Denver Boot

Chad got out of his Philosophy meeting on Tuesday morning to notice that they’d stuck a Denver Boot on the front right wheel of his car. Actually he didn’t know if it was a Denver Boot or not; it was bright yellow, and it obviously would keep his car from going anywhere, but the difference between a Denver Boot and any other kind was, at that point, still unclear to him; in fact, it still is. He was rattled and edgy all day, but he decided to ask his friends what to do before doing anything.

The problem was that, of course, he had a hundred, maybe a couple hundred dollars worth of tickets to pay, and, of course, he couldn’t pay them, as he was a Philosophy graduate student, in the middle of taking his comps, too busy to work an outside job, too busy to do pretty much anything except read thirteen or fourteen hours a day, and remember all these arcane details about philosophical theory. That was why he had parked illegally in the first place. Late for a meeting, too much going on in his head, he’d pulled into the Life Sciences parking lot at the last minute and had made it to the meeting, barely a few minutes left.

The first friend he talked to was Riley, who advised him to get Cleo to help. Cleo was a good old boy with an enormous pickup, and no doubt had welding tools back in Dallas, and Cleo would be glad to run back to Dallas, pick up his welder’s equipment, and melt the thing off if he had to. Riley was right; Cleo would jump at the chance to challenge the authorities. And, if they melted down some boot right in the parking lot of Life Sciences, Cleo would be able to handle that challenge too. The problem was, anything having to do with Cleo would also involve at least a week of drinking. And this would be solid drinking. For example, they’d get back to Dallas, start drinking with Cleo’s friends, and those friends had other friends who wouldn’t forgive them if they just blew through town, picked up welding equipment, and left without having a drink or two. Chad couldn’t afford it. It was a serious time in his life, taking comps, trying to get out of this alive, getting an advanced degree. There was too much at stake. Chad avoided Cleo.

There was always borrowing money, from his dad, or perhaps his brother, who had lent him the car in the first place, and who was at least working in a brewery, though he was drinking three for every one he made. Chad rejected this idea too. He had borrowed too much already.

One of his friends, MacKenzie, told him to simply wait it out. The university, she said, would eventually come and get the boot, because they’d need to use it on some other car. The university would also have the car towed, no doubt, because it was parked illegally, and had been for a while, and blah blah blah, couple hundred dollars of back tickets, whatever. The thing was, as MacKenzie pointed out, the people who would tow it would be different from the people who actually removed the boot. Yes, both events would happen on the same day, probably, but if you were there at the right time, you could theoretically drive away before the tow truck got to it, and you were scot-free, so to speak.

The final solution, short of robbing the bank, would be to just to let the car go. Take the license plates, let them figure out who owned the old wreck, and just never turn back. In this regard Chad was a little paranoid, because he was sure they had records that would show who owned a car with such-and-such VIN number, Montana license plate, probably a stack of notices on his brother’s kitchen table, and they would get him eventually. He could always say that he’d sold the car, and it wasn’t his problem anymore, but in fact he needed the car; it was only worth about a thousand dollars, but it was a running car. He was relying on it to move to Michigan in May, when he finally would graduate, and get a job, hopefully near his girlfriend, selling power tools or something. He didn’t know if he would need the car for all this; all he knew was he’d need a car soon enough. One always needed a car. That’s how he’d convinced his brother to lend it, kind of on permanent loan. You can’t live without one.

It was testament to the kind of friends Chad had, and the kind of era we live in, that when he mentioned it at a crowded table in the student union, one friend laid into him about the name “Denver,” as it had just been known as the boot, as far as that friend knew, and had never been associated with Denver at all, and another friend instantly looked it up in Wikipedia. The first friend was a Broncos fan, and was offended that anything so odious as a boot could be associated with Denver, but Chad said that that’s what they called it in Iowa, when he was there, and, sure enough, when they looked it up, it was true that one kind was invented in Denver, and used first in Denver, but there wasn’t enough information to determine for sure whether the big yellow kind stuck on Chad’s car as they looked it up was actually the same kind as the kind known as the Denver Boot. One of those mysteries, he decided, that would have to go unresolved for the time being. Denver boot or ordinary boot, his car was stuck in the Life Sciences parking lot until he got himself out of this mess.

His last friend, a woman, pointed out how ironic it was that, when you were going places you weren’t supposed to, they’d stick a boot on your car so that, in essence, you couldn’t leave. She thought the Denver Boot was an existential symbol of irony, and she wanted to point out how he’d fallen into a kind of must move/can’t move trap. This friend was totally right, but Chad had no time for the philosophical implications of the Denver Boot, and in fact, it was all he could do to get home that night (he got a ride), get an old bicycle out of the garage, and get back on campus in the morning. The bicycle had a flat tire and a broken chain, and he had very few tools, so once again he was late for some dumb meeting and felt self-conscious about his greasy hands and sweaty t-shirt. He lived about two miles from campus, so this bicycle routine would take some getting used to; the biggest problem was safety, as he had some busy intersections to get through and had no helmet. Also, it rained that day; this was rare for Texas, but it still happened occasionally, and, wouldn’t you know it, the day he’s trying to wobble home on an old bicycle, and it’s throwing puddle water up into his eyes.

