Flying to America

by Donald Barthelme

  A terrible night. Simon is in bed by 10:00, taking a Scotch for company. Anne and Dore are now watching television. Veronica is out somewhere. About 10:30 Anne comes into the room, strips, and gets into bed with him.

  “I’m cold,” she says.

  He turns her on her stomach and begins to stroke her back, gently. A very sculptural waist, narrowing suddenly under the rib cage and then the hipbones flaring.

  When Anne goes back to her own bed, at 2:00, Dore appears in the doorway.

  “Are you used up?” she asks.

  “Probably.” Dore climbs into bed, clumsily, peels off her jeans and bikini pants, retaining the tank top she’s cut raggedly around the neck in the style of the moment.

  “I’m sad and depressed,” she says. “I feel useless. All I do is sit around and watch MTV.”

  “What do you want to do?

  “Something. But I don’t know what.”

  He struggles around the bed and begins to kiss the inside of her thighs. “This is a terrible night.”

  “Why?”

  “You guys aren’t solving your problems. I can’t help you very much.” His hands are splayed out over her back, moving up and down, over the shoulders and down to the splendid buttocks. Thinking of buttercups and butterflies and flying buttresses and butts of malmsey.

  “Veronica has a rash,” she says, coming up for air.

  “What kind of rash?”

  “Dark red. Looks like a wine stain.”

  “Where is it?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Veronica walks in. “What is taking place here?” she asks, in a voice like thunder.

  Simon thinks about Paradise. On the great throne, a naked young woman, her back to the viewer. Simon looks around for Onan, doesn’t see him. Onan didn’t make it to Paradise? Seems unfair. Great deal of marble about, he notices, shades of rose and terra-cotta; Paradise seems to have been designed by Edward Durell Stone. Science had worked out a way to cremate human remains, reduce the ashes to the size of a bouillon cube, and fire the product into space in a rocket, solving the Forest Lawn dilemma. Simon had once done a sketch problem on tomb sculpture, for his sophomore Visual Awareness course. No more tomb sculpture.

  Was he in love with these women? Yes, he was, however stupid that might be. He was in love with Anne, Veronica, and Dore. “I understand a divided heart,” his wife had said to him once. The women would soon be gone. The best thing he could do was to listen to them.

  “I’ve had twenty-six years’ practice in standing up. I can do it,” Anne says.

  She’s wearing sweat pants with a dark-gray crew-neck sweater and medium-gray Reeboks. She’s been drinking tequila and she’s terribly drunk.

  “I want to tell you something.”

  “What?”

  “You think we’re dumb bunnies.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Your attitude.”

  Simon’s been reading Audubon Action, “Arizona Dam Project Faces New Challenge.”

  “What’s my attitude?”

  “I see fatigue and disgust.”

  “Sweetie, that’s not true.”

  “Don’t call me Sweetie.”

  Some days they were angry with him, some days they were angry with each other. Four people, many possibilities. Each person could be angry at any given point with one, two, or three others, or angry at the self. Two people could be angry at a third, three people at a fourth. He reached forty-nine possibilities before his math expired.

  Their movement through the world required young men, a class to which he did not belong. Simon liked young men, within reasonable limits, and approved, in general, of the idea of young men and young women sleeping together in joyous disregard of history, economics, building codes. Let them have their four hundred square feet. Veronica liked garage apartments. Perhaps the young men would do well in the world, attend the new branch of Harvard Business in Gainesville, market a black-bean soup that would rage through Miami like rabies or a voice attenuator capable of turning crackers into lisping Brits, and end up with seven thousand square feet in Paris on the Ile de la Cité. Young men smelled good, by and large, almost as good as babies.

  Simon constructs a white plaster egg eight feet tall and positions it in the sitting room. The women are watching, sitting on the gray couch. He smashes the egg with an iron-headed maul. Inside are three naked young men. Their names are Harry.

  Three

  I presented myself to the husband. He was an impressive figure in his brown velvet smoking jacket frogged (an ornamental fastening for the front of a coat consisting of a button and a loop through which it passes) with real frogs. I was wearing full dress with a red sash on which all thirty-four of my merit badges were displayed.

