Waiting for the Man (13 page)

Eyes Without a Face

Very few people recognize me here. By working in the back of the kitchen, by having the dumb luck of occupying the last room in the trailer, by being antisocial. I have remained relatively undetected. I think. I don’t expect this to last. And when someone does recognize me, I can talk my way out of it. None of the guests have direct contact with me except on those hikes. I am a worker here, not a frontline employee, and so I am mostly invisible to them. I have added a beard. Even on the steps I managed to shave. I had an electric razor and I shaved every morning. I hate stubble. I was always clean-shaven, a pretension that made me feel presentable to the world. I was always the most clean-shaven guy at the office. I learned this from my father. Who had learned it from his. A long line of clean-shaven men.

My hair is long now. I usually wear a ball cap. I’ve put on weight. After all I went through, I put on weight here, eating a celebrity chef’s rich food and his silly clafouti. Athena doesn’t ask questions. Tomas wants to. Because he knows. I’m the reason he wishes he’d read more than the sports pages.

There is no manhunt for me. I expect this to change at some point. Dan is either continuing his search or, sensing closure, has cashed in already. Am I worth more to him invisible? What if I showed up in Hollywood ready to sell my story? What if I walked into a newsroom right now? What if I granted an exclusive interview to a tabloid? To one of the networks? Would they laugh me out of the office? Or write me a check? And how would any of these actions interrupt Dan’s planning? I see my story more as his. I was merely a subject. Dan was the storyteller, the driver of the thing. He ensured its momentum.

I almost miss him.

But as much as I do, I don’t want him to find me. I enjoy being nobody. The act of being faceless is one of the most liberating things I’ve ever felt. Here, I have no past. Except for the parts I keep inside of me.

Last night, staring out the window, drinking a beer, I counted shooting stars. The wind blew through the trailer, creating a hum. Everyone was asleep. I was hypnotized by the sound of the wind. The tall grass swayed gently, lit up by the moon and the stars. The mountains the color of glow-in-the-dark stickers. And I realized I wanted to stay here. Not to revel in the anonymity of the place, or to hide from the world, or to turn my back on the life that led me here. But to work, to do the work that Athena had assigned me, to see what would happen. The mountains, the land, made me optimistic. Small. Insignificant. But optimistic.

Last night, suddenly, I stopped feeling like a failure. I can try to understand what happened to me or I can try to internalize the ordeal and move on. I think I have achieved some understanding of what happened, on some level, and this is letting me understand who I am. Even who I was. I have my talents and I have to accept them. I have come to accept them. The reality of life gets in the way of total happiness. Expectations need to be modified. Desires. Our ability to say yes and no and maybe. The pursuit of happiness just leads to an endless run, not even a marathon, because the finish line keeps fading from view. I do stuff. I can manufacture words. I’m about to do something like that again. And instead of lamenting the irony of it, I see it and know it, finally, for what it is. Acceptance. And I can use that to build something, something as big and as ambitious as I can dare to imagine. Or not. I’ve tempered my dreams, perhaps, but they remain limitless. Except now they may have form.

What is there to live for after 100% satisfaction is not just guaranteed but achieved?

And the thing I learned is the main idea behind every ad ever made.

Today, in the kitchen, Tomas walks up to me with a smirk on his face. “We’re moving a lot of pie,” he says.

“Everyone likes a good pie,” I say.

“You’ll have to do more peeling,” he says, the winner of a contest I haven’t even entered.

“I figured that.”

“With the mechanical peelers, you get problems. Abrasions. Bruising. They’re too rough on the fruit. Only hand-peeled apples taste good.”

“I’m not arguing with you.”

“I’m just telling you. So you don’t think I’m trying to stick it to you or something. Because I’m not.”

“Great,” I say.

“Just so we’re clear.”

“Good.”

“I’m following your plan.”

“What plan?”

“Well, what you said.”

“OK.”

He taps me on the shoulder. “Teamwork,” he says.

“Good.”

He walks away and moments later four men, including Keith, walk in bearing crates of apples. “Maybe the game show circuit doesn’t look so bad,” Keith says.

“It does from here,” I say.

“There’s no shame in work,” he says.

“Peeling apples or being on a game show?”

He puts the crates down to my left. “Both,” he says.

“Right,” I say. I reach into the first crate and begin my work.

All Alone

Dan made arrangements. Many. He was like Mercury orbiting the sun. I felt a certain awe watching him work. I say that only because it is still hard for me to admit. The amount of work he performed was cutting away at my antipathy like an ice pick. Food had been donated. He had procured a media bus that would follow the Odyssey. The bus was equipped with satellites and modem hookups and a fridge — everything journalists would need to tell the world my demented story. The webmaster for the site was joining the trip. Bloggers had been invited. The social media team. The bus was being outfitted right now by a company near Providence that specialized in this sort of thing. Industry was being created. Blips to local growth projections. Jobs.

