I woke up Friday morning with my head packed into a pipe bomb and had to move real slow to keep it from exploding. I was brought a big glass of vitamin C and love stirred into orange juice, went back to sleep, and had a look at work email after ten thirty. Almost nothing there. It was as if the "out of the office sick today" email I sent out at six a.m. actually got read by people, and the entire corporation was leaving me alone. Very strange. I was tempted to shake my laptop like an Etch-A-Sketch and start over, but no, so I took a bath.
I read a book while absorbing hot water and the steam clouded my glasses and carried toxins away to the ceiling, or so I hoped. There's really no cure for the common cold, however uncommon, but if there was, I would have it include a large tub of hot water. And ceiling speakers.
Feeling like crap is no excuse not to work, of course. Hooked wirelessly into the secure network, I may almost as well be at my desk. If I could create a work space, a sort of home cubicle, I could get plenty done. Lard knows there's plenty enough to do.
But I looked at all those emails (yeah, there was plenty, I underexaggerated), and all these action items required or whatever you call 'em, and the sun on the hillside out back with my landscaping tools strewn about, and the leftover food in the fridge, and all I could think was: It's Friday, and I'm kinda sick. Screw it. So instead I wrote out a story that had come to me as I drifted half-awake a few nights ago. I don't know what else to do with it, so here.
* * *
She walked past a row of rainbow streamers swirling in the wind, her head down, watching her feet. She was so tired. What was it, two in the afternoon? Around her tent flaps slapped, plastic on canvas. Somewhere a pot or something blew over and skiddered in the sand. People were shouting instructions to tie this down or that. A man bicycled by in a crazy wig and colorfully patched pants. He said something; she ignored it. She just wanted her tent. Something like home.
She found it. It was empty. She took off her shoes and put a brick on them and crawled in, tore off her dusty clothes, crawled into the nest. Where was he? She was too tired to think about it. Naptime.
She closed her eyes. Last night, they danced. Or was it just her? Who did she dance with? Someone had a big tent and there was music throbbing and she was happy to turn off her brain and let her body go with it. She did that for hours. Was he with her at all? He wasn’t when she went to bed. He was off, wherever. With whomever, no doubt. Getting it out of his system. What the fuck. Let him. She didn’t care.
Yes she did. That was why she let him. Her mind drifted past twenty years of marriage and childrearing with a man who, she now knew, was never really sure he wanted to be there. After all this time, he still needed something. He claimed he didn’t know what. Fuck a lot of women? Find a new love of his life? Whatever. Here on this crazy playa in the desert, she told him she didn’t give a shit, he could go do what he wanted, just don’t bring anything home. But he didn’t smile or say thank you or anything. Just stared at her, hugged her, kissed her, and walked away. To look at artworks and stuff, he said. Right.
So she danced, alone, and with other alone people. And then she went to bed. It was probably two in the morning. He wasn’t there. She didn’t want to know where he was. She went to sleep and dreamed she was in his arms, and for awhile, she’s pretty sure she really was in his arms. She remembered his body, lying as it does when he’s asleep, and the way he smelled, a smell she loved even after five days without a shower. But when she woke early in the morning, he wasn’t there.
Now she lay still in the windy afternoon and listened to the growing storm whip at the tent. She watched it shake and wondered how other campers were dealing with it. Forty thousand people were out here in a Nevada desert, participating in a sort of ad hoc human circus. She was inclined to worry about them, because this was her first time here and it felt like it should be everyone’s first. But then she figured everyone else knew what they were doing. So she indulged in a little worrying about people whose tents weren’t put up right or whatever, and then told herself to stop worrying and go to sleep. Her tent, their tent, was put up right, anyway. One thing he could do right was put up a tent.
The wind grew and sand flowed and blasted against the side walls and everything shook, but she felt safe, and was so tired, and drifted into windy dreams while Nature called out to remind everyone She was there. The wind grew and grew and fine white sand blew up everywhere. He stopped jogging. He didn’t even walk, but just stopped, feeling idiotic. He turned away from the wind and in that moment, realized he had no idea which way was the way back. If he went one step further, it might be the right way, but was more likely to be the wrong way. He was lost, completely lost. So he sat down, and waited.
