The Map That Leads to You

by J. P. Monninger

  “Why? Do you play a lot of air guitar?”

  “Au contraire, Ms. Heather. I believe anyone who plays air guitar should be forced to look at a never-ending loop of themselves playing air guitar.”

  “You hate it that much?”

  “Oh, more than hate, Heather. Much more. Hate does not begin to describe it. I mean, what is air guitar? What does it mean? A person holds out his hands as if he—or it could be a she, but more typically it’s something guys do—as if he were playing a guitar. Of course the guy just happens to be able to play the best guitar licks in the world, usually without practicing anything at all. And then he looks around as if he’s actually doing something, and he makes these rock-and-roll faces like he’s getting the last squeal out of a note he just played. It’s an insult to everything that is holy on this earth.”

  “So I can never air guitar?”

  “You can air guitar, Heather. Be my guest. I will never stop you from air guitaring. I will simply have to leave the room, that’s all. I could never look at you in the same way afterward. I just couldn’t. It’s kind of the white man’s overbite of musicianship.”

  “So yes to Bigfoot, but no to air guitar. Got it. Anything else I should know about? Is there a manual that accompanies you?”

  “Oh, there are caverns within caverns here, Heather. It’s one big car ark.”

  I closed my eyes. The bus came to a wider road and accelerated, and when I looked out the window, I saw planes coming down out of the sky. Jack held my hand. I thought of Mr. Periwinkle. I thought of my mom and dad and what they would say, and what they wouldn’t say, how Jack would fill up our house. I held my breath and went under the pool water and all above, all the bars of light and liquid, became soft and quiet and tender. Then the bus pulled onto a ramp and the tempo changed and we were here, we were leaving, and Jack stood up to get our bags, then did a quick air guitar lick, his tongue out, his grin the Jack-est ever.

  * * *

  Airports suck. But Charles de Gaulle sucked a little less with Jack beside me. With a second pair of hands and eyes to manage the baggage, things went easier. We had arrived early enough to go through security without feeling like a convertible going through a car wash. We showed passports, bumped our phones on the desk clerk’s computer to record the boarding pass, slipped our shoes back on, restrung our belts through our jeans, bought gum, bought magazines, drank a quick beer in a quasi-French sports bar named Alas, then sat for a time in a pair of rockers the management had placed near the windows overlooking the tarmac. It was nice sitting in the rockers. I felt quiet and dizzy and exhausted. But I felt satisfied. I had done Europe. I had seen it. I had strayed off the path and seen different aspects of a place so many people visit, and it felt good. I held hands with Jack. Sweetly, he stood and moved his rocker closer so that we could have greater contact.

  “I really didn’t expect to meet anyone like you,” Jack said in his softest voice when he had settled back into his chair. “I really didn’t.”

  “Ditto. You’re a surprise.”

  “Do you want me to tell you why I love you? Would that be a good thing to do right now?”

  “Sure, of course.”

  I kissed the back of his hand. I always wanted to kiss him.

  “First, I want you to know that I love you despite your disability. Your joke deafness. It started out as a problem, but I’ve learned to overlook it.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And because you read Hemingway. I love you because of that.”

  I nodded.

  “And because you complete me.”

  “Oh, good grief. Quit quoting movie lines.”

  He leaned over and kissed my neck. I moved my lips to his. We kissed for a while. The world went away whenever I kissed Jack.

  “The real reason I love you is because we share an eye,” he said when we parted. “Have you ever heard that?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You’ve heard of the Gorgons? They were three dreadful sisters with snakes for hair. They were all blind, but they had a single eye, and they had to pass it back and forth to see the world. We share an eye like that, Heather. We look through the same lens.”

  I started to make a joke about him calling me a Gorgon, but then I realized he was being serious. Although I couldn’t quite believe it, I heard his voice crack. I sat forward and looked at him.

  “Jack?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Are you okay?”

  “I love you, Heather. I want you to know that.”

  “I love you, Jack. You okay? What’s going on?”

  “I’m fine. A little tired.”

