“Damn,” she said. “It’s like you can penetrate my mind and know exactly what I’m thinking.”
I blushed.
“I haven’t seen you around in a while.” When Delilah touched my arm, hairs stood on end.
“Oh, you know me,” I said. “New Orleans, Hawaii. Bakersfield. I get around. Having fun in Boston this weekend?”
“Yes.” She smiled. “But it could be better. I’ll be spending my weekend in a stuffy hotel with nothing to do.” She looked around to make sure nobody was listening and leaned further in, pushing an extra helping of womanly tissue over the top button. “They have this Jacuzzi that no one ever uses and I was clumsy enough to leave my bathing suit at home. Too bad I don’t have anyone to share it with.”
Alex’s eyes widened.
“Sorry, Delilah.” Blood surged through my flesh. My forehead warmed. “You may be my favorite flight attendant, but alas, my heart belongs to another.”
“Damn, damn,” she said. “Usually a mere suggestion has the power to make men’s rings fall right off their fingers.”
“You should see my Chamberlain grin, then.” I set my latest book over my lap. It was a biography on Charles Schulz by David Michaelis, and the entire cover was emboldened by Charlie Brown’s iconic yellow and zig-zag t-shirt. “Your clothes would come right off.”
“Perhaps you can show me sometime.”
“Sorry, love,” I started to grin then realized and put an immediate stop to it. “My power must be used for good, not evil.”
“Damn, damn, damn,” she said.
2
Checking into our Boston hostel, the desk clerk informed Alex and I of the bad news. There was only one remaining bunk available.
“But I clearly made a reservation for two.” I retrieved a piece of paper from my carry-on as evidence.
“Yes, I see that,” the desk clerk said without a stitch of emotion in him. He yawned. “But the fact remains, we only have one bed available. It’s in the co-ed dorm.”
“But I made a reservation for two.”
“What can I say? It’s the Gay Pride Parade, as you well know. Every single hotel in town is booked. You can take our last bed available or hand it over to our waiting list. You can’t even begin to imagine how many calls I’m getting.”
“I’m not sleeping in the same bed as this guy if there’s the slightest chance that girls may be lurking around,” Alex said. “I don’t want to send the wrong message.”
“You are a couple, here for the Gay Pride parade, are you not?” The desk clerk yawned again. “Because I can make an exception, so long as you don’t tell my manager.” He winked. How is it possible that someone could wink without the slightest hint of emotion?
“Yes,” I cut in. “We’ll take it.”
“Um, I don’t know what you’re on, but I’m not…”
“You are here for the Gay Pride parade, are you not?” Emotionless Desk Clerk said.
“The thing is, Alex gets very timid around heterosexual girls.” I slid my fingers across the counter to caress his hand. “Especially when we’re trying to have some much needed alone time together. But since this is clearly the last bed available in town, we’ll have to put our Y-chromosome blinders on, won’t we, Alex?”
“Oh, alone time, I see,” Emotionless desk clerk said. “Well, we don’t allow any of that here, this being a family establishment and all/” And then he winked again.
“Are you trying to tell me something, because I’m not…”
“Shut up, honey-bunches of oats.” I hissed at Alex. “It’s the last bed in town. You want to sleep in the car?”
“We’ll take it,” Alex said.
“So, I’m curious,” Emotionless desk clerk said. “Which one of you is the male and which one of you is the female?” He winked with emotion this time.
Alex happily erected his finger. “He’s the female.”
3
As soon as we settled in I laced up my jogging shoes for a good workout through the quaint streets of Cambridge before the sun collapsed over the Appalachian Mountains. After the flight and my encounter with Delilah I needed to get some sweat and sexual energy out. Alex said he needed the time to take a dump.
“I’ll be gone well over an hour,” I said.
“My point exactly,” he stared at me.
I didn’t question him.
A little over an hour later I was just finishing up in Harvard Square, gasping for breath as I usually did. It was raining out, slightly at an angle, and I was standing in front of the John Harvard statue when Michael called me on the phone.
