change of scenery - and pants
when you see someone for the first time in a long time, its customary to hug them, or at least shake hands or something. it's a common courtesy for a reason. that reason is, as far as i know, because it would suck to have your feelings hurt by someone who didn't recognize you or remember your name after a certain period of time. but as we all know, it happens. that what happened when i bumped into leigh at the irish-pub/arcade/milo's?/thing. in my defense, i was distracted by the game of darts i was playing with sara and chad. that chad, he's a competitive one (the following extra exclamation points are for emphasis)!!!!!
so i turned around, and there she was. she was wearing a black dress and too much lipstick. she was smiling the typical pretentious, faux-confident grin that fit her like a tool belt fits my dad. it looks so heavy and cumbersome, but he wears it so effortlessly.
"hi," i stuttered.
"hi," she squeaked, and smiled even bigger at my acknowledgement. but either she can read minds or i'm not terrific at hiding what's going on in my head, because her pearly whites almost instantly took a bow and slid behind her shiny lip curtains. "you don't remember me, do you?"
"of
course i do! you're..." do it eric. do it. do it with pride and conviction. "...lindsey?"
needless to say, the conversation didn't progress well from there. i'll spare the details and skip to the theme park.
it's funny, i don't remember having to climb a ladder to get to the platform of the roller coasters. but that's what we were doing after we left the pub/arcade/milo's?/thing. i guess chad hung back to beat himself at darts. don't laugh, i've seen him do it before. so it was just the two of us climbing this white wooden ladder. hand over hand, foot over foot, my view was of the soles of sara's shoes. i found myself worrying that she was going to fall and wondering if she was thinking the same thing. if so, did i catch her in her fantasy? if not, what
was she thinking? i might never know the answer to that question, and that's what keeps me (in)sane.
i can tell you, however, what i was thinking. i was hoping that somewhere atop this ladder there would be a restroom.
but there wasn't. and now the title of this post makes sense and i don't have to write anymore.
suicide club
caitlyn was sara and she was upset with me. mark had death cab tickets and i couldn't go.
as caitlyn leaned against the column of my front porch, i pleaded with her to tell me what was going on. but the tears just kept coming. she was making herself more upset because she was upset. it's called the metacry. crying about crying. it's a wicked spiral, and must be stopped in its early stages.
mark called again and i silenced his call. i had more important business to attend to. at least i thought i did. after one glance at the screen of my phone, i returned to comfort saracaitlyn, but she was gone.
i stood alone in my parents' garage, and i was a girl.
a nurse, in fact. my lab coat was starchy and uncomfortable, and i was suddenly wearing glasses that made my nose sweat. i sat on the hood of my dad's car and tried to get my bearings. a blonde woman was leaning, elbows on the trunk, and scribbling on her clipboard. she looked up at me and thanked me for being on time, "it's more than i can say for the others."
others? what others?
oh. those. all 15 other nurses that appeared during the course of that sentence. the one with the dark brown curls took charge.
"ok, here are your responsibilities for the day," she said, handing out clipboards to the rest of us. her voice was shaky, and her tone was insecure, as though she had recently been handed the title of head nurse. i took my clipboard and she smiled at me. "good to have you." i guess i was new.
my responsibility? sweep the garage. yay. the huddle broke and we scattered like dandelion seeds. slowly and deliberately, with purpose, but without guidance.
the lights went out. nobody spoke, but our feet kept shuffling. the garage was so dark it was almost tangible, as if a great black curtain had fallen on us. i fumbled in my pocket for a match, a flashlight, something to get me to the circuit breaker so i could test it. my fingers found a bic lighter. not my first choice in this situation, but it would do.
1, 2, 3, 4 flicks of the flint and i was 6 inches from a man with a scar 2 inches wide and 9 inches from temple to neck.
"cooperate with me. i'm supposed to make this look like a suicide."
he shot me in the face. i was dead, but somehow i knew the other nurses died too.
dan, brad and footwear
my sandals were looking a bit more flop than they were flip. i could feel the individual pieces of gravel as i walked in them. sara and i stopped at a store (whose name i could't pronounce, but the logo was cool - spray painted over stencils) to see about getting me into some new ones. the selection was slim at best. in fact, i only saw one pair. they were brown, with rainbow-striped straps and they were hideous. not to mention $45. but i let sara talk me into it. the guy at the counter overheard my complaints about the price and offered me a special holiday deal. $35. wow. thanks guy behind the counter, who happened to be dan cortese. your life totally sucks. i guess a foundation as an mtv vj leads to owning a shitty boutique that shares a space with a church.
what? a church? yep. pews and all. right there attached to the store. my curiosity ran wild. fortunately, dan invited us over, as he would be preaching this fine afternoon. sara and i took a seat in the pew behind some dork with head gear and at least 3 chins. he was having a conversation about creation that was as ridiculous as he looked. head gear, freckles, thick curly hair and rosy cheeks... and a passion for evolutionary theory that dan cortese didn't seem to understand. dan threatened to kick him out, but backed down when he saw was was transpiring.
the dork was actually brad.
after hours brad. the brad no one gets to see because he wears a wig and a skinny suit. he turned around and sara recognized his eyes. his rosy cheeks became little volcanoes, and he bolted.
