Flame Angels

by Robert Wintner

  Which is not to say the game is over; it’s only the foolishness of youth being pushed aside by the inconsolable forces of nature.

  Who knows? Maybe the next part will be easy.

  A Night on the Town

  Daydreams are better, not so violent. So the waning day darkens. The lingering daze dissipates with dusk. The eyes watch the eaves but see something else. Ravid wanders deeper into the maze toward conclusions of logic, perhaps, but no consequence. Which is not to say that these thoughts come to dead ends; these hours in repose pass in agreeable absence of stimuli. Besides, who can be motivated in such heat?

  Basha Rivka Rockulz married Zviki Rahnoose against her better judgment, but sometimes, she says, you cannot know God’s plan, which, in this case, gave her a son — “You know how the song goes,” she often reminded him. “First comes the son, then comes marriage.” Ravid was nineteen before learning that the song actually explained his socially awkward introduction to the world at large. Some things don’t change. The skewed lyric was his mother’s playful way of disclosing his bastard beginning, which she invariably followed with the hearty question, “Who cares? You got your health!” He didn’t press for the logic or reasoning in giving him her last name rather than his father’s; it already seemed so logical.

  A son was the only thing, by the way, that worthless man ever gave her. He left before Ravid could walk, returned to Lebanon for a piece of hashish or a whore or maybe a package deal on both along with a nice cup of mint tea. Good riddance. So what should she do, allow her only son to struggle with the name of a stranger, an Arab stranger at that? The father called himself Lebanese, but he wasn’t — nor was he Syrian, Iraqi, Iranian or Saudi — thank God and praise Allah too. He claimed Armenian heritage, but he could have just as easily been Jordanian, Omanian or a Buckeye. Who knew?

  Ravid did not ask about initial attraction, because she’s his mother, after all, though conjecture on the subject proved a most difficult thing to repress. In time, he took solace in thinking that she too felt the fire inside at some point in her long and challenging path — like himself, more or less.

  Eminently clear to Ravid Rockulz is the milestone he’s reached; in peak physical condition, give or take, he feels near the top of the performance curve, maybe not as strong as ever, but close, with more road wisdom in the mix. Now at square one on a brand new game board, he is a man with developed skills and a reasonably handsome face, facing the prime of life. This may be an optimal view, but times call for the benefits of a few doubts. What should a displaced man facing middle age with marginal prospects think, that it’s all downhill from here?

  No, he should look up, not down. Everyone says that life begins at forty, which is two years off — okay, a year and a half — and the question of livelihood should already be resolved by this time. A man should have rent and groceries dicked by forty — are you kidding me? He should hit forty in stride with the dough rolling in, by rights, leaving him free time to focus on his legacy. Okay, so he doesn’t have the background of, say, an ivy leaguer from Yale or Harvard or capitalization as a birthright or family ties or social connections or collegiate associations. He’s come up the old-fashioned way, the resourceful way, and he has his wits — not that they proved so sharp in the recent past, unless they did and the process was bound to be dirty no matter what.

  Never mind, a man living by his wits will have better wits than a boy with a silver spoon could ever dream of. A year and a half should be plenty of time.

  Starting right now with a first step into the future, to define himself and the mark he’ll make — no, scratch that. No marks. No footprints. Only nature’s sweet embrace will be his destiny, on a path chosen mutually long ago by nature and himself, surely a match made in heaven. Like most people, he’d ignored what was right before him all along. Okay, maybe he didn’t ignore it, but he’d merely enjoyed it — which is not to dismiss enjoyment as a requisite first step. Enjoyment is integral to love and learning; it’s the foundation of any lasting relationship or insight. Let’s just say he did not embrace his calling to full advantage, but now he sees the path as the legacy.

  Except that he did embrace it. He’d loved his camera work. He misses his astounding images. He freely admits his homesickness and tries not to ponder Skinny — but he could return to Hawaii and forget this little misunderstanding. He could be home in time for Sunday’s charter, or Monday’s for sure, legal — what can they do, the “local” mishpocha? He’s one of them. By law!

