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Really? ––the story of a YouTube men’s fragrance and fashion influencer venturing out on a day he hoped would end in making amends with his daughter without losing countenance or respect, or was there something more––at once intangible and vast, perhaps even immeasurable––as big as existence itself? However absurd this premise might appear from the outside it begs an even bigger question. What did his life signify beyond that collection of events, which, held together in his palms, was no more valuable than a fistful of sand? ––and like the sand in an hourglass, his time was running out: he was getting older, not old, but older. Who was he after all? Maybe that was the most important question. Was he a wanderer hero like Odysseus or Don Quixote, his life a brushstroked canvas of plundering and adventure leading finally to greater prosperity and wisdom, or was he instead a flawed but strangely compelling antihero in some ratty French novel, or perhaps a B-division Philip Marlowe from the Film Noir classic Murder, My Sweet? Regardless, the name ‘Marlowe’ is significant in this context, but in a somewhat different form: ‘Marlow, the knight errant of the sea’ from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, a man anyone would wager would meet his Kurtz someday––this day? But was this Kurtz destined to be a real person or just a symbol of something about to happen to him, something foisted on him from outside, at once unwelcome and uncontrollable, which would bring about an even more unwelcome revelation, or was his Kurtz a representation of something inside him, our YouTube influencer, or perhaps even our YouTube influencer himself?
The day ahead would be a deposition, the first day in many years he had forgotten to apply a fragrance––maybe for precisely this reason: so he did not appear presumptuous, showy, or groveling before his deposers––and what was about to happen to him, hour by hour, minute by minute, would become a collection of cues or clues (how sweet that these words rhyme!) on how he should defend himself or not, at the culmination of the day, when he met his daughter after so many years at the café they had mutually agreed upon just the day before in a brief flurry of laconic text messages. A ‘knight errant of the sea’ searching for his grail, but finding instead Mr. Kurtz, there in the center of his life, the center of his judgement, the center of everything that mattered––in short everything. It was a romantic notion, to be sure, but nonetheless terrifying. He needed to do his best to make sure things went his way. He needed to search for clues, look for signs from anything: a baby’s cry, an eagle flying overhead, a glance from a curious stranger. If he was observant enough, a good student willing to open his eyes and learn about the world and himself, things would go well. Like a man convicted of a crime who works with a lawyer to analyze any possible instance of guilt and subsequent probabilities of outcomes, scouring his laptop and social media accounts for evidence for and against his complicity, on their way to building the perfect defense, his day would unfold. He had to look. He had to listen. His life today was an ancient scripture, and he was its solemn disciple, divining every possible sentence and word for intended or implied meaning, searching for the kernel of truth resting in its center, no matter how liberating or damning––but could not damnation also be a form of liberation? He did not know.
After leaving the hotel he decided he would walk as far as he could until he got tired and would then take a bus or subway. Unusual for such a luxurious establishment, at least a 4-star hotel by his estimation, it was located on the fringes of the city, perhaps to better service stranded travelers from the airport, which was twenty-or-so kilometers from the city center. The only thing that isolated it––no, protected it––from the large swath of stark warehouses and other random industrial constructions was a shopping center on one side of it and a row of specialized superstores on the other: Plant World, Home Depot, Lawn Center. Why not Garden Mecca? The roads were wide with several lanes and very few stoplights, with knee-high metal railings partitioning the sidewalks from the asphalt. Clearly this was not a neighborhood, one could never call it that––zone might be better, but one where pedestrians were welcome. The city planners had given no thought to the possibility that there might be walkers such as himself rather than just families coming in droves in their minivans to shop in bulk. Despite the starkness of this environment there was a frailty everywhere that reminded him of Easter, a residue of the feeling of weightlessness he had had only moments before in the hotel. Perhaps it was the airy light and pale blue sky, the sun now hidden behind a cluster of white clouds, or maybe it was the lack of leaves on the few trees he could see, obviously planted there in a clumsy attempt to give the area some sense of familiarity and community. In this case it had backfired, the bare branches only emphasizing the lifelessness of everything. The world was fragile today, so fragile it could shatter at any minute; reality, it seemed, could plunge any second through whatever sheet of ice separated it from infinity or whatever else there was lying on the other side of existence.
