LAST CALL FOR CHARLOTTE
With friends like this...
It took just fifteen minutes.
She came at me, a strutting flamingo, a surreal reveal. I could see her left thigh drenched in Dali’s original handiwork, melting above the knee. A souring clock, a dream catcher, an arrow, sparrow, a bit of obscured script, always cursive, they choose, her tattoos, indigo from head to toe, and her alarming frantic hair, electric pink, a nest for her to rest, maybe to lay an egg or two. Her phone, those indicators, incessant chatter, and she leans in, and the incoming words, I imagine, march and jostle and charge to her lips. The war wages, and her ink cascades to the thirsty floor, ice cream on a humid eve. Oh, Salvador, and I am plugged in.
Into her.
Next, I spy a less comely creature. Never a Star Wars fan, I. Jabba the Hutt, this one undulates into focus, a passable stunt double. She punishes the innocent plastic chair. Is it moaning? A slovenly mess, she opens a pent-up Coke, and it showers her in a sugary orgasmic explosion—we lock eyes, and I smile. A shrug in return, and she wipes herself down with an itinerant sweatshirt, and I imagine elephants at the zoo pampered and hosed, long-handled scrub brushes leaning, soap bubbles foaming and popping and escaping. Still soaking wet, she disrobes a pulsing, bulging burrito and begins, and I become nauseous, and the booming intercom blares a disembodied screed.
Last call for Charlotte.
Last call for Charlotte.
Last call for Charlotte.
The city or the passenger? Does bellowing make it matter more?
Who is that to my left? I can’t tell. The mask is on, then it's off; time to feed—another from the herd, like her before, and a sneeze. Can I hold my breath for the next few hours as the aspirated air dissipates? Maybe I should try for the rest of my life. Charlotte is still missing. Lucky her, the pestilence here, my swaying savannah.
I drag my rattling bag, wheels snickering, take another piss and check my phone. The app is still hanging about, and so is my boarding pass, no matter how often I check. Should I buy pizza, maybe a beer? Nope, I’d have to take out a personal loan, and I am maxed out in many ways. Still, I eye Cinnabon, nostrils flaring, and they post a nutritional statement now. Funny, I think, all the calories are in the center anyway, the oozy, gooey center, so the outer rings must be fortifying. My waistline and their bottom line collide.
We invite parents with small children, military personnel, and people who need extra time to board.
We invite our elite platinum-level passengers to board.
We invite our gold-level passengers to board.
We invite our bronze and star-level passengers to board.
We invite passengers in group A to board.
We invite passengers in group B to board.
We invite passengers in group C to board.
We now grudgingly invite the rest of you miserable bastards to board. If we could leave without you, we would. Unfortunately, we've run out of overhead bins. Thanks for flying the friendly skies.
I guess I qualify as a miserable bastard, and will I or won’t I be that when I land? Who is eager to pick up irritating luggage chasing golf clubs around the baggage carousel? The names invade my mind’s eye now, so many suitcases, and faces, left unclaimed, all written in the sand on a windy day, and all blow through my ephemeral memory, scattered, leaves pursuing the running trees. Their eternal essence drains, too. All that remains, my reins to the past, is a single filament, the one thing worth recalling, if that.
Ingrown hairs, they are now. What …is…her… name...?
Lalani. That’s right. Not as exotic as the label implies. She still owes me money, I think. What do I owe her? Yes, she’s still in my contacts, and I scroll. Time to erase that debt. Bye, Lalani, permanent like, you are gone, and Angeline, too, since she’s dead. Been that way for years, but I haven’t summoned the courage to delete her. Wonder why? Maybe I'd be demising a little bit of me? Could be? I always liked her, and there's Karen, Karin, Kalyn, Talyn, and Telyn, plus Nicole, Nichole, and Nikki. One of that lot means something to me. Hell, if I know which one—or why. Skip it, and I kick that can down the road. They all stay. And so do I, the part of me too stubborn to forget.
Last call for Charlotte.
Damn it.
I open my book, dog-eared, panting, my book.
Quentin climbed up the bank and tried to catch Versh, but Versh ran away, and Quentin couldn’t. When Quentin came back, Versh stopped and hollered that he was going to tell. Caddy told him that if he wouldn’t tell, they’d let him come back. So Versh said he wouldn’t, and they let him.
GD, Mr. Faulkner, how’s a guy supposed to keep up? The window outside is inside now, and I wave my cap, and the old train, the tracks, cut Main Street in half. I hear it, though, screeching steam piercing a crisscross horizon, and I look back for it, and my gaze, trapped, becomes it, evaporating. The glass is complete in my dream, and I am here, about to take flight. I said it so I would not forget it. Home, and being whole.
Last call for Charlotte.
My pink Flamingo is off to Miami. Seems right.
The Coke stain is fading, the fat residing, resting.
All this took fifteen minutes.
Charlotte made her flight.
It brings me hope and delirium.