“And now?”
“You know. Politics as usual.”
“Meaning?”
He looked at his fingernails. “The chef, remember? I said it before, you got to break some legs. Three years ago. Nobody listened, but I said it.”
“You did.”
“Now they’re listening.”
“Sarah?”
“Oh, sure,” he said, “especially Sarah. Sometimes I almost wonder… Anyhow, you’ll see. She’s got some rude new friends.”
“Who—”
“Three fucking years ago, I said it. You heard me, right? I said it.”
“Yes. What about these friends?”
Ollie stood up. He unwrapped a stick of Juicy Fruit, folded it twice, placed it on his tongue, and chewed vigorously. “Just pals,” he said. “Concerned citizens, you might say.”
“Bad-weather types?”
“Sure,” he said, shrugging, “you might say that, too. Vigilantes. Various shades of dread. The network, it’s your basic franchise principle, like Kentucky Fried Terror. Independently owned and operated, but you can always count on the Colonel.”
“Happy arrangement,” I said.
“I guess. Let’s eat.”
We ordered sandwiches at a stand-up counter. Ollie reviewed my itinerary and told me the hard part was over. Like when a little kid starts walking, he said, the first few steps were tough, he understood that—sort of seasick, everything moving at weird angles—but in a week or two I’d get the hang of it. A month, max. He said to treat it like a business trip, a vacation, whatever. A big country, he said. Not to worry about Uncle Sam. Don’t start seeing ghosts. Paranoia, that was the killer. Just follow the rules of the road, he said, then he listed them for me, how I should avoid strangers, stay cool, keep my nose clean. Never jaywalk, he said. Be a good citizen. Then he laughed. “There’s nothing like crime,” he said softly, “to keep you honest.”
I was not feeling well. Disconnections, I thought, or maybe the sandwich.
Ollie’s voice seemed to be coming from the far end of the terminal.
“What you have to remember,” he was saying, then came a short hum. “See what I mean? Right now you’re on the ultimate guilt trip, just ride it out. You know?”
I excused myself.
“Oysters,” I said, “you were right.”
In the men’s room I sat on the can and let the fuses blow.
I’d been expecting it, or something like it, and now it was bad. There was just the indeterminate future. It occurred to me that I should cry. Briefly, as if slipping out of myself, I imagined that I was back home again, watching all this on television.
Hollywood, I decided.
I washed up and combed my hair. If you’re sane, I thought, you look at the end of things but you can’t cry because the end isn’t real. You put on a David Janssen smile. Because nothing ever ends, not really.
Later, in the lobby, Ollie suggested deep breathing.
“Like this,” he said, and he demonstrated for me, puffing up his cheeks. “Slow and deep, it works magic.” He took me by the arm, lightly, just steering. “The depths, pal, lots of pressure per square inch. The bends, right? That first dive, you just got to breathe slow and deep.”
We took our time heading down to the TWA gate area. It was a thirty-minute wait. When the flight was announced, Ollie went over to a pay phone, placed a quick call, then came back and handed over a packet of tickets.
“Okay, you’re off,” he said. “The Big Apple. Another layover at La Guardia then a straight shot down to Miami. Pure gravity the whole way.” There was a soft, almost compassionate expression on his face; he paused and held out a stick of Juicy Fruit. “Don’t dwell on it. Put her on cruise and just coast for a while. The gum, too. Keeps the ears unplugged, helps decompress. No problem, you just got caught in a draft.”
There was turbulence all the way to New York. I didn’t crack. I put myself on glide, breathing deep, imagining I was aboard a one-man spaceship tracking for the stars. Far below, the home planet spun on its axis, a pleasing vision, those lovely whites and blues, the fragile continents, and as I sailed away, as the world receded, I felt a curious measure of nostalgia, desire mixed with grief. Here, in space, there was just the smooth suck of inertia.
At La Guardia I dozed off for an hour, then roamed around the terminal, then called home.
It did not matter that the line was busy. I just kept talking, very quietly, picturing my mother’s face, and my father’s, explaining to them that I was running because I couldn’t envision any other way, because the dangers exceeded the reach of my imagination. Safety, I said. Nothing else. Not honor, not conscience. All I wanted for myself was a place to ride out the bad times.
“It isn’t cowardice,” I said, “it’s my life.”
And then I chuckled.
No big deal, I told them, because none of it was real. If you’re sane, that is.
I put courage in my voice. I told them how alone I felt, how much I missed them, but how it was all a daydream. There are no bombs, I said. We live forever. It’s a steady-state universe. I told them about the spaceship sensation, warped time and high velocity, as if I were traveling through some strange new dimension, another world, no maps or landmarks, no right or wrong, no ends to the earth.
It was Trans World from there on.
A clear night sky, like glass, and I could see it all. I could see the lights of Atlantic City, the scalloped edges of Chesapeake Bay, the tidewaters of Virginia. The clarity was amazing. Telescopic breadth and microscopic precision. I could see Baltimore and Richmond and Washington, the glowing dome on the nation’s Capitol, the Lincoln Memorial, the dark Carolinas, Cape Hatteras and Cape Fear, the quiet suburbs of Norfolk, the rivers and inlets, the Jersey shore, north to Maine, south to the Keys, all of it, the whole profile, the long sleeping silhouette of midnight America.
I was in orbit. The eye of a satellite. A space walk, and I was tumbling at the end of my tether.
There were lights in the Kremlin.
I could see a submarine in the shallows off Cape Cod, like a fish, and I could see Kansas, too, where there was a harvest moon and vast fields of corn and wheat, and men in blue uniforms beneath the translucent earth. The men wore silk scarves and black boots. They were not real men, of course, for none of it is real, not the blue uniforms and not the boots and not the Titan II missile with its silver nose cone and patriotic markings. I could see Los Alamos, too, where nothing real had ever happened; I could see across the ocean to Bikini; I could see the Urals and the Sweethearts; I could see all of what cannot be seen, because it’s beyond seeing, because we’re sane.
The Trans World engines made a lullaby sound. People slept, the flight attendants chatted in the galley.
There was nowhere to land.
Below, in the dark, I watched ball lightning strike Georgia: a conspicuous white fireball that rolled toward Atlanta. The jet was on low-hum cruise. There was comfort in knowing it could not be real. Later, I fell asleep, and later yet, as we passed over Charleston and Savannah, I could see how it might happen, if it could, though it can’t—crisscrossing threads of color in the great North American dark, bright flashes zigzagging from sea to sea. It was not a dream. One by one, all along the length of the eastern seaboard, the great cities twinkled and burned and vanished. A half-dream, I thought. I felt no fear. I buckled my seat belt. I knew what was next, and when it came, I watched with a kind of reverence. There were flashes of red and gold. There were noises, too, and powdery puffs of maroon and orange and royal blue, fungal arrangements in the lower atmosphere, the laws of physics. But it was not real. When it happens, I realized, it will not happen, because it cannot happen. It will not be real.