They ate some more.
"Do you create anything?" he asked.
"No." Lourdes never thought of it as a deficit.
"Right," Mike said. "Bet you never thought of doing it before?"
Lourdes looked at him, wondering if he was psychic. "I never-" She didn't want to disclose her life story to him.
"That's alright. I'm sorry," he said.
"No, it's okay. I never thought about it. I have been focused on other things, I guess."
"You know, the reason I talk to people about it? Because I find that if they do create something in their life, to express themselves, they feel better as a person. I think it's a way to reach out to other people in an emotional way.
"Jim's big on that with everyone. He's the reason I do so much of it, because I realized I'm hungry for it. I think I always have been, and when I was drinking, I made it worse because that drives people away."
Lourdes looked at him warily.
"No. I am not coming on to you, Love. I'm saying that I think-like Jim does-that there is a fundamental need in all of us to do that, to reach out. I learned it from him. So he encourages people to get into some form of expression-to become artists, if you will-and that if we don't, we get stuck in ourselves, and that messes us up."
Lourdes didn't respond to him again.
"I don't know what's wrong," he said, "but you seem hurt about him, so I'm sharing what I think about that."
"You're a good person, Mike."
"Right you are," Mike said. "And I think you are, too."
Nothing from Lourdes again.
"That's alright, Love. You're not into talking tonight? That's okay. So I'll do all the talking for both of us-bad habit of mine, anyway. So if you get tired of me, just let me know, okay?"
Lourdes nodded and took another bite.
Mike took a bite as well, and talked right through it.
"I eek out a living doing my art now and then. Millie is a musician, like Jim. She plays the piano and sings. Connie used to garden. That was her art. And so I wondered what yours might be. You look like you could be one of those folks who attaches balloons to a chair and tries to fly around the world with it."
Lourdes enjoyed his teasing and tried feebly to smile at him, but in her own heart, she felt like dirt sinking through the ocean's depths to hidden craters below.
She tried to talk with Mike, nonetheless. "I don't know. Maybe I could express myself as a hermit in a cave."
"Right. There you are. You could paint little figures on the cave wall of things you hoped for, and maybe the gods would make them true for you? Paint a little- What would you paint up there?"
Whale dung, Lourdes thought.
"I can't choose an art right now, Mike."
Mike nodded and ate some more.
"You know, I was in a worse way when Jim found me that first night in K.C. Actually, I found him, I guess. I'm sure he didn't go into it with you; he doesn't talk about other people. One of the things I admire in him. But I was worse off than I'm sure you know. Because I wasn't just into alcohol; I was into anything. Messed up, terribly."
The nurse in Lourdes perked up.
"Not messed up my whole life, though. But I'm an artist, of mentality. And I wanted to come over from England to the Midwest to get into the rustic scenery and express myself in contrast to it. Like do an oversized, multi-colored mosaic tile sculpture of Peter Frampton and sell it to a cattle feed lot? I had this big idea I was going to sell my bits everywhere and be appreciated for my work, and it didn't happen. I was a flop. And then I got depressed and found myself doing drugs and drinking."
Lourdes stopped eating and looked over at him, for the first time of the evening.
"Nobody is more messed up than I was. Because not only was I homeless at the time, but I actually met Jim because I mugged him."
"No way."
"That's right," Mike said. "It was outside a movie theatre after dark, in K.C. He was in the parking lot with his Connie, getting into their car, and I attacked him. I was strung out, so I don't remember all of it, but I attacked him-meant to pummel him with my fists until he gave me his wallet, I did."
"Mike!"
"I know! How stupid. Because there were two of them." He laughed at himself. "I did my work, and then right when I was getting to the part where I get paid, she hit me on the back of the head with a brick without so much as a by your leave. And then he got the best of me and held me down bodily until the Bobbies came-and then," Mike said, "he tried to talk the police into not arresting me! He said I should go to a home instead."
"You're kidding! You mugged him?"