“Don Juan Escort Service,” I said, “where you pay for my time and everything else is free.”
“You know how I adopted Saint Augustine so that Aristotle would have someone to play with while you were gone on the road?”
“Mm-hmm,” I said.
“Well Aristotle’s not playing with him. Saint Augustine is hiding under the coffee table as I speak.”
“I’m shocked. My Aristotle?”
“You know how I bought a lot of toys for Saint Augustine to play with?”
“Mm-hmm.” A busload of Asian tourists was grouped around the John Harvard statue rubbing his toes and forming peace signs with their fingers for cameras.
“He’s not playing with any of them. Aristotle’s hoarded every single one into a pile. He just stands over his pyramid staring us down from across the room.”
“I don’t believe a word of it.”
“I think he wants to murder us.”
“Lies,” I said.
“He’s afraid for his life. And I am too.”
“You must have me confused with another dog owner.”
I hung up the phone.
Michael texted me a minute later.
He’s puffing his cheeks and giving me direct eye contact. What should I do?
I sent him a text message of my own.
Me no speak English.
4
Returning to the hostel Alex said he wanted to lick those British ninnyhammers and catch the Spirit of 76 with a viral case of bar hopping, being sure to make a stopover in Cheers, the iconic Boston bar from the TV show. I had just positioned my very sore double-jugg, courtesy of Banyans, into one of the few couches the hostel’s recreation center offered. A piece of tape was bandaged across a single cushion in an attempt to keep its stuffing in and it attempted to pass off as genuine leather, but it felt nice. I wasn’t going anywhere in a while.
“Suit yourself.” I cracked open my new David Michaelis biography, Schulz and Peanuts, and prepared myself for an enticing read. “I’ll catch you later.”
“But it’s Boston.”
“Exemplary observation.” I spoke into the pages of my book.
“Aren’t you going to show a girl a good time?”
“We have all day tomorrow.”
“It’s supposed to rain tomorrow.”
“New England in the rain? I wouldn’t want it any other way.”
“So you’re telling me you actually like the rain?”
“I do.”
“I’m disgusted. You’d never make it in Southern California.”
“Darn.” I never lowered the book. “I guess that’s why I commute several hours to work almost every weekend. Thank the Lord the good people of Boston will have me. We’ll start off early with a jogging tour of Harvard University and Cambridge.”
“While you sleep….”
He’d really fart on my head too.
“Alright. I’ll wake you up after I get back.”
Alex just stared at me.
“After breakfast then.”
Alex didn’t say anything.
“Ten O’clock?”
“I might manage.”
5
I succeeding in reading four entire pages of Schulz and Peanuts before a fellow hosteller came in, sat herself down in the next chair, and asked if I was a fan of Peanuts, except her Swedish accent pronounced it like penis, and as I open
ed my mouth to exclaim my love of Charlie Brown it occurred to me it that she may have possibly implicated either.
“I’m a big Schulz fan.” I put it in a slightly different way. “I like the way he depicts humanity as reeling from the trauma of our own childhood, as though we’re eternally grounded in it, and how we’re all basically driven by our own surmounting insecurities.”
That was the last word that I ever got in. I tried. Believe me, I tried. But she wasn’t one for interruptions, so I set Schulz and Peanuts on my lap and listened as best I could to her infinite coming to America story. There was her father, thrice divorced, something about living with her mother, not to be confused with her best-friend’s mother, who had cancer, and her dog, also twice a mother but no cancer.
Her name was Susana, a proportionate girl in both size and mouth, who apparently never made it past Stockholm until now, making sure to pack everything she owned, including her accent, and thought nothing better of my evening than to drone on and on about how friendly everyone in America was. I sought my rebuttal, but as I was saying, I couldn’t get a word in, so I sat on the sofa glazing my eyes over the television behind her head and her motor-like mouth as it brilliantly matched the words of Larry King on CNN. Alex was probably having the time of his life in Cheers. Where everybody knows your name. I needed a beer.