  But no. He cannot. Imagining a return to Hawaii is like a boy wishing upon a star to be back in that perfect place, so warm, dark, cozy and perfectly fitted to every need — not that a man needs to imagine his mother in such terms. But the point is that life goes forward, not back, that the place and time behind us are gone. They no longer fit, are no longer available for reshaping, unless you’re part of the right-wing media. Otherwise life is present tense, in which fulfillment gets a proper chance if you can grasp the moment just so, not too firmly, not too light.

  Maybe the mistake was taking rejection to heart when it was only a handful of people in New York saying in so many words, Hey, we’re too stupid and/or jaded to see the beauty in your work, not to mention the extraordinary character and technical excellence, to know how to make money on it. Maybe the true artist pursues his work no matter who says what in New York. Maybe the only true artist in any medium is the one never paid, the one with amateur virtue sustained to the end, like Vincent.

  He ended as dust, neither more nor less than Leonardo or Galileo or the rest. Only the work survives. By forty a man has most likely become what and who he will be. At forty he is written, no longer imagined, whether he be a man of means, a man of spirit, or a man meandering among the labors, perhaps with a spiritual penchant and continuing appetite for intimacy with the earth. He can take pictures of fish along the way, or not.

  Don’t think these mental gyrations, convolutions and genuflections are a waste of time. They facilitate inner guidance, because a man of no reflection is a man passing time, which all men do to some degree, but one who slows down to weigh the merits and downsides of this and that will realize a richness, even if he’s denied his dream, even if he’s condemned to work, eat and sleep in obscurity, which may be oppressive on the mean streets of New York but doesn’t count for squat in the azure clarity among garish minions here in the land of oceans.

  Obscurity?

  What are you going to be on a vibrant reef, famous?

  Which comes back around to the legacy, meaning the place and fish and all that stuff tumbling like broken glass in a mirrored tube churning in chaos, except for the little reflective wedges rendering balance, order and symmetry, which is what this boils down to, once we cut the crap and get out of this room and into the world of constructive engagement, where a fool goes hungry, but where a man with something of value to give will give and thereby gain shelter and sustenance — and maybe some mirrored wedges of his own for a legacy. Yes, practicality can be depressing, unless you put it in terms of a simple, happy question: What would you do, given unlimited choices, in the whole wide world?

  Well, let’s see... How about living on a beautiful, tropical island unblemished by humanity, where I work at something or other and take pictures of the reef every day?

  I’ll take it!

  Just so, a scenario takes form. That is: Here is a beautiful island home for many species, a few humans included. The humans complain of too few tourists and not enough money, but whining is human nature. In America they whine of gasoline going up twelve cents a gallon, as if God had killed their first born, so never mind. Three dollars a gallon, six dollars a gallon. Who cares? Let ’em skateboard.

  The follow-up question is the balance of the scene. That is: If I get a scooter and rig it for my camera equipment and spend a few days or weeks taking pictures, then what? I ride around this island on its single perimeter road discovering places, using up my savings, going to bed early, eating at home alone, ri
ding around, drinking beer at home for only a dollar and half instead of six dollars each at a bistro, and every week or two I head over to Papeete to walk the streets and be away. Then what?

  Bad question, that’s what. The longest hike begins with a single step, and a person recently reborn to life and prospects might stumble for a while trying.

  Okay, it’s settled, except that Ravid fears the old grind and rut. He craves liberation from making marks and manual labor, and this practicality thing may only need some imagination and give. In his brief use of psychedelic drugs, wonder and anxiety vied for attention till he realized either one could prevail, depending on him. Like a pilot with a joystick in free-fall reality, his gentle grasp could level things out at proper altitude or let go for a screaming nosedive.

  The compromise will be to seek employment as a dive instructor. He will not resist what he is: a waterman by rights and skills. Older by nearly a generation than many instructors coming up, he will appear more seasoned, especially on that ignoble but inevitable question, to which he’ll chuckle: I don’t know, seven hundred dives a year. Ten, twelve years. What’s that? Seven times twelve. Not even ten thousand dives. So? I’m learning.

