In Dallas-Fort Worth it was entirely my fault. I imagined in a flash of madness there was a Charlotte, South Carolina, and we were flying to the wrong one. Mind follows any suggestion. Body joins with chemical panic. It began in simple fashion in front of a computer at my office in Oakland. Tall woman showing how to book my flight. There is a Greenville, South Carolina and a Greenville, North Carolina. My name is Brief, as in the amount of time I’m going to spend here on earth. A bobsled for a country called Heart Attack racing to the finish line, perfect run. I grabbed my traveling companion by the lapel and said, “We’re fucked!” A flash, I said, quick. Insinuation, a thought, off and running.
In front of that computer the girl promised me it would be easy. I hesitated to use my card. “What are you doing with it?” she asked. “Well, I’ve been thinking of taking a flight to see my brother. He and his wife just had a baby.” Come, I’ll show you how. We made love on my boss’s dusty couch. Not the sofa in his office – leather and fine. The nasty one in the storage room at the warehouse. Drunken sex, which was fine, and then she held my hand and led me to a computer on the main floor. We used McCray’s cubicle, I know. We stained his upholstered chair. McCray purchased the chair at an antique shop in the city. I know, because once he led me there excited, an attempt to influence my buying habits positively. I ended up getting a leather CEO’s on wheels.
He had this old chair with gnarly, upholstered cover and we. I didn’t know her name. After using it thought about throwing it in the bay. I was ticked off, after reading an editorial about how California no longer matters. The author of the article the one out of touch. California will always lead, Dad told me growing up, always rebound. “People forever trying to count us out.” I nodded, vaguely sure what he was talking about. All six boys went to state schools. Sister went to Wellesley. She did not write the article. I neglected to use a proper email address. “Let’s do the public library,” I suggested. “No way,” she. “First, it’s closed, second, I want to get you in your office. Cameras in libraries.”
She was a conspiracy theorist. Politicians and bankers always making fun of conspiracy theorists. That’s because they’re the ones in control. You should see what’s going on with Iraqi oil. A drunk man at the bar spilled the beans. He used his credit card lavishly. He wore a fine suit.
“You should see what I know,” he whispered. “And don’t get me started on Halliburton,” first to her, then to me. “Seven billions of dollars awarded from the government, with, get this, guaranteed profit of 700 million, you know, for the risk. They got the contract uncontested. No bidding. Ha! First in line? They are the line.” The man spit on the floor. He was in a bad state. I assumed he was on their side, from the suit, from the way he talked. Funny, when he got up to stumble, he left the Wall Street Journal on the barstool to his left.
“Hey, friend, you forgot your paper.” He turned and thanked me. He had the look and the breath. He forgot his credit card and so did the tender. That’s when she – what?; Melissa?; Cindy? – began making moves. I wore a suit, too. But that was an accident. I’d gone to a funeral. Then to the party. A band at this funeral. Young friend of mine. He was a musician, regionally famous, van tours throughout the Pacific. Played Tokyo. I’m at thirty-thousand feet, just looked out the window.
I didn’t want to spend $500. Didn’t have the spend. My brother lives in Asheville. He plays with crystals, wears his hair long sandals year-round, a healer. Only, he doesn’t heal poor hippies. Rich boys from the realm, golf guys and chinos, members of Augusta. Accidental, this route, but a path to reasonable wealth. For a healer. When you meet him he touches you. Wears beads outside turtleneck. Like the author of that one article accused California residents of. But it was $500 from San Francisco to Greenville. I pro’d and con’d, I hesitated, through the alcohol and the woman’s hand, I saw she was about to hit Greenville and that’s in North Carolina, not South Carolina. An hour from Asheville or four hours both ways, not the drive I desired for my brother. She said, “Why not fly direct into Asheville, honey?”
One, I didn’t want to spend five-hundred-plus. “He likes to drive,” I said. So I shouted “Wait!” and had her switch to Greenville, South Carolina. Too much. She clicked Charlotte, North Carolina and I forgot, over the next six weeks, the what. Charlotte is two hours from Asheville, land of crystals and wizards and blue, clustered ridges of the southern Appalachians. My brother started out as an Appalachian scholar; lived in the South since he left California. Knows all about waterways. On-command drawl.