I took her pause of breath as an excuse to leave for bed on account that I was tired and couldn’t read another paragraph of penis if I’d tried, (I actually said it like that, we’re all reeling from the traumas of our penis years, but she didn’t seem to notice,) and hoped Susana wouldn’t follow me up the stairs and to the room, but since we were apparently sharing the same co-ed dorm… well, there you have it. Even then the talking continued, she on the bottom of one bunk and I another, all in an attempt to bring us to the present; she’d finally claimed her six weeks summer vacation in the states and how so eager she was to finally meet Americans, maybe even a Texan cowboy. And then she went off on cowboys. I wondered if it took Frodo this long to reach Mount Doom.
A German couple was occupying the top of my bunk, and from the sounds of it (and the way my bunk bed creaked) I think it was safe to say they weren’t sleeping. That’s when the motor on Susana’s mouth finally came to a halt. Susana sat on her bunk seemingly paralyzed, eyes wide open and absolutely terrified by the boldness of the German’s dedication to drain all body parts of its sexual fluids. She pulled a blanket past her nose to stare at them, as if the a single white sheet would camouflage her, and all I could see were two bulging eyes in a room softly lit by the lights of the city gleaming through the window.
That’s the last thing I remembered. I closed my eyes hoping the Germans could rock me to sleep before she started up with the ongoing saga.
They must have, because I slept like a baby.
6
I was up at six in the morning, not because I had to, but because Boston was therapeutic before the sunrise bustle. Of course so was Chicago, New York, and Lake Titicaca, but I wasn’t choosy. I had no recollection of when Alex crawled into bed with me. He’d probably been drinking well into the morning, but there he was, hair messed up and breathing soundly when I woke. The Swedish woman opened her eyes long enough to watch me crawl over Alex’s shirtless body and lace my jogging shoes on. I told her to have fun with the Germans. Her eyes widened again. My work here was done.
I jogged Cambridge again in the rain, because one trip to Harvard is never enough, and I didn’t have to spend one hundred and sixty grand in tuition to do it.
7
“I’m so thrilled that you’re taking a walking tour of the Freedom Trail with me,” I told Alex under my blue poncho. “I never have anyone to see America with.”
“Mm-hmm, thrilled,” Alex said under his blue poncho. I detected a hint of sarcasm in his delivery of thrilled. “I’m certainly thrilled to be standing out here in a miserable Boston downpour, so long as you go bar hopping with me tonight.”
“It’s a date.”
The rain spilled with ever increasing intensity. I think bucket is a good word to describe it – and knives. Spilling like buckets and slashing like knives. It was raining like cats and dogs too. In Southern California, it rained like kittens and puppies. But out here, cats and dogs.
“No,” Alex shook his head. “It’s not a date – just bar hopping between two bros. And can we get out of this miserable rain for a moment? I can’t even see the street anymore!”
Indeed, the intersection of Devonshire and State Street, site of the Boston Massacre with the State House in full view, was clearly flooded. I opened my mouth to speak in protest when a dually lumbered by, spun its wheels, and showered me in a fresh heaping of floodwater.
“I’ll be inside.” Alex nudged at Starbucks. I silently followed him.
“Anyways, as I was saying.” I pulled my poncho off and shook my hair the moment we entered Starbucks. “This morning Paul Revere’s house and Bunker Hill, and then this afternoon, the cozy coastal town of Salem.”
“I bet Paul Revere would never have gone riding through a rainstorm like this.” Alex stared out the window with disdain despite the fact that the rain seemed to be letting up. “Dear lord, what is that?” He pointed to my soggy piece of paper that I’d unfolded from my pocket. I’d prepared a carefully laid out timetable, with precise schedules and places lined up in organized slots. “Is that an agenda? Please tell me that’s not an agenda.”
Before I could answer him the rain let up and a patch of sunlight shone through.