  With no local knowledge he’ll face a golden opportunity to demonstrate quick-study skills on currents, drops, surges, wildlife and weather patterns. That he can’t speak French is more perfect still, since nobody speaks French or pig Latin under water. He has his gear except for tanks, which he can borrow. And he has his camera and lenses, which can lead to something good, or maybe not. It doesn’t matter, because a shutter will be opening on a regular basis to record godly images for people to see what is being lost when it could be saved. Recording those images is why he’s here, meaning here on earth. Maybe the shutter will open on something great, but prospects for greatness are best left to their own volition.

  So he feels good — unusually good, better than a man of his recent challenges should feel. Maybe the place is so right that the good feeling is natural. But who would waste time wondering why he feels good? Tomorrow he’ll start over, making a home in a tropical paradise that will likely go the way of all else, to rack and ruin for more people with more cars and less happiness — but then maybe not. These frogs can fool you when it comes to life and its mystical import, which can never be greater than wine, some cheese and a baguette. Hold the pâté for now. Who knows? Maybe the place will be spared for the duration of this lifetime. The inevitable loss of this place seems as sad as the mothers who lose their cubs, but at least he’ll be dead by then, which is better than seeing another beautiful place go to hell.

  But that seems as foolish as wondering why he feels so good, so he sets that thought aside along with the rest, wondering if the sidelines will get too crowded with thoughts, and if a man can actually leave no footprints in a legacy of nature preserved. Then he falls again to sleep, returning again to breaking waves and moonlight sparkling in the grin of his hostess. An hour later, he bolts awake with a pounding heart.

  Can I lunge from one dream into another?

  Of course he can. So he rises, towels off, dresses and walks out to the road and turns left — no, right — on his way to dinner, say, something French, something as rich and extravagant as the future might be, starting tomorrow, day one. Descending into the atmosphere of the new, more manageable dream he senses the tiles on his heat shield cooling, rattling less, his glide pattern stabilizing toward a smooth touchdown up ahead, a water landing of course.

  An early moonrise feels lucky, with the big white bulb now high in the sky. Lucky too is the grassy shoulder easily four feet clear of the sparse traffic, and it’s soft under his stride, his first in a series of strides to come. Treetops blocking the moonlight and two miles of nothing roadside feel like another challenge, till he comes to a resort hotel that looks fancy in moonlight and feels extravagant, beyond a frugal man’s needs. He could walk back and eat across the road, if they serve late and he wants to walk another two miles on an empty stomach. So he goes in. What’s the alternative, saving ten bucks? That’s hardly half a tip on any given day, and the days will come again.

  The seafood and French buffet are also more than anticipated, and at forty dollars cannot be justified. So he pays it, knowing his mother would encourage it, knowing she’ll send another forty, if only ethereally. What the hell, a man who gets married and swims in from the aggregation buoy at night and moves to French Polynesia within a handful of days and then fairly plans his new life in one afternoon shouldn’t blink at a forty-dollar buffet. Or cocktails at seven dollars each, which he has three of in the hotel bar, since the buffet won’t open for another twenty minutes, because the French like to eat way later and maybe one good reason is the liberation from pain and suffering these rounds provide. The drinks flow so easily, the first with a shudder, the second with a twist, the third with a bow wake on mirror-flat seas...

  Then it’s time to eat, which all living creatures must do — but to survive as Ravid has done and then to eat as the French do is another match made in...not heaven, because he would not repeat the experience any sooner than he would stare at the face of God, but then he has stared at something awful and divine, so the match could have been made in the heavenly realm, or maybe it was Neptune’s realm.

  He makes a mental note to come back tomorrow and have a word with management on serving swordfish, with its mercury toxins and black tumors and the obscene bycatch of turtles, birds and marine mammals killed wantonly on the swordfish long lines, as if anybody should live one more minute in blissful ignorance of this murderous carnage or the disgusting black and slimy poison that was excised by hand back in the kitchen mere minutes before carving and cooking the swordfish. But that will be tomorrow — tonight he’ll simply pass on the swordfish, scrunching his nose and wagging his head at the woman behind him, so she might catch on and pass the word as well. He makes another mental note to learn the French word for “tumors” and the words for “bycatch,” “leatherback turtles,” “marine mammals,” “sea birds” and “crying fucking shame.”

