Creative Writing from
Fairleigh Dickinson University

A Chapter from a Novel

Andrew Condouris

I was assigned the seat next to him.  The beast. Plaid shirted, overall-ed, black skull-capped, his weeds of salt-and-pepper hair poking out the sides, his knuckles ivory on the edge of his armrests, his sweat like a lump of muenster left in the afternoon sun. I tried to engage him in small talk, but each topic I offered received only a nodding or shaking of his gargantuan head. I elbowed him toward the buxom, raven-haired creature across the aisle playing video games on the in-flight entertainment system.  But his attention remained out the window; he gasped at each wisp of cloud that shot by.  I gave up; this beast hadn't slept in a week; I had no truck with the violence of a mind withdrawn.
        The hands on my watch swung to the right, a drunken pirouette.  3PMish, 1500ish.  But what time was it, I wondered, in America--in New York City in particular? Easy. Subtract six hours. Go ahead, Charlie. 3 in the afternoon minus six equals…?  But time remained a phantom skulking about in my head. Ah well. It was the way I wanted it. See, I hadn't dreamed the last few times I'd slept and I found it rather odd, so I'd decided to give up on it for awhile.  Though I feared I would be awake forever, anything was better than a lack of dreams.  Perhaps, having worked under the beast for the last three months, I had acquired his insomnia. Yes, that's right. This beast, this aberration of a man, this thing--because, with insomnia, you live in a world of things--was my boss. There was no way around that. Not even with the crime he was about to commit.
        In the seat in front of me, a young mother sat with her infant on her lap.  The beast leered at them with his antifreeze eyes through the gap in the seats.  Calm descended upon him.  Perhaps, I thought, the image had acted as a sedative.  I got up to go to the lavatory located just past the mother's seat.  As I stood there waiting for the occupant to leave, the mother undid her blouse and breast-fed her child.  I averted my eyes, but the beast leaned stealthily over the seats and watched.  I was about to say something when the occupant exited.  A blur whispered past. I went in and slid the bolt home.
        In the cramped and pale light, I took off my baseball cap and examined the zombie standing in the mirror across from me.  His eyes were blotchy, he had a five o' clock shadow and his hair was matted to his head.  His Ray-ban sunglasses were crooked and the lenses were filthy.
         “And who are you?” I asked. 
         An orange piece of paper sticking out of the inside pocket of my sport jacket caught my eye.  A travel voucher.  The airline had overbooked.  Since it was a travel day and there was no rush, the beast and I had volunteered to wait a few hours.  For our patience, the airline gave us both a travel voucher worth 700 euros. Yes, that was the word they had used. Patience. Weird word. Noun or adjective? Pick one.
        Just then, as I was putting my travel voucher back into the fold of my wallet, turbulence hit the plane.
         “Mammaknullare!” I heard the beast roar from outside the lavatory.  
        I fumbled with the bolt, rammed my knee on the door and then opened it.  The beast had undone his seatbelt, leaned over the seats and was grabbing at mother and child with his cannon-sized arms. “Donnez à papa un peu de goût!” he howled.  Mother and child shrieked like newborn foals being murdered.  I tried to restrain him.  He elbowed me in the shoulder and I fell to the floor.  I got up for a second go, but he had backed off already.  “Fine!” he huffed at the mother.  “You don't wanna give Daddy a little taste?  Then how about this?”  He rummaged through the baby bag, found a jar of Gerber's, opened it, scooped some out with his pinky finger and ate it.  “Sustenance,” he said to the jar.  “Sweet, sweet sustenance!” 
         The mother yelled in a churning mixture of French and Swedish. Her child cried and wiggled in her steely arms.  Her breast was still exposed and flopped about, her milk flicking into the air.  The other passengers turned up their sleep masks to catch sight of the beast as he worked at the dregs of the jar.  He stopped digging and looked about, seemed to realize what he'd just done and tried a smile. 
        “You'll have to excuse my friend,” I said to the bewildered faces. “He's feeling a little blue.”  He took his cue from me: “Are those diapers one-size-fits-all, madam?” he asked.  She stopped yelling; the question had put her off guard.  He put headphones on, gazed at the ceiling and sucked his thumb.  Pop music percolated out of his headset.  I put on my headset too—gentle ocean waves smashed against my eardrums. I turned down the volume and tried my best at being inconspicuous.
        The flight attendants arrived, calmed the mother, dirty looks on the beast and me all the while.  The Captain stepped out of the cockpit and talked with the flight attendants to figure out what had happened.  I closed my eyes and pictured curling green waves breaking on a pale beach. 