“The well-organized always have more fun.” I held my head high. “Boston is a place of heritage and learning. See, the sun’s come out. We’re still on schedule. If you’ll follow me, I’ll kindly direct your attention to Bunker Hill.”
“You owe me another six pack for this.”
Five minutes into our walk it was pouring cats and dogs again, only Grate Danes rather than Chihuahuas and African lions instead of Calico cats.
“I’ve traced my family all the way back to the late middle-ages, you know,” I told Alex after scrambling into the next Starbucks that we come to. “And I have a lot of history here. My twelfth great grandfather Nathaniel Miller was a whaling captain from Rhode Island and Boston Harbor, and his father, Jacob Miller, he came over on the ship right after the Mayflower – just one off from the big time. Then of course there’s Samuel Miller, who was in Salem during the witch trials. Well, actually, he was one town away from Salem, also one off from the big time – but you figure he must have known an accused witch or two. Then of course there’s the French and Indian War….”
“Yes, this is all very fascinating.” Alex trudged back out into another patchwork of sunlight. “But all this talk of history has made me thirsty. I really think we need to stopover in one of these bars. If I have to sit through four hundred years of Miller-Chamberlain history, then we can learn about your family that way. You know, which Chamberlain or Miller drank where and when…. what brand they consumed and how much of it. Perhaps we can replicate centuries of proud drinking history.”
“It’s like this town tells my story.” I stopped in the middle of the Freedom Trail. “I and the town are one.”
A crack of lightning, peel of thunder, and then the rain plummeted down, more violent and vengeful than ever.
“Mm-hmm,” Alex grinned. “Looks like they’ve brought out the welcome party.”
8
It must have been 2 or 2:30 in the morning back at the hostel (after a night of family history via bar hopping), and I was spooning Alex for lack of space on the last available bed in all of Boston. A drunken bunkmate entered the room holding a pitcher of beer (the Germans had moved on and traded in a single Belgian). He stubbed his toe, swore, and sloppily climbed the ladder to the bunk above our heads. Our rude awakening would come within the hour.
“Did you wet the bed?” Alex, the inside spoon, nudged me.
“No, I thought you wet the bed.”
Strangely enough, I’d just had
this dream where a sudden uprising of Boston floodwater drowned the both of us, only in my dream we were drowning in piss. It consumed us. This was worse.
“If you peed on my face, you know I’m going to murder you, right?” Alex said.
“Why does it smell like a brew house in here?”
“That’s not piss.”
Who knew so much alcohol could rain over the drunken man’s mattress, and all from one pitcher. It drenched our pants and our shirts and our faces and our bed sheets. And it kept on spilling in groves. I huddled my body over our camera equipment and let my body take a sacrificial sponge soaking of beer in order to save it.
“This is what happens when you invite Russian racehorses to the Kentucky Derby,” I said.
Several seconds later, once the last of it spilled over, Alex shattered the darkness to howl with uncontrollable laughter. “I’m beginning to think Boston doesn’t want you back.”
9
“What I don’t understand,” Alex said from the passenger seat of our rental car, a JEEP Cherokee, as the last of the Boston rain turned to a drizzle. It was the morning of the wedding. “Is how you do it, how you take pictures like you do.”
“What do you mean?” I reached into the crinkled bag and retrieved a chocolate frosted donut with sprinkles. “I just aim the camera and push the little clicker button.”
“I was watching you in Hawaii. You weren’t just aiming the camera.” He chewed on a chocolate frosted without sprinkles. “Sunrise/Sunset Magazine recently named you the BEST PHOTOGRAPHER with the fewest awards.”
“That’s because I never enter those stupid self-serving back patting popularity competitions. I’m in it for the personal soul searching and not how many people recognize that I’m doing it.”
“I looked over the pictures that I took at the Bakersfield Wedding. They’re awful.”
Wrong Flight Home (Wrong Flight Home, #1) Page 20