One Hundred

Okay, I finally made it to my hundredth post! It's only been, what, four years? Here's to hitting the next hundred before 2012!

I was looking for cute images of the number 100,
but I saw one made of cupcakes, so this
is the photo you get. I made these.
Pretend they spell out "100." 

To celebrate, I thought I would go back into the Critically Ambiguous Truth in Drinking archives and actually finish one of the many story fragments there. After reading the beginning of this story over and over to refamiliarize myself with it, I'm excited to say that I can definitely see some improvement in my voice and narrative flow since then.

This was the story about the woman who comes back to her apartment and finds a strange gift. The beginning can be found here: http://critical-drinking.blogspot.com/2006/09/open-your-gift.html

And now, for the thrilling continuation:

---

"You again?!" my landlord's mobster voice barked through the earpiece of my Blackberry. "What, ya got another rat or somethin'?" Last month, I had a dead rat decomposing between layers of drywall in my bathroom. Getting it out of there was the apartment equivalent of open-heart surgery. But for my landlord, a thoroughly misplaced New Yorker, it was just another rat.

"No, Mr. Angelos," I said. "Nothing like that. I just--"

"Ya got bees?" he asked.

"What? No, I don't have...bees?"

"Okay, good," he said, relief in his voice. I couldn't help but laugh a little. This conversation was distracting, at least.

"I'm calling because I had a package delivered yesterday, and I wanted to ask you about it."

"What package?"

"It's a gift box, with a bow on it. I'm sure you saw it, because someone had to open my door to put it inside, and you're the only one who has a key. Right?"

"I ain't bin to yer building since Thoisday," he said. "No packages."

"Are you sure?"

"I keep a hundred tenants' full names, phone numbuhs, and payment statuses in my head and she asks me if I'm sure I ain't dropped by?! Oy. Ya need anything else, or can I go about my Satuhday now?"

"That's all," I said into the phone. "Thanks, Mr. Angelos." He hung up without saying goodbye, which only served to punctuate the problem at hand: what was I supposed to do about this mysterious gift?

I paced a little before settling onto the couch, where I could keep a watchful eye on it. If something so strange was so insistently exerting itself into my life, would it be prudent to accept it? Or would that be dangerous? I was so terrified of this gift that I'd put it out in the hallway before going to sleep. I did the lock and the chain, both of which were still done. Yet, the gift had somehow made its way inside again.

Starbucks is where I go on awkward first dates, to see whether the guy orders something more frou-frou than me. I rationalized the decision to myself as I made it: 'It is clearly meant to be mine, so I can take it to Starbucks to open it if I damn well please. If it turns out to be evil, I'll see if it orders a decaf nonfat soy caramel macchiato.' So I showered and got dressed.

Nestled under my arm, the gift seemed to lurch with every step as I walked to the coffee shop, like the box was anxious to be opened. It was a short walk, but each step seemed heavier as I went along. I ordered an iced Earl Grey and sat in an armchair by the front window.

When my fingers slid through a seam in the wrapping, I felt a chill course through my body. The sensation on my fingertips was like touching my own freshly-moisturized face--warm, soft, familiar. I pulled on the flap. The wrapping fell away from the box as though my gentle tug on the flap had started a chain reaction in whatever machinery had been holding it together. And, in fact, it was a box that I held in my hands, a sturdy affair made of stiff, white, glossy cardboard. This box did not suffer from the same affliction as the wrapping the night before: it was immediately clear that I had to lift the lid of the box from the bottom to see what was inside. I set the box on the table and sipped my tea.

When I looked around for the discarded wrapping, I thought that some fastidious Starbucks employee must have cleared it away. But as I hadn't seen a fastidious Starbucks employee since 1996, I had to assume that the wrapping paper (or whatever it was) had vanished just as mysteriously as the entire gift had appeared. I quickly looked back at the box, just to be sure that it hadn't pulled the same kind of vanishing act. It was still there, on the table, radiating the same soft glow as it had when it was wrapped.

"What's in the box?" said a voice behind me. The force of my startlement nearly launched my cup of iced tea at the window. I wanted to admonish the man for sneaking up on me, but my voice caught in my throat.

"Well?" he said, glancing--furtively?--alternately at my face and the box.

"I don't know," I said.

"Only one way to find out," he said. Before I could answer him, the barista said his name, causing him to pick up a coffee from the counter and leave the store. It was me and the box, alone again.

The lid of the box, I found out, was not heavy at all. It came up from the box easily and quickly. By opening the box, I had fully committed myself to finding out what was inside, whether the contents more greatly resembled those of Pandora's box or Marcellus Wallace's suitcase. Inside the box, a machine made of metal and some other materials I couldn't identify gleamed expectantly.

I wrapped my hand around it in order to lift it out of the box, so as to better examine my prize. As soon as my skin came in contact with the machine, it leapt into motion. The machine was reminiscent of the kind of perpetual motion machine you might find on a boss's desk, a shiny affair with what appeared to be a visible clockwork inside. On Monday, I took it into the office and set it on my desk. Its glow brightened my tiny cubicle and its silent motion often served as a welcome distraction from the daily grind.

I thought nothing of it for three years, other than to pack it carefully with my framed family photo and my ceramic tea-for-one service whenever I moved from desk to desk up the corporate ladder.