But he settled on MacKenzie’s option, waiting them out, and actually moved his studying place to a couch in the corner of the first floor of the Life Sciences building, where he could keep his eye on the parking lot and his little car with the bright yellow boot on the front right wheel. He made sure that he could see that wheel from where he was sitting, with the plan that if someone would remove the boot, any morning or afternoon, he would be there and see it, and would run out the door and remove the car, quick before it was towed. With resolution he took his seat in the Life Science building lobby every morning that he could; and then, after lunch, he would return. He used that couch as his own personal library for about a week, and he just acted like there was no better place for a Philosophy student to study for comps than that couch in the Life Sciences Building.

In fact, the week dragged on, and the lobby of the Life Sciences building was not the ideal studying environment. He didn’t feel completely comfortable leaving his books there at night, or even over lunch, and he ended up carrying around a large pile of them, from place to place, and though he considered using the car as a storage bin, since it certainly wasn’t any other use to him, he didn’t, because he was afraid of being seen using it at a crucial time such as when they were towing it. But a worse problem was that he just couldn’t concentrate well there; it was a lobby, and people were coming and going, and some of them were actually pretty good-looking. One woman, who introduced herself as Saturn, came by regularly and tried to remove his old coffee cups, as if she were in charge of keeping the garbage picked up; she would actually stop and talk to him for a while, or watch his books while he went to get more coffee. Oh yes, they got used to him pretty well, but that doesn’t mean they really liked him; it was more likely that they felt like they had to keep a pretty good eye on a guy who parked himself on a lobby couch all day long for almost a week. He never told anyone about the boot or about how he had to keep his eye on that car himself; he didn’t even tell Saturn, who saw him looking at it occasionally, but didn’t really know what he was doing.

One day the Life Sciences had some kind of party in the lobby, and Saturn was busy setting up tables, bringing drinks and crackers, decorating, and in general making noise. It was absolutely impossible to study Philosophy, and Chad was a little aggravated. He reviewed his options again; he considered borrowing money, or finding some other source of money; perhaps there was one he hadn’t thought of. He was beginning to lose faith that they would ever come and remove the boot, though he also knew it couldn’t last forever. He paced around the lobby and ate crackers, and noticed that the Life Science people were absolutely not like the people he was more used to, though they were quite friendly. For a while, he felt bad about taking their parking space so often, so much, and even this week, so continuously, but there was nothing he could do about that now. If he’d had it to do over again, he’d park in the neighborhoods every time, no matter what, and take the price, whether it be being late for the meeting, or whatever. This waiting game was driving him crazy.

But one morning, just as he was finally easing into his Philosophy reading, they removed the boot. Some campus policeman was leaning over, using a key, removing it, and taking it away. Chad couldn’t hide his disbelief, but he gathered up his books, and his notebook, and threw away what was left of his coffee. The minute the policeman drove away he rushed out into the parking lot and started the car. He could actually see a tow truck, just down the campus street, but it was blocked behind an ambulance that was stopped in the middle of the road. The ambulance was saving his life! His choice was whether to go the same direction the policeman had gone just now, west, or go to the east, and drive right in front of the oncoming tow truck. He went east; the policeman was far likelier to recognize the car.

As he drove by the ambulance he was shocked to see that it was his major professor that they were loading into the ambulance; they had lots of equipment out, and the poor guy was trying to explain something to them as they fussed with the equipment. Chad’s jaw dropped but he tried to keep to the campus speed limit of 20, despite his hurry. Behind the ambulance was the tow truck driver, who stared hard at him, knowing full well that Montana license plates are quite rare, so this was probably the car he was after. The minute he could, Chad veered right and off campus, and when he got home, he hid the car, and put some bags of leaves up against it to hide the license plate. He was superstitious; he figured the city, the university, and even the state patrol had him on their list now, and would be looking for him for weeks. Deep down, though, he was proud that he’d beat the system, and even had the car, and had gotten away with something. His heart was racing.

In fact his comps were grueling, and it didn’t matter that the major professor was ailing. He had not quite studied well enough, and it showed, but after considerable run-around, they let him pass anyway, and he was able to leave for Michigan about three months later to follow his original plan. He was superstitious about the car and left at night, but going through back roads in east Texas ran off the road trying to avoid hitting an armadillo. He’d like to say the armadillo almost killed him, or ruined the car, but in fact he lived to tell the tale, and I heard him tell this very story at a bar in Michigan, where, believe it or not, some old guy claimed to know the inventor of the Denver Boot, who was a violinist, and who actually lived in Denver. One never knows about these stories, because people will say almost anything when they’re in a bar, but there were two things that struck me as true about both stories: one is that a clamping device like that is not going to come off easily, it would have given even Cleo a run for his money. And the other is, you’re lucky to get out of Texas with anything, whether it’s a car, or a degree, or a good story. Chad lifted a glass to the old guy and said that, whatever else had happened, it sure wasn’t that violinist’s fault that he’d gotten in such a mess at that university.