  “You shouldn’t stay up all night dancing.”

  He smiled and kissed the back of my hand now. He let his lips stay on my skin.

  “What do you think the Esche is seeing right now?”

  “Two lovers. They have a small dog that sits by their feet. The dog is very old and comes to the park every day with them. The dog can barely see, so it has mistaken a squirrel for a lady dog, and it dreams of running through the park with the squirrel, except the dog is too old and has bad hips.”

  “Does the squirrel have a name?”

  “No, I don’t think so. The dog’s name is Robin Hood.”

  “That’s not a dog’s name.”

  “Yes, it is. It’s a beagle. It has brown dots right above its eyebrows.”

  “That’s a good thing for the Esche to watch. I’m happy the Esche has something like that to see on a good morning.”

  “The Esche will always be watching.”

  A few minutes later, he said he had to use the restroom. He got to his feet and grabbed his backpack. I asked him to snag a piece of fruit if he saw one. He nodded.

  “It was pretty to think so, wasn’t it?” he said more than asked me.

  He had said it to me once before. Maybe twice before.

  “Are you quoting Hemingway at me?”

  “It’s a nice line. I always wanted to use it.”

  “I don’t get the fruit connection. I mention fruit and you quote Hemingway.”

  “I guess there wasn’t one,” he said. “I guess it seemed like a cool thing to say. You looked beautiful sitting here, Heather. If I had six lives, I would want to spend them with you. Every last one.”

  He smiled and hoisted his backpack higher on his shoulders.

  What was going on? He seemed too emotional for the everyday atmosphere of the airport. A glancing thought passed through my mind to ask why he needed his backpack to go to the men’s room, but I let it go. Maybe he wanted to change. Maybe he needed something out of it. Our eyes met. I watched him walk away, and in an instant, the foot traffic had swallowed him.

  I dug out my phone and checked messages. I shot a text to Amy. Told her I was heading her way. I texted Constance and asked if she had seen a kangaroo. I texted my mom—knowing that was the same as texting my dad, too—and said I was at the airport, all good, tired, ready to come home, couldn’t wait to see them. I checked a dozen e-mails, mostly from work, and then looked at a picture a friend named Sally had posted on Facebook of a cat wearing a pirate hat. It was a good picture, and it made me laugh. I liked it and wrote Aaarrrgggghhhh, matey under it. I stopped short of adding an emoticon. The cat looked adorable.

  I felt, for a while, that I had entered the phone-world. It was just me and a virtual world that didn’t actually exist, but did exist, and when I looked up, I was surprised to see time had passed. The light had changed slightly out by the airplane. The flashlights the ground personnel used to guide the planes, to flag them forward or left and right, suddenly seemed brighter when contrasted against the dull sunlight. My neck began to prickle, and I put my phone away slowly into the breast pocket of my shirt.

  I looked down the passenger way where Jack had gone. Then I pulled my phone out again and checked the time. He had been gone … I didn’t really know how long. What was the sense, I asked myself, of checking the time if I di
dn’t know when he had left? If I didn’t know that basic piece of information, whatever time it was now was pointless.

  Then before I could do anything, or come up with a plan, a man in a nice-looking business suit, his ear to a phone, pointed at the spare rocker beside me. I held out my hand to block him, but then realized that was a pretty ballsy reaction. I dropped my hand and nodded to him. He smiled a thank-you and dragged the chair away. It had been close to me from when Jack had sat in it. It bothered me to see him drag it off.

  “Would you mind?” I said to the man, pointing to my backpack.

  I wanted him to watch it. He covered the mouth of his phone and shook his head. He told me in French he was going to be only a minute.

  “Please watch it as long as you can,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

  The man gave me a French lip purse. As if to say, Americans. As if to say, Maybe, maybe not. I didn’t have time to negotiate a deal with him. I walked in the direction Jack had taken. People walked toward me, and for an instant I had an image of The Catcher in the Rye. It was a novel we had read in high school, and I never liked it much, but I did recall the image of the main character, Holden, as a catcher in the rye. He wanted to be a boy who went through the tall meadow and kept children from falling, his arms outstretched, his eyes trained on their safety. That was how I felt walking against the grain on the passenger way. Jack had to be in there somewhere, in among the people, and I walked with my arms nearly outstretched, trying to see him.

