Dave Eggers - You Shall Know Our Velocity

I found an American fifty in another pocket and gave it to her. She put the kroon aside to unfold and inspect the U.S. bill. That was all I had. I kept some Latvian coins in my left from pocket, worth about $12.

She noted my mild discomfort at having given away all that I had with me.

"You will get more," she said.

"I know," I said.

"There is always more for people like you," she said, and pointed to the waterskiers, two of them, hitting a jump and soaring over a group of people, twelve and cowering, in a dinghy the color of new blood in an overhead sun.

I took a taxi through the black city to the Esplanade Park and ran across it and burst into the hotel. In the elevator I dared myself to attach my head to the elevator wall. Then did it. I dared myself to walk around the elevator with my head attached to the wall, and did that, too, trying to make with my body the most oblique angle possible. The wall, the floor and I – as one we were isosceles.

Hand was awake and calling about flights to Cairo. We had forty-two hours before Hand had to be back in St. Louis and I had to be at the wedding in Cuernevaca, so we did the math, backwards:

Three hours from New York to St. Louis

Two for the hours lost = five hours gone

Eleven between New York and Cairo

Eight hours in time-zone loss

Twenty-four hours right there

Eight to get from Riga to Cairo

Thirty-two hours, at least, in travel time.

I was deflated. Hand was excited.

"That's a solid ten hours in Cairo! Perfect!"

"But that's if we leave this second. It's midnight, Hand. We lose another eight sleeping tonight, here."

He watched me blankly, as if waiting to see if I'd take back what I said.

"Oh God," he said. He threw himself on the bed and cursed Latvia. Whose idea was Latvia? he wanted to know. I couldn't remember whose idea it had been. We'd picked it out of a big grey book. How could we trade Cairo for Riga? He was pacing. He turned the heater on then off. He tried to open the window but the window wasn't that kind of window. He brushed his teeth then opened a beer from the minibar.

We called the airport anyway. We learned we could get to Cairo the next day, but only via Prague. It would take ten hours in the air. We'd get to Egypt at two am. Hand was chipper again.

"That's perfect. We get off the plane, get a cab to Giza, climb Cheops at five, ready for the sunrise. We're there when it comes up, and then we shimmy down and have plenty of time to get back."

It did sound good. We called the airline again. But then learned that to get Hand back to St. Louis, we'd have to leave Egypt at 6 a.m. It was the only way he could make it. The limits were dawning on him.

"So we'd have about two hours at the pyramids."

"Right."

"In the middle of the night."

I nodded.

"Fuck!" He couldn't believe it. He turned on the TV, to a porn channel. Two American women had pulled up to a beachside house and asked directions from two long-haired men. Hand walked around the room, doing math in the air, carrying ones with his index finger, testing scenarios, asking the same questions: Why isn't there a redeye? Are you sure the sunrise isn't till six…

"We should go now," he said.

"Where?"

Now the women and men were having sex, the two pairs parallel and moving in unison, then perfectly alternating, like pistons. It was impressive.

"What happened with Katya?" he asked.

"Not much."

"You get naked?"

I nodded.

"You use something?"

"We didn't have sex."

"Still. If she was touching you -"

"It didn't happen that way," I said.

"Well, we have to get out of here," he said. "I hate it here. Riga sucks." He was watching for movement in the square below. I agreed it didn't make sense to be here.

"You know Cairo won't work," I said.

"But Cairo was the main place I wanted to be."

"Listen -"

"That's the main fucking place!"

The two women were now putting makeup on the men, and then were sitting on their laps, everyone naked and gyrating, and they were doing so while keeping time with the soundtrack.

"Fuck!" he yelled.

"Shut the fuck up!" I said.

"I can't believe we're not going to Cairo. Goddamn!" He kicked the TV, knocking off a faux-wood panel that obscured its fine-tuning dials.

"Get a little perspective, Hand," I said.

He was sitting now, on the heater, looking out at frozen Riga, then was yelling into his pillow about the unfairness of it all, how we had a week and were in Riga and would not make it to Cairo for the sunrise. How could everything else have gone so right, even the treasure map was so good, and now this?

I fell into sleep and Hand stayed up watching for hours, periodically calling airlines and whispering urgently to them, in tones alternately pleading and accusatory. I was afraid, vaguely, that he'd find a good fare and wake me up, insisting we leave immediately.

But in the morning we were still in Latvia and had until 2 P.M. to catch a flight to Copenhagen, the hub on the way to New York and then St. Louis for Hand and Mexico City for me. We decided to drive an hour northwest, along the coast, to look for the Liv village. They were indigent and dying and only five spoke their language. We'd find them, unload everything we had left, leave Latvia and the continent, and head home.

We were done. No Cairo. No sunrise at Cheops. And from now on, there would never be options, never like this again. Lord this was obscene. We should have saved the money, most of it, invested it, so there would always be more. I could have done this every year if I had planned it better. I planned nothing well. I dreaded being back in Chicago, or Memphis, wherever – the stasis, the slow suffocation of accumulation.

We needed more money, and another week somewhere, and we needed more Senegalese men residing in resorts-to-be, more children yelling bonjour!, more Moroccan discos and soft kisses goodbye, chocolates from a woman in a checkpoint parka.

Morning in the hotel restaurant was all suits, continental breakfasts and tinkling silver. I felt dizzy. The silverware was so heavy.

"You have to drive today," I said.

"Fine. I'll drive. I want to drive."

We read an English-speaking newspaper commemorating the anniversary of the liberation of Riga. Citizen after citizen, their breath blurring their faces in the small snapshots of each, recounted where they were, how they felt, and all admired those who had defended the radio tower. We loved the Latvians again. They were tough as nails and they used the available light. They made their light into fire.

Hand drove and we went north from the city up the western coast of the Gulf of Riga, looking for the Liv. It was 10 A.M. when we started, and we had to make a flight from Riga at two. We hadn't thought it through. We couldn't make it there – it was 90 miles at least – and back in time to make the flight. But we didn't know that yet. The landscape was unchanging, was Wisconsin, the sky milky and suffocating.

I decided we had to send Mo and Thor a letter from Latvia. I'd been feeling guilty since we did the treasure map, knowing I'd never done one for them. I dug out the graph paper and started, though my hand was unsure and I felt dazed or drunk. I planned to send it to Stu and make him promise not to show it to Melinda.

Mo! Thor!

(Did you know that in Scandinavia they always use the exclamation mark in greeting? I think this is true, even though Hand told me this. Remember Hand? He took you to the aquarium and argued with the tour guide.) So I have advice for you guys. I don't want you to actually use it. I just want you to hear it, have it, sometime after the fact - - after it's useful. Don't listen to me. Advice so rarely finds its intended audience. It's like the sword in the stone - - you leave it there, maybe someday someone finds it useful. Sorry, people - - we're driving through Latvia and I can't vouch for my state of mind. 1. Thoughts are made of water and water always finds a way. 2. If you can't dodge the water, run.