The Enterprise - 62

Leanne was an art student at Pratt. We met up in a studio where she was working on a massive project, a maze of undulating wood and PVC. She explained how the boards were softened and shaped, a thing that seemed impossible to me. Her sculpture was beautiful and utterly impractical. It was unclear to me how it might be displayed, let alone consumed. I ran my fingers along the smooth, curved plywood. Later we went to her dorm on Dekalb and drank and ordered out and watched an Italian art film on VHS set in a desolate industrial hellscape.

Every day at about five o’clock cars would line up along Canal to leave Manhattan through the Holland Tunnel. The drivers honked and cursed along the way. If it started to sound crazy we’d get up and peer out the window. I saw an enraged man leave his car with something in his hand and stride with purpose.

“What’s he got? What’s he holding?” I said.

“I don’t know. Something that fits nicely in his fist,” said Tom.

The man hurled the object at the car ahead of him. It made a dull sound against the rear windshield and disintegrated pitiably into foamy little fragments that fell into the street.

“It’s a muffin,” I declared. “It’s a blueberry muffin.”

Sooner or later the traffic cops appeared with bullhorns, bellowing commands like “You! Pull over!” Once I heard the squawking voice say, “I don’t care.” The honks went quiet after that.

I thought fuck it, I’ll go to the bar for fifteen minutes before picking up my kid. Johan’s last night. After all. I was so close to not going. I wanted not to go. I’d lined up all the reasons: exhaustion, late work, family. In the end there was a half hour window and I realized I was powerless not to go. I strode there quickly, emphatically. Imagining the scene. Maybe it’d be crowded, I wouldn’t even see him. Maybe he wouldn’t remember my name. All of these were possibilities. But I was going all the same. When I arrived the bar was subdued, just a half dozen people. Some gazing at the Mets on TV. At the far end Johan was chatting with a little group. When I got his attention he came right over and I said is it really your last night, he said yes, we shook hands and embraced. I bought him a shot. Mezcal for him and Jameson’s for me. I told him all the right things, how we’d miss him, how I had to see him one last time. Where was he headed? I asked. Imagining some far-off place, a young, untethered man’s adventure. Chile maybe. Thailand. Spain, Morocco. He said Manhattan. Some stupid-ass Irish bar in Hell’s Kitchen with a fiddly-diddle name. I wished him well. You’ll be missed, I said. He thanked me and we shook hands again and hugged and I threw a few extra dollars on the bar, not enough, and I walked back out.

Memories of Flying as a Child

I stood by the giant window at JFK, looking out at the sunny tarmac. A TWA 707, possibly our plane, waited at the gate. The big red stripe and the letters on the tail signaled a dimension of mystery and beauty apart from my world back home of walking in the woods. An elderly couple appeared you’d describe as kindly. The woman handed me a yellow butterscotch in its twisted little wrapper. When I found Mom she took it away. Don’t accept candy from strangers, she said.

As soon as the light went bing the man I sat behind reclined and lit a cigarette. The stewardess’s cart clattered with soda cans and baby liquor bottles. I had peanuts and ginger ale. Dinner was lasagna, hot and salty in the smoky atmosphere. The presentation excited me: the foil tight around the edges of the dish, the undressed iceberg and tomato salad, the dense and pale roll. And something strange and colorful and sweet. Utensils wrapped in plastic. We face forward when we eat on a plane. We do not face each other. Not that we really eat. It’s not about eating. I poked apart the pasta layers with my fork. I knew I’d be vomiting by the time we land.

The cabin was dark and still. On the screen a purple dune buggy bounced along the beach. I raised the window shade. The sky above the clouds was yellow, red and deep, dark blue. Was it sunset, sunrise, I don’t know. On the screen a man was getting acupuncture. The practitioner rotated each needle, an act that appeared devious and cruel but might bring healing forces into play.

I walked alone by the chain link fence outside Luxembourg Airport thinking if they could only see me now. My classmates from that awful year in Paris. If they could only see me in my winter jacket out there in the jet fuel-scented air. Me in my place, them in theirs. Planes taxiing in the distance with the logos on their tails. Much like the one that was to take me home. I could see myself the way they’d see me. If they could only see me now.

My sister and I took turns going to the toilet to steal soap. It was stacked in a dispenser, little paper-wrapped bars with TWA. I don’t know what we ever did with them. They seemed so precious in the air. Stewardesses would give us things, playing cards with a picture of a plane flying over the sunny Rocky Mountains, and I’d wonder how they took a picture of the plane. They gave us little wing pins, junior flight crew pins. Socks.

We sat in a dimly lit terminal at an odd hour of the night, waiting for our connection. Outside a squall covered the planes and tugs and luggage carts in a dusting of snow.

I stood by the checkout at the newsstand in JFK. I couldn’t see above the counter and the lady couldn’t see me. That’s what I figured anyway as she tended to a customer. At arm's reach before me sat rows upon rows of candy: gums on top, Dentyne, Wrigleys in blues and yellows and greens, Dubble Bubble and Bazooka; in the middle Necco Wafers, Smarties, Chuckles and Dots; the chocolate down below: Charleston Chews and Milky Ways, Reese’s, Kit Kats, Crunch. I took a roll of Life Savers. How was I not supposed to? I concealed it in the front of my waistband and walked away. On the plane it fell down my pants leg and rolled along the cabin floor. Mom saw it and said did you steal this, I said yes, full of fear, and she grabbed me by the shoulders and scolded me and said you may have one if you share them with your sister.

I finally let go of my old computer, the one I only used to play a constant slideshow of all my pictures. It was all it was good for until it wasn’t good for that. The recurring black screens, rebuildings of the photo database, your computer restarted because of a problem. I did the things you do, reinstalled the operating system, and when that didn’t work deleted everything and started anew, several times, the updating of files from the cloud taking days on end, a measure of all the pictures and all the years gone by. For the past few years the fan ran constantly; its white noise became a characteristic of the room just like the light coming in the window from the south. Now I can really hear the silence. I’ve put it in the closet, not knowing what else to do—what do you do with your broken computer?—and it fit so neatly and perfectly on the shelf behind my old notebooks that it seems like it belonged there this whole time.

I try to progress through the airport in the optimal way, with a minimum of graceless, superfluous motions. Boarding passes in respective passports, bookmarking the photo page, all three together in the leather document pouch in my messenger bag. Are they there? Yes they are. One two three. Close the flap with the weakly magnetic snaps. Are they there? Open the flap. Yes they are. One two three. Security is problematic. Will they be checking passports on the way in? I think they do at JFK. But what about Heathrow? If they don’t I’m holding mine like an asshole, nakedly American. Does it go in the gray tray alongside my bag, electronic devices, belt and loose change? Or do I carry it through the detection portal, holding it out as I stand in the full-body scanner and make myself into the shape of a stick figure man? Sometimes they say take off your shoes. Sometimes they don’t. Maybe we’re now past the ritual as a civilization, the shoe bomber’s name having finally been eclipsed from the last of our brains. Richard something. I had only just learned to properly navigate this step, slipping on my sneakers quickly after retrieving them and then, so as not to hold up the line, gathering everything and walking to the nearest row of chairs to put it all back down, step on the seat to tie my laces, then put my jacket back on, then my bag, then my hat, are the passports there? Open the flap. Yes they are. One two three.