The woman clicked Charlotte and I forgot most things about that evening. Content, happy, a man with a ticket. When I arrived in Dallas, I took one look at the monitor and saw Charlotte, NC. Triggered heart palpitations, ticket agents dealing running, and finally, nearly a miracle, I called my brother.
I began to think it was a stupid idea. Began to sober up, look at the woman differently, to ignore. She started touching me. Fun to be touched there. Quickly, reasoned that I could fly anywhere in the world if she wanted me to. Ready to whisper beautiful things. “I love you,” I said when she was on top of me, seated as we were in McCray’s chair. I meant it, too. Right there, in that moment, her naked body and her eyes alive and clean, I loved her, in this brief.
Grinding, lowering her head, she looked at me as if my utterances were ridiculous. No - employing common sense with her - I mean it. And I could live with you the rest of my life. And we have to do this more often, everyday in fact. She smiled and bit my neck. Good I was single because at home I noticed bite marks all over my fragile sack. Repeated that I loved her and called her “Baby.” Oh, man, baby, this is so great, baby damn. She looked at me, perturbed, exclaimed “Don’t call me baby.” She paused a few strokes and said, “I don’t want you to call me what you call the other girls.”
“I don’t have other girls, baby.” Apologized. Moving forward I kept my mouth shut. By then I was drunk with love and drunk.
In apoplectic Dallas I called him. I said, “Oh, man, shit, I’m flying to Charlotte, North Carolina.”
“Um, yeah?” pause while waiting for the catch or the punchline.
“No, North Carolina. I’m fucked. Don’t leave the house yet.”
“That’s where I’m picking you up. I’m about to head there now.”
“What about Charlotte, South Carolina?” I asked him, desperate for my mistake or the ticket agent’s mistake or the website’s mistake.
“There isn’t a Charlotte, South Carolina,” he said. “I’ve got to hit the road. It’s a two hour drive.”
“There isn’t a Charlotte in South Carolina?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Oh. Um. So . . .”
“See you soon.”
“So, I’m flying to Charlotte, NC?”
“That’s where I’ll be.”
I hung up before working out how the mishap began. Synapses. Power of suggestion. Why I no longer consume psychedelics. Looked around to see whether people were staring. The original agent behind her desk, at whom I’d yelled and who knew there wasn’t a Charlotte, South Carolina, who had attempted to explain, looked at me. A man who’d made like he was staring at his laptop but listening to my cry, smiled. I sat down. Tried to piece it together. Two minutes and there it was: Greenville.
The original drunken movement with the girl was for Greenville, in that state to the south. Greenville, to the south of Asheville, is closer. And Greenville, North Carolina, far away. Charlotte, that’s where it was all along. And Charlotte, that was the girl’s name. I knew it. Charlotte was her name or at least the name she gave me seated on McCray’s chair.
Breathing easier but less affirmed of my place in the world I watched “My Life As A Dog,” next to a plug in an airport chair, then caught the flight further east. Noticed that Pepsi secured a contract with Dallas Fort Worth. Pepsi everywhere, every vending machine every shop or store. I applauded the sell who scored the contract.
I had no food on the flight. Finished the film and wondered why I related to the characters in the movie, tried to piece it together, this care. Always an odd hope, an eye forever on the lookout, concerned not about matters. A baby nephew, my younger brother’s, there I am scratching my head. Why did he go first? Supposed I had all this time. Used to tell her, “Mom, I’ve got all the time in the world.” There’s a conspiracy, and the human being is not involved.
My brother and his wife bought a small house on a hill, quiet rural street called Crestview. The dogs barked. The cat visited. Cat’s name Lilac. She’s an outdoors cat. They don’t want animal hair. Not with the baby. Not with the hardwood floors. The dogs barked. My brother barked back, “Jesse! Anna! Hush!” Past midnight. Two brothers somewhere in the foothills – past humidity and flatlander, before the mountains, the region some proudly refer to as Appalachia – seated on benches in a booth with a high-school cast of Grease celebrating a fine run and an even better Saturday night.
I hadn’t recognized members of Grease. My brother provided the insight: pink jackets, makeup still intact, excited bubble of young people in their exuberant prime. My brother laughed with them; I laughed at them. It is possible that I exhaled something like, “They don’t know how good they have it.” My brother looked at me closely and he didn’t smoke. He doesn’t smoke any longer. There was a carcinogenic section behind glass, over there, two relatives of R.J. Reynolds of the oldschool going to town.
