Stories for Airports
judy b.
"...tightly composed, lyrical prose that resonates with understanding of the new emotional territories that we're all just now exploring."
—Jackson West, SFist.com
"judy
b. writes with great intelligence, urbane wit and jazzy charm.
Her
stories are unpredictable, often rather sexy, her characters
intriguing."
—S.M. Peters, art critic
Stories for Airports
© 2005 by judy b. All Rights Reserved
Smashwords Edition
Published by Onze Productions at Smashwords
© 2009 by judy b. All Rights Reserved
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/778
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Cover design by Kai Haley
Original book design by Katy German
For fresh, new fictions by judy b. visit http://onzeproductions.com
~~~~
Stories for Airports
Contents May Have Shifted During Flight
Clang, Clang, Clang
Leftovers
Food of the Gods
International Arrivals
Best Laid Plans
Nothing Ever Happens
Chakras Read
Icarus of Market Street
Take It or Leave It
Reasons
Mother Mary Came to Me
Downtime
Right as Rain
Excursion
~~~~
Contents May Have Shifted During Flight
Dustin woke up 20 minutes before the plane was to land, jarred from a dream by a boy's clammy hand brushing his lips. The lad's target had been Dustin's nostril, but a bit of turbulence bumped him off course. Dustin twitched when he awoke and his sudden shudder startled the boy, who hurried to explain why he was all but sitting in Dustin's lap.
"You know you have a little thing in your nose that wiggles when you exhale?"
The sound of the word "exhale" used in the same sentence with "a little thing in your nose that wiggles" and spoken in the voice of a cartoon lion cub threw Dustin more than the question itself. He mused over the paradoxical mixture until the woman sitting on the outside of the row turned her attention away from the aisle and exclaimed, "Alexander! Leave that man alone!"
Still bewildered from being awoken with a hand in his face and instantly subjected to such a puzzling interrogation, Dustin shrugged his lips and settled his head back against the window. Alexander spouted ear buds linking him to a little white music box twice as big as his hands and settled back into his seat with his eyes closed. The woman leaned over him and touched Dustin's sleeve.
"I just want to apologize for my son's atrocious behavior." Stuck in the disjointed and sluggish spell of his in-flight dream, all Dustin could manage in reply was to wave his hand and nod. She looked at him, appearing to expect more, but he just rolled his head back to the window, tried to find his bearings in the landscape below, looking for the landmark park in the center of the island. They weren't there yet.
~
"How far are you willing to go to meet your true love?" the website yelled at him in bold letters. "Your chances of making good matches increases the broader the geographical parameters you choose" it continued in regular type. Dustin clicked the box that sent his profile all over the country.
The website also strongly suggested – after Dustin had paid and filled out the questionnaire that generated a profile for him – posting a photo, but the only digital photos Dustin had of himself pictured him with a beard or 60 extra pounds.
The most recent photo was two years old, taken six months after Terri had left. His face was heavy and sullen; he looked like he was about to fall into a bottle of vodka, burst out crying, or both. And when he signed up for the service he was still sporting a nasty scab on the left side of his face, a souvenir of a tumble from his bike. Still he had his friend Josh snap a photo, under the guise of wanting to document his injury. When Josh needled Dustin into telling him the real reason for the photo, he tried to dissuade him from posting it.
"Dude. These chicks have their pick of, like, hundreds of dudes. They're not going to go for Scarface – put it this way: you don't want to go out with a chick who would go out with someone looking like you look right now. Save your money. Wait a month."
Josh, who had never dated anyone for any longer than it took her to introduce him to her parents, was still the closest Dustin had to an expert opinion, so he believed him. But Dustin had already signed up, and his profile was already out there in the mix, and when he went back online to cancel his account he had a note from a woman in Manhattan named Nanci whose likes (food, art, outdoor sports) and dislikes (smoking, insecure people, party animals) were so like his he couldn't not reply.
Nanci had posted four photos. The first was a little trite – she was smiling and leaning against a tree – but she looked attractive enough. And hey, scab or no scab, Dustin had to admit he was not one of anyone's 50 most beautiful. In the next photo Nanci was playing a violin and looking at a music stand. Dustin couldn't tell if she was playing a recital hall or just at home. The background was unclear.
The last two photos drew Dustin deeper. In them he sensed a sexiness about her that was absent from the other two pictures. One showed her sitting on a set of outdoor bleachers, her elbows resting on her knees, a tennis racquet in her lap. The shine on her face showed she'd just finished playing. The photographer seemed to have caught her between heaving breaths. Her smile said she'd just won the match.
In the last shot she was walking away from the camera, looking back over a bare shoulder, a beaded bag in one hand. Her bright red mouth was slightly puckered, and her eyes were saying, "Put down that camera and follow me."
Dustin hadn't expected anything to come of his subscription, and certainly not this fast. His trial run in the dating scene had become a real game, and he didn't have the requisite equipment. He was sure he'd be disqualified.
He and Nanci exchanged notes for a couple days, learning more common interests: She had grown up in the Midwest too, and he was often in New York on business; they both liked unknown films and bands; neither had ever been to South America but wanted to go. Then the question came.
"Say, one friend of mine says maybe you're a famous actor and that's why you haven't posted any photos; you want me to know the real you. Another says you're probably on the lam from a bunch of other women and can't afford to be recognized. Which one is right? There's a dinner riding on this."
Dustin sent Nanci the picture Josh told him not to share along with the sad sack shot and emptied everything into the email that accompanied them: The woman he proposed to said no and he sank into a cheeseburger- and booze-fueled depression that ended only when he saw that picture, didn't recognize himself, and started running and riding his bike — the bike which, two months ago, he fell off of training for a triathlon.