(3-16)

short stories

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Double in Tinder

Double in Tinder

John had a chance to go to Washington DC for a conference on Shakespeare, so he took it; he lived in Kentucky, and he didn’t get out much. His older brother, Robert Clement Stone III, lived in D.C, and he could stay with Robert while he attended the conference. His car was running well and, leaving Kentucky early in the morning, he arrived in D.C at about 8 in the evening on a Monday. His brother texted him that he was at a Georgetown sports bar, and gave him directions. It was early fall, and the weather was pleasant, but the roads were confusing and traffic was terrible. By the time John got to the sports bar he was rattled by the traffic and relieved to be able to get out of his car.

He found Robert and his friends at a large table in the back of the sports bar. It was a large place with many televisions and lots of noise; plenty of people filled almost every table. Most of the people in the bar were facing televisions that had the Redskins on them, but John and his friends were near a television that had the news on it; no telling whether this was deliberate. A first glance, it seemed like very few people in the place were watching any of the televisions, even though it was the Redskins.

Robert had four friends, Mark, Terry, Kirk, and Franco, who were at the table. John was sitting between Terry and Mark. Across the table his brother Robert made sure he would receive chips and salsa, and a drink. Terry and Mark ordered doubles, but it wasn’t clear what they were doubling, or whether it actually made them drunk.  The waiter, a tall guy, would come by, and they’d say, “Another double!” and this went on most of the evening. There was evidence that most of them had eaten if they had wanted to.

All four, it seemed, and Robert too, were obsessed with using social media to find and pick up women. Tinder was their favorite app; they sat and scrolled as they talked, and to John it seemed like following Tinder, or whatever they were doing, was a constant habit, whereas it was conversation, or interest in their environment, that would come and go. For minutes at a time they would be on their phones, scrolling, reading carefully, texting, seeing what was happening. Perhaps they wanted something to happen tonight.  John asked Terry and he showed him Tinder, and how he would swipe it, to look at woman after woman who was available, he said. “You can see how this could be addictive,” he added. Swiping right was approving them; swiping left made them disappear from your life. On the other side of him, Mark, more serious, swiped left more often, but looked at them more carefully first.

The news on the television above them showed refugees coming into Europe from the war-torn countries. They were interviewing people in France about taking in the migrants. Occasionally, between bites of dinner or drinks, John would hear what they said or read the captions at the bottom of the screen. Some people stated openly, based on the closed-captions, that it was good, that they would welcome migrants; others said it would be bad, and they were opposed. The Eiffel Tower was in the background; they had positioned the camera to catch it so it was very clearly Paris.

The footage from Paris reminded John of a time he had visited Paris briefly, and, in the four days he was there, met a woman who he’d become very close to. She lived there in Paris; her name was Marie. Both Marie and John had made extraordinary effort to cross cultures and get to know each other, but it wasn’t easy; there were a lot of differences between cultures. They’d become quite close in those four days; they’d spent much of their free time together, and she’d shown him a few of the sights. But when his time came to go, he’d gone, back to the U.S. Perhaps it was better that he’d left; he’d miss her forever, but it probably wouldn’t have worked. Maybe she’d visit Kentucky someday? That was highly doubtful. He was an English graduate student, unable to show her the good time she deserved, or even be as good a host to her as she had been to him.

Back in the sports bar, the friends were talking about their various sexual conquests. Somehow, based on what they said, they’d meet these women, text with them for a while, and go to bed with them, with very little in the way of dating, getting to know each other, the traditional kinds of things. His brother Robert seemed to be just as adept at it as the others. The city seemed to be full of women who were willing to do this; they’d make a profile; they’d answer texts; they’d see what was interesting, they’d swipe their phones as often as the guys at this table would. They’d see what came up, and pretty soon, they’d be in bed with one of these guys. John was somewhat amazed. Life wasn’t really like this in Kentucky; he’d just broken up with a long-term girlfriend, one whom he’d met after going to France, and he wasn’t really out on the singles market anyway. These guys, Robert’s friends, were on a full-scale hunt, based on what he heard them say. They were active participants.

From across the table, Franco, obviously a weight-lifter, explained it to him a little: “I’m busy,” he said. “I work all day, I go to the gym, I have the career thing going, I don’t have time to set up a domestic situation. If I were married or had a steady girl, it would take up too much time and energy; my career would suffer. This way, I look attractive to them. I have money and a car. They give it a try, and so do I. It’s just that I’m less likely to fall for them, I have no motive to settle down.”

