The only difficulty with this island was and is that the best beach is located at the end of the airport's one runway. The Dukes had just gotten to the island that morning, and having no time to discover its smaller hidden beaches—the pockets of sand secreted along its rocky harbors and lagoons—they were at this beach.
Bob watched an airliner bank over the ocean, then aim for the airport. Fortunately the planes today were landing from the west, so all the beach had to endure was a roar and a blast of sweet, warm fumes when one came to the end of the runway and turned around. Otherwise they would be thundering overhead at an altitude of fifty feet.
Dropping, the airliner disappeared below the edge of the dunes. A few moments passed. Bob. heard a much louder roar than he had on previous landings. Then there was a dull thud and a cracking sound. Then silence, but for the bouncing of an enormous wheel, which bounded down the dunes, across the beach and splashed into the sea. People sat or stood, all turning toward the dunes, all freezing when they saw the nose of the airplane sitting there like a sculpture, not two hundred feet away. Bob was locked in a kind of silence. Two men in blue uniforms clambered out of the top of the plane and Jumped down, disappearing among the dunes.
Bob began to run. When he reached the top of the dunes, he found himself overlooking a scene of astonishing destruction. A huge jetliner lay in at least four pieces, festooned with wires and smoking tubes. Jet fuel poured out of half a dozen places, making foaming pools in the sand beneath the shattered plane. A man and a woman jumped off one of the sections of the plane and, arm in arm, began making their way back toward the airport. The pilots climbed up into another section, the main section, and started shouting into the jumble of detached seats and people.
There was a soft rush of sound as the jet fuel under one section ignited. Bob could see the people inside struggling frantically,, then they were obscured by thick, black smoke. The two pilots had begun dropping people out of the main section. Bob ran over and began leading them away from the plane. There were terrible screams coming from the burning part of the plane. A burning woman leaped out of the smoke and began to dance, her arms flailing as she slapped at herself with her flaming purse.
Then the main section of the plane caught. The fire was for the moment confined to the rear. People kept jumping out of the front. The pilots and a stewardess could be heard inside, shrieking at them to hurry up.
Fire burst into the cabin from a thousand different directions, swirling in a vortex. One of the pilots rushed forward, leaped down, and ran away, his face black, his hair smoking. The other one could be seen in the fire, throwing seats, pushing people toward the gaping hole at the front.
Bob sat in his seat in the plane to Atlanta, reliving as he always did that afternoon on the Island of Escape. The Island of Dreams. Pina colada, limbo, snorkel. The Island of Coral Bedrooms.
"Will you be having dinner with us, sir?"
He nodded.
"Steak or chicken?"
Always the same two meals.
"I'll have the duck a l'orange and a half bottle of Chablis. Maybe the saffron souffle for dessert."
"That sounds like the chicken."
"It's the chicken."
The flight attendant made a note on her little list and went away. This year he had earned over a hundred thousand miles on Delta. Soon he'd be able to cash his mileage in for a free trip somewhere. Maybe the Caribbees, maybe hell.
For once he wasn't lugging along boxes and boxes of seminar materials. Instead it was simply a matter of coming, listening, and going home again. The Apple Computer people were the ones with the boxes of junk.
He tried to let his mind drift. Last night's nightmare was still close to the surface, though, and when he drifted, he at once smelled its fearful scents: wolf breath, wet grass, and his own blood. The dream wasn't really over, that was the trouble. Cindy shouldn't have waked him up, as terrifying as it must have been to see him toward the end howling and snapping. She should have let the dream resolve. Now it persisted in him, lingering at the edge of memory, jumping for a split second into his vision.
To quell it he forced his attention to the face of his watch. Nine P.M. She would just be turning off Masterpiece Theatre and probably fixing herself a cup of herb tea. Kevin would be asleep, the cats at the foot of his bed. When Cindy lay down they would come to her, their habit being to share the society of sleep between the two beds in the household. He wished that she was sitting in the seat beside him, Kevin in the window seat.
If the plane was going to crash, though, better he be alone.