"And she bought it?" Josh's skepticism grew in proportion to Dustin's hope. "Dude. I'm telling you, beware. She's not the chick in those photos. Listen. She's crazy — she invited Scarface to stay with her for crissakes."
"Josh, we're staying in a hotel. I don't know exactly where she lives or where she works—she's not giving it all up."
"Of course not! She's untraceable! Man, you are so not seeing this."
"What, you afraid I'm going to pick up and move to New York?"
"I'm afraid you're going to die in New York, man, lose all your money, your dignity, get killed in New York before anyone can think about moving anywhere."
Something Dustin couldn’t tell Josh: Someone already had killed him. You don't die that way twice.
His sister Carrie answered all of Josh's fears when Dustin repeated them to her.
"Don't make decisions for people, Dustin. You don't know if she's going to want to you move to New York—you don't know if she's even going to want you to stay the whole week. Nobody really knows for sure what they want until they have it — and then most people realize they don't want it after all.
"Come on — what a great reason to go to New York. Even if it's a spectacular failure, what have you lost? You get a week in the greatest city in the world. And hello, look at it from her point of view: she's taking a chance on some hayseed klutz from the Left Coast who doesn't have a decent picture of himself.
"No matter what happens, it will make a great story — Go!"
~
Dustin had been dreaming of Nanci, dreaming of her meeting him at the gate—which of course people can't do anymore; Dustin even told himself so in his dream. The dream Nanci was an amalgam of all four photos and also a new Nanci, all in one. He recognized her immediately, and he smiled and waved, but she didn't see him. She was studying the face of each man who passed her. When Dustin finally approached her, she gave him the same expectant look, but spent no more time staring into his eyes than she had with any of the others, passed on to the man following him. He walked on by, didn't stop or reach out to her or even call out her name.
That's when he awoke, to a hand on his mouth that smelled like pretzels and grape bubble gum.
"You look tired." The mother wasn't done with him yet. "Have you been flying for business? Are you going home?" She didn't wait for him to answer. "We're going to visit my mother. In Brooklyn. She just moved there. Can you imagine? Moving to New York City. Most people her age move to the sun, not away from it." The woman pointed to Alexander, whose eyes were closed, head bobbing. "For a man, no less." She turned to look at Dustin squarely. "Are you married?" And immediately retracted. "I'm sorry. None of my business. Flying makes me nervous and when I'm nervous I blab."
Dustin excused himself to go to the restroom.
As he approached the lavatory Dustin began to see that the Nanci in his dream had also resembled that woman. But that's the way with dreams: they incorporate the waking life — especially napping dreams, when the mind can't fully escape the outside world.
So why hadn't the boy figured into it too, the sticky, smelly hand right under his nose? Josh's voice argued with Carrie's voice and the two of them wrapped a net of words around him and he stood in the john until a gentle rap on the door startled him and a voice guided him back to his seat to prepare for landing.
Alexander had scooted into Dustin's window seat and his mother had moved over beside him. Dustin buckled himself in on the aisle and wondered if he was up to this after all. He fell back into a daze and the world buzzed around him.
When they reached the gate and the warning lights went off and the cautions about shifting baggage had been given and the connecting gates had been read, Dustin let his seat-mates leave, then sat for a minute before collecting his things. When he entered the Jetway he moved to the side, let those who knew where they were going pass him, took his time getting wherever it was he was on his way to.
~~~~
Clang, Clang, Clang
ONE
She was riding the California St. line. The driver recalled the svelte pale-skinned woman wearing cat-eye shades, in her twenties or so, with shiny black hair caught at the nape of her neck in a thick braid that reached half way down her back. She had crossed California from the south side and hopped on to a running board at Sansome, a couple of blocks before California begins to slope up Nob Hill. Just after the car crossed Kearney St., she appeared to lose her balance, according to a woman from Baltimore who had watched the young woman rummage through her shoulder bag with her free hand. Perhaps she was searching for a Kleenex, the bewildered, pink-faced, gray-haired lady surmised aloud to no one in particular as she dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief, the arm of a passerby slung across her ample, rounded shoulders.
The car lurched, the woman gave a little squeak, tipped back, and let go of her purse, the strap of which slipped from her shoulder to her forearm. The bag must have been heavy: the weight of it appeared to loosen her handhold. The woman from Baltimore said she would never forget the look on the falling woman's face: she appeared to be puzzled, more than frightened, when she tottered back, her left hand sliding as if the pole were greased. She flapped and flailed both arms, grappled for the pole, a hand, a bit of someone's coat, but by the time observers realized what was happening and reached out to her, she had already landed on the hood of a green Honda Accord that was speeding in the opposite direction to make the light at Kearney.
The driver slammed on the brakes when he saw the body flomp onto his car, heard the dull thud, felt the shock resonate through the vehicle into the seat of his pants, and the woman was thrown into the intersection, into the path of an SUV that rolled over her right leg without stopping. Witnesses said the driver was talking on a mobile phone and would have plowed over the woman's torso, had he not swerved to pass a red Beetle that was waiting to make a left turn onto California. No one noted the license number, though all agreed the driver was young, good-looking, and sported a goatee. As the Beetle driver passed behind the cable car the catastrophe unfolded in her peripheral vision. In her peripheral vision she saw the woman's flimsy frame fall from the cable car onto the automobile and in the rearview mirror followed her trajectory into the path of the SUV. Several other cable car passengers corroborated the two motorists' accounts, even some who were sitting on the north side of the vehicle, their backs to the scene.