Another guy, Kirk, was into being rough, and he described it a little; it was a little unsettling, because John could tell, through the stories, that the women were not necessarily into rough. But it seemed that Kirk didn’t care about this. He’d text them, and get into bed with them, and he barely knew them. How did he know whether they liked it that way? The only way to find out was to do it. If they didn’t like it, he wouldn’t do it again; he’d find someone else. He seemed to be taking out his anger on a string of strangers. Actually knowing them was never really part of the bargain.

It occurred to John that they seemed to live in a world where they met women in bed first, and then found out a little more about them little by little. This unsettled him a little, and worse, it reminded him of Shakespearean England, a world he now studied, but a world just different enough that he hadn’t quite known what to think of it at first.  Also unsettling was that here in the bar, there didn’t seem to be any other women around them at all; the waiter was a man, and there were no women even at the nearby tables. This lent an air of locker-room brag to what they said, as if, who would even know if they were telling the truth?

At one point he got up to use the bathroom, and walked through the bar. Again he noticed that the Redskins were on, throughout the bar, and not a single person seemed to care anywhere. What kind of town is this, he wondered.  This was the local team. It was Monday night, and they’d be on in front of the world; didn’t people follow their own local team, even a little? Apparently they didn’t.  Staggering a little with exhaustion, he returned to his table. Mark, who was sitting next to him, was a historian of Washington D.C. itself, and happened to know a lot about the French influence in its building and development. Perhaps he had been provoked by the news of Paris above him. He was saying something about the Frenchman who had designed the road patterns. John could see blaming the French for the trouble he had with the roads coming in. Across the table, Robert, who had made sure that John had a dinner coming, cast a rueful look, as if, who cares about the French? Two other friends, similarly, had taken the opportunity of a break in conversation to swipe their phones. More right swipes, a few left swipes.  

Terry seemed to be explaining to Kirk about how he had ghosted some woman that he’d been seeing. This apparently meant simply cutting her off, not answering texts, removing permission to call or view, pretending like someone doesn’t exist – this was what you did if you had no use for someone, or if their being there, on your phone, bothered you. Just cut the connection. Remove permission for them to view your profile. People were describing situations where they’d ghosted various women.

Suddenly, John was jolted out of his thoughts when he happened to see Marie on the television right above him. She was explaining, in French and in partly broken English, how the Parisian people would do the best they could with the situation they had at hand, namely the migrants. She seemed, at that moment, incredibly innocent, and sweet. John’s jaw dropped. He couldn’t believe that it was Marie, but it was, unmistakably. And within minutes, she was gone; the news moved on to another person.

John stared at the television for a while, hoping to catch another glimpse of her, but she was gone without a trace. The television moved on to more comments about the migrant situation, and about Europe in general, and its ability to stay together under the circumstances. John noticed that among his brother’s friends and the people in their area, Europe had no more popularity than even the Redskins. People were self-absorbed. The friends had their Tinder; they’d look at their phones in between times that they’d talk to each other. The waiter would come; they’d order something, then look at their phones as their friends ordered.  No sense talking to the waiter, for example, about what was happening in D.C.; what was happening was directly on their phones. The other people in the restaurant were the same way, except that, from what John could figure, they were more political than John’s friends; it was, after all, a government town. Politics was everywhere. Everything was political. Franco, at one point, said, “Get used to it. It’s political if you order chips and salsa. It’s political if you don’t. This is D.C.”

Mark, who had been expounding about the French, now told another story. He had apparently been ghosted by a woman he’d slept with. She told him she was pregnant first, then totally cut him off. He admitted to being a little worried. He couldn’t remember clearly how well-protected their sex had been; for all he knew, it was possible that she really was pregnant. But Kirk jumped in and said that was common practice, and it was rare that it was true. They were pretty sure women just did that, and, yes, it was an act of hostility, but that’s what you get.  They tried to make Mark feel better. Robert said it had happened to him as well; he still didn’t know how it turned out. The general conclusion at the table was that women, if they had no use for you, would rather leave you with something to worry about, than simply leave you.

But John wasn’t so sure, and he studied his brother a little. For all his bravado, he might not have been sure either. Did they only do this to certain guys, and if so, which ones? There was no telling; it was a new world they were living in. On television, they were now interviewing a migrant; between worlds, life ravaged by war, unable to enter one country, not welcome in the previous one, and with kids in tow, they, also, appeared to John to be in a world he could barely understand. His head spun as he watched.

Robert, in any case, was being a good host; he ordered whatever John wanted; he made sure John had a good dinner and a few beers. He was serious about his role as big brother, and kept asking John if he was ok. John was. He was dazed, tired from the long drive, and overstimulated by the heavy traffic, but, once he had dinner and a couple of beers in him, he was ready to face the world. They would go to his brother’s small apartment, and he would lay out some blankets on the couch, and fall sound asleep, knowing he would be going to that Shakespeare conference, first thing in the morning. From one world to another he would go; fortunately, he thought, there were no children, yet, to share this story with.