  A little farther on, I pulled out my phone and texted him.

  Where are you? I texted.

  I held the phone in front of me, expecting his reply to come instantly. But it didn’t. I realized I had stopped in the middle of the moving traffic, a boulder in a streambed, and people moved past me, clearly annoyed, their faces bright little bubbles of mini-rage. I was violating rules. I was an imbecile. It was all they could do not to strike me.

  I tucked my phone back in my pocket and went down the passenger way until I found the men’s room. I looked at various men as they went in and out, and I wondered if I could ask one or the other to check on Jack for me. He could be sick, I realized. Something could have happened. But then I thought, The hell with it, and I ducked inside, keeping my eyes innocent and glanced away, and called out in what I knew must sound like a shrewish wifely voice.

  “Jack? Is Jack Quiller-Couch in here?”

  The bathroom attendant, a thin, tall African man in a blue coat, came toward me and held his arm out to prevent me from penetrating farther into the bathroom.

  “Mademoiselle, non,” he said. “Non, non, non.”

  “Jack!” I shouted louder. “Jack, where are you?”

  The bathroom attendant backed me out of the bathroom. My voice had echoed in the tile chamber.

  “I am missing my traveling companion,” I said, trying to speak in French but failing horribly. “My boyfriend, he went in here, I think.”

  “Non, mademoiselle. Les garçons—seulement les garçons.”

  “I understand, I do, but he is missing.”

  A text came in on my phone. I pulled my phone out so quickly that I dropped it. It skidded on the floor, and I had to scramble after it. I thought it might be broken, but it seemed all right when I examined it. The text was from my mother saying she couldn’t wait to see me. I didn’t even want to think about my phone skidding across a bathroom floor.

  I texted Jack again.

  Jack?

  Almost in the same moment, the PA system called our flight.

  New York City. JFK. Group four now boarding.

  “Mademoiselle,” the bathroom attendant said again, and it wasn’t until I heard him speak that I realized I remained in the outside portion of the restroom. I backed up. The main streambed of passengers felt as busy as ever with people rushing down toward their flights, their roll-on luggage trailing behind them like obedient dogs.

  My brain began speeding up, and I thought, My backpack. What kind of idiot leaves a backpack unattended in an airport? I started back toward our gate, and I realized, as I went, that Occam’s razor applied here. I knew the rule from a first-year philosophy seminar. I even knew it in Latin as lex parsimoniae. Simply stated, it recommended when confronted by conflicting hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. In short, keep it simple. Assume the easiest line of reason. I was letting my mind get carried away. I needed to follow Occam’s razor instead.

  Another voice—a voice outside my head—came over the PA system and announced a flight for Algiers. That stopped me. A small flood of panic kicked into my bloodstream. I turned and began jogging in the direction Jack had taken. It was nearly impossible to jog with the people coming toward me, but I did my best. My breath felt like a sword plunging in and out of my lungs. The fact that Jack might have left, had gone, was such a raw thought that I could not allow it space to emerge, to uncurl like a ghastly baby bird pecking its way horribly through a gray egg wall.

  But then a saner, more measured voice began whispering calming things. He did not leave, it told me. No one does that. He would not simply walk away. It told me to take it easy, to go slow, and I slowed to a walk and continued another five minutes down the long footbridge, trying to be a normal tourist, trying to look unconcerned, trying to believe that when I went back, when I returned to the backpack that I had recklessly left in the middle of an airport loading gate, he would be there, air guitar in hand. I even forced myself to stop in a magazine and candy shop, pretending to browse, my stomach as raw and horrible as if I had swallowed a cat covered in Crisco. I snatched up a copy of Match and flicked through the pages. I wanted Jack to have time to return. I wanted him to be unrushed.

