When You Are Engulfed in Flames (9 page)

In the Waiting Room

Six months after moving to Paris, I gave up on French school and decided to take the easy way out. All I ever said was “Could you repeat that?” And for what? I rarely understood things the second time around, and when I did it was usually something banal, the speaker wondering how I felt about toast, or telling me that the store would close in twenty minutes. All that work for something that didn’t really matter, and so I began saying
“D’accord,”
which translates to “I am in agreement,” and means, basically, “OK.” The word was a key to a magic door, and every time I said it I felt the thrill of possibility.

“D’accord,”
I told the concierge, and the next thing I knew I was sewing the eye onto a stuffed animal belonging to her granddaughter.
“D’accord,”
I said to the dentist, and she sent me to a periodontist, who took some X-rays and called me into his conference room for a little talk.
“D’accord,”
I said, and a week later I returned to his office, where he sliced my gums from top to bottom and scraped great deposits of plaque from the roots of my teeth. If I’d had any idea that this was going to happen, I’d never have said
d’accord
to my French publisher, who’d scheduled me the following evening for a television appearance. It was a weekly cultural program, and very popular. I followed the pop star Robbie Williams, and as the producer settled me into my chair I ran my tongue over my stitches. It was like having a mouthful of spiders — spooky, but it gave me something to talk about on TV, and for that I was grateful.

I said
d’accord
to a waiter and received a pig’s nose standing erect on a bed of tender greens. I said it to a woman in a department store and walked away drenched in cologne. Every day was an adventure.

When I got a kidney stone, I took the Métro to a hospital and said
“D’accord”
to a cheerful redheaded nurse, who led me to a private room and hooked me up to a Demerol drip. That was undoubtedly the best that
d’accord
got me, and it was followed by the worst. After the stone had passed, I spoke to a doctor, who filled out an appointment card and told me to return the following Monday, when we would do whatever it was I’d just agreed to.
“D’accord,”
I said, and then I supersized it with
“génial,”
which means “great!”

On the day of my appointment, I returned to the hospital, where I signed the register and was led by a slightly less cheerful nurse to a large dressing room. “Strip to your underwear,” she told me, and I said,
“D’accord.”
As the woman turned to leave, she said something else, and, looking back, I really should have asked her to repeat it, to draw a picture if that’s what it took, because once you take your pants off,
d’accord
isn’t really OK anymore.

There were three doors in the dressing room, and after removing my clothes I put my ear against each one, trying to determine which was the safest for someone in my condition. The first was loud, with lots of ringing telephones, so that was out. The second didn’t sound much different, and so I chose the third and entered a brightly painted waiting room set with plastic chairs and a glass-topped coffee table stacked high with magazines. A potted plant stood in the corner, and beside it was a second door, which was open and led into a hallway.

I took a seat and had been there for a minute or so when a couple came in and filled two of the unoccupied chairs. The first thing I noticed was that they were fully dressed, and nicely, too — no sneakers or sweat suits for them. The woman wore a nubby gray skirt that fell to her knees and matched the fabric of her husband’s sport coat. Their black hair, which was obviously dyed, formed another match, but looked better on her than it did on him — less vain, I supposed.

“Bonjour,”
I said, and it occurred to me that possibly the nurse had mentioned something about a robe, perhaps the one that had been hanging in the dressing room. I wanted more than anything to go back and get it, but if I did the couple would see my mistake. They’d think I was stupid, so to prove them wrong I decided to remain where I was and pretend that everything was normal.
La la la.

It’s funny the things that run through your mind when you’re sitting in your underpants in front of a pair of strangers. Suicide comes up, but just as you embrace it as a viable option you remember that you don’t have the proper tools: no belt to wrap around your neck, no pen to drive through your nose or ear and up into your brain. I thought briefly of swallowing my watch, but there was no guarantee I’d choke on it. It’s embarrassing, but, given the way I normally eat, it would probably go down fairly easily, strap and all. A clock might be a challenge, but a Timex the size of a fifty-cent piece — no problem.

The man with the dyed black hair pulled a pair of glasses from his jacket pocket, and as he unfolded them I recalled a summer evening in my parents’ backyard. This was ages ago, a dinner for my sister Gretchen’s tenth birthday. My f-ather grilled steaks. My mother set the picnic table with insect-repelling candles, and just as we started to eat she caught me chewing a hunk of beef the size of a coin purse. Gorging always set her off, but on this occasion it bothered her more than usual.