The woman's purse strap had stayed hooked in the crook of her arm throughout the flight, and the bag's contents spilled onto the street when she hit the pavement, catching the attention of a tall, burly man who was buying flowers at the edge of the Bank of America plaza on the southeast corner of Kearny and California. His left hand, cragged with dirt, fisted a bouquet of pink Gerbera daisies, and a glistening track lined his dusty right cheek from his eye to his bushy red beard as he recounted for reporters how he had heard screeching tires and screaming voices in the intersection behind him, how he had turned toward the commotion only to see a bullet-shaped tube of lipstick and a crumpled white tissue roll and tumble past him, ushered along by cold, gray swaths of fog.
TWO
Jennie Jennings does not need to glance in a mirror to know that her hair, her lipstick, her powder is perfect. She has already checked it seven times and the young woman who is her production assistant knows she will lose her job if she lets Jennie go on air with so much as a fleck of lint on the back of her jacket. The last PA got booted on a breath charge: at a city hall spot she didn't have any gum or mints, and the mayor correctly named—during a live interview—what Jennie had eaten for lunch. The girl was gone before the crew returned to the station.
The other passengers are long gone, and the weeping burly man has been done to death. If they could find out the girl's name, they'd have a scoop. But nobody knows anything; these people are no help. Inside herself Jennie slumps her shoulders, lets her arms hang lifeless at her sides, drops the microphone to the ground, then ravages her wavy, shoulder-length blond hair (accented with chestnut low-lights) with her fists, and screams, "Why can't I get any decent fucking help?" But she is wearing linen and can't afford any extra movements that might wrinkle her look. She stares at the rod in her hand, touches the big ball of foam on the tip and twists the microphone to read each side of the box, the station's call letters, alternating with its winking icon. KWNK. Wink. KWNK. Wink. K-Wink. Kwink. Field reporter.
Two months into this, and she is still reporting from the scene of accidents and street fairs. Her father is an executive at the station, and she was promised an anchor job—on condition that she go through the motions of paying her dues. They said as soon as old white hair retired, they'd put her behind the desk. Raymond Carlisle had supposedly been on the verge of leaving since the day she was offered the job. Now the would-be retiree is eking out a little more time until the market recovers and his funds are secure, so Jennie is stuck standing around while some inept intern screws up another story for her.
The San Francisco State student pumps her arms to propel her up the incline to the Bank of America Plaza, where Jennie stands, so poised that the young woman panics, thinks she's on air. The cocktail formed when the adrenaline shooting from her brain meets the espresso's caffeine in her blood propels the young woman to run the last half block in just three seconds. She slows herself so her footsteps cannot be caught on the sound track and strides noiselessly around to behind the camera operator.
"What are you hiding for? Did you get me an interview or not? I'm not going to stand around here all day." Jennie manages to deliver the rebuke without moving her body or even but scarcely her face. The one thing over which she maintains absolute control is her voice. It does exactly what she wants it to.
The intern is unruffled. She has already outlasted two others as Jennie's assistant, and she is determined to go the distance. She needs the credit and the line on her resume. "I got you the barista at the coffee shop where she had a cappuccino before she stepped onto the cable car."
One would not have thought it possible for Jennie's posture to be any straighter, but she straightens. "Well it's about time. Let's go." The intern starts back down the hill. "In the van, missie. I'm not walking in these shoes."
"But you're wearing linen."
Jennie considers the remark. "How far is it?"
"Just at Sansome. And it's all downhill."
Jennie heaves the sigh of someone reluctantly granting a favor, shoves the microphone at the assistant, follows.
"I think this is going to be a good one." The assistant is determined to make this work. "It's a chance to show her before the accident, give people a glimpse into the real person, not dwell on her as a victim."
"Yes." Jennie says the word slowly, almost adds, "Good work," but holds back. No need to give the girl too much to go on. Keep her hungry. She'll need to stay in touch with that feeling. It's part of the business. "So, who was she, before the accident?"
The girl takes a deep breath, not just for the three extra seconds it affords her to clear her head and organize her thoughts, but also because her body is trembling from nerves, adrenaline, and caffeine, and she needs to calm down.
"She's a double decaf low-fat, low-foam mocha; no whipped cream, dash of cinnamon."
Jennie slows her pace. The PA thinks she's going to stop walking to yell at her, so she quickly adds, "The table where she sat hasn't even been bussed yet. We've got the cup. And—" she pauses for effect, then spills her revelation. "I think the barista kind of dug her. Sounds like she kind of flirted with him. Very human."
What gave Jennie pause was the coffee order. She is herself a double decaf low-fat, low-foam mocha, though on occasion she will take a spot of whipped cream on top, and she prefers nutmeg to cinnamon. In spite of herself, she does see this young woman as a real person, sees herself on that streetcar, grappling for a firm purchase, watching the ground she had trusted to stay beneath her slip away. "All right," she says, as much to herself as to the crew. She nods slowly as she stares straight ahead. This is it. She feels it. This is the story that will put her behind the desk. She has paid her dues, and now it's time for the payoff. "All right, then. Let's talk to the barista." Yes.
The barista is standing outside the café, draped over a mailbox, smoking, when the crew arrives. His brittle, dull-black hair falls into his face, frames his dark eyes, which don't blink when he sees the blond stick walk toward him. Jennie tends to be attracted to her likes, but her empathic episode continues and she finds herself drawn to this slouchy, misshaven young man. After she introduces herself and offers the young man a cordial handshake, the PA ushers the pair inside to a table on which a crumpled napkin sits beside a tall glass mug with dried bubbles around its rim. "I thought we could do the spot here," she says.