After walking for what seemed like an hour but was less than fifteen minutes according to his phone, he came across a tree decorated with what looked like giant black coconuts growing in strict rows out of every branch. What could they be? On coming closer, he saw that they were in fact pigeons assembled there for some unknown reason, and the sun which had just emerged from behind the clouds had only made them appear like dark smudges against the sky––or were they not for that moment of uncertainty holes in the very fabric of the Cosmos? Gone was their usual lack of purpose, the inane wandering and ubiquitous pecking about in public squares. There was a concrete plan behind this gathering, but what? Row by row. Branch by branch. In ominous assembly like a court of ravens. Was there some impending extinction event no one had yet predicted, and these avian elders were standing there in solemn congress lamenting and preparing for it? Or was it some local issue that pertained only to this flock, perhaps a renegade pigeon being tried for his crimes against the collective?
After some time, he came upon an open field, on the other side of which there was the first appearance in the distance of residential dwellings. As he crossed, he began to feel more and more naked, more and more exposed. ‘All the more naked, all the more exposed!’, he stopped short of muttering to himself. Even though there was nobody in sight he sensed that from one of the distant windows across the field someone was looking at him through a telescope that very moment as in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. How strange it was that a person like him, who spent his entire day filming himself on YouTube endorsing this fragrance or that, as though privacy was not even on the table of his concerns, always felt exposed whenever he crossed a field. Was it that his videos were only viewed by a cast of unknown followers, shadowy internet entities with names like sunnydaffodil, palaceoflife47, bangbangbob, or letsstripnaked66, or was it something about being along in the field, a sensation that made him feel like a man walking on the moon, so alone and far away from everything, yet simultaneously being watched by millions on television or, in his case, social media?
At the end of the field, he came across an overpass under which there was a handful of tents and scattered sleeping bags, the tents spaced about twenty feet apart, yet in a random cluster rather than a line. No one could be seen. Were the inhabitants inside the tents, still asleep? He walked gingerly as he approached. The shelter of the underpass had created a natural enclave under which a small community of three or four parties, or even families, could thrive. The cement backdrop supporting the road above formed natural walls and was covered in all manner of graffiti but faded from the elements as though representing some kind of ancient text or hieroglyphics on an embankment at an archeological dig. What did the characters mean if anything? Was it a language that only street people and their artists, the cave painters of the modern day, could understand or was it completely meaningless, the bizarre forms only mimicking language to seem intimidating to the public, people that these artists likely had nothing but contempt for?
As he approached, a grizzly figure––was it a man or woman? ––covered in a long blanket emerged from one of the sleeping bags. The YouTuber had not noticed that the sleeping bags were occupied and assumed any hidden members of this miniature community were lying asleep in the tents. The androgenous figure turned its head and stared at him for what could have been an hour as far as he had experienced it, the encounter was so lopsided and uncomfortable, but was objectively only a few seconds before turning away quickly and slinking inside one of the tents. Just before the figure disappeared for good, the blanket covering slipped, and he could see in clear profile a tanned woman’s breast. He suddenly felt like an invader, an unwelcome voyeur. Responding in kind, he changed his direction, walking in a wide arc as though the small community had begun generating a repelling magnetic field, emanating from the woman––perhaps one or both of her naked breasts––who was now inside the tent, and he could not pass beyond its reach.