"That I did! And Connie, particularly, got very upset about the whole thing, even though it was a proper mugging by all accounts, following the Robert's Rules of Mugging Order to a 'T.' I should have had a card printed up."
They both laughed.
"I was so messed up during that time, they made the term up after me. I-" He looked at his food and back over to Lourdes: "Tell me what's worse than that? A shallow, misguided person who hurts other people so he can do something else that hurts himself, too."
Lourdes wondered what more he'd say, but he clammed up.
"There are a lot of things worse," she said.
"Not by my way of thinking," he said. "I was so lost, I didn't even know what a compass was, let alone follow one-like deep in the clouds, upside down and backwards, without so much as a cane to tap with-and there was no way out of it, for me. Really! I think if Jim hadn't come along, I'd have wound up dead in an alley somewhere, or a cheap hotel room, if you know what I mean."
"I know what you mean," she said. "What happened?"
"The both of them tried to talk the police into sending me to a drug rehab house instead of jail, but the police would have none of it. They took me away in irons and chained me to the wall. But then Jim talked to the judge, asking me to go to rehab, and Counselor Troi stepped in-"
"Off the Enterprise?" she asked.
"Yup. Straight off the bridge."
"You don't mean the real Marina Sirtis? I saw her once in Hollywood."
"No. I mean the character from Star Trek."
Lourdes looked at him questioningly.
"I'm kidding with that," Mike said with a smile. "Gotcha! But I mean in real life, a regular counselor."
Lourdes shook her head for missing the joke. "Sorry," she said.
"That's okay," Mike said. "The best part of the whole thing, I think, was the Alcoholics Anonymous that was attached to it, because in there I found out there were other poor sods just as badly off as I was-and I got that connection Jim talks about. It was the first time I ever did.
"It was the reaching out that did it, and being open to other people reaching out, too. And I learned the most important thing in the world, to me: that, if you're open to life, there are things that can still hurt you, but there are other things-maybe even things you'd never expect-that give you the things you really need. And if you aren't open to life? Then you don't get the good things, and the lack of connection makes you hurt worse, right on top of your other crap that still hurts."
Mike smiled at Lourdes. "Jim gave that to me. Not all by himself, but through him, it did."
Lourdes knew there was more to the story because somehow they grew together, but she also knew she couldn't get it all in one evening.
"You guys are best friends. Do you have the keys to his house?" she asked.
"It took me years to earn Connie's trust. She kept thinking I'd steal to go back to drugs-which includes alcohol, you know. But Jim seemed to believe in me right away.
"And yes." He fished out his key chain, selected one in particular with some red paint on it. "This one's his house, and even though I've never used it, it's my greatest treasure."
Lourdes looked almost embarrassed to ask her next question. She looked around at the other tables. No one was paying them any attention. "How did you live down mugging him? You must have felt soooooooo humiliated."
&n
bsp; "It was harder than petrified- Woops! Lady present," Mike smiled. "About a month after all that, Jim came to one of my A.A. meetings in K.C."
"He's an alcoholic?"
"No. I am. My meeting. He came to see how I was doing and we talked. And there was never any recrimination out of him. It was more like a natural understanding of where I was, and we work with that. But Connie was a different story for me. I feared facing her. Maybe I associated her with my mother. But the A.A. group said I needed to face her, so I did. I stood right there on the porch of their farm house and introduce myself as their mugger and told her the whole story- Braced for it, I was. Ready for her to bash me with a board. And she looked it, too. The devil herself, she was. Because I'd hit her husband and tried to rob him. And I don't blame her."
"What did she do?" Lourdes asked.
"It probably made her proud," he said. "She never did hit me, but she didn't let me in, either. She made me stand on the porch while I talked and then she told me in a kind but plastic-distant way to 'F' the opposite of On and she slammed the door."
Mike smiled for some reason, and Lourdes laughed at him. He was a natural comic.
"Have a roll, Love?" Mike slid the basket of rolls over to Lourdes, to compliment her meal.