Jennie does not take her eyes off the barista. She cocks her head over her right shoulder. "OK, let's set it up." The crew flurries around them, moving tables, adjusting lights and verifying sound levels. Jennie looks past the straggly locks of hair into the young man's eyes, rests a hand on a forearm that is crossed before his chest, and says, "I know this all seems terribly banal, but we do need to give people the details. Especially in a situation like this one, which could have happened to any of us, people want to know exactly what happened, retrace the person's steps, you know, to understand. We want to show them the real person who suffered this unusual ordeal." He indicates his agreement with a nod.
When the stage is set and the PA has brushed her shoulders, smoothed her lapels, and primped her hair, Jennie Jennings, field reporter, slowly seeps back into her skin beside her compassionate counterpart. Together they guide the barista through recounting the last drink the woman had before her fall: her decisive order (she knew exactly what she wanted), her friendly manner (she wasn't chatty but had a kind smile), and her generosity (she left a hefty tip). In her earpiece Jennie hears the director tell her to wrap it up; the studio needs to cut to a crash on the Bay Bridge, where a vanload of teenagers nearly plunged to their deaths.
Jennie Jennings holds the microphone in her left hand, the empty coffee cup in her right. She stares into the spent drink, the remains of what could have been her beverage, her destiny. She swirls the cold, murky fluid, smells the cinnamon, feels the grit of the last gulp on her tongue. She tilts her head up, looks directly into the camera lens, where she can see but not quite make out her own inverted, mottled reflection.
"If only she had taken this last sip," Jennie touches the the napkin on the table. "She would be here with us right now."
Jennie does not realize the inanity of this remark. First off, the woman is not dead, as Jennie's dramatics imply. Second, if she hadn't fallen off the cable car, the woman most certainly would not have been in the cafe, she'd be on the other side of Nob Hill. Her producer, a documentary filmmaker by night who is producing news for the money and because he believes she can lift it from the morass of sensationalism it's slipped into in the last 30 years, will ream her. And although the production assistant will do her best to cajole her, may even keep her job, Jennie Jennings is done with paying dues. Finished.
THREE
Jason is hungry. Not for a scone or a croissant or a madeleine. He wants lunch: a big sandwich at least, if not something hot, with a salad on the side. Paychecks won't come in until 3 p.m. at the earliest—more likely it will be 5—and his shift mates know better than to float him lunch money in the meantime. Someone looted the tip jar during the morning rush—not him, this once—so he'll have to wait, who knows how long, until there's enough to buy him a sandwich and then until he can pocket it without being caught.
In the last twenty-four hours he has opened his refrigerator thirty times. Last night, after having a fried egg on toast with a jar of pickles on the side, he sneaked his roommate's leftover mac and cheese one forkful at a time until so little was left he had to finish it off and wash the casserole so Jimi would forget it had been in there. Jason continued to gravitate to the fridge, hopeful each time he opened the door that he would find some forgotten morsel he had missed. But after he made a ketchup sandwich with the last heel of bread, there was nothing but a jar of tomato sauce overtaken by a mold culture, a jar of horseradish mustard, a loaf of tofu, two unexposed rolls of film, and Penelope's macrobiotic wheat germ concoction, which made him gag even when it was just sprinkled on beans tossed in olive oil. His six-three frame is starving.
As Jason is wondering if he might be able to scrounge up some protein powder, make some kind of smoothie with the wheat germ and tofu and some honey, a woman a head shorter than himself walks in. Her shiny black hair is caught in a loose braid that hangs a little below the middle of her back. She seems to be a little nervous, or perhaps just energetic. Her hands rest on a fat brown wallet. Her thin, pale fingers taper to pointy oval nails painted a glossy beige. Her fingers look incredibly soft, are wrinkled only at the knuckles. She can't keep them still. They drum the counter, flip and spin the wallet around. She doesn't remove her sunglasses. The wallet bulges with more receipts and business cards and bills and credit cards than there are slots and compartments allotted for. Jason nods a hello, juts his chin in her direction to invite her to place her order.
"Hi. I'd like a double decaf low-fat, low-foam mocha, please. No whipped cream, but a dash of cinnamon on that, if you would." Jason bobs his head twice, slowly, to let her know he's registered all that. Her phone rings.
This woman is perhaps the only person in the world capable of speaking on a mobile phone so discreetly that her words are unintelligible. Jason can't even tell whether the call is business or personal. She could be ordering a hit on him, or describing him to a girlfriend, he thinks, staring at her face while he steams the low-fat milk, then he realizes she could also be watching him watch her, for all he knows, as her eyes are obscured behind her shades. She abruptly turns away from him, leaving her wallet on the counter beside her. She continues to spin it with her free hand. Business is slow enough that Jason can take his time concocting her drink. So he does, all the while watching the wallet and willing the bulging mass to spring open, for that stack of credit cards to spill onto the counter, so he can slip one under the register as he helps the distracted woman reassemble her affairs. Then he realizes this won't work if she has an Asian last name. His gothness couldn't pass for being her husband without showing ID. The best he can hope for is a big tip.
Just as Jason is running out of ways to draw out the drink-making process, she claps her phone shut and turns to him. He slides the coffee across the counter to her, along with a plate on which he has placed a biscotti, and points her to the condiment station, where she can garnish her beverage. She retrieves a five-dollar bill without compromising the rest of her stash and hands it to him, then sees the biscotti.