  “Let there be no misunderstanding,” I said. “I am here to ask for the hand in marriage of your wife.”

  He accepted this news calmly. He handed me a brandy in a brandy glass.

  “I see you have Penmanship,” he said regarding my sash. “Nothing gives one a better opinion of oneself than Penmanship.”

  “I also have Reverie,” I said, pointing to Reverie.

  “As to what you propose,” the husband went on, “the girl is too young. Much, much too young. Too young and too beautiful. But a girl. Practically a maid if we are thinking of life experience.”

  “I love her,” I said. “I want to make that clear. I love her, as that term is understood by me. Her perfections —”

  “Yes, yes, that’s all very well,” the husband said, knocking back a bit of the brandy. “To be sure. An attractive match, from some points of view.” He looked at his swords, which were crossed on the wall above the fireplace. “You are young and vigorous. I know your family of old. Good people. Your income is acceptable. Your prospects bright. You have delicacy of feeling. You are not bad-looking, aside from the scar.”

  “That was Counterinsurgency,” I said pointing to the Counterinsurgency on my sash.

  “Yes,” the husband said, quieting a frog with his stroking fingers. “You are a fine fellow, as fellows go. But —”

  “I faint a good deal,” I said. “In fairness I must tell you that fainting is something I do a lot. Even now —”

  “Yes,” the husband said, “that often happens, with you younger men. But may I point out that the lady, or rather the girl, whose hand you seek has already made other arrangements?”

  “I am aware of that and do not consider it an insurmountable obstacle. You see I have Surmounting.” I pointed to same, on my sash.

  “Let me top you up,” the husband said and did so from his decanter which bore a small silver plaque on a silver chain reading Gift of the Mongolian People’s Republic.

  “You perhaps think I am not right. For Marie-Helene,” he continued.

  I made “no no no” noises.

  “It is true that I am a man of a certain temperament,” he said. “But not right! Marie-Helene doesn’t think so. Only this morning she was remarking upon my muscle tone.”

  He ripped open his smoking jacket to display the naked muscle tone beneath. I had to admit it. This was good skin, clear, smooth, rosy in color.

  “Also there is my superb singing voice,” the husband said.

  He sang then some of Satie’s furniture music. There was no gainsaying the fact that he had a superb singing voice.

  “Sir,” I said, during a crack in the singing, “she loves me.”

  The husband left off singing.

  “Well of course!” he said enthusiastically. “Who in the world would doubt it? I expected it. Why not? How else? People meet people and sweet music fills the air, as the poet Schade puts it. Of course Schade is not my favorite poet.”

  “Your favorite poet is —”

  “Neither here nor there,” the husband announced. “No, I am afraid I cannot give you my blessing. You understand that there is nothing I would rather give you than my blessing. But my blessing, in this case, must be withheld. I know that this is something
of a disappointment for you, brash successful young riser that you are. I know that you have pictured yourself rising, with Marie-Helene on your arm as it were, to heights. Well, what can I tell you? Into each life some rain must fall. My favorite poet, if I may parenthesize, is the Mills Brothers.”

  “Longfellow,” I corrected him coldly. “‘The Rainy Day’ 1842. Stanza 3.” I have a merit badge in Coldness, of which I am ashamed.

  “Will you have a look at her?” the husband asked. “To make more keen the agony of bereftness?”

  “Yes,” I said, for every glimpse was gold.

  The husband yanked upon a bellpull.

  Presently Marie-Helene glided into the room. Then she glided into the room again.

  “You have two!” I cried.

  “Yes,” the husband said, “beauties, aren’t they.”

  They were beauties, it was a fact.

  “This is Marie-Helene,” the husband said, pointing to the one on the right, “and this is Helene-Marie,” pointing to the one on the left. My love curtsied prettily twice, and went to sit upon a sofa.

  “Two is a beautiful number,” the husband said, “don’t you think?”