Soon another such area was within view. But was it a community? He approached this new zone with considerable caution: there was a leather armchair in the center, its slashed upholstery becoming more apparent with every step. Beside it a briefcase stood erect within easy reach of any potential sitter, and scattered around willy-nilly were syringes, nitrous oxide cannisters and all manner of paperback books on subjects as diverse as auto mechanics, The Moscow Ballet, and Asian cooking. There was also the occasional leatherbound book, which after picking up a few all seemed to be part of a prepackaged bookcase set of literary classics: Wuthering Heights, A Room with a View, Moby Dick, etc. An empty bottle of Hennessey Cognac lay broken underneath a Playboy magazine. It all had the sense of a reading room in an old mansion. Was there a monocle somewhere? A smoking jacket? A top hat? Apparently not. He dusted off the armchair and sat down. His legs were already heavy from walking, and it seemed an ideal place to rest. He closed his eyes as though to savor the moment. Perhaps the world, if he allowed it to do so, would impress itself on him, tell its story. Time could form eddies in spacetime, he once read in a popular book on modern Physics, and if you found them you could divine the past or future events at that very spot. Children’s books appeared before him and then a young boy with a train set. Had children been involved somewhere in this sad story? But maybe it wasn’t a sad story at all and whoever it was who came here had a successful life somewhere and had only created this spot for solitude and reflection or left their life willingly for an existence as ‘a wanderer’. It was a romantic notion, but wasn’t he always known for that? ‘You were always my accuser!’ he shouted out to the imaginary figure beside him, a close friend who had always laughed at him for being overly fanciful in life but had recently committed suicide after travelling to Russia with his lover’s teenage daughter. Everyone in their circle was shocked because his friend had always seemed so confident, and he and his lover lived together in what most people would call a dream home. People suspected he had slept with the daughter, but no one dared say so. It was just in the air, in their eyes: everywhere. It could have been on the front page of the newspaper or the airwaves––Planet Zircon News even––but it wasn’t. It would remain unsaid and forever in the minds of those in this circle of friends, but at once everywhere and publicly so. The YouTuber suddenly became aware of the fact his gaze had been unconsciously fixed on the book on the Moscow Ballet and the cover image had been responsible for setting off his reverie about his friend’s fateful trip to Russia. He snapped out of his daydream and almost jumped when he saw an earwig crawling across his leg. When he was a child, he was convinced they sought to borrow in the ear, using the pincers on their tail as an anchor into the eardrum, but now it seemed far more benign––even silly. If only it knew how silly it was. He thought of swiping it off his leg but stopped short. He didn’t want to kill it. Like the moth in the hotel earlier, this earwig would have its ‘lucky day’.
But the day demanded he continue. He stood up, dusted off the seat of his pants, and continued, but now listening, carefully listening. The high frequency sinusoidal thudding of helicopter blades was suddenly detectable, rising in audibility from beneath the hissing of the wind in his ears until it was almost so loud it seemed it was coming from inside his skull. Were they coming for him? Was he a fugitive? As soon as the sound peaked it quickly receded, returning to its hiding place beneath the hissing of wind, wherever that was. He was safe, at least for now. Eventually, after crossing through many fields and dormant construction sites, he came across a small strip mall. Outside a convenience store a teenaged girl was singing mock Karaoke to a tune playing from a boom box; she had black and white striped hair and was holding a skateboard under one arm. Was it some kind of stunt from the shop to attract more customers or was she just being rebellious and busking to pass time as she waited to meet friends? The song was a love ballad from a UK megastar whose work was immediately recognizable for its lingering monuments of fatuous sentimentalism: it was the singer’s hallmark. Yet strangely, as if from nowhere, the song suddenly became dark, even threatening, without changing at all. Black clouds gathered in his mind. It was a sign of impending doom, the coming of some miniature Apocalypse. Everyone assumed the end would come in some eruption of unspeakable horrors on a scale the world had never seen, as in the dystopian AI nightmare of Terminator 4, but the reality was that the end would only arrive when everyone had slid into a state of emotional vacuity, swelled with empty contentment, like the Satanists in Rosemary’s Baby. That was why The Devil was always portrayed in literature as a comforting ‘buddy’ figure promising joy and happiness. Why bother with work? Who needed to read? The weekend was coming. Love was near. All you needed was a good time. These were the perilous lessons this song taught. The girl sang on, her voice sounding at once menacing and reassuring, until the music loop ended; she took a breath and wiped her tiny nose with a handkerchief from her pocket. This was his chance to escape. He broke into a light jog and ran past the strip mall through a set of red lights (forcing one car to swerve and honk its horn) and then an apartment block––a residential area at last! ––and continued running until, as if on cue, he ran out of breath precisely the moment a bus stop stood there abreast and to his left.
