He doesn't want to
spend money so he goes back home and cleans up, starts doing some
laundry, that kind of stuff. He's too fast though, too organized, and
it doesn't take long. There's not much. In every relationship he's
been in he's the clean one, the tidy one. Girls have too many
clothes, shoes, too much makeup, accessories, toiletries, vegetables
and spices and snacks and magazines. Girls have gum wrappers and
purses and trunks filled with pieces of paper that remind them of
someone or something that happened some time ago, and these trunks
and purses grow and grow until they're too heavy to move, and then
the girls sit in front of them for hours with grey sunsets filling
the window behind them, the lid of the trunk open, inspecting pieces
of paper with a strange half-smile, and separating the different
colored scraps into huge piles of importance and one small pile of
trash, that they sift through at least twice before removing to a bin
outside. If we went on forever, there'd be storage sheds of these
memories.
Gunshots outside,
three or four, though it's a few blocks away. He sits on the couch
and surveys the cleanliness, inhales the fresh pine scented air. He
tries not to look at the clock. All the motion has lifted dust
particles into the air, which are moving every direction through the
window light. What of those moving upward? How do they do it?
He peeks through
the blinds; a police car is leaving the street, heading toward the
sounds. The neighbor upstairs is moving furniture. He needs to leave
the house.
It's not a house,
it's an apartment.
Grabs a light
jacket and gets out. It's cooled down, feels good. Walks up the
street, gets food, eats it.
A woman comes up
the sidewalk, dragging a leg. He can't tell if it's put on, but
before she's there he's taken out a dollar she accepts with a God
Bless and keeps moving on, crossing the street in the distance and
holding up the cars, several of which honk, and soon she's faded from
view. He's still sipping his soda from the food truck, sitting in
their plastic chairs along the road, tonguing some piece of taco
between his teeth.
He walks back home,
kicking at pieces of trash, and after some TV on the couch his day
off is over.
*
Up early because he
fell asleep early, and it's nice to have some time to get his head
together before he has to leave for work. Showers and then turns on
the radio news while he shaves. There's an argument going on, about
politics, but he can't follow it exactly, something to do with
whether or not some senator's remarks about the President were
unfair, and if this sort of “nasty behavior” should be allowed in
our political arena, especially when televised. “You're missing the
point,” says one man, “It's not just an issue of disrespect, or
bad behavior. We have to consider the message this sort of conduct is
sending not only to other politicians but to the American people
themselves. If the people that represent us, that we look up to,
speak this way, why shouldn't we? That's what I'm primarily concerned
about here; their accountability as role models.”
“I'm not
downplaying your concern on this angle,” says another man. “It's
valid. But it goes hand-in-hand with what I'm saying, which I believe
is far more significant, and that is whether or not the critique is
true. All this talk of conduct is important, to some degree, but we
can't let it obstruct our ability to see the bigger picture of the
Senator's claim: is the President lying about his past
relationships? And does this “divorce issue” imply a morally
defunct commander in chief? That's the real pressing moral issue
here, as far as I can see.”
The bus is
relatively full, given the hour. He finds a clean seat near the back,
above what must be the motor or something, because it's warmer than
elsewhere. He likes the bus more than the train, especially during
the morning, when it goes over the bridge and he can see the outline
of the city in the early light. It's beautiful. It's hopeful and
exciting and could be anything when you get there, though it never
is. For the most part it's just like home, never better or worse. The
skyline sure is beautiful, though.
From this bus he
takes another bus, on which he has to stand, since the city is awake
now and it's crowded. He doesn't mind too much, though. The morning
crowded is different than the late night crowded. No one's drunk, no
one's yelling. There's no vomit or piss or blood, no danger. The late
night buses can be bad, and
it's the real reason he keeps in shape. Health comes secondary. He
feels bad for the skinny guys and mostly for the girls, though
sometimes a young guy will see a bit of softness in his eyes and try
to provoke him anyway. He lets them win, lets them feel big or
whatever they need to feel. He knows not to start trouble on public
transportation. Chance is he'll get arrested too, regardless of who
said/did what. He's seen it happen.
Gets
off and walks the last few blocks to the pier, then up it to the
boat. It's colder out on the water, with the fog and all, which is
usually thick in the morning, lifts during the afternoon, disappears
altogether by sunset, and collects again overnight. Repeat. Repeat.
It's only just ten, so he gets a coffee from the dining room and
reads parts of one of the free weekly papers. The main story is about
a farm nearby where they kill animals. Last week, someone burned
their office down, and with the help of the wind it spread and burned
down some other things too. No one got hurt, thank God, but it caused
quite a buzz, especially when they caught the girl they think did it,
a pretty twenty-five year old wrapping up her PhD in something
environmental. Some people called her a terrorist and the paper's
wondering if that's true or not. After a bit he checks his watch
again and it's showtime, as they say.
He
starts out the shift in the cabin's sound-room, where he checks the
current weather report and tests the microphone, walking out onto the
far end of the deck and testing the remote he uses to balance the
volume. Both seem fine, but he puts an extra set of batteries in his
pocket, just in case.
Back
in the cabin he checks the day's schedule. Two tours for sure, at
noon and three, with a possible six if he wants the overtime, which
he does. With Jon on unpaid paternity leave he's the only guide, so
not only is the six o’clock completely up to him, but if he keeps
this shit up they'll have to
give him a raise, or make him a senior guide. The drawback is a lot
of hours pacing back and forth, telling the same story over and over,
a story he can't care about anymore, a story that has nothing to do
with him, or anyone like him. He his him. Calls the main office,
tells Carrie to tell Bill he'll do the six. “Don't know how you do
it,” says Carrie, and he can feel her shaking her head that way she
does. He likes Carrie. She's a lot like him.
“I
do it for the money,” says Donald, and he hangs up to finish his
tasks.
