by Nathan Holic
I thought about calling LaFaber, too, but what would he say? Maybe he’d tell me that the National Headquarters still believes in me, that they’ll pay for any damages to my vehicle, that they can change the time of the flight? No. He’d tell me to “tough it out,” to get to Philadelphia by any means necessary. That he’s disappointed in my driving, that I sound hung-over (I brushed my teeth twice this morning at the hotel and still my mouth tastes like Jack Daniels; I stopped for gas station coffee and a package of powdered donuts, but the alcohol aftertaste still festers). LaFaber would know this, can stare out his window and see my hangover. Maybe he even saw me lurking on Facebook last night, lurking outside the NKE house.
I think about straightening the mess in my car, but I still don’t know where to start.
*
There is something else, too. Something else I did this morning. When I pulled out of the hotel’s parking lot, I made a wrong turn but didn’t realize where I was headed until I was almost there: the Nu Kappa Epsilon house. Yes. It was 7:00 AM when I parked at the same curb where I’d watched the party from afar last night. A lingering morning mist wrapped around the wet exterior like a moth-eaten shawl; and the Pepto-colored sunrise made the house feel sickly, as if it was ready to puke all the empty kegs and cups and snoring frat stars out that heavy oak door.
And I don’t know why I did it, either. I don’t know why I left my car and walked the front porch, shoes crunching over wrist bands and flyers. I don’t know why I walked through the open front door and into that humid foyer, that dark, visqueene-covered living room. Who was I hoping to find? There was indeed a couch in the living room now, and there were two young men sleeping on that couch, but I didn’t wake them…I headed for the stairwell instead, for the basement, for the library, and I pulled the fraternity’s original 1921 charter from the wall, and walked back the way I came…up the stairs, out the front door, back to my car.
The charter is wedged in my back seat now, the glass splintered from the impact of the pothole, and still I have no idea why I needed to take it. But I did. I have it.
*
Charles Washington…never learned how to change a tire. Is this strange?
Charles Washington is…checking the pressure on his other tire, and it’s dropping.
Charles Washington is…noticing that his WHEELS are also dented and mangled!
Charles Washington is…wearing a clean dress shirt and a pair of khakis, and wants to change clothes PRONTO. Too fucking hot. Is it unprofessional to change clothes in front of all these passing vehicles?
Charles Washington…wishes someone would have taught him how to do this.
Charles Washington is…pissing on the side of a highway for the first time EVER.
Charles Washington is…still waiting for that tow truck.
At 8 AM tomorrow, I board a flight to El Paso. Then: three weeks without my Explorer, plane-and-school-hopping on my “vacation visits” as I fly to El Paso (en route to New Mexico State University in nearby Las Cruces), then Lubbock (Texas Tech), then Fresno and Highland and Long Beach, then finally San Francisco before my final flight back to Philadelphia to reclaim my Explorer, which I will then drive to the University of Delaware.
At some point I call Nick, who is somewhere in South Carolina right now, likely nearing the “vacation visit” portion of his schedule also. We’ve been labeled, the two of us, as mirror images. Same height (just a hair under six feet tall), same weight and build, same brown hair and smooth faces and coastal complexions. Same face, different ends of the country. But while I’ve tried since taking this job to dress in pressed slacks and crisp button-downs, Nick dresses in short-sleeved shirts left untucked, slip-on Steve Madden shoes without laces; he styles his hair with greater flair; all summer, during our training, he’d wake up later in the mornings (slapping the snooze button for 45 minutes), would go out to bars on Tuesday or Wednesday nights when we had to be in the office by 9 AM the next morning. I withheld my comments about how he shouldn’t still behave like a college student, particularly because Nick and Brock were my only two friends during this past summer in Indianapolis. Twin brothers in appearance, Nick and me, but we’re nothing alike: I have a long-term girlfriend in Florida, and Nick is gay, single, cares only about the moment. Even bragged after our first week on the road that he’d hooked up with a consultant from Sigma Alpha Epsilon at the University of Georgia, that he’d spent the night in the SAE guest room and ooh boy, can you imagine what some of those Deep-South Bubbas would do if they found out about that? You should probably keep that to yourself, I told him. Forget about the Bubbas. What would LaFaber think?
