Up in the Air

The harder she bangs on this lid, the tighter it seals. A moment ago I felt it opening—a vision of Dallas office-tower blue glass, an artsy reception area with seats resembling children’s wood alphabet blocks, extreme-angle views of parking garages with painted helipad markings on the roofs—but now it’s all black again, and shut; Chernobyl entombed in its smooth concrete sarcophagus. The barricades are up on memory lane.

My seat seems to tilt. Is this the jack at work?

“You don’t remember the exercise?” she says. “That workshop hour where you were some big headhunter and I was supposed to sell you on my skills without using words like ‘need’ or ‘want’ or ‘hope’? You cracked pistachios to show uninterest, which you said I’d have to be prepared for, and I unbuttoned my cashmere cardigan, the top two buttons, and you said, ‘That looks desperate; you want a new job, not a sugar daddy.’ Nothing?” She lifts my chin with two hands and makes me see her.

I apologize and apologize. The seats tilt. I’m afraid if I move I’ll shift the limo’s balance point and crush Driver under an axle.

“You cared,” says Alex. She closes her legs with her dress tucked in the V. I’m off-duty now; I uncramp my neck. “You didn’t want to be there, either, did you? We had that in common. We both wanted to scream. You fidgeted, your nails were bitten raw. I should be consoling him, I thought. I knew my job couldn’t last. It wasn’t meant to. Exxon. The Bushes. Festivals must end. But you thought you were responsible. So earnest. I wanted to cook you a great big hot peach cobbler.”

And then all is level and we’re on the road again. The limo founders in a swarming crosswalk and long-haired rowdies slap the windows, holler. A can of something thunks the roof and skitters and Driver accelerates and through the floor I feel the wheels lump over a large soft object that I’ll always remember as a body, even if it was a mail sack or a garbage bag. I want those Ambien. I find strange capsules, ones I haven’t seen yet, shining in an upholstery crack. I gobble them. Alex is still reminiscing. “You cared,” she says. It’s the mantra in this monologue.

And then we’re dancing somewhere. We’re back indoors. Or is this the new outdoors? The purple drinks are back—they’d just gone dormant—except that now they’re made of frozen slush that you can scoop up off the dance floor if you spill one and pack back into your cup like a wet snowball and pierce with the long straw and keep on sucking. Other dancers keep shoving me. A cubist Alex, all planar overlap and sextuple foreheads, surrounds and eludes me simultaneously, omnidirectionally dancing with all of us. She grinds on my hip, she whispers in my ears—both ears at once. She loves me, loves me, loves me. Her ponytail slices a Z in the green fog, smoke, the Mark of Zorro. She’s hanging on my neck.

I squirt through a crack in her cycloramic presence and make it to the bar and ask for milk. In a corner Art Krusk consults with Tony Marlowe, still plotting his comeback as an ethnic food king. Marlowe will cost Art. The newsletter. The videos. In CTC, all I wanted was a clean getaway, but Marlowe’s game is different. He sticks around, angling to be your Pope, your spouse, and soon you’re paying him to certify you as a trainer in his franchised cult. Goodbye, Art Krusk. The grating is off the storm drain. You’re underground now, blowing through the mains. The two of them rise from their table with their snow cones and stroll away like president and premier talking peace on some Camp David bunny trail. Tomorrow Marlowe will give Art his new name.

“You little shit. You ditched me,” Alex says. Her heat-rashed throat is like an oriole’s and her high birdy voice weaves through the DJ’s drumtrack, which is all he’s spinning tonight. Percussion.

“I needed cool dairy. Where are we? Where is this club?”

“Under Mount O.” She index-fingers my temples. A current crackles between the diodes. “It’s me.”

If this could just conclude, please. I guzzle milk. It’s not the taste, it’s the texture. It’s how it coats.

“You knew it would have to happen, didn’t you? Someone was going to see under your black hood and realize the Grim Reaper was just a kid. This is our chance to heal each other, Ryan.”

Where is all this eloquence coming from? She’s mixed her pills better than I have. “You have a mustache.” She licks the two percent off my upper lip and I lick off the wetness of her licking.

“Did you rehearse these things you’ve said to me?”

“Day and night since Reno. Certain lines I wrote down. The Barbara Bush part.”

“You’re good,” I say. “You’re scary good, in fact.”

“I want us to go upstairs,” she says. “Just give me half an hour. To set the mood.” She hands me her violet frosty to hold and kisses me and does the Bond Girl turn and activates her jetpack and whooshes off, right through the ceiling. Her contrails smell of propane.