It happened to catch the eye of an intern who came to my desk on some errand or another.

"What is that?" she asked.

"What, this?" I had grown so accustomed to its presence on my desk that I was practically immune to its charms. She nodded.

"It's a perpetual motion machine, I guess," I said.

"What do you mean, you guess?" she asked. "How does it work?"

I looked at it for a long time. The gears in my brain turned at the same rate as the machine, its shiny parts tumbling and resetting endlessly. The machine had no discernible source of power, and yet, I'd never had to restart it from rest.

"I don't know," I said. I stood up from my chair, picked up the machine, and pushed the chair under my desk. I put on my coat.

"Hey, where are you going?" the intern asked, still holding the sheaf of papers she had brought for me.

"Somewhere," I said. "You'll hear something from me soon."

The machine caught the harsh light of the winter sun and glittered in my hand. Now that I finally knew what I had, what should I do with it?

Extraordinary

The first time he saw her, she was standing outside of a hipster dive on H Street, in that not-yet-gentrified part of town where nothing lives except the nightlife--and even that seems to be hanging by a tenuous thread. Someone's shitty garage band was pounding the hell out of some unsuspecting ballad and a small crowd of scenester kids (and her) had spilled onto the sidewalk to take a few drags of night air, cigarettes. He had never really paid attention to smoking before, until he saw her do it. The smoke expanded to fill her mouth and she pulled it down into her lungs, where it curled into the airways like little white cats, turning in circles before finally choosing the correct orientation for a nap. Then she pushed the smoke out, shooing the comfortable cats back into the chill of the evening. It was startling to him that a single puff of her cigarette could make him purr like that, when many years ago, he had watched a tumor grow in his mother's lungs but couldn't figure out how to tell her until it was too late. This girl was extraordinary.

He crossed the street and sidled up to her, hoping that he didn't smell as drunk as he actually was. "You shouldn't smoke," he said. "It's bad for you."

"I know," she said. She took another pull, and he tried to keep his eyes on her eyes, away from her lungs. He didn't want her to get the wrong idea about him. As he waited for an excuse that wasn't coming, his vision slipped back and up into her brain, where he could enjoy her little electrical storm of thoughts and feelings. If he knew anything about how the brain actually worked, what the pulses meant if they were in certain lobes of the brain, he might have considered this a violation of their fragile, nascent trust. But he did not.

"I'm Sam," he said.

"I'm Sam too," she said.

"It's a pleasure to meet you," he said. She nodded. "What do you think of that band?"

"They're terrible," she said, not missing a beat. He nodded.

"I don't have to pay full cover if all I want is to buy you a drink, right?"

"No," she said. "We can go to the bar upstairs, and you only pay half." She stepped on the end of her half-smoked cigarette and left it as a prize for the scrappiest underage kid or most desperate bum. Inside, he received one hand stamp (instead of the two that Sam sported), and then watched the best parts of her backside work their magic as he followed her up the rickety staircase.

The DJ was just as loud as the downstairs band, but at least the dance music was more predictable. They both knew when to sip their gins and when to talk. He found out that Sam was short for Samantha, that she worked as a paralegal in a big firm downtown, and that her paralegal friends dragged her to see this band because they thought the drummer was sexy. She found out that Sam was short for Samuel, that he was a patent officer in Alexandria, and that he had been drinking alone at the trendy new burlesque bar down the street. From their banquette, they could watch the would-be dancers as they moved by increments, rhythmically trying to push their way through the chaos.

After a little while of drinking and talking, he noticed her noticing her friends by the stairs. "I'd like to see you again," he said.

"I get coffee for my favorite associate every morning at the Starbucks at 13th and Penn," she said. "Maybe it's on your way?"

"I live right near there," he said. "I go to Metro Center to grab the blue line down to work."

"Then maybe I'll see you. I'm in line at nine-fifteen," she said. "Thank you for the drink." She stood up, and he was suddenly at eye level with her internal plumbing. Without meaning to, he saw it: amorphous and an inch in diameter, lodged firmly in her right ovary. It looked like one of the ones that grew, malignant, not just a cyst like the ones he'd seen in other women. He stood, looked one more time into her eyes, and fell in love with her as she turned away to find her friends.

When he was seven years old, he was in a car accident with his father. The car was rear-ended at a stop light. He was wearing his seat belt, but it was before the time of airbags, and there was very little to keep his head from smashing itself on the dashboard. He had a year of physical therapy after that, mostly to monitor his progress after the first painful session when they reseated his cranium over his spinal column. The crrr-aack of his own head and neck being popped back into place haunted him to this day. They treated his concussion by letting him take a week off from school and making sure he got plenty of Gatorade and rest. The goose egg on his forehead went down with regular application of bags of frozen vegetables. His parents asked him how he felt, and truthfully, he felt perfectly fine. But he found that when he stopped focusing his eyes on something, he could see a little more than he used to be able to see. The insides of things. People's insides.