“I hope you choke to death,” she said.

I was twelve years old, and paused, thinking,
Did I hear her correctly?

“That’s right, piggy, suffocate.”

In that moment, I hoped that I
would
choke to death. The knot of beef would lodge itself in my throat, and for the rest of her life my mother would feel haunted and responsible. Every time she passed a steak house or browsed the meat counter of a grocery store, she would think of me and reflect upon what she had said, the words “hope” and “death” in the same sentence. But, of course, I hadn’t choked. Instead, I had lived and grown to adulthood, so that I could sit in this waiting room dressed in nothing but my underpants.
La la la.

It was around this time that two more people entered. The woman looked to be in her midfifties, and accompanied an elderly man who was, if anything, overdressed: a suit, a sweater, a scarf,
and
an overcoat, which he removed with great difficulty, every button a challenge.
Give it to me,
I thought.
Over here.
But he was deaf to my telepathy and handed his coat to the woman, who folded it over the back of her chair. Our eyes met for a moment — hers widening as they moved from my face to my chest — and then she picked a magazine off the table and handed it to the elderly man, who I now took to be her father. She then selected a magazine of her own, and as she turned the pages I allowed myself to relax a little. She was just a woman reading a copy of
Paris Match,
and I was just the person sitting across from her. True, I had no clothes on, but maybe she wouldn’t dwell on that, maybe none of these people would. The old man, the couple with their matching hair: “How was the hospital?” their friends might ask, and they’d answer, “Fine,” or “Oh, you know, the same.”

“Did you see anything fucked-up?”

“No, not that I can think of.”

It sometimes helps to remind myself that not everyone is like me. Not everyone writes things down in a notebook and then transcribes them into a diary. Fewer still will take that diary, clean it up a bit, and read it in front of an audience:

“March 14. Paris. Went with Dad to the hospital, where we sat across from a man in his underpants. They were briefs, not boxers, a little on the gray side, the elastic slack from too many washings. I later said to Father, ‘Other people have to use those chairs, too, you know,’ and he agreed that it was unsanitary.

“Odd little guy, creepy. Hair on his shoulders. Big idiot smile plastered on his face, just sitting there, mumbling to himself.”

How conceited I am to think I might be remembered, especially in a busy hospital where human misery is a matter of course. If any of these people
did
keep a diary, their day’s entry would likely have to do with a diagnosis, some piece of news either inconvenient, or life-altering: the liver’s not a match, the cancer has spread to the spinal column. Compared with that, a man in his underpants is no more remarkable than a dust-covered plant, or the magazine subscription card lying on the floor beside the table. Then, too, good news or bad, these people would eventually leave the hospital and return to the street, where any number of things might wipe me from their memory.

Perhaps on their way home they’ll see a dog with a wooden leg, which I saw myself one afternoon. It was a German shepherd, and his prosthesis looked as though it had been fashioned from a billy club. The network of straps holding the thing in place was a real eye-opener, but stranger still was the noise it made against the floor of the subway car, a dull thud that managed to sound both plaintive and forceful at the same time. Then there was the dog’s owner, who looked at the homemade leg and then at me, with an expression reading, Not bad, huh?

Or maybe they’ll run into something comparatively small yet no less astonishing. I was walking to the bus stop one morning and came upon a well-dressed woman lying on the sidewalk in front of an office-supply store. A small crowd had formed, and just as I joined it a fire truck pulled up. In America, if someone dropped to the ground, you’d call an ambulance, but in France it’s the firemen who do most of the rescuing. There were four of them, and, after checking to see that the woman was OK, one of them returned to the truck and opened the door. I thought he was looking for an aluminum blanket, the type they use for people in shock, but instead he pulled out a goblet. Anywhere else it would have been a cup, made of paper or plastic, but this was glass and had a stem. I guess they carry it around in the front seat, next to the axes or whatever.

