The hot and sticky terminal hums with panicked tourists. Five thousand strong, they clog open spaces and all eateries. Pandemonium reigns. The last Golden Bears somehow don’t take too long to send on their way. Once they’re gone, Sheryl flows aimlessly within the frantic meandering crowd, until she spots a concourse seat being vacated. She dives for it, gaining possession against stiff competition. Settling into the plastic shell, she allows herself a breath of relief and then grabs her cell and locates Muhammad’s number.
“Hey, Muhammad,” Sheryl says loudly, fighting to be heard over the background noise. “Me again.”
“Oh, hi, Sheryl.”
Barely able to hear him, she uses a finger to plug her free ear.
“I was just thinking of you and was going to give you a call.”
She’s not sure she believes him, but with hopes elevating, she responds, “What do you have, Muhammad? I’m still at the airport, so I’m ready to go!”
“Actually, Sheryl, I just wanted to let you know it’s not good news. I can’t find anything anywhere right now. But of course, I will keep trying.”
Tears well up as Sheryl sighs. “Oh well. Thanks for trying, Muhammad. Just find me something soon, please, anything.”
“Of course, Sheryl. I will do my best.”
“Thanks again, Muhammad.”
Drying her eyes, Sheryl tries Omar, one of Muhammad’s competitors. No answer, no voice mail greeting, no nothing. She stuffs away her cell, totally fatigued. I must have a bed tonight, she thinks, barely having slept since the onset of all the protests. Mere thoughts of staying at the pungent airport give her the willies. So once again, it’s time to brave the crazed city and go back to her hotel, however dreaded and rightfully feared the trip is. What else to do?
Maybe tonight, she thinks hopefully, having no other options, with everyone out of my hair, finally, I’ll be able to fall asleep. Even as she vacates her chair, it’s swarmed.
Outside, there’s no line-jousting at the taxi stand. Few others seem to be leaving the airport. Sheryl spots a security squad parting the sea of troubled people, trigger fingers at high alert. She wastes no more time in flagging a cab.
The cabbie barks, “Let’s go, let’s go!” in broken English.
A normally twenty-minute taxi trek runs well over an hour. In growing darkness, Sheryl and her cabbie endure several tense checkpoints before reaching her downtown hotel. How sad to see the iconic edifice without welcoming lights ablaze. Scattered torches substitute tonight. A cadre of armed guards protects the hotel from looters.
She silently chides herself for even being here. Hasn’t this been in the air for years? Many of her other Egyptian tours had dangerous moments with assorted incidents, most of which never were reported. In a tortured, private reaction, she reasons, Why be surprised that the wheels finally have begun to spin?
The front desk verifies that her room remains available. No kidding, Sheryl quips to herself. To the clerk she gratefully says, “Thank you.”
From her too-familiar window above Tahrir Square, she reflects on a career track that has taken her to all corners of the globe. She’s handled dicey situations in Moscow, mediated temper flare-ups in Kosovo, dodged hurricanes in Jamaica and Puerto Vallarta, dealt with an exploding volcano in Costa Rica, faced personal affronts as a blonde in the Middle East, challenged mobsters in Acapulco, and even talked down a determined jumper at the Golden Gate Bridge. Nothing, though, in the end has ever surpassed this. She survived everything else. Whether she will survive this remains to be seen.
Below, outside on the plaza, torchlights flicker, creating faint flashes against her dirty window’s surface. Riot police maintain their vigil. Sheryl wonders if the oppressed are home asleep; or once pressed into action, are they ever even able to sleep?
Refocusing on her own needs, she prays, Sleep, please, Lord—tonight let me sleep. Thoroughly exhausted, Sheryl strays from the window. She flops onto the bed fully clothed, yawns with a hippo’s ferocity, and stretches out her drained body. Shortly, she falls into a fitful sleep. Dreams come easily; her imaginary body double drifts safely above events at the plaza. Her dreamland includes kaleidoscopic out-of-body views of the hotel lobby.