At the Gate

At the Gate

At the gate, Gate 13, they still hadn’t changed the sign that said where the next flight was going. It was going to Lubbock, and so was Ronald. He sat facing the sign, rather than looking out the window at the wide Texas sky, because he was getting nervous, and he wanted to see when they changed the sign. The flight was only about a half hour late, and the attendants kept assuring everyone that it would take off as soon as possible. And the flight to Lubbock was leaving out of this gate, as soon as they could board it. But the seconds, the minutes were becoming longer and longer. He could almost no longer bear it.

To his left, a television went on about the presidential race; there were way too many candidates, at this point, and he could barely focus. Occasionally this particular news channel would switch to a bombing or some violence somewhere else in the world. Ronald wasn’t used to television, and its constant blather irritated him as well. Off in the corner of the gate area, a poor mother was trying to control three young children; the youngest, a boy maybe two, was pawing away at a garbage can, while his older sister, about four, argued with her mother about the way she had changed the daughter’s hair. The third child, also a sister, was a bit older, maybe fourteen, and cast a disparaging look at everyone, but didn’t do much about the little boy. The boy’s hand was now reaching into the garbage can, leaning it over, while he climbed on a nearby seat. He was about two or three, very active, perhaps more than the mother could handle. The mother, in her thirties, very pretty but completely exhausted, kept calling the boy and telling him to return, but to no avail. He seemed determined, in his own way; if anything, he was determined to find out what was in that garbage can.

Ronald was a wind energy consultant. His specialty was knowing how various kinds of winds interacted with the various blades of the modern wind generator. He’d gone to Canada to help with a project on the high plains of Saskatchewan, but something had bothered him on the return trip: a man who, for whatever reason, had been allowed to leave Canada, but not allowed to enter the U.S. The man, a good-looking young fellow of indiscriminate national origin, had somehow convinced the Canadian authorities to let him try to enter the U.S., but he didn’t have a backup plan for what to do if rejected, and basically, Canada didn’t want him, once he was rejected. His luck had run out. He was stranded in that nowhere land between customs agents, arguing for what seemed to be an eternity, and it seemed like forever even to Ronald, who at that point was just standing in line. Ronald wasn’t sure how such things worked; what if the guy couldn’t go anywhere else?

Now, at the gate, another young man sat picked a seat next to Ronald and sat down, and started talking to Ronald about various topics: the flight, the delay, the weather.s He was pleasant, well-dressed, about twenty five or so, and had a few lines of worry on his face. As often happens, the conversation somehow drifted to the topic of eternal salvation, and the loving power of this young man’s savior. Ronald noticed at the same time both how likely it was for this to happen, and how thoroughly incapable he was of diverting the topic, or even just shutting it down. He was bored; he was being friendly; it just seemed like a normal conversation at first. Now he was considering bringing up the truth – that he really didn’t believe in heaven, at least not the heaven of everything being good, everyone happy. If there was a heaven, then what was this, purgatory?

Now people got off another flight, coming into the airport, which was in Dallas, and this was a good sign; the flight to Lubbock would be departing soon, probably with that very plane. The flight attendants arrived with their luggage and talked with the man at the ticket counter. Ronald was relieved. Progress was being made. The sign still hadn’t changed, but there was every indication that there would truly be a flight to Lubbock, and Ronald would get home.

The boy had now fallen into the garbage can, head first. It was the kind of garbage can where the hole in the top was smaller than the can itself, so that once he was in it, he couldn’t get out very easily, even when it was tipped over or sideways. His mother had seen it, at the last minute, but she had been unable to prevent it, because it happened quickly. Her anguished shouts upset the boy, and one could hear him crying and shouting out inside the garbage can, though because it was metallic there was an echo and it just raised the general noise and confusion, without solving the problem. The problem, really, was that he had two legs and two arms, and he wouldn’t be still enough for them to remove him, legs first, and they couldn’t seem to take the top off of the can in order to make the process easier. She had help now, as some bystanders saw the problem and came over to help, including someone from the airline. The boy kicked furiously, inside the can, hoping that would make a difference; it made the situation worse. Ronald considered helping, being naturally good at keeping his composure and taking apart things such as garbage cans, but he didn’t; screaming kids made him uncomfortable, especially anywhere near airplanes and confined spaces, and he didn’t want to be any closer to them than he was already.

The young man sitting next to him, dressed up, intent on discussing the joys of heaven, was similarly aloof from the situation with the boy. Ronald again almost blurted out his disagreement with the concept of heaven; he was, after all, a scientist; but instead he asked the young man about the particulars of his flight. He was coming back from Africa, he said, where he was on a mission. But it was more than a mission; he was training African missionaries, so that Africa could have more African missionaries, and they would be more thorough and efficient in covering the world with missionaries.  Ronald, hungry all of a sudden, excused himself and stepped out into the hallway where there was a McDonald’s.

