“How can I help to accelerate the process?”
“There you go. You’ve understood me right away.” Scott smiled. “You and I can understand and listen to each other instead of having to repeat the same thing over and over again like we do with Mike from your team. When I have similar conversations with Mike, it always turns into an argument. You see, Zack, ICONIQ doesn’t pay a lot to,” Scott leans over his desk, making finger quotes, “the participating volunteers. The centers can hardly gather the minimum number of patients required to legitimize their research results before the Department of Health, whose administration has to approve the drug, which in turn has to be in drugstores before Christmas. Some centers operate with whomever they have or come across. Your job is to monitor this process carefully. But when some of your diligent examinations find a violation and disqualify a patient—which happens,” Scott sighed, “well, quite often—sometimes a whole clinical site falls through the cracks. Here, for example, last month, you’ve rejected,” Scott quickly consulted the folder on his desk, “three, four, five . . . eight patients. Two of them will drag two centers down with them and these two clinics will have to drop out of the study. And what this actually boils down to,” Scott waves the folder in the air, “is a couple of mistakes on the part of the personnel collecting the participants’ data.”
“One of the girls jumped from the twenty-seventh floor a week after that. If I had left her in study and she had done what she did while taking our drugs, the media would have destroyed us!”
“That’s why we’re grateful, Zack! That’s why you are an invaluable associate.”
“Thanks.”
“Having said this, though, if we carry on this way—if everybody is as detail-oriented as you are—it’ll be hard for us.” Scott slams the report back on the desk and furrows his brow—that’s how he illustrates deep concern. “It’ll be hard.” He shakes his head. “It will be really hard for us.”
“So, I shouldn’t dig into the details so much?”
“No, no, I never even thought of saying something like that.” Scott throws his arms in the air. “Be as detailed as you want.”
“But not too much?”
“I haven’t said that.”
“So I should be detailed. Because my first responsibility is the well-being of our patients. But I should also make sure we have results.”
“Exactly!” Scott exclaims and claps his hands. “It’s all about results. And the well-being of the patients.”
*
At the last second, I see the brake lights of the truck ahead of me. I hear his loud horn and sharply swerve to the left to pass. But there, the shining lights of the oncoming vehicles blind me as I manage to hit the brakes and get back in my lane. I take a deep breath, rub my eyes and try to calm down. I realize that I was inches away from an accident and I offer one more thank you prayer to the one above. And just then I realize what I had seen in the split-second before avoiding the crash. I saw two glowing red spots in the bushes to the left of the highway—perhaps a vehicle’s brake lights? I pull over on the shoulder and shift into reverse. I drive backward for quite a while until I see the sharp tire marks on the asphalt and the tail-lights in the dark green shrubbery. In the twilight, the back of the pick-up truck would have been invisible if it weren’t for the red brake lights. Perhaps the truck driver in front of me had also seen them and had hit his brakes, nearly killing me. I jump out of my car and cross the highway. I stop in the middle for a second to let a car pass. The back of the pick-up is hanging in the air. The wheels are still turning.
Just then, I see a woman slowly step out of the shadowy bushes next to the side of the pick-up. She sways back and forth. Cars zoom between her and me. I lift up my camera, open the aperture to two, and take a few shots. In the dusky bluish twilight, only her silhouette—cut horizontally by long white lines, the headlights of passing automobiles—will be visible. Damn, I grabbed the Nikon, and even used it completely instinctively. I hang it around my neck. The woman across from me keeps rocking back and forth as if mourning someone.