with no brad to listen to, sara and i were bored with church. we exited the front door and kicked our heels together as we jumped down from the handicapped ramp.
who needs a snare drum on his motorcycle? that's right. i do. especially when i ride it to work, and especially when i work at the music hospital.
you see, here at the music hospital, we spend a lot of time dancing around to music i create with my snare drum. so i don't have a lot of time to practice. except for on the ride to and from work. i create beautiful rhythms from between my handlebars while you're passing me on the right. i execute rolls and paradiddles as you change lanes.
that's right. a snare drum on my motorcycle.
the chopper
lunch was served on the patio. sara, tutie, their parents, ashley and i ate our sandwiches as the cast iron chairs made waffle patterns on the backs of our thighs. i had grilled chicken breast on ciabatta with lettuce, tomato and honey mustard. sara had ham and cheddar with mustard on wheat. the wind was starting to pick up, so i rolled my sleeves down. the girls struck up a conversation about clothes as i craned my neck to evaluate our surroundings. we were in irving. i could tell by the black tint on the windows of a building shaped somewhat like a pyramid, only it flattened out halfway to the vertex. i'd been to the building before. i had actually interviewed there. strange that they never called me back. oh well. hey, look. chicken.
from behind my sandwich i saw bob's brow furrow. it's fine when my brow furrows, because i control that. or when sara's brow furrows, because i know what to say to straighten it out again (usually). but bob is my future father-in-law, so i neither control his brow, nor do i have the balls to try and make it straight again. so bob's brow had me worried. because bob was worried for a reason.
tutie was worried for the same reason. i took note, amidst my uncomfortable glance in her direction, that she seemed to be mocking her father. and for a split second i thought, "how cruel." i was quick to dismiss my quiet condescension when she pointed to the sky behind me, half nervous and half giddy, and shouted "look at the helicopter!"
again with the craning of the neck. so my attempt at reading bob and his brow had been thwarted, for the moment, by a helicopter. it rose from behind the black glass like a cobra being charmed by a clarinet. swaying left to right, its propellers created black halos above the fuselage. poised above the half-pyramid, the craft seemed to stare at our table, as though our enormous metal waiter had returned to see if we needed refills.
"that chopper's coming down." bob said. and then he stood up and repeated himself, barely louder than the last one, and with a little more emphasis on "down." i swallowed the last bite of sandwich in my mouth, but it was too large and i hadn't chewed enough, and it stung all the way down. bob grabbed mary by the hand and put one arm around her shoulder. i did the same for sara, and the four of us began to flee. ashley and tutie were right behind us as we rounded the corner of the building and descended the steps from the patio onto the sidewalk.
the propeller hit first. the way it cut into the cement reminded me of ordering sausage at a barbecue joint. the blade is always too big, and they always cut at such a severe angle. but sausage lands on my plate in perfect 2-ounce pieces, it doesn't fly away in dust clouds and thirty-pound chunks of skin-piercing rock.
it was fractions of a second before the cockpit dove into the cement soup, releasing a symphony of moaning metal and glass. we were still running when it slid through our table. and into the front of the restaurant. people flew like the aforementioned cement chunks. it was hard to tell screaming patrons from iron scraping on brick.
by the time the weight of the machine had carried it as far as it could scrape along the pavement, it looked like a dead slinky. the one you had forever and couldn't throw away, even though it was bent in several places and didn't slink right anymore. the propellers simply didn't exist anymore, and the whole unit sat in a sea of glass shards and cement powder. the only sound was the breath of millions of tiny little concrete particles hitting the ground.
i glanced around to see if anyone near me was hurt, or if sara's brow needed unfurrowing. but there was no blood, only heavy breathing and wide, white eyeballs under dust clouds. a glance at bob revealed the violent rising and falling of his chest. it didn't take long to realize where all the heavy breathing was coming from. bob was furious. he released his vice grip on mary's white fingers and began to march back toward the patio, arms flailing, obscenities falling out of his mouth like teeth after a beating.
the commotion stopped. twice. the first time was so everyone could have a good hard look at bob. bob was the wreck on the highway that despite their agendas no one can bring themselves to turn from. the second stop was when the pilot climbed out of the wreckage. at this point the dust was nearly clear and the sun was bouncing off the pilot's helmet as he removed it. bob stopped dead in his tracks.
"cut!" a voice sliced through the scene from inside the restaurant, behind the shattered window.
the pilot let down his hair and shook the dust out. as he released the velcro on the neck of his jump suit, a thin man with a clipboard came shuffling out of the restaurant. he addressed the pilot first, presumably to ask if he was okay. then, with a smile he turned to the crowd and informed us that we had just landed a part in his major motion picture. he explained how his vision was to capture the natural human reaction to various disasters, and that the helicopter scene was such a pivotal point in the movie that we should all give ourselves a round of applause. and we did just that. the man was so eloquent, so moving, and he had touched us at just the right time, as our endorphines had begun to subside. although he was the macabre conductor of this orchestra of deception, his actors, who were also his audience now, had no choice but to respect him.
the stuntman/pilot put one arm in the air and took a bow as the director patted his back.
