She stood there, breathing through her nose, arms folded, balanced on one foot. He looked down with a sigh. It was late, but he’d just had coffee and there wasn’t any point to trying to go to sleep. She wasn’t saying anything, and he couldn’t see beyond his feelings to form any reasonable words to make use of. This was a re run. There was no point. What was the point?
What were we talking about again? Was it how hurt he was from that thing she didn’t do (ever) that started years ago after that time, with those things, and the other time she’d done something similar? Or was it really that she wasn’t listening? Was he listening? Hurt and angry words on the tip of everybody’s tongue, ears filled with cotton, and eyes darting in different directions.
No matter how thoughtfully it begins, no matter how casually, somehow the past arrives in the conversation provoking the stream of “I always” and “you never” and “if only” followed by a barrage of shoulda, coulda and woulda the three ugliest flight attendants on earth.
“Would you like a lukewarm coffee with milk to go with your shame and damage sir?”
“Yes please!” He said with a shit eating grin. “Extra milk!”
“I’m sorry sir, I’ll have to see if there’s enough milk for everyone on the aircraft today. If there is I’ll bring you your coffee with extra milk.”
“I’ll just take it without the extra milk please…” He said desperately, but it was too late. The polyester wrapped hips had already rubbed past his shoulders and the ruddy face of the flight attendant was already placating the woman with two children in the row behind him. The faded blonde working the other side of the cart had been watching him, but she averted her eyes and went off to get some more ice. They never seem to run out of ice on an airplane.
She walked back toward the galley, frustrated with her job. She had expected this gig to be different than this. She really hadn’t known what to actually expect, but this was like day-care in the air. People were stupid, and she was going to throttle Marina if she didn’t stop control tripping everyone, every chance she got. One good thing about this job was that she would never have to see any of these tired old women again. She would sit with them in the galley, and listen to them stab the others in the back, or brag about how much more money they made on third tier than she did on fifth tier. Union, infidelity, gossiping waitresses in the sky. Like geese in a pond. Maybe she could go back to school? She wasn’t ever going back to school. Who was she kidding? She set the blue plastic bag full of ice into the opaque white bucket and picked it up, and headed back to the cart. She could already hear Marina’s voice saying that there weren’t enough Eagle Snax for the obese man to have two packets. That was her trick. If someone asked for more than one, she wouldn’t give them any.
“I can understand what you are saying. Is there more?”
She stands there, exhausted and angry. It’s late, and this is going nowhere. He is so sad. She is so sad. How did this happen? Where did this anger come from? Where did his friend go? They silently walk into the adjacent room and sit on the couch to watch television. Their program hasn’t begun yet, so he flips the channels and hands her the remote. She doesn’t move, so he rests it on her lap and tries to smile. It would be so nice to light up a smoke. Smoking in the living room was nice. Smoking in the bathroom was nice too. Smoking outside sucks.
As the program begins she touches him softly and says, “I hear what you’re saying. Is there more?”
“No.” Waves of fatigue roll over him. Her exhausting silence, and his delusional belief that if he could explain it all one more time then everything would be fine. It’s a lie. What would be fine? What would be different? Nothing. Forget it, no, no there’s nothing more. It doesn’t matter. Forget it.
While the program plays on the television a meeting convenes in the mezzanine level board room. It is a dance recital. Seventeen children are dressed in glittering costumes, and stand ready for the lights to switch on, and the music to begin. An exhausted man is seated at an old upright piano, his lips are pursed as if he has someone else’s hair on his tongue. He thought he’d gotten it off in the bathroom, hacking, gagging, nearly vomiting and then spitting into the toilet. But now that he was seated here, about to begin, he realized the hair was still there on his tongue.
The pale green lights rise softly, and his fingers press down onto the keys. The children leap, and pose. They are delightful. Their pink cheeks glow with concentration and exhilaration. Cameras flash, fathers kneel in the isle to record the performance on their digital video recorders. Grandparents fall asleep, cousins fidget in their seats, but mostly parents grin with delight as the green lights and sparkling flash of the costumes reflect in their eyes.