He had to be looking directly at something to see inside of it. Therefore, he could not see the defect in his brain that gave him this extraordinary vision, though he could see the inside of the mirror when he tried. But he could see the bones of his fingers and toes when he looked down at them, the muscles and blood vessels. He rolled his ankle in gym class when he was in high school, and he could see the strain on the tears in his ligaments when the athletic trainer tested him for sprain. Even though he couldn't exactly feel the damage, he could see it, so he screamed and refused to allow anyone to touch him until the nurse arrived. People thought he was peculiar.

When he was an adolescent, he always laughed when his friends said they wished they had x-ray vision so they could see into the girls' locker room. He laughed because he knew it wasn't like that. You couldn't just choose how many layers you wanted to see through for any given object--two for the girl with the thin sweater and nice rack, four for the heavily-wrapped birthday gift. He saw the girl's heart and lungs, and the inside of whatever the present was, which was usually not enough to identify it. He always saw all the way to the center, if he let his mind wander. He had to really focus to see the surfaces.

He saw her again on Monday, at 9:15 sharp, in line at the Starbucks with all the other suit-clad office workers and their ravenous appetites for caffeine. "Fancy meeting you here," he said.

"I didn't think you'd come," she said as she stepped up to the counter. He noticed with dismay that the line was moving particularly quickly this morning. "Two tall chai lattes, one regular, one skim."

"Why is she your favorite associate?" he asked.

"He is a trip," she said, emphasizing the pronoun. "And he always lets me have my pick of the work."

"Do you think he has other motives?"

"Why shouldn't he?" she asked, tossing her hair as she turned to look at him. The barista came back with her lattes, and he nodded toward them to alert her to their presence. She stepped out of the way to let him order.

"One tall chai latte," he said to the barista.

"But he doesn't," she said. "Have ulterior motives, I mean. I've asked, and he's not the sort to lie." He loved how honest she was, about everything. He glanced down to her abdomen. It may have been his imagination, but the tumor seemed ever so slightly larger than it had on Saturday.

"Which latte is yours?" he asked, taking his own from the counter.

"The regular," she answered.

"Good," he said, smiling.

"Will you be here tomorrow?" she asked.

"I might," he said. And he was.

After a week of "chance" meetings over chai lattes, unsweetened iced teas, and an iced mocha (as a Friday treat), he decided that it was time to ask her to go out with him on a real date.

"Only one drink today?" he asked.

"The associate is taking a long weekend," she said.

"Let's go skydiving," he said, using his straw to stir the ice into his cold chocolate coffee milk.

"That's a little crazy for a first date, don't you think?" she said, slowly stirring her own iced mocha the same way.

"Life is short," he said.

"Okay," she said. "Let's do it."

Unbeknownst to him, she went through a phase in college when she wanted nothing more than to hurtle toward the Earth with nothing but a parachute and God's grace standing between her and an untimely demise. She was certified to jump by herself, and she did, even though he had to jump out of the plane with a big Australian instructor strapped to his back. "How're you feelin', mate?" the instructor yelled in his ear as they stabilized after a tumbling freefall. He looked down and watched as her chute opened, an explosion of neon green against the vast, dull earth below.

"Alive!" he yelled back.

"Hold on!" the instructor shouted before deploying their parachute.

On the ground, they decided to follow the jump with lunch at a local vineyard.

"Thank you for suggesting that," she said, pouring herself another glass of cabernet franc. "It has been entirely too long since I jumped out of an airplane."

"I've always wanted to try," he said.

"You did well for your first jump," she said. She spread some soft cheese onto a piece of bread and handed it to him before making one for herself. He read volumes of love poetry in this small, simple gesture, and carefully watched as her pulse quickened, then slowed, then quickened again, a gentle flush appearing in her cheeks.

"Thank you," he said.

"This is my favorite sort of lunch as well," she said. "Spontaneous, beautiful setting, lots of wine and cheese." Their small wrought-iron table was out on the stone patio of a spacious new winery, providing them with a view of the rolling green hills of rural Virginia and row after row of new vines. Sam had always had trouble with women, but in this idyllic setting, sitting across a table from this beautiful, strange woman, he could easily pretend that he'd always been lucky in love. Something about the calmness of her breathing soothed him, and he could envision them doing this kind of thing again and again.

"I'm having a wonderful time," he said, feeling the creamy cheese melt on his tongue.

"A girl could get used to living like this," she said.

"I hope you do," he said.

"I'm going to kiss you now," she said, leaning around the table to gently press her lips against his cheek.

"A guy could get used to more of those," he said, smiling. He knew that his second impression of her--that he loved her--had not been wrong.

"I hope you do," she said. She took another sip of her wine and stared out over the expansive vista. He wondered what it was like not to ever see the water flowing up into the grapevines, to take the pulse of life for granted. He had momentarily forgotten about the tumor. He watched her brain again. The pulses there were quick and even.

After the sun had gone down and they had eaten all the cheese, he took her back to the city and let her out in front of her apartment. "Let's go to Paris," he said.

"Paris? Don't you think that's a little crazy for a second date?" she asked. She raised her eyebrows this time. When he had asked her to go skydiving, she had kept her cool because freefall was familiar territory for her. But Paris was something else entirely.

"I speak enough French," he said. "And the bubbly there is better, or so I'm told."

"Next Friday is a holiday," she said. "You come up with tickets and a place to stay, and I'll go for the long weekend. I'll take Monday off, too."