We ordered pancakes and my brother took care of his small craving for eggs and meat. It was an omelette. His wife vegetarian. She won’t patronize Italian restaurants – any of them, without checking the menu – notorious veal. Small baby cows, raised in horrific shit-bath conditions and slaughtered for tender, soft meat, soft, easy. Kill the babies, I said and didn’t mean it. My brother stared at me again, closely. We drank coffee. One-thirty when we arrived and I was shown the guest room in their small home, the dogs chilled out by careful inspection of my hands, groin, vibe. Meet his son in the morning. I could hear my mother again. She would call to check-in on the progress, feel out where I was, how my response would be, where the feet might be standing. No dreams that I recalled, slow, unforced drowsiness consumed consciousness, turning waking to the spirits of night.
The little tyke was dressed in a blue sack, lying on his back, rotating his arms with clenched fists and kicking his feet hard and furious. He blew bubbles and smiled when my brother leaned close to his face and made high-pitched sounds cutesy-wutesy. My younger brother. And I could hear our mother. I forgot about the credit card and didn’t tell a soul. My mom wanted to know when I was next. Cartoon foot tapping, impatiently waiting. The young infant hippie kicked and squirmed on a blanket on the floor bordered by toys. Each toy rattled when shaken. There was a secret war going on somewhere, global Pax Americana, that little ones cared not about. He watched the ceiling, movements of wagged fingers, adult heads peering, smiling maniac in his frame. The small infant boy fed mother’s milk and placed in bed. They sleep with him.
A woman in a bar once scoffed, then launched into an example of a kid who slept in bed with his parents until he was twelve years old. Much to do with spooky nights. A pacifier and diapers at five. One must watch the hippie. But the woman wore a business suit at this bar watching Fox News and its coverage of heroes fighting goons. And the woman said, referring to this family and this kid in his parents’ bed, “There is such a thing as too much love.” Peace and love are out; pre-emptive wars, bashing heads and asserting American power are in.
A conservative Renaissance, patriots swimming with flags. A great time to be alive for the American, left or right. If you set aside most of the crying in the press, about diseases death and dying, and concentrate on your right here, your immediate moment, your small community, your cold beer on the wet, slick bar, your twelve-pound baby boy, you’ll see empire doing its job. Shot rings out on the Syrian border. Why not after Palestine deals with Africa? Afterwards, let’s consume Cuba and shut down whining in Colombia and Venezuela. A fine, new doctrine, and a quiet man at a bar, overhearing dialogue of misinformed concern and emotional reactions to emotion-inducing television journalism.
Lawbreaker, I stooped over my brother’s struggling new body and my thoughts expanded far and wide and farther still, as the sun consumes our universe, and I wondered what we were all doing and where in fact we were. I could hear my mother. Happy to be a grandma. My brother concerned about his job. His wife taking a year off. They own a small home. Some eat meat and some abhor, some protest and some accept and a powerful force (greater than any political structure) set in motion. A book on tape by Edward O. Wilson. His mother committed suicide. Biological determinism an exciting concept. Or, come into the world and observe the environment hammer upon the innocent blueprint. Some scholars deny these associationist connections. Some give them holiness and assert life direction. Let us wave our flags for some thing, any thing, desperately. Listen to the man at the bar laughing.
“We can’t have McDonald’s in the car,” my brother said, “Because they kill babies.” Morning he made me scarf hash browns funny little grease slabs and throw the to-go bag in the trash on the franchise premises. Instead of eating in the car and wife finds the empty sack behind the seat and incriminating gaze, eyes claim we have just ruined her baby. Watch yourself your politics and your way of living. An urban cat from the northeast via the west coast tiptoed through their small brick town. “Actually,” my brother said, “The French Broad is one hell of a polluted river. Industry in these mountain valleys trashes Appalachia. And acid rain from the toxic busybodies on the Ohio River drifts this way.”
Mostly the sight of a cop makes me slow down and encourages thought about all the times I’ve broken the law, increase nerves, incites thoughts that wonder, “Is this it?” Certain to be busted. A feeling. Bad that way, these thoughts on the run. Damn them: cough equals SARS, HIV or COVID. Zit cancer. Glance from a stranger means I’m ugly. Couple with child reinforces my social and biological insignificance. My little brother, darn him; look at him go; how does he do it. Small wiggler a living room carpet, shimmying, stretching, temporary monicker “Bubbles.” Sounds like a porn star. Scene in a motel. Played a maid. Oh, to receive secret sex for free and be the dominant grunting male, order the toy around, rub places unmentionable. Fantasy rarely meets reality. Must be this way for the bulk of us otherwise anarchy.