  He laughs, and so does the lady behind him.

  He forks the steak — a tough, cheap cut and way overcooked, so he takes a small piece and vows to chew it slow as a minute in the pitch dark depths...

  Never mind.

  Everything else is perfect: fillets, scallops, shrimps, salads, spinach and broccoli and these little pastry shells with delicious things in sauce inside and Caesar salad, fruit salad, pasta salad and tabbouleh. Sliced cukes in yogurt with dill and sliced tomatoes with olive oil and garlic, and cheeses and baguettes and — sadly but equally scrumptious — lobster tails and crab. Three trips seem in order, or five, with an evening to span, so Ravid puts solitude aside along with unwarranted happiness and death, and like a Buddhist who is joined by a most honored guest, he takes a table to dine with his most honored and newly minted self.

  But wait! Never a sentimental or superstitious soul to bow his head in prayer to a private God who can be called upon to grant personal favors if the begging is sufficiently strident and the need sufficiently needy — though the Holy, Holy, Holy One was paged frequently on a very recent night — Ravid pauses with the ether. He takes a moment to feel it, to sort its essence, which is life as defined by a moment and then another. This sequence is so different than it was or still could be and maybe is, if in fact he drifted the wrong way and to this very hour is still treading, and this is merely...

  He shudders, verging on apoplexy and tears, till he heaves on a deep breath and stops.

  He exhales and so joins the rising steam. He inhales and so receives the perfect scents of sweet and sour and homecoming at last. He gives thanks to the plants and animals who have given of themselves to make this meal possible.

  He dodges a momentarily lapse into the moment of fear shared by all living things just prior to the moment of passing. Or would that moment have already passed to awe and wonder?

  He eats.

  Never have taste buds stood so t
all in tribute to sheer, shameless flavor. He can only nod at the waitperson’s suggestion of the hotel special wine for the evening, continuing his immersion in the extreme opposite of recent encounters...

  But enough!

  Let it go.

  And let go of the letting go as well, because bad things fade at the same pace as good things, the same pace as life itself — too slow for some things, but the first sip of Bourgogne Burgundy Blanc displaces all things with goose bumps on taste buds. Anything more perfectly delivering the happy side of life would make a grown man cry.

  But he won’t cry. He laughs aloud as onto the pool deck serving as a stage walk dancers: six dazzling women and, not to burden a random encounter, a lead woman whose shape, face and sheer essence trigger a feeding frenzy of insatiable eyes that don’t exactly bug, but then they do. This fantasy seems foolish to say the least, not to mention it’s irrational — or insane — to be scoping a woman at this juncture. The bigger mystery for a man in eerily odd sequence is the statistical chance of such a repetition. But then he can plainly see that the two events are not similar. They only seem similar just as a mirror universe is merely an idea, in this case encouraged by proximity to the equator, which makes no sense at all, except to a mind grasping at meaning. In fact, the two encounters have very little in common. Yes, he was out to dinner when he met what’s-her-name. So what? This isn’t out to dinner like that. This is way the hell out to dinner, like this.

  He laughs aloud and alone.

  He stops laughing when she drops her rhythm for a personal inventory, scanning quickly for a nipple slip, a bottom out, proper packing, fit, ties, zippers and the full range of safety checks triggered by your casual tourist pervert breaking into a laugh for no apparent reason. With a misstep hardly noticeable to all but herself, she blushes, covering this little botch with staggering beauty. Nobody notices, till he laughs again at the maddening wonder of random events. He shakes his head to indicate that he’s not laughing at her but at the crazy turns life takes — he laughs again at his own capacity for ignorance and growth. He’d thought Minna — that was her name — was beautiful, with the legs, the hips, the ass, tits, face, graceful movement and the whole package. But he was wrong; she was harsh, with the liquor, the dope, the slutty sex and the greaseballs on her tail.