Drift

This is the first draft of a new scene in Ants.

Raquel was the first to wake up. She and Gina shared a two-bedroom suite at the hot springs resort. It was the fanciest, most luxurious place Raquel had ever been. She felt out of place. As she had at the hot pool the night before in her old bathing suit. She hoped she wouldn’t have to do that again. Gina was the only one she felt comfortable enough to be like that, so exposed. She would go back to the Walden in a heartbeat, but she couldn’t do that by herself. Raquel slipped out of bed quietly, put on the thick bathrobe and padded into the bathroom. Undid the robe in front of the huge mirror over the sinks, turned to take off her pajamas and stepped behind the curtain. Lathering, she thought of showering with Gina in the tiny stall at their room in the Walden, a slippery being with four arms and legs, active mouths. Drying off in the harsh light, she remembered her mother’s disapproval, her admonition to abandon this foolish relationship, to find a kind man who would be a good father for her children. Someone like Raul, she thought, except the Rauls of the world end up with pretty girls like Claudine and Gina. Not with girls with scars. Raquel leaned toward the mirror, focusing on the marks left on the right side of her face by an untimely launch of home-made fireworks. It’s okay when I look this way, she told herself for the millionth time, turning her good side to the mirror.

Gina was outside, waiting in her bathrobe for a turn at the shower. You could have come and been with me, Raquel said. There was only an awkward grimace from Gina, who rose and followed the footprints into the bathroom, warm and humid when she would have preferred it fresh and dry. She used the toilet, adding a new funk. Took her shower, dreading the long car ride ahead, to the other side of the desert, according to Steve. He thinks he can get them to stay together, Gina thought, but he’s wrong. Claudine has already left David, already looking at new conquests. Raul, maybe. Not that she cared what happened to him, but she was sure Claudine would chew Raul up and spit him out. Gina deliberately left the bathroom messier than she normally would. Let the princess deal with it.

Outside, the princess was having coffee with Raquel at the cozy table in the kitchen area. This bothered Gina, that Raquel was getting cozy with her, that her girlfriend could be gullible at times, too eager to please. That her girlfriend is dressed and Claudine is still in her bathrobe. “Sorry for the mess in there,” she said, and headed into the room she’d shared with Raquel, who had already made the bed. “They have their own housekeeping here,” she muttered to no one.

Claudine doesn’t mistake Gina’s quip about the state of the bathroom as an apology. From the pained look in Raquel’s face – please forgive my lover’s rudeness – she doesn’t think Raquel does either. Claudine doesn’t know what Gina’s problem is, but she seems to have one.

“What’s eating her?”

Raquel squirms metaphorically, stirs more creamer into her already well-stirred coffee. “Sometimes she is grumpy in the morning.”

Claudine realizes a diplomat resides within Raquel’s quiet, wallflower life. You would make a good mother, maybe even a good wife, she thinks, deciding to try to make things easier for Raquel. If possible.

“I’m looking forward to this.” In fact, Claudine has arisen hungry for bear, eager for a showdown with her idiot boyfriend.

Raquel makes a sound like Claudine’s father makes, a contemplative hum halfway below the threshold of audibility. You feel it more than hear it. The disagreeing affirmation. “You don’t want to go?”

Raquel’s eyebrows twist. “It feel like everything is coming undone.”

There is a knock on the door. Steve says good morning on the other side.

“Just a minute,” Raquel says. Claudine goes to the door. Steve is knocked a little off kilter by the bathrobe.

“Want some coffee,” she says, holding the door open, doing a Vanna arm-sweep toward the nook, where Raquel doesn’t know what to do.

He pushes his glasses up. “No. Had some. Are you guys ready to go?”

On cue, Gina comes out of her bedroom in street clothes. “Some of us are,” Claudine says. She senses that Steve is trying to take charge here, run this expedition on his schedule. “Is there a rush?”

She can see he’s a peeved. “Well, it’s a long drive to Baker.”

“How long.”