Lourdes had one and began buttering it. "So?" she asked.
"I was shook up. So I went back to my A.A. group and told 'em. And they said I had to back and tell Jim, so I did. He was out in the shed building his plane and took me in over there. That was me: humble hat in hand, begging people to help me live with myself. You can't undo stuff like that. You just gotta learn through it."
Lourdes knew he was talking about the mugging, drugs, all of it. "Did you feel shame in it?"
"Yes, I did. How couldn't I? These good people, and I hurt 'em so I could steal from them. And I was so messed up I let drugs mess me up further. I was totally nothing I'd want to be, and it was official with a police record and everything. Yes, I was ashamed. But that was part of the A.A. thing there: if you run from your issues, they control you. If you face them, you can handle them, and in some cases, get past them."
"Do the people in town know about all this?" Lourdes asked.
"Yes, they do."
"How did they learn of it? What did you do?"
"At first, I was humiliated- The courage it took to go to their farm and face Connie, and then to go back and face Jim?"
Mike hung his head and looked embarrassed to talk.
Lourdes remained silent, hoping not to disturb his thought process.
"I was afraid," Mike continued, "that they'd hurl daggers at me with their words, that somehow evil death would hit me for being there. I didn't know. Tar and feathers? Dressing me down with jagged bits duly earned? That I'd walk down the street and old ladies would spit at me? I was afraid they'd strip me down and expose my nakedness, right there on Main Street, and that everyone would snarl and laugh at my crooked penis or something-"
Lourdes raised her eyebrows.
"-humor, there, again, love."
Lourdes shook her head at missing another joke.
"-and then while they scorned me, I feared I'd blow up, explode from too much evil pressure in me. I didn't know what would happen, but facing a group with all I was, was more than I could handle.
"Which was why I had to do it, and probably one of the reasons I'm still dry today."
"Why?" Lourdes asked.
"Because I did face them, and I learned the lesson that my scary fears were my own, private issue-that, believe it or not, other people didn't feel as sickening about my issues as I did, and many didn't even care. Hell: If I were to run for Mayor and say how hard this life has been-there are some who would appreciate it, but there are others who would wonder why I was even bringing it up, they care so little.
"It turned out to be not important to them except they're glad I got better," he said.
"So they know because Jim and Connie told them?" Lourdes asked.
"No. They know because I told them. I had to face the fear they'd find out. And it turned out they were proud of me for overcoming. But the evil, hating, paralyzing humiliation I felt inside? They didn't feel that. It wasn't their issue, it was mine.
"And that's what's so great about it. That's why I don't melt down, nowadays, when I work another fear into my life. Because I learned fear is just an emotion. It's not a thought process. It's not a real thing in life like poverty, or hate crimes. It's just an emotion, and my fear is in my head, not other people's.
"So I learned to handle things instead of run from them, and it turns out handling them is a lot easier than running, and costs less, too," he said with a smile.
"God," he apologized. "I haven't shared my ugly bits in years. I'm sorry to go on about it all with you. That can be onerous."
"No, Mike. I think it's beautiful," she heard herself say-and there she was, not minding, and even thinking it beautiful, that someone else shared what humiliated him. And she noticed: she cared for his trial, but she noticed she didn't feel his humiliation in it, like he'd said.
"Do you tell other people about your humiliation? Are you public about it?"
"Not any more. I don't know why I told you-probably because you're with Jim, now. After I learned the lesson, I quit jabbering about it. Nowadays, I don't bring it up with folks any more. No need, I guess."
Her phone rang. She grabbed it out of her purse. "Hello?" She listened with pain showing on her face. "You're there?" she asked, then to Mike, "They're at home, already."
"It's an RV," Mike said.
Listening on the phone, Lourdes tried to summarize for Mike: "They got there just before dark."
"Lucky sod," Mike said. His phone rang and he answered it also. "Millie," he quietly mouthed to Lourdes, who nodded.