         “English?"
         I opened my eyes to the Captain looking down at me with a face of diplomacy. He reminded me of the character of Vershinin in Chekhov's “Three Sisters.” A hiccup of a Lothario, deliberate, peacock feathers fully exposed, a ponce. His eyebrows like a seesaw.
        “I'm an American, yeah, talk to me babe.” I said. 
        “What happened here?”
        “My friend has a fear of flight.”
        “Passport?”
        “Mine?  His?  His and mine? His and mine.”  I tapped the beast on the shoulder. The squeaky-clean pop spilled out as he lifted his headphone to hear me. 
        “Your passport, man.  They need your passport,” I said.
        He snorted, huffed.
        “Please, Arty.  They could give us a cavity search,” I said.
        He raised an eyebrow. 
        “Is this man a-o.k.?” the Captain asked with an affected Texan accent.
        “He lost his wife and children in a plane crash a few years ago,” I lied. 
        “May I see his passport?” he asked, leaning in.
        “Okay.”  I turned back to the beast.  “I'm just going to reach into your pocket and get your passport.”  No response.  I reached into his left breast pocket.  His steamy breath purred on my hand.  I lifted the passport, took mine out too and gave them both to the Captain.  He only examined the beast's, scrutinizing his photo and then flipping through the pages.
        “You've been to many countries, Mr. Arturo Gaul.”
        No response.
        “Yes, he has.” I said.  “He has and he's never--he's not a troublemaker.  He's just all broken up, you know?”
        The Captain leaned in further.  “He's been to many countries, ja?”  He smiled at me: he had a gold tooth. “Yeah, you just asked me that.  Are you okay?”  
        He handed me both passports. I put mine in my right pocket and the beast's in my left. I saw my reflection in the gold tooth. “If he's been to many countries, why is he afraid of flying?”
        “Because, like I said, he lost his wife and child to--” But I knew the jig was up.
        “You've already crapped in your hat, pal.  You wanna wear it, too?”  I tried to figure out what he meant, but I didn't get it; insomnia deprives one of that receptivity to wit--if you can call that particular gem wit. Plus, he sounded more and more like John Wayne each time he spoke.  But the meaning of the phrase came to me and I affected a laugh.
        “Muh-h-ha-ha, mer--hmm…  Never heard that one before--”
        “Shh,” he went, leaning in until he was three inches from my face. “The man looks tired.  He looks like he's going to have a heart attack.  When was the last time he slept?”
        “He doesn't sleep, sir.  That's the problem.”
        “I see.”  He thought the matter over for a moment.  Then he whispered in my ear. 
        “We're landing in an hour.  I don't want to have to call security.  Contain him.”
        “Yessir, yes.”
        “I know his work, his films…  He is Europe's greatest director, maybe even the world's.  That's why the break, slim.”
        “Yes, Ja, thank you.”
        “Tell me though: why doesn't he sleep?” 
         Arturo Gaul answered for himself in Swedish.  The response on the Captain's face was not unlike an ice cube plopped in a pot of boiling water.  He walked away, peacock feathers down. I'm going to be deported, I thought.  This film will never get finished, there goes my last shot at a real acting career down the tubes the drain the shitter.  I'm two days away from being done.  One day, really.  Today is a travel day.  Tomorrow will be my last day.  Finish what you started, Chuck.  Then get the hell out of Dodge, or Sweden anyway.  Back to America.   
         “What did you say to him?” I asked.
        “I called him a glorified bus driver.”
        “That's all? You must've said something worse.”
        “I might've added something about his mother. That she picks her teeth after a meal.”  
         “Jesus Christ,” I muttered. “You know, we're lucky the father of the kid isn't around.”
        “I could've handled him, Brother Love.” 
         Mother and child were moved to the other side of the plane.  The baby's face had aged thirty years.  He'd learned one of the big lessons way too soon: you're either the hunter or the hunted.  
         Either way, the Gerber's had satiated the needs of the beast.  He drifted off into reveries.  Of what, I had no idea and didn't want to know.  I drifted off to the shoreline of my mind. More green waves. An empty horizon. Curve of the Earth.  But then tremors emanated from the guts of the plane.  The seatbelt lights chimed.  The beast grasped the arms of his seat with his hands, one juggernaut in fear of another.  The plane bucked and his face went white.  A flight attendant appeared and asked the beast to buckle up.  They bickered in Swedish.  The beast gestured with his belt, indicating its futility in the event of a crash.  In response, the flight attendant leaned over me, placed a hand on the beast's shoulder and whispered in his ear.  Her ribcage was inches from my nose and I caught the scent of roses.  A grin broke on the beast's face.  The flight attendant buckled his belt, lightly brushed her hand across his upper thigh and backed away down the aisle.