"Perfect," he said. She had gotten out of the car and come around to the driver's side before he knew what was happening. She leaned down and kissed him full on the mouth, pressing her tongue between his lips, between his teeth and onto his tongue. He snapped his eyes shut and kissed her back, reaching out, touching her hand, wrapping his fingers in hers. She slowly pulled away.

"Goodnight, my enigma," she said.

They met every day for morning coffee. On Thursday, he told her to pack for the continent and reminded her to bring her passport. He'd be by at seven in the morning so they could make their flight out of Dulles. He had tickets on Air France and confirmation of a room with a balcony in an apartment-sharing scheme.
She was astounded. "I can't believe you put this together. For me." Sam had never had the best luck with men, but with this Prince Charming whisking her away to Paris, she could easily pretend that she was a fairytale heroine, a woman who could enjoy everything about her life.

"But of course," he said, putting on a mockery of a French accent. They boarded the plane and alternated napping with canoodling under an airplane blanket. In the evening, they arrived at Orly and took the metro downtown to their apartment. A violinist in a black beret played an old French folk tune as he strolled through the train cars, extracting coins from clueless American tourists who either didn't know the difference between a Euro and a quarter or didn't care. After one such exchange, he looked over at her and mouthed, "Suckers." She giggled, the sound escaping her throat before she could identify it. The unfamiliar place and the strange circumstances had tapped into her well of unadulterated joy.

The apartment was characteristically French--everything in it was about 2/3 the size of things in American apartments and the walls and furniture were draped in toile. As per the description, the apartment "ne donna pas sur la rue," giving the balcony a fine view of the well-manicured stone courtyard in the center of the building. The first thing he did after putting down his suitcase was run out to the marché, where he picked up some fresh baguette; good, thick French butter; imported marmalade; and a bottle of red wine. The apartment was stocked with glassware and dishes, and she had set the small balcony table with them before he returned.

He set out the food and they ate. When they had eaten their fill, he asked her, "How did you know I was bringing back food?"

"I know you," she said.

"After only two weeks?" he asked.

"Yes," she said.

"Good," he said. "Then it will not be a surprise when I ask you to become my wife tomorrow evening, in the sunset under the Arc de Triomphe." He pulled a small silvery ring out of his pocket and placed it on her finger. She looked down and saw that it was in fact white gold, channel set with tiny diamonds.

"It is a surprise," she said. "But I say yes."

"We can choose other rings tomorrow, and clothes, if you want something more French to wear to our wedding. I have already arranged for the ceremony. The Champs-Elysees shall be your bridal aisle."

"This is a formal side of you that I have not seen before," she said.

"And this is a happy side of you that I have not seen enough," he said.

"We should celebrate," she said.

"I know just the place," he said.

Together, the engaged couple strolled out of their beautiful French apartment, down the street to a cafe. Inside, there were old men standing at the bar, plunking sugar cubes into their tiny cups of strong coffee. "Bonjour bonjour bonjour," the old men said. They nodded to the men, smiling. "Quel bonheur!" the old men said under their breaths, remembering the happinesses of their own reckless youths.

"Une table, s'il vous plait," he said to the barman.

"But we just ate!" she said.

"No matter," he said. "It's Paris! We'll eat again." She smiled. The barman came out from behind the bar and showed them to a table outdoors. He took their order: a croque-monsieur, a croque-madame, and a bottle of absinthe with all the trimmings.

"Absinthe," she said. "That's legal in the states now, isn't it?"

"Yes," he said. "But you can't get the really good stuff. You have to come here for that."

"Hmm," she said. "I feel not like myself."

"You haven't even had any green fairy yet."

"It's the engagement, I think," she said, looking down at the ring that beamed up at her from her finger. "And the escape to Paris. It's all happening so quickly. I'm a little disoriented."

"Do you feel unpleasantly unlike yourself?"

"No," she said. "Not entirely."

He mixed her an absinthe with water and a muddled sugar cube, then mixed one for himself.

"Sante," he said, "Chin-chin." They clinked glasses and drank. The food arrived shortly after that, and they shared the gloriously fried sandwiches with gusto, letting the absinthe order them a plate of grilled vegetables, a salade Nicoise, an order of pommes frites with aioli, and a chocolate croissant. When they were quite full of rich food and intensely fucked-up on absinthe, he told her, "I can see through things." At first she thought he was hallucinating. Then she thought that she was hallucinating.

"What kinds of things?" she said, seeming to deliberate over each word.

"All kinds of things," he said. He spoke deliberately too, a side effect of the absinthe.

"Prove it," she said. So he ordered two coffees. The barman brought the coffees and a pitcher of cream, and replenished their bowl of sugar cubes.

"Put a certain number of sugar cubes in each cup," he said. "I will close my eyes and cover my ears. Then you should cover each cup with a saucer. And I will tell you how many cubes are in each."

She thought this a brilliant plan, and hastened to execute it. Even though he claimed that he couldn't hear, she made extra clinks and clanks with the sugar bowl and the cups. She hoped to fool him again by placing a piece of pomme frite in one of the cups. He would have no way of knowing that she tampered with the experiment that way, and would be unable to prove his claimed talent. When the saucers were over the cups, she kicked him under the table and told him to open his eyes.