  “But if you have two —”

  “I know what you are thinking,” the husband said. “You reason like the child you are. If I have two, then I could easily give you one. That would be fair. Everything would then be just ducky.” The husband moved very close to me. “You are a fool!” he said. “A child! They are mine!”

  I remembered then that I had a merit badge in Contention.

  We contended, the husband and I, for a brief time. I was bested. The weapons were cultural allusions.

  He said: “Violette Leduc!”

  I said: “Lightnin’ Hopkins!”

  He said: “Moses ben Maimon!”

  I said: “Morse Peckham!”

  He said: “Howlin’ Wolf!”

  I said: “Jurgen Becker!”

  He said: “Myles na Gopaleen!”

  I fainted.

  When I revived I found his face very close to mine. “Listen!” he hissed. “I know that you already have a wife. I have seen her on the boulevards. She is very beautiful. Give her to me!”

  “But,” I said, shrinking, “then I would have none! No wife at all! Wifeless!”

  “Three!” he shrieked, bending over me. “Three, three, three!”

  Up, Aloft in the Air

  Buck saw now that the situation between Nancy and himself was considerably more serious than he had imagined. She exhibited unmistakable signs of a leaning in his direction. The leaning was acute, sometimes he thought she would fall, sometimes he thought she would not fall, sometimes he didn’t care, and in every way tried to prove himself the man that he was. It meant dressing in unusual clothes and the breaking of old habits. But how could he shatter her dreams after all they had endured together? after all they had jointly seen and done since first identifying Cleveland as Cleveland? “Nancy,” he said, “I’m too old. I’m not nice. There is my son to consider, Peter.” Her hand touched the area between her breasts where hung a decoration, dating he estimated from the World War I period — that famous period!

  The turbojet, their “ship,” landed on its wheels. Buck wondered about the wheels. Why didn’t they shear off when the aircraft landed so hard with a sound like thunder? Many had wondered before him. Wondering was part of the history of lighter-than-air-ness, you fool. It was Nancy herself, standing behind him in the exit line, who had suggested that they dance on the landing strip. “To establish rapport with the terrain,” she said with her distant coolness, made more intense by the hot glare of the Edward pie vendors and customs trees. They danced the comb, the merengue, the dolce far niente. It was glorious there on the strip, amid air rich with the incredible vitality of jet fuel and the sensate music of exhaust. Twilight was lowered onto the landing pattern, a twilight such as has never graced Cleveland before, or since. Then broken, heartless laughter and the hurried trip to the hotel.

  “I understand,” Nancy said. And looking at her dispassionately, Buck conjectured that she did understand, unscrupulous as that may sound. Probably, he considered, I convinced her against my will. The man from Southern Rhodesia cornered him in the dangerous hotel elevator. “Do you think you have the right to hold opinions which differ from those of President Kennedy?” he asked. “The President of your land?” But the party made up for all that, or most of it, in a curious way. The baby on the floor, Saul, seemed enjoyable, perhaps more than his wont. Or my wont, Buck thought, who knows? A Ray Charles record spun in the gigantic salad bowl. Buck danced the frisson with the painter’s wife Perpetua (although Nancy was alone, back at the hotel). “I am named,” Perpetua said, “after the famous typeface designed by the famous English designer, Eric Gill, in an earlier part of our century.” “Yes,” Buck said calmly, “I know that face.” She told him softly the history of her affair with her husband, Saul Senior. Sensuously, they covered the ground. And then two ruly police gentleman entered the room, with the guests blanching, and lettuce and romaine and radishes too flying for the exits, which were choked with grass.

  Bravery was everywhere, but not here tonight, for the gods were whistling up their mandarin sleeves in the yellow realms where such matters are decided, for good or ill. Pathetic in his servile graciousness, Saul explained what he could while the guests played telephone games in crimson anterooms. The policemen, the flower of the Cleveland Force, accepted a drink and danced ancient police dances of custody and enforcement. Magically the music crept back under the perforated Guam doors; it was a scene to make your heart cry. “That Perpetua,” Saul complained, “why is she treating me like this? Why are the lamps turned low and why have the notes I sent her been returned unopened, covered with red Postage Due stamps?” But Buck had, in all seriousness, hurried away.