        “What did she say to you?” I asked.
         “She said if I was a good boy she'd give me a kiss when I got off the plane.” 
He giggled like a geisha, his breath smelled of shit.  I turned away.  He rubbed his eleven o' clock shadow and looked out the window again. “The runway's not cleared of snow, Brother Love.  Vamos a morir.  Not good.”
        I scanned the length of first class for the flight attendant, followed the faint scent of her roses.  A majority of the passengers were skiing enthusiasts—rows of wool-knit sweaters and expensive wraparound sunglasses.  The flight attendant was in her
seat by the emergency exit.  She waved to me.  I nodded for her to come back over.  She shook her head and mouthed the words: We're landing.  I looked past the beast's shoulder and out the window.  A ruffled bed of white sheets rose to meet us.  I imagined my head resting on a fluffy glacier; my legs sprawled out across the tundra.
        “There it is!” the beast said, tapping the window in an apparent moment of lucidity.  In the distance, a black mountain loomed large above the hills.  Floodlights surrounding its top illuminated its spew of steam.  Or was it smoke? 
        “A volcano?” I asked. 
        “Iron ore mine,” he said.  “You know about that, don't you?”
        I shook my head. 
        “That's where the Nazis birthed their guns.  Kept 'em in the fight another three or four years oh fuck me here it comes...”
        The wheels smacked the earth, shook the marrow of my bones. The reverse thrust roared, let us know we'd made it. We taxied toward the airport. I checked my pulse. It seemed to be going too fast, but then I'm not a doctor. All my blood seemed to be sloshing around in my head. A vein just behind my nose pulsed rigorously. I imagined my head exploding and the blood splattering all over the fuselage. Now there was a cleaning bill I wouldn't want to get stuck with.
        The flight attendant walked up to us, leaned over again, and patted the beast on the shoulder.  He put his hand on hers and got a good grip.  He made little bubbling noises, smiling as though he'd been put out to stud.  The attendant looked at me as though I were a life preserver on the raging seas.  I gave a slight shake of the head in return; a promise is a promise, darling; you're on your own.  She mustered up some courage and delivered a peck on his leathery cheekbone.  He pulled her down into his lap and gave her the tongue. 
         She slapped him, regained her dignity as best she could—smoothing the wrinkles off the seat of her skirt--and went to the front of the plane to open the door.  
         "My lack of overture is welcoming to the ladies," the beast said, sighing. "That reminded me of my days in pornography." I shot him a glance. "Oh, no, I wasn't in them.  I'm too well-endowed.  No, I did the music for them.  My stuff was quite breathtaking really.  On par with Glass, Cage, Kraftwerk.  Brian Eno even called me once."
        Another piece of the puzzle slid into place. I had nothing against the pornographic industry; they'd helped me out many a lonely night. But working in the industry required one to disavow all foreknowledge of sexual love, of compassion, of sense.
        The door of the plane opened.  Arctic winds snaked through and slapped me in the face. I rushed down the stairs to the earth, across the tarmac, into the airport—never looking back in case the beast was gaining on me.  I kept my eyes peeled for an ambush.  I was certain the Captain of the plane had radioed the airport and told them of the beast's vile attack on the mother and child.  The cold air pressed into me.  I reached the terminal and went inside. Hidden amongst a few of the other passengers and darting my eyes hither and thither from under the protection of my sunglasses, I waited at baggage claim for my luggage to arrive.  Two security guards walked by. They took no notice of me.  They were in the throes of what seemed to be a Socratic dialogue. It became clear to me, though, that I had to get away from the airport, far away from entanglements with the local police and possibly even Interpol.  I had committed a crime, hadn't I? Yes.
        No, wait. Had I?
        Well, yes. In some way, I could've been perceived as an accomplice in the molestation of a mother and child. After all, why did I take the side of the beast? Why did I cover for him? All in the name of my stupid little career? What if that had been my wife (well, ex-wife anyway) and child? Oh, Sweet Christ. In my lifetime I'd only been charged with two crimes: jumping a turnstile and urinating in a public place.  I'd paid the fines, taken responsibility.  But once Interpol put two and two together, they'd assume they had a burgeoning international sex deviant on their hands, wouldn't they? It would be too good for them to pass up, wouldn't it?