He hems, “I dunno,” then haws, “pretty long,”

She allows herself a half roll of the eyes and turns away. “I’ll get a wiggle on then.” Walking toward the bathroom on the balls of her feet.

It started on a mild winter day – an extra day – in a courtroom.

He is being arraigned for trespass at a casino, an avoidable misdemeanor if he had left when the security men told him to. But he was on his high horse, railing in a blackjack pit against wastefulness and greed. “Have me arrested,” he told the security men. So, they did.

The bailiff reads the charges. The defendant starts to lecture the judge on free speech, the corruptness of modern life. The judge peers over the tops of her glasses, cuts him off. Does he want to pay a fine and go free or spend a night in jail? The court, he realizes, thinks he’s a fool.

He surrenders, pays his $100 fine in humiliation. At the exit door, he realizes he has left his helmet at the cashier window and retreats to get it.

He stands on the steps of the courthouse. Half a block away, the Truckee River shuffles obediently through Reno in its trough. His blood is pounding to loud to hear it; he can’t smell it for his disgust.

Bits of sun fork through a splotchy sky. Social order holds trees in place, directs cars and people about their business. It’s not the first time he has turned his back on who he really is. You would think that in his twenty-some years on the planet, living among people, he would have figured out better coping mechanisms.

“I guess I really told them,” he says aloud, ridiculing himself. “I guess they will go home tonight and really think about things.” His bitterness swells, fairly shouting. He starts down the steps, brushes past someone climbing up from the street. “I can’t help it if I give a damn,” his volume knob dialed lower, but still talking out loud, like a lunatic.

He pulls the helmet over his head, leaving him even more alone with his thoughts, and crosses the street to his motorcycle. He straddles it, stomping the kickstart. It coughs up a phlegmy mechanical indifference. He impatiently resets the kickstart, heaves at it again. And again, frustration ratcheting tighter. He curses aloud and take a breath.

He tries again. The bike exhales the sigh of a slightly different failure, considering his point of view. The next stomp brings it to life. “Get out of here,” he says, revving the throttle. The bike spurts ahead recklessly toward the street. An old man with a dog crosses his path just yards away. To avoid disaster, he slams on the brakes and dumps himself and his bike.

Face and macadam meet, hips and ribs grind. His head bounces once, cushioned by the helmet, and thuds to ground. In slow motion, he skids to a stop safely away from the man, who does not to notice, and the dog, who does.

 

One person witnesses this. When they briefly brushed against one another on the courthouse steps, she wonders if the guy is drunk. Talking to himself, unaware of his surroundings. She watched him finally get his motorcycle going, bolt into traffic and then throw himself to the ground to avoid hitting the man. Or his dog.

This is heroism, she thinks, the guy – probably a jerk in many ways – has done the right thing. She crosses the street to check on him. He sits on the ground, taking inventory. She stands over him, hands on her hips. Dreamy eyes. “Are you alright?” she asks.

He thumps his helmet on the pavement. “Gotta smile at my incessant good fortune,” he says.

“Good you didn’t kill the dog,” she says, warming to the notion that she might like to know him better. He stands up, shows himself to be comfortably taller than she, warm blue eyes, wispy moustache, dark brown hair. He turns to hoist his motorcycle upright, lifts it onto its stand, then back to face her.

“Yeah. Got enough trouble as it is.” Nodding toward the courthouse.

“Oh, no.” She finds herself flirting with him. “Should I add your name to my protection order?” She lifts the handbag full with the documents requesting a restraining order against the asshole craps dealer where she works. Of course, the motorcycle hero doesn’t understand, so she explains that a guy she’s been dating has somehow come to mistake her for his property.

The dog-saver nods as though he understands something about her predicament, offers her his motorcycle helmet, for added protection. She likes humor that comes in under partly raised windows and soon they are introducing themselves. She’s a dancer in a casino-showroom review. He owns a small hotel up at Lake Tahoe. They learn they are David and Claudine and make plans to have dinner that night.

About 480 miles east, an old man dies, leaving behind seven wives and many children. And in Southern California, a young woman meets someone famous in a diner.

