and neither do I. I could, though, because it impedes my research. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of publication, right? That’s why I’m flying to Connecticut. To do research for my book. The Indians have a casino there called—”
I opened my eyes. “Wequonnoc Moon,” I said.
“Right. You’ve been there?”
I nodded. “It’s about ten minutes from where I grew up.”
“Biggest single gaming venue in the country,” Mickey said. “Or so I’ve heard. I’ve never been there before. Been to Atlantic City many times over. I’m no longer welcome at Mr. Trump’s venues either. Now I ask you: is it legal to ban me, simply because I’ve figured out how to beat them at their own game? If I could afford to do it, I’d sue the bastards.”
The plane lurched forward. The intercom clicked on. The captain said we’d been cleared for takeoff. Would the flight attendants prepare the cabin?
“Oh, boy, here we go,” Mickey said. He pulled the vomit bag from his seat pocket. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to puke. I use these for my breathing exercise.”
“Right,” I said. Closed my eyes.
Mickey grabbed my arm. “I was wondering if, when we lift off, would you hold my hand? It helps.”
“Uh, well…”
The plane began to taxi. “Oh, boy,” Mickey muttered. “Oh, boy, oh, boy.” Paper crinkled in my right ear. In my peripheral vision, I saw his vomit bag expand and contract like a lung. The plane turned right and started down the runway, picking up speed. “Please,” he said, his shaky hand groping for mine. Instead of taking it, I pushed it down against the armrest between us.
The cabin rattled. Mickey’s hand gripped the armrest. We rose.
With the whine of the landing gear’s retraction, he returned to his abnormal normalcy. “Fascinating stuff, though, chaos-complexity,” he said. “Order in disorder. Disequilibrium as the source of life. Can you imagine it?”
“What?”
“God as flux? God as mutability?”
His pupils were dilated. Stoned from whatever he’d taken, I figured. For the next few minutes, neither of us spoke.
The captain turned off the seatbelt sign. The flight attendants wheeled the beverage cart down the aisle. Mickey flopped down his tray table and began to play solitaire with a deck of cards that, in my peripheral vision, I noticed were pornographic.
I dozed, woke up, fell into a deeper sleep. Somewhere during the flight, I heard Mickey and a flight attendant joking about Mr. Sandman….
IT TOOK TWO FLIGHT ATTENDANTS to rouse me. I looked around, lost at first. Mickey was gone. Up front, the last of the passengers were deplaning.
Inside the terminal, I wandered myself awake. At the pay phones, I fished out my calling card and punched in the numbers. Back in Colorado, our machine clicked on. “Hey,” I said. “It’s me. I’m at O’Hare. Doing all right, I guess—a little groggy…. Guy next to me on the flight here was a lunatic. And there were these kissin’ cousins going to be on Jerry Springer. You want evidence that Western civilization’s in sharp decline, just come to the airport…. Hey, Mo? I’m a little scared to be going back there. Lolly’s my last link, you know?…Well, okay. I’ll call you tonight. Don’t let the dogs drive you nuts.” I stood there wondering what would come first: me saying it or the beep ending my message.
“I love you, Mo.”
I love you, Lolly: I should have been saying it at the end of every one of those goddamn Sunday-evening calls. Should have been calling her. I love you: Why did that simple three-syllable sentence always get stuck in my throat?…Well, I was flying back there, wasn’t I? She’d asked for Caelum, and here I was at fucking O’Hare instead of sleeping off my post-prom assignment. It was like what Dr. Patel told me that time: that “I love you” was just three meaningless words without the actions that went with them. Lolly’s crippled tongue had said my name, or tried to, and I was halfway there.
I walked—up one concourse, down another, in and out of a dozen stores stocked with crap I didn’t want. Walked past the smokers, sequestered like lepers in their Plexiglas pen, and a crazy-looking shoeshine guy, wearing a do-rag and muttering to himself at the base of his empty platform chair.
I bought a coffee and a U.S.A. Today. Sat and read about that Love Bug computer virus. It arrived via an e-mail titled “I Love You.” Opening its attachment, “Love-Letter-for-You,” was what infected you. Well, I thought, the diabolical prick who designed it understood technology and human psychology. I mean, something like that arrives, and you’re not going to open it? It was both a virus and a worm, the article said; as it erased your files, it raided your address book, sending copies of itself to everyone on your e-mail list and spreading the havoc exponentially. Like HIV, I thought. Like that chaos-complexity stuff. Small disturbances, big repercussions. God, we were all so vulnerable.
Walking back, I passed that crazy shoeshine guy again. On impulse, I did an about-face, climbed up onto his platform, and sat. I was nothing more than a pair of shoes to him, and he went to work without so much as an upward glance. But as it turned out, he hadn’t been mumbling to himself, as I’d assumed; he’d been rapping. He rapped under his breath while he shined my shoes. I caught a little of it: “Calvin Klein no friend of mine, don’t want nobody’s name on my behind…” When he finished, he rose from his stool. “Five dollar,” he said, looking over my shoulder.
I handed him two fives. “One for the shine, the other for the performance,” I said, at which point he did look at me. I figured he’d return my smile, but instead he nodded, blank-faced, stuffed the bills into his pocket, and gave me his back.
At the food court, I bought a turkey sandwich and another coffee. As I ate, an entourage caught my eye: four Buddhist monks, camped at the periphery of the food court seats, about thirty feet away. Shaved heads, maroon and pumpkin-colored robes. Each was smiling, even the one who slept. You’d think monks would be wearing sandals, wouldn’t you? But these guys were wearing what I wear: Nike sneakers, Timberland boots. Two were horsing around with a Hacky Sack. Another was chatting quietly with a black woman in a Chicago Bulls sweatshirt.
I spotted a fifth monk, seated apart from the others. He was staring at something on his finger—studying it, or meditating on it, or whatever.
It moved.
Slowly, gently, the monk put his index fingers together, tip to tip, and it crossed the bridge they made, then traveled the back of the monk’s hand and halfway up his arm. I got up. Got closer. Saw that it was a praying mantis. I watched that monk watch that mantis for…well, I don’t know how long. But somehow, it made me feel better. Less anxious or whatever. Less alone.
THE FLIGHT TO CONNECTICUT WAS uneventful, and Bradley Airport looked and felt as glum as ever. I rented a Camry and picked up Interstate 91 going south. In Hartford, I exited onto I–84 and drove, with gathering dread, toward Three Rivers. Lolly’d been a life force my whole life. I didn’t want even to see her diminishment, never mind have to do something about it. I wanted to be back in Colorado, facing nothing more than my computer monitor and three or four open bottles of beer.
En route, I passed billboards luring travelers to Wequonnoc Moon, the U.S. Army, the home cooking at Cracker Barrel, Jesus Christ. Weird how they all promised