In the hallway of the gate, there was a steady stream of travelers, with suitcases and packs, traveling either way, either toward the lower-numbered gates, toward the SkyTrain, or perhaps toward the bathrooms or the flight information boards. One person with the silver star of the Dallas football team on his dark blue shirt, struggled with a few extra bags. Ronald longed to be back in his office, where he studied computer models of wind flow and the behavior of certain kinds of wind-generation systems in response to variations in the flow. He couldn’t even begin to discuss it with the average airport traveler, so he kept it to himself. But occasionally, lost in a sea of humanity, especially people moving in a hallway such as this, or many people going the same direction in all different speeds, he’d think about his research.

At the McDonald’s, the big question, of course, was whether he could actually get something quickly enough to eat it before, at the gate, they would be boarding. He had now run out of time, and knew that he had to be back at the gate in minutes, perhaps ten or twelve.  At McDonald’s there were three separate lines, each with three or four people, but some man was complaining loudly that he had been given a hamburger with cheese, when he had explicitly said no cheese. McDonald’s workers were scrambling to accommodate him, trying not to lose track of their other orders.

The memory of the guy who was stranded at customs led Ronald to try getting something to eat, no matter how bad or how quickly eaten, and he almost stepped in line. But in the end, he chose against the food; it would be easier, and healthier, to simply wait, and not take the chance of missing a flight. When he got back to the gate, people were lining up. The pressure on the boy to hold still and let himself be removed from the garbage can was intense; finally, they had figured it out, and he got out, bubble gum in his hair. He was telling the airline attendant about the kinds of garbage he had experienced in there, in the darkness, as the grownups around him tried to make him presentable for the flight.

To the side, another airline steward was counseling the older sister of that boy, the one who had cast such disparaging looks at everyone when Ronald had first seen her. This girl, who was about thirteen, had apparently exploded in a rage against her mother, just as Ronald had stepped out of the gate and gone down the hallway. Her face was red, and she was shaking. She was at an age, apparently, when everything around her was faulty, nothing was as it should be. She couldn’t really describe how she had become so angry and exploded, or even how she was feeling now. They tried to restore her composure as well, so that the family could board the plane.

The young man who had sat next to Ronald, the missionary, had now realized that he had lost his cell phone, on some connecting flight; after a good amount of frantic searching, and even asking Ronald if he’d seen it (he hadn’t), he was now alerting the airline attendants to the problem. But it was pretty clear to Ronald, as he watched this, that the airline attendants had better things to do. The young missionary, apparently missing his wife and children, who had given up on Africa and returned to Texas earlier, was now in a panic; he was going to have to go without that phone for a few days, and that was quite a hardship, in the modern era, even if you were a missionary. Ronald noticed that they had changed the sign, and lined up to board the plane, grateful that he was moving on to the next step.

(8-15)

Minding One's P's and Q's

Minding One’s P’s and Q’s

Gilfredo walked up the stairs of his office building slowly, thinking that he hadn’t been in his own office as much recently as he used to; he’d been staying at home, drinking more and more, doing scholarly activities less and less. He blamed this on a young graduate student, Maya, who had chosen to make his life hell, presumably as punishment for his amorous affection being removed; she was, after all, a terrible poet, and she had gained a hundred pounds since the time he’d been seeing her, maybe a couple of years ago. He caught his breath, climbing the steps; the office building was at the same time very familiar, and also just a little tense.

He was an Argentine poet and a full professor; he knew all the Argentine poets he had grown up with, but he specialized in a Cuban poet, and could talk for hours about the beauty of the Spanish language when it was bound up in the enchantment of poetry. Sometimes in the rhythm of his own steps he would hear the words of the poets, or the beauty of the language, but this was in better times. Now his steps sounded more like a nails sealing his own coffin. He intentionally recalled great Spanish poetry, trying to reverse the downward spiral of his thoughts; it wasn’t working. Each step seemed like a thorn in his side, rather than a beautiful syllable of a beautiful language.

Expounding on the beauty and grace of the Spanish language: this was how he met Marcelline, a woman in his own building, a French teacher who had recently been studying logic as part of semantics and thus as part of language. He had enchanted her by telling her about how, in his generation, they studied logic along with Latin, and he’d told her about a Latin teacher who had been one of his inspirations. Here in the US, it was similar; back in the old days, namely the turn of the previous century, in certain schools, logic was one of the hardest subjects students would take, and they would refer to it as “p’s and q’s” as in “minding one’s p’s and q’s” – which was, in essence, hitting the books.  He’d had a logic teacher who had been a monster, abusive and cruel, but he’d survived, and he was proud of it. He’d studied the great Spanish poets, and studied in England. With Marcelline, he’d gone on to tell her about the Argentine poets, and, of course, his own favorite Cuban poet, and he was, at this moment, climbing the stairs in hopes of maintaining an amorous relationship with Marcelline, who had implied she would be in her office at this hour, after class.