 

Claudine was not one to rush into affairs. She had a lousy track record. Her first serious boyfriend in high school turned out to be gay, which didn’t stop them from loving each other. At college, she fell for a manipulative professor who almost coaxed her into a three-way with a short, bald and sweaty sociology instructor. Then the stalker craps dealer.

So, Claudine waited until their fourth date before having sex with David. Although she had to initiate it, she was pleasantly surprised at its vigor and particularly impressed with his enthusiasm about orgasms – hers as well as his.

After a few weeks, she moved into the Walden Guest Hotel in South Lake Tahoe, the small, primitive lodging lacking pretension, television reception or the ability to take credit cards. He ran the establishment with his younger brother, Matthew, who was happy when he learned David’s new girlfriend was moving in.

First, he had an enormous crush on her: smoldering dark eyes, a dancer’s lithe figure, wit, and air of gracious inclusion for those she lets get close to her. Of course, Matthew will never actually be with her, but it didn’t make it any less enjoyable to be around her.

More importantly, Matthew thought that even David – his unmoored, wandering brother – would have the good sense to stay with this woman, do whatever it took to keep her with him, that they would settle down and take over the Walden Guest Hotel so he could finally get away from the place and get started on the many wonderful things in store for him.

After a while, Freda rejoined them. She was quiet, didn’t want to talk. Marie heard Anne say she would come back and pick her up that afternoon, after her work was over. Then she and Anne took a long walk around the point of land that jutted out into the sea near the Viking settlement. It was lovely. Birds pitching and diving overhead, the smell of the ocean, a steady offshore breeze stirring the grasses. Up and down craggy little trails, over mosses, alone the two of them. It is funny how sometimes a quiet distraction gave her mind a chance to catch up with things. They found a pair of red Adirondack chairs posed to look over the water and sat down. 

“Were you ever a girl scout?” Anne asked. Her eyes were closed, sun turned toward the basking sun. 

“No,” Marie said. “But we would go hiking and canoeing at the cabin in Vermont. And campfires. I don’t think Father enjoyed it that much, but Mother and I did. It was my favorite thing in summer. She knew the names of all the flowers and plants and would get excited when she found something rare.” 

Marie laughed. “To tell the truth, I never really learned the plant names. But Mother was so excited by it that she just swept me along. I just like to look at things. I don’t need to know their names.” 

“Our girl scout troop went to a camp in Vermont,” Anne said. “And there was someone always trying to teach us about nature and point out the constellations in the sky and all I could think was how great it was to be there with my friends. Girls I didn’t know became like sisters. We took our sleeping bags out on the lawn, watching the stars turning slowly.” 

“What is that?” she asked, pointing toward an iceberg. 

“I think it’s an iceberg,” Anne said. “But I’ve never seen one before.” 

“Me neither.”  

“Some girl scouts we turned out to be,” Anne said. 

Marie thought that was a funny thing to say, and liked to think of herself and Anne as young friends. “I get afraid sometimes,” she confided. “At first, I was afraid that people would find out, but now I’m more worried about what I won’t remember or know anymore.” 

“I’ll always be here to help you, Marie.” Anne reached her hand across the gap between the two red Adirondack chairs and Marie joined her. “Everybody daydreams, it’s no big deal. Lots of times at church I have no idea what’s going on. I’m just admiring the stained-glass windows and wondering what Reverend Mapes has on under his robes.” 

Marie laughed. A little a first. Then more.  

“If you tell him that, I’ll say you’re a crazy old woman who hears voices.” Anne shook her hand, letting her know it was a joke. 

The sun begins to come out as we head to Doolin, a little town along the coast. Find a place to park. Not a lot going on there. A port where ships go out to the Arran Islands. Rhonda is already heading off toward the shops. Betty points up the road to some picnic tables outside a pub.

“Go claim one of those tables and we can get some lunch,” she says, heading off for the pub.

I find an empty picnic table. There’s a mare and colt across the way, looking forlorn on the drought-stressed hillside. It’s weirdly quiet.

