I MEET ANDREA THROUGH LENS -- a Norwegian, Danish or similarly Scandinavian type, a biker many generations removed from Vikinghood, his curly yellow locks running Thorlike to his shoulders and complemented by a beard in which food, insects, and other critters could get lost if not nest -- and her own credentials, provided by Lens in his typically soft whisper several octaves too low to comprehend but certain to travel through walls and across parking lots, serve as a gateway for when I finally get up the nerve to call her Saturday afternoon about four, the late summer heat smothered by a strength and motivation sapping humidity not felt since the flu pandemics of the last century.
Though I'd rather stay in, convinced the dense air itself could serve as ether and vector for malaria, West Nile, and more, I get off the phone minutes later having established a location and time, the former too far, the latter too near for my tastes, but Andrea's credentials in hand or at least in mind, my own trust in Lens not shaken in the least, I put on the cleanest, most honest, hard-working clothes I have, those that cover me without making me, the work boots and jeans generic and the shirt button-down, monochrome, and fitted.
I could travel in these clothes and live in these clothes if I were taking nothing but my wallet, passport, and perhaps backpack as I close up shop and turn my back on this town.
A distinct possibility.
HARRY KNOWS EVERY BAR as well as every bouncer, manager, bartender, and bookie in Riverside, though ten minutes later he whispers that he's not really Harry, but names himself after a similarly talented Harry -- who goes by another name and was even featured on television or in a movie or in a book -- who covers the much more upscale Hollywood, where even the seedy areas -- and when you count the biker bars, the strip joints, the tattoo parlors and the like you realize it's not all Beverly Hills, not all Santa Monica, that Hell and Christ on a Bicycle it's a different fucking city, or two or three -- rate higher than the practically rural Riverside, though out here the air is in a smog belt, even when you can't smell the cattle, but at least mountains, real mountains, are closer.
And pretty soon, soon enough that it's not even the beer talking, I realize I like Harry, though I wouldn't want to socialize with him sober or even outside of a sleazy joint like this. I like his bulbous nose and receding hairline matched with the twin to Gorbachev's birthmark, and the black silk shirt he's wearing, cuffs buttoned, imitation Bulgari timepiece peeking from under a sleeve, and rings masculine but not brutish in displaying style, funds, and that he's not married.
I find myself seated next to him when I enter and get a drink at the bar at Eno's, the Italian-named dive with billiards and darts and where you can't order a Sapphire and tonic or Tanqueray and tonic or Gordon's and tonic but just a gin and tonic and they actually feature Olympia on tap, not that I thought they still brewed that, under license or not. What I notice first is that Harry is a regular, and from poise and comfort that he is used to being surrounded by attractive women, as he was and we soon are, and since it isn't yet dark and Eno's is far from full we monopolize a corner of the bar. When Harry turns his attention to someone slight and much less a regular that he, I find myself relating my life's story, or an edited, nonchalant yet rakish version of it, to my own harem.
"I ran away. That's it, no ifs, ands or buts, no romance, very little adventure, but what's a kid to do? I was escaping."
Those were the days, sixteen hours in a row with sunlight nearly constant, never cooler or darker than dawn, never off the boat more than a few hours every week, at least if you wanted the best money, or if not the best the most, best not being a consideration when water encrusted on your skin turned you into a living salt lick, when the slip of a blade played daily Russian roulette with your coworkers' digits, and you vowed never to buy the stuff you caught and had canned just in case your tuna, your salmon, came with a finger, too much human blood, a modern Jungle at sea.
Not organic, not fair trade, not for those vegetarians who still cheated with fish.
In other words: those were the days, having gone north to the arctic rather than south to plantations or oil wells, nothing like them, never going back, but unable to imagine going forward without them, my truant self made into a man by nets and hooks and knives, by whores and women whose miner and logger husbands were inland or whose fishermen spouses on other ships, and by those cuckolds returned and pissed and sure to spray you with pellets if you didn't instead let them teach you a lesson with their fists or a belt or -- if you're lucky -- at a bar with bottles and shots and country music that served as a prelude to poker of the cheapest, basest, least card-counting kind.
"But from Alaska," I rattle on, not looking any of them in the eyes for too long but mirroring just enough of their postures, hand motions, and head tilts to control the body language situation, "it's a quick if not quite legal trip to Siberia, or if you're stupid to the wrong Korea, but better yet, to China." Not to mention the Merchant Marine -- a friend did that, disappeared for a couple years, during university and all, and when I'm getting ready to walk he's back, older and wiser, the sophomore around whom huddle outsiders, their world-traveler messiah having been to ports of call tropical, temperate and even arctic -- if you want the legitimate route, but once you've smuggled yourself across borders it gets easier, and soon you're taking items and other people with you.
"Besides, not all those merchant marines were fine, upstanding citizens. Take George Hennard, a mass murderer who claimed twenty-four victims on a rampage at Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas. I'm just saying." And I shrug, continue the tale to Clara and Megan, the blonde and brunette respectively, both well-endowed, under-dressed, and a little past prime, though I look at them first and foremost as former strippers who have abandoned stage names, enhancements and powder or pills for beer, booze, and evenings of cable accompanied by Ben & Jerry's. Clara eyes me and sets an empty glass of the pitted, knotted, and warped bar. When the leathery one-eyed bartender, Ten, shuffles by I ask her to refill mine and Clara's while she's at it. She smiles through the left side of her mouth, sneers with the right, and I just nod.
