Rivka Galchen - Atmospheric Disturbances

I folded up the newspaper like clean laundry. I cleared my throat and stood up. I began to gather dishes over Magda’s protest. I began to wash the dishes and Magda asked me to stop. She told me I was using the wrong sponge.

I told her that after stopping by the airport, I’d be spending the rest of my day at the university.

“Which university?” she asked me.

I didn’t know. It just seemed like the place a research meteorologist would be spending his days. So I just said, “Thank you again for breakfast,” and left.

I called the airport and a woman’s voice told me assuringly that my suitcase had been found. I splurged on a taxi, but then what they showed me wasn’t even the right color. My suitcase — Rema’s suitcase — is pale blue, baby blue, and hard-shelled with regularly irregular craters like the moon. The suitcase they showed me was periwinklish, which I suppose some people will call blue and some purple, and both camps will be pretty dedicated to their idea of what the real color is, and will see it, often, as, well, a black-and-white issue. Rema and I argued over this once. But how do people make those kinds of mistakes? I wonder if the periwinkle color is an undecided issue in all cultures, or if there are some cultures with so many things to distinguish along the blue-to-violet spectrum that a much more sophisticated and precise language has evolved.

Anyway, a miscommunication.

I made my way back to the coffee shop where the Rema-waisted waitress had been. The Rema-waisted waitress was not there. The waitress in her place was attractive, but not as attractive. I asked for a coffee and extra cookies, and I set my first priority: to respond to Harvey’s e-mail, and in that response to come up with a convenient barrier between Dr. Gal-Chen and myself.

After that, I could (I told myself) with a clear mind return to the central matter — I didn’t see then how they were related — of searching for Rema.

I took up pen in hand and began writing, with no plan of what I was going to say, just hoping an idea would come to me; something to the effect of what is reproduced below is what my hand wrote:

Dear Harvey

,

Glad to hear that you are doing well

.

Some news: Tzvi Gal-Chen and I have been moved to separate legions and can no longer communicate directly. I can only send notes upward to my superiors, who will contact his superiors — possibly — who might then possibly choose to contact him, but one can never be sure. YOU SHOULD NOT MAKE ANY FURTHER ATTEMPTS AT CONTACTING DR. GAL–CHEN DIRECTLY. Who can know the ifs and whens of whether messages are transmitted, or if they are intercepted? We must always be wary of the 49

.

These clouds do not cast shadows, they scatter light

.

I am out of my office for an undetermined length of time, but please, keep in touch

.

Dr. L

Terribly hokey. And not very believable? Why did I use that word “legions”? The use of all caps for emphasis embarrasses me. And I cannot even express the nausea evoked by recalling my feeble attempt at mysterious wisdom. If only I’d had Rema’s help; she would have come up with something so much more compelling.

I ate a cookie — slightly almond — and considered whether to type in and send my note. I did send the note. Harvey soon sent me back some quite surprising news.

So there I sat, wearing borrowed clothes, in the southern hemisphere, in a coffee shop near Rema’s childhood home, the Rema-waisted waitress not there, my awkward missive to Harvey sent, time moving at an uncertain rate as sunlight flooded continuously through the window, inducing a not so subtle dew along the plane of my back, and when I glanced — at some moment — back down at the slightly reflective screen of my BlackBerry I saw — in addition to an orangutan-y distortion of my forehead — that I’d already received a response, of sorts, from Harvey.

He had forwarded me a note from tzvi@galchen.net.

Dear Harvey

,

Thanks for your compliments. Sorry I’m responding to your e-mail rather than snail mail address; I know you said you were worried, but let me reassure you that e-mail as a form of communication is plenty safe for our purposes here

.

As per your request, let me first say that I have no doubt that you’ve been extremely dedicated in your work as a covert mesoscale operator for the Royal Academy. For that reason and others, I agree with you that you definitely deserve more freedom as regards your assignments. Yes, New York can get dull, especially meteorologically speaking. I also love severe storm season in the plains. Anyway, from here forward consider yourself autonomous; I (and my superiors who must remain nameless) trust your judgment entirely

.

With continued gratitude for all your atmospheric labor,

Dr. Tzvi Gal-Chen

P.S. — Yes, please do pass on my regards to Dr. L

.

A breeze then entered the coffee shop. I looked up and saw a striking old bald man enter; I took a sip of the fresh-squeezed orange juice before me; then somehow I spilled the glass of orange juice; the pulp mosaiced through the liquid as it spread across the table; the Rema-ish waitress emerged seemingly out of nowhere carrying several white waffled rags with trim of pale blue stripes; she smelled of baby oil; with a paper napkin I patted at the splash on the screen of my BlackBerry, but flecks of pulp remained, looking like scraped cheek cells smeared out on a slide.

But beneath those not actually cheek cells, the e-mail from Tzvi to Harvey and then on to me, remained unchanged.

The door had swung shut; the breeze as if it never were; the man seated; a chill still on my dewy back; the Rema-ish waitress again vanished.

Recall: at that time in my life, the only Tzvi Gal-Chen I knew, really, was Rema. Rema, Rema, Rema, Rema. The Tzvi language didn’t seem like hers, but certainly the note seemed like a clue. I didn’t feel safe typing into my pulpy BlackBerry, but I found an old, very old, receipt in my pocket, and wrote on the back the following list:

Unnamed dog?

Anatole?

Royal Academy?

Rema’s husband?

Tzvi Gal-Chen?

Then I folded the receipt over many times, making a compact little nugget out of it, so that I could reach into the deep and narrow pockets of my borrowed pants and feel the contours of that folded paper; I figured that would help me stay focused in my thinking, stay focused in my search.

“You’re here,” a voice said, and looking up I again for a moment thought it was Rema, or the Rema-waisted waitress, but it was not the Rema-waisted waitress, nor was it Rema. It was Magda, there in my coffee shop.

“I’m here. Yes,” I said, feeling suddenly like a child caught skipping school. Magda may have been standing there at the side of my table for rather a few moments before I remembered to offer her a seat, an offer she did not refuse, and we then sat there quietly for a few more moments, as I felt along the contours of the crumpled clue receipt in my pocket. My impersonation of a meteorologist — it was off to a bad start.

With a nod toward the damp BlackBerry, Magda, breaking the stillness as uninvasively as possible, said simply: “That’s something.” Then: “Before this morning I’d never seen anything like that.”

“Yes, it’s kind of a new thing,” I said.

“Something I’ve never seen before,” she repeated.

“But it’s common,” I said, deciding to let that small electronic device cloud over any false explanatory rays of my not being at any university.