Friday, February 14, 2014

Chapter 47a

 In an hour, he was checked out of his hotel, changed into a sweatshirt and jeans, circling the perimeter of New Buffalo in search of a launch point.  He cruised down Industrial Parkway, cut over to West University, headed north on Lincoln.  He was used to speeding down these streets, passing pokey grandmas doing the speed limit.  Now he was the one creeping along, wanting to get somewhere but not sure yet how to move forward.  It actually wasn’t dark at all yet; that sunset was all in his mind.  Hours of good driving time left in the day, but he was anxious to get on the road.  Wherever he ended up sleeping tonight, it should be as far away from New Buffalo as possible.

 So which way?

East would be obvious.  East was where all the stuff was, only a half-day’s drive, that tangle of Boston and New Jersey and Connecticut, places that ached in the guts of young academics, the longing, the hope, if only I could end up someplace like that.

And of course, New York. Right into the welcoming arms of Rona and Sinder. That would be nice, right?  They’d be thrilled to receive him, wouldn’t they, to let him sleep on their couch. If Sinder wasn’t sleeping on it already. So happy you finally made it out. We always knew you would.

Gavin slowed down at the yellow, made a last-second decision, pulled a quick u-turn. Some guy in a truck honked at him, yelled out the window. 

Not east, he decided. If he was going to run away, he needed to run away. West.  Into the great wild frontier, like so many pioneers before him, the uncharted prairie, Iowa, South Dakota, definitely Wyoming.  

Of course, the end point of west was California. And his parents, which was like Rona and Sinder but worse.

He was doing twenty down Lincoln.  He’d never seen all the edge-of-town fields and business parks creep past so slowly.  A couple old ladies passed him.  The radio played some song from the Eighties, I want you to know, ooh, ooh, want you to know.  He started singing along—he wasn’t usually too into singing, but everything was weird today. Ooh, ooh, where should I go?

Not south. Kansas was south.  So that left north. Perfect. He had no idea what the fuck was up there.

He turned around again, more honking (it seemed like he might have almost hit a guy on a motorcycle), and doubled his pace towards the entrance to 231. 

South—Bloomington.
North—Lafayette.

So, towards Lafayette. Weird.  It was like, maybe fifty miles away, but there was totally no reason to go there. He had to keep chanting to himself himself, north, north, just to make sure habit didn’t veer him onto the wrong ramp. Had he ever even gotten on 231 North before?   It was hard to tell.  It looked just like 231 South, fields, a little town with a few houses and a gas station, more fields.

Finally he saw a sign that said he could go left towards Chicago or go right, which didn’t say where it went. He’d been to Chicago a few times (he must have taken 231 North then), so he went right.  

By the time he hit Gary, that pack of factories at the base of Lake Michigan, the sky was starting to get dark.  He drove into Michigan, on a road that followed the east side of the lake, but you couldn’t see it from there. He cut over to the west on a barely-paved road through flat fields of grass, parked his car at a beach parking lot, watched the sunset through his windshield. The lake had movie-blue water stretching to the horizon, gentle waves, a lot more oceany than the cold grey-green of the Pacific from his childhood.  He thought about walking closer, joining the wholesome Michigan families and vacationing couples sitting on towels in the sand, staring up at the rose and gold of the sky.  But he wasn’t ready to get out of the car yet. As long as he was in the car, he was still driving, still going somewhere.

As soon as the sky was dark, he was back on the road, north, up the coast of Michigan, towards—what? He wasn’t sure what happened up there, exactly. The state came to a little point at the top, he knew that. And then what?  Canada, he supposed. Would he have to go through customs?  Because all he had was one suitcase with a dirty suit and a few clean t-shirts, definitely no passport. It didn’t matter.  He would keep driving, and whatever was going to happen, he would let it. 

He drove for hours in deep country darkness, using his high-beams whenever there weren’t other cars on the road, which was most of the time. It was late, and he should have been getting sleepy, but there was something pushing him forward.  Maybe it was Kansas. How he was supposed to be headed back there tomorrow, yet here he was, driving exactly the opposite way.  Far, far, too far to turn back.  Far enough to guarantee that on Monday at eleven, when his students took their seats for English 130, World Lit 1850-Present, he wouldn’t be there.  There were only two weeks left until summer.  And while nothing was certain—especially on this road surrounded by inky blackness—he felt about ninety percent sure he wouldn’t be back in Kansas to finish out those two weeks.  That he wouldn’t be back ever.