When Kevin had been a baby. Bob had taken great pains to preserve his own life. He did not want to leave such a vulnerable little creature. When there was someone in the world whose eyes literally shone when they regarded you, how could you bear to die? Kevin had needed a male image, had adored Bob in a way he had not known was possible, had so relished his every attention. But now Kevin was twelve, and he could grow up without a father, if necessary. Or Cindy could remarry. Bob could be replaced.
While these morbid thoughts passed through his mind, the stewardess dropped his meal on his tray. He nibbled at the chicken breast, ate the parsley, ate the half of a cherry tomato that was on the salad. He drank the club soda and ate a bite of the dense brownie. He had brought Max Brod's book about Kafka. If he was going to keep up with his son, he was going to have to gain some sort of insight into Kafka. What were the parables about? And the "Penal Colony"—or, for God's sake, the Metamorphosis? This morning, while Bob was looking through the Amusement Section of the Times for notices about ballroom dancing, Kevin had suddenly asked, "Where's Away From Here? Is it away from here, or away from where Kafka was when he wrote the parable?" He had seen the mirth in his son's eyes, and decided that he had to learn more about Kafka.
He just stared at the pages, though. Half of his mind was waiting for the plane to fall out of the sky, waiting for the dreadful roar that would announce the explosion of a terrorist bomb, or the thuttering oscillations that would precede the separation of a wing.
Why should I read about Kafka? I'm living in Kafka. I'm a Hunger Artist on trial in the Penal Colony. There isn't any escape. Even death is no escape, not if there is reincarnation. Oh, God, what if I come back in Bangladesh or as a Shiite fanatic, or a Chinese peasant? What's going on, how does it all work, why do I keep thinking I've lost my keys when I haven't?
I'm in the middle of the woods and I suddenly realize that I can't get out. The wolf is no help, the wolf is only chasing me deeper.
A cold hand covers mine. A face, rusty around the edges, skin as tight as that of a mummy, hair too blond, voice older than the polished nails, the pearl-hard face-lift. "Jesus will comfort you," says the mask.
Bob realized that he had been crying, his tears raining down on the chicken and Max Brod.
"Jesus—"
"Pray with me. It'll help."
"I don't go to church." He thought: O'Reilly. Cigar. Communion. Then: Altar Society, mother picking up the lilies at Anne Warner's house. Benediction, Mass, the Last Sacraments.
"It doesn't matter whether you believe or not. Jesus doesn't mind."
Where was Father O'Reilly now? The Oblate Seminary, perhaps, teaching the dwindling few seminarians their truth and calling: "Don't drink after midnight or before five o'clock in the mom-ing. Beware of female converts, they are all after your tail. Remember that most questions cannot be answered. Remember that most sins cannot be understood. Nuns expect terrible penances. That is what their lives are about. The church is dying, this is the key truth of our time. Trust in God. Judging from the amount of notice He takes of us, He isn't too concerned. Follow His example, He has perfect knowledge."
All things grow old. The girls of spring get face-lifts. Bob wondered how much skin the lady beside him had lost over the years, how much experience she had hidden in her waxed looks. Where was the skin? Incinerated, or lying in a bottle of formaldehyde in some plastic surgeon's private museum? What would he
have there— removed scars pinned to cards like butterflies, septums, big lips, bits of eye sockets and breasts? And, floating in formaldehyde, the discarded cheeks, jowls, and chins of his best customers?
"Pray with me. You might find it helpful."
Her intrusion made him feel mean. "Play?"
"No, pray!"
"You said play."
"Well, hardly that. Play—I mean, oh dear, pray with me."
"Freudian slip. I don't remember any prayers except the Hail Mary."
"I don't believe in Freud. He knew nothing of Jesus. What is the Hail Mary? I don't know that prayer."
"Moslem."
"Oh."
She began leafing through the Airline Gift Guide. If you fill out the card—say, order a friend some golf shoes with retractable cleats—and the plane crashes and they find the card, do they mail it for you and take the charge out of your estate? Is there an airline policy covering this matter?
Until the island Bob had always assumed that people were just pulverized in jet crashes. But they had all been alive, broken arms and legs no doubt in the twisted jumble of seats, but alive. Twelve got out.