An elderly woman sat there on the bus bench, alone and motionless as only the elderly can be. She was wearing a peacock blue wool coat with matching hat and a red poppy on her left breast, but Remembrance Day it certainly was not, although for him it very well could be: wasn’t today a day of his remembrance and possible judgement, a day he hoped––no, prayed–– would end in his emancipation? She didn’t even notice when he said, ‘excuse me’ and took a place beside her on the bench, so fixated was her gaze on something in the sky. What was it? He looked up but there was nothing, only a few wispy clouds smeared across the pale blue backdrop. As though finally noticing he had noticed she had not yet noticed him she lifted her arm upwards in a slow but steady and deliberate motion––like a lever in a signaling station used to divert the path of a train––and pointed to the sky. ‘The clouds are so talkative today,’ she said as if in speaking to a third, invisible person. ‘If you listen, they have so much to say. Some days they say nothing, and I sit here waiting for hours and hours, dog after dog, bus after bus, and they reveal nothing to me. They could be made of granite or obsidian for all it matters. They could crash from the sky or rise into the stars for all I care. But today is different. Today they are speaking.’ ‘Yes,’ he replied delicately, but she didn’t seem to hear him. A young girl tore in front of them on a scooter: they were in the suburbs and the traffic was so light that her actions presented no danger. ‘Now they are really talking. Everybody’s talking these days. A lot of people talk but say nothing. But these clouds deliver! They are the business, that’s for sure.’ An enormous smile spread across her face like a housewife on a TV commercial announcing the perfect brand of floor cleaner promising to transform her very existence. He nodded politely and once again she didn’t seem to notice him. ‘Those two are horses. Beside them are two rabbits. I think they are kissing. Yes, that was a kiss, no mistake about it. Like the boys used to kiss me outside the school bathrooms.’
As he sat there listening to her, as though to the trickling of water from and underground spring, the entire world seemed to freeze, but only for his benefit like those film scenes where time stops for everyone except for the protagonist, and he gets to walk around the other actors like a visitor in a wax museum. Wasn’t the woman a not-so-subtle reminder––or maybe alarm bell? ––that he had forgotten the night before to call his own mother, who had been recently diagnosed with early-stage Dementia? The last time he visited her she would be perfectly lucid for days at a time before suddenly doing or saying something so incongruous that it defied belief. Was she even the same person anymore? One day she went out alone for hours and the police found her calling for her dog, which she thought was walking just a few strides ahead of her when she had left the dog at home only an hour before. Another day he found her in the middle on the night watching a Chinese gangster film with subtitles, which had become her new favorite pastime since she had forgotten how to change the channels and the TV was stuck on an Asian network––yet she watched them with such attentiveness, often asking questions and making commentary; she obviously had no regrets about missing out on other stations. But this night, when he found her there, she claimed that she had the strangest experience: she had suddenly woke up on the couch in front of the TV with no idea how she got there. When he suggested she had obviously fallen asleep and just woken up she vehemently disagreed: it was more likely that someone had entered the house, removed her from her bad and placed here there, because she ‘just wasn’t the type to just fall asleep in front of a TV’. That was more for lonely bachelors with a bag of potato chips and a six pack––certainly not her!
She was currently living with his older brother, the owner of a used bookstore who somehow always managed to have financial problems throughout his life, suggesting hidden vices lurking somewhere in the shadows––but what? He always wore long-sleeved shirts, even on hot days, a telltale sign of intravenous drug addiction, but it was hard to tell, and no one dared to pry. He had recently moved in with her, ostensibly to ‘take care of her’ as her dementia progressed, but the real reason, and his mother even admitted it once during a moment of lucidity, was so he could save money on rent. After all, she had spent a good part of her life chauffeuring him around because he never learned to drive, so who was really taking care of whom? It was a disturbing situation because his brother had a dark side that went far deeper than any possible addiction and frequently came out in his belittling, even abusive invectives against anyone, including her. When they were children, his brother constantly bullied him, with great relish and the scholarly sense of purpose and detail of a medieval dungeon master: he always charged his younger sibling admission to his room at night when he thought his own room was haunted and once he even let his fingernails grow for several weeks just so he could pin him naked to the floor and lacerate his back, and once he lamented how he had overheard family conversations between their parents––and even grandparents––about how they had ‘concluded after solemn and painful reflection’ that they did not love him, his younger brother, and ‘wished he were never born’. What made matters even worse is that whenever he cried for help their mother would storm into the room to find his brother there standing there behind an innocent, almost angelic countenance, making it look like whatever had happened was solely his younger brother’s fault. No matter how many bruises and gashes were left on his body, the young ‘bookseller’ would always win. As our YouTuber grew up, it became more and more obvious that she favored her firstborn, and even admitted it openly several times. She defended her bias with the position that since their father obviously favored his youngest, she had to protect the firstborn from his father’s scorn. But it was a disingenuous explanation, because their father, an ambitious young architect with a hot temper, always seemed equally angry at everyone. After the years passed their father left for another woman during their adolescence, further glimpses of his older brother’s dark side began to emerge. He would lurk in the dusty basement behind locked doors for hours doing who knows what––the awakening of some hidden vice? ––and became defensive and irritable whenever anyone asked; their mother was too busy trying to meet new men and make ends meet to care. As an adult ‘the bookseller’ never showed interest in women, but never came out as gay either, although most people in their circle suspected this. At family dinners he would often launch into a vitriolic attack against his brother, even in front of the children, but whenever he tried to defend himself, ‘the bookseller’ would cry foul and blow up, causing their mother to glower at him in a show of support for her favorite. Over time this had the effect of undermining his authority as a young father, signaling to everyone present that it was OK to disrespect him––Grandma endorsed it, so why not? ––and any attempt to defend himself was an act of instigation, even provocation, while his multiple peace offerings––why should he even be making them? ––never had even the slightest effect. ‘The bookseller’ became more hostile and pettier with age until they finally stopped speaking: there was no other solution. Just before he moved in with her, he was caught shouting at her over the phone, threatening to abandon her if she did not do what he wanted. When he was told she went missing one afternoon and had to be returned by the police, he exclaimed to his younger brother ‘what the fuck am I supposed to do about it?’ It was moments like this that convinced him that not only was it an act of gross imposture that his brother claimed to be moving in with her as a ‘caregiver’, but he might even have psychopathic tendencies. It all seemed so clear now: the systematic bullying, locked basement rooms, and glaring lack of empathy were red flags that couldn’t be ignored. Would he kill her? Maybe one day, but only slowly and methodically while always appearing innocent, although cracks in his fake countenance were clearly emerging with age: already during his first month living there the cleaning lady found her unconscious on the floor of her room while ‘the bookseller’ was too preoccupied to notice. Exactly as predicted.
Beside him the old woman continued staring blankly at the clouds, occasionally commenting on their shape or beauty––the comments had slowed and came out now only an occasional utterance rather than a proclamation. ‘What a ringer! That one could have done better. Who knows what Reagan would have thought? If I could stuff that one in the refrigerator what I could do with it! Mick Jagger! He was never that sexy, I preferred Leonard Cohen. I see a chariot, take me to the Sun. I think that cloud is reminding me I should trim the shrubs. How dare it! And now my grandson, the golden one.’ A bus passed by, but the woman didn’t seem to notice it, so rapturous was her gaze. ‘The golden one,’ he repeated in his mind. Did every grandmother idolize their grandson the way his own mother idolized his son? In his imagination his son was always subtly bearded, ice crystals hanging from every hair, as he skied down some wildly dangerous slope only accessible by helicopter, his skies perfectly waxed with exactly the right grade as only he knew how to choose, his face obscured behind yellow-tinted goggles and a photon blue––was that even a color? If it was, then it would be one step brighter and paler than the sky, the same color exactly as the snowsuit he used to dress him in every winter morning to take him through miles of snow to kindergarten or school. He would always remember him this way. ‘The skier’ and ‘the little boy’ as one. But had ‘the skier’ not betrayed ‘the little boy’, or vice versa? The two entities were no longer the same. Only a year ago, he had no other choice but to block him, his little boy in the blue snowsuit, on Facebook for not one single transgression, one act of unforgiveable hubris, but a long string of many such ‘almost acts’ no doubt sanctioned by his daughter, ‘the skier’s sister, who always had a strong pull over her brother: accumulated yellow cards as opposed to a single red, although many of these yellow cards would easily have been red cards had someone else other than loving father acted as referee. Indeed, he wasn’t blocked on all apps––only Facebook––and could easily have contacted him for an explanation or, if God allowed it and he was so lucky, an actual apology. But nothing came. Had he gone over the line and punished his son too harshly? That is a question that only the day, this day, could answer. Somewhere in the sound of the city in the distance, the warbling of birds in the trees, shapes of the clouds, or glances and whispers of strangers the answer lied and perhaps with some effort could be divined, exhumed, disgorged, inferred, extrapolated, pieced together, computed, or even announced on the face of the news anchor on the six o’clock news.
It all started when he asked ‘the skier’ to buy his grandmother six months’ worth of two highly specialized supplements that promised through rigorous clinical trials to radically delay the onset of dementia, sending him five hundred dollars to buy them online. Since they lived in a different country, the country he had once lived before moving away and becoming a successful YouTube influencer, it would be hard for him to buy them and ship overseas, and who would be there to make sure she received them and even took them? ––certainly not ‘the bookseller’! Since ‘the skier’ was visiting her that Christmas it was an ideal opportunity to provide her with the help she needed. His son claimed to have ordered them the same day he received the money but several weeks later said they were no longer available from the vendor––did he order them at all? ––and it was not until after his son had returned from his Christmas visit, a period during which our YouTuber received no updates, did he say that he tried another vendor and could only get her one of the supplements (the less effective one) and had already ordered it, but it would arrive in three weeks, a full six weeks after he sent his son the money. Who would make sure she received them and took them? ––the same frustrating question as before.
But then the proverbial hammer came down when our YouTuber received an email from ‘the bookseller’ with a legal document attached. It was a power of attorney giving his brother and son ‘immediate control’ of his mother’s estate pending her signing it in a mental state officially confirmed by a doctor to be legally lucid. A lawyer and doctor were coming over the very next day: everything was set. What was this about? Why wasn’t he informed? What was his son doing getting involved with his hostile brother and mother’s estate without even telling him? Why did she even need a new power of attorney? He replied to the email politely, subtly questioning their motives of secrecy, wondering why such drastic steps were required when she was by all accounts only experience early-stage dementia and was still lucid. Then he called his mother, explaining what was going on and why she should not sign anything. Miraculously, within an hour of his email reply, her existing power of attorney ‘showed up’ in his brother’s possession––‘the bookseller’ had had it all along! It was clearly a ploy to get control of her money to solve his own financial problems: gambling, oxycontin addiction, whatever. His son––was he ‘the skier’ or his ‘little boy’? ––backpedaled immediately, but without offering an explanation as to what really went on and what he was doing making legal moves without his father’s knowledge. No matter how disrespectful this seemed, in a matter of hours he resolved to forgive his son, as any good father would do, assuming it was his brother manipulating him into it––he was always gullible on account of what everyone thought was his pure and trusting heart––and someone with the cunning of ‘the bookseller’ would have obviously known this and took advantage.
But a few months later when our YouTuber was visiting his mother, he discovered that the second, more effective supplement had been available all along and that ‘the skier’ just hadn’t tried hard enough. So, he bought her the second supplement, enough for six months, and notified his son by text that they ‘lucked out’ and the problem had been solved: they no longer had to worry about where to buy them. To his surprise, his son immediately took offence to this and accused him of ‘throwing him under the bus’. He replied that he wasn’t accusing him of anything but was just happy that she could at last get the supplements she needed: problem solved! But ‘the skier’ (he was certainly not the ‘little boy’ anymore!) wouldn’t let it go and continued trying to pick a fight, which seemed to escalate with every round he tried in vain to explain to his son he wasn’t accusing him of anything until finally ‘the skier’ called him ‘an arrogant prick’. The interchange ended abruptly and exactly at that point. They spoke a few days later but only superficially, about other things like sports and the weather, with no apologies or even mention of the argument. Indeed, our YouTuber was determined to show temperance, not as would have done his own father, who once beat him and his brother with his slung and casted arm, which he said was broken from ‘getting in a fight with an Eskimo’, for setting methanol fires in the basement for fun, and even for something as small as refusing to give him his two nickels for a single dime––what child would trade two of something bigger and heavier for one of something smaller and so thin?