Still, we three consultants understand one another. Changing the culture together.
“Broke down in Pennsylvania?” Nick asks after I explain my situation. “Sounds like a bad Lifetime movie about drug addiction.”
“Ha, right,” I say.
“I got stuck in some mud a week ago. If that’s any consolation.”
“I guess,” I say. And then there is silence. “Nick, have you had any…situations yet?”
“Situations?”
“Alcohol infractions? That sort of thing?”
“Shit, no,” he says and I can picture him surprised at the question, glaring at the phone as if it’s just farted. “These South Carolina chapters, they’re pretty chill.”
“No kegs? No parties?”
“A little of that, nothing major,” he says. “But I told myself from the start that I wasn’t going to be a Fun Nazi. I wasn’t going to take this more seriously than it is.”
“Yeah,” I say. “You’re definitely living it up, aren’t you?”
“I heard you ran into some problems at Illinois. An emergency visit?”
“Pretty intense, yeah.”
“You’re out of there now?” Nick asks, voice—as always—interested but never fazed. “That’s the great part about this job. No matter what the problem is, it never lasts longer than three days. You’re there, you’re gone. Boom. Clean slate.”
“Exactly,” I say, but is that really the way of it? My head still hurts, my eye twitches, one of my dress shirts is ruined by pizza stain. I have a cut in my back, stiffness in my joints from the Shippensburg couch. My suitcase is slimy from fraternity house floors. And my Explorer might be fucked. Everywhere I’ve been, all of these places are following me.
“Take a nap or something,” Nick says. “Read a book.”
“I wish.”
“Don’t wish. Just do it. Relax.”
“I’ll try,” I say, but I’m inspecting each car that materializes on the horizon, checking to see if it could be AAA.
*
The tow truck arrives after 8:00 PM, and the muddy driver-side door opens to reveal a wiry man with a rusty moustache and reddish facial growth that creeps invasively across his cheeks. Arms so hairy that I can’t tell if the skin underneath is freckled or just dirty. He shakes my hand, but greets my situation and personal appearance with disinterest. “Florida,” he gurgles, spits, when he looks at my license. “Ya’ll better watch out on these Pennsylvania highways. Weather damage on the pavement, and all that.”
“Nobody fixes the potholes?”
He shrugs. “Sometimes. If someone actually hits one and complains.”
“That’s what it takes? That thing was huge.”
“No blame or nothing. People just get used to the holes out here.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Well. Let’s take a look at the tires,” he says, and he shuffles to the front tire. The verdict, he tells me after careful examination, after he rubs his oil-darkened fingers over his hairy chin, is that not only is my front tire destroyed and my back tire severely damaged (still driveable, he assures me, but…whoo, he says…I’m going to want to get it looked at, quick), but both wheels are also damaged. Even with new tires, he says, the sharp, stray metal from the dented wheel could puncture my tires at any moment. Looks like a fork with two of the prongs bent in
the wrong direction.
“I can change your front tire,” he says, “but I might scrape up the spare as I’m doing it.”
“It’s just a rim, right? Can’t you just, like, replace the rims real quick?”
“Rim’s part of the wheel, just the outer edge. It’s not as easy as changing a hubcap.”
“How long does a spare hold together?”
“One of them little donuts? Couple hundred miles.”
“I’ve got to get all the way to Philadelphia,” I say.
“Whoo,” he says. “Philly. Can’t say that’s a smart idea, what with them wheels all fucked up. You’d be looking for trouble, you do that.”
“I’ve got a flight.”
He shakes his head. “I’ll change the tire. But I’m telling you this, man,” he says. “Them donuts are quick to burn out. You don’t want to drive on it for more than an hour at a time. Heat it up too much, and your spare’ll be toast.”
My Explorer—my office—my bedroom—my entire life in that vehicle…And I’m only able to stretch my salary to cover car payments and insurance and food and student loans. I can’t cover the cost of repairs, even just the deductible.