It was two in the morning when he saw the sign.

Mackinac Bridge Entrance 6 Miles.

His mind would never have been able to produce this name, but when he saw it, he recognized it right away: the bridge that extended off the north tip of Michigan.  Into a place that he couldn’t visualize, somewhere off the edge of his mental map.

That name, Mackinac Bridge, the image of driving off the tip, it hit him hard. Suddenly he was desperate for sleep. Okay, yes, good time to get some rest. The bridge would sound a whole lot better in the morning. 

He turned off the road at Mackinaw City, whose sign promised food and gas and hotels.  But the town was almost as dark as the state road.  There were hotels, dozens of them, small ones with parking spaces in front of the rooms, giant ones with fancy signs.  None of the signs were lit up, and all the front offices were dark.  He circled for a while, past family restaurants with fish on their signs, empty parking lots, little stores, more hotels.  Everywhere, lights off, blinds down. 

Finally he found a place with a light inside, Lakefront Palace Motel.  They guy at the desk was sleepy and unshaven, with a puffy vest and a large-size Styrofoam coffee. He squinted at Gavin, rubbed at his floppy walrus mustache.   

“Need some help?”

“A room.” 

Gavin’s voice was a dehydrated croak. He hadn’t eaten or drank anything since New Buffalo, just stopped for gas once, where he peed but forgot to get a snack. Totally unlike him.  Now the smell of cheap coffee made his stomach growl loud enough for the desk guy to hear it.

“All full up.”  The guy’s voice was creaky, too.  “Sorry buddy, whole town’s full. Vacation season.  A few weeks ago we mighta had something, but starting May you got to book ahead, maybe a few weeks.”   

So that was it.  He was going to have to keep driving.  Across the Mackinac Bridge, and wherever he ended up after that. He could find a hotel in the morning, or maybe he’d sleep in his car if it ran out of gas before then.

“Do you guys have a vending machine or anything?”

The guy shook his head.  

“Hang on.”  He went into a back part of the office where Gavin could only half see him, came back with another cup of coffee and a granola bar in a wrapper.  “Try these.”

By the time he was back in his car, Gavin had gobbled down the whole granola bar—chocolate chip dipped in some kind of white coating—and burned his tongue trying to drink the coffee.  He poured a third of it out onto the concrete parking lot so it wouldn’t spill in his cup holder.

The bridge was long and flat, suspended over a still blackness that made him feel like he was in outer space.  He braced himself for a border crossing at the other side, but there was just a sign saying Welcome to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.  Ah, right: Michigan was that weird state that was split in two parts.  He’d just left the bottom part, and this was the top.

He kept driving, through a forest now, the road bumpy with rocks that grated under his tires. He wouldn’t have thought roads could get any darker than the ones he was on a couple hours ago, but no, this was much, much darker. He crept forward with the high-beams on, waiting for a deer to jump out in front of him, or maybe something worse.  He only had about a quarter tank of gas left, and there was no fucking way he was sleeping in the woods.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket, checked it—no signal.  Kept going, because what else could he do.  But he was starting to entertain the possibility that he had massively fucked up.  Made one of those dumb, impulsive decisions that he prided himself on never making, and predictably enough, now he was completely fucked.  Lost somewhere on the very edge of America, nothing to eat, nowhere to sleep, nothing to do but keep driving north and hope for civilization to emerge somewhere up ahead.

After a while—hours? No, actually only forty-five minutes—the trees ended.  The road was normal again, a regular flat road with signs lane markers and even a few lights. 

And then a big sign across the entire road.

Canadian Border Crossing Ten Miles, it said.  Prepare to stop.

He pulled out his phone again.  It was working now, and there was a text from a few hours ago. 

Rona. What did she want?

He couldn’t read it now—something about Time Slide, but the road was too dark and scary to take his eyes off it for more than a second. Anyway, he needed to get his thoughts together for this border thing. They were going to ask him where he was going, right?  What his business was?  And what would he say? Should he make something up, or just tell them the truth: I’m driving north. Was that an okay reason to enter Canada?  And if he needed a passport, would they just tell him to turn back, or could they arrest you?