He imagined being twisted practically in two, the seat on top of him, his face against the floor, and the floor getting hotter and hotter and he cannot get free.
"Please fasten your seat belts, ladies and gentlemen. Captain Gamer has begun our final approach into Atlanta's Hartsfield International Airport."
The flight attendant hurried along collecting the last of the meal trays and plastic cups. The landing was completely normal. Bob moved past the smiling crew members and out into Hartsfield's silly vastness without any difficulties. Maybe he only imagined that his life was running out. Perhaps this was an illusion, there to mask the far more horrible reality that he was going to live a long, long, long time.
My problem is, I'm in a panic state. I'm panicked about death. Over death. Death and going broke. At the moment I have no accounts receivable. I've got to drum up some new business. Dying and going broke are similar, except death is less embarrassing. He hurried along a moving sidewalk. But what do I do? How do I drum up business if I'm not sure what it is I do?
Maybe the Apple people would have some i-deas. Maybe he ought to start advocating the Macintosh Office after all. A point of difference. "Spend your money with me. I advocate the Macintosh Office."
"Excuse me?"
"Nothing." The man beside him had responded to his thoughts, not because he could read minds but because he had obviously spoken out loud. All right, so you pass age forty and you start talking to yourself.
Nose, ears, and penis all continue to grow, even as your overall body mass starts to decline. Short-term memory is going. And now you mutter.
Silently, over the past year, Bob had begun to engage in the battle of the nose hair. You couldn't very well just leave it to grow longer and longer, curly and gray, like smoke flowing out your nostrils. You had to cut it. Bob used nail clippers, and the process made him sneeze. The more he cut it, the stiffer the hair became. Maybe he was one of those unlucky men whose beards grew inside their noses.
He would have drunk, but he had swallowed so many gallons of alcohol in his youth that he was almost unable to stimulate himself. He didn't smoke, drink, or chew gum.
He was nostalgic for the time in London he had been given some brownies laced with hash by a lush daughter of the nobility—possibly the only lush noble daughter—and had wound up writing a seventy-page epic poem about the death of Nebuchadnezzar.
This part of any trip was the worst, the cab ride from the airport to the hotel. You were alone and you were angry and you were bored. Stone bored watching the passing exit signs, the cars, a Camaro driven by a blonde so enormous she might be a depilated man. Maybe she was. What would that be like? A violation, thrilling ... or depressing, a sexless struggle with someone too strong to escape.
The dull, steamy thoughts of the traveler. Already 10:35. Get checked in, for God's sake, you can't call Cindy after eleven. That's the rule, that way you don't inconvenience anybody. Too bad he couldn't afford a portable phone.
The cab hurtled around a corner and he finally accepted the feeling that the world was ending, or rather, he was ending. "It felt like I died and the whole world died with me," a man had once said upon awakening from a particularly severe auto accident.
"May I take your bag, sir?"
God, I wish you would! "No, that's all right."
Check in: the people ahead have no reservations. Then they have a credit card on the Bank of Pakistan. They speak little English. Bob would carry them on his back to their room if it would hurry things up. The lobby smells faintly of cigarette smoke and food. Liquor. Steak. Later, he'll come down to the bar with all the other lonely men and sit staring around, looking for the Woman Who Is Not There.
He's being processed now. Credit card. Guest of Apple. Oh, that'll be the fourth floor. She says it like it's the bomb shelter. Go right up, you're already checked in, Mr. Drake.
Duke.
Okay.
Fourth floor: a woman of twenty in a tan suit with the Apple logo on her pocket comes forward. "May I take your bag, Mr. Drake?"
"Duke. No thanks."
"Let's see, you're in 403. Lucky you, you'll have a view down Peachtree Street."
Oh, how wonderful! What luck!
The room is very nicely packaged. Little soaps and creams and things, and a shoeshine rag that doesn't quite work, the bed turned down with a mint on the pillow. A bowl of apples and a lot of literature. A Macintosh on the desk to play with. Very posh. Apple wants to win.