In the dream, she has just returned from the airport, and she overhears anxious talk in the lobby about Mubarak’s having released ten thousand hard-core prisoners to run amok. “Tourists already have been killed!” shouts someone in the lobby.
“They were taking pictures at dusk!” another person harshly retorts.
“Yeah,” chimes in a third, “the idiots. What’d ya expect?”
Sunrise returns Sheryl from overnight misadventures to morning’s realities. She drags herself to the window. Scores of disenchanted early-bird Egyptians already fill Tahrir Square. They shout revolt mantras with more oomph than the previous day’s dispirited crowd. “Ebbs and flows,” she deadpans from her overlooking position, sensing that an optimistic atmosphere appears to be regaining traction.
Suddenly anxious to resume her search for a ticket out of here, Sheryl hurriedly dresses and curls up with her laptop in a window chair. However, Wi-Fi is down. “Big surprise,” she mutters aloud.
Sheryl passes several more days eavesdropping on living history being made a block away. She reads her Bible and religious journals she has downloaded to her laptop. Praying incessantly, she also keeps her cell phone busy searching for flights out of Egypt.
Finally, word comes from Muhammad as an answer to her prayers. He has used insider local connections to penetrate a newly available waiting list and has gotten her moved up in line. “Get out there by noon!” he insists. “Your flight leaves at four. Don’t cut it close.”
Sheryl gasps in elation. “Thank you so much, Muhammad! And thank whoever it was that helped make this happen! Gotta run!” Her mostly ready suitcase takes minutes to pack. “Hallelujah, I’m going home!”
She exits the battered hotel that’s been her port in the storm. Time to take up the gauntlet once more and brave the ride to the airport. The shuttle scurries through Cairo’s hostile streets, surrounded by chaos. Sheryl’s mind brings up iconic images of CIA personnel escaping Saigon via chopper off a rooftop.
Just as the last bastion of soldiers anywhere would fear, she does not want to be among the final tourist casualties here. Turning to prayer, she begs, Please, Lord, get me out of here. She knows anything still could happen in an instant.
Relief becomes imaginable as the shuttle reaches Cairo International. Ultimately, Sheryl’s jetliner fills fast with its cargo of global refugees. Despite everybody’s progress in getting this far, doom still hangs in the cabin’s stifling air, unwilling to loosen its grip on the fleeing sightseers.
Throughout a white-knuckle liftoff, nobody seems able to let out a breath. Even once the landing gear retracts and their pilot banks for friendlier skies, silence rules. Finally, passengers begin offering fervent prayers in differing tongues. “Thank you, God!” is heard repeatedly in languages from around the world.
Soon enough, the plane levels off, leaving Cairo behind. Joyous pandemonium breaks out, with a cacophony of various victory cheers. Hands reach across aisles as strapped-down strangers reach for anyone with whom to share their glee. Sheryl, as excited as anybody, belts out a loud “Yes!” accompanied by a fist pump, nearly hitting the head of a tall turbaned man sitting in front of her. Raucous chants ring out and spread, despite language barriers. Forms of English dominate early rounds of vocal thanksgiving. In competitive spirit, a few other languages take over one by one.
Everyone feels like comrades-in-arms—appropriately so since most are merely victims of circumstance whose long-sought dream vacations stumbled smack-dab into the middle of hell on earth. For now, at least, all have more in common with each other than they ever could have imagined.
Ultimately, passengers and crew alike begin to laugh a bit—nervous laughter, but lau
ghter nonetheless. Tears of relief follow, and then things begin to quiet down. The realization sinks in that they all still remain far from home. At least I got my whole group out of there, Sheryl proudly reminds herself.
As Sheryl leaves her claustrophobic bathroom to rejoin Sterling in her Lincoln Park living room, she carries memories of Cairo with her. She thinks about how she went from her finest working hours into her biggest personal fall. And it hasn’t taken all that long at all.
Just as he was only months ago, postexodus from Egypt, Sterling again is an unannounced visitor. He is sitting stiffly on the sofa pity perch when she reenters the room. Seeing him there in her hoarder’s quarters gives her a sense of helplessness beyond any levels she’s ever known. She secretly grieves. None of this was meant to be. Sheryl pauses at a dining table chair in what she hopes is an unnoticeable attempt to keep her balance.