The fireman filled the goblet with bottled water, and then he handed it to the woman, who was sitting up now and running her hand over her hair, the way one might when waking from a nap. It was the lead story in my diary that night, but no matter how hard I fiddled with it I felt that something was missing. Had I mentioned that it was autumn? Did the leaves on the sidewalk contribute to my sense of utter delight, or was it just the goblet and the dignity it bespoke: “Yes, you may be on the ground; yes, this drink may be your last — but let’s do it right, shall we?”

Everyone has his own standards, but in my opinion a sight like that is at least fifty times better than what I was providing. A goblet will keep you going for years, while a man in his underpants is good for maybe two days, a week at the most. Unless, of course, you
are
the man in his underpants, in which case it will probably stay with you for the rest of your life — not floating on the exact edge of your consciousness, not handy like a phone number, but still within easy reach, like a mouthful of steak, or a dog with a wooden leg. How often you’ll think of the cold plastic chair, and of the nurse’s face as she passes the room and discovers you with your hands between your knees. Such surprise, such amusement, as she proposes some new adventure, then stands there, waiting for your
“d’accord.”

Solution to Saturday’s Puzzle

On the flight to Raleigh, I sneezed, and the cough drop I’d been sucking on shot from my mouth, ricocheted off my folded tray table, and landed, as I remember it, on the lap of the woman beside me, who was asleep and had her arms folded across her chest. I’m surprised the force didn’t wake her — that’s how hard it hit — but all she did was flutter her eyelids and let out a tiny sigh, the kind you might hear from a baby.

Under normal circumstances, I’d have had three choices, the first being to do nothing. The woman would wake in her own time and notice what looked like a shiny new button sewn to the crotch of her jeans. This was a small plane, with one seat per row on aisle A, and two seats per row on aisle B. We were on B, so should she go searching for answers I would be the first person on her list. “Is this yours?” she’d ask, and I’d look dumbly into her lap.

“Is what mine?”

Option number two was to reach over and pluck it from her pants, and number three was to wake her up and turn the tables, saying, “I’m sorry, but I think you have something that belongs to me.” Then she’d hand the lozenge back and maybe even apologize, confused into thinking that she’d somehow stolen it.

These circumstances, however, were
not
normal, as before she’d fallen asleep the woman and I had had a fight. I’d known her for only an hour, yet I felt her hatred just as strongly as I felt the stream of cold air blowing into my face — this after she’d repositioned the nozzle above her head, a final fuck-you before settling down for her nap.

The odd thing was that she hadn’t looked like trouble. I’d stood behind her while boarding and she was just this woman, forty at most, wearing a T-shirt and cutoff jeans. Her hair was brown and fell to her shoulders, and as we waited she gathered it into a ponytail and fastened it with an elastic band. There was a man beside her who was around the same age and was also wearing shorts, though his were hemmed. He was skimming through a golf magazine, and I guessed correctly that the two of them were embarking on a vacation. While on the gangway, the woman mentioned a rental car and wondered if the beach cottage was far from a grocery store. She was clearly looking forward to her trip, and I found myself hoping that, whichever beach they were going to, the grocery store wouldn’t be too far away. It was just one of those things that go through your mind.
Best of luck,
I thought.

Once on board, I realized that the woman and I would be sitting next to each other, which was fine. I took my place on the aisle, and within a minute she excused herself and walked a few rows up to talk to the man with the golf magazine. He was at the front of the cabin, in a single bulkhead seat, and I recall feeling sorry for him, because I hate the bulkhead. Tall people covet it, but I prefer as little leg room as possible. When I’m on a plane or in a movie theater, I like to slouch down as low as I can and rest my knees on the seat back in front of me. In the bulkhead, there is no seat in front of you, just a wall a good three feet away, and I never know what to do with my legs. Another drawback is that you have to put all of your belongings in the overhead compartment, and these are usually full by the time I board. All in all, I’d rather hang from one of the wheels than have to sit up front.

When our departure was announced, the woman returned to her seat but hovered a half foot off the cushion so she could continue her conversation with the man she’d been talking to earlier. I wasn’t paying attention to what they were saying, but I believe I heard him refer to her as Becky, a wholesome name that matched her contagious, almost childlike enthusiasm.

The plane took off, and everything was as it should have been until the woman touched my arm and pointed to the man she’d been talking to. “Hey,” she said, “see that guy up there?” Then she called out his name — Eric, I think — and the man turned and waved. “That’s my husband, see, and I’m wondering if you could maybe swap seats so that me and him can sit together.”