"Is that mine? I didn't order it."
"It's on me. Special today." He places a napkin on top of the plate, gives her a knowing look, though what knowledge it conveys she doesn't absorb. She just smiles at him, and dumps whatever change he returns to her in the tip jar—as he knew she would. Her phone rings again, so she puts it on top of the biscuit, grabs the plate and the coffee and hurries over to a table to take the call.
A buck-fifty-seven in the jar—not a bad start. Two more of those, and he can get an egg salad from the sandwich truck; three more, and he can add a cup of soup. As long as he makes the dough in the next forty-five minutes, before Angelina comes in. Anyone else he can scam, but not her. The first thing she does is count the jar. She may not need the money like Jason does, but she wants it just as badly. She's a stickler for dividing it fairly.
The next two customers are an elderly white couple; the woman, short, round, and rosy; the man, tall, drawn, and peaked. She does all the talking, orders them both hot chocolates, one croissant to share. When he pushes their drinks to them, Jason makes sure to accidentally jostle the tip jar. The woman doesn't appear to notice, but does drop her coinage into it—all of thirty-five cents. The next two customers have exact change for their orders. Rarely do people bother to fish in their pockets to tip. Jason sees he has fifteen minutes on the clock and the hunger in his stomach gnaws a bigger hole.
A man wearing what appear to be brand-new athletic shoes and a woman carrying a large Gumps bag and a Lonely Planet guide enter, arguing in a foreign language. Two types of people who never tip are arguing couples and foreigners. What Jason does not realize is that they are not arguing, merely animated, and they had read in the book that it is considered rude not to tip wait staff in American restaurants. They leave him a dollar for each drink and all their coinage, eighty-seven cents. As they turn to go, the woman shoves something toward him and says, "Someone forget." Jason looks down at the bulging wallet, slides it behind the register, and nods a solemn thanks.
He feels just one crisp note in the billfold. On second thought, it's two twenties stuck together, born together from the ATM. He removes them and folds them in one deft flick, pushes the wallet deep under the espresso machine with one hand as he slides the other to his pocket, seemingly to remove his lip balm, which he nonchalantly applies just as Angelina comes in the door. She doesn't pause to ask her question or even look at him as she saunters behind the counter.
"You skim your tips yet?"
"Oh, that's right." Jason leans around the register, plunges his hand into the jar and retrieves four singles and four quarters, leaves one single and a mound of pennies, nickels, and dimes. "I almost forgot," he says to the cloud of perfume Angelina has left behind her. "It's been pretty slow."
FOUR
He waited longer than was necessary. Then he waited longer than would be expected and stayed past what would be considered reasonable. He was waiting when the ambulance passed and the wailing crescendo and diminuendo of the siren did not distract him from his waiting, although he was staring into the street when the flashing red and white blur sliced through his field of view. He waited until his second coffee, which he forced himself to sip slowly at first and then lost interest in halfway through, grew cold. He waited until he was sure.
He had begun the waiting resolute: after three months of occasional coffees and movies he was going to ask her to dinner. Ask her out on a date. But then during his stay his certainty slipped into hopeful excitement which transitioned into nervousness which shifted into anxiety which in the dampness of errant thought warped into cold fear which mutated into an anger that smoldered and grew hotter the more his coffee cooled. When his last hopes finally dried up and ignited the anger morphed back into anxious anticipation which fizzled into a dull resignation which now rises from the ash as the following thoughts:
She is not coming.
It's just as well.
He is hobbled by his lack of a cellphone. She could have called to let him know she was running late. After waiting 30 minutes he did call her from a payphone outside but she didn't pick up. Then he checked his messages at home; there were none. He waited 15 minutes and called both numbers again. Nothing still. She simply wasn't coming. She decided not to come. Perhaps she had heard the twitch in his voice when he asked her to meet him, noted a different tone from his other calls, a hesitance, and she sensed what was coming and was avoiding it. Why else would she not call? The plan was to grab a coffee and walk to the bay. He will continue, as planned. He will walk. On his way out he passes a large, loud man walking in but does not hear the man ask the room:
"Hey, you hear someone fell off a cable car?"
He follows California Street up and over Nob Hill. The climb does him good. When his lungs heave his attention is forced out of the past and his thoughts are pulled back from the future he had imagined there. Exertion eclipses embarrassment. He doesn't pause to catch his breath when he reaches Huntington Square Park at the top of the hill. He keeps walking. He goes faster going down. When he reaches Kearny he does not notice the skid marks and remnants of a flare on the pavement. He does not glance across the street at the Bank of America building and so finds nothing remarkable in the lethargic movements of the flower seller and the crowd still gathered around the kiosk at the corner of the plaza. He misses the TV news vans. As he approaches Montgomery two cable cars crisscross so even if he were looking across the street he would not see the café on the other side, the one with the same name as the one where he'd just spent over an hour. Because he doesn't see it he doesn't go in and doesn't hear the woman behind the counter telling a customer that she was supposed to have been on the a.m. shift but had to trade because her daughter had an orthodontist appointment or otherwise she would have been the one on TV.
He is glad to have walked. He is seeing more clearly now: He sees how it is all in his head. It was nothing, really, she is just a friend. He almost ruined it. Overreacting. He is infatuated with a woman who enjoys his company, nothing more. Why does he have to make it more? What was he thinking? He was waiting a long time. He shouldn't have waited such a long time. Even if she did feel the same way, that can't be attractive. Or healthy. But she doesn't. Feel the same way. He won't call again. He will walk until he is sure.
