Flame Angels

by Robert Wintner

  But speculation that the old neighborhood might shape up with great good times and salt-o’-the-sea soulful living one more time is a certain symptom of happiness going away. Let’s face it: Old neighborhoods do not shape up again. Wishful thinking is the last gasp, even as former happiness is front and center on life’s lazy Susan for scrutiny from all angles. That doesn’t mean you can reach it or hold it any more than you can bring money home from a dream. You can’t, because it’s a dream, and it fools you one moment to the next, presenting itself as real.

  Then they fade away, the moments, the wish, the happiness, the life. For that matter, what’s the difference between happiness in the moment and happiness as a memory? No difference at all is the answer; each is illusory, giving way to new moments and memories in the making...

  Fuck that. You’re so full of shit. Happiness in the moment is fun. It feels good, and if you don’t know that, or if you’re a nincompoop schmendrik who needs to call it illusory, then you’re a bump on a log who never lived anyway, never cut loose and let go headlong for no tomorrow, and I mean a million moments in a row, like from jumping off a perfectly good boat down to a hundred and forty feet, where reality doesn’t get any more real. That is, with tanks and daylight and the magic at depth, not tied up in duct tape at night.

  Fuck that, too. Let it go.

  Except that letting go might be the new buzz phrase for modern people processing too many changes; with massive popularity comes loss of meaning. Except that cliché is often grounded in reason and necessity. Like now, when a man of above average fortitude can let go and is doing just that with alacrity — except for Skinny. She’ll most likely leave the body in this life before her man dies, and that’s a consolation — a difficult scenario grasped by a realist — but then if he hadn’t gone away, he could still be with her, by her side to help her on her way when her time comes. For that matter, better that she should go first, so he can assure her care and protection for as long as necessary. And now she’s alone, facing the end by herself.

  But enough of that. All people and cats must take the journey sooner or later and always alone.

  Enough.

  Put your mind elsewhere right now. Okay, in a minute, as soon as new images come in for review and assessment. Like the shape of the future, which from here looks like a mirage, an illusion on a desert, beyond the shimmering heat.

  Hey, I thought I told you to ditch that illusion noise. It’s okay that the horizon is where things are headed, because life should be dynamic, not static, because mobility makes for a balanced view, including cross-cultural experience and insight, not to mention the outer-connectedness most integral to the inner yadda yadda, hitherto and forever more. Outer-connectedness? That’s a good one, but it can’t very well be integral.

  Outegral?

  Let’s face it: Until the last hundred and fifty years, a trip over fifteen miles took a whole day. Okay, so that was on land, and a seafarer could cover what, a hundred or two hundred miles in a day? That doesn’t count here, because life on board in the olden days was a commitment of no return, for a year or two anyway.

  Now a traveler can span half the globe in a day, ostensibly adding years to normal life span in time saved. Besides that, jet travel adds scope to life, making vast areas of cultural variety accessible to anyone in new worlds formerly reserved for intrepid or wealthy adventurers.

  Except that time saved is not time earned. Frequent flyers actually get less return on effort than their ancestors, who seemed happier on fewer miles and no amazing free gifts. They also lived free till their dying day — free of surrogate adventurers in oppressive density chattering tediously about their physical contact with places they never sensed, never understood, never lived in but merely visited on brief reprieve from personal ruts. Like now, in the gridlock of vacationers here at the gate, suburbanites for the most part, pedestrian masses yearning to be free, sighing in wondrous disbelief at the amazing, fantastic and fabulous sights and sounds they will soon call their own by virtue of physical presence.

  I was there.

  I did that.

  Count me in.

