J. Lennon - See You in Paradise

“He’s lying,” someone said nearby.

“What’s there to lie about?” someone replied.

“God only knows. I don’t want to know.”

In a moment we were banking back toward the coast.

“Rent me a car,” I told the ticket agent, who was young and alert, had probably had a good night’s sleep followed by several cups of hot coffee.

“The car-rental offices are right—”

“I know, I know. I want you to rent me a car that I can drive to Marshall. I want it instead of a plane ticket.”

“I can get you on the next—”

“Just the car. It costs less than the ticket, right? You’re getting a great deal.”

I was the first bad thing to happen to the clerk so far that day, and I suppose I felt a little sorry for her, but not really. She stared ragged smoking holes through me. Her hands were poised above the computer keyboard. I stared back.

“Come on,” I said.

“I can’t.”

“You can. You can. You’ll be commended for doing it. You’ll get rid of me and from here on you can have a normal, pleasant day.”

She rolled her eyes. “I wish,” she said, and I knew I had her.

I listened to her breathing over the car phone. Through the windshield I saw the lights of a plane pulsing; they rose in my field of vision, dimmed in the shaded strip of glass, and disappeared. How long would she have waited for me to say something? Maybe forever.

I said, “Don’t. It’s all right. Don’t.”

“I might as well just die,” she said, not so sure of herself. “Maybe I should. Die, I mean.”

“There’s no reason to die. Don’t say that.”

I believe she was realizing that I was not who she thought I was and deciding what, if anything, to do about it. I had to say something, otherwise she would hang up. At that moment a trailer truck came roaring into the parking lot, slowed briefly as it passed my car, then sped up again, barreling down the exit ramp. I watched its red running lights shrink into the distance.

“What was that?” she said.

“Big rig.”

I could hear her licking her lips. “Please forgive me,” she said. I tried to picture the room she was in: a sloppy twin bed, maybe, the sheets half pulled from the mattress and leaving a bare corner exposed; dinner plates with crumbs on them stacked on the carpet. A roommate sound asleep behind a thin wall. I was starting to understand what a jerk I was, why I lived alone in a hick town, in a silent apartment, where no neighbors ever visited and no cries of passion ever sounded.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry for what happened.”

The blackness outside seemed to expand, taking on the shape of something huge: if I opened the car window I could touch it. I found myself gripped by terror and pressed the phone closer to my ear.

“Do you love me?” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“Take me back,” she cried. “Will you take me back?”

“Yes! Yes!”

“Come home to me!” she was saying, but I could barely hear.

When I woke again it was still dark, and the phone lay silent on the passenger seat of the car. I opened the door and stepped out. It was cool, the air fresh, my fear gone. I walked to the low brick building that housed the restrooms and peed to the sound of quiet music. When I came out, I saw, for the first time, an illuminated booth in the parking lot, staffed by a clean-shaven middle-aged man watching a small television. Had he been there all this time? How had I failed to notice him? He presided over a narrow wooden counter under a sign reading FREE COFFEE.

“Free coffee?” he said. His words carried across that scant distance with perfect clarity, as if ferried by swift small birds.

I went to him. Crickets were exploding in the weeds beyond the blacktop. A plastic basket of broken cookies lay on the counter.

“Okay,” I said. “And the cookies?”

He nodded. While he fixed my coffee, I tried to rearrange, with gentle fingers, some of the fragments into one whole cookie, but they didn’t fit. I picked up a few of the larger pieces. “What time is it?” I asked.

“Nearly three,” he said, handing me the coffee. He had made it with cream, which is not the way I drink it, but it seemed important to accept what I was given.

The man didn’t seem real to me, and because I thought I might be imagining him I never thanked him. For the rest of the drive, even with the radio going, I struggled to convince myself that there wasn’t someone else in the car with me, hiding behind the driver’s seat or maybe in the trunk.

My building was quiet when I arrived, and I couldn’t get in because my keys were in my duffel bag. I wondered if I would ever see the bag again. I walked around outside, trying the windows, which were locked, and I noticed a blinking red light inside: there was a message on the answering machine. Finally I went to my door. A box lay on the hallway floor, with my mother’s return address scrawled in her florid hand. I sat down and leaned against the wall, to wait for dawn and for the landlord to wake up.

I had a brilliant idea for my classroom bulletin board, but when the principal scuttled it I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to teach second grade this year, or perhaps ever again. The bulletin board was going to be an evolutionary chart, starting on the left with some chemical symbols meant to represent amino acids and progressing through single-celled animals and amphibians and apes all the way up to man, who would not be a man at all but a seven-year-old child wearing a mortarboard and holding a scrolled-up diploma. I was going to get Gwen, the art teacher and my significant other, to draw the child in a way that evoked the development of reason through natural selection. Each student would have his/her name markered onto the left-hand column, and with each book he/she read over the course of the year a promotion in evolutionary rank would be awarded by me. I was very excited about this and couldn’t wait to get my hands on some construction paper. And then, in an exuberant aside in the break room, I described my plan to Doug, and Doug told me that this was a Christian community and that while evolution was part of the curriculum there was no reason to ruffle any feathers by emphasizing it unnecessarily. Also, while he had me, my practice of encouraging extraneous reading tended to make self-conscious those students who didn’t like to read, and since we were on the subject, from now on we would be referring to students as learners and to teachers as facilitators , at the request of the parents’ association. I tried not to cry right there, and in fact I made it into the parking lot before I broke down, flinging my empty briefcase at my car and cursing the day Doug was born while tears streamed down my face. I cry easily, for a man. I’m not ashamed of this.

Once I’d caught my breath I picked up my briefcase and got in behind the wheel. It’s a little car, a Volkswagen Golf, red, with a bumper sticker depicting a businessman smugly chattering into a cell phone beside a message reading DRIVE NOW, TALK LATER! A few people have honked at me after reading it, or given me the finger. Let them! I say. I am not afraid to voice my opinions; in fact I believe that to do so is absolutely vital for the advancement of the democratic ideal. It was noon, and I was hungry. My briefcase was empty because I had been eating my lunch during Doug’s little speech, and I had left the lunch, largely uneaten, on the break room table when I ran out. It was hot: there was still a week before school was to start. A few of the custodians were hanging around in the parking lot nearby, smoking, though Doug had insisted that all smoking take place off the school grounds. Perhaps the rule wouldn’t take full effect until classes began. Anyway, it wasn’t my problem. Get fired, gentlemen, if you wish! Die of lung cancer!