Our Honda Jazz explodes into a shrieking fireball; the blast wave flattens innocent passersby, knocking them to the ground. A ball of flame bursts heavenward, and turns into black smoke, definitive, evil black. A piece of front bumper lands a few feet away from me.

It’s quiet again. The little village in shock. People pick themselves up off the ground, amazed they are still alive. Others creep cautiously from doorways into the sunlight. What’s left of the Jazz is burning, a birthday candle that outlived the celebrant. I turn around, realize I am standing now and not sitting on the stone wall. This must be a good sign, I think.

The horses are gone, wisely.

I feel a little sad for the Jazz, which had begun to feel like a cousin. And then remember that Betty said she was fun to travel with. Well, I guess so.

Rhonda comes out of the shop and then moments later I spot Betty in the crowd in front of the pub. She looks around, spies me, and continues to scan the crowd. Rhonda starts for the wreckage, but Betty heads her off, takes her by the upper arm, points toward me. She looks me in the eye and nods up the street, away from the smoldering carcass.

The crowd is crowding around the ruins; Betty is guiding us away from it. We pause in front of a pastry shop. Rhonda embraces me, her heart and lymphatic system pounding. Closer than usual. She has high blood pressure anyway. I’m thinking about aftershock.

“Do you have your wallet and passport?” Betty asks me. I have mine and Rhonda’s passports, and nod.

“There’s nothing left of ours in that,” Betty says, looking toward the Jazz. “We have to start over.”

I have my arm around Rhonda, who I think is in shock, and we follow Betty away from the main street and through some backyards and onto other streets, unthinking or more exactly not knowing what to think, glad that we have somebody to follow. I think. There is another road leading inland that eventually goes over a narrow bridge beside which is another pub. Betty leads us inside to a table.

By then, everyone has either heard or heard of the explosion in the center of Doolin, leaving the pub by the bridge surprisingly empty. The bartenders and waitresses are talking among themselves, distracted from their jobs.

“What was that?” Rhonda asks when we’re settled at a table.

“I shouldn’t have dragged you into this,” Betty says. Genuinely, I think. “I told you I’m not where I’m supposed to be.”

Someone named Rachel texted me on my cell phone today. I don’t know anyone named Rachel, though it would be nice to because I could call her Rach with a long A and say stuff like, I wonder what Rach is up to today, or gee, Rach sure was in a glum mood at the bowling alley.

Rachel, of course, is the name of the ship that rescued Ishmael at the end Moby Dick. Didn’t mean to spoil it for you.

Anyway, texting Rachel want to remind me that I could vote early and urged me to vote for an attorney general candidate in my state. This annoyed me. Full disclosure, it was also raining at the time.

I texted Rachel back words to the effect that I don’t pay exorbitant wireless service fees every month for the convenience of spammers, salesmen and volunteers for political campaigns. Don’t text me any more, I said.

Feeling smug for about 10 seconds when Rachel responds something like, oh, sorry, didn’t mean to disturb you but you can still look up more information about her candidate if I clicked on the link in this new text message.

I responded: Are you stupid? No means no. Stop texting me.

Rachel is hard to turn off. She texted back another apology and said I might get more texts because other people might have my number and if I want them to stop I should just reply STOP.

Fearing the worst, I responded STOP.

That seems to have ended it.

Is there an app that would require anyone not on my contact list to pay $1 or so into my account before their attempted phone call or text message goes through to my phone? If not, why not?

Since I’m doling out brilliant solutions to vexing problems. Why doesn’t the US Postal Service issue digital stamps — a penny or two — merchandisers and known contacts would have to embed in their spam before my email software accepts it? I would pay 2 cents to convey my two cents to people I know, even to people I don’t know. Like you. Even Rach.

Here’s a picture that’s nothing to do with this blog post.

Back at the harbor, the Danish couple have another moment of unsynchronized matrimony getting off the ship.

There is an obvious protocol for disembarking. Each person who crosses the threshold to solid ground turns to see if the next person needs any assistance. I’m standing behind Mrs. Danish, who expects her husband to wait for her to go first.