  They look forward to six more days of it before returning to the job — make that the position — where imminent promotion, a sound economy and a solid market-share point to more, more, more of the best of everything. Then comes supplemental acquisition, maybe a third car or an extra TV. You can’t beat the new flat screens with higher definition. Or a change of wall-to-wall carpets a few years ahead of schedule might be nice, along with some new appliances or a nip and tuck. Like that couple on the far side of sixty: Her cereal bowl tits and his drum-tight neck make them right for a zombie thriller from Hollywood. How much better could things get for people like that? Well, they’re headed to Tahiti for starters, or maybe finishers. Who cares, anyway? They’re not hurting anything. Unless he’s an industrial asshole hell-bent on killing nature for personal gain, like the billion-dollar developer on the Westside who actually lives in Europe but insists on fouling our reefs in the name of livelihood — for the people, don’t you know. Well, who’s to know? Still, the tits and neck are enough to make you wonder where we’d be without growth.

  “Mark my words,” says the disheveled man in the seat beside Ravid. “One day soon, this will be the perfect Executive Club.”

  “What?”

  “Executive Club. You know what that is, don’t you? You pay a few hundred bucks a year, and they treat you like a human being, like they used to do for free. You know, like how they used to wash your windshield and check your oil? You’re old enough to remember that. You sure look old enough — no offense, but you been run hard, huh? Anyway, now you pay extra. A few hundred and they give you cold soda. Air conditioning. Some pay phones and magazines.”

  Ravid nods, hoping the man beside him is not deranged, or at least that he won’t go berserk, though events of the last days and nights have fairly inured him to hazard. The gate area is choked with people, with twice as many bodies as seats, with people squeezed double, sitting on the floor, mulling, spilling into the walkway, lingering in front of, beside and behind the counter, where they are reminded to stay in front of the counter if they’re in line and somewhere else if they’re not. We must follow these rules for security.

  To keep America free?

  Nobody listens, because no place else is available. Still, the reminders defer to the rules, more rules in response to more people doing wrong things. But how else can they adapt except to behaviors that don’t fit in the plan? They could stand on their heads or lie down, but that wouldn’t free up much space. They could vanish into thin air at the whim of a wizard who...

  “You see what’s happened? The overhang on that building right there shields the sun from half the gate area, but the rest of the seats are in direct sunlight. You think you’re hot? You think you’re sweating? You think it’s beading up between your eyes and rolling down your nose and your neck and ribs? Me too. But I got news for you. We’re in the — pardon me — fucking shade. Oh, yes. Look over there. Ten degrees hotter I’d say. We lucked out. We got the good seats. I’m telling you, not so far in the future, this’ll be the Executive fucking Club.” Ravid looked at the seats in late afternoon sunlight. The passengers there are sweltering. The difference seems marginal, but he’s glad he’s not in sunlight. He wipes his forehead and hopes that’s the end from the fellow next door.

  But no — “Okay, we feel it, so they feel it too. Just you watch. Next thing: They’ll see what we see, but we won’t say anything. Doesn’t matter. They think like we do. It’ll start small — just you wait, first will be an optional up-charge for Executive Seating. That’ll mean shade. Look, you got what, two hundred seats in the shade? They’ll start at five bucks, and when that sells out, they’ll test the market by going to ten or twenty. What the hell — you’re spending hundreds on the ticket, so why not start cool? Not cool, but not so hot. Get it? I’m in business. Tourism. That’s business. That extra twenty bucks would add up to
what, say, two grand on the full flights? And most of them are full. That’s pure gravy. Two grand could make the difference between profit and loss on some flights and minimize loss on the other flights. You wait. You’ll see. Crowds of middle class people crowded tighter than a gnat’s asshole in what this airline will call “shade” — wait. Make that cool, soothing shade. Or, you get the cheap seats with the poor grunt migrant workers sweating bullets on folding metal chairs. Yeah, metal chairs with no cloth, no foam, just metal, in the sun. Sweating. What they do best, right? You wait.”

  Ravid waits all right, avoiding acknowledgement of the nutty guy nearby, even as the disturbed man erupts with small aftershocks: “Shade? Shade, my ass. You can’t say it’s any cooler, but it’s not in the glaring sun. So they’ll want more money. It’s like saying an open flame is cooler than a blowtorch, which it is, but if you were sentenced to death by fire, would it make a difference what was under you? No, it would not.”