        No, no. This was the effect of severe sleep depravation. Nothing more. Still, it was wise to get to the hotel as quickly as possible.
          I gazed at the crowd forming at the luggage belts and remembered reading somewhere that the average person spent one sixth of their life waiting, whether on line for luggage, a cab, a film, a prescription, unemployment, clean water, vaccination, etc. 
        I can't prove it but I believe actors wait longer than the average person, maybe a third of their lives.  Not only are we waiting for our big break into the hearts and minds and wallets of the world, but we also relish the loitering existence, the bum's life.  We have a willingness to let things be as they are.  Then, we gradually color it in, give invention full rein.  Human beings in the waiting environment--where they are most vulnerable and, on occasion, most hostile--are the perfect study. And if we're lucky, we witness a human being's dreams leaking out their heads and floating up into the air above. 
         I studied the crowd until my luggage came: a cobalt blue suitcase, with rear wheels and a sticker of the American flag gracing the side; and my guitar, which had once again survived the rigors of air travel.
        Down the conveyor belt a ways, a commotion grew in the crowd as the beast yanked
heartily at his sole piece of luggage--an alligator-skinned trunk measuring two feet by four; a monstrous thing from which I had always expected to hear the ticktock, ticktock of a certain Captain's clock. The beast heaved his Alligator off the belt, ramming his crotch in the process.  He grimaced. He caught sight of me and waddled over, the throng clearing the way for beast and alligator, whispering to each other their abhorrence—a melting pot of dissent; Swedish, French, Spanish, German.
         “You ready to go, Charlie?” the beast asked.
        “That Captain might have security guards after us.” I said, grabbing the other end of the Alligator.
        “I was a security guard once.  I eat guys like that for breakfast.”
        “Well, then let's get to the hotel.”
        “Hey, I'm the director, Brother Love."
        “Let's get out of here is all I'm saying.”
        We lugged our way to the front of the airport.  A handful of drivers were waiting for customers, sheets of paper in hand, surnames in marker.  A man standing four foot ten with a thick black beard and a scowl akin to Churchill's was holding GAUL und RAVINE.
        “Hej, L'il Mickey. Laget?” the beast asked.  The man grunted and nodded. A man of few words, I thought.  
         “Hey, Mickey, you're so fine.  You're so fine you blow my mind,” I said, without the required bravado. 
        The beast and L'il Mickey made no comment, though their sideward glances told otherwise. 
         “I haven't slept in three days,” I said.
         Mickey piled our luggage onto a cart and tugged it away.  We followed him. Outside, the beast slowed his pace, opened some distance between us and Mickey.
         “This guy's a local.  Don't get in his way, Brother Love.  He once killed a man.”
        “What?”
        “Just play your cards close. Hey, do you have my passport, man?”
        I dug into my right pocket and handed him his passport.  
        Before I could ask any questions, L'il Mickey opened the passenger-side door to his van.  The beast walked over and got in. He warmed his hands on the vents and then sheepishly nodded for me to get in.
        L'il Mickey loaded our luggage.  I'd have helped, but I had a prejudice against murderers.  He finished loading, slammed the backdoors shut, came around front and jumped into the driver's seat.  I glanced into the rear view: Little Mickey's eyes had all the calm of the dead.
        He gunned the engine and pulled onto the highway.
        We sat in silence for a while.  The white earth slowly turned blue.  We passed two people on kick sledges.  The iron ore mountain crept toward us. 
        “So, Mickey, how far away is the hotel?” I asked.
        “Nine.  Nine kilometers.  Nine," Lil Mickey said. 
        A spindrift cut across our nose. It seemed to adjust its tie, late for some business meeting or ceremony somewhere. The van's engine rattled in my ear like a spent lawnmower. The silence pulled hairs off the back of my neck.
        “Must be 20 past, right?” I said.
        More silence.
        “Nine kilometers,” L'il Mickey repeated.
        “Thank you, Mickey,” I said.
        “L'il,” L'il Mickey said, leaning forward and pointing to the L'il Mickey embroidered on the back of his jumpsuit.
        “L'il,” I said. “Right.”
        Yes, more silence. Water feeling out the path of least resistance.  I let the path take me. The mountain lumbered past us.  Something was about to happen.  A rush of adrenaline overtook me.  I tried to reset my gauges.  My senses were falling apart. Where was that screaming sound coming from? That waah-ooo? Was it the mother's scream inside my head? No; too easy. I turned around and saw the flashing lights.
        “Holy crow,” I said.   
