For Laurie…
3 HOURS AT THE AIRPORT
PROLOGUE: Breakfast Before Departure
I wish I could have wished the precious wishes. One more black funnel of midnight, one more set of wings, one more time charging into the blank blue-gray morning, all night to stand finally where the Earth meets the Sky. And you laughed, and I laughed, our hands filled with bright paper stars, and we painted morning, our thoughts mirrors in the other's eyes, and we painted the windows of our skulls two times before the paper boy bicycled up, 10,000 words rocketing in no particular order from his hand . You ran, and I ran, and the paper boy left, and we gathered the words, giving them to the neighbor's dog to worry and muddle over.
"He'll never finish the crossword," you said, and I saw the movie of your mind promptly produce a dictionary that arced high and true landing with a canine YIPE!
And so we began our day that way, you and I, with eggs and gravy and butter and biscuits; and out the window, across the lawn, the neighbor's dog lying crumpled under the weight of the entire English language.
Velocity Girl
You left one week ago, young and strong in your unwashed jeans and oversize coat, a dwindling white line in an atmosphere sea. There wasn't much I could do. I waved, my own ripple spreading out from my hand. I thought of you up there, comfortable or not, trying to pull the seat around you for lack of me. Thinking this absurd simile, of course I forgot where we parked our car.
This past week has been a horror show of imagined photographs, impacts and pressure, the end rushing up at 32 feet per second, your two and a half minutes of forever squared.
I know you would tell me I'm obsessing, but Man had been up there long enough with ways unstoppable and foreign, fly without politics unbiased, cross an ocean for a bomb unknown, or maybe, just maybe, it's the hiccup of a lathe missing a thread that can never say "excuse me" in a thousand yards of twice-plowed corn just outside of I Done Seriously Been Fucked, USA.
But Now is seven days later and your flight number is 826, arriving gate B-20, time: 6:22p.m.
Barely out of the shower, straight down into the bowl of the city, gears up and down through hot oil and grease, wet hair whipping a Medusa good-bye from a rear-end dropping start, I found open highway that said AIRPORT.
R.S.V.P Faux Pauxs (a brief history of man and flight)
One day Man saw Bird and marveled at the sight. Flapping his arms in anticipation, he climbed the nearest mountain, looked to the sky and shouted: " Hello, Sky! I'm feeling to fly!"
And the Sky immediately rhymed back: "Born without wings to try!"
Man, indignant with the facts of his first aeronautics lesson, knit his brows and said: "Yeah, so? I am gettin' kinda' smart, ya' know?"
The Sky, having covered all the pertinent information, resumed it's stoic pastime- staring into space.
Man, slighted, and hating to be ignored, and feeling further qualification may win him further consideration, shoved his hands into the air, madly worked his thumbs and said: "See that? Opposable! Opposable!
At which point, Evolution jumped into the conversation, and said with a voice powerful and slow as a moving continent : "The thumb thing is real cool, Man, but trust me on this one-hey, who loves ya' baby? Don't call us, we'll call you."
Humbled and chastised, Man turned and climbed carefully down the mountain. Upon reaching the ground, he thought and thought, and finally, a kind of truth was revealed to him.
Welllll," said Man slowly, kicking at the dirt, then looking to sky, "Okayyyy, whatevvverrrrrr, but I ain't gonna' hold my breath."
The Approach
AIRPORT dead ahead. I was driving in on a long loop of black top.
Check the gauges.
Glancing down at dashboard-"Roger…everything normal."
Check the landing gear.
Head out window-"Roger...round and rolling."
A Lexus with tinted windows blows by on the inside lane keeping its nose in the air.
Vreep vreep! goes the proximity alert. No time to slow down.
Th-thump! Skree! Clatterclatter!
Goddamn speed bumps. There should be a law.
Lemon 2G: A dance for Laurie
I had a place in the crowd, hypnotized, mesmerized. Gate B-20 was ¼ mile through. Piled my keys in a white plastic basket and spun a dance of pocket change. I learned the steps and began to wonder where I parked the car. I remember 2G. There was some color connected to it...lemon…yellow? How about Lush come to rest with Failing Liver? Fuck that, I had a sufficient liver and never drank tequila, but I know colors reminded you and I. Vital organs were distant cities that sent confessions…such stories…such patience…no X-ray show…
I parked in lemon 2G, rode the elevator…did a metal dance for you.
Lifetime Circus On Wheels
(Dedicated to those harried businessmen who pull the caboose of their luggage through the transport terminals of the world.)
I'm glad I'm not dragging my circus on those small wheels.
Bounce it down on a rented bed, a nylon zipper whisper, and the next city feels the bite of your bigtop.
Your acrobats read GQ and tie your tie in dangerous fashion statements. Your lion tamers leap forward, Sun-Tzu coiled in one hand, a four-color bar-graph for distance and distraction in the other. Tightrope walkers practice day and night, a facsimile of your Daytimer in hand, receiving the thrumming signals of the high-tension wire all the while.
This is fantastic, I think, but where are the clowns? In a circus, there must be clowns.
As I pass further through the crowd, I see a caboose stopped in the roundhouse of a car rental desk. The clerk is young and blonde. He has 3 feet of official looking print-out to add to the dispute.
I have a strange urge to buy roasted peanuts and laugh at what really isn't that funny.
Six Dollar Indifference
I stopped at the first bar I came to ( bad luck to pass a bar without getting a drink).