“Hey!” I yell. She starts walking toward me. “No!” I scream frightened. “No!” I gesture for her to stay where she is. I make eye contact. “Stay there!” Two cars pass, one between me and her, and one behind me. I see the headlights of several more cars, which are too close for me to cross the two lanes that separate us. She seems not to notice the speeding automobiles. It’s strange that they also seem to ignore us. For a moment, all this seems unreal—this unknown twilight, this unknown swaying woman, the road between us. “Don’t move!” I shout. “Don’t move!” She stares at me with bleary, uncomprehending eyes until I manage to cross over to her side. “Is there anybody in there?” I point at her vehicle. “Is there any one else with you?” She shakes her head. “No? No? Thank God. OK. OK.” I wonder what to do, I don’t know what to do, goddammit. “Are you OK?” She keeps shaking her head. “No? You are not OK? Are you hurt?” A tall, white pick-up truck with absurdly big tires and round lights on top of the cabin slows down and blows its horn. Laughter, booing, a beer bottle shatters a few yards from where we are. Somebody screams “assho-o-o-o-ole” as it disappears toward Albuquerque. “Are you hurt? Does it hurt anywhere?” Then, she lifts up her arm and makes a horizontal gesture in front of her throat. “You can’t talk?” Her eyes, I notice now, are filled with tears, but not a single one falls. “What’s your name?” She repeats the gesture. Maybe she has something in her throat and cannot speak. Maybe it’s the shock. She makes the same gesture again and, only then, a tear rolls down her cheek. She opens her mouth and struggles to utter something. I reach for her arm. Finally, she manages to squeeze out a few words:
“I wanna . . .” A huge semi is approaching. I see how she measures the distance with the corner of her eye, pushes me aside abruptly, and attempts to jump in front of it. I manage to grab her waist and press her to my body until the danger passes. She doesn’t resist. Her whole body reeks of alcohol. “I wanna . . .”
“Not here,” I say. “Not like this.”
Half an hour later, the failed suicide and I sit in the 66 DINER—a classic joint, as if teleported from the forties—and quietly sip coffee. She tries to concentrate on the menu as I check out the black and white photos on the walls.
The 66 DINER—the lights, the juke box, the Budweiser signs, the maroon seats, the chrome, the tables, the ketchup, the salt shaker, the pepper shaker, the middle-aged waitress with the coffee pot . . . Americana, Americana, Americana . . .
The 66 DINER, I learn from the photos, burned down in 1995, but, fortunately for everybody, three years later—under new ownership—it was completely restored to its former glory.
I don’t know her name. I don’t want to know it. We are waiting for some Joey guy, whom she called from the pay phone by the restrooms. Joey who will come pick her up so I can go on my way. She doesn’t have any relatives. She doesn’t have any friends. She doesn’t know what happened. She has no memory of what took place. Oh, yeah, she wanted to . . . and again the gesture towards her throat, but it didn’t work, obviously. She wanted—Bam! Bam!—and that’s it. But, in life, I guess, if you are out of luck, you are out of luck and that’s that. An even bigger loser will show up and ruin the whole thing, trying to save your life. Why in the world did I have to show up there?
“Some more coffee, hon?” The waitress asks her.
“We are ready to order,” I say.
“No, we are not,” the woman says.
“Yes, we are.”
“I’m not.”
“I have to go.”
“Then go. Joey is coming to pick me up, I told you. Go.”
“I will as soon as Joey shows up,” I say. “The lady here would like to order something to eat.”
“A half-pound burger with cheddar cheese, please, and fries. Rare. Add bacon on it. Lots of it.”
I order spicy Buffalo wings.
“And what can I get you to drink?”
“Octob
erfest draft, please,” I say.
“I want a Bud.” The waitress looks at me, I shake my head “no”, and she fill up her coffee cup.
“One little beer,” the woman begs.
I shake my head.
“Just one?”
“When your Joey comes, do whatever you want.”
“I want to die.”
“I got that.”
“So?”
“I can’t help you.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t like helping people.”
“What’s your name?”
“My name is Zack.”
“Zack, I don’t want to live.”
“That makes two of us.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“I’ve got an idea.”
“Yeah?”
“Let’s die together.”
“No, thanks.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to die with other people.”
“OK then, you die by yourself. I’ll watch.”
“I don’t feel like dying in Albuquerque.”
“Where do you want to die?”
“Where I was born.”