        L'il Mickey pulled to the side of the road.  As the sirens lowered in pitch, I wondered if the jail cells were heated.  The beast turned and looked at me. "Just take it easy," he said. “The mother, probably. What can I say? He who has not sinned--”
        But the pert snaps of the cruiser's doors closing cut him off. Two officers stepped out and approached us, hands on butt of holstered guns. They asked Arturo Gaul to step out of the van.  He complied.  They led him back to their car and talked with him. He smiled at them, seemingly made nice. They opened the back door and gestured for him to get in. He complied.  They drove away.
        And then there I was: alone in a van with a murderer a hundred and some odd miles inside the Arctic Circle.
         “What is it he has did?” L'il Mickey asked.
        “I don't know, man.”    
        He put the van in gear, got back on the road and drove me toward what I hoped was the hotel. To avoid further interaction, I busied myself, checked my wallet. Everything was in place, travel voucher neatly tucked in the fold. I reached into my left pocket and pulled out my passport.
        My passport wasn't supposed to be brown. The beast's was brown. I searched in vain for mine, then realized I must've given it to the beast. I opened his passport to his photograph. Green Mohawk and a piano smile.

        
        Without a passport, they refused to give me my room. I wasn't up to the task of arguing with the receptionist, a middle-aged man with a striking resemblance to Abraham Lincoln, so I called Helen. She told me she was in Room 317. I gave the phone to the receptionist and he talked with her a bit. He hung up, rattled his eyeballs in their sockets, puckered up his lips and nodded for me to go ahead. There's a man, I thought, who takes his job way too seriously.
        Mirrors surrounded me inside the elevator. A funhouse. I hit 3. The hum of the machine. The silence within the hum. I caught myself in the mirror, took another look at the stranger. He was a…a half-finished sentence, a message in a bottle, a CQ shot into the dumb ether of space, still traveling even as we speak; a half-finished sentence and a poorly written one, too. A subject and a verb, sure, but what in God's name was this disgusting amount of time before the discovery of an object, or objective, for that matter? All it was was tick…tock…tick-tock, ticktock.
        The beast's Alligator popped into my mind.
        Ding of the elevator. Pale yellow hallways, brown carpet with orange zigzags. I walked toward 317. Ticktock went my feet on the carpet.
        That was when it started—no, not that afternoon—but decades ago, when I played Captain Hook. That was the role that made me want to become an actor. I was ten years old. I could still smell the oily decadence of that stage. I could still see the outlines of my classmates' faces--just past the warm light that divorced fact from fiction—filled with the terror I'd delivered straight into the muck of their hearts. What a blessing; what a dream—yet no dream! Awake! Life became a mere hobby, and the stage a place where God doled it out.
         I knocked on Helen's door. I heard stumbling and then the jiggling of the lock. Now, Charlie, wouldn't it be interesting if the police were on the other side? I wondered. Or Interpol. Shadowy men in trench coats packing heat. I would swallow my pride and surrender quietly. But Helen opened the door instead. She gave me the once-over, her brown eyes like rocks falling down on my head. She lifted her 35mm camera and took a picture of me.
        “You sat next to Mr. Gaul on the plane?”
        “It's that obvious?”
        “What happened?”
        “Nervous breakdown.”
        “That would be his third, right?”
        “My third. His Fifth.”
         She kissed me on the chin and went back inside, leaving the door open. Through her window, a cinematic view of the tundra with the iron ore mountain in the foreground. “What happened?” she asked. I was still in the threshold. I looked up and down the hallway for shadowy men, beasts, etc. Nothing. All in good time, I figured. Maybe they'd bugged Helen to get more dope on my cabal. Nah. There's insomnia for you.
        I went in, shut the door behind me. Helen sat at the little table by the window and took pictures of the tundra. I explained to her what had happened on the plane while she unpacked my clothes and threw them in a corner on the floor. “Do you really think they'll come for you?” she asked, putting her camera down on the dresser. “I mean, I think you are blowing it out of proportion.”
        “I don't know,” I said. I took my guitar out, tuned it and improvised a bit, let my playing follow my thoughts and vice versa. “I just know that there's going to be some questioning. You don't get off the hook easy on something like that.”
        I put down the guitar and took in Helen sitting reflectively in her chair, I kneeled beside her, buried my head in her lap. “When's the last time you slept?” she asked.
        “Do I need my beauty sleep?”
        “Yes, you're very ugly right now. And you smell like Gaul. You need to take a shower, 'Brother Love.'”