  I took my time returning. I looked at the faces passing by me, coming at me, or whisking by, and I wondered what secrets they had held that they could not reveal. Everyone appeared to be searching. Everyone seemed to be looking for someone else, something else, and twice I nearly collided with people wheeling bags. Then, without meaning to, I saw my backpack, and I smiled to see it, glad it was still there, happy that I had taken a small risk and won, but I did not see Jack. I walked closer, and still he did not appear, and I turned to inspect the waiting area, the small check-in desk, and he was not there, either.

  I went and sat next to my backpack. I stared straight ahead.

  I was aware of time passing, but only in a marginal way. When the people around me began to stand and move, I realized, almost in a haze, that it was past time to board. New York City. JFK. I stood and bent and lifted my backpack. I chucked it up onto my shoulder, and it bounced against my back, and a tiny gurgled grunt worked out of my lungs. I bent and made it hit me again. It felt good to be hit, to feel the solid weight strike like a pendulum against my back and beltline.

  I snatched my phone and looked to see if Jack had texted, called, done anything. Then my finger snapped on my contacts, and I hit Jack’s name, and I poked it. My phone connected with Jack’s phone, and I thought madly about things to say—Hey, Jack, where are you? You disappeared. Hey, Jack, I’m standing at the gate, and they’re calling our flight, and I thought you might want to hustle along now … but he did not pick up. The call went to his answering message, and I took a deep breath, opened my mouth to speak, then softly hung up.

  The airport people announced they were now boarding section one on the plane, please have your boarding passes ready and your passport opened.

  I moved slowly into the boarding line. I looked down the walkway in the direction where Jack had disappeared, and I thought, Now he will show up, here he comes, he must be moving toward me now, what a funny joke, what a nut, how kooky is this guy? It occurred to me he might even be on the plane already. Maybe it was all an insane mix-up. Then one of the airline people asked for my passport, and I handed it to her. She scanned it and handed it back to me. I said okay, thanks, but mostly I watched her mouth move, and then we went down a long passage toward the plane door, and I stepped on, removed from Franc
e’s earth at last, and I handed my documents to a flight attendant, a woman with plenty of makeup and a smile that came too easily to her lips, and she nodded and pointed me toward the back of the plane. I passed the bulkhead that separated first class, and I kept going, and then I arrived at my aisle and row, and I slipped in, sat down, and kept my eyes forward. Jack was not sitting next to me.

  * * *

  I threw up in the plane’s restroom before we had taxied an inch.

  It came like a wave, and I couldn’t resist. I voided everything. After a while, after throwing up three times, someone knocked on the door and asked in French if I was all right.

  “Ça va,” I said. “Merci.”

  The person said something rapidly in French.

  I repeated, “Ça va.”

  * * *

  After great pain, a formal feeling comes. That’s what the poet Emily Dickinson said. As I sat waiting for my flight to start its taxi, the minutes passing, the reality slowly, painfully becoming incontrovertible, I felt a rigidity enter my posture. I sat more upright. Yes, I would be formal. I would accept what I could not change. I would not, could not, cry anymore. It sounded like Dr. Seuss. Would not, could not.

  I put my phone into my pocket and turned it off.

  I did not try to read. I did not check my e-mail. I did not drink or eat. I sat and felt strangely solid. This had happened. That’s what I told myself. I had been played for a fool, and I wasn’t the first woman to believe a man’s lies, nor would I be the last, but this counted for a lesson learned.

  I did not permit myself the luxury of searching the faces of my fellow passengers for Jack. I didn’t pass any longing looks toward the front of the plane. He was not coming; he did not come; he did not want me after all.

  A little later a bright, red-lipsticked flight attendant told me to buckle up, and I did. She smiled. I smiled back.

  We took off a little later. The plane lifted, and Jack was not with me. We passed through a cloud, and Jack was still not with me. I asked the attendant for a gin and tonic, drank it, asked for another, drank it, asked for a third, drank it. She refused to give me a fourth. I put my head back against the headrest and closed my eyes.