Brochure: Apple and Your Corporate Clients. Oh, God, I haven't got any corporate clients. I've got to make some calls, but I hate to make calls. "Hello, may I speak to the president of the company? Hello, my name is Robert Drake—I mean Duke—I'd like to send you some information about—hello, yes, this is Robert Hack, I'd like to send you—this is who—oh, no, I need to speak to your podiatrist—or president. Well, good-bye." That's called a line of gab.
Look at you, strutting around in the dreary room, proud and scared, an ego on a stick, signifying nothing. The girl left abruptly with a reminder that he was due for breakfast at 8:30 in the Dorset Room. Dorset Room. Breakfast. Okay, Mr. Drake will be there. Why not Mr. Mallard, it's similar but more interesting. Midlife crisis cliche. But I had my midlife crisis when I was thirty-eight. Working for Merril Witch, flacking bonds, all of a sudden you get up from your desk and go stomping off like a golem. You reach the elevator. You leave the building. A day passes, your boss Luke Skywalker finally calls. "Hi, Bill," he says.
"It's Bob."
"Yeah, that's right. You okay, Bob?"
"Am I?"
"Well, I'll tell you, Bill, I thought you were sick or something, looking at your numbers. Real sick! You can't get the business. Sure, you rush around with goddamn cups of coffee in your hand, but that's it. For you, that's the whole job. I've been watching you, Bill—"
"Bob."
"Rob, Bob, Bill, goddamn Irving! Your severance check is in the toilet!"
A factual story: A very hot man was once hired by a small but very hot brokerage firm but did not do the volume expected of him. The trouble was, he had gone there on a five-year contract with a five-year salary in addition to commissions. This was a man who could not work unless he was desperate. Mr. Float, they called him at Wrexler, where he had originally been employed. Soon the boss of the very hot brokerage firm wanted to get rid of Mr. Float. But how, with a five-year contract? One morning Mr. Float walked in to find that his entire office had been moved into the men's room.
He remained in that office, reading comic books, for the full five years.
Some say that is where the expression "taking a floater," got its start.
Hanging up his spare suit, Bob thought: Now, why in hell did I tell myself that story? Why don't I go down to the bar and tell some broad that hilarious story? This very night I may fondle strange breasts.
That thought led to a frantic check of the watch. Eleven-two. No. Grab the phone, click, dial, click click. Ring. Clunk. "Hello."
"Honey—sorry I'm late."
Laughter. "I was reading. I knew you'd be late. I was hoping you'd call."
Am I a self-absorbed by-product of a dying culture? "I'm glad you're still up. How was Masterpiece?"
"I slept through it. Kevin watched it, though. He says it's very well acted. Apparently some of the period detail is wrong, though. Something about the men's collar styles."
"I miss you."
"You know what I want to do to you."
"Oh, God, Cindy, I wish you could."
"Have a good night's sleep, darling."
"The dream—"
"What dream?"
"God, don't you remember? Last night I dreamed I got eaten by a wolf? It's still in my mind, I can't get rid of it. It's terrifying, Cindy. I wish to hell I'd canceled out on this."
"You might make some good contacts. Now, I want you to take a nice, warm shower and settle down with a good book. What did you take with you?"
"Max Brod on Kafka."
"Dear God. That's Kevin's influence. Let him deal with Kafka, you need to have some fun when you read. A good historical, Michener or John Jakes. Something that'll take your mind away from itself. Kafka's not for you, you're too old and overwrought to stand it."
"He stood it. He had to, he was in himself and couldn't get out."
"Didn't he cut off his ear?"
"That was Van Gogh, the painter."
"Yes, well, his skies are Kafka's words. They all ended badly, those men. You can't get on that road. It'll kill you, there are secrets down there we shouldn't know. I'm telling you, Bob, you've got to stick to the real. Throw yourself heart and soul into the conference. Learn, make friends, really work at it. Bob, you might lose your way, honey, a lot of people like you do."
He yearned toward her voice, wished he could flow through the phone and into her body, could swarm into every cell of her, the wet, the jittering electric places, and possess her and be possessed by her, to be her ghost, her aura.