He braced himself, tried to strengthen his insides, quiet the thumping of his heart.

Off to the right, he saw lights.  Was that the border?  No, a small building, surrounded by a parking lot, a few cars.

White Pine Diner.
Open 24 hours.

He blinked a couple times, made sure he had read it right.  Yes, definitely.  Twenty-four hours. It was like some kind of insane beautiful dream.  He pulled into the lot, stumbled out of the car on legs that kept bending under him in funny ways.  The most amazing smells hit him as he opened the door: breakfast smells, frying potatoes, steam.

“Eggs with bacon, juice, coffee.  And, um, pie,” he told the waitress.  He wasn’t even the only customer.  There were a few bearded guys in ski jackets, one really skinny guy in a baseball cap.  This was like a straight-up party.

Once the coffee and toast came out and he’d had a few bites, Gavin remembered the text  message. He set his phone on the sticky table and turned on the screen.

Just saw time slide. Off off off broadway. U were right, his best one.

And then, an afterthought:

Where’s my movie.

“Here’s your eggs. Pie’ll be warm in a minute.”  The waitress set them down carefully, like she could tell Gavin was fragile.  She seemed really young, like one of his students, with makeup covering bad skin and a huge red-blonde halo of hair around her face. She gave him a curious look, like it was weird for him to be here, which of course it totally, totally was.

“You heading across the border?”

He nodded.

“What’re you doing up there?”

Gavin took a sip of his coffee to make sure his voice would work. 

“I’m not sure.”  He wondered if it would be rude to ask what she was doing up here, surrounded by miles and miles of what seemed like nothing at all. Did she live with her family?  What did they do?  They weren’t farmers like his Kansas students, right?  Maybe they needed people to clear the roads, or maybe logging in that forest. Or hunting—was that a job?

He looked down at his phone, its screen dark again, but Rona’s text was in his mind. He took another sip of coffee for bravery, cleared his throat, took one more sip.

“Actually, I’m making a movie.  Could I maybe, I mean if you wouldn’t mind, could I ask you a few questions?”

She raised her orange eyebrows, a little skeptical, but she sat down on the vinyl-covered seat across from him.  A good sign. “What do you mean, you’re making a movie?  You don’t have a camera or anything.”  Close up, she looked even younger, maybe high school.  Did they have high schools up here?  How could you have a high school in a place full of just forest and no buildings? Was she the only student?

“It’s with my phone,” he said.  “Actually, I don’t know how to make a movie.  I’m trying to learn.  That’s weird, right?”

“It’s not that weird.”  She wrinkled her forehead like she had to think about it. “You have to start somewhere. Yeah, I could be in it.”

He looked down at his phone, pressed the camera button.  That’s what he would use, the camera, right?  He hardly ever took pictures, and he’d never made a video.  He tapped a button and a bunch of options popped up, black-and-white, comic, vignette.  He tapped it again to make them go away.

“Here.”  She grabbed the phone, frowned at the screen for a second, pressed something.  Handed it back to him and pointed at a button at the bottom that hadn’t been there before.  “It’s this one.”

“Okay, thanks.”

“Wow, you seriously don’t know how to make a movie.” He was watching her through the phone screen now, giggling, rolling her eyes.  Definitely in high school. A friendly, helpful high-school kid; he didn’t remember any of those from his own high school.  He tried to imagine the snotty kids from Silicon Valley helping some confused old dude who didn’t even know how to use his own phone.

Maybe it was different to go to school on the very edge of America. Maybe her friends were chipmunks, and instead of going to the mall, they had tea parties in a mossy grove in the woods. Her parents might be the border agents he’d be talking to in a few hours. Or they could be CIA operatives looking for terrorists.  Or Canadian lumberjacks, or Mounties, or, um, hockey players.  Maybe he’d meet them tomorrow, on the other side.

He had not idea what would happen tomorrow, where he’d be, who he’d meet. The options were infinite.  All he knew for sure was that he was traveling north, and anything was possible.

His hands were shaking really bad, but he tried to get the phone steady. Steady was good for filmmaking. With his elbows braced on the table like a tripod, he centered the girl’s freckly face on the screen and pressed record. 