"Well?" she asked. "How many?"

"The cup on the left has three cubes of sugar. The cup on the right has one cube of sugar and one bit of French fry. I'll drink that one, if you want." Of course he was exactly right.

"I don't believe you," she said, even though she did. "Can you see through other things?"

"The woman at the table behind you has an economy-sized package of dental floss in her handbag," he said. She turned around just in time to see her take the floss out of her bag and start flossing the teeth of her tiny toy poodle.

"What's in my handbag, then?" she asked.

"Both of our passports," he said.

"And?"

"A lipstick, a pack of cigarettes, a handful of Euro coins, and a condom," he said.

"Okay," she said. "Now I believe you. What else can you see? Can you see people naked? Have you seen me naked?"

"No," he said. "I only see the insides."

"So you haven't seen me naked?"

"No."

"That's a shame."

"It is."

"Do you see people's insides all the time?"

"No," he said. "If I focus properly, I can see the outsides of things, like a normal person."

"Like a superhero," she said. The idea of being a Lois Lane played right to her fantasies, her weakness. "I don't care if we are hallucinating. This is the best conversation I have had since becoming an adult."

"Absinthe is wonderful, isn't it?"

"Can you see things inside people? Like injuries? Artery plaque? Tumors?" she asked. The moment she said the word "tumor," he remembered hers. He looked at it. It was much larger than the last time. It was hard to pull his attention away from it. It looked like it might reach up and tear out her liver at any minute.

"You can, can't you?" she said.

He dropped his gaze into his coffee cup, fishing out the French fry with a spoon. "Yes," he said.

"You looked away from me when you said that," she said. "Do I...do I...?" He continued to stir the coffee, even though the sugar cube had long since melted. "I do, don't I?" He did not answer. "Where is it?"

"I'm not sure," he faltered, still staring into his coffee.

"It's my ovary, isn't it?" she said.

"I think so."

"My grandmother died of that. Young, too."

"I'm---"

"How long do I have?"

"I'm not a doctor," he said. Her face started doing contortions as she mouthed things to herself. She moved her coffee cup, the empty plates, and the utensils around the table, trying to impose order on them to compensate for the chaos that roiled in the pit of her stomach.

"Is this what the rush was all about? The second date in Paris? The engagement?"

"No," he said. But even as the word came out of his mouth, he knew that he wasn't exactly sure, and the sound wavered with uncertainty.

"It is," she said. "You only love me because I'm going to die." She stood up, then sat down again, still searching for some kind of order, something that made sense. She'd uncharacteristically dropped everything and come to Paris with this virtual stranger, who was now telling her that he could see through things and that she might have cancer. This was exactly the sort of thing that her mother would have warned her about, if she'd been able to imagine something so ludicrous.

"Everyone is going to die," he said halfheartedly. The pain on her face made him unwilling to argue with her, and he wasn't sure his arguments were in any condition to convince anyone, especially not himself. Was he really in love with her, or did he love her mortality?

"Why didn't you tell me?" she asked.

"I didn't know how," he said. "You can't just go up to a person and say, 'Excuse me sir, but I see that you've got a rather large cancer on your left nut that you might want to get looked at, if you haven't already.'"

"I'm not some stranger," she said. "I was going to be your wife."

"I couldn't tell my mother, either," he said.

"If you can't save people with it, then what the hell is your extraordinary superpower worth?" The silence after her question was like a vacuum, sucking out all of his insecurities. He was elated to have finally shared his burden with someone, and even more thrilled that she was already making the load so much lighter. She was starting to feel the weight of his knowledge, pressing heavily on her brow like an absinthe hangover.

"I never thought about it that way," he said. Her face suddenly contorted into a scowl, and his heart dropped into his stomach. The cafe had emptied out, and the barman was eyeing them suspiciously as he dried the coffee cups for the evening. Sam suddenly found himself wishing that he could make the layers of his own body disappear the way he did for others. If even a part of him could have become invisible...

"What were you going to do after I died?" she asked, starting to visibly shake. "Marry someone else? How many other times have you handed out this ring?" Between tremors, she pulled the ring off of her finger and dropped it in her coffee. He had thought that this was going to be the most positive moment in his life, but it was all going horribly wrong.

"None, I swear!" he said. "I only loved you! From that very first moment on H Street when I saw you smoking that cigarette." He took his spoon and deftly fished the ring out of the little coffee cup. Then he dipped the ring in his glass of water and dried it on his napkin. "Please put it back on. Please marry me. All I wanted was for you to have a happy life, with me." He held the ring out to her in the palm of his hand.

"And after my last time on earth? My months? My year? After I'm gone, then what?"

"I don't know!" he said. "I don't know." The look on his face was a cross between sadness and remorse. It melted her a little, but she tried hard not to show it.
She reached out and took the ring from his hand. She slowly slipped it back onto her left ring finger, realizing only then that the ring was unmistakeably her size. He couldn't possibly have given the ring to anyone else.

"I will help you tell them," she said, holding up her beringed left hand as though she were taking an oath. "For as long as I can. Then you have to tell them yourself."

He held her right hand and sobbed, dropping his head onto the table next to his coffee. He looked up at her, his face streaked with tears. "I love you," he said.