A Russian widower whose English is shaky and whose phone number is one digit off from his is hearing this message: "Hello, this is UCSF Medical Center. Could you please give us a call? We have a patient here who arrived with no identification except her agenda book. Your name and this phone number are written in for today and circled twice so we're hoping you know her and can help us find her family before she gets out of surgery…"
~~~~
Leftovers
I woke up this morning with a taste for pancakes and immediately began to cry. The chef is gone. He left the buttermilk behind to sour in my icebox, along with the crème fraîche, the eggs, the vanilla extract, and the organic French butter. He left me the elements of breakfast, in pieces, scattered across my kitchen. Candied walnuts. Maple syrup. A seasonal assortment of fresh berries. He forgot his whisk, too. Or maybe that was a gift. With him it was hard to tell.
It started out simple, with a salad. We met at the market around the corner, over the avocados. I was holding one in my palm and he put his hand over mine, said, "Ah, non, non, non. It's too ripe. You can't do anything with that one, not even guacamole." Then he pulled an avocado from his basket, replaced the one in my hand. I didn't tell him I wasn't planning to buy the thing; I'd just wanted to get a better look. We met again at the check stand. He paid for my ice cream and avocado, then walked me home. I invited him up for a bowl of chili—nothing fancy, I told him. From a can.
He went straight to the kitchen, set his knapsack on a chair, his groceries on the table. He took out a head of romaine—a little showy, like a magician doing a trick: watch this. From his pack he pulled out what looked like a case for a flute. Or a pool cue. When he opened it, I saw the glint of stainless steel. Then he wielded a knife, slowly, gracefully, even. Like a dancer or something, making a point. I didn't like the looks of it.
"Whoa, mister!" I said. "It's not that kind of party."
He froze, tilted his head to one side, confused. "I will make you a Caesar salad. You have a cutting board?" He had a slight accent, a way of saying things that could make some questions sound like statements. And vice versa. I pointed him to the counter, then turned away and reached for a bowl. I heard several clops and when I turned around he was cupping handfuls of lacy green strips, dropping them into the colander. "Eggs?" He said-asked as he dug in his grocery bag for a jar of anchovies.
"This is going to be some salad," I said.
"Yes," he said, fixing his eyes on mine. "Like no salad you have ever had before."
Next to the eggs, he found a box of Velveeta.
"Ah, mon dieu. What is this?"
"Ah, mon ami. It's cheese."
"You put this in your body? Your beautiful body?" He slid his hand from my neck, over my shoulder to my waist. Then he tsk-tsked me. "This is not cheese, ah non. This is, this is—polyester."
"Polyester has its merits."
He held his breath and kept his hand on my hip.
"It's versatile—and durable."
His face softened. He spoke slowly, softly. "Food is not durable, ma chère, it is not supposed to last. Even our enjoyment of it is ephemeral. That is why we must eat so many times in one day."
"So why make a fuss every time, if you're just going to do it again anyway?"
He smiled. Tilted his head, but just slightly. Pulled me closer. "Who knows which meal will be the last? We must savor each dish, relish each time the pleasure of a warm bread or a delicate wine or a simple blueberry." He was so cute. With that accent of his, "blueberry" came out as two words, with the stress on "berry."
"Come here," I said, "Let me taste your blue berries."
~
Those first two weeks he made me pancakes every day, with every fruit there was. Berries inside, berries outside, plum compote, caramelized pears, peaches, and fresh whipped cream. In the middle of the night he would make us a snack, "for the entr'acte" he said. He would cook by the light of the stove and the street lamp outside the kitchen window. As I lay in bed I would stare at the ceiling and wait for the aromas to reach me. Once he made bread pudding—had slipped it in the oven before we went to bed, in anticipation of our intermission.
"Every country has some kind of pancake," he told me. "You find them on every continent."
"Even Antarctica?"
"Surely the Americans have imported them." There it was again, a statement spoken as a question: lilted at the end, said with a pursed mouth, sparkling eyes.
He blamed my lack of cooking skills on my nationality. I didn't protest. "But if we could do our own cooking, what would we need with the French?" He showed me a thing or two, between bites. I've never had pancakes like the ones he made: spongy, but light. They dissolved before you had a chance to chew. Like him.
What luck, he said, that we met when we did. Perfect timing. He had just quit his job as a chef and I clearly needed a nutritionist. He would rescue me from the evil cult of prepackaged foods, teach me how to feast. Every night for two weeks he served me a new dish with a foreign name: paella, gaspacho, quiche Lorraine. Dinner began with an amuse-gueule. That means "amuse-mouth." It's like an hors d'oeuvre. Something to tease the palate, get you ready for what's coming later. The foreplay of food, he said. Here's a sample: He's facing me nose to nose, so close his face is a blur, so I know him only by his breath, a heat wave on my lips, and his hands, rough with cuts and burns but gentle on my cheeks. As he leans in to kiss me, he whispers, "Tiens, let me amuse your mouth."
At first he found my stock of canned goods droll. He chided me, tried to convince me to see food as art as well as alimentation. "Good food is not a luxury," he said, "but a necessity. One must eat not only to feed the body but also to nourish the soul. Both need fresh, wholesome, and tasteful nutriments."
"Fresh, I can handle," I told him. "Wholesome and tasteful—I'm afraid I'm just not that kind of girl." I knew he didn't get my jokes, but I thought he found me saucy, piquant, something his palate would adjust to, like jalepeño peppers or ripened cheese. But he thought he could season me to his taste. He tried to teach me how to use his knives, how to slice and dice and julienne. He left one of his favorite pans at my place. He thought I would use it. I mentioned it once, and he said, "It is a gift, my chou. Use it for your good health. May it serve you as well as it has served me."