Sterling asks, “You all right? I was beginning to worry.”
“Sure,” she says without conviction, her hand on the back of the chair.
From where she stands amid all the squalor, Sterling almost looks good to her, not to mention he provides ready company, which often has been nice on quick turnarounds between KTC trips. This most redeeming feature of their relationship has spawned continuous growth for them as a couple despite years of tumultuous events and financial pressures. Their many reunions have felt more romantic because they usually have occurred right after travel-induced bouts of absence have made her heart grow fonder; this never seems to fail.
Privately, she ponders, Who knows? If I hadn’t canceled Hawaii and Istanbul, maybe I’d be all starved for him again and susceptible to his baloney.
“Something on your mind?” asks Sterling.
“Not really. I just kind of blanked out for a few minutes.”
“Hey, that’s no good. But we’ve all been there.”
“What were we talking about?”
“Before you went to the bathroom, we were talking about mortality.”
“Oh yes,” she replies, slightly chuckling, “and loved ones in heaven.”
“Exactly,” affirms Sterling.
With false bravado about their morbid conversation, Sheryl boasts, “Well, I guess I’m way past asking for permission or worrying about a thing. It’s a personal choice anyway.”
“That’s the spirit!” Sterling says.
“Anyhow, what can anybody do about it?”
“Nothing, of course—and the more I think about it, Sheryl,” he says very seriously, “the more I believe it’s something for us to consider. The two of us, together forever—imagine that.”
Light-headed at the thought, Sheryl replies, “Yes, imagine that.” Although his words set off warning buzzers in her head, she’s powerless to go along with common sense, assuming she still retains any common sense at all. Clearly, the increased dose on those pills is having an effect on her, generally breaking down all senses, common or otherwise. She yawns repeatedly but not in a tired sort of way. Rather, she feels relaxed, so relaxed.
Feeling liberated, she believes she can stave off Sterling’s death-wish crusade, quipping, “Keep thinking about it, Sterling—death, life, whatever you choose, for you. Think away. I can’t stop that. But count me out.”
Sterling shifts gears, asking, “And how goes the shredding, Sheryl? Anything left I could help with? We can work it right into our little party here.”
“Never fear, Sterling dear—all done, dumped, and hauled away, today in fact.”
In truth, she knows there are unfound things stashed too deeply or in secret places long forgotten and overgrown, things no one ever would want family to find left behind—like that letter, which she can’t believe Sterling seems to have forgotten. There are surely other things, too, that his lawyers wouldn’t want left lying around, if he even has any lawyers.
If only Sterling knew this, he might not say what he says next. “You always were efficient.”
Sheryl’s eyes flash at his use of the word “were.” Troubled, she remarks, “Well, we’re all good at something, right?”
“Yes,” he agrees before abruptly declaring, “They say sex is better in heaven.”
She unsuccessfully fights off a grin at this claim from nowhere. “Is that right?”
“That’s what I hear from reliable sources,” he says, smiling.
“Well, how about that?”
Chuckling, he again abruptly changes course. “Hey, we haven’t cooked together in ages.”
“Huh? Maybe so. What do you have in mind?”
“How about a little kitchen-sink stew?”
Puzzled at first, Sheryl soon recalls his talk of dangerous products stashed around her place. “Very funny,” she says without humor.
Sterling snaps his fingers sharply before her eyes, looking deeply into them. “Sheryl, I’m dead serious now. Just listen to me. Are you listening?”
“Yes, I’m listening, Sterling, but I’m not sure I’m liking.”
“That’s neither here nor there,” he says mockingly. “Now, listen and hear me well.” In deliberate fashion, he delivers lines Sheryl is sure she’s heard from him before. “Your job is done. And you’re out of my life.” After a beat, he asks, “Do you understand?”
Powerless to think on her own and dizzy to boot, Sheryl mumbles, “Sure.”
“Good. And now that you’ve shred, it’s time to make yourself dead. Correct?”
