Tim O'Brien - The Nuclear Age

“It’s you,” she said. “I know .”

Like sleepwalking, the inertial glide.

I spent Thanksgiving in a Ramada Inn near Reno. On Christmas Eve I treated myself to oyster stew at a Holiday Inn outside Boston. My goals were modest—to stay unjailed, to keep the biology intact.

Crazy, I’d think.

On New Year’s Day 1970, a new decade, I built a snowman in the parking lot of my motel in Chicago. Then I went haywire. I butchered it. I committed murder. I gouged out the eyes and smashed the head, and when it was done I took a shower and washed off the gore and lay in bed and watched the Rose Bowl.

Stability was a problem. You could only keep running for so long, then the odds caught up and you got mangled like a snowman.

If you’re sane, I thought, you’re fucking crazy.

Over the dreary months of January and February I performed my duties and nothing more. Inertia. Town to town: I delivered the mail and watched my step and looked for a way out. I focused on routine and ritual. Once a week I’d get a haircut. Twice a month I’d receive an envelope containing expense cash and a typed itinerary. Now and then I’d find a short note from Sarah. Be well , she’d write. Or she’d write: William—I feel unwanted .

In March there was no note at all.

In April she wrote: I miss you. It hurts. Whatever happened to Rio?

In May I began looking for Bobbi.

Madness, I realized, had now become viable. Fantasy was all I had. Something to hang on to—that one-in-a-million possibility—so I went after it.

Passively at first, then actively.

In airports, between flights, I stationed myself near the Trans World gate area, a stakeout, sitting back and scanning the crowds for blue uniforms and blond hair. Impossible odds, I’d think, but even so I’d feel a tingle at each arrival and departure. I’d listen for her name over the airport loudspeakers. Bobbi, I’d think. I’d rehearse bits of dialogue. Sure, I’d tell her—obsession—imagination—but those were my great assets. I knew how to dream. I’d win her over. Yes, I would. I’d recite Martian Travel from memory. I’d charm her with love and practicality. Money was no problem—I knew where the money was, it was in the rock, it was there in the Sweethearts to be found and dug up and spent without thought of consequence—I’d buy her furs and perfumes, whatever the ore could buy, and we’d have a family, and the world could go to hell, but we’d go in style, we’d live as others live, in fantasy, happily.

In mid-May I began making direct inquiries. There was little to go on, a first name and a vague description, but luck was the governing factor—a TWA flight, Denver to Salt Lake.

I picked up the trail at thirty-two thousand feet.

“Bobbi,” the stewardess said, and she looked at me with grave eyes. “Sublime smile? Lots of rhythm?”

“It sounds right,” I said.

The woman shook her head.

“Pity,” she murmured. “This way.”

She led me down the aisle to the galley area. We were somewhere high over the Rockies, a fresh spring sky, and there were troops in Cambodia and ceremonies at Kent State, but it didn’t mean a thing to me. The stewardess mixed a pair of drinks and motioned for me to sit down in the last row.

She lighted a cigarette and blew smoke rings at the ceiling. Her name tag said Janet.

After a time she sighed.

“Bobbi Haymore,” she said. “The Skywriter, we called her. Bobbi the Haiku Haymore. Let me guess—she pinned a poem to your shirt?”

“Coat.”

“Coat, then. Fill in the blank.”

“Haymore?” I said.

“Like Hey-more. Care less. Not my favorite person.” She took out a pen and wrote down the name for me. “The golden bard. Very mystical. Those poems of hers, she’d pass them out like peanuts. Passengers loved it. Especially male types. You, too, I suppose.”

“Yes,” I admitted, “she had an effect.”

“The full treatment, no doubt?”

“Not a treatment. She was—it’s hard to describe—she was completely there . No qualifications.”

The woman nodded. “I’ve heard it before. A spiritual experience.”

She snuffed out her cigarette.

“All right,” she said slowly, “let’s see if I can set the scene. A night flight, I suppose. Very cozy. Dark cabin. Soft voice. Classy legs. Martini or two. Sound familiar? This leads to that, lots of spirituality. Next thing you know you’re getting the complete unabridged works, sweet and sexy. A day later you find a sonnet pinned to your undies. I miss anything?”

“Grass,” I said.

“I’m sorry?”

“Just grass, it came with the poem. She said it expressed her deepest feelings for me.”

There was a pause.

“Yes, well,” the woman said, “I think we’re obviously talking about the same person.”

For a time I was silent, just reflecting. I watched the passing atmosphere. It occurred to me that the events of imagination are never easily translated into the much less pliant terms of the real world. Too damned inflexible, I thought, but then I shrugged.

“So,” I asked, “how do I find her?”

The stewardess grunted.

“Sucker,” she said. She pulled a tube of lipstick from her handbag and dabbed grimly at the corners of her mouth. “Listen, I know the girl. I crewed with her. Tone-deaf little tramp. Doesn’t talk to people—she recites . That so-called poetry of hers—rushing tides and dappled dunes—garbage, you know?—but the guys, though, they all fell for it, they just ate it up. Putrid. Men, they’re all suckers.”

She turned and half smiled at me.

“All I want,” she said, “is to help. Forget it, that’s my advice.”

“Well, thanks.”

“A word to the wise.”

“I appreciate it,” I said. “Where is she?”

The stewardess closed her eyes and leaned back. Her smile seemed bitter.

“Bailed out,” she said. “The great blond beyond.”

“In other words—”

“Departed. Thin air. Ran off with some navigator. New York, I think. Hey-more. Care less.”

“Navigator?’

“Andy Nelson. Cute guy. Sucker, though.”

“For sure,” I said gently, “aren’t they all?”

I borrowed her pen and jotted down the name Andy Nelson.

The facts came slowly, but in the end I had what I needed. Back in the early fall, Bobbi had retired to pursue her muse full-time. Grad school, apparently. A creative writing program at Columbia or NYU—New York City, that much was certain. The navigator had gone along for the ride.

I studied my notes. Sketchy at best, but at least there were options.

“Last warning,” the stewardess said, “she’s a bloodsucker, she’ll eat your heart out. Crush it, I mean. Drain it dry.”

I smiled and said, “That’s the risk.”

In Salt Lake I changed my travel arrangements.

Go, I thought. Curtain Number Three. There was time for a cup of coffee and then I was airborne again.

The next few days were chaotic.

In New York, I took a room at the Royalton and started making calls. The phone book listed thirteen Haymores, no B’s or Bobbis, but I tried anyway. No luck, just bad tempers. I spent a restless, tumbling night, and the next morning I was up early. Alarming developments on the Today show: the Kent State aftershocks. There was violence in Little Rock. In St. Paul, 80,000 people stormed down Summit Avenue, and there was public mayhem in the streets of Philadelphia. It was epidemic. Arson in Tallahassee, a bombing at Fort Gordon. Surreal maybe, or maybe not, but I imagined the Committee’s contribution to all this. Sarah calling shots, Tina quoting Chekhov. I could hear Ollie Winkler’s squeaky giggle: “The chef and the terrorist—they’re finally cooking!”