“Well, actually —,” I said, and, before I could finish, her face hardened, and she interrupted me, saying, “What? You have a
problem
with that?”

“Well,” I said, “ordinarily I’d be happy to move, but he’s in the bulkhead, and I just hate that seat.”

“He’s in the
what?
”

“The bulkhead,” I explained. “That’s what you call that front row.”

“Listen,” she said, “I’m not asking you to switch because it’s a bad seat. I’m asking you to switch because we’re married.” She pointed to her wedding ring, and when I leaned in closer to get a better look at it she drew back her hand, saying, “Oh, never mind. Just forget it.”

It was as if she had slammed a door in my face, and quite unfairly it seemed to me. I should have left well enough alone, but instead I tried to reason with her. “It’s only a ninety-minute flight,” I said, suggesting that in the great scheme of things it wasn’t that long to be separated from your husband. “I mean, what, is he going to prison the moment we land in Raleigh?”

“No, he’s not going to
prison,
” she said, and on the last word she lifted her voice, mocking me.

“Look,” I told her, “if he was a child I’d do it.” And she cut me off, saying, “Whatever.” Then she rolled her eyes and glared out the window.

The woman had decided that I was a hard-ass, one of those guys who refuse under any circumstances to do anyone a favor. But it’s not true. I just prefer that the favor be
my
idea, and that it leaves me feeling kind rather than bullied and uncomfortable.
So no. Let her sulk,
I decided.

Eric had stopped waving, and signaled for me to get Becky’s attention. “My wife,” he mouthed. “Get my wife.”

There was no way out, and so I tapped the woman on the shoulder.

“Don’t touch me,” she said, all dramatic, as if I had thrown a punch.

“Your husband wants you.”

“Well, that doesn’t give you the right to
touch
me.” Becky unbuckled her seat belt, raised herself off the cushion, and spoke to Eric in a loud stage whisper: “I asked him to swap seats, but he won’t do it.”

He cocked his head, sign language for “How come?” and she said, much louder than she needed to, “’Cause he’s an
asshole,
that’s why.”

An elderly woman in aisle A turned to look at me, and I pulled a
Times
crossword puzzle from the bag beneath my seat. That always makes you look reasonable, especially on a Saturday, when the words are long and the clues are exceptionally tough. The problem is that you have to concentrate, and all I could think of was this Becky person.

Seventeen across: a fifteen-letter word for enlightenment. “I am not an asshole,” I wrote, and it fit.

Five down: six-letter Indian tribe. “You are.”

Look at the smart man, breezing through the puzzle, I imagined everyone thinking. He must be a genius. That’s why he wouldn’t swap seats for that poor married woman. He knows something we don’t.

It’s pathetic how much significance I attach to the
Times
puzzle, which is easy on Monday and gets progressively harder as the week advances. I’ll spend fourteen hours finishing the Friday, and then I’ll wave it in someone’s face and demand that he acknowledge my superior intelligence. I think it means that I’m smarter than the next guy, but all it really means is that I don’t have a life.

As I turned to my puzzle, Becky reached for a paperback novel, the kind with an embossed cover. I strained to see what the title was, and she jerked it closer to the window. Strange how that happens, how you can feel someone’s eyes on your book or magazine as surely as you can feel a touch. It only works for the written word, though. I stared at her feet for a good five minutes, and she never jerked those away. After our fight, she’d removed her sneakers, and I saw that her toenails were painted white and that each one was perfectly sculpted.

Eighteen across: “Not impressed.”

Eleven down: “Whore.”

I wasn’t even looking at the clues anymore.

When the drink cart came, we fought through the flight attendant.

“What can I offer you folks?” she asked, and Becky threw down her book, saying, “We’re not together.” It killed her that we might be mistaken for a couple, or even friends, for that matter. “I’m traveling with my husband,” she continued. “He’s sitting up there. In
the bulkhead.
”

You learned that word from me,
I thought.

“Well, can I offer —”

“I’ll have a Coke,” Becky said. “Not much ice.”

I was thirsty, too, but more than a drink I wanted the flight attendant to like me. And who would you prefer, the finicky baby who cuts you off and gets all specific about her ice cubes, or the thoughtful, nondemanding gentleman who smiles up from his difficult puzzle, saying, “Nothing for me, thank you”?