Chapter 46a

“You’re right. You’re totally right.”

Kat stood up, repositioned her bra cups over her potentially-but-not-necessarily fake breasts, reached behind her back to latch it shut.  All business, like getting ready for work in the morning.  Slinked the dress back up to her shoulders, zipped it.  He wasn’t sure what he was right about, but he must have been pretty convincing.

“I always do that.” She kicked at one of the pointy shoes until it stood upright, stepped her foot into it. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” 

“Do what?”  

“You know.  That. Try to fuck people.  Try to fuck people who I shouldn’t fuck.”

“Oh, okay.”  His voice wavered, hurt, even though there was no reason to be.  Something about being called a person I shouldn’t fuck, even by a woman you had just rejected, seemed depressing.  Plus the word fuck over and over like that was kind of jarring.

“No, I mean, I try to fuck them when that’s not what I actually wanted.”  She was in both shoes now, a half-foot taller than before.  “All I really wanted was find out more about you.”

Find out more about him? What was there to know? Gavin Cheng-Johnson, half Chinese and half Midwestern, from a boring strip-mall computer-town, sole occupant of a one-bedroom apartment in Fancy, Kansas. Thirty-two years old but starting to look middle-aged.  An expert in the dramatic works of Liam Stump.

 “What did you want to find out?” he asked.

“Well, it’s just that I get kind of fascinated with people sometimes, like intrigued, with people who are—” 

She paused, looked into the window like it was a mirror.  Combed her hair out with her fingers, tied it back up into a messier version of the twist from before. Puckered her lips, studied one side of her face and the other like women used to do in old movies.

“People who are living out their dream.  Fulfilling their destiny. I mean, I’m never going to do it, I’m resigned to that now, and I just really want to know: what’s it like?”  

Was she making fun of him?

She had turned from the window to look straight at him.  No hint of sarcasm. Eagerness, open interest. She actually wanted him to tell her about his dream life, the unimaginable fabulousness of being a professor in Kansas.  Maybe it would be nice to talk, to tell her everything: the loneliness, the daily routine sustaining him like a scaffold on a rotting house, the desperate treadmill scramble to finish, to get on to the next place. The horrifying suspicion that the next place wasn’t going to be any better.

But there was a shadow falling over her face. He felt pretty sure it was getting darker, that the sun was lowering in the sky. Even though the office didn’t get any outside light, something in his body felt like dusk.  Urgency came back on him, like if he didn’t leave now, he might get stuck in here forever.

“I don’t know,” he said.  “I really need to go.”

“Right, you said that.” She smiled an apology, but kind of bitter.  “I’ve been keeping you.”

“No, it’s just.” What was it?  

“It’s too sad for you here.”  She turned to look at the office.  Everything in it was colorless and unloved.  “So fucking sad, you’d rather be back in Kansas.”

“I’m not going to Kansas.”

A strange thing to say, and it surprised him probably more than her. He was a reliable kind of guy, a good worker. Disciplined, his tenure report had called him.  But as soon as the words were out where he could hear them, he knew for certain: he was going to get in his car and drive somewhere, and it sure as fuck wasn’t Kansas. 

“Of course you’re not.” She was glib now, like reciting lines from a movie. Maybe she was. “You don’t even know where you’re going.  Anywhere but here, right?”

 “I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, right.”

It was true, but it didn’t sound like an answer, just an awkward prelude to an even more awkward silence.

“Okay, well.” She checked her reflection one last time, pinched her cheeks and smoothed her hair.  “I guess I’ll head back upstairs then.”  

She opened the door, held it for him. Just like that, he was supposed to turn and walk out.  Forever.  Something about it seemed more momentous than the last time he had left New Buffalo, in a haze of packing and taping and lifting and cleaning and vacuuming and printing out multiple copies of his finalized dissertation to file at this office and that office and attending various nights of goodbye drinks.  He’d barely given it a thought then, but now he felt it in his stomach, hard: you will never return.

Part of him wanted a moment alone with the office.  But really it was better not to. He gave it one final look, quick, his eyes drawn mostly to the medieval lesbian article spread open on the front desk by the computer keyboard, mouthed the word goodbye. Then he walked past Kat into the hall, holding his breath so he could hear the door click shut behind them.