"We'll help them," she said. She then used her free hand to fish a cigarette out of her bag. She pulled her other hand away so that she could light it.

"You shouldn't smoke," he said, still catching his breath.

"I know, it's bad for me." A mischievous smile crept across her face as she considered this. "But life is short."

Delusions of Grandeur (part 2)

I'm on a hot streak. Would you believe it? I finished Simon's story. In case you don't recall, here was the first half:

The Ambiguity of Truth: Delusions of Grandeur (part 1)

...and now, for the dramatic conclusion.

The hotel they ended up staying in (and paying for in cash from the Roy Rogers) was next to a divey bar. This was the sort of bar that had a banquet facility much like the ones where Simon’s freelance DJ company (Alyce’s Deal Jays) would send him to DJ for white trash weddings. He didn’t like those gigs because they always requested The Thong Song, but he went anyway because he liked helping to support his wife’s shopping habit. Even though she wasn’t into danger, she was into a good time in the bedroom. And if she bought clothes and lingerie that made her look hot, she felt hot, and the hotter she felt, the more she felt like sharing. Simon liked that about her, and he unwillingly found himself wishing she were here.

It was about the time that his wife would usually arrive at home, and he anxiously anticipated the phone call that was inevitably coming. He took his daughter to the bar and asked the bartender to make up a clean hot chocolate for her. As this was the kind of place that pretended to be cosmopolitan (even though it wasn’t), they had a number of coffee drinks on the menu and the equipment to make it happen. Simon had never seen such a spotless espresso machine in his entire life: it was like it had never been used. The barman looked like Bluto from the old Popeye cartoons, and making a hot chocolate (“With whipped cream, please,” Simon added) would have been humiliating for him if there had been anyone else around to see him do it. When the frilly little hot chocolate arrived, Simon ordered a nervous bellini for himself and set to chatting up the barkeep.

“Where is everybody?” Simon asked.

“It’s seven o’clock,” the barman grunted. “Dinner, maybe? Not from around here, are ye?”

“No,” Simon said. Three bellinis and a few hours later, Simon had still not gotten a call from his wife. He checked the phone, making sure that he had enough service to receive a call, which he did. Traffic in the bar had picked up, but there were still only a few patrons scattered around the space. There was a woman at the end of the bar who looked like a lonely librarian, sipping a G&T and staring at a full pack of cigarettes like she was imagining herself chainsmoking her way through the entire thing. Nobody else in the bar was smoking, and Simon deduced that there was a smoking ban in this county. Maybe she was trying to quit. There was a May/December couple at a secluded table in the corner, sharing a bottle of wine. They each seemed completely incapable of disentangling their limbs and lips from those of the other, and their full glasses of wine remained untouched. The motley crew was rounded out by a man in a trench coat who sat alone at a table near the bar, drinking an O’Doul’s. Out of the four customers in the bar, only this man had given Simon a dirty look after spotting his pint-sized drinking companion. Simon did not like the look of him, and was more than a little shocked that a divey place like this even carried non-alcoholic beer. Then again, the bar also had an espresso machine. The looks of this place had been deceiving.

“I’m getting tired, Daddy,” his daughter said, her head drooping a little, her white-blonde curls tumbling angelically over her arm.

“Let’s go, then,” Simon said. “You want me to carry you?”

“No, I can walk,” she smiled wanly. They both knew that he would be carrying her for the last leg of the journey. But only he knew that they were going to the car, and not to the hotel room. He settled up the tab with the barkeep and left him a generous tip. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the trench coat man take a cell phone out of one of his many pockets, and quickly dial a number into it. He spoke furtively into the phone, covering his mouth with a cupped hand while the barman thanked Simon profusely and loudly, hoping that the other customers would be encouraged to improve their own tipping habits.

Simon hurried his daughter out of the bar, to the hotel. There, he settled up with the concierge and specified that the room should be occupied by vagrants, if any were out and about on that chilly night. He scooped his daughter up and dashed out the door, leaving the concierge shaking his head.

To his great relief, he did not see the trench coat man leaving the bar while he loaded his nearly-sleeping daughter into the car. He wore a blank face while he buckled her into the car seat, and only let fear seep onto his face when he was safely strapped in behind the wheel. There was a reason why she didn’t call. Either the trench coat man was doing an exceedingly poor job of following him for her, or something was wrong. Either way, he figured that he needed to get home as soon as possible, or the consequences might be dire.

As he pounded the highway in the unfamiliar car, he wondered what he could have done to keep himself from falling in love. If only he hadn’t taken that sorority girl home from the pan-Greek party that night; if only he hadn’t been impressed by her sexual skills; if only she hadn’t gotten up the next morning and usurped his fraternity house’s kitchen to make him his favorite omelette, the contents of which he had no recollection of telling her. If only she wasn’t so wonderful, he thought. He remembered the feel of her body in his lap as he flew under overpasses, through exits and toll plazas, less driving than driven, like a magnet toward his own personal north. If only he hadn’t fallen in love, he’d be free to do what he wanted. If only there were a way to keep the one he loved most from ever succumbing to the same fate. As she glowed in the back seat, he finally realized that it was almost certainly too late.