  The aircraft were calling him, their indelible flight plans whispered his name. He laid his cheek against the riveted flank of a bold 707. “In case of orange and blue flames,” he wrote on a wing, “disengage yourself from the aircraft by chopping a hole in its bottom if necessary. Do not be swayed by the carpet; it is camel and very thin. I suggest that you be alarmed, because the situation is very alarming. You are up in the air perhaps 35,000 feet, with orange and blue flames on the outside and a ragged hole in the floorboards. What will you do?” And now, Nancy. He held out his arms. She came to him.

  “Yes.”

  “Aren’t we?”

  “Yes.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Not to you. But to me . . .”

  “I’m wasting our time.”

  “The others?”

  “I felt ashamed.”

  “It’s being here, in Cleveland.”

  They returned together in a hired automobile. Three parking lots were filled with overflow crowds in an ugly mood. I am tired, so very tired. The man from Southern Rhodesia addressed the bellmen, who listened to his hateful words and thought of other things. “But, then,” Buck said, but then Nancy held a finger on his lips.

  “You appear to me so superior, so elevated above all other men,” she said, “I contemplate you with such a strange mixture of humility, admiration, revenge, love, and pride that very little superstition would be necessary to make me worship you as a superior being.”

  “Yes,” Buck said, for a foreign sculptor, a Bavarian doubtless, was singing “You Can Take Your Love and Shove It Up Your Heart,” covered though he was with stone dust and grog. The crowd roared at the accompanists plying the exotic instruments of Cleveland, the dolor, the mangle, the bim. Strum swiftly, fingers! The butlers did not hesitate for a minute. “History will absolve me,” Buck reflected, and he took the hand offered him with its enormous sapphires glowing like a garage. Then Perpetua danced up to him, her great amazing brown eyelashes beckoning. “Where is Nancy?” she asked, and before he could reply, continued her account of the great love of her existence, her relationship with her husband, Saul. “He’s funny and fine,”
she said, “and good and evil. In fact there is so much of him to tell you about, I can hardly get it all out before curfew. Do you mind?”

  The din of dancing in Cleveland was now such that many people who did not know the plan were affronted. “This is an affront to Cleveland, this damn din!” one man said; and grog flowed ever more fiercely. The Secretary of State for Erotic Affairs flew in from Washington, the nation’s capital, to see for himself at firsthand, and the man from Southern Rhodesia had no recourse. He lurked into the Cleveland Air Terminal. “Can I have a ticket for Miami?” he asked the dancing ticket clerk at the Delta Airlines counter hopelessly. “Nothing to Miami this year,” the clerk countered. “How can I talk to him in this madness?” Nancy asked herself. “How can the white bird of hope bless our clouded past and future with all this noise? How? How? How? How? How?”

  But Saul waved in time, from the porch of Parking Lot Two. He was wearing his belt dangerously low on his hips. “There is copulation everywhere,” he shouted, fanning his neck, “because of the dancing! Yes, it’s true!” And so it was, incredibly enough. Affection was running riot under the reprehensible scarlet sky. We were all afraid. “Incredible, incredible,” Buck said to himself. “Even by those of whom you would not have expected it!” Perpetua glimmered at his ear. “Even by those,” she insinuated, “of whom you would have expected . . . nothing.” For a moment . . .

  “Nancy,” Buck exclaimed, “you are just about the nicest damn girl in Cleveland!”

  “What about your wife in Texas?” Nancy asked.

  “She is very nice too,” Buck said, “as a matter of fact the more I think of it, the more I believe that nice girls like you and Hérodiade are what make life worth living. I wish there were more of them in America so that every man could have at least five.”

  “Five?”

  “Yes, five.”

  “We will never agree on this figure,” Nancy said.

  2.

  The rubbery smell of Akron, sister city of Lahore, Pakistan, lay like the flameout of all our hopes over the plateau that evening.