Robert Onopa: The Pleasure Tube

“Nothing abnormal. The same readings as last week. And the week before. And the day after we landed.”

“Still having those nightmares?”

“Werhner,” I say, “they go away. This is a nightmare, this place. Who can live this way? The same questions, steamed food, and look at that cot, that cot’s killing my back. I’m going to get out of here.”

“Me, too,” Werhner says—he is picking up his diving mask and snorkel and fins. “To the reef? Utama Bay?’

“Not now. I’ve got something to do.”

“No swim? Gonna watch the vidi?”

“I wish I were flying,” I tell him. “I didn’t think I’d ever miss it, but I do now. I need to get out of this place.”

“Good luck.” He smiles sardonically.

light sensuous sauna

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foods of the world

aquaplease paradise garden

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Movement itself has made me feel better—and for the last few minutes more exhilarated than I have been since we danced back into the silvery upper atmosphere with our microweather show a month ago, the tenuous landing of our lame ship. I can’t say much for the lower atmosphere of the continent, it is on the brownish side of yellow, but now in descent I can see L.A. through the window rolling from hill to hill, its traffic pattern elegant and intestinal from our altitude, its air light haze beneath its dome. My hand throbs as we lose altitude quickly, the stretched skin of the old scar, hidden in the healing of the new cut, changing cabin pressure.

Werhner is spooked, too—in the month back on Guam he’s left his data entirely to others and now just drifts all the time, psychologically and physically. He spends his days diving around the reef—not fishing or collecting shells—just floating around, swimming past the breakers at Utama Bay and coming in slowly only when the light is almost gone. I told him he should come along, but he said no, he was on too high a dosage. He wasn’t about to go through what I did, and even if he had, there was no guarantee they would have let him go.

My guess is that he’s out there right now, suspended in the blue-green water. I wonder if we’re doing such different things after all. That’s ironic—all the trouble I went through, those obtuse bastards.

As I pass through X-ray and security a bored Oriental asks to see my papers. When he spots my green card, he waves me through without looking at my ticket. Nor does he open my bag—my one leather bag. I’ve only brought a few sets of casual clothes—old blue flight clothes, mostly—I intend to relax. One blonde woman, she looks about thirty, has eight bags. When I ask her what she is carrying, her broad face flushes and she laughs; finally she says clothes, mostly, some tennis gear, wig racks, magazines, cosmetics. I wind up helping her guide her luggage on a cart.

I hadn’t realized theTube was so large—this terminal occupies an entire wing of the Trans-Port. Crowded, all kinds of people, some as young as eighteen, others are eighty. I see a number of very attractive women with men, both sexes in jump suits. Some of the women are wearing tight leather skirts and halters; this must be the latest fashion for women trim enough. The blonde I’m walking with is perhaps ten pounds too heavy for the pastel leather outfit she has on; she is attractive, though, in a fleshy way. I wonder if her nervousness is sexual, like mine, or simply the anxiety of travel. Her luggage is new, covered all over with broad rainbows. I like it and tell her so, her face opens with the flattery, and I ask if she’ll have some free time tonight on the ship.

She giggles. “I’m paired,” she says. “I’m meeting Tonio at my gate, we’re almost there.”

“Paired?” I say, braking the luggage cart to a stop.

“Aren’t you? Not even on your first night? Tonio’s an old friend, but everybody…”

“I don’t know,” I tell her. Then I say: “That should be interesting.”

“It’s on your ticket,” she tells me.

I show her my ticket. My reservation impresses her; I’m going first class on government money. But her forehead wrinkles.

“It doesn’t list anyone,” she says. “Still,” she goes on breathlessly, apparently not knowing what to make of me, “you’ll have fun.”

A tall, thin man with angular shoulders and a sheaf of black hair is making his way toward us against the stream of people. It must be Tonio—as she sees him she puts her hand on my arm.

“Look,” she says, “I’ve got an idea. Let’s do a fantasy co-op some night on the ship.”

“What?”

“Just give me your codex number. I’ll get in touch.”

I recite my codex, she closes her eyes to remember, then guides the cart away.

“My name is Erica,” she calls back.

“Rawley Voorst,” I say, raising my hand to wave. But she is too quickly submerged in the crowd, disappears. Tonio is up on his toes.

I have to change levels, backtrack through a lounge concourse, then walk a kilometer or so before I arrive at the gate coded on my ticket. Alongside a squinting young man, a tall, gorgeous black girl, whose eyes are so distinctly green that I can see their color from the end of the line, is behind a counter punching ticket codes against space as the young man checks in luggage. Passengers leave the counter following pastel stripes on the floor. I loiter in line for ten minutes, shoving my flight bag ahead with my foot.