The leading ladies roll out in perfect pirouettes, balanced on one leg, quickly switching, and then swooning as the boys arrive. They hoist the girls into the air, and hold them there. With a soft three quarter turn, they slowly bring them down with a whoosh and they are all whirling across the reflective surface of the floor. Parents applaud, and one boy looks into the audience. His eyes search over the faces of everyone, and then return to the dance.
For some strange reason the music doesn’t sound classical. Listening carefully it sounds like something by AC/DC stretched out over time. Something about the D minor scale, and the weight of the pianist’s hands give a droning heavy metal undercurrent to what should be delightful and lyrical music. Children in headless panda costumes march across the stage with five foot replicas of the ‘High Voltage’ album cover raised over their heads between their paws. Angus Young, or someone dressed like Angus Young does a dramatic slide out into the spotlight and wails out an unheard guitar solo. The pianist is biting his lower lip as well in the shadows. The audience is clapping along. The lights change from green and yellow wash with a red spot, into a pure blue spotlight and everyone fades into the background.
A lone dancer streams from one side of the floor to the other. She moves in circles on her tippy toes, looking cautiously over her shoulder as if the light were going to catch her. the circles get smaller and smaller until she leaps into the shadows, and then turns and reaches longingly for the light. she repeats this dance several times, and finally stumbles and falls, extending her arms toward the center of the light. for a moment it appears she will get there. The audience hold their breath. Everyone hopes that she will break free of the darkness, and step into the light. Reaching with all of her might she trembles and makes a horrible face. Spit sprays from her gritted teeth and she gasps for air. The rouge on her cheeks is upstaged by the flush of blood in her skin. The light slowly goes out as her arm stiffens, and fingers grow still. Her head collapses onto the floor.
Men in red uniforms swing open the doors, ushering the parents out onto the balcony level. Wide stairs with brass banisters lead steeply down to the lobby where children are already rushing out from some unseen stage door to greet their families. Makeup hastily removed, and costumes covered by down jackets and mismatched overcoats. More pictures, hugs and kisses.
“You were wonderful!”
“What a show!”
The flight attendant never returns with the coffee. The paper leaves a crease in his face. A man he hasn’t seen before is standing at the door as he departs, and with a bashful smile he glances at his package, and then thanks him and says “bu-bye now” with a kind of distasteful finality. He steps into the airport and walks past what looks like seventeen Starbucks, eleven Hudson News stands, and two elderly Philippino women greet him with a slap across the face with their gloves as he mistakes their ATF approved 19″ rack case for his own.
The program is over. The television is switched off mid-sentence and the remote controls are placed neatly in a row on top of the cabinet. Doors are closed, speakers pushed back, and the table adjusted. And the lights are switched off for the night.
“It’s stopped raining”
“It’s supposed to start again.”
“Tomorrow?”
“All weekend.”
“Good night.”
“Night”
3 Comments
Did you dream any of this? Or was any of it the result of meditation, or those vivid flashes that just happen and you have to write down? Such cinematic imagery. The children dancing, then the bizarre shift to rock performance, the poor dancer who fell…what happened to her? She became unconscious (she didn’t die did she)?
And how poignant the pseudo-exchange between the man and the woman, played out so many times to little effect. The familiar inescapable roles we can fall into in relationships, worn threadbare and useless, but still we don them out of habit.
Power trips, struggles with self-esteem and identity, alienation…There’s a lot in this story.
I liked this, s.
Well, despite my inability to express the bittersweet depths of Sunday, I was filled with sharp implements of emotion, and wanted to shift between them in an audacious way.
The idea was that a conversation is not simply a conversation, two people at stalemate, their minds ablaze with a hundred things. This piece attempted to embellish the space between. In metaphor, naturally, but the dance of unsaid words, unexplored thoughts, feelings which swell, pique, and then fade. The dance performance is the best example of the life of those feelings. The dancer in the spotlight at the end was just the fading of the traverse from many thoughts, and feelings into anger, into sadness, then back to the civility of air travel, and then back to the room where simple things are carried out, and the story ends.
A visual tale of the life of unstated emotion. How it has a life of its own in our head, in our heart, and where it goes, why it doesn’t return until the next time. The space between.
Thank you, Sunshine for enabling me to plumb the depths of your story. I understand now. I feel you, believe me.