I'm on a happy thought trail, hard-won, when another young woman, hairless and white with eyes burning black and red, appears on the other side of my desk. Now there are two staffers, flanking me, both pointing to the same material. She has the same file – WHEN SEMI SPEEDS OVER CAR – I was just looking at and had managed to forget. She sees my alarm.
"What the hell is this?" I ask.
"We made copies," she says.
I turned on the TV. The State of the Union, a rebroadcast on cable. I pushed my ear into the pillow. The president had burst into the hall and everyone was so happy. They all seemed so genuinely mirthful, all of them. What is the president whispering to them? Most of the people just stand and clap, but some get the president whispering to them, something really great. These people, in their suits and ties, the women all wearing their bright, solid-color outfits, like a loosely distributed bunch of giant fruits and vegetables. Green and red peppers and apples and blueberries, everyone smiling such difficult smiles, not easy smiles, but smiles full of resentment and fear -
I corrected myself. I had no right to judge these people I've never met nor ever will, presuming that their smiles are forced or bitter, when there was every possibility in the world that these were happy and good people, that the senator from North Dakota for example was wholly normal and content, was someone who loved those close to him and did what he could to aid those he represented. It was entirely possible that the distinguished senator from Oklahoma was stung every time a poll indicated the public's lack of trust and admiration for those they elected. Maybe he was hurt. Maybe when results like that were conveyed to him he shook and vomited and went to his window for air and called his mother, who still lived in his childhood home and was widowed and who soothed him by using both his first and last names, and whispered them together, over and over and over and over -
Oh Jim
Oh James
Oh James honey
Oh Jimmy my dearest one
Oh Jimmy Inhofe
Jimmy, Jimmy my son
Oh Jimmy Inhofe
Jim – Jim
Jimmy Inhofe Jimmy Inhofe
– and this would work for the senator, though neither of them would know exactly why.
It was dark and the phone was ringing; the pillowcase beneath my mouth was soaked.
"You awake?"
I'd slept for two hours. It felt like minutes.
Hand came in and we ordered pizza and watched Kingpin on cable. The guilt was monumental. We were wasting the time allotted. We had had hours and we slept. We could have been doing something. This week was about using minutes and hours like these, taking them and holding them, polishing them, throwing them as far as we could, but at our first opportunity – all these hours free and full of infinite choice – we'd done nothing.
We could have hitchhiked somewhere. We could have knocked on doors – even in this hotel – and met or groped new people. But no, nothing. We'd bought the Senegal tickets but now were waiting for pizza in an O'Hare Best Western – we wanted to be able to tell people about every hour this week, that every hour we had done something not-or-seldom-before done (at least by people like us) but instead we were watching the angry hustler guys put Woody's hand in the bowling-ball retriever machine.
"If you think about it," Hand said, tearing a slice from its crust, "the original schedule had us getting into Dakar at 1 in the morning, too late to do anything anyway. Now we get in at 9 A.M. or something. Same difference, except we sleep on the plane."
He was right. He was a titan. We were again golden.
And in an hour the phone rang again; the shuttles were coming. We jogged down to the lobby. In the lobby, what seemed to be a hundred Senegalese dignitaries milled and lined up. There were a few women among them, a pair our age, their skin so smooth and unblemished it seemed fake or too tautly stretched. I was caught staring at the full round hips of a woman in red, the color of new blood in direct sunlight.
I nudged Hand. He rolled his eyes.
He knew I liked women of heft and generous curve, 5'11" and up, as tall or taller than me – I'm maybe 6'1" – and with exuberant, exaggerated lines. It was a preference I'd developed in the past few years, after dating Charlotte, who remade me in the shade of her luxurious form. Charlotte was a plus-size model of grand sweeping landscapes, who demanded attention of sidewalks and living rooms and had a soft loud laugh like the clashing of great white clouds. We'd been together for six months or so when she announced she wanted to move to Los Angeles to do the usual things. I was invited along but passed and it was just as well. We'd begun to snap and gnaw with moods and boredom – "How could you say that when you know I can't whistle?" "How could you say that when you know my aunt is diabetic?" and besides, I'd run out of logical and erotic metaphors and in our particular coupling, with its foundation in the bedroom, this drought meant doom. She had a thing for metaphors during sex – Me: "I'm plowing your field! I'm plowing your field!" Charlotte: "Speed the plow! Speed the plow!" – and demanded new, evermore exotic images – "I'm docking my starfighter!" "I'm stuffing your burrito!" "I'm… I'm sinking your… tight, wet… battleship!" – and I guess at a certain point, when I found myself consulting friends for ideas – it was Hand who came up with the the starfigher/docking/Gallactica analogy, which didn't do much for her – it just became too much work.
I stopped staring as a bellhop, middle-aged and white with a thin droopy mustache, spoke to us.
"You guys had a nice dinner did you?"
"I guess," I said. I had the greasy feeling he was talking to us because we were two of only three white people (Carradine, now regaling others with his tales of luck and encompassing hospitality and poor math skills) in the lobby.
"You guess. C'mon! I saw that pizza come through. You two had a feast!"
Hand and I smiled. The bellhop had what I hoped was toothpaste at the corners of his mouth.
– You moron.
– I am sorry Will.
– Wipe the spittle from your mouth.
– I am sorry Will.
I told him he was welcome to the rest of the pizza, that we'd only eaten half and the rest was still there, in the room. He said he might just do that – if Rose hadn't already gotten it. I didn't ask who Rose was. Where was Hand? Suddenly Hand was gone.
"So you're going to Africa too?" the bellman asked.
I nodded.
"Listen, just watch yourself," he said. "The place is a mess." "They got it cut up like a pizza pie." Pizza again. He liked pizza. He stepped closer to me. "They're always killing each other! Brother against brother! You're going where again?"
"Senegal."
"Senegal. Senegal! You gotta watch out there. Remember – hey! [Grabbing my shoulder] That's the place where they shot down the Navy pilot and dragged him around by his penis!"
I told him he was thinking of Somalia. He shook his head at me, as if I were the king of chumps. Hand had returned.
"I used to send money to Africa," the bellman was saying, "but then I realized the warlords were taking all of it. They take the money and then when we send supplies the Russians come down and carry it away on planes. They cart it away!"
"Right," Hand said, pointing at him. "You're right." I couldn't tell if Hand was being serious.
"Didn't know that, eh?" the bellhop confided to me. "The Russians get all the stuff we send – they buy it straight from the warlords." He loved that word. "It's crazy. So now I don't send money."
I shook the man's hand and winced. I'd forgotten my hand was half-broken. Hand shook the man's hand.
"What is your name sir?" he asked.