“American Express. I was afraid you would be all booked up.”
“We are, you got lucky, a last minute cancellation.” The comfort of a familiar room, the green colors, the creak of a cheap bed. I had everything hung up and in place within minutes, a trot to the ice machine and I was on the bed, drink in hand zapping the tube. The bed began moving diagonally below me, the floor rising and falling. Was this the beginning of it, was something happening? It stopped, the calm after a big wave has passed, time and place finally catching up to my mind like a sling shot. I took a few deep breaths, making sure it wouldn’t come back, enjoying the newly appreciated health, the fear of illness getting me out of bed and into the bar.
A small time waitress handling a big crowd with enough disrespect to make her feel important in front of her locals and a Thursday night NFL game which was being ignored amongst the excited space crowd. Seri-ous voices with studied cadences trading NASA anec-dotes. A Boy Scout crowd if I ever saw one, next to me sat a flip flopped local with a tee-shirt advertising a bar. The annoyingly happy faces forced my stare to-ward the long hared local, shoulder length black hair, blown dry, a ridiculous crown to an otherwise hand-some face. Our eyes met, his head bounced with a ‘Hi, how you doing’ grin that brought instant distaste.
“Your not here for the launch, are you?” I had the immediate feeling he was trying to pick me up.
“I am, actually, combining it with business.” The ‘Clintonesque’ nodding of the head, he felt my pain and my profession. He could see inside me.
“What kind of business are you in?” The look of a fellow corporate warrior, don’t bother about the Texas hair. I’m really just like you.
“The spice business, industrial spice’s and season-ings.” It came out dry and placid. The understanding nods.
“I’m in the same business. I work in commodities, John Smith, but my friends call me Smity.” It was studied and delivered for the thousandth time. He had pyramid/multilevel marketing racket written all over him. “I work out of my house with the computer, that’s why I can wear the hair. The Naval Academy got that long hair bug into me. How long are you here for?”
“I’ll be leaving tomorrow.” He grew with his de-livery, from the faggy bar fly to the ex naval officer commodities trader. The weird hair took on a Thorish command. I enjoyed watching him grow, giving him energy and esteem. “What kind of things do you trade?”
“All kinds of commodities, if it’s sold on a market, I’ll trade it, from currencies to orange juice.” He was looking at me as if he was going to fuck me and enlist me in his sect. “Get us two more please.” He said to the waitress as he got up. “I’ve got a conference call. I’ll be right back.” Touching my shoulder as he left. The waitress left a glance on me as she served the drinks. I suddenly felt pitiful, the magic of the morning, books, ideas, and the mystery of a space shot was melting into a drunken conversation with a gay pyramid scammer.
“Late conference calls, one of the downsides to my business, but then again I work for myself, no bosses, no lay-offs, no downsizing.” I was supposed to be ab-solutely fascinated with Smity by now and ready to give it all up for the new magical life he was to offer me. I decided to play along.
“God, would that be great, no boss, no reports, but I would be afraid to live without a salary.” I felt like the straw man in an infomercial. I even imagined my-self on TV at 3:00 AM. They would cut from me to an icy blonde, nice legs squeaking inside a tight knee length skirt ‘Tell us Smity, how can John get over his fears?’ A cleaned up Smity with a more subdued hair-do would let us know how to take control again of our lives.
“John.” I had forgotten I had told him my name, nonetheless he used it with too much familiarity, a sneaky trick of the trade. “The world is changing rap-idly, most people our willing to live at the mercy of what’s given to them, but some people want more, they want to create their own destinies, be the eagles, not ducks.”
“Smity, I’m sick of being a duck.”
“I know it sounds funny, but it’s really true.” He wasn’t as naïve as I’d hoped. “Do you know how few Americans make over $100,000 a year, less than 5%, the rest are basically living from paycheck to paycheck. Why? Because they think they don’t have any choice.”
“Come on Smity, commodities trading is gambling, you win some you lose some, but you can’t bank on that.”