I want to hold a conference in Ur. Move through dusty streets with a powerful gun. I pick my nose for no reason. Why did Charlotte jump me and play that card game? I should never have gone down that path. My brother, the young New Age, talks of our “journey.” Well, the journey is long and our way with family set. One red-wine toast after another and tears in our eyes. Good to have meaning. Oh, Charlotte, I should have worn a rubber. I don’t like how they look, wrapped there, peering down upon it. And each thought yields quickly to: “I am going to die.” Come on, hand-cut-off, potential danger there and of course here. Get a grip. Incapable of a grip and not able to let go. Untenable. Or do I mean unenviable? Language spins and I work hard for the proper position.
Come on, guy, a thought in the ride to the pingpong castle on the mountaintop, find one, get one, hold one, render her pregnant. This should be easy enough. Happiness is a decision. And your mother, ha!: She’ll be untroubled and delighted. She used to read the Chronicles of Narnia. The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe swims in my brain. Even with Mr. Lewis and his Christianity. During this special, secret time the clash of civilizations. Liberals losing consideration. Ha Lefty: friend I once knew. He of course an intellectual. And now seated upon some vanguard tractor on the working farm of the conservative revolution. In Asheville they don’t know about this. Peace signs in windowpanes old and well-set brick buildings: “Drop Beats, Not Bombs” in the window of an independent record store. Vinyl. And more. They don’t know, and shhhh, don’t’ tell ‘em.
On the flight home an older well-dressed woman sat in front of me, one seat over, flowing pantsuit and large-rimmed sunglasses, on her way to Chicago. She’d purchased a magazine; must be left-leaning; else a spy studying the competition. Flight attendants a Boston-based crew. One remarked to another, dealing with coffee, tomato juice, ice and plastic cups, “I realize the president did not win the popular vote, losing to a liberal. What confuses me is he’s ruling from the extreme wing.” The woman poured ginger ale for the older woman in her purple flowing pantsuit and smiled. I peered through the seats-gap and my eye snatched a quick one. Before I share it – employing powers of recollection – I think about American Airlines and the union agreement with executives to cut costs, mechanic here or there, man heaving suitcases without bending his knees, sporting a wedding band: “I suppose he can support a family,” image of my mother speaking. See the airlines and the pilots and the sinking economy.
America the Hated spell the left-wingers still holding their positions. The president seems unstoppable. Something horribly wrong. I’m going to have to revisit that bar, search for her again, the smell of her neck her organic musk. The woman in the purple pantsuit and I’m gazing through the crack: discovering the magazine itself not its contents: the new Time hit the stands with Saddam Hussein and a large red X through his face, much as the same magazine displayed Hitler at the end of that war: Looking for a running head, curious: saw instead: “America is hated the world over as never before. Deficits are exploding, unemployment remains high, the stock market is still in the tank and interest rates are poised to take off. The country is heading to hell in a handbasket from so many directions one can barely keep track. And yet the Foxified media tell a story only of heroism: of the US military, of the American people and the President of the United States, who managed to avoid service to either one.” This from the Nation.
Sat back in my chair, jutting lip bemusement. No desire to strike up a conversation with this purple woman. Wanted to ignore the reality around me, at thirty-five-thousand feet and 500 miles-an-hour, mountains of stone and snow first the Rockies then Sierra, almost home. Nothing made sense any longer; couldn’t tell what I was getting away with or not getting away with; so many other concerns. I have a friend who did some time for passing bad checks and credit card fraud: she learned card games on the inside. At her memory I smiled. Visited her a few times. Bedraggled behind glass. All she could talk about were the other women, interesting games of cards, the passage of time, the inescapable functions of aging. She asked whether she should cut her hair. I didn’t want to say yes. Struggled, turned, looked out the window at the clouds and occasionally breaks in the clouds. I worried. Began to wish I hadn’t gone drunk to the office with this bar woman. And there my brother’s baby, quivering, tentative smile to one broader, on a steamer toward a sterling. I saw it, and there I was, wondering.