I tried to shut myself off. I saw myself alone, surrounded by thousands of people, misunderstood — and if not that, at least, unappreciated. I felt like the cheap punch line to an egregiously bad joke. Something perhaps told by a failed comic on a three-digit cable channel after midnight. The entire ordeal had come to this and had achieved a kind of light-speed momentum. I felt a bit off balance by the movement of the thing. “Don’t leave,” I told Sophie and she didn’t respond. I was groveling and it was pathetic.

Ever since the television interviews, the Man had remained silent. I tried to will him into my thoughts and could not. I didn’t feel him inside of me. He was probably out west already. Somewhere. Some place I was supposed to be and couldn’t fathom. The mystery of this journey had already been compromised. There was no more journey. There was only an event now. A random chorus of atonal, unplanned things. A search for an ending. A bad show on late night cable. A movie. Dan’s book. This was product. The creation of a brand. The media bus would follow me to see how the brand developed. The world waited to see whether or not my brand was positive. I was hoping that the media would highlight the tackiness of my station and the world would lose interest. Dan kept calling my journey “gold.”

Because I had the sense that despite Dan’s best efforts, this wasn’t huge. It wasn’t going viral. It was niche. I was just another bit of noise in the world. Some people listened in but many didn’t. Dan was the media, after all. He needed this story to be big. And the bus and my journey were his last chance to make it into something bigger than just me. And a few thousand lost souls around the world went along for the ride.

That was my sense of things. I had no way of knowing whether I was right or not.

The night before the departure I awoke from a nap to see Sophie staring deeply into my eyes, into my head, it seemed, trying to understand the torrent inside. My blanket was slipping off and heading down the steps. “Hi,” she said.

I opened my mouth to speak, but she put a finger to it, shaking her head. “Don’t say anything,” she said. “Don’t say anything. I know you’re unhappy. I know it. I understand. I would be, too. There’s something inside of you that makes you unsatisfied with living this way. You are unhappy. You were. I should say that. And now you’re getting away. You’ll keep driving until you get tired of it. Or until something special happens. You’re looking for magic. And I hope you find it. It’s very noble what you’re doing. And because it’s noble and special, people will lose interest. It will happen at some point. You’ve created a complicated thing. It’s not really good on TV. The less you speak the better.”

“You’re an optimist,” I whispered.

“You are, too,” she said. She stroked my hair and began rocking back and forth. “Keep your mysteries to yourself. Don’t give them the satisfaction,” she said, gesturing toward the media. “You feel out of control but you’re not. They don’t know you. That’s when it finishes, when they think they know you. Then they take advantage.”

“A very cynical optimist,” I said, smiling.

“Just think, you’ll be by yourself,” she said. “When was the last time that happened?”

That was a truth that had yet to occur to me. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve felt alone the whole time here. Until you arrived.”

She leaned over and kissed me. My lips parted and met hers and I wanted to write country music. “I have to go home now,” she whispered.

“I wish you wouldn’t,” I said.

“I have to go home and start my life,” she said and it sounded like such a sensible, wonderful thing to be able to admit and do that I sat up straight. It was an odd reaction.

She stood up. “I’ll watch you on TV,” she said, without a hint of irony, and walked off, ignoring the pack of media that surrounded her. Dan walked down the steps and caught up to Sophie. He said a few words to the reporters and camera guys and they fell back and the crowd parted before her, magically, as she walked down the street toward the barricades. A limo waited for her on the other side of the police cordon and she got in it and disappeared. I suppose Dan had arranged that as well.

The crowd rumbled. This was an episode that needed discussion, analysis. There was something to Sophie’s last words. I was getting away. Getting in the Odyssey would be like exhaling. I might never see this place again, I thought. And even this didn’t bother me. No matter where I found myself, this would always be home. No matter where the Man took me. No matter what happened.

WILD IS THE WIND

I’d heard about this. That sometimes it snows in the middle of the summer. That sometimes the cold winds that come off the mountains don’t warm up, don’t hit some hot air, and a perfectly fine summer day can become winter in less than five minutes.

It snowed after breakfast. The morning had been cold but that only made it like other mornings here. By the time the breakfast shift ends and we’re ready to ramp up for lunch, the ground is warm and the insects buzz and it’s summer. Not today.

Today walking outside is a fight through blowing snow. Bits of ice blow into my face, my shoes crunching on the ground. It sounds like broken glass. From the kitchen window, the mountains look like giant snow sculptures. The tall grass bends under the weight of the ice and snow. They look like they’re suffering. Even the plants don’t like the weather.

It’s beautiful.