  Overhead TV monitors placed for viewers from every angle keep the area up-to-date on the war to keep America free and establish democracy in the Middle East, but not for oil — never for oil. Then comes news of terrorism, major accidents, natural tragedies, corporate criminals and their status in the legal process. To balance the news with smiling faces come stories of children making the world a brighter place for those less fortunate, children coping with debilitating disease, children starving to death or excelling at sports or studies. And back to the war.

  “They call this fucking air-conditioning,” the troubled traveler bemoans. “Except that there’s no air, and it’s not conditioned.”

  It’s true, evidenced by universal sweat, though one pesky person really doesn’t need to bray the uncomfortable truth when it’s so obvious to everyone. What does he think, that he’s saying something nobody knows? He can’t be that stupid. Can he?

  But can he, Ravid, offer an effective response — or maybe a counter eruption to quell the incessant blubbering beside him? Maybe a quick serving of the Devil’s own discomfort — and horror — would squelch this guy. How can anybody be so tiresome in a situation already too tedious?

  “You know...” Ravid wades in. “This airport used to be a few gates. No jetways. Just those stairs on wheels, and you got on and off from the blacktop. This used to be a beautiful place.”

  “Yeah. Used to be. You should have seen it before you got here.”

  Ravid turns to double check the man’s complexion, to see if the presumptive “you” was intended, or if the man merely meant nineteen years ago.

  Well, the man could be a poi dog too, or maybe he’s got a deep base tan. Who cares? A running mouth transcends anyone’s birthplace and is achingly familiar to a tourism professional with impeccable haole blood quantum.

  Ha!

  No matter where he’s from, a single idiot can dominate an otherwise lovely scene — or exacerbate an intolerable one. Most days Ravid counts himself a world traveler, with the world coming to him in evolved, articulate women and men willing to answer his many questions. The problem with the odd diarrhea mouth is that nothing will stop them, short of insolence, which, frankly, is unlikely to salvage either them or the situation.

  “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen...” The woman at the counter advises that regular boarding will begin in a few brief minutes — a troubling phrase. A minute is sixty seconds, not more or less, though insights of recent hours taught otherwise, that minutes assumed to be brief can in fact be interminable, down to each and every heartbeat of each and every minute for an entire night. “...those who need extra time in boarding or those with very small children.”

  “Yeah, a few brief minutes,” the smoldering fellow says. “Like ten or twenty. Like we’re not already a shitload of brief minutes late.”

  “You know,” Ravid replies, beginning to explain the burden one man puts on everyone by sharing his angst, or the awful difference between discomfort and horror, or the nuisance this man’s voice has become. But he stops. He stares off... Is that a bird of prey swooping to kill, leading with talons and beak and nature’s mercy? Wait a minute: Are those wings, or pectoral fins? And those teeth...

  “Yeah, I know. And you’re about to find out.”

  Ravid has seen predators take prey up and down the food chain. Near the bottom, prey go quick as a gulp. Climbing higher, they require killing prior to eating. Some die instantly, some from heart failure, while others squirm. Some predators pause for a brief minute to see if the prey will die conveniently first or require the kill. No matter if death comes from severing the jugular or a vicious headshake or live dissection or engorgement, time becomes paradoxical in nature’s transition. Practical time transcends technical time and takes forever; those moments may be brief but seem interminable. Once the kill is foregone, time stretches, resuming normal cadence after the kill.

  Doesn’t it?

  Unless you’re the prey. Then time becomes eternity. Now there’s a not-so-brief minute for you — unless it’s a minute of zero span, quick as a blink for the difference it makes, the first minute in an infinite series of minutes.

  So the night had passed in minutes, heartbeats, waves, surface flutters, muscle cramps, stars, clouds and, of course, the curious, hungry crowd sensing from below. The only consolation of fear is the eventual acclimation to fear as the constant state of being, so that death’s sudden appearance or continuing absence merges into the same thing. Which isn’t fearless, because you’re still scared shitless for a few hours, till the fear muscles give out. You’re no less scared, but when death finally arrives it’s foregone, down to casual exchange between familiars: Oh, death. How’s it hanging?