My brother asked whether I’d recently gotten a haircut. Fingered my smooth neck and answered, “No.” We walked in wet heat. April already humid in my face. My brother younger for a lifetime I’ve been telling him how things are or how things are supposed to be. Now he wears the sharp clothing of a responsible man. Standing next to him I’ve lost an inch. Attempt to straighten. He may have noticed. Nothing in my lungs for a desire to tell him how the air on the bay lacks humidity, breeze like swimming in a clean lake when you require it most. Keep my mouth shut these days with my younger brother. Isn’t worth it, elder’s tyranny, enforcing will, asking him to run errands, suggesting where to live, what sort of career, shy of mocking, careerists inferior, now haunting come around slinky, even how to make love.
But he has proven to be a better man: he goes down on his women more in a week than I do in a year. Has to be a special occasion. I recognized too late this malfunction. There he is now, my younger brother, with his go-down woman, his newborn child kicking in a blue fleece sack. “Isn’t he cuddly?” his wife asked. Of course I agreed. Shift into ulti-uncle, on my knees cooing, saying proper things, eye contact, congratulating them and hugs all around. My brother incense played Buddhist monks humming. Or maybe the throat singing guys from I don’t know. “Good for the baby.” I looked down, the boy breastfeeding, his mom, scene bliss, and I thought, “There is the Buddha Baby, Bubbles.” One with drool.
Okay, I submit: I’ll return home and locate a wife immediately, sustain a career, have kids, buy minivan or Passat wagon. Here I come, I give up, give in, accept. Not capitulation, recognition. Arms open to something, some monotheist essence, lack of a better I’ll go Buddha, there with Bubbles, and the Throat Singers of What.
We drank a bottle of Jameson’s. Ate vegetable stir fry. Wiped with recycled toilet paper. Took a bath lion claw tub, feet on the wall in front of me, bubbles. Chess in a café, long walking, hiking trail along the Swannanoa River, farm fields view distance-mountains, gentle dramatic ripple hills. A warm Spring, budding trees, early green, naked farther up the slopes along ridges. Tempeh Reuben and Sol served. Last in San Francisco in 1945, coming home from the war. People somehow find Asheville. It’s a place where the funky and free congregate. Buy a brick building give life to a studio, paint the first buds down low and still-naked high on the ridges. Be a photographer, darkroom there, low red light.
On the hike with a Baby Bjorn brought as a gift kid slept most of the way. We paused next to a waterfall an old, decrepit dam. Trees grew on the dam stones. Slow-moving day, relaxed with the rhythms of Bubbles, who seemed to need milk on the hour. Experienced drowsiness on the dirt slope near this springtime river. Kids from Warren Wilson College installed a hammock. An understanding: you do not walk away with somebody else’s hammock, no thievery on this sacred slope. Mom sat low in the hammock with Bubbles and fed him. Brothers seated on a root, listened to water, audible the reason we’re here. Blood spoke of working hard, making payments; he thanked me for flying “all this way.” A flight attendant asked me where I was going. Paranoia in my eyes as I detected something in her smile. My answer elicited a “Bless your heart,” a warm southern shimmer. A baby, I was going to see a baby. The question posed several times. On the streets bump into their friends, the café with the chess guy, Andie MacDowell appeared all hair when she asked. She smiled at Bubbles, who obliged by blowing them from lips first, cascade chin. She pinched his cheek. Natives blasé about this famous woman with raven hair. The star-struck tourist, fidgety outside. People in that town so darn nice. Nobody mentioned the war, the current administration, or the word “profit.”