But he brushes past her. Ignores the old fellow who preceded him and bounds some distance away on the wharf, where he begins to fire up a cigarette he has already retrieved from the packet.

The older gent who had expected to be relieved of his post simply tilts his head slightly to one side. He holds his position faithfully and awaits Mrs. Danish. When her face turns toward him, he smiles. Once across, she thanks the old gent and takes his place in the human protocol. Then her lad jumps across, unassisted and like his father scampers along the wharf.

Then it is me. I do not need her help, but I willingly accept it. She takes my hand firmly and uses her other hand to guide my elbow. Enchanted in a passing pas-a-deux at six below with a fur-bound Dane.

We trade smiles. I turn to help the next passenger get back on solid earth. And so forth, our race proceeds, trying to pick up the slack caused by others.

I end up in a van with Mrs. Danish and her son. The husband waits on the wharf for the last van to savor his smoking. In cramped quarters, she smiles at me awkwardly. We have wound up knee-to-knee, sitting across from each other. It is impossible not to look at each other.

“I got hypnotized to quit cigarettes,” I offer, trying to be helpful, but I don’t think she fully gets my drift.

I force myself to look out the window as we launch off on another hair-raising drive through town. We are dropped off at the outfitter’s office and go our separate ways.

There has been a lot of gnashing of teeth and rending of garments over the past week or so as the nation assesses the worldwide crisis that trashed financial markets 10 years ago. Over the past decade, many slide rules have been worn to nubs trying to prove who was to blame.

So many candidates. Banking regulators who didn’t stop profit-focused lenders from selling grotesquely risky home loans to deluded households that want bigger pieces of the American dream than they could rationally afford, which were then bought up by greedy Wall Street tycoons who slathered them in snake oil and sold them to easily duped investors. One thing all agree on is that this was absolutely not the fault of the U.S. Congress, which is never to blame for anything that goes wrong.

I realize now it was my fault. On July 14, 2008, I appeared on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal program to discuss a forthcoming Federal Reserve Board regulation on mortgage brokers.

Several callers were more interested in the rapid boil in financial markets that in less than two months would poach Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I should have used the opportunity to implore all those regulators, lenders, mortgage borrowers, Wall Street hucksters and innocent investors to come to their senses and stop the madness. But I didn’t.

My bad, America.

A Hertz Chevy Cruze, sunroof window cracked open, tuned with fresh air pulled through the top of the cabin windows. A cool vacuum over my skull, running its fingers through what’s been long gone. The late afternoon light drawing color and shadow from a soaring, roaring park road on the western edge of Newfoundland.

Madness takes over from the phone. One Step Beyond, it urges.

Okay, I say. Lifting off at the crest.

 

She is already done with me. I climb down the steep steps to the main deck and maneuver along the leeward promenade toward the bow just as we smash into the ice again and make about 10 or 20 yards before we have to back up, rev the engines and ram forward again.

There is a small but hearty band of us forward on the main deck, intent on our progress, pounding away at the ice regardless of how cold the seawater had to get to freeze.

After a couple of cycles of stall-backup-ram ahead, I see us as an American football team with no passing game. We have to rely simple-mindedly on our offensive line and running backs to wear down the ice that separates us from that channel of open water near the iceberg.

At the moment, we are 100 yards away. But we are notching first downs, moving forward in eight-, 19- and 26-yard gulps and all of us on the bow are convinced this is just a matter of time.

I’m standing by a bell when a prize position near the center opens up and I move to the line of scrimmage. We huddle and the quarterback calls the same play every time, fullback dive, sometimes to the left guard, sometimes to the right. We hammer away. And hammer away.

The chains keep moving. I turn to the fellow on my right and ask him, ‘Is it one or two more?’ He says one, but I think it’s two. And sure enough, we get about 12 yards from the goal line when the defense stiffens and stops our forward progress. We huddle again on second down and of course every man and woman among us knows the play by then.