“Does insurance usually cover something like this?” I ask.
“Depends. Everyone’s insurance is different.”
“Well, should I call highway patrol? Fill out a report?”
“Naw,” he says. “That pothole don’t have insurance. Ain’t gonna sue you.”
“Right,” I say. “Wait, what?”
“I’d just take yourself up to Bethel. Get new wheels and new tires. They’ll have to put a special order in, you know. Might take awhile, but…this ain’t safe, what you got.”
But there’s no doubt in my mind as the tow truck driver talks, no doubt. My plane leaves early in the morning, and I’m not leaving my car anywhere except the Philadelphia International Airport parking lot. What are the chances that a mechanic’s shop would even remain open on a Friday night? So I watch the driver shake his head one more time, then climb back into his clanking truck, and I wait until he’s pulled back onto the highway and he’s out of sight, and then I drive in the slow lane, my spare tire heating beneath me, catching tiny potholes and bumps in the road and every one of them feels greatly magnified with this weak tire. I turn my radio louder to drown out the high-pitched squealing sounds made by the spare, try not to think long-term right now, only short-term. Airport, I think. Airport. The national fraternity’s “DO IT!” time management program suggests that life is a checkerboard of short and long-term goals, that a successful leader must integrate both. I’m picturing the diagram in The Marathon pledge book, where white is long-term and gray is short-term:
But I’ve discarded or abandoned so many of my goals, and so much has gone wrong, and it feels like I’ve painted over all of it and have a new checkerboard that looks nothing like the original:
*
The drive to Philadelphia should take only five hours, but it’s so bumpy that I’m haunted with visions of my spare tire melting and spinning apart and so I stop every thirty minutes or so. Let it cool. I stop at a Denny’s along the interstate, order a fried chicken sandwich because my head still pounds. Greasy fried chicken with greasy French fries and a small tub of ranch dressing. I sit alone in a booth, still dressed in shirt and tie, and I think my waitress feels sorry for me. Later, I stop at a Super Wal-Mart and wander the aisles and end up in the pharmaceutical section, scanning all the different pain relievers: aspirin, non-aspirin, acetaminophen, ibuprofen, chewable tablets, gel capsules, 24-hour relief, instant relief.
I stop at a rest area, find it difficult to simply sit at a dark picnic table making random phone calls to friends who don’t answer, and so I stop at another Super Wal-Mart because it’s the only store open so late, here in the middle of Nowhere, Pennsylvania.
*
I sleep for four hours in a smoky Sleep Inn, knowing I’ve wasted money from my slim hotel account, knowing I don’t have time to unpack and relax and take anything more than a quick shower, knowing I don’t even have time to shave and iron a new dress shirt…so I wear the same khaki pants and a wrinkled NKE polo when I leave the hotel at 5 AM.
Early Saturday morning, I drive the remaining hour into Philadelphia, the countryside finally crackling into industry and urbanization, cement and steel and glass, blinking intersection lights and car exhaust, thousands upon thousands of cigarette butts tossed from open windows and collecting alongside the curbs, discarded newspaper pages caught in the sweep of wind and fluttering across the highways. Finally I arrive in Philadelphia, at the airport’s long-term parking.
When I find a parking space, though, I don’t want to leave my Explorer.
For three weeks, my damaged car will sit in this lonely spot here at Philadelphia International, naked to thunderstorms and heavy wind gusts, splotches of mud spun from truck tires; children will bump my hood; neighboring car doors will open too far and too quickly, scratching and gashing my paint. My tire will leak, go flat.
My Explorer is packed so tight that sometimes I can feel the engine straining to start; I can feel the slow acceleration, everything sliding on the seats when I brake, my blood-red suitcase knocking gently into my back door or catching in the carpet. I know all the sounds. And after three weeks of nonstop travel, I don’t want to leave it behind. It shouldn’t be this way, that my only functional relationship is with my car, but somehow that’s where I am.
I gather what I need for the next three weeks. Suitcase, garment bag, laptop case.
Three bags: one over my shoulder, one in each hand. That’s all.