Were the plane to lose altitude and the only way to stay aloft was to push one person out the emergency exit, I now felt certain that the flight attendant would select Becky rather than me. I pictured her clinging to the doorframe, her hair blown so hard it was starting to fall out. “But my husband —,” she’d cry. Then I would step forward, saying, “Hey, I’ve been to Raleigh before. Take me instead.” Becky would see that I am not the asshole she mistook me for, and in that instant she would lose her grip and be sucked into space.

Two down: “Take that!”

It’s always so satisfying when you can twist someone’s hatred into guilt — make her realize that she was wrong, too quick to judge, too unwilling to look beyond her own petty concerns. The problem is that it works both ways. I’d taken this woman as the type who arrives late at a movie, then asks me to move behind the tallest person in the theater so that she and her husband can sit together. Everyone has to suffer just because she’s sleeping with someone. But what if I was wrong? I pictured her in a dimly lit room, trembling before a portfolio of glowing X-rays. “I give you two weeks at the most,” the doctor says. “Why don’t you get your toenails done, buy yourself a nice pair of cutoffs, and spend some quality time with your husband. I hear the beaches of North Carolina are pretty this time of year.”

I looked at her then, and thought,
No.
If she’d had so much as a stomachache, she would have mentioned it. Or would she? I kept telling myself that I was within my rights, but I knew it wasn’t working when I turned back to my puzzle and started listing the various reasons why I was not an asshole.

Forty across: “I give money to p —”

Forty-six down: “— ublic radio.”

While groping for Reason number two, I noticed that Becky was not making a list of her own. She was the one who called me a name, who went out of her way to stir up trouble, but it didn’t seem to bother her in the least. After finishing her Coke, she folded up the tray table, summoned the flight attendant to take her empty can, and settled back for a nap. It was shortly afterward that I put the throat lozenge in my mouth, and shortly after that that I sneezed, and it shot like a bullet onto the crotch of her shorts.

Nine across: “Fuck!”

Thirteen down: “Now what?”

It was then that another option occurred to me.
You know,
I thought.
Maybe I
will
swap places with her husband.
But I’d waited too long, and now he was asleep as well. My only way out was to nudge this woman awake and make the same offer I sometimes make to Hugh. We’ll be arguing, and I’ll stop in midsentence and ask if we can just start over. “I’ll go outside and when I come back in we’ll just pretend this never happened, OK?”

If the fight is huge, he’ll wait until I’m in the hall, then bolt the door behind me, but if it’s minor he’ll go along, and I’ll reenter the apartment, saying, “What are you doing home?” Or “Gee, it smells good in here. What’s cooking?” — an easy question as he’s always got something on the stove.

For a while, it feels goofy, but eventually the self-consciousness wears off, and we ease into the roles of two decent people, trapped in a rather dull play. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“You can set the table if you want.”

“All-righty, then!”

I don’t know how many times I’ve set the table in the middle of the afternoon, long before we sit down to eat. But the play would be all the duller without action, and I don’t want to do anything really hard, like paint a room. I’m just so grateful that he goes along with it. Other people’s lives can be full of screaming and flying plates, but I prefer that my own remains as civil as possible, even if it means faking it every once in a while.

I’d gladly have started over with Becky, but something told me she wouldn’t go for it. Even asleep, she broadcast her hostility, each gentle snore sounding like an accusation.
Ass-hole. Ass-ho-ole.
The landing announcement failed to wake her, and when the flight attendant asked her to fasten her seat belt she did it in a drowse, without looking. The lozenge disappeared beneath the buckle, and this bought me an extra ten minutes, time spent gathering my things, so that I could make for the door the moment we arrived at our gate. I just didn’t count on the man in front of me being a little bit quicker and holding me up as he wrestled his duffel bag from the overhead bin. Had it not been for him, I might have been gone by the time Becky unfastened her seat belt, but as it was I was only four rows away, standing, it turned out, right beside the bulkhead.

The name she called me was nothing I hadn’t heard before, and nothing that I won’t hear again, probably. Eight letters, and the clue might read, “Above the shoulders, he’s nothing but crap.” Of course, they’d don’t put words like that in the
Times
crossword puzzle. If they did, anyone could finish it.