“The conference call I just had, part of a multi-marketing group I have, started with a small ad in US Today. I have five sales managers covering the whole country.” The ad must have been a beauty. His glances were becoming to long, his sales pitch was getting con-fused with his pick up lines. I began to wonder if there was something faggy about me or did this guy just not pick up the signals.
“How much did you make last year Smity, if you don’t mind me asking?” A conversation right out of a TV melodrama, one where I had been transported to. My existence was flanked between the evening news and a three-minute run of commercials. Two dimen-sional TV life and conversation. I physically felt less substantial, my problems were faint and unreal.
“Over a hundred thousand.” The ‘thousand’ sounded tinny and unbelievable. The day, beautiful and sublime, raged against the silly night. I was reaching the point of no return, a few more drinks and I would sleep through the night launch. I wanted some-thing real and Smity had lost his sociological appeal.
“Don’t you feel like an asshole taking advantage of idiots in those pyramid things. I mean, life is bad enough as it is.” He laughed sadly. He was the ugly girl in grade school whom I just called a pig. The pain shrunk him, from Nordic warrior to rodent underclass scum. There was no turning back, no consoling words could repair the damage, though I wasn’t particularly pained by it though I realized it had been too rough. I was no one to judge and as long as he had done no damage to me, who cared what he did to the suckers who called his ‘800’ number. Since finding out I was positive I had been much more reluctant to do damage to people, under a strange superstition that the nicer I was the longer I would live. Trashing poor Smity took at least a month off. I would have to help some house-wives with their groceries without indulging myself in any impure thoughts.
A wonderful TV movie ended in familiar bliss just in time for me to get an early start on my trip to the cape. The traffic felt like 8:30 AM, but it was 3:30AM. They were going to see something strange and destruc-tive, not going to work. Life was more than the paycheck for at least a few hours, nothing more than being astonished by a powerful and frightening ma-chine. I drove east, the traffic building as I neared A1A, finally parking a hundred yards from the intersec-tion with the coastal road.
Across the water the shuttle appeared tiny, illumi-nated form what appeared as miniature spotlights. We were directly across the water from the launch site; I was cold in my dress shirt, shoulders tight against my ribs trying to keep warm. Time, as if aware of her pro-taganism, slowed down coquettishly, as if jealous of the shuttle, but proud of her place in the show, 4:20 AM. I was tired of looking at my watch, the cold, humid beach more and more uncomfortable. The crowd relatively silent, I wanted to think it was a respectful silence. The machine seemed completely autonomous and I had no sense of it being directed or flown by men, even the radio commentaries I overheard seemed to talk of it as an animal, not a plane. The hour approached, the minute neared, the second advanced, the white light was still. Time was playing the trickster, the seconds became minutes, heads turned, the murmurs rose, was the mission scrubbed, the expression of a face listening to the radio through headphones. “45 seconds!” The stares returning to the light. A giant match being lit behind it, the orange flare framed by the white spot lights, then an explosion that grew across the water, pure biblical violence speeding across the bay. The earth trembled, the ungodly sound brought its heat to the shore as the craft slowly rose from its pad, the night suddenly day, the gods demonstrating their domin
ion. Then the night began to regain its domain while the craft reached for the heavens, smaller and dimmer until disappearing into the black sky.
CHAPTER 20
My living room sheltered me from the heavy rain, after two years of projects the space’s esthetic was fi-nally what I wanted. I enjoyed seeing it to the sound of the rain and the emptiness that comes from a good film. It was clean and finished, the look of my leather organizer impressed me on the wooden coffee table, a quick check of the messages, call Harry Irvin, when I got back, no matter how late.
“…Skip Burgess is going to be in your area the day after tomorrow, the Holiday Inn at …, 10AM.”
“What does he want to talk about, just so I can prepare the meeting?” My voice was shaky, almost trembling. Even though I knew it had to happen, the timing worried me. Had they found out about Stephen? No matter how prepared one is the end is always vio-lent.
“Nothing in particular, he just wants to review your territory, you don’t need to bring anything in particu-lar.” It was clear. Thirty-six hours. A quick call to Todd Harris. He agreed. “John, buy a six-pack and watch the plane crash.”