He could, of course, take the elevator, but the elevator made him feel old, and he was only 56. It was almost twenty years ago, he thought, thinking in years, that his first wife had left him. She, too, was Argentine; she was disappointed that they hadn’t had a child by then; but most of all, she simply wanted to go home. She wasn’t happy in the USA, and she’d let him know that. He’d been quite stubborn about it; he was successful here; he’d become a professor; he’d impressed everyone, and his career, basically, was here. The sadness of that breakup had haunted him.

At first, he had enjoyed his freedom, seeing woman after woman, many of them in this building, which was like a little Europe. He courted Portuguese teachers, Italian teachers, even a German professor. He had wild nights on the town with beautiful, well-educated young women.  

Everyone seemed to tolerate it; he was, after all, a tenured professor. But this young poet, Maya, had basically ruined it all, in his view. She had come along at a time of weakness for him, and somehow he didn’t see what an unhappy person she was, not to mention the fact that she was a bad poet. At a reading one time she was reading her poetry, and he was admiring her figure, when all of a sudden he caught himself listening to the words, and having to admit that, yes, it was pretty bad. What was he doing? What had he stooped to? What had gone wrong?

The other day, someone had asked him why windows in the building could never open. They were sealed shut, and that was no doubt because a central-air system meant that an open window would mean that the building would be air conditioning a very hot outdoor patio, or trying to heat a very cold winter day. But what it had meant, in the long run, was that every single person in the building had become accustomed to being cut off from the outdoors, operating, if they were lucky, with a window to look out of, but not a window to breathe out of, or yell out of. The building was a fortress, sealed off from the invading world, closed off except at the front and back doors. He thought of this, sometimes, as he compared it to Europe, say, or even to the USA. Places become insular, he thought, as do the people in them, cut off from reality, unable to feel something obvious in the air.

Marcelline had given him hope again, though even Marcelline looked at him sometimes as if she’d been through a few relationships herself, and wasn’t going to be so quick to trust him. The hallway that he now walked down was full of signs that said “No means No!”, and he looked at them, thinking of their discussion of logic. You’d think that, in a building where everyone taught various languages, “No” would be the most basic word, the first one, one that you wouldn’t have to argue about. Didn’t it translate as “No” in Portuguese, French, or German?

He knew that in fact these signs were part of a campaign, in which women, particularly professional women on campus, were enraged by a fraternity whose members had allowed themselves to be photographed publically with a sign that said “No means Yes” – it was more complicated than that, but it was blatantly disrespectful to women, and the women on campus had responded with these signs. It all made sense, in context, of course, if one understood the campus and what was happening on it. But from a purely logical point of view, it was somewhat absurd, and it reminded him of that logic teacher so many decades ago.

Of course, he couldn’t bring this up with Marcelline; she had a similar sign on her office as well. It would simply make her mad; there was always the possibility that she would think he “didn’t get it” or “didn’t take it seriously.” On the contrary, he thought, he took it too seriously. He read it for what it was. He remembered his education in logic, every hour of it, and it came boiling to the surface at moments like this.

The case with Maya was slow in working its way through the system; it was unresolved. Maya had complained to the highest authorities, saying that he was using his sexual involvement with her, and the personal fallout from the breakup, against her in her pursuit of a PhD. His view was the opposite, that if anything, his involvement had helped her, had taken her much further than she deserved, and his lack of support now was simply forcing her to get the PhD. on her own, without his help. He didn’t feel like he was preventing her from doing anything. And he felt like everyone – chair, ombudsman, provost – was colluding to make his life miserable.

Perhaps Marcelline could change his mood, and make him feel worthy again. But, alas, there was a note on Marcelline’s office door, addressed to him, and basically telling him she was busy for the evening, and was sorry to back out of whatever engagement he had planned. Now in fact, as he went over exactly what he did have planned, and how much of this he had actually communicated successfully with her, he was sorry to admit that it was all very vague, and he was sure she knew what he had truly intended, and had simply rejected that. Perhaps she had done her homework, or had heard through the grapevine about the situation with Maya; or, perhaps she was truly busy, and would be glad to make other arrangements later. There was no way of knowing whether this was a temporary or permanent setback.

In this picture, of course, things were very rarely direct, and Gilfredo had long ago become used to this way of operating; he’d even mastered it. But now he felt like he was a victim of it, in that he didn’t know where he stood. The “No means No!” signs seemed to mock him, as he stood there, in the hallway. Things had, in fact, come to this, and it wasn’t pretty. He was entirely alone, up there in that hallway, and badly needed another drink.

8-10-15

Rite of Passage

Rite of Passage

The little boy had chicken pox, and Jordan realized, as he saw how truly miserable the kid was, that it had never occurred to the kid that he wouldn’t always be the cutest thing on earth. He was only about three; he hadn’t looked in the mirror all that much, but he’d looked in it today, and that’s when he saw them, the little red spots all over his face that made all the grownups in his world gasp in horror and turn away, or tell him what a poor child he was.

