18% Gray

by Zachary Karabashliev

  “But, you said . . .” he cries.

  “You messed up my preset buttons, you moron! I said exactly as you found it! That does not include country or smooth jazz.” His hands are raised defensively. His eyes are foggy from my jab, his body shaking uncontrollably. He gets to his feet. “Get the fuck outta here! Run! Run!” I yell, stomp my foot, and observe him melting away toward Ramona. I look at Melody, who is finally silent. In her look I read a mixture of amazement, admiration, and some kind of disappointment. Apparently, I am not so different than the rest. Well, I’m not, I guess.

  After I lock the car, Melody drives to the closest gas station. On the way there I learn that her husband is a truck driver who comes home for the weekend every other week. That her kids (by three different fathers) are very nice, and her sister helps her however she can. I buy a small gasoline container and fill it up. I grab a bunch of air fresheners—for her car, which I stunk up. I buy candy for her kids (three, eleven, and thirteen) and we head back to the Mercedes. While she’s talking, I’m looking at the desolate street. The sense that people have deserted this town in the heat still lingers in me. Before I take off, Melody politely offers to let me go to her place if I want, to take a shower and change clothes. The idea of water over my body is very tempting. I thank her, but I have to go. I don’t even want to think what might happen if out of the blue, a semi pulls up to her house while I’m there and her man jumps out of it, and I’m in the shower. One of those it’s-not-what-you-think situations that I really don’t want to deal with. I’m proud of my decision, damn it. I’m proud. There, I can be reasonable when I use my head. I give Melody a hug, thank her one more time, and we go our separate ways. She gets back into her car, waves good-bye, makes a U-turn, ferociously turning the steering wheel, brushes something off her eye, and drives off, tires screeching. She can probably see me in the rearview mirror. What is her bleached head thinking now? Melody.

  *

  Stella kept on working with kids who needed help. Sometimes she’d tell me about them, and I tried to listen. I hadn’t seen any of her paintings in a long, long time, but I knew she had been painting. When I came back from work, tired from staring at names and numbers, I didn’t feel like talking about anything, and on the weekends I just didn’t have the energy to drive downtown to her studio. I had given myself a break from art, photography, writing, philosophizing. I decided to spend at least one year of my life dedicated to work, financial stability, and TV. I avoided any kind of serious conversation with Stella. Over time, I invented mechanisms to do that. I didn’t feel like talking about my work (she still wasn’t sure exactly what my occupation was) and I certainly didn’t want to bring up art. The word future made me sick to my stomach. My attitude toward Stella did not change; I just freed it from a few unproductive aspects.

  *

  I get in the car. I’m again reminded of how good you feel after you lose something for a while and then find it. I get on the freeway with a full tank and a painfully empty stomach. I am hungry after the excruciating diarrhea. And, of course, I am aware that no matter what I put in my mouth, I’ll suffer. I’ll starve, I decide. I’ll starve until my head clears up a little, until I get my thoughts in order, until my emotions abate. I’ll starve my sorrow for Stella.

  I just need to leave California.

  *

  I started traveling often. The company paid me ninety dollars an hour for my business trips and the time I spent out of town. So I started choosing more indirect flights.

  In order to get to Illinois, for instance, I’d fly to Texas, which added eight more hours at airports and planes. Money-wise, this was more than my grandma’s annual pension back in Bulgaria. The thought of it was absurd, but also entertaining in a way.

  I’d fly to Florida through Chicago, which extended my journey by six to seven hours, even though there was a more direct flight from L.A.

  To New Orleans I’d take a layover in Sacramento.

  The longest way to New Jersey was through San Francisco.

  I spent less time with Stella and our silences.

  The company policy was that travel time shouldn’t exceeded seventy-five percent of the time spent at home. I began to appear as an exception. Scott the manager did not miss an opportunity to mention my professionalism and loyalty to the company. In fact, I felt fine in this new endeavor of mine—among people who needed my expertise, with employers who appreciated my efforts, and with a bank account which for the first time in my life looked promising. I felt strangely fulfilled. This was it—fulfilled. For the first time in years, I liked the idea of calling my mom and chatting with her. I’d mostly do it from airport coffee shops between flights. Those conversations were gifts from me, and she was happy and proud that I, her only beloved son, traveled so often, that I was succeeding professionally in America, while my friends back home could hardly make ends meet. Of course, I would conveniently neglect to mention the reason for my frequent travels, and it never even crossed her mind that I would be anything other than a photographer, writer, or artist of some kind, at the epicenter of something exciting. I don’t know how she would have taken the truth that I was visiting clinics, collecting data, and writing business reports instead of stories.