Vacuously, she responds, “Correct,” while her brain screams, What?
“Good. Now,” continues Sterling, lightening his tone, “let’s have some fun with this.”
“Fun?”
“Absolutely, you’ll see. You play sous chef to my diva chef down on hard times.”
“How clever,” Sheryl replies.
Sterling does a recipe search on his cell again. Finding an abundance of deadly formulas, he directs Sheryl to retrieve various ingredients from either under her sink or inside the pantry. One main element is drain cleaner, a must according to the Web, thickened with scouring powder—and with a little insect spray thrown in for good measure. Right before Sheryl’s second visit to the pantry, she notices Sterling quickly stirring in something from a small bottle that she doesn’t remember helping him find.
He seems to notice her scrutiny and humorously instructs, “Stay on task now, super sous chef of mine. See what else is in the pantry.”
“Right away, sir,” she responds, almost without thinking.
Sheryl returns with ammonia as an activator for their foaming fuel. “This is some recipe, all right.” She nervously laughs, hovering mentally at the brink as he adds the activator agent.
Sterling quips, “People will come from miles around for a taste of the real thing.”
She is totally freaking out and knows it. Losing her sly, sarcastic smile during a dizzy backstep, she staggers but recovers to drift in shock along the narrow passageway through stuff that zigzags around the junction of her kitchen and living room. A bad rush courses up from her ankles to the top of her head, bringing on involuntary arm flapping that tells her just how out of control she is.
Her mother’s face floats above her as an apparition. It is an angry face, out of character for Ruth. Sheryl feels outed on many levels and sobs, calling out to her mom in front of Sterling.
“Sheryl, you’re here with me,” Sterling says, “so be calm.” He gently adds, “But if you want to, you can be seeing your mother by dawn, for real. Think about that.”
Spacey, sad, and several beats behind in the conversation, Sheryl answers with silence. She takes the ammonia back to the pantry.
“Are we done yet?” she asks from the pantry. “Need anything else?”
“Yes, my dear, we’re done,” he responds from the kitchen. “So all we need is for the queen to join her king for a toast!”
Returning empty-handed and glum,
she mutters, “I can hardly wait.”
Sterling is at the sink, carefully filling the second of two glasses with toxic-looking liquid. Once he has finished pouring, he smiles warmly at her and sets down the glasses on what little space serves as open countertop. “And so the time has come,” he says ominously.
Speechless, she can’t believe that her life, once so promising, has led to this dead end. It must be a mirage, she vainly hopes one last time.
He picks up both glasses, offering one to Sheryl. She stares at the frothing glass in her hand and boldly declares, “You go first! When I see that, I’ll know you’re serious.”
Sterling deliberately puts down his glass and takes hers away, carefully placing it near his. He warmly pulls her into an embrace and brushes back tangled hair from her still-pretty face. “How long till you believe in me again?” he asks. “If I have to prove my love with a demonstration, so be it.” Sterling checks his watch and concludes, “I can’t catch the next bus, but the one after that will be a cinch. So just before I leave, I’ll drink mine down in front of you.”
Sheryl recoils in anger. “Leave? Where’s the romance in a suicide pact if we don’t literally go out together? This is sounding pretty sketchy to me.”
“Oh, don’t misunderstand me, dear—I’d much prefer holding hands as we leave this world, fused together. Only what’s the biggest factor in our both being so up against it all? Financial ruination! Foreclosure tyranny! Thanks to banks, lawyers, and politicians. So we should tie our deaths to that, dying in our own homes, in hopes the dual headlines might help others get a break.”
“This is all news to me,” gripes Sheryl. “I’m not looking to be a martyr.”
“It’s something good we can do for society. But we have to do our demonstration individually in our own homes.”
“I thought this was about us, like Romeo and Juliet?”
“Of course it is. But why not publicly tie our deaths to this foreclosure orgy?”
“Tell me, why?”
“It will be our gift to hundreds, thousands, of poor souls lured into these bad loans.”
Heartstrings in B-Flat Minor Page 23