“Why?”
“That’s what lions do.”
“How do you know what lions do?”
“Animal Planet.”
“So you’re a lion?”
“I am a lion.”
“Then why are you such a sad lion?”
“My lioness left me.”
“Where is she?”
“Gone.”
“Big deal. You’ll find another lioness. Can you order me just one beer, Zack?”
“No.”
*
Two hundred and ninety-seven.
That is the annual average number of sunny days where we live. Yet, I can’t remember a gloomier year than the last one. I wandered aimlessly through airports and hotels, read tabloids, watched CNN, ate Toblerones, followed the stock exchange, and dressed like a widower. Why had I been so sad, I wonder, now, when Stella was healthy, sound, and at home? So what if she had a little crush on some artist. Maybe it was temporary, maybe it wasn’t anything serious, maybe she simply needed a break from me. It wasn’t the end of the world. Maybe in I-won’t-mention-his-name she found something that I didn’t have. But what was it? His passion for his work, his belief in his own importance, his successes, his confidence that the world would know his name and work, his megalomania? How arrogant do you have to be, for God’s sake, to paint canvases as big as Niagara Falls? What’s so goddamn important to express that you have to use canvases that large?
Or perhaps those were the sizes of the holes in your soul, Artist, which you try to conceal with buckets of paint?
I learned everything that was out there about Bernard Foucault. I even dug into the crown of his family tree, trying to find an explanation. His father, an entrepreneur, had supported his only son through his undergraduate years in Lyons, then as a graduate student in Paris, and later in America. His father was still available if needed. But now, he wasn’t needed. Bernard Foucault was on his way to becoming one of the most successful artists of the new century. Nothing in his biography suggested, even in the slightest, Stella’s mysterious withdrawal from me.
*
An hour later, still no Joey. But she won’t stop whining that she’s bored. She’s sobering up now, and asks me where I’m going.
“New York.”
“Can I come with you?”
“No way.”
“Why not?”
“You wanted to die, didn’t you?”
“Exactly. I will die of boredom riding with you.”
“Boredom? You have no idea who you’re dealing with here,” I snap. “I’m funny.”
“You’re boring.”
“I am hilarious.”
“Boring.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You are, too.”
“No.”
“Yes, yes, yes, yes, you are boring!”
“Shh, be quiet.” I put a finger to her lips. On the TV above the bar, I see the San Diego suburbs in flames.
“You’re boring!” Pictures of buildings and trees on fire. “Buy me a beer. Only one beer, please.” The Santa Ana winds, human nature, the original human anti-nature, fire, Prometheus, knowledge, the greed, the madness, the self-destruction, deeply coded in our DNA . . . “I want beer. And I don’t have any money.”
“Where’s your money?”
“In my wallet. You took my wallet.”
“Excuse me?”
“My wallet’s missing, my ID is missing. HAS ANYONE SEEN MY WALLET!?”
“Be quiet!”
“Buy me a beer then!”
“I won’t!
“Buy me a beer or I’ll scream.” The wild fires keep creeping west toward the ocean. The governor has declared a state of emergency. The president has declared a state of emergency. “Hey!” She yells. “What are you watching over there?”
“It’s burning.” I say.
“What’s burning?”
“California’s burning.”
“What do you care about California? We’re in fuckin’ New Mexico!”
“The fire’s very close to where I live,” I say. “My neighborhood’s next.”
“You have a neighborhood?”
“No, I have a house.”
“Hey, motherfucker, you have a house and you don’t wanna buy me a beer? Why can’t you buy me a beer? Why don’t you buy me a house, too? I want a house, I want kids, I want to die, where’s my wallet? Why did you take my ID? Where am I? Why did you kidnap me, who the hell are you? WHO ARE YOU?! Please don’t hurt me, please don’t hurt me, I want to go home, please take me home . . .”
A few heads from the neighboring tables turn in our direction. I take her by the arm. She pulls it back abruptly.