  *

  I’m driving southeast. Eventually the populated areas yield to vast wheat fields. The prices of the newly built houses advertised on the billboards along the freeway become lower and the landscape—more desolate. On the road I’m always fascinated by the ever-present wooden utility poles, the barbed wire fences all along the way to the East Coast—evidence of an America I fell in love with so long ago. Far, far away on the horizon rise murky, bluish mountains that don’t get any closer, even though I’ve been driving toward them for a while now. Between them and me lie acres of farmland. I pass huge yards where all sorts of combines, tractors, machinery, cement trucks, caterpillars, bobcats are covered in gray dust. Places like these frighten me. Further on, I pass an outdoor enclosure with enormous concrete pipes piled on top of each other, colored green, red, yellow, blue, and black like a huge art installation. Here and there to the left of the road, satellite antennae jut into the air, beneath them stand small houses, trailers, and bungalows. Alongside the asphalt there are yellowing patches of grass, burned thorns, tumbleweed, gravel, blown-out tires, beer cans, broken bottles, papers, shattered stop lights, oil stains, plastic bags waving in the wind—the remains of passing humans. From time to time, tall trees appear—slim, with light-gray dolphin skin and small, hard leaves, in groups of three or four. I don’t even know what these trees are called. I drive for a long time through uninteresting, flat places. No matter how unpopulated everything looks, though, from time to time I see the unavoidable Taco Bell, Shell, McDonald’s, Burger King, even Walmart, Pizza Hut, In and Out, Dunkin’ Donuts, Mobil, and Chevron—corporate calluses surrounded by tall palm trees, imitating oases.

  I now figure that for the last couple years, I had been working hard to make my bank account pretty and my days unbearably boring. I know that this is also the case with all my co-workers and their co-workers’ co-workers. I haven’t met interesting people in a long time. I haven’t read a book in a long time. In fact, I now think that Stella had begun leaving me long before I saw her off last week. I had noticed those shadows of absence—first in her gaze, which withdrew from mine more quickly than before. Then, in our most intimate, still-occurring moments of closeness, one invisible part of her would remain half-turned away, as if to see whether someone was calling her. In our now rarer kisses, I’d feel that trace of coldness, like the breeze at dusk in late August. As a kid, I remember the old fishermen in my hometown saying that the sea was turning. Stella’s physical projection left me last week. But the larger part of her had left before then. And that’s the part I miss most.

  I exit the freeway and pull over. At the foot of a yellowish hill scattered with large oval rocks, the shadow of a utility pole has cast a dark, elongated cross. A group of slender, dark green cypresses st
and to the side like sentinels. I take the camera and carefully compose the picture in the viewfinder. I finish the roll, take it out, put it in my pocket and load a new one. I get back in the car.

  An hour later and it’s still California. As far as my eyes can see, there are different nuances of yellow. The foreground is a freshly harvested field, as bright yellow as a punk hairdo. The hay bales are lined up in long, neat rows. A little further on is a murky-brownish field with huge heaps of straw dozing in the late afternoon. The air is yellow-brown, dyed by the desert wind. Yellow. Brown.

  Then, from a dirt road adjacent to the freeway, a white convertible appears with a woman dressed in white, wearing a fluttering white scarf and dark sunglasses. Behind the car, a yellowish dust trail stretches for as long as my eyes can track it. I try holding the steering wheel with my left hand as I take a couple shots with my right. For a short while, the convertible and I drive at the same speed, and I get the feeling that I’m on a train, following my favorite movie star through the window. I’m not on a train. And the woman out there is no movie star, but perhaps the wife of a small-town accountant. Whoever she is, a moment later she turns right onto a perpendicular road and drives away. Drive away as much as you want, unknown lady. I will go on.

  The foot of the mountains starts turning dark violet and the peaks—milky orange. Imperceptibly, it has begun getting dark. I pull off the freeway and stop in front of a small motel named Mirador. It’s quiet. A girl with a Spanish accent and a name tag that says GABRIELA checks me in. The motel is almost empty. I take the key and find my room.

  I get in.

  I turn on the light.

  I toss the Nikon on the bed and flop down on the bedspread.

  I get up and check the bathroom. Well, it needs an intervention, there’s no getting around it. In most American bathrooms, there is a fan in the ceiling. It’s usually connected to the light switch. So, every time I go into a bathroom and turn on the light, the noise these fans make drives me nuts. No comfort or intimacy whatsoever. I pick up the receiver and dial 0.

  “Hi Mr. Kara . . . bash . . .” My name shows on a display apparently, but she can’t pronounce it.

  “Hi.”

  “How can I help you?”

  “I need a screwdriver, please.”

  “May I send our maintenance man, Mr. Kara-sh . . .”

  “It won’t be necessary, Gabriela. I just need to tighten something here on my suitcase. For just a minute.”

  “No problem, Mr. Ka . . .”

  “You can call me Zack and you don’t need to do it all the time.”

  “No problem, Mr. . . . errrrrr . . . Zack.”

  “Thank you, Gabriela.” I hang up. In a minute, a guy brings the screwdriver and leaves. I pull up a chair, go into the bathroom, step up on the chair, unscrew the four screws of the small vent on the ceiling and unhook the fan’s wires. Now I can spend some time here without feeling like airplanes are constantly flying over my head. I throw my soiled clothes in the garbage, strip off whatever else I have on, and jump into the shower. I close my eyes, standing still for a long time. Then I open my eyes and start observing how water behaves. I see how the drops hit the tiles, turning into small streaks, intertwining, continuing on down, making unexpected turns, and running into bigger streams. Enchanting.