Next to a broad, thick-grass meadow leaned against a fence. Still hear the river, though flats flowed the bend. Saw in butterflies the beauty we’re supposed to. Near this fence mooed. Long mooing bellows, over the meadow, head tilted back. Used to Switzerland, mountain slopes, glacial melt trough. Realized no longer young. The kid in his Baby Bjorn Boris. Cows returning home. Congregated along the fence. One shocked her wet nose and jumped. Another flipped her thick, dense, long tongue grabbed the cuff of my shirt. Thought she’d taken a button, but she only unbuttoned. The others laughed; the cow laughed. “Look at her long eyelashes,” my brother’s wife. We did. Friend of theirs hiked the trail. Hug introductions. Knew her from the Buddhist temple, from yoga. She goo-gooed the sleeping baby pinched cheek. Community in action and wondered what my problem. Clear I possessed one. Baby’s arms and legs in a profoundly relaxed dangle. I desire to sag like that. Cow wanted more; friend from temple departed; we finished our hike in the heat, back to town, time for dinner. Japanese restaurant indulged desire for flesh in the form of fish. Crab noodle soup and sushi. Picked up the bill against vigorous protestations: said I flew all the way out here, they’d wanted to treat. Gave the waitress my own and covered the one forty. Two breastfeeds during dinner and catnaps throughout. My brother ordered a bottle of wine. His red flushed and our pronouncements, spend more time together, take family vacations with ours, call more. “I write letters,” he said. Answered that I knew and looked down at my plate. Baby in a sack and thought had to get back. Okay, my brother, my brother, you show me some things and I’ll show you some things. Make this work, I said, no longer cared who won, and I believed that no competition would ever exist between us again. Look at my younger brother; gaze upon what he has done, with her, there the tiniest one, wiggling on the mat the rug the floor, throat singers.
“I have a hard time staring into the deep unknown assuming I know something one way or the other,” the agnostic said to the atheist at the bar. Heated discussion that began with Fox News and its unabashed patriotism, its approach to journalism. A commentator called all war protesters traitors, and “the great unwashed.” A good time to be a conservative in America. Revolution, perhaps. Led by visionaries, say a few. Conservative think tanks having orgasms. The left set to confused disarray. Even switching sides. Or brandishing revamped versions of liberalism that include moderate conservative ideals. They claim that the eleventh day of September is responsible for all of it, left or right. Two men sat on their stools and argued. A drunken professor and a writer of unintelligible yet published poems.
Stylistic swagger draws me to certain writers. Reading DeLillo’s at this bar when the men began their banter. The subject that passed between two sets of fleshy lips attracted me. At first. The King James Bible notable for its euphonies. Time to consider the poet. In all of this. I scratched my head, thinking of an old foreign movie called “Mon Oncle” and considered the camera angle. Things I desired to see, and when I saw them needed to share some embrace of grace. Needs indeed great. A vision seated upon my brain. I saw the man who struggled in front of me: he shook his head for the sixty-third time during a four-hour flight from Chicago. Small girl behind us diaper changed three times. She screamed at the summit of her lung power the entire flight. I wore headphones and cranked sound song and film. Her father and mother expressions of severe, unending torture. Desired to tell the hipster-dressed young man not to worry about it, it’ll all be worth the screaming in a few years, or a decade, sometime. But what do I know? My mother’s glance, her eyes upon me, knowledge in some and not others.
Charlotte laughed. Flung her head back and I noticed the red lipstick. She turned her head and our eyes caught, briefly. Papers in a swirl wind caught then released. But her laugh paused. She glanced again. Mr. Credit Card noticed her falter. He followed her gaze. He noticed me staring. He could not place me. Charlotte turned to him – I watched the back of her head – and said a few words. His expression changed. But not in the direction I would have written it. His smile hearty. He swirled a pivot on the stool and in a bound was on his way. Damn!
A thought: generally prefer to remain invisible. Like Bresson, an art through careful, methodical observation then capturing. Interpretation through the event and the eye of the beholder. Leave the poem natural, said Emerson. Leave for people to sway and argue. A photograph the color of sight. Had I a cigarette would have been casual movie-puffing as Credit Card approached. Instead tapped a finger, no butt for the man with the camera. Credit Card in this bound upon me stuck out a hand; I took it with spy-like calmness (if you’re caught, may as well not freak out); he introduced himself. “Hello, my name is Charles Almonde.” He smiled.
Puff on my imaginary cigarette and a cool, steely stare. Bogart couldn’t touch me dressed in his finest. Some bit belied my calmness. A pro would notice: corner mouth twitch; fear a tangible expression illuminating eyes; rise in body temperature detected, subtle smell armpit sweat; hot in here. Mr. Almonde must have noticed. And he must have known. He was going in. But what sort of kill could it possibly be? Charlotte made those moves on my total innocence. What was she doing back at the bar? And with him? Things need to be simpler, flash flood through my mind. Need to ease off, chill. Need a wife and not this torturous, lonely merrymaking. Charity Merrymaking once a friend of mine. Or Alice Munro’s there is confusion: don’t know real from imagined.