She was fast asleep by the time he pulled the car up a few blocks away from the day care, just where he’d found it. The thought vaguely crossed his mind that a car full of quality weed probably shouldn’t have been parked so close to a day care, but he shoved that aside. All he had left to do was grab her out of the back of the car and run home with her, sneak her into her bed like nothing was wrong, and bring the sacks of money and weed as peace offerings, or in the worst case, medicine.

Then he would be home, and while he’d had another of the adventures that he so desperately craved, the luster was already wearing off of it. Whereas, even after eight years of marriage, his wife and daughter still shone in his mind’s eye like the most beautiful treasures. He was steps away from home when he saw an unfamiliar car in his driveway. It wasn’t a police car, not even an undercover one: they almost never drove frivolous cars like the Mazda Miata parked next to his Audi. The paint was so black, it sucked all the light out of the air around it. He marveled at the car for a moment before slipping silently into the house, going directly to his daughter’s room and tucking her into bed before deciding what he wanted to do about the owner of the Miata.

He kept a Louisville Slugger in the front closet, waiting for the time when his daughter would be old enough to play softball with him in the park. It was also there to combat intruders, because his wife was dead set against having a gun in the house. Simon opened the closet silently and pulled out the bat, tossing the bags of money and weed in to take its place. He tiptoed toward the bedroom. What if she was cheating on him? What if she hadn’t called because she’d been preoccupied by a lover? The very thought made him want to shove the bat down his own throat—if he hadn’t left her alone like that…

He opened the door and poked his head into the opening, the wooden baseball bat still hidden behind the door. His wife was sleeping. The bed appeared to be otherwise empty, but the covers were rumpled such that he couldn’t be sure. He crept in and poked at his side of the bed with the end of the bat.

“Are you holding a baseball bat, Simon?” she asked. She was awake.

“Yes,” he said.

“Why?”

“I thought there was—somebody—here.”

“I thought you took our daughter on one of your crime sprees,” she said. “But you don’t see me coming to beat you to death with a bat.”

“The bat is not for you. And I didn’t—”

“I know you did.”

“Did you have me followed?” Simon suddenly remembered the trench coat man who was suspicious enough to make him leave the hotel bar.

“No,” she said.

“Oh,” Simon said. The man must have been following him on a lead from the police. He was still glad he left when he did.

“Then how did you know?”

“I called you right after the daycare called me to say that she didn’t show up.”

“Why didn’t you call the police?”

“Because I understand you, now.”

“Because of the car?”

“Yes, because of the car,” her voice revealed her smile, even in the darkness.

“Is it yours?”

“It is now.”

“Did you buy it?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

“Interesting.” He wondered whether she would get out of bed to smoke a joint with him, like the good old days. He wondered what had precipitated this particular change in his beloved wife. But most of all, he felt something that he hadn’t felt for quite some time: the complete absence of fear.

Vic and Rennie's America (in three parts)

I.

I'm Vic, it's nice to meet you. The person belonging to that pair of legs you see sticking out of the dumpster is Rennie. We're really glad that you could join us, aren't we? I don't think Rennie can hear us. Where is everyone else? Well. You're actually the only one who answered the email we sent out last weekend. You're the only one who really thought that Americans needed to do something to get out of the rut we've worked ourselves into. I mean, the economy is one thing, but what I'm talking about is adventure. Extreme sports are good, but they are only safe if you're an elite athlete with top-of-the-line equipment. All we have are some rusty old bikes. Wow, yours is nice. Is it a mountain bike? Oh, a cross-country bike? How often do you take it out?

Well, anyway, other typically American hobbies that we've noticed in the recent past include whining, dining out, shopping, and EXTREME SHOPPING. Stop laughing, Rennie, I mean seriously. After the market crash, you're just not going to be able to spend your weekend wandering around a big box store, looking for the exact item you need for your house, or whatever. You might not even have a house. I mean, not you, personally. But maybe you. These are uncertain times. Which is why you need to have some fun. And this weekend, you ARE going to get to do something different...something awesome that, I hope, catches on. And your life will never be the same. I'll just hop on my bike here...come on, Rennie. Kickstands up, my friends. Follow me.

We're not so far off the beaten path out here, but there aren't so many trucks at this time of day, so we don't have to worry about that. Can you still hear me? Oh, you're right there. Good. We aren't so far off the beaten path, but if you'll look to your right...the tall grasses just barely yield one of the last existing sets of...I won't ruin it for you. "In this vale...of toil and sin...your head grows bald...but not your chin...Burma Shave!" Didn't think there were any of those left, did you? Especially not ones that almost moralize like this one. It's amazing...almost like we're going back in time, pedaling up these hills. You're not tired, are you? Do you need a rest? Rennie! Catch up! Rennie looks to be in good shape, but I can't remember the last time we've been able to bike shoulder to shoulder. All right, we'll rest a minute. Didja bring some water, like I said in the e-mail? Go on, drink some. I don't need any, I'll have some at the next break, but thanks for offering.

You're so slow sometimes, Rennie. But it's gorgeous out, and I don't care how many times we stop and wait before we get there. Where? I can't tell you. No, I mean I really can't tell you. We'll know when we get there. It's beautiful.