        “Hmm, sounds delish, but I'm working toward a complete shut-down of the senses.”
        “Well, you're shutting down mine, too. You really must sleep tonight.”
        “I'm gonna need some help, you know, getting to The Island Of Zzzzz,” I buzzed the Zzzzzs into her thigh. She scrunched up, pushed me away and crumbled over onto the bed. I sat on the floor, leaning against the chair.
        “You mean the pot,” she said.
        “No, I mean the ol' workout. ”
        “You can workout alone, can't you?” She offered a smirk.
        I scratched my head a la Stan Laurel. I got up, got ready to collapse on her. She held up her foot and shook it side to side, like a cobra locking me in a trance. She swung it toward the bathroom door. “Alright,” I said. I stripped, went into the bathroom and shut the door behind me.
        The warm water slowed my breathing. My eyes shut up tight. A sharp pain swelled in my head like brain-freeze from ice cream. I pictured an ice cream truck twinkling down a suburban street in the middle of the summer. Strength came to me. I leaned against the marble wall, shifted in and out of the stream and listened to the smacks of water on the floor. Out of that rhythm, the echoes of the mother and child's screams rang in my ears. “Help them,” I muttered and repeated over and over again, until it lost meaning, until the words were two innocent creaks in an empty house. I don't help, I thought. Ever since Captain Hook, I'd played nothing but evil characters. I was Charlie Ravine: Villain Extraordinaire. A funny bit of fortuna, I thought, but not the reason for my timidity on the plane. Nothing worth investigating. A way to earn your keep, nothing more.
        I got out, dried off and opened the door. Helen had closed the curtains and gotten under the covers. I practiced turning on and off the lights—a habit I'd fallen into over the last two months; a compulsion to see if things worked.
        On. Off. On. Off. On.
        “Stop it, Charlie.”
        “No.”
        She lit a joint. A truck grumbled by outside, sticking into the quiet. Helen got up and put on some music, handing me the joint. She pressed the play button and the guitars crackled and fizzed. She picked up her camera, took another picture of me naked and sipping at the joint. She put it back down on the dresser.
        My bones and muscles went slack. We sat on the bed Indian-style, smoked the joint and then another one and listened to the entire album, not a word between us.
        When it was over, we were left with those deadly winds outside rubbing against the silence, trying to find a way in. I couldn't shake the notion that one was already in the room watching us, lurking in the shadows, hiding under the bed, waiting in ambush. A monster. Not merely a beast this time, but a monster.
        “You want some water?” Helen asked.
        “Huh? What? No thanks.”
        She got up and went into the bathroom, her body swimming through the dark: hips like the body of an acoustic guitar, breasts floating in the air, the dragon on her back, that inky irk. When we'd make love, I'd think it had slithered right onto me, its paper skin turning mine to gooseflesh. Its claws, thin and black, would remind me how deep they could go.
        Helen's camera on the dresser, the lens cap off, looked like an eye watching me watching her. The sound of the running water made me have to pee. I got up, went into the bathroom. She drank her glass of water at the sink while I peed.
        “You know what I see when I listen to music in the dark?” she asked, finishing her water. “I think of a glass-bottom boat sailing through the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. I don't like it. But when I'm tired, it doesn't scare me as much. But imagine, Charlie, the glass cracking. Not a good way to die. But that is not what scares me. The dark, the dark that passes underneath. How it can just as easily be nothing. Do you know about that? Why do you think I have such a fear?”
        “Sounds like you take yourself too seriously.”
        “Who else will?”
        “Good point.” I said, getting back into the bed and pulling the covers over me.
        “What do you see when you listen to music in the dark?”
        “Depends on the song.”
        She wriggled into bed, put her body on mine. Her feet were ice. I kissed her shoulders and rubbed her arms. She looked into my eyes, tried to sniggle me out. I saw the bloom in hers.
        “Tell the truth, Charlie.”
        “Hmm?”
        “Tell me something.”
        “Okay…” I said. Her eyes were like cuts in stone. I knew what I wanted to say, all the energy of it was on my tongue. Listen: Scoot a little closer, darling. A little closer...there...there...lemme touch your eyebrows...close your eyes...close them...there we go... I wanna paint your name all over a car and drive around the world. Listen to me, baby: Listen to me: I wanna tell you everything.
        But those words didn't get said; they were thrown into a safe that was then thrown into the sea. I knew the rules: don't ever let a woman know you need her. The hungry don't eat. Avoid that word of words. You know which one I mean.