"But it doesn't even fit in the microwave."
I couldn't turn him off. He wanted to make me his sous-chef, but I just wanted to get it to go. When I would marvel at the flavors of a steamed green bean, remark on how fast his hands moved when he sliced carrots or whipped egg whites, he would hand me a kitchen implement. "Tiens, chérie. Here, you try."
"Why should I as long as you're here? Why cook the cow when the goose lays for free?" Missed him completely. We spoke different languages, couldn't find a common cliché. He was all braise and sauté and apéritif, and I was all six-pack, frozen, ready-to-serve.
One night I surprised him, made dessert—my specialty, Oreo cream pie. "A kind of chocolate mousse à l'Américaine," I said. It's a simple dish: Oreos, pudding, and Cool Whip. Takes ten minutes to prepare, four hours to freeze. Instead of one big pie, though, I made us two small ones. Before serving them I drew hearts on top with chocolate syrup. He was touched. He brushed my cheek with his fingers. His eyes looked misty. His mouth looked ready to be pleased.
It wasn't.
He tried to hide it, but I saw the disappointment when he took that first bite. He closed his eyes, as if savoring it, but he wouldn't look at me until he had swallowed. He said nothing. Leaned into me and kissed me. I pulled away. "But don't you want to finish it?" I asked.
"I'd rather have you instead."
Soon after that he started doing some catering, so the midnight breakfasts ended and dinner was served only on Mondays. I gave him the check when he had me stir a Hollandaise while he was on the phone with another gastronome. He began to describe the dinner he was preparing for me, down to the precise color of the tomatoes and the variety of basil. As the creamy white sauce simmered I began to seethe. I would not watch this affair be reduced to his recipes—every entrée and sauce, every amuse-gueule. I wouldn't watch him distill the dinners to some kind of cookbook he could carry off; I would not be boiled down to a list of ingredients to be reheated at someone else's stove. He had taught me this much: when a stew is too salty, add a potato to balance the flavors, but when you put too much sugar in the batter, pancakes will burn on the surface and stay raw inside. I poured the sauce into the sink, took his knife case from the counter, tossed it at his feet. "Get off the phone," I told him. "I'm ordering out."
~
Even though I wouldn't but touch his knife while he was here, now I see through my own reconstituted, dehydrated, flash-frozen-from-concentrate world. Now I understand that bread needs warmth to rise, soups need to simmer and sit for a day, and a good custard takes a good long time to thicken. A week after he left I made a Caesar dressing. Tossed it with prepackaged greens. I can also make a decent quiche (in a store-bought crust), and last night I finished off the best bouillabaisse I've ever tasted—a feat, especially when you consider that two months ago I didn't even know the word. I have gone whole days without looking at the microwave. Sometimes I tell myself I made him up—I didn't meet him in that store, he didn't teach me a thing. I like to think that I had amnesia or slept through the first part of my life and suddenly came to, hefting that avocado. Spontaneous enlightenment. Food for thought. It's easier that way. Hard to miss someone you never knew.
But of course I miss him. What do you think? I miss him so bad I can taste it.
~~~~
Food of the Gods
Austin knows he'll have to make up for this, storming out before the argument is over. They'll have to talk about it, which means he'll have to listen—again—hear how insensitive he is, how he belittles her work, her goals.
It's true: he doesn't like to listen. He's a professor; he imparts knowledge. He likes to talk. OK, hold forth. Well, she knew that when she took up with him. She knew what he was like.
Austin has a PhD in American History from one Midwestern university and he teaches at another. He met josie his first night in town; she was waiting tables at a nice restaurant someone had told him was a good place for dinner. He'd flirted with her, thinking she was younger than he and not as wise. After a year, he's not fully convinced he's wrong on the latter point.
His route to the U never varies, though his mode of transport does. He sometimes rides his bike or walks but today is piloting a 10-year-old Honda, because of the rain. The rain that in a month will be snow. He is starting his second year at the university, entering his second year of life with josie. She moved in last month.
Their argument was over, of all things, fruit.
Austin made a remark about the persimmons josie had in a blue bowl: "Ah, persimmons," he'd said, "food of the gods." Then he'd offered a short history of the fruit: that the English couldn't wait until winter to eat the bitter fruit the American Indians called "pessamin," didn't realize it ripened and sweetened in the cold. How The Native Americans shared with Hernando de Soto a kind of bread made with what the conquistador thought was prunes. Austin had picked one up, and josie told him it wasn't ripe.
"I wasn't going to eat it."
"Of course not. You were going to pontificate on it, ruminate over it to the point that I no longer want to look at it, let alone bake a tea bread with it—which I definitely won't want to give you a taste of, because I'd just get a lecture on the history of tea, the beverage, the meal, the ritual, the…the…oh, fuck it, Austin, just go to work. Go lecture the people who don't know anything yet. Talk to the people who want to listen." She threw a handful of spoons into a mixing bowl filled with water in the sink and walked away.
They've had this conversation before, about how he can't just enjoy a thing, appreciate the look, the feel, the taste of something. Why couldn't he just observe how striking the contrast of the orange persimmons in the cobalt bowl, if he had to say anything at 7:30 in the morning? He knows this is what she's thinking.