Why did you decide to come with us today? I mean, I'm just curious. You're a writer, I got that from your email, but--oh. That's it? You wanted something to write about? Well. Good luck describing all this. I bet you wouldn't even know how to describe me. I'm a little bit of everything, you know. Rennie too. And this evening's activity is something that you probably won't even understand. Heck, I don't understand it all, but I know it works. Do you think you'll keep up on this leg, Rennie? Are you ready? Kickstands up, my friends.


II.

Vic and I take this ride a lot. It's kind of our special place, but Vic thought it would be a good idea to bring strangers along and teach them the beauty of what we do. I don't like that idea, which is why I'm letting Vic do all the talking, but I also didn't think it was a good idea to let Vic and the stranger go without me. The stranger doesn't seem like a bad sort of person, but sometimes I think Vic wants to flaunt things that really should be kept quiet. What if the stranger doesn't get it? Strangers are unknown quantities: if we scare them, they could either laugh or kill us, but we won't know which until it actually happens.

Vic is yelling at me to keep up, but I like to ride in the back. I like to watch people riding in front of me, their bodies exerting the way my body is exerting, bones driving muscles to twitch under protective fat, each foot pushing the pedals up, down, up, down, taking turns. Vic and the stranger push harder than I do because they feel they have something to prove (to each other? to me?), but when we get where we're going, my mind will be sharper than theirs. My body, more fresh. I want to tell them to slow down, because my enjoyment will be less if they are tired, but I refuse to talk to the stranger.

The squirrel I was feeding, back in the dumpster near our meeting place, was a pregnant mother squirrel. She was just about to pop with squirrel pups, and a few minutes earlier, I had watched her mate get flattened by a crazy teenager in a speeding Camaro as he crossed Main Street. I gave her my raisins and peanuts, which she appeared to eat a few of before stuffing the remainder into her nest. A dumpster is no place for a family, even a squirrel family, but I didn't try to move her. If I'd been bitten, I probably wouldn't have been able to make the trip.

We're getting close now, I can feel it. The sun is starting to dip-dye the sky in a spectrum of oranges, and the air is noticeably cooler as it flows around my bicycle. Soon, the afternoon fire will fade to the coral, pink, and purple of evening, but for now, I slow my pedaling to hang back with the long, dark shadows that Vic and the stranger are casting. I get farther behind, but I reason that a shadowlength is a good amount of space to leave between us, even as the sun sets and that distance grows.

"You weren't serious about not talking, were you?" Vic shouts back at me.

I do not answer, and Vic knows better than to press the issue. Besides, we are almost there.


III.

It has been a longer ride than I thought, maybe ten miles, but it only felt like three or four. We pedaled uphill the entire time, so logic dictates that I should be more tired. Perhaps it is Vic and Rennie that make me feel like we are just a bunch of kids out riding bikes until dinnertime, or maybe it is my sense of adventure. I have climbed Mt. Everest and leapt from cliffs in Greece, but somehow, this feels different. Perhaps it is the fact that I don't know what's in store for me when we get where we're going. Vic pulls off the main road onto a dirt path, and I am suddenly glad for my fancy cross-country bike. I follow and listen for the clank of Rennie's aged gearshift behind us.

A few minutes later, the dirt runs out and all that's left is grass. Vic pulls over and says, "Kickstands down, my friends. We're here." It's a gorgeous clearing full of short grass and fireflies, and I wonder if anyone cuts it, or if it just stays short, like dwarf grass. The fireflies are just starting to wink on for the evening, and it is just barely dark enough to see them. Vic walks to the center of the clearing and stares out over the edge. All this time, we had been riding up the side of a mountain, or so it seemed from the beautiful birds'-eye view. The sun is practically gone now, glowing red in its little corner of the earth. All we have is early starlight and fireflies.

Vic lies down on the grass and says, "Well. This is it. This is what Americans should do. They should see America. Like this." Vic's eyes go out of focus for a moment, then back in. Then Rennie lies down on Vic, that is to say, Rennie's head rests on Vic's stomach. Rennie motions to me, the most acknowledgement I've received today. Before I realize what is happening, Vic's head is resting on my stomach as well, and we have made a laughing circle--a laughing triangle, I suppose. But nobody is laughing. We are just breathing, slowly and deeply. The air is pure up here, sweeter than anything I've breathed in a long time. And when I am finished being awestruck at my own ability to draw a breath, I see it. The field of stars above us is so enormous, I suddenly forget that anything else even exists. My eyes go out of focus, then back in, and I see the fireflies, lazily blinking on and off as they swirl around us.

"What do you want to do, Rennie?" Vic asks.

I feel Rennie's stomach rise and fall with a deep breath. "I want to help animals," Rennie says.

"What do you want to do?" Vic asks me. I think about the question. It was one I hadn't heard since I was a little kid, a variation on the theme of "what do you want to be when you grow up?" I don't know how old Vic and Rennie are, or for that matter, anything else about them. But I know how old I am. And I know that there are still a lot of things that I want to do with my life. There are a lot of things that I'm afraid to say I want to do, but I am only noticing this fear for the first time.

It sounds kind of lame in my head, but I say, "I want to write a novel." When I actually say it, it feels like something I could really accomplish. I feel Rennie sigh softly, and I can see Vic smile.

"What do you want to do, Vic?" Rennie asks.

Vic says, "I can do anything."