  I feel much better after the shower. Still undressed, I lie on the bed and study the ceiling for a long, long time. I can’t remember ever doing that. I’ve always thought that was just a cliché for depressed types, but I was wrong. No ceiling is just a ceiling if you have the eyes to see. A gallery, a film, a book, a concert, a bas-relief . . . To me, it is now an etching of Dante’s Inferno with all its demons, suffering, and torture.

  Stella, Stella, Lama Sabachthani!

  I have no idea how long I spend like this, but at some point I realize that there’s nothing above me to look at anymore, because it’s completely dark outside. I have to get up. I put on a pair of jeans and go to the car. I drag the bag into the room. I go back and get the lemons. Are there enough? Well, there better be. I pick up the phone and dial 0 again.

  “Hi, Mr. Kara-ba . . .” The familiar voice starts energetically and stumbles on the third syllable again. They all do. “Hi.”

  “Gabriela, how are you?” I say.

  “I’m OK, thank you, Mr. . . .”

  “Zack.”

  “Zack.”

  “Gabriela.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Thank you for the screwdriver. I needed it.”

  “I’m glad. What else can I do for you, Zack?”

  “Gabriela.”

  “Yes?”

  “I need a knife.”

  “A knife?”

  “A knife.”

  “A set of utensils?”

  “No. Just a kitchen knife. A sharp one.” A pause at the other end.

  “A sharp knife?”

  “Yes, very sharp.”

  “May I ask . . .”

  “I’m thinking about slitting my wrists.”

  “Oh!”

  “I’m kidding, Gabriela,” I say. “I’m kidding. I need it for something else.”

  “Of course, sir.” She sighs with relief. “I’ll send somebody over in a minute.”

  “Gabriela?” Hesitantly.

  “Yes, sir?” Somewhat warmer.

  “Did I scare you?” Reluctantly.

  “Yes.” Serious.

  “I’m sorry.” Quietly.

  “It’s OK.” More quietly.

  “Have a nice evening.” Even more quietly.

  “You, too . . . Zack.” Whispering. Very carefully and slowly, I hang up the receiver. There—I can still awaken someone’s emotions! Not all is lost. Perhaps not.

  Somebody bangs on the door—a plump Mexican woman in a blue uniform with a huge knife in her hand. She silently gives it to me. I read the badge pinned to her enormous checkered bosom—Juanita. The knife’s blade flashes, and for a split second I see in it Juanita in her home village somewhere in Mexico, a knife in one hand, a chicken in the other, walking confidently toward a stump. Dust, cackling, feathers, blood . . .

  Why don’t you chop off my head, too, Juanita? Slaughter me, Juanita.

  I am a dead man already, but I’ll bleed.

  I thank her, give her a few bucks, take the knife, shut the door behind her, lock it, double lock it, fasten the chain, check the windows, and fully close the curtains. I untie the bag. This is the second time I’ve done so since it fell in my hands. And this time I’m sober and relatively calm. Until this moment, somewhere in me the thought was alive that perhaps all of this is just some mind-trick. Some kind of half-dream and half who-knows-what. Deep inside, I guess I’ve hoped that this isn’t happening. Too bad, because it is. The first thing the fucking scent of the marijuana does is land me in a meadow in my childhood. I’m about five and I’m rolling down a hill flecked with wild flowers. Before my eyes, a tall, blonde girl with a wreath on her head and a dark, long-haired man with a beard emerge and disappear. She’s running, laughing and waving her long straight hair, he’s reaching out, trying to catch her, and a German shepherd jumps around them with its tongue sticking out. From time to time, the man catches the girl and they both tumble into the tall grass; the dog bounces around them, nudging them with his wet nose, then runs toward me. I scream and roll down the hill even faster. This is the first time I’ve seen people kissing. It attracts me and appalls me at the same time. So I shut my eyes while they do it. The dog’s name is Smoke. The man and the woman are Christo and Teresa. He’s my father’s cousin, and she’s Polish. Christo goes to Warsaw for a month. They meet there and fall in love. They find that puppy by a dumpster and take him in. Then they return to Bulgaria. They had taken me with them for a walk in the woods that day and they were kissing, picking wild flowers, and weaving wreaths as I was running with Smoke. There must have been some kind of wild cannabis plant in that meadow.

  I take a lemon, I thrust the blade into its thick skin and it squirts
me straight in the eye. I rub it for a long time, then open my eyes and wait for the circles to fade.

  Christo and Teresa got married in the cafeteria of the machinery plant where he worked. Teresa became a seamstress in a factory. She gave birth to a boy and a girl within a few years and her face faded to gray. One winter evening in the middle of the seventies, Christo came home from work and found the girl crying alone in the empty apartment. Neighbors had seen Teresa with a suitcase and the young boy at the bus station early in the morning. It must have been November. They must have been wearing overcoats.