In the movies, snow is almost always clean and beautiful and pure. It makes everything seem fresh. And even now, even though it’s summer and snow is as welcome as a plague of locusts, there’s still something about the whiteness of the landscape that makes everything look new.

The wind is messing with the horses. It’s uprooting fences and small trees. The snow is ruining people’s vacations. All outdoor activities have been canceled for the day. The beautiful snow is bringing misery to everything it touches. It’s so windy it’s even hard to say snow is falling. Can something fall sideways? The snow is falling parallel to the ground. Is this what usually happens? And if it’s not quite falling, when does it touch the ground? Wouldn’t it just keep blowing?

It’s August.

Some of the old-timers are always prepared for winter. They’ve got their boots and fleece layers on and lean into the wind while going about their jobs. There’s work to be done. Crews run around looking for something to fix, for someone to help, watching the mountains for signs of the end of the storm. It’s hard to tell where the sky ends and ground begins. There’s no horizon.

And it’s wrong. Everyone can see through the beauty of the event. That’s what it is, an event. Athena runs through the kitchen, swearing. The unexpected seasonal change requires new plans, contingencies. Realities alter. Expectations shift. Tomas wonders out loud if he should add a stew to the menu for lunch, though it’s too late for that. I watch a wrangler run toward the stables, head down, one hand holding his hat to his head. He runs and runs on unsteady feet, unsupported by the wet and slick ground and his legs give out from under him, and he falls hard on his ass. He lies on the ground, not moving, a blue denim spot on the speckled earth. He gets up slowly, wiping the snow off his pants. He rubs his tailbone and limps around the corner of the fence and is gone.

In the distance, the mountains take shape and suddenly the sun is shining and the snow on them glitters like casino lights. And slowly, the snow stops blowing or falling or dive-bombing the ground, the clouds scatter, the wind travels someplace else, and then, like a gold medalist, there’s the sun, and the day is changed and the window is warmed and the sun’s rays shine their crazy life everywhere and things start to feel normal again. The snow melts. It retreats in the face of the power of the sun.

Athena finds me in the kitchen. “Are you thinking?” she asks, flashing her smile.

“I’m always thinking,” I say. “That’s the problem.”

“Did you see the weather?” she asks.

“It frightens me,” I say.

And then Athena feigns concern and comes over and gives me a light hug. She hugs without really touching me. “There there,” she says. And she walks into Tomas’s office. And shuts the door. I hear laughter. Very loud laughter. And I wonder who told the joke. And hope it wasn’t me.

Athena exits the office quickly. “Let’s have a meeting,” she says.

I put down my peeler. “Now?”

“Later,” she says. “Tonight. Come to my place.”

And this is when I start to wonder whether I should keep peeling. Whether or not this part of my work is starting to become an affectation. I spend the day thinking of her, a new optimism that washes over me like warm water.

I walk to Athena’s place. The winds have changed direction. They aren’t coming off the mountain anymore. The winds have changed direction since the snow. They come from the north now, from somewhere beyond Alberta, where it’s always cold and the ground is always covered in snow. Each gust is enough to make your nipples hard and is a reminder that the snow that fell as a fluke a few days ago will soon become normal. Soon our ground will be covered with something frozen for months and the ranch will become a giant blanket of white.

I knock on her door.

Athena motions for me to sit on the couch. She pours me a red wine. She’s dressed in her uniform, or big sky casual: frayed bootcut jeans, white cotton shirt, a red scarf wrapped around her neck and falling over her shoulders. “Did you ever think you’d see snow in the middle of the summer?” she asks.

“We’re not really going to talk about the weather, right?” I say. “I’d like to think we’re beyond the weather discussion.”

“Haven’t you noticed?” she asks. “Everybody here talks about the weather. It’s not rude. It doesn’t show a lack of familiarity. I can imagine in families it is the first topic of discussion in the morning. It is a relevant topic here.”

She’s making conversation. “I wish I knew something about the sky,” I say, doing the same. “I wish I knew the constellations. There’s probably something, some app, that tells you everything you need to know about your bit of sky. Well, not here. A book. Some local amateur astronomer probably has a book about the stars above Montana. It’s odd that all we really know is the land. Most of the earth is water. And all of space is the sky. And we’re tied to the land. And even at that I don’t know anything about it. I don’t know rocks, for example. Geology. I wish I knew geology.”

I’d felt this more and more. Out here, I want to go beyond remarking about the beauty of the rocks, of the landscape, to knowing more about it. Geology is the story of the stuff we’re standing on and I don’t know the story.

“In Greece, it’s all about the sea,” she says, taking a sip of her wine. “The land is just the place the sea isn’t.”

“I can’t even imagine the sea here,” I say.

“One time, it was sea,” she says. “There’s a good book on the physical history of Montana in the library. There was a sea here. And then land. And then the mountains came. After the west coast floated over and hit North America. It was the first book I read when I got here. The Rockies are still growing.”

