Submissions

            Found myself in the Vegas airport in a 2^1/2hr layover thanks to this girl I know who works for the airline.  People with luggage trailing at the heals like faithful dogs, talking to themselves like sci-fi psychopaths with earpieces and everyone going nowhere not fast enough.

            I was feeling twitchy and restless.  The ringing of the terminal slot machines wasn’t helping any.  Neither was the fresh memory of the intimidating and insulting officers of the TSA back in Oakland who insisted on subjecting me to the prods of their meaty fingers, the delectable stares of their beady eyes while rifling through my underwear, or their stifled glee at dumping every carefully packed item out of my backpack whereupon they brought their coffee-stained hairy faces close to mine to ask me to remove my shoes, jacket and mask.

            Truth be told I’d been feeling fidgety since the night before when I got home from the bar.  The Dude I live with was laying in wait in the bushes in front of the house with a sniper rifle in one hand and a scope in the other.

            “Hoogatcha!”

            “Jesus God!”

            “Slacker,” he casually appraised.

            “What the Christs?”

            “I’m waiting.”

            “You scared the shit outta me! What the fuck are you waiting for?”

            “Targets.”

            “I’ve got a headache.  Take that damn gun offa me.”

            “It’s not loaded.  I’m just getting a feel for it.”

            “New?”

            “Yeah.  Well old, but new to my collection… once I’m sure it works.”

            “Cool.  Just don’t test it out on me, ok Dude?”

“We’ll see.  Just don’t get on my bad side.”  He wrapped a camouflage jacket over his shoulders and ducked back down into the lawn bushes.  If there’s a zombie apocalypse or another Great Depression I rest assured knowing our house will be well defended, but in the meantime I often have trouble getting to sleep at night knowing The Dude is the way he is.

“I’m going to bed,” I declared over my shoulder wearily, “Got any Tylenol?”

“There’s some multivitamins on my desk if you want.  Couldn’t hurt.  Unless they kill you.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “They’re right next to the poison.”

            “Well which one’s which?”

            “Oh they’re not labeled.”

 

            When I got up in the morning everything had melted from my rattled mind except for the thought of Nigel.  My own damn brother, and I realized I hadn’t actually talked to him in over a year, and hadn’t heard anything from him in about 8 months.  To think that he’d been here in this city with some poor girl, knowing what Nigel is capable of…

6AM I called my mom hoping to pounce on the subject at hand.  Keep the spawn of unwanted topics at bay with a quick sweep.  A barrage of questions, click.

            The trouble with plans is that they fail to come to fruition.

            Those touchy topics are so incessant because their triggers are unidentifiable.

It was a dry morning and I couldn’t have told you what I was thinking about except the statuesque Persian girl in the basement apartment across the street, hair black as shoe polish, a caged bird singing songs that only I could hear.

            Dad answered.

            “Hi son.  Decided to go back to school?”

            “Hi Dad.  No, not yet.  Where’s Mom?”

            “She’s taking a nap.  Written anything good lately?”

            “All roads lead to Rome,” I said.

            “It’s good, but hardly original,” he added, “funny, for Nigel that phrase always seemed true, but for you, I think it was more along the lines of ‘All roads lead to roam…”

            “Yes, that is funny… that you should mention Nigel I mean.  Heard anything from him lately?”

            “No, not lately.  Last I heard he was in Alaska I think.  Some new job or something.  Why?”

            “No reason.  When’s the last you think you heard from him?”

 

…

 

           

 

            The whole country lay bright and silent beneath me flying out of Vegas impersonal and cold.  We ascended into the sun and soon I had forgotten all about the submissive hordes raising their hands to the metal-detector gods like common criminals, and the guilt-tripping father, the gun-toting housemate… A few perfect hours of flight time where mindlessness and bliss cross streams in the high atmosphere until all the unconnected dots started scuttling back at me and I did my best to assemble them together.

I had told the girl part of what Nigel had done, hinted at the rest which I suspected and she didn’t ask too many questions but offered to put me on a plane right away.  The benefit of working for the airline is that you can do these sorts of things for yourself or select friends. 

“I’ll pay you back the fifty bucks.” (Because as with all free perks, like last-minute flights for friends and loved ones, there comes a nominal price)

“Keep it baby, we’ll call it even if you stop here in Chicago first.”

“Promise you won’t call me Baby?”

“No.”

 

The stewardess on my present flight had a bit of a tendency at over-smiling her way down the aisle, and her grin started to make we wary of her altogether so I rummaged through my bag until I found a printout of the last email I’d gotten from Nigel… which as a matter of fact wasn’t meant for me at all.  He had sent it to my mother, almost a year to the day before, and she had forwarded it on to me.

 

 

            Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.  I suppose I learned that from years of wearing a mask and writing stories about it.  When Nigel got back from India last winter he was alone and I never heard anything else about anyone named ‘Christine’.  Might have stayed, maybe he left her behind, those are the best possibilities I could hope for her.

Later in the Chicago terminal I saw my stewardess stilting along, still grinning wide like a lip sutured hyena and laughing into the embrace of a big Filipino.  Big sweeping curves of snowy asphalt awaited me in my cab out into the suburbs where I would stay for the night before continuing on to Houston in the morning.  Nigel’s last known address, as far as anyone could tell me.  The sun had gone down and the temperature with it.  I was struck once again by that sad melancholy of snow of which California has left me gratefully bereft.  Pale village buildings all unlikely decorated in sad attempts at Christmas cheer.  Blown-up Frosty’s and Santa’s piled high and garrulous.  Giant flickering multicolored string-lights thrown along the drab front of an eerily vacant apartment complex beseeching (lost) JOY, and paying tenants who are Pet Free A Must.

We pulled up and for a moment I remember just what I was getting myself back into by knocking on her door once again.  But before I could change my mind she flung it open and stood there stretched out in the tall frame, wearing barely anything, ready to wrap me in a hug and a kiss.

“OBaby’so Goodta seeya!”

“It’s been a long time.”  I took a nibble at her neck and ran my cold hands down the rounded flesh of her hip.

“Not really, I mean, it doesn’t feel like, I mean…” She bit a pale lip.  “I didn’t want to tell you before baby because I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”

“Tell me what?”

“Your brother.”

I went rubbery.

“What about him?”

“I saw him. Here.”

“When?”