short: ride

“Is it supposed to rain today?” the thin man asked as he boarded the bus. Pluming clouds of grey loomed overhead.

“Flip a coin,” the driver answered. “The man on the radio said there’s a 50% chance of thunderstorms today.”

“Maybe it will, maybe it won’t,” said the thin man, his words trailing off.

“You know, bein’ a weatherman is the only profession in which you can have a 50% success rate and still keep your job! If I had that kinda rate takin’ you folks from point A to point B, I woulda been outta job a long time ago!” Jackie the driver responded.

Jackie had been driving me from point A to point B for three years, and I don’t think I ever saw him without a smile on his face. He was a good man. You felt it whenever he greeted you boarding the bus. Three years, five days a week he was my morning commute, yet I knew practically nothing about him. My imagination filled in all the vacant spaces: he was a happily married man, married his high school sweetheart twenty-five years ago, had two kids, a dog – a postcard sent from the American Dream.

But I had no idea if those things were true.

I’ve never been one to strike up a conversation. I can’t do small talk. I’m lucky if a single coherent sentence stumbles from my lips. Maybe two. Then it’s silence.

When I do speak to Jackie or respond to a fellow passenger, it’s always the mundane and brainless. Like the weather, current events, or “the game last night.” Bullshitting has never been my forte. And I always avoid personal topics. The morning following my dear mother’s death – the very next day, a Thursday – I, as usual, was at the bus stop, at 9:15 sharp. I stood there inside the fiberglass shelter. Waiting for Jackie. Inside of me was a million pieces of broken glass, but I’m a man who revolves around the burning sphere of routine, habit. So, I was there, dressed in my freshly pressed suit, polished shoes and overstuffed briefcase, and at 9:18 Jackie pulled up.

“How ‘bout them Cubbies last night? Is there any hitter in the bigs who can hit Ricky Delgado right now? Guy is on fire!” he said.

“He sure is, he sure is. Cubs could ride him all the way to the playoffs!” I, feigning enthusiasm, responded as I took my usual seat next to the third window. I sat there, silently. Watching people board. Watching people exit. Watching and listening to Jackie, I just sat there, waiting for my bus stop at the Crown’s King Hotel, which was exactly one block from my employer, Thompson and Associates. I was a file clerk there. Eight hours a day I filed manila folders according to last name, department, claim type, resolved cases, whatever the code indicated, I placed it in its respective vault. I suppose the job fitted my personality. Other people answered phones. Others met clients. I was in the background of it all, thumbing through stacks. Silent. Dust. Back there somewhere. “You’re going to be screwed when your company goes digital with its records system,” some guy once cracked. I couldn’t formulate a response, so I just chuckled and smiled real big. Small talk has never been my thing.

Anyway, Thompson and Associates did go digital, and three weeks thereafter I was out of a job. Just like that. The following Monday, however, I, like some loyal lapdog, took my place inside that fiberglass shelter. Pressed suit, the shoes, the briefcase, all of it – I was there as if nothing had happened. I’ve always been a man of routine, and I don’t know if it was fear, an unwillingness to accept my circumstance, or some internal breakdown – hell, it was probably all those things – but I just couldn’t not be there that Monday morning and every morning after.

I got off at the Crown’s King Hotel and walked. During those weeks I walked down every downtown corridor. I’d kill a few hours at some coffeeshop, burn a few more at the newsstand, and sometimes, I’d take a taxi and just ride.

But this morning – exactly seven weeks after Thompson and Associates canned me – I took a cab to the airport. The airport was like a monastery of Americanism. Clean. Efficient. Towering over everything. The only people inside its soaring glass walls were those conducting business. Everyone inside had a purpose, a reason. Except me. I suppose I came there to find a role, a function. And if I couldn’t find that, at least I came dressed for the part. When you’re a professional-looking businessman, no one stands in your way, because you’re above them, all of them. Your tailored suit. Your cufflinks. The gold watch. Even your skin is an extension of those material products. The flesh on your face looks like a perfect slab of tenderized meat, and you’re ready for the heat – you’re waiting for the heat – because you’re a motherfucking businessman. I wasn’t one of them, but I worked under them, and I saw how people looked so small in their shadows. But out here, or killing time at the newsstand, or exchanging words with a sexy intern at a Starbucks, no one knows who crawls under that slab of meat. No one knows I’m an unemployed file clerk whose denial won’t allow him to accept his reality. I look important. And that’s all that matters.

Like a drunk throwing darts, I randomly picked an airline, then picked a city. “When’s the next flight for Boston?” The ticket agent smiled, produced clicks on a keyboard and told me, “Actually, it appears we’ve got one leaving in fifteen minutes. Would you like that plane, sir?” I paid for the ticket and immediately began running for the appropriate concourse. Through the terminal I ran, and I know the onlookers must have marveled at me, the running businessman, struggling against time to make a plane that would make a connection that would produce signatures that would
make
money.

I made my flight, and now I’m here. In some hotel. Hell, I can’t even remember the name of this place. In the sprawling metropolis, all the hotels look different from the outside, but once inside, everything’s the same. The fake art on the walls change, but everything else is the same. You open the door and the same wall of air-conditioned cold wraps around your body. You separate the curtains and see the same indistinguishable skyscrapers. You find the mint carefully placed on your starched pillowcase.

I’m near the Logan International Airport, it’s one of the busiest airports in the country, and the constant sound of 767s arriving and departing is like an invisible medicine; I think about all the faces on those giant jets, all those people with some place to go, to be – destinations waiting to be grasped. A loved one waiting to be hugged. A hand waiting to be shaked. Personal exchanges of mutual significance. When the jets are whirring and the walls of my room struggle to remain intact, I close my eyes and lose myself in the sound, and sometimes, I convince myself I’m an important person
I’m an important person
I’m an important person
with a destination waiting to be greeted.

Behind that heavy hotel door and under the glow of flashing television advertisements, I’m here. Under the soaring jets and behind the hotel drapes, I’m here. I’m closing my eyes and trying to believe that this isn’t me. And this isn’t happening. I want to believe that the veneer I’m living under is just the collapsible scales a snake has shed. The real me is inside that fiberglass bus shelter, waiting for Jackie. But I can’t convince myself that’s reality. See, bullshitting has never been my thing.

I think I’ll leave this room. Tighten my tie. Spit shine my wingtips. Take a cab. The cabbie will ask me “Where to?” And I’ll respond, “I want you to take me to the edge.

“Take me to the edge of all this,” I’ll say, looking through the oily fingerprints of my backseat window. “Take me to the edge of the flashing lights, the people, the destinations. Take me to the edge of it all, and I’ll get out. I’ll go over it. Jackie’s waiting for me.”

xx