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“I mean they are still rising,” she says. “They are young. Just like the Himalayas are young.”

“You’re a fountain of knowledge,” I say.

“I read the book,” she says. “That’s all.”

“You read the book,” I say, laughing.

“Yes. I read the book. I don’t pretend to understand what it means,” she says. “Everything about the rocks that make up Montana. I looked at the mountains and I found this old book in the library. It was a good book.”

“It’s very useful,” I say.

“Don’t mock me,” she says. And with this, I’m about certain she’s flirting with me. Or I want her to. I want the thrust and parry of a good flirt. Does Tomas know of our meeting? “I’m an elitist.”

“No, you’re not,” I say.

“Why not?” she asks.

“An elitist looks down on the world,” I say. “An elitist expects you to see things his way because he knows he’s always right.”

“I am,” she says.

“Not in the same way.”

“What’s the difference?” she asks.

“An elitist sets the standards,” I say. “He tells you where to look and what to see. In ad terms, we call these people influencers. They’re even more elite than Washington’s ‘media elite’ bogeyman. When we look out and wonder what it is we’re watching, the elitist tells you and expects that all is understood. It’s an expectation. It says, ‘I understand so you must as well and if you don’t, you’re stupid and unworthy.’ It’s a bit poisonous, I always thought. Because it means never staying in one place. Never being happy with what you know. So you are constantly seeking more. More knowledge. Because with knowledge comes your opinion. Your edge. And these people believe in their role. Their place. They believe in the patterns to knowing, patterns that are new and improved and clean and clear and bright and minty fresh. Because we all believe in the end that we should know things we have no right to know and suspect things we have no right to suspect so that now, when we drive past a suburban office-complex parking lot, and see the darkened cars sitting alone at midnight, side by side, we wonder whether these are totems of adultery. We think of the partner at home knowing and not wanting to know. We don’t want to see two cars in a parking lot. We see an old man and a young woman enjoying a burger in the neon-washed window of a fast food restaurant and wonder how much he’s worth without even once considering that perhaps he’s an uncle or a grandfather or Tony Randall. We think these things not because we want to but because we feel it is our place in the greater culture to think these things. Because we’re participants in it, too, even though we’ve elevated ourselves, and sometimes we resent this, because we want out, we want to find an out, so we search for meanings where perhaps none existed, we search for patterns and lines where there are none and we become more susceptible to the messages we think we can avoid.”

“Isn’t Tony Randall dead?” she asks.

What am I going on about? I’m trying to decide whether I believe this or not. These are the arguments I left behind. Am I trying to impress Athena? Realizing that I believed everything I’ve said, at one time in my life, causes a pit inside of me the size of . . . Montana. “That’s not the point,” I say.

“You’re rambling,” she says. “Making conversation. And you just did this marketing speak like someone might talk about the weather. And perhaps you hate yourself, too.”

“I used to,” I say. “I don’t anymore. I know that now. That’s a good feeling. I admit that much.”

We change. This is something that took me a long time to figure out. Nothing stays the same. Thinking this now, I feel almost stupid because it’s such an obvious truth. A simple idea. People who don’t change get left behind. If we hadn’t changed we’d still be stuck in caves, beating off the saber-toothed cats with big sticks.

“Your little trip was like therapy?” she asks.

I slouch into the couch. “Maybe.” I just can’t admit to it. No one ever said therapy was cheap.

“Are you comfortable?” she asks.

“How big is that question?”

“With yourself,” she says. “Here. With your situation. Have you processed what you’ve done? We’re all here, in this place, for a reason.”

“Are you talking about the ranch?” I ask. I need to be sure.

“Maybe,” she says, smiling, taking another sip of wine.

“Or am I comfortable here, in your apartment, having a meeting?”

Athena laughs. Her laugh is like something out of Hollywood. It’s deep and resonant and sexy all at once. Forties Hollywood. “I do want to discuss matters,” she says.

“Does Tomas know I’m here?” I ask.

“He doesn’t hate you,” she says. “And we are not an item.”

This news is neither a relief nor an added burden. “I think he resents my little clafouti campaign,” I say. “That our little discussion has been elevated.”

“He’s insecure,” she says. “That just means he’s a good chef.”

She gets up and goes to her bedroom. What am I supposed to do now? She returns, her arms full of papers. She throws them down on the couch, filling the space between us. With this she has answered any dirty questions I may have been harboring. Because I was. “This is the job,” she says.

I take a long drink of wine. I pour myself another glass. “The job.” I sigh.

“I think you will do it well,” she says. She sits on the couch again. Closer. Between us, papers, letters, brochures, the paraphernalia of the sell. “I think your being here is a kind of miracle,” she says.