The Fun Nazi business card is wedged into the space below my odometer.
Three weeks, I’m thinking, and I could bring it along, pull it out during the inevitable late-night moments when the houses are all screams and club music and sticky liquor residue on my guest-room pillow, and the card can remind me of my purpose, whip me into shape, send me back out to the living room to stop the—
But I flip the card over, look into all that white space, and leave it.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN. Insiders In, Outsiders Out.
At the National Airlines ticket counter just inside Philadelphia International, the e-ticket terminal spits out my credit card without reading it. “Insert a VALID credit card,” it says, the word “valid” capitalized and flashing like I wouldn’t have noticed it otherwise. I re-insert the NKE company credit card and the terminal spits it out once again, repeats the same message.
Wipe my neck and forehead and try to smile for the long line of travelers switching back and forth behind me, and they all stare impatiently, like I’m the guy at McDonalds who’s never seen the menu and can’t decide between a regular cheeseburger and a Quarter-Pounder. I look around for someone at the nearby ticket counter, smile again, expect some burly Pennsylvania security guard to grab me by the neck and grumble into my ear, “Back of the line, buddy,” in the same voice he’d use if I was just some punk fucking with the machine. When I re-insert the credit card, the message changes: “Your credit card cannot be read. Please see a Ticket Agent.” I fumble through my wallet, searching for my debit card instead, and I find it and jam it into the machine but the message won’t disappear, just jeers back at me like I’ve committed a crime. “Fuck,” I say. “Fuck fuck fuck.” Then realize I’ve sworn aloud. Around this crowd, businessmen, families, and I’m wearing this NKE polo, this billboard.
“Sir,” I hear from somewhere distant, and behind the ticket counter someone has materialized. Brown-haired woman in her 40s, tired eyes like she’s seen it all and has no time for this shit. “Sir, you need to come here,” she says, voice burdened by decades of two-pack-a-day cigarette addiction. “We’ll need to input your information manually.” She motions with one old-beyond-its-years hand, then smoothes her frizzy hair back into her ponytail.
I lug my suitcase, my garment bag, my carry-on laptop case to the counter.
Sixteen weeks, I’m thinking. Philadelph
ia to New Mexico State. New Mexico State to Texas Tech. To Fresno State.
“Sorry,” I say. “Airport travel isn’t really my thing. I mostly drive everywhere.”
“Name,” she says. “ID?”
“I mean, I travel a lot, you know? For my company. Just not on planes.”
“Name. ID.”
“Washington.” Hand her my license. “Sorry.”
“Flight number,” she says. Then: “Number of bags you’ll be checking today?” Then: “Siiiiighhhhhh.” She hands me my tickets, fastens stickers around the handles of my luggage, points to the security line fifty feet away.
Then it hits me: she didn’t comment on my Florida driver’s license. For the first time in over a month, someone was uninterested in the distance I’ve traveled. I could tell her that I’ve traveled from Fort Myers, Florida, to Indianapolis, to Kentucky, to East Tennessee, to the mountains of Virginia, to the big cities of Pennsylvania, to the heart of Illinois and back again, and now I’m headed out West…but surrounded by this crowd of middle-aged men in navy blazers and hastily ironed barley-colored dress pants, each of them smelling of hotel rooms and travel-sized bottles of facial lotion, each of them packing the same Jos A Banks travel toiletry bag, each of them representing a different state/ different business…to her, I’m like a junior version of them.
“Ugh,” I say. Sharp pain in my stomach. “Could you, um…closest bathroom?”
She sighs, and it occurs to me that even her sigh—her indication to the world that she is weary—sounds as though it drains her of energy. “Right next to the checkpoint,” she says.
“Thanks. It’s just…too much fast food.”
“Sure,” she says.
Rush to the men’s room, enter the first stall and gag because someone has left sopping brown towels bunched up on the toilet seat, and so I back out and rush to the handicapped stall where I spend the next ten minutes gripping the cold toilet seat, stomach pains persisting. Just dry heaving, though. Nothing more. So look on the bright side, Charlie: now you don’t have to dig through your bags for your toothbrush.