        I got up and looked out the window. A blanket of highway lights lay stretched toward the mine and the warm blue sky in the west slowly sank behind the glaciers. I looked north. Something was twirling out there in the absolute dark, a faint light rattling along the horizon, but the floodlights on the mine, that alien spaceship forever landing, drowned it out. I had to do an inventory on the situation. I was in over my head in a hotel room a few hundred miles from Santa's house and Superman's Fortress of Solitude. An iron mine used by Hitler's army didn't help, didn't fit into my cosmology, but there it was in all its glory, or lack thereof. I fell back on the bed and looked through the dark at the pictures on the walls. To the side of the bed was a picture of horses grazing on a swell. A dark cloud lingered on the horizon. They shuffled their feet in the grass and waited for the storm. Above the headboard was another painting of the same horses being chased by the storm, the thunder working into their hooves
        Helen picked up a pack of cigarettes from the bedside table, took one out and lit it. I closed my eyes. She got up and looked around for the ashtray we'd used for the joints. She gave up quickly and stood in the bathroom door, occasionally flicking her ashes in the sink. The light of the bathroom gave me her silhouette.
        “Imagine civilization has disappeared and only you and me is left. Everyone is gone. The streets are empty, the houses, the world.” she said.
        “Why do we survive?”
        “The gods favored us.”
        “Well, then: first, we'd have to make a lot of babies. Then, we would have to collect all the world's knowledge: History, philosophy, survival skills, et cetera.”
        “Sex before knowledge?”
        “Fundamentals.”
        “Okay, but here is what is disgusting: our children would have to have sex with each other to, um…”
        “Propagate the species?
        “Ja.”
        “Something they left out of Genesis.”
        “It is strange…they had two boys.”
        “Cain and...what was the other's?”
        “Abel.”
        “Right. Bible's a terrible work of fiction anyway.”
        “Have you read the Bible?”
        “You spend enough time in hotel rooms and you get wise to certain things. Like loneliness, emptiness… ”
        “Now who takes themselves too seriously? More music.” Helen said. She got up, put on some outer space stuff, guitars calling from under the ice of Europa, an amniotic warmth. She whispered in my ear. “What is it like to grow up as a boy?”
        “What was it like to grow up as a girl?” I whispered back.
        “I don't remember.”
        “Sure you do. You must.” She turned to me, her eyes like cuts in stone.
        “Can you remember growing up?”
        I waited for a memory to surface. None emerged.
        “No...no. Strange.”
        “Ja, det er det. That it is. What is this feeling?”
        “Quietude, I think.”
        She smiled her smile.
        “It's good you're here, Charlie.”
        “Hmm?” I said, beginning to drift toward The Island of Zzzzzzzzz.
        “Who else can I depend upon to call a thing its name?”
        “I guess that's what it means to be a boy: knowing the names of things.
        “And girls, they give the things their names.”
        In my mind, I saw her as a giant walking through the world and naming the animals and the flowers and the land formations; I saw her face reflected in a tsunami. Then, as if she read my mind, she asked “What was it that first came out of the sea?”
        “Something refused,” I said. “Thrown upon the rocks.”
        “What did you say?”
        “Huh?”
        I turned back to face her.
        “What about 'rocks?'” she asked.
        “Didn't you just ask me what the first thing was that came out of the sea?”
        She kissed my temple.
        “Sleep.” she said, running her fingers through my hair. I turned away from her and did as she instructed. She lay down. I could hear from her breathing she was deep in thought. “When I was a kid, I found something on the beach. I did not know what it was then; I don't know what it was now. It was yellow and gold and purple, smooth as marble. Heavy as a rock, but you could see through it.”
        “Do you still have it?” I asked, standing on the last bit of ice.
        “No.”
        “What did you do with it?”
        “I threw it back in.”
        “Hmm.”
        “I wanted to keep it, but that would be stealing.”
        “From whom?”
        “All those years it took to make it. The elements.”
        “You should have kept it.”
        “Why?”
        “Remembrance.”
        “It's all in here,” she said, pointing to either her heart or head.
        The monster in the dark presented itself. Helen knew it was there, too--putting us an arm's length away from each others' spirit, letting us know that we were merely a guest in eac other's reality. We'd made it to that weird, sticky feeling; holding on to the Gone in each other. Wait it all out, I thought, until this tryst becomes a vague memory, a Polaroid of an empty powder blue wall that you find on a street in some second-rate city.