How long would the storm last? An hour, two, three? No big deal. It was mid-afternoon, the wind was warm, he had a shirt on to protect at least some of his skin. He knew he could wait. The sand was annoying. It got into everything. A little got into his eye. He turned on his butt to put his back to the wind, hunched over with his face in his hands, breathed slowly, and waited. He sat there and waited a very long time.
He hoped she was okay. He knew she was probably in their tent. She was smart that way. She knew when trouble was coming and managed to avoid it. Not him, though. He was in a little bit of trouble now. He’d been in a lot of trouble lately with her. He was no longer stable, and he knew that and couldn’t fix it even though he knew she needed him to be stable. He needed to be something else, something other than the more or less stable family man he had been the past twenty years. Twenty years was long enough for that. All that time he had vague ideas of doing this or that, of quitting the corporate track, traveling, discovering friendships of every type except the type he already had; of finding women. And though he tried to hide it, he couldn’t, not from his own wife. She knew him better than he knew himself. It tore her apart, he understood that too; yet he couldn’t find enough of him that cared to work on fixing that, on returning to whoever he had been when they got married. It was as if to become a person who cared enough to work on repairing this brittle marriage was to become someone else, someone he wasn’t; and always he had to wonder, what was the point of that? What was the point of yet more pretending? What was the point of continuing to lead a life that wasn’t true, just to try and make someone else happy? Especially someone who wanted pretense least of all?
This ran through his mind and so did a lot of other things, memories, shared dreams. He kept his hands over his face. He felt sand build up and whistle around in his ears. The backs of his arms and his neck were stinging – he was getting sandblasted. Well, that sucked, but there was nothing he could do about it. He could only wait.
He danced with her last night. And then he danced with someone else, and someone else, and danced with the crowd generally, a middle aged man dancing out his inner hippie child. It was fun. Later he found himself in someone’s camp, drinking their vodka and speculating on the true nature of stars and of life out among them, and they gave him a blanket and let him sleep on their sofa. She probably thought he was with some woman, expecting perhaps it would bring some sort of closure, either to his wanderlust or to their marriage, whichever – she said she didn’t care which anymore – and he in turn chose not to care either. But in the depth of the night he did care and made his way back to their tent and slept with her awhile. She moaned happily but never awoke. In the morning he left early to go help his new friends make breakfast for a hundred people, and then did dishes afterwards. He always liked doing dishes.
And still the wind blew. He pretended he was stuck on a flight over the ocean, cramped in a seat, the roar in his ears. He pretended the roof had been ripped off and he had to sit still and small and not get blown away while the airplane returned to the airport. He pretended this a long time.
Maybe he napped, maybe not, he was never sure. The wind slowed way down, and fine white dust drifted everywhere. It was still blowing around, but it was much better. He knew the end was near. He had only to wait for the dust to settle, for the air to clear. He would see the vast tent city then, and could go home. Damn but he was thirsty. His throat was dry and his ears clogged with dust and sand. He still heard the roar.
The roar came at him and passed in a rush of headlights and knobby tires. Another one raced right after. Damn, he thought. How can they see? Could they see him? He was the same color as the dust. What the hell were they doing racing around blind anyway? He heard another coming. No way to know if it was coming from or going back to the place he wanted to be, so all he could do was stand and wait, either until they picked him up or the air cleared.
He heard another one coming and then saw the headlights in the dry dun mist, racing toward him across the flat desert floor. He stood up and raised his arms and watched it approach and when it came near she woke with a gasp and a cry, a hand clutching her throat, her heart racing. She cried out again, staring blindly through the exit of sleep. Something terrible. What? What happened? Where is he? Where are you, baby? Where are you?
The wind was gone, and in the silence she heard him answer, I’m right here, sweetheart. She didn’t see him. Where? I’m right here, he said. I am so, so sorry, honeybunch. I went for a jog out in the desert. I waited out the storm. Some people were out driving in it, driving fast. They couldn’t see me. I am so, so sorry.
Her eyes squeezed shut tight and tears flowed like screams and she felt his arms and legs and body wrap around hers, his body that she knew so well, the body that she had loved so well for so long embraced her and shrank into her, squeezing tears and cries out of her, and enveloped her heart in warmth and light and then, like a candle, melted away and went out.
