The Hour I First Believed. Wally Lamb
flight probably meant no seat-switching. And who would I end up next to if I did switch? The incest aunt?
Mercifully, the video screens blinked on and the emergency landing spiel began. At the front of the plane, a flight attendant mimed the on-screen instructions. You’d think someone with “flying anxieties” would shut up and listen, but Mickey talked over the audio. “Of course, the fascinating thing is that there’s a self-organizing principle at the edge of chaos. Order breeds habit, okay? But chaos breeds life.”
“Yeah, hold on,” I said. “I want to hear this.”
He resumed as soon as the video was over. “But anyhoo, that’s my area of expertise. I’m adjunct at Colorado State. I teach one course in math, another in philosophy, which makes perfect sense, see, because chaos-complexity cuts across the disciplines. Actually, I could teach in the theology department, too, because chaos theory’s entirely applicable to the world’s religions. That’s not a concept Pat Robertson and the pope would embrace, but hey. Don’t shoot the messenger!” The giggle. “Of course, three classes is full time, so they’d have to give me the benefits package, which would kill them. Screw the adjuncts, right? We’re the monks of higher education. How much do you make?”
I flