Wednesday, May 14, 2008

• Plan B.

  Picture sundown on a road above the sea line. Fill the scene with roving albatross, lanky power lines, liquid gold shimmering over the water, whatever you like. Of course what's a scene of the road and all its implied symbolism without a motorcycle? In this case, a classic Norton Commando MkIII Interstate, its riders a man and a woman. She leans deeply into him as if to fuse her center of gravity with his, face pressed firmly against his back, arms collapsed sturdily around his waist. The wind lashes her hair violently about her face—they are going fast. Fast enough to elude pursuers. Fast enough that to disembark would be certain death. And that's the point, because he's kidnapping her. That's plan B.
  
  Plan A was to establish a repertoire. Nothing deep, just a light platonic foundation from which to casually court her affections. I'm an honest guy—honest with myself and lucid enough for it to count. I was going to be her friend, I was going to open up to her, and by this show of faith I hoped she would love me, if nothing else as a friend. But she was too cool, too sick with the mal du siecle, too ready to not cross that bridge at all. So what? I've failed to capture the affections of many women, but never once failed to get on with life. Life will get on anyway. But this time, it didn't. This time I felt stubborn, I felt indignant, and I felt...sorry for her? I can't quite understand it myself.
      And so plan B runs as follows. I'll kidnap her. It won't be anything romantic like whisking her away in a rush of intense passion. I'll pace my living room biting my nails while she sobs convulsively against the locked door of my bathroom. After 36 hours I'll take her south on the back of the Commando and we'll keep going south as if flying straight for the mouth of Hell, hunched into the wind, grazing the speed of light. Eventually, the plants and birds will become exotic and we'll arrive, somewhere in South America. She'll dream about a tiny white bird piercing the canopy of the rain forest beyond the road, and it'll make her seethe with hatred for me. But I'll keep my spirit high, only because since we first met I could sense her inner beauty the way you'd sense the truth behind an uncommitted lie.
      We'll become itinerant basket weavers. She'll achieve visionary proficiency at the craft, learn to ride side-saddle, carry all her belongings inside of each other like nesting dolls. She'll be silent and grave towards me, and will flee from me at every opportunity. She won't even put on her shoes before flying off into the desert, but she won't make it far. I'll have to pluck the spines of cacti from her feet, using my teeth for the ones that are too small, and she'll kick me in the face. She'll make at least one attempt on my life, and my wounded ego will swell with revenge—I'll watch her in her sleep and contemplate raping her, until daybreak sobers my pride.
      She'll get a tan, hands and legs scored up with cuts from the basket-reeds and frequent escapes on foot. Her hair will dry out and her ribs will start to show. But she'll still be too beautiful for me. It'll be painful just to look at her. Soon we'll meet a charming man, a syndicalist volatile orchestrating revolt in the countryside. She'll quickly fall for him and I won't even be angry. Though he and I are alike, he's the better man—the one serving a righteous cause, and I will take a bow down and out into gradual despair, according to plan.
      Life will go on and we'll periodically come to town where she'll risk her life as an attractive gringa to send a postcard home, while I waste postage mailing stuff to literary mags. One day our syndicalist friend will be shanked to death by a rival. I'll take the news as opportunity to say that ideologues are as ruthless as their hated tyrants, but naturally she'll ignore me. Later at the market she won't see the ugly creole creep up on her. He'll drag her halfway across town before I catch up. Like the night she stabbed me, my mind will fill with bright red birds. Suddenly, his men will pounce from the filth—she'll see then that I have no regard for my own life, nor for ideology, and she won't know what the Hell I'm fighting for. I'll have the busted lip, crushed ear, cracked ribs, and broken hand to prove it.
      I've also taken into account that the creole will turn out to be one of the revolution's great leaders, and the blood on my hands means I'll have the labor unions coming after me swinging nooses. For the first time she'll look me in the eye and she'll say fuck this Steinbeck shit, let's bounce. And this will make me nostalgic for that time when I first saw her but was too devastated by her beauty to come closer. We'll take another long ride on the Commando. She'll lean deeply into me as if to fuse her center of gravity with mine, face pressed firmly into my back, arms collapsed sturdily around my waist.
      Of course the Commando won't last forever, but at least we'll break down in the middle of a vast and scenic desert where there will be truck stops and gas stations with massive convenience stores, so that we'll know we're back in the states again. Up until this point the plan will have been pretty convoluted, but here is where it turns into geometry, simple and elegant. I'll sift through the convenience store aisles, pretending to marvel at the superfluous completeness of their inventory, while she distracts herself from me in a National Geographic.
      Later, we'll take a booth in an inexplicable Dairy Queen, and she'll look out the window for that tiny white bird again. Look what I got at the gas station I'll say as I produce a single bottle of nail polish—a softly iridescent coral that won't look familiar to her even when I remind her it was the color of her toenails when I first met her and she wore that nice pair of open-toed flats. The red ones. Funny, I never had a foot fetish, but her feet are very appealing to me for some reason. She'll knock my sundae off the table and into my lap and as I dab at it with a fistful of napkins, she'll lean on one hand and stare at me for longer than she ever has, honest-to-God perplexed. And this confusion—it'll be love.
  
  That's plan B. But for the time being, picture sundown on a road above the sea line. Fill the scene with all kinds of birds, lanky power lines, liquid gold shimmering over the water, whatever you like. Next picture a classic Norton Commando MkIII Interstate, its riders a man and the woman hunched up against him, grazing the speed of light. The wind lashes her hair violently about her face—they are going fast. Fast enough to elude pursuers. Fast enough that to disembark would be certain death. And that's the point.
  
  

  • 3:48 AM
  • 25 views
  • 86 eprops
  • 46 comments