After all this he acted as though his son’s obvious transgressions were something that could be ignored, a fly buzzing around his head that would go away with a simple swipe of the hand, mere mirages in spacetime that would vanish as quickly as they came, leaving nothing but a vapor trail. But he would not be so lucky. In their next conversation his son, ‘the skier’ accused him of having not taken the garbage out while he was visiting his mother two weeks before––reconnaissance he only could have received from his uncle ‘the bookseller’. It was something so utterly false and hurtful, clearly fabricated for malicious reasons by ‘the bookseller’, who, it was now evident, had been in secret contact with ‘the skier’ all along. But for some reason ‘the skier’ trusted his uncle’s version of the story over that of his own loving father; who would have thought that he, a man known across the globe for expert grooming tips, known––no, synonymous with––luxury fragrance brands like Creed, Frederick Malle, and Areej Le Dore, with his own line of scents due out this year, was, underneath it all, a pig. ‘That’s right,’ he thought as he sat there on the bench waiting for the bus, ‘I’m a wart hog, outhouse dweller, horse’s ass, filthy skunk, white trash, rotting pile of compost, trailer park scum, utter slob––if slobs could have an emperor it certainly would be me––vomit merchant, slime king, that I would have let the garbage pile up there in my own ailing mother’s kitchen until the stench became so foul, permeating every corner of the house, seeping through ever crack and crevice in the walls or tiles, that no living rodent no matter how hungry would dare enter her house? Even the spiders and centipedes would scurry away, their alarm hormones ringing through their exoskeletons like fire bells.’ It was all ‘so plausible’, especially given he had left the house sparkling clean and took the garbage out daily, something his brother could not have known since he never deigned to appear once during his visit. But ‘the skier’ went even further in this conversation, accusing him of being a ‘bad father’ for questioning ‘his own brother’s’ (should it not be ‘bully’, ‘mother grifter’ or even ‘psychopath’?) motives by accusing him of concocting and spreading such malicious lies (which were, in fact lies, and his son had no way of verifying this, only his uncles word). At that point ‘our father’ had had enough. He quietly dropped his phone on the sofa, withdrawing from the interchange without a word and promptly blocked his son on Facebook––was he even ‘the skier’ at this stage, or had he become someone else yet again, an entity akin to Judas but without yet a name? Blocking him was a message that said he, his father, would not take such treatment. Of course, he would always unblock his son if he just ‘smartened up’ and ‘ate humble pie’, all it would take was something so small as a simple email apology––of course he would, what father wouldn’t? ––but weeks passed, and none came. It had now been over a year, and he heard through his mother that his son had become a father himself: a grandfather once more, and a grandfather once more barred from his grandchildren, all for ‘committing the crime’ of refusing to be treated poorly.
You ‘the skier’, you the little boy, you the as-yet-unknown man who sided with my brother, whom you grew up watching as he mocked me at family dinners, sided with him as I tried to save my mother with supplements you were to lazy to order, your own grandmother, who spoiled you and loved you above all others, maybe more even than me, after all my forgiveness, everything I did, the guitars and amplifiers I bought for you, the trips to New York and San Francisco, all the support I gave for your band, listening to every song over and over as if it were the new release of my favorite artist. How I fed you as a child, was there when you came out as a purple skinned baby crying and how many times I changed your diapers and dressed you in your blue snow suit that looked so much like a ski suit when we trudged through snow to get groceries because I couldn’t afford a car and all those inside jokes we shared on our road trips and the time I paid thousands of dollars I didn’t have to get you out of jail that time you were caught with counterfeit money and a kilo of hashish. It was I that saved you from your mother that day when she had run off with the flautist and left you there alone by the garbage can when I was already a block away and your sister was safe inside with her mother. It was I who ‘manned up’ and jumped into the saddle of being a single father for four years when I was only twenty-three and barely old enough to make ends meet. Me, me, me. You, you, you! I still remember that day when you went to school the first day and came home crying and then tried to regain composure and said with such nuanced reservation ‘I don’t like school...much’ (the ‘much’ was such a great touch!) or a year later when you punched the teacher in the face and knocked off her glasses, shocking everyone because you had been so calm and even-tempered to that point, and when I said you would become a criminal that same day just to scare you: and I did. But now you are ‘the skier’, someone else lives inside those blue eyes, someone I don’t even know. You accused me of trying to undermine your sister’s wedding on some poison lie spread by your mother, you blew up at me and called me an ‘asshole’ at Christmas for merely asking your new girlfriend what her Christmas plans were (in your mind I was deliberately making her feel unwelcome) and you smirked when I first told you about M– and her extended grief after her mother died––only a crazy person could grieve so much, I am sure you thought, then you said you would wait for ‘someone better’ a few months after you started to date your current wife and needed your friends to tell you that you could be missing out on a good thing but then you asked me a month after your wedding (you didn’t even thank me for my wedding present!) if you should divorce her because she took a job in a new city and your life was with your sister, who only a few months before had told you in privacy that your fiancé was planning to murder you––how crazy is that? How easily women manipulate you! Just like the grade school class always calls the dunce ‘smarty pants’, ‘Captain Substance’ would be your name if you were a superhero because you have no substance, and ‘Doctor Depth’ would be your name if you were a supervillain because you have no depth. A superhero whose special power is having more substance than anyone in the world: certainly not be you! A supervillain with the power of having more depth of character than anyone else would never be you!