Chicken pox isn’t so bad if you’re three; it’s mostly bad if you fail to get it, and get it later as a full-blown adult. That’s the way these things are; almost everyone gets it when they’re three. The little guy had dozens of friends, in his daycare and in his playgroup, and whenever he was with them he was completely with them, in their faces, being moved from one friend to the other. This little strain of chicken pox probably took all of five minutes to spread to the whole daycare, and another five, later that week, to hit every kid in the playgroup. Then the reports came in; so-and-so had chicken pox, so-and-so wouldn’t be coming to the playgroup this week. It was a kind of recurring pattern.

The kid was actually Jordan’s brother. Jordan was 20; he’d just come back from college, but he’d just wrecked his car, when he was almost home. His girlfriend had dumped him, apparently, before he’d left, but he found out accidentally, and then, somewhat upset, had been coming home in a hurry. His parents, busy with a sick 3-year-old and a couple of other siblings, had barely noticed his arrival, though they did promise him his favorite dinner, spaghetti, as soon as they could provide it. He had a knot in his stomach, and he felt like it was caused by having two homes, one at college, where things had fallen apart rapidly, and one here, where it was home, of course, but his poor brother was so miserable, and it didn’t really feel like home anymore. He wanted to go out for a drive, but his car was wrecked and was in the shop. He kept checking his phone, hoping somehow for a text from his ex-girlfriend, but, even if she texted, what good would that do? What could she say that would make any difference whatsoever? Perhaps he could text someone in town that he knew.

It was raining at his parents’ house. Finally he reached his girlfriend from high school, Rachel, and she was due to come over in about half an hour; maybe they’d do something together. They’d broken up when he went to college, and his feelings for her were gone; they’d gone separate ways. But she was still a friend, and would cheer him up, he hoped. She was going to a university on the other side of the state, but was home at the moment too. She’d come home to find out that not only had she lost her room, but she’d lost her whole house; her parents had split up, gone separate ways, neither having a room for her anymore. Ordinarily she’d go visit her grandmother, but grandmother was in the hospital, not expected to live into the next month. The grandmother had a house, and even a room, but being there or staying there was next to impossible. When Rachel came over, she was a nervous wreck, and was considering driving back to the university that very day, texting friends at the university and elsewhere almost constantly, in her nervousness. At least at the university she had a place to stay.

Jordan tried to get Rachel to take him out for a drive, even though it was raining, and he promised her he’d give her some gas money or take her for coffee. His little brother’s wailing and whining were bothering him. She didn’t want to go; she appreciated a safe haven, a house that wasn’t hers, or wasn’t full of her mom’s bitterness for her dad, or her dad’s anger. They went back behind the shed and smoked a cigarette, a kind of teenage ritual that they’d performed many times in high school. The rain dripped off the roof of the shed and threatened to put out the little nub of a cigarette as they were smoking it. Rachel pointed out that they were lucky they were in college; she had a friend who was already a mother, another who was in jail; one old acquaintance from high school had been killed in a car wreck.  While they were there, checking their phones, Rachel let him in on two more personal dramas. The first involved her own little sister, about thirteen, who had flown to New York to spend a week with her uncle’s family. But the uncle had been delayed on his way to the airport by a missed connection, and left her stranded in the airport. The sister kept texting Rachel and Rachel would text back furiously, encouraging her and telling her that the uncle would be there as soon as possible. Second, she found out, reading her messages, that her dad had been fined for some business infraction; this would likely cost him his business and he’d have to get another job. Jordan, checking his own messages, found out that a friend of his back in college had a mom who had fallen, and would need months of rehab; that friend would have to drop out, go to school somewhere else or perhaps not at all, and rearrange his life accordingly.

At one point the rain let up a little, but they were both busy texting people, and didn’t really see it. They described the dramas that were playing out on their phones to each other. And then, when everything seemed so bleak, the sun came out above them; it was still raining a little, so there was a rainbow, clear as day, out over the creek, behind some neighbors’ houses. Jordan was using his fingers to crush what was left of his cigarette.

Finally Rachel agreed to let Jordan take her out for coffee, and they went into the house to get his keys. Jordan’s brother was still whining; chicken pox made him miserable. It was more the idea of it that made him miserable than the disease itself. He was no longer a baby, and was going to have to lie around and whine until he got better, because everyone was busy. They’d put a movie on and hoped he’d just sit there watching it. Jordan stopped to talk to him for a minute, but he didn’t want to linger, because the kid would delay him, and hang on to him, and he was really eager to get out of the place. Also, he wasn’t quite sure if he’d ever had chicken pox, so he was a little hesitant to get too close to the kid. He told his brother about the rainbow, but they looked out the window, and it seemed to be gone. The brother got mad at him, and complained that all the good stuff in life, all that Jordan had promised, was all a cruel hoax. Jordan licked his lips, hoping the kid wouldn’t smell the cigarette, knowing his brother was watching him carefully. Basically, he agreed with the kid. It was a tough world, and you just had to get used to it.

(7-2015)