The tales, tellers, and tellees are all unfinished when I recognize Andrea entering the joint.
LENS HAS A LATVIAN FRIEND who has a Canadian acquaintance named Andrea, who is Conan's Valeria but more striking, smoother skinned, and dressed not in barbarian chain mail but in tight leather, lace stockings, and boots worn yet shined. No bows or buns, no clips or chemicals taint her hair, and Lens tells me on the phone that she speaks French, Castellano, Mandarin, Japanese and some dialect of Arabic with both educated and urban accents, consumes expensive wine and more expensive whiskey by the bottle, and conducts business only rarely in an office yet draws at least six figure from banking, consulting, and piracy. The last he says without a chuckle, as he mentions the fencing, sailing, and marathon running thereafter and that she's only in town for a few days. Evidently she likes to fuck; this, I remind him, is not what I'm looking for.
When she enters she should stand out, but only I pay attention to her, perhaps because I was awaiting her arrival, while Clara and Megan attend to my bullshit and Harry continues to be enchanted by the anonymous pretty young thing he'll at least take out back even if he doesn't take her home. Ten gathers more empty glasses, I leave several bills on the counter, and excuse myself from the bar.
Andrea, who is blonde without appearing pale, golden or bleached, has taken a corner table and I slide onto a chair, nod, and Ten starts to make her way over. Something 80s, vaguely rock, and possibly U2, has made it to the jukebox. I hold out a hand for greeting, keeping this business, formal, while she just looks at me, up and down, and avoids stating the obvious. Before I can order another gin and tonic or even ask her what she wants she informs me that her boyfriend is out of town, out of the state, out of the country, actually, though I didn't catch whether it was relief work or some other employment in Afghanistan. He's Polish, rugged, thuggish, jealous, and a bit of a poet who loves surrealism and science fiction. She doesn't say sci-fi, and she doesn't speak a slavic language.
I've never been a poet, or even a listener, but soon her troubles are landing at my feet, against myself I empathize, and before even a sip of the new glass passes my lips her complaints and needs and observations have filtered through the haze of previously consumed alcohol. Filtered and distilled, broken down, no longer words but syllables, just impressions, my throat throbbing, my temples pounding away, her syllables drowning out the jukebox, her sounds like her smell not something I can categorize. My encounter with Harry, Andrea's monolog with me, it all seems like a second-hand, plagiarized, photocopied, retold footnote to something grander, though she's grand enough, but I fear that even what's to come has already been done in a less bastardized form. Andrea asks if I want to take a ride in her rebuilt 1970 Karmann Ghia convertible. I inhale the rest of my glass, and pass Ten a ten on our way out the door.
ANDREA'S BLAZING GREEN EYES eyes enrapture me, and the thought returns that she's alone, I'm alone, and her usual port of call is in Afghanistan, where I haven't been for several years since traveling roughly east to west along one branch of the Silk Road until the Balkans then driving Hummers for various nouveau riche clients who needed items taken from Point A to Point B with a minimum of questions asked.
In the parking lot we strap ourselves into newly upholstered seats, the fabric original or a recreation but seemingly authentic and giving the impression of being woven, not manufactured; from there it is all Andrea.
We avoid the ever expanding toll roads, which had come to the region in the wake of rapid growth, home construction, and sprawl, forgo the 91 and its Express Lanes for the 60 in a different direction, and as we head west I wonder about our destination, whether she's taking me to Los Angeles, which will at least give me a port out of the country, but also bring me full circle, to my point of departure for Alaska, those young years across Asia, back across the Atlantic, the New Jersey Turnpike and its tolls, all the way to a state college I refuse to name, and the slow progress back, zig-zagging up and down but always westward, always following the sun or being driven by it, on highways and railroads and dirt roads but always roads, these partitions dividing property and demarcated by mile markers and intersections and signs.
At the 83 and at 83 miles per hour she zips us north toward Ontario and Upland to that mythical highway, known to some as Route 66, to locals as Foothill Boulevard, and across, without a nod or wink or any acknowledgment of its status and into the San Gabriels as to our left the last vestiges of dusk fade from orange-pink to violet to black. Ever upward, in and out of turns, pumping pedals and accelerating through tunnels blasted and bored through mountainsides, gaping ravines, chaotic maws, falling to our right, and vaguely north toward Mt. Baldy.
WHEN SHE SPEAKS AGAIN HER LANGUAGE IS DARK. Obscure, fused together. Something that rarely or barely survives. The stuff of primeval forests: before deer trails, hunting paths, trade routes. Before that upon which we tread becomes paved. Packed down, encompassed and sheltered and formed. As our words: encapsulated, conceptual, divisions, a logos or discourse.
We barely kiss. Insight startles me. I suspect she isn't multilingual but somehow perversely unilingual. Or prelingual. Alingual. Casting tongue and lips not as tools but sense organs only.
In my mind only I mutter who I am. Mark. Johnny. Somebody.
She never asks my name.
OUR UNION IS BRIEF. She is unreal. The road is a dead-end. We turn around; descend, lights on low, the rumble of the engine and wheel in hand bestial and vital; and keep on going. At dawn we stop. We sleep, we eat. At night again we let the Karmann Ghia's top down, ignore signs in the darkness, and drive. Without destination or fixed direction, but only at night, in obscurity and confusion, never considering the road not taken, for in the dimmest of lights by which we drive all roads are one.
I've always hated Frost.