I sat down in the center of three bartenders and the long part of the L that is the bar. I attempted a flag down with my eyes. Reciprocation negative. I indicated flight path status with my hands. Response? Not so much as a napkin. Geezus, this squad must be flyin' blind. I abjure all formal communication and bring to bear the Great Wall of Green, clacking it hard on the bar in imitation of Pavlov. Still no communiqué. So here I am, I think, on the runway, no take-off impending. As my eyes glance down in preparation for the "What shmucks" roll, I see on the bar in front of me, all plastic'ed up like a breakfast special advertisement at Waffle House, an offer from an airline for my "FRIENDS to FLY FREE!"
FRIENDS FLY FREE?
A seven day bad vibe descends on me 3-D and sense alive; a ghoulish, tittering projectionist-
A bright, shiny, sky liner cracked like an egg against the roof of the world-friends fly free!
An explosion never solved…people rain down like roasted chickens-friends fly free! "I saw a flash of light," one observer said, "Powerfully quick BBQ."
I can see two men looking in stunned silence at the flashing lights and dropping gauges of the instrument panel. The pilot reaches into the pocket of his jacket hung neatly behind him, pulls out a small Bible, opens it to one of the many bookmarks moving his lips silently. The co-pilot rummages through his pants pocket, pulls out a cigarette cellophane containing ten Xanax, dumps them on the radio console to his right, crushes all ten in three deft movements of his Bic lighter.
The pilot pauses in his reading, glances up through the windscreen, a beautific smile on his face. "It's been nice knowing you, Bob", and so saying, returns to his bible.
Snurrrt! "Fuck you, Phil", replies the co-pilot looking up momentarily. Snurrt! Snurrt!
…Friends Fly Free…..Friends Fly Free….
Enough's enough already. I thought of enough of this crap by myself in the shower…in the car…in bed…
"Sir?" I say, leaning forward looking at the bartender, pushing an ashtray with three of my canceled butts into the sink behind the bar.
The bartender doesn't answer me. He pulls the swiftly bloating children of Philip Morris to safety in a napkin, tucks them in tight, and consigns them to a future among the relics of expensive hangovers.
"Excuse me," I say, "Could you pick that up for me?" And dropped a papercut-stiff $50 into the sink.
"YES, SIR!" he says, all pliable now, the 50 bright green and slick with soap, draped over his index finger.
"Bourbon and water," I say.
"Double, sir?" he asks.
"Your a good man," I say.
"That'll be six dollars, sir"
"Damn straight. Wouldn't be ignored for anything less."
Doubles For Kerouac
Jack, I feel so strange. I found you in Waterstones. It's not my place, but the drinks were overpriced, the bartenders forgetful, and my bookstore never has Big Sur. The clerk asked me questions about you. He said it was his favorite book. I paid for your words and lit a cigarette.
The clerk gave me a bookmark instead of a receipt and said, "Hey! No smoking in here!"
Au Bon Painâ®
2000 cultures a day arrive through the International Hall. Liberty says they all come from distant cities just to see her, she is such a beautiful woman. I stand over her bed and we all say: "One of the wonders of creation."
The doctor gathers his things, glances up, says: "Soon."
Outside the room, 700 more cultures clamor to see her.
A nurse arrives changing sheets and scribbling on charts, replacing empty bottles and hanging new ones. She's young and blonde and has a genuine smile. She asks if we need anything.
Raising my hand I say: "A croissant." Then: "And a double, please."
Jack, you'd want one, too. I'm sitting here in a puke-plastic mock up of a French café reading your bio. You died at 47 with nothing to disbelieve. That year we walked the moon. That year I was four years old and I thought we were gods.
Jack, I'm 30 finding you on the way down.
1969, you died Jack, my parents don't know you.
They never order doubles for Kerouac.
An X-File Fan
Laurie, you were late, hours late. I settled into the last bar I came to, the one where I could see you enter the terminal. I smiled at the lady behind the bar and asked for the time.
"About ten after eight, the X-files special just started," said the woman turning her back to me, her thinning white hair lit through with blue TV glow.
"I'll take a Beam and Coke, please."
She turned again and bent over the bottles poised on their own runway around the inside of the bar. "Double's only a dollar more," she said looking up.
"Sure," I said.
Mulder looked at Scully, I looked at the bartender, and she watched Scully discover something Scully had never seen before…
Someone To Say Your Name
I'd ordered a fourth drink as your hand came around under my arm and offered the drink to me. I drank, your soul and body close and warm. "Surprise!" you said.
My head fell back to rest on your shoulder, your hair a delicious waterfall across my face.
Mulder shouted, "Federal agent!"
Scully said, "Mulder!"
I said your name.
Epilogue
And we drove out of there onto the humming road, the windows down, the wind fast in our hair and eyes. The last week was fading away as the highway opened up to country dark, and insect music, and the dashboard light glowed over our faces like the king daddy of all lightning bugs. You laughed, and I laughed, and you were never gone, and I was never alone; and we drove and drove, the night cooling, the night familiar, and the feeling hadn't changed: Madness in our skins; perfect angels earthly supersonic leaving phantom earthquakes of the sweet young days. Existence at a thousand miles an hour, our mad dance under a thousand dark stars, we pressed against the sky and left no prints on the mystery.
"Never look back," you once promised me, moving your shadow in a setting sun, stepping forward out of the jeans puddled at your feet. I remember open windows and the last of summer; you were a river mad and beautiful, I was an ocean of silent wishes…all my wishes through my fingers glittering deep into the wishing well.
I was mad, you were mad, and we didn't know how to count the things we didn't have. And suddenly we were home, breakfast made, breakfast over, the best time for ripples, splashin', sloshin' dishwater. Soon ready for bed, Palmolive fidgety scrub-a-dubba…and it's just one short leap from a frying pan to makin' love in the kitchen sink.