Lourdes listened to Jim on the phone, feeling a mixture of thankfulness and sick depression. She said little through most of it.
"Jim-" she finally said, then listened some more. After a couple of minutes, the call was ended on the other end.
CHAPTER 28
The next morning, Lourdes was over at Millie's motorhome bright and early, helping Mike get things stowed for their return trip-or, rather, Lourdes was doing it, and mike was mentally "organizing."
The car was already hitched up.
Lourdes didn't know Mike and Millie well and had no business, she felt, taking charge there, but Mike didn't seem like he'd do a job Millie would like, so she jumped in and did it. And Mike didn't seem to mind.
After about a half an hour, everything was ready to go, and Lourdes gave him the all-clear.
Mike sat in the driver's seat up front, turning to her. "What happened between you two, Love?" he asked Lourdes. "I don't want you to talk about him, per se, but how could I not ask? You seemed so happy, but now-?"
Lourdes put some cleaners under the sink in the galley and turned to leave by the side door.
She didn't feel like talking.
She stepped out the side door of the motorhome to stand near a picnic table there. Images of Jim sifted through her mind, of their time together at Oshkosh, and of him back on a farm she could only imagine.
Where was he now? She didn't really know. He was gone. She felt disconnected, and now even Mike was leaving, also.
Mike followed her out the door to stand near her.
Tears welled up in her eyes and fell on their own.
"He asked me to marry him," she said.
"Marry you!" Mike yelled loud enough for the whole camp to hear. "My God! Great!" he yelled again.
Lourdes was startled.
Other people in nearby camps turned to stare and smile.
"Yea!" they yelled back.
"Good for you!"
"Congratulations!"
Mike wrapped his arms around her and picked her up off the ground, doing a three-sixty with her before setting her back down.
"We're gonna get married!" Mike yelled to everyone within a mile.
Lourdes' mouth fell op
en.
"Oh, no, God: we're not marrying each other!" Mike clarified for the other camps. "We've each got our own! We're marrying other folks, not each other-because her fianc? wouldn't like that, and neither would mine."
"You dweeb," Lourdes laughed at him.
"She's gonna come down to Greenhills and marry Jim!" Mike yelled to everyone within earshot.
"Hooray!" the camps yelled.
"Hey!"
More congratulations.
Lourdes turned around to avoid looking the other camps in the eye and yelled quietly to Mike, "But I don't think I should!"
"Oh!" Mike said in a normal tone.
Lourdes' tears welled again. "You get it now?"
"Yes," he said. "Oh, my God."
"I don't know him. Just here," she indicated the airshow. "And Mike, you don't know it, but I'm messed up. I have issues. I'm probably just loving him-"
"You love him!" Mike seemed overjoyed.
Lourdes didn't want to cry any more in front of Mike-or any of the other campers-so she turned to walk away.
"Please don't leave, Lourdes," Mike said, following her. "I don't know the details. But I know something beautiful was happening, and now something's wrong. You both seemed happier than in years, but-he told you he's a communist?"
Lourdes turned to stare at him aghast.
"A pirate? He kidnaps people and holds them for ransom? He's told me that one before, too. None of it's true."
"It didn't work out, Mike. That's all."
"Go back to your perfect life," she said. "Congratulations on getting married to Millie."
She walked away.
CHAPTER 29
Standing among alien trees in a show half the length of the country away from any home she ever knew, Lourdes willed her heart to stop.
Slow it down. Let it give in.
The rough wood, plank siding of the Theatre in the Woods was nothing to her. It didn't even block her way, because she didn't have the strength to walk over to it. The oaks were ghosts. The drainage ditch along the south edge of that field and its two, rough-wood pedestrian bridges across it, were not even in her mind. The endless grass under her feet belonged to someone else, a whole 'nother culture of people who led happy, distant, plastic lives behind a glass barrier.
Lourdes' feet moved sometimes, but they had no mind either and didn't know where they were going.