Austin understands it's particularly annoying when the topic is food, because josie herself is a professor, of sorts, of the culinary arts. She is now the chef at that restaurant where they first met. She was not a student back then, but a graduate of the California Culinary Academy and the veteran of several different San Francisco cafés, bistros, and one major restaurant he'd never heard of but evidently should have. She snagged him with her white apron, but she hooked him with her handmade pizza crust. She knows something better than he does, and yes, this troubles him a little, but he's big enough to know his resistance is ridiculous. He's working on it.
The other thing they argue about is his driving to work, when they live only a mile from campus. She wants him to walk or take the bus. It's a waste of gas, especially considering he always stops at Brady's café half way in for a coffee and a muffin, where he's standing right now. It occurs to him just then that before he remarked on the persimmons, he had smelled something in the oven. She had baked him muffins. She'd been talking about it, but usually started her mornings later than he, because she was at the restaurant so late. He hadn't even said good morning or told her how nice it was to see her awake, first thing.
The girl behind the counter says hello to him, but he turns away, plods back to the car in a daze. He considers driving home and apologizing, but running through that narrative in his mind, he realizes it's forced, contrived, implausible. Better to play out the role of the idiot male and take what's coming when she gets home at midnight.
He doesn't notice the two persimmons sitting on the roof until he is unlocking the door. There is a note, written on a crumpled receipt, rain droplets gluing it to the driver's side window:
Hey, Professor. Some goddess loves you.
A plastic bag hangs from the door handle. She had to have decided in a second what she would do, snatched the persimmons from the bowl, found a bag for the muffins, scribbled a note, all before jumping on the bike, riding like mad. Did she take time to grab a coat? Austin stands there in the drizzle, thinking.
~~~~
International Arrivals
The Girl From Ipanema, its samba beat neutered by violins, fails to sedate her. She can't hear it. Nor does she hear the acid female voice command Mr. Park to pick up the white courtesy phone. Santa Claus could be meeting Pokémon at the baggage claim, and she will never know. But in that brief blank space between where the announcement ends and the song resumes, all Lorna's senses register the swoosh of cold, stale air when the frosted glass doors slide apart.
The baby in Cynthia's arms looks nothing like the picture: she's paler than Lorna expected, a little peaked—is that one of the things she's not supposed to say, one of the things she is supposed to think about before saying out loud? Is it one of those things that even though she means it in a caring way, makes her sound insensitive? At some point Lorna went from being out of touch to being wrong.
It happened around the time when Cynthia changed her name to Cinthya and went off to the other side of the world to find herself—and then got herself a little child. That's how Cynthia—Cinthya—had said it: "Mother, I got myself a little child." To which Lorna had replied, "What do you mean?" And Cinthya had said, "I mean what I just said. Why are you always trying to deconstruct and complicate what I say?"
It was one of those traps, a question that was meant to shut her up but also begged her to speak—but to say only exactly the right thing. In 23 years Lorna hadn't figured out what that was, so she just said the first thing she thought: "What kind of little child?" The sigh that came through the phone was cold and sharp. Lorna pursed her lips and blinked. Waited. Expected but didn't batten down against the gale force of Cinthya's words.
"Mother." Just that one word, a firm declaration, in a tone that implied she was a bad one. "You wonder why I moved so fucking far away."
The curse word made Lorna wince. And it gave her inspiration and courage to speak. "Now, I don't see the need for cursing. I'm just wondering. You tell me you have a child, you 'got a child,' and I wonder what that means. Did you 'get' the child before you went over there, or after? And by the way, what kind of way to talk is that, 'get a child'? You know, I can't expect you to tell me anything if I don't ask. I never heard about any husband or boyfriend, and now there's a child. I just want to know what kind of child: a boy or a girl? An infant? A teenager? Does the child look like you? Now, don't get defensive. When we adopted you, people asked me these questions, and I didn't take offense. People just want to know, that's all. Because they care." And she kept silent, resolved to say nothing more, no matter what.
Cinthya spoke slowly. She plodded through her words with a certain resignation. "She's just a child, Mother, a baby. It doesn't matter where she came from or what she looks like. She needs me and I need her and we are together. I love her. I love her dearly." There was another silence, another sigh; this time the slow breeze that escapes when shoulders drop into gravity's pull. "It's time for us to come home. I want to come home."
Over the next two months the two mothers spoke more than they had in two years. The elder lectured on nutrition, lactation, and exhaustion; and the younger held forth on people of color and communities of color, the importance of sensitivity, and the inevitability of racism. They both tried hard to think before they spoke.
But still she's nervous and worried and—whoosh—there they are, and Cinthya looks just as anxious, but she keeps walking this way, and mother and child are in grandmother's arms, and the music continues, but no one hears, because they are all thinking things they are unable to say.
~~~~
Best Laid Plans
Sharon Baker is a bad mother, she knows this. She knows this as sure as she knows her daughter had her tongue pierced because, as Lily said to a friend, over the phone, at 1:30 in the morning, on a school night, while smoking marijuana [she thought her parents were sleeping (one of them was)] "It makes such a difference when you're giving head."
Sharon didn't immediately know what that meant, but she knew it was something she had never done, and in the back of her mind she associated it with the image of herself and Phil clinging to opposite sides of their queen-size bed, a situation she ever more increasingly believes is her fault.
Nor did her mothering skills prevent Justin from becoming a young thug who treats girls like servants -- much like his father treats her, but without the courtesy of a paycheck or so much as a dinner, a kind word, or heaven forbid, flowers. The world is a convenience store stocked with pretty things he wants and can have on his own terms and time. As of yet, he doesn't appear to have been drawn to any with pierced tongues.
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