“What plane crash?”
“The 747 that blew up off Long Island, look, there isn’t much you can do.”
“How much severance do you think I’ll get?” I could hear the desperation in my own voice.
“You’ll get something, get drunk and worry about it tomorrow.” He thought it was worse than it was. I couldn’t tell him I was expecting it.
The flames bubbled on the TV. “The Crash of Flight 800.”, the television title to the accident. I could feel the pre-flight atmosphere at Kennedy, the sun tak-ing a head start on the race across the ocean. The open excitement of the tourists, the tempered business travel-ers savoring their cocktails, the beautiful woman traveling alone, exquisite, delicate, to reunite with a lover. The calm, too calm stewardesses, resembling the same run down overworked beauty of the aircraft they worked on, mysterious and silly. That was probably my favorite thing in the world, the few hours before a transatlantic flight. If I was going for a while those last hours in the bar watching a ball game, knowing that in six months the names and averages would mean noth-ing.
I knew without knowing that all those types of people had been there, those conversations, the long looks at new and mysterious people. They were all nothing but chunks of burnt flesh floating in the Atlan-tic, tomorrow they would float up on the Jersey Shore and on Jone’s Beach. I felt free, freer than I ever had, freedom was getting as close to where those people were without ‘touching go’.
The impending release made my surroundings more intense, the same people whom I watched swimming everyday seemed trivial, trivial compared to my tragic and eventful life. But within moments I felt ridiculous, what was so eventful about getting canned and slowly dying of a horrible disease. I wouldn’t have traded it all for a peaceful life with ‘Betty’ and a safe paycheck from the telephone company. I wasn’t sure it made me feel any better but I was over the edge, and there was no going back even if I had wanted to.
The ducks shit in a row, the warm water beat vio-lently on my back while the high temperature of the Jacuzzi was making me dizzy. I lazily slid deeper into the water, time warped in the moist winter light, so lightheaded I lost perspective of myself without fear or desire to return. I stumbled out of the Jacuzzi and col-lapsed into the heated pool, which snapped me out of the daze. My mind returned as I sat under the water, the same water that had helped me decide to leave. I tried to feel it, smell it, find out if it was good or bad, if it had advised me well. The panic that had been long away, years and miles, almost forgotten, only to return. Looking up at the sky from below, it seemed to be there, across the threshold of the water. The bubble rose and burst into the air, an air filled with panic, panic of death and pain and suffering. I finally gasped for air, sucked in deep what most terrified me, focusing my mind with all its power on conquering the enemy, find-ing reasons and plans to escape the worst.
I called Stephen, he had closed the deal. I had a check in the mail and two more down the road, he was kind and up. Stephen would give me the equivalent of three months pay, hopefully there would be severance. The hope of dusk became the immediacy of the night, alone with a story I could tell no one, except Kerry. We hadn’t spoken since her phone call telling me she was OK, but she was the only person with whom I could talk. She answered the phone with energy and hope, happy to be alive and happy to be speaking to me. “Wait, I’ll be right over.” It had been longer than I could remember that someone did that.
The knock on the open door. I was afraid to see her, her glasses appeared childishly from behind a large paper grocery bag. She removed a six-pack, a big bag of chips and a bottle of Jim Beam. “Just in case you were running low.” As soon as I saw her I wished she hadn’t come. All her life and hope only made me that much more dead. The beers raced nervously down my throat behind chips whose texture and flavor stood on the limit of the humanly consumable. The heat of awkward conversation. We were far away form each other, she talked as if it was our last conversation, with-out wit, without affection. I drank to not have kick her out.
“Oh really, he’s playing tee-ball, he’s got to be careful with the curve balls.”
“Curve balls, on the tee?” Her face changing from the pensive executive to the semi-humored mom. “Have you thought about what you going to ask for?”