But the power of some instinct rising. Damn. Have got to find a wife. Marry some good Midwestern girl and have a child, a second, a third. Quit this romance nonsense, literature, arts, detective fiction, halt screenplays depicting shadowy moments with tension-lighted cigarillos. Help on the horizon, and it comes from action, not prayers. My mother always said I was a complainer. “Well, mom,” I said, “You try wearing this retainer.”
I threw the thing away forever and damn the teeth moving glacially during the night, until they came to rest in the comfort of their previous position. Things not going my way and I whine. High-nasal sets dogs to howling. Damn. What went wrong? Nothing. I got laid in McCray’s office chair and a flight to see my brother and my nephew that changed my life. I’d go to prison on those terms. New life, a life of sustained understanding: I have matured. Should call mom and say, “Mom! I’ve finally matured, you should see it.” Always been her claim. Haven’t been shamed by my younger brother; enlightened. Not in a moaning Buddhist fashion, not in some Hegelian sense. Rather, in a good old American nothing special kind of way. Time to put out the imaginary cigarette, lose the fake London Fog, brim-tilted hat. Do something, say something.
“Henry Bresson,” I lied, pronounced American. Damn. He’ll know now for sure. Wait, Charlotte never knew my real name. Lied to her, too. At the bar, in real time, her laugh. Not a trifling detection. Thought of an uncle – my mother’s brother – who once said on our way to a basketball game, “Truthfully, we’d lost all hope in you.” Just finished an impassioned defense of my new understanding. Only, I was early, the truth not set into me; lying still and playing my usual game. What sort of sentimentalist sap is this? Hold my baby brother’s baby in my arms and I think the world has changed?
Circumstances never simple. Perhaps merely time. Maybe a step taken, new level in the life climb, final catalyst or straw and some poor camel’s spine after a life of catalysts, a new understanding. It happens. Dams eventually breached. Work of a levy temporary. All the miscues, stories and long trail of friends have arrived upon this ultimate moment. My younger brother’s miracle and instincts taking over, exhibiting the folly-laced notions of our intellect, philosophies, governments, our whole symbolic whining, religions, tap-dancing emotions, wars and criminal courts: a swirl around the ultimate deal, a life you see, the creation of it. I hissed my S in Bresson and said Henry like an American, thus the spelling.
And then I said, “Knowledge of the monkey man has made me wiser.”
“What?” Charles Almonde queried. Understandably confused. But for a moment. Charlotte came over. “May we buy you a drink?” she asked.
“No, no thank you. I’m fine. Downing one pint and I’m off.” My eye caught her eye and in that flash I attempted to understand. Got it. Her meeting with Charles accidental, not her husband. She knows his credit limit. She does me she has every right to do him. Purely and absolutely coincidental. Okay, I get it and accept. For a moment considered a jealous rage. Which would have been ridiculous. He can have her. I’m on my way to better and bigger things. I’m going to have a family, man of the community, step up to my biological responsibilities. Right? Is not this the line? I looked at her again and said, “Nice to see you.”
“How was your trip?”
Before answering and in that pause I glanced at Charles Almonde. He was smiling. Eminent gleam indicated he knew about the tryst. He freaking knew, he was, as they say, with cigarettes, in cahoots.
“The trip was the best,” my answer, and truthful. “I saw my younger brother in all his glory. He has a wonderful son. A son. Dad spoke of a peace-boy growing up to be an activist. I spoke of a catcher for the Red Sox. In absolute terms fabulous. One may even say that it changed my life . . . no, affirmed a new direction. Odd, really.”
“I’ve got a niece, you know,” Charles said. “She’s amazing. Talking in full sentences shy of her second birthday. She is a flower. Quite literally: Her name is Lily.”
“Hmm,” all I managed to muster. From my eyes I gave him more.
Charlotte said, “We were just talking about you.” And then she laughed. They’ve been drinking; my detection late. They fell into each other and gave sort-of kisses. “Let me buy you a drink,” Charles said.
“I have to go. Start this new life of mine.” I looked down the bar. Everything was normal.
Charles laughed drunk, grotesque rapid burst. “Glad you could see your brother,” he said, and laughed again. The two fell into each other briefly. She tried with her tongue but he resisted, being public. I announced my departure, stood against protestations, and walked from the bar into an accepting evening, a welcome from the elements that spoke without words of better things.
