I found them all unworthy of the epic nature of what was about to occur. I longed to be young, nervous and looking for adventure. An unsettling attractive woman sat next to me, the plane backed out on to the tarmac while the emergency procedures were demonstrated on a film, for a brief moment we were all in the same boat.
The aircraft climbed, the fuselage rattling. I en-joyed my brief return to the common life, which ended much to quickly with the small bottles of Bourbon in ice filled plastic cups and curt quick smiles from the woman on my right. The first taste touched the far back of my tongue, the nausea rising, the sweat attacking my upper lip.
“Are you returning home?” She dipped her head before lifting it as she over-pronounced her words. I was sure she was crazy.
“Yeah, a business trip, how about yourself?” Hap-py to talk to someone.
“Personal matters.” A short smile, this could be enjoyable, a stroll down madness lane. I had begun drinking without noticing, the body working again. Deference and interest are the two keys to opening the mad mind, become one of their humble subjects.
“I hope everything turned out all right for you, mam.”
“Yes, I’m afraid they did.” Afraid? The over-anxious pompous smile, from whom did she pilfer it? I would have loved to met the original. Here I would make a tactical pause while I hailed a stewardess for another miniature bottle. The breathing became specif-ic, the hand movements timed. Finally the head turned and stared penetratingly. I began to wonder if I should have kept my mouth shut, eight more hours, luckily I was still able to drink.
“My daughter is going to marry a Spanish artist, a renowned painter who just happens to be the son of a Marques.” Was the daughter as nutty as the mother, probably not. I was imagining a junky who had painted a few discos; once a middle class brat who knew how to turn on the disdain to convince these two he was really someone. How much had he gotten out of her.
“Congratulations, that’s great! She’ll love living here, it’s a wonderful country. What brought her here?”
“She’s also an artist of course, a sculptor. She came over to do her last year in the university. She met Paco in an exhibition, he likes her work.” I’m sure he did. “His style is eclectic.” The tennis shoes with the slacks, comfortable American attire to travel with. Why was it so necessary to show the world how comfortable they could travel? Money, but not enough, the Celestine Prophecy on the seat back tray, next to the Virginia Slims.
“When’s the wedding?” I asked happily.
She dipped the plastic mixer into her Vodka tonic, “December, I’m going to organize, it, small, two hun-dred people or so.” How quaint. “Their relationship is more than a coincidence, the way they met, two people from so far away but on the exact same wavelength. Things are happening in the world you know.” They certainly were.
“What do you mean?”
“There are certain people, more everyday, who are finding a new energy, an energy that will prepare us for the end, the rapture.” She eyed me to see if I was one of them. I opened my eyes to let her know I was.
“I feel it, the coincidences, meeting you on this plane for example..” Kerry had read the book and loved it, had given me an exhaustive explanation and her copy which I could only read twenty pages of, the rapture part she hadn’t mentioned. Maybe that was her twist.
“It’s happening, we must be ready, do you know that UFO sightings are increasing every day….” I slipped into drunkenness while she rambled, pouring her insane mind on to my drunken one as Portugal passed below us and the Atlantic approached. The bright light off the white clouds, the night too far behind, and every minute farther.
WINTER
CHAPTER 14
A distant train horn somehow made its way through the closed window. Kerry was leaning up against a pillow, the post coitus ready to talk posture while I tried to imagine the train racing down a dark track, the conductor above the bright light. I was weak-er; Amparo alone in the hospital bed crept onto the train, as if she were a passenger. Kerry leaned her head back, to stretch it and at the same time let me know she was ready to talk. I would beat her to it, always a good strategy. When we don’t love women it’s so easy to do the right thing, only making it worse. “Did you miss me?” A long stretch and a deep kiss on my cheek.
“A lot, maybe one day we can go together.”
“Definitely.”
“Did you see any old friends?” Her face was younger in the dark and it gave me a glimpse of what she must have looked like at 20. The horror at what I could say became apparent, a bizarre urge to tell all.
“Sure, we had a good time.” She cupped her breast with her left hand and brought it to my mouth, a pathetic attempt to show me we could also have a good time, but sufficiently out of the blue to excite me into sex. A laborious self-conscious sex, I watched her ap-parent pleasure, was it real or was it what she saw on television? Oh to have sex with a women who had never seen a television, it must have been easier to tell. I put her on all fours and watched her face, it became real somewhere between pain and pleasure, her desper-ate desire for affection, for family Sundays in the mall, Christmas shopping, not being alone. I could have been killing her, the condom could break or maybe it had already broken. I closed my eyes, remembered a whore, and came.
I was uncomfortable until she finally turned over, releasing her grip on me and fading into deep solitary sleep. It hadn’t been easy but at least there had been no dreams. I knew I wouldn’t sleep, not for a while. I was warm and until the chill came there was no sleep, not a chance.
Like a cool breeze on a dry summer day, a plane crash. Holly Gunn was about to have an orgasm as she related the still “unconfirmed” numbers of dead, too generic for my taste, but the excitement and death let me escape. Body bags were being loaded into ambu-lances, the occasional hanging limb, the pornography of death. One day my arm would be hanging off the white linen of a hospital bed, but it still felt good to see it on someone else. The fleshy arm of a middle-aged woman, maybe wrapped around someone in passion hours before. I was getting excited. Holly looked bet-ter now, morbo-generically speaking.
An overweight slob of a women anxiously told a reporter what she had heard. “It was like a bomb going off. I ran outside and saw the flames, it was awful.” It was awful but she was enjoying herself like she hadn’t in years. An injection of the horrible reality she had worked so hard to shelter herself from smacked her in the face. Not so refreshing for the passengers and crew but what the hell; she felt like a new woman.
The toilet received my urine on its purple porcelain, her anti-wrinkle creams eyeing me from atop a shelf. We certainly don’t give up easily. Begoña was probably out of her mind on coke, but she wasn’t think-ing about me, no doubt, she was thinking about someone else. I wanted to blam
e her, if it had only worked with her I wouldn’t be pissing into this tacky toilet after screwing a single mom while dying of Aids.
The pornography continued, the orgy of reporters saying absolutely nothing that hadn’t been said five times, a tragedy, that’s what they called it. No, I was tragic; they were accident victims. I felt a tickle on my foot and in the flicker of the TV at the end of my long leg crawled a cockroach. I froze, horrified. I threw my foot, sending the creature to the floor, then reached for a magazine, but I couldn’t do it. To much death for one day and for one life, and while it crawled under the couch I realized how fragile I had become.
CHAPTER 15
An enormous American flag waved proudly above a cascade of cables covered with small pieces of colored plastic which reached the ground to create the appropriate circus atmosphere to sell new automobiles. A Kmart mall, a pawn shop/gun-shop, an adult-video store, a grocery store and a drug store-liquor/store com-plex; a cornucopia of the not quite there side of Americana with a helping of Florida sunlight. “Loans, Dial 1-800-FREEDOM” singing on the radio. Nude dancing on the corner. Bring your Dolphin ticket stub and get a free drink.
I should have been roaming meat packing plants looking for new customers, but instead of feeling slight-ly guilty I was totally free. That was freedom, no loans needed, no putting off checking the voice mail. I didn’t really care. To Sell or To Be Sold, that wasn’t the question anymore. I still had a bit of strip mall land to traverse and I wasn’t sure I could do it. I was going to have to work myself into state, get cocky. They were used to it anyway. The street number appeared from behind a billboard ad for a sports radio show, a lot of sharp New Yorkers who had never played a sport in their lives talking about baseball as if it were the stock market.