And so, he continued his inner invective (or was it a prayer, some form of memorial speech or epitaph for a man who had died long ago?) as he sat there on the bus bench beside a woman he was surprised to find was no longer there––or was she still there in some hidden form, yet to be revealed? You, you, you, who dare side with ‘the bookseller’, the bilker who hides behind a thin veneer of respectability, giving customers pat elevator pitch summaries of every book on his shelves, as though he had memorized the Wiki summary without ever having read them: his brother, the grifter and self-absorbed victim. ‘The bookseller’ as a professional victim and you, ‘the skier’, his accomplice.
Just as he was about to start typing his rant into an email message to ‘the skier’ he instead typed ‘Son, I love you. All is forgiven.’ He almost pressed the send button but stopped. It wasn’t because the sky had just darkened or a sudden cold wind blasted over his face, making it seem like winter again, but because an inner voice welled up inside and said one word: no. It wasn’t a father’s job to bend over in forgiveness to those who had wronged him. It would open the door for further mistreatment from ‘the skier’ and his sister while also teaching the wrong lesson: weakness. His son was already weak enough because his grandmother had spoiled him as a child into believing the world somehow owed him something and some great power, a metaphysical ‘Pan-grandma’ would always be there to sooth him with enough gifts to satisfy a school Christmas choir. She spoiled him well into adulthood, even paying his rent after he left college when all his peers were already fending for themselves. And now that he had become a father, he needed to assume responsibility and learn never to take abuse from anyone, not even his own father or, eventually, son. That was the lesson he was teaching ‘the skier’, he convinced himself as he sat there on the bench: to stand up for himself and never back down.
A loud rumble barged into his thoughts, disturbing this reverie, which had taken hold of every fiber of his being. No longer. His eyes were filled with a flash of silver and green coming towards him––what was it? ––and he became suddenly aware of being alone on a bench somewhere in some city without M–, where was she? A kite was floating upwards above the houses, obviously no longer guided from the ground by some tiny invisible hand. It rose into the blue mantle of the sky, which almost seemed like paint: thick, blue, and fluid, but completely opaque in its blueness. The silver and green impression suddenly concretized, became tangible. It was a bus! He stood up like an automaton and leapt to the door. When it opened, he turned his head to make sure that the woman had really gone––was she ever there at all? As he stepped into the bus, he was relieved to find he could pay by simply tapping his debit card since he had no change in his pocket. Physical money was getting more undesirable by the day. M– made him wash his hands after handling coins or bills, because they were covered with bacteria, she said. He loved her for this obsession with cleanliness. Just as he was about to take a seat, he spotted a face he recognized. An elderly face beneath a peacock blue hat, crumpled by time into something barely recognizable as having once been a young woman, all those years of cavorting somehow gathered and remolded into the kind of gravity and wisdom on display in a Russian teahouse, staring blankly at the back of the bus into a piece of paper. Was it a map? She looked up at him but didn’t seem to recognize that they had been seated on the same bench only ten minutes before––or was it an hour, or maybe a day? ––as she spoke to him about the clouds in the sky. It was as though she had disappeared beside him only to reappear on the bus without having to go between: quantum tunnelling? ––more likely she had walked to the stop before to board the bus there without him noticing. And so, the bus lurched into motion, almost pulling the ground away from him a split second before he was about to take his seat, dumping him awkwardly into the smooth red vinyl receptacle behind him. He scooted over to the window and watched. All he would do for the next hour was watch.