I like to think the captain revved it up a little more, but he probably didn’t. Or that we on the offensive line drove more resolutely into the wilting defense. The ship surges forward, the ice cracking and scattering to the side, plowing toward that clear sea ahead, but losing momentum and then the guards, tackles and tight ends lean into it, our hips thrusting forward, the quarterback helps drive the pile of a dozen or so humans trying to will a multi-ton iceberg ship forward to the promised land, our momentum staggered but not extinguished over those last few feet and then.

We are through. Touchdown. The offensive line turns as one and cheers for the captain. “Ring the bell,” I say, and Lakshmi – I didn’t know she was there – flails away at it and I see Dr. Nashville leaning gleefully over the rail, snapping memories into his camera with abandon.

It is almost anticlimactic, streaming toward the big iceberg in open water, a victory lap after ejaculation, as the rest of the tourists pour up from below to the main deck and the captain throttles down and we drift as close as we can toward the iceberg which is, after all, flipped over and shrunken enough to get out to the open sea. With most of itself hidden underwater.

It looks big out here, but it was bigger before, maybe a year ago when it sheared off the glacier and began its long journey, perhaps to sink a poorly navigated transatlantic vessel. We glide toward her, cameras clicking electronically.

“I cannot promise that we’ll get out to the icebergs because the sea is quite frozen,” the tour  guide says. “But we will try.”

It’s not every day that your boat ride might get cancelled because the sea is frozen. I wait until Beehive chooses one of the two vans. Then I get in the other. Not trying to avoid her, just avoid her in public.

The harbor is only a few blocks away, but we tender tourists must be coddled, I suppose. Plus, it is another opportunity for the locals to show off their disdain for snow-packed, narrow lanes, whipping us around blind curves on threadbare tires.

The harbor, coated in snow, countenances no nonsense. People come here to wrench a living from the sea or wait for supplies to come in when the bay isn’t frozen shut. The guide climbs out of the van, leaving us idling diesel fumes into the cold morning, waiting for the iceberg tour-boat to arrive.

After a little while, it appears, smashing what looks like a puny layer of ice in a channel out in the harbor before angling for a nearby berth that looks ominously frozen. The boat gets sort of close to the pier. The crew maneuver a staircase just over the edge, connecting ship to shore and its stream of tourists eager for icebergs.

It is just the littlest bit dicey navigating the stairs at the bow of the tour ship, and the helpful captain grabs elbows as necessary and guides the revenue to somewhat safe and steady footing on the deck, where we follow ourselves below to a cabin that holds a couple three dozen of people. Benches on either side of tables. I find myself across from the Danish family from the airplane: the distant husband who smokes, handsome wife and teenage son.

The tour guide delivers a mandatory safety lecture. I’ve heard hundreds of these on airplanes and still sometimes listen because, well, you never know. But not so many on watercraft.

At one point, the tour guide mentions the unlikely event of an emergency and the presence onboard of immersion suits and how we are to crouch – either before or after taking off our boots, I’m not sure about the order – and stand up, whereby we will be magically in the immersion suit that will prevent us from freezing to death in an arctic sea that is, itself, so frozen that we’re not sure we can get this boat out of the harbor, much less anywhere near the icebergs which are, coincidentally, frozen in place.

I want to ask the tour guide to go back over that bit about the immersion suits because I’m still low on sleep and English is probably her third language but I realize this would be too gauche, like raising your hand during the mandatory safety explanation on an aircraft and asking whether it is really necessary to put the oxygen mask over one’s face before helping others, including infants.

From across the table, Mr. Danish asks the tour guide if smoking is allowed on the ship. The guide says no. Looks a little disgusted that he has asked.

Then the iceberg tour ship backs away from the wharf, out into the harbor, a little over three degrees north of the polar circle. Captain points us to sea and shoves it into Drive and the tour guide says we can go aloft. The congregation rises with near unanimity to clamber topside. I notice on my way, following the herd, that Beehive and Lakshmi and a few other souls are staying behind. Again, the feeling that we have been assembled at a place from which there is no escape, notwithstanding the immersion suits.