“DON’T TOUCH ME! DON’T YOU DARE TOUCH ME! I DON’T KNOW YOU! HELP!” She starts scratching the place on her arm where I touched her as if there are insects crawling underneath. “WHO ARE YOU? I DON’T KNOW YOU! LEAVE ME ALONE!” I get up quickly and make an attempt to call the waitress, but a man in a flannel shirt and a Red Sox cap blocks my way, fixing his belt.
“Is there a problem, pal?” He asks.
“No.” I attempt to go around him.
“What about the girl?” The flannel shirt blocks my way.
“What about her?” Only now I notice that the woman I saw rocking back and forth next to the pick-up truck’s red tail-lights alongside the freeway is actually a girl no older than nineteen.
“I think the girl is upset.” The flannel shirt lifts a plastic cup to his mouth and spits tobacco in it.
“Leave him alone, Randall.” I hear the waitress.
“I don’t know this girl,” I say.
“Then why is she upset?” He turns his baseball cap backward and advances on me.
“I haven’t upset anybody,” I say.
“You’re making me upset.”
“Hey, hey . . .” I flip out. “I found this kid by the highway. She’s been in a car crash. We’re waiting for her friend Joey to arrive . . .”
All of a sudden, a jug of coffee smashes over the baseball cap and splashes me with hot brown liquid.
“You dumb redneck, leave my man Zack alone!” The girl jumps between the flannel shirt and me, holding the handle of the coffee pot. Two more flannel shirts jump up from the tables around us, grab her and twist her arms behind her back. The flannel shirt with the baseball cap, with a painfully twisted face and a hand over his left eye, makes his way toward the bathroom.
“Fuck! You bitch, you fucking bitch!” Coffee is dripping from his yellow mustache.
“Randall, don’t think about it, or I’m calling the police.” The waitress yells in panic. A youngster in jeans, a brown leather jacket, and long blond hair enters.
“Joey. Joey!” The girl waves her hand. “Over here.”
I leave money on the table and
rush out. Getting into my car, it crosses my mind that 66 Diner sounds like a title of a short student film, shot on 16 mm and shown to an audience of about thirteen people, relatives and friends, on a cold rainy afternoon.
*
I make just one more stop in New Mexico. In a small parking lot in front of a liquor store, a plump Native American bangs on a ritual drum, his eyes squinting, and his right ear lowered to the leather, humming gutturally. Another Indian, dressed in a Navajo poncho, slowly dances, shifting the weight of his heavy body from one white Puma sneaker to the other. A few more fellows are watching the dance indifferently, sipping from brown paper bags.
I walk into the liquor store and buy water, chips, and a bottle of bourbon.
I drive toward Texas on the desolate night highway. The white line of the road hits the hood ornament of my car at 140 miles per hour.
I love American roads at night. The prairie outside is dark and cold. The American West. Ever since I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a part of this. But why? Is it possible that I had simply been charmed by the idea of the West, the West of absolute, raw freedom? I grew up with my grandparents’ fairy tales, with innumerable stories of our own national heroes—my mom read me to sleep every night.
The American West, however, was the myth I discovered on my own in books and, later, in films. The myth that included all other myths. In my American West, there was a place for everybody—for Old Firehand and Winnetou, Levsky and Jesse James, for the Apaches and Benkovsky’s Flying Squad, for Sitting Bull, Ivanko, King Arthur, Botev, Richard the Lionhearted, and Budyonny . . . In my American West there was room for all of these horsemen. In my American West, they were all Sons of the Great Bear. As a child, I often fantasized that the hordes of Khan Asparuh were closely related to the Iroquois.
I remember when our history teacher took us on a field trip to the archaeological museum where we were shown the restored head of a Thracian chieftain, I was ecstatic. It was the face of an American Indian. So that means the Thracians and the Indians . . . and since Bulgarians are part Slav, part Thracian . . . so I, too, am maybe related to . . . I fell asleep tangled in my own infantile hypotheses.
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