I couldn’t tell her about Stephen, she wouldn’t un-derstand the beauty of it. What I had thought of as a person whom I could talk to was really someone who understood nothing. She knew what I had, and very little else; like the sister with whom there is nothing more than the faint family tie which distance and time allow us forget, only to remind us within seconds of reuniting after thousand mile trips that there is nothing to talk about. “I’m going to try to keep the car as long as I can, and I thought about three months severance.”
“Use the relationships you have with the large cli-ents to bargain, the non-compete clauses are very hard to enforce, try and let them think your going to the competition even if your not.” The rhythm of the con-versation finally stopped completely, the words stopped forever, a strange wicked silence. I was afraid to look her in the eyes.
“I bet you’ve got to get up early tomorrow.” I got up and walked toward the door. “Thanks for coming, I call you and tell you what happened.” I’ve always hat-ed being alone in company. The door slamming was like a big debt being paid off. What I had to do was to be done alone, if I had thought about it I would have realized it, but that was the moment I came to grips with how alone I had always been and would be for what was left. It was a peaceful moment full of truth and calm, no more searching for something that I wasn’t going to find, no more lonely conversation with people I had no interest in. From then on I knew my best conversations would be with myself. I began to think with ‘we’ instead of ‘I”. I had freed myself from people as well as money and work.
A long breakfast with the paper. It was the begin-ning, up till that moment there had always been the possibility of turning back, of staying. From the mo-ment they fired me there was no turning back. That strong sense of freedom returned.
I felt it in my heart and in my arms. I worked myself into an angry state, and checked it before it got to strong. More coffee, the day was cool, the Dolphins were off to a good start, 8-3, but they always got off to good starts. I left a big tip to try and get the Gods on my side.
The sun shown warm through the cool air, a crisp comfortable light. I had cleaned the car. I felt good getting in, no more McDonald’s bags or hangover kill-ing cans of V-8 and empty boxes of cigarettes. I had my best suit on and was wearing Armani cologne. I felt smart and strong. I liked Skip, he was the man who hired me and he was the one who would fire me. Short, stocky, one-on-one he was clear and direct. I didn’t want any scenes, just the severance and the car for as long as I co
uld keep it.
The green uniformed receptionist looked up from behind the desk, like the many hotels I had walked through hundreds of times, after hours of driving. “Skip Burgess, please, John Lynch.” He reached for the phone.
“Room 311, he’s expecting you.” I hit the elevator button, then I remembered the brisk cold outside BWI when I had flown up for the first interview, being very tired, leaving at 5:00AM from Ft. Lauderdale, almost falling asleep in one of the interviews. The upbeat talk, ‘I really want to sell quality, not price.” What a lot of bullshit. I knew it was bullshit when I said it, but it seemed completely ridiculous now. I didn’t really know what I wanted when I got the job, though a lot of people probably thought they did, including these folks. These men believed in work, in paying mortgages and sending their kids to college. They weren’t only giving me a job they were giving me a future, and now they were taking it away. But what bothered them was why I didn’t do what I was supposed to do. It would remain a mystery to them even if I explained it: enough bullshit for one job, for one life.
The doors passed by each other ominously, the number appeared and I pulled my shoulders back and knocked on the open door. “Come on in John.” He shook my hand hard, the light was powerful behind him through the window. Passed the bathroom a black shadow appeared from behind a small table.
“John.” He didn’t even have the balls to tell me he would be there.
“Hi Harry.” He didn’t raise his hand and I didn’t offer mine. He made a half grin as if he were going to burp.
“Sit down John.” We sat around a small coffee ta-ble, Skip closest to me on a couch, Harry next to him. “John, as you can imagine, we’re not here to give you good news, you’re territory is not doing what we ex-pected it to, a lot of it has had nothing to do with you, problems in Mexico, I know, but we have decided to let you go.” I nodded my head, stared him in the eye and than looked at Harry. “I know this must be difficult, but sometimes when your life gets turned on its head it’s the best thing that can happen.” Not convinced of what he was saying, though it was true, he reached for more concrete solace. “Here are three severance checks, you will be paid normally through the end of the month, plus the three months.”