        The guitars melted Europa's ice. I jumped in. I thought of Noah and his Ark, the dove and the raven. I saw the bed as the absolute bottom on which to lay the wrack of my body. Thunder—distant, muffled—yawned from up above. The lazy horses in the painting on the wall tried to swim through the plains, the currents taking them along through underwater forests and towns and cities filled with swimming wolves, giraffes, beasts, monkeys; the rebellion of Noah's menagerie.
        The guitars boiled it all, steaming up every last drop. The monster now a child standing in the corner and rubbing one foot over the other. And down the hall the ice machine hummed to life, announcing the vesper hours. Ethereal beings drifted about above me, floated through the walls and windows, lit a trail into the dead of night. Ice winds slathered about, descended, stilly and lucid, behind the glaciers. I chased after them, screaming.
        Then. Helen in a field of tall grass watching a red sunset. Tan. A hand on her hip. White blouse, billowing and simple. Blue jeans. Hair pulled back. The sky to the east was morning glories and there were clouds, billowing and simple, too. A wind hummed through the tall grass. Nearby, a little car was parked on the side of a dirt road. I sat on the back, rolled a cigarette. Calm hands. Lit it with a match. Smelled of dirt and fire. Helen laughed her laugh.
        I got up, brought her a beer.
        Cold, wet.
        Summer.
        She reached over and shut out the bedside light.
        A slide-show played on the inside of my eyelids. The beast lurching at the mother and child, the mother's exposed nipple, the gold tooth of the Captain, L'il Mickey's eyes. Then nothingness came, an absence of notions. I did the old trick my brother taught me when we were kids: I pretended I was dreaming of trying to fall asleep.
        Tumblers aligned.
        The bed turned into the deck of an empty sailboat. The gentle sway smoothed out all vigilance in my arms and legs. The moon unfurled its silver upon the water and, behind her, an arc of fresh stars led to the gods. My salty tongue loosened and unleashed whispers. I leaned over the side and peered into the pitch black water. I put my hand into it. Warm. From beneath the surface, the silhouette of a creature swirled into form, extended a limb, gripped my hand and pulled me into the deep.
        The phone rang.
        I jumped up.
        Was the jig up? Was I going to jail? Second ring. Or did they have the “one phone call” rule in Sweden? I cringed at the mere thought of the beast roaring for me from the clink—though that would be better than the police asking me to come downstairs. I pictured the beast under the lamp, beads of sweat dripping down his forehead. Did they suspect he was a terrorist? Would they attach electrodes to his testicles? Under such pain, would he put the blame on me, claim that I was the ring-leader of some freaked cabal? I wouldn't put it past him. Third ring.
        No, no.
        He would tell them about his insomnia and his struggles with the film. Perhaps the mother wouldn't press charges with such an explanation. The fourth ring came barking. Perhaps they'd seen his work. He was, as the Captain on the plane said, Europe's greatest director. Perhaps they'd all seen his work; maybe they'd bring in a doctor, get some sort of whale or polar bear sedative sloshing through his bloodstream. Make him a cup of tea. Fifth ring. Why didn't he make a big fuss when the police pulled us over? It was as though he needed them to incarcerate him; he knew he was a threat to society. Sixth ring.
        That's what he was: a threat. Clearly. Unequivocally. A walking tub of nitroglycerin walking through a playground on a beautiful, blue-sky Sunday afternoon. Seventh. This was no noble savage. This beast had violated the sacred bond of mother and child.
        Let the fucker rot in his cell.
        I picked up the phone.
        “What is it?”
        “Mr. Ravine?”
        “You woke me up.”
        “I am sorry sir, but there is a gentleman down here, a police officer. He would like very much to ask you a question.”
        “Who is it?” Helen asked me, half-asleep.
        “Room service.” I said.
        “We didn't order any room service.”
        “That's the problem,” I said. “We didn't order any room service,” I said into the phone.
        “Excuse me? I'm sorry. My English must not be very good. Would you please come down?”
        I tried to sound casual about the whole thing, but my acting skills weren't up to the task. “I'll, uh, be down in a minute.”
        “Charlie?” Helen asked.
        “Very good, sir,” the receptionist said. I waited for the cinematic dial tone that always came biting on the heels in the movies. But this wasn't the movies; we were making a movie, yes, but this wasn't the movies. The dial tone came and I placed the receiver gently back in its cradle.
        “What do you have to go downstairs for?”
        “Something to do with Gaul.”
        “Do you want me to come down with you?”
        “Sleep for me.”
        “Okay.”
        She turned around and did so. I got up, turned on the lights and put on some clothes. Then I turned the lights off. On. Off. On. Off. And went downstairs.