  Does that make sense? “Scared shitless” is a figure of speech — but it gains real meaning if the fear pounds within and without for a sustained period. Some major gut tremors along the way can press the fearful onward toward salvation. Changes occur in disposition and outlook, like the numbness that softens the fear and cramp, which isn’t like icing on cake; it’s more like a topcoat of additional fear. Even adrift at sea at night, fear becomes a baseline, easing the fearful to acceptance, which, after all, any death must lead to, all the sooner with violence nearby.

  In any event, the man dies inside sooner or later.

  Just so, if the fearful one is already scared shitless and then offs a major load, he is rendered marginally fearless, which feels like advancement on the spiritual plane, such as it is.

  With one more exercise in letting go, the jettisoned stuff is easily viewed as unnecessary, like anything foolishly obsessed.

  So, for a brief minute, fear turns to reflection on attachment and what might have been if things had gone differently or if chance had been kinder.

  But maudlin regret becomes quickly incidental in dire straits, like the open ocean in pitch dark save the ghostly whites of the frothing crests. You can’t go back. You can only will yourself toward the tiny lights to the southeast, among which affluent folk savor their aperitifs this very minute.

  So the burbling stomach sucks itself into a fist as regrettable scenes play back — like woofing Jorge’s Chili on the Fly. The fearful one clenches again, sorely wishing he hadn’t, not yesterday or any day, or was that earlier today? A viable man needs calories on any day, and Jorge’s Chili on the Fly is so convenient and filling, bubbling lightly on its little gas stove. But Jorge giveth and Jorge taketh away. Jorge used heavy cayenne to balance marginal hygiene in chili grown as a culture like yogurt, fleshed out with more beans, burger, water and lard (for flavor and viscosity) when the vat went shallow.

  Chili can host a culture or two, though not as intended, making Jorge’s Chili on the Fly more like the Cannonball Express screaming round the mountain on a head of steam with the station coming on — something’s got to give...

  And give it will, with special insistence from the odd gob of saltwater down the hatch. Oh, the ocean will not be contained.

  But wait — the swimmer drifts, knowing he must squirm to ease the should
ers free so he might peel off the neoprene sleeves. Then he must pull the torso below the tunnel round the bend, so the Cannonball Express won’t crash into the station.

  Then he’ll need to sprint, because sharks love a speeding train, especially when it smells like shit.

  Then again, a sprint might be clumsy, given the fatigue, and clumsy movement will ring the dinner gong. Then again, drifting may be worse than a sloppy stroke, because predators prefer the easy meal, already dead and smelling dead, adrift with no movement.

  So a bone-tired waterman is yet again between a shit and a sweat. But he must. Time and tide — and chili on the boil, saltwater in the gut and apex predators — wait on no man. Unable to peel a shoulder without sinking, he vows to buy a new wetsuit with that stretchy material, if only he can...

  But he can’t. So he lets himself sink in order to peel the neoprene off his shoulders. He’s only sinking four feet or six. And what else can he do, spew in his wetsuit and seep shit till the whole toothsome gang shows up for chow?

  Ravid ponders the nature of his crime in this or any life to warrant such a cruel correction, and he laughs and cries at once at the beating on top of his beating and the beating on top of that — all this six feet under, nearly drowning and stuck for lack of strength on a surplus of pain as the shoulder threatens dislocation. Then he is drowning and so yanks the shoulder free on a shot of adrenaline, make that a double, and look: no dislocation.

  Gasping at the surface he peels the neoprene to just below his butt crack, hanging onto the sleeves so he won’t lose it along with the shit or shit into a sleeve — just his luck — and he whimpers again, this one neither a laugh nor a cry but an appeal for mercy if not reason. Then he finds a position in which to float without losing his wetsuit or shitting in it. His skimpy swim trunks bind him at the knees, so a dolphin kick serves for moving slowly through the waves and waiting.