Chapter 15

Gavin.  Your time is up.   

His eyes popped open.  It felt like they did, anyway, but he couldn’t see. He was on his back, suspended in the darkest kind of dark, bobbing gently like a big wobbly planet in outer space.

Joanie’s voice, projected through speakers hidden at the top of the tank, meant that he needed to get out.  Fuck. This was going to be tricky.  He couldn’t even tell where his body was, exactly, like how far it extended in any direction or where parts of it might go if he tried to move them.  Mostly what he felt was his lungs sorting through water vapor for precious particles of useable air.   

Right index finger.  Where was it?  

Move!

Okay, there it was.  He wiggled it again, then his whole hand.  Then finally, with the force of will normally reserved for something like lifting a couch, he freed his entire right arm from the water and reached behind his head for the door. 

Nothing there.  Just flat, smooth wall. 

Shit. 

He couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t sit up without banging his head.  Couldn’t scream for help—not enough air, and anyway, who would hear him?  He felt around for the door again, this time with both hands.  Where did it go? Could he have turned around in his sleep?  (If that’s what he’d been doing, sleeping.  He wasn’t a hundred percent sure.)  The tank had looked too narrow for someone to turn, but maybe he had, somehow?  What if his head was now at the foot of the tank?  Should he try to kick the door open?  

Let me out!  Somebody, PLEASE, let me the fuck out! 

One last time, he lifted his arm behind his head, more punching than pressing.  The wall flipped open with a loud sucking sound, smack. 

AAAAAAAH. 

Light! Air!  He took long, deep breaths, like the air was icy water on a burning hot day. 

His head stuck out of the door as he pulled himself up to sitting and leaned against the wall.  Shit.  Holy fucking shit. Fucking holy fuck shit.  That was possibly—no, that was definitely—the scariest experience of his entire life.

He kind of wanted to cry, but his body didn’t have enough liquid left to make tears.  The salty water had sucked him dry.  Now that he could breathe and sit up, he really, really, really wanted some water. And, come to think of it, to pee. Right now. 

“How was your float?”  Joanie was standing in the hall as he hobble-ran towards the bathroom, his knees knocked inwards, his robe flying open to reveal his bare chest and bathing suit.  He didn’t answer, just nodded and grinned, trying to look tranquil and creative. 

When he finally emerged into the waiting area, showered and dressed and relatively dry except for his hair, Guy was waiting with a steaming cup of tea. 

“People often want to sit for a while and reflect on their experience.” He set the mug on the table in front of the green couch. “Stay as long as feels right to you.” 

Too late for that.   

Gavin wanted to leave right away, like right now.  No reflection on his experience would be necessary, and the tea smelled like hippy deodorant.  Rona was still showering, though, so he sat. 

Books were stacked on the table, at least three of them about dolphins. Gavin turned towards Guy, who was sitting at a tiny computer desk against the wall with the dog on his lap.  It looked like he was shopping for t-shirts.

“What do the dolphins signify?” Gavin asked.

“What do they signify?” Guy turned his eyes upwards like he was trying to solve a puzzle.  “Freedom?” 

Fuck, never mind. 

Gavin reached into the bag he’d brought his bathing suit in and pulled out an article on abjection in Modernist theater.  He couldn’t really focus, but he stared at it, circled a few potential fallacies and made some marginal notes, until Rona emerged, scrubbed and glowing, from behind the screen.

She sat next to him and flashed her eyes in a way that said, Wasn’t that fucking awesome?  Only a total asshole would ruin a look like that with his own pathetic anxiety issues, so he half-smiled back.

“Good?” she whispered.  There was no reason to whisper, but it seemed like she didn’t want to ruin the mood by talking yet. 

He nodded.  “For you?” She nodded and mouthed the word, “amazing.”  She took a sip of her tea and closed her eyes, looking like this was the happiest moment of her life or something. Gavin sipped his tea, too.  It tasted kind of like sweat.

Rona scooted closer to Gavin, so that their knees were touching. There were tiny drops of water on her collarbone.  She picked up one of the books from the table and spread it across both of their laps. Inter-Planetary Communication it was called, a broad, flat book with lots of pictures.  Gavin winced and looked around the room, but no one was there except Guy.  Fine.  Share the book, then.  At least it’s not fucking dolphins. 

As soon as they got to the car, Rona started talking.  She talked and talked, like she couldn’t get the words out fast enough, like the dam had broken and everything she’d been holding back, out of shyness or politeness, was gushing out of her. 

“That was the most enlightening experience of my entire life.  God, amazing.  Do you still want coffee?”

Gavin shook his head.  Caffeine was probably the last thing either of them needed.  

“The tank was so peaceful!  I was trying to just relax and empty my mind, you know, like meditation, but I couldn’t stop thinking.  I was thinking about so many things.”

Luckily she didn’t wait for him to ask, Like what?  About eighty-five percent of his attention was focused on getting them home to New Buffalo so he could sit on his couch and watch porn or a dumb movie with Sinder and forget this day had ever happened.  The snow had let up. But there was a lot of it on the ground, and the setting sun was glaring off it, forcing him to squint as he steered back onto 46.  Rona was talking about her childhood, her parents, how much she hated Florida, about Cubans in Miami.  Her words took a while to penetrate into the fuzzy haze of his brain, blurry and burned-out like bright sunlight on snow.  She was saying something about big ideas, about love and art and music, psychedelic experiences and expansion of consciousness.  

She’s smiling again. He could tell just from her voice.  Before today he’d only seen her smile that one time last week.

She was talking about theater, about blood, about being inspired.

“I need to be doing something creative, you know? Something completely original that no one else had done before. Like Liam Stump.”

Huh, that was a new one.  Given her unprecedented interest in his class, he’d sort of imagined she would want to be a professor, which would be strange enough for one of his students, but not as strange as—

“You want to be a playwright?”

“Maybe,” she said.  “Or maybe, I don’t know.  I could make movies or some kind of performances.  Maybe something with music.”

“Impressive."

 “I had this idea while I was floating.”  She slowed down a little, got shy and mumbly. “I mean, do you want to hear it?”

“Sure.” He looked at the dashboard clock.  Twenty minutes to Bloomington now. It was almost dark, but they were making good time, and it was kind of nice not to have to talk, to just listen.

“I kept thinking about a girl who becomes a—I’m not sure how you’d say it. An intern maybe?  Or an apprentice?”

“Those both make sense.”  

“To a tree.”

“Wait,” Gavin said.  “What?”

“She becomes an apprentice to this one tree in a forest she’s trying to join. And she gets all involved in these tree politics.”  

Tree politics. He was way too burned out to think about what that even meant.

“I guess it sounds kind of stupid,” Rona said.  “Maybe it will be like one of those dreams that’s totally interesting while you’re asleep but doesn’t make any sense when you wake up.”

“Maybe.”

The icy wind whooshed against the car windows, dark and lonely as the deserted road in the twilight.

“What was it like for you?” Rona asked.  “Did it help you with ideas for your talk?”

“Yeah, I think it did.” Actually. So that was something good at least.

 “Like what?  What kinds of things did you see?”

“I guess I saw a lot of dark things.”

“Dark things?”

“Like, you know.”  He tried not to sound negative.  “Nothing bad.  Nighttime.  Family. Babies.”

“Babies are dark?”

“I don’t know.” 

He could see shadows of it again, ghostly afterimages pulsing the windows, like it had all been waiting for him in the darkness of the unlit country road outside.  

“I guess I got a little anxious.  It was like everything turned to garbage and I couldn’t escape.”

“That’s a bad trip,” Rona said. 

“No.”  That was a drug thing, right? “Nothing like that.”

“Yeah, wow.  You bad tripped in an isolation tank.  I never thought that could happen.  I’m really sorry.”

“It’s not a big deal.”

“No, it is.” 

She sounded upset.  Please, please don’t cry.   Gavin hated that, having to comfort a woman who was crying over some bad thing that happened to you, not her.

“Pull over for a second,” she said. They were still on the state road, four miles from New Buffalo.  

“Here?”

“Yeah, right here.”

“Can it wait until we get to your dorm?”  

“No, here is good.”

He steered the Honda into a pile of dirty snow on the side of the road.  It was too dark to see her, so he turned on the overhead light and waited for her to start sobbing. But no, she was just looking at him, biting on the side of her frowny lower lip.

“I was thinking,” she said.  “Maybe I should give you a blow job.”

“What?”

Okay, it was official: he did not understand anything about women. 

“To make you feel better.”

“I don’t know if that would work,” he said.

“Oh, okay.” She closed her lips tight, like he had just told her she was repulsive or something.  “Sorry.  I wasn't trying to make you uncomfortable.”

“No, I mean, I still feel kind of dark.”

She reached over and put her hand on his leg. Rona’s small hand sliding across  the top of his thigh. Actually, yeah, he had to admit—there was some interest. 

“It wouldn’t be like, romantic or anything,” she said.  “It would just be to cheer you up.”

“It's probably not a good idea.”

“Just relax and think about nice things.  Think about kittens.  Happy fields full of flowers.”

Her hand was sliding higher up into his lap.  Yeah, all right.  This might help.  She climbed onto her knees and rested her face against the bulge of his stomach.  His pants were getting unzipped.  Car lights were flashing past, fuzzy through his half-closed eyes.

This is actually pretty okay.   

Then she pulled her head back, way back to the other side of the car.

“You know.” She ran her hand across her lips, as though they had been doing anything, which they had not.  “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

Well fuck, hadn’t he just said that?  It’s not like it was his idea.

“It’s just that I respect you so much as my teacher.  I don’t want to mess it up. Is it okay if we’re just friends?” 

God, she was earnest-looking.  He wanted to be pissed off, about how she was fucking around with his feelings and everything.  But how could you be angry at someone looking at you like that, with big eyes and serious mouth, like she had never done one devious or coy or non-straightforward thing in her life?

“Sure,” he said.  “Of course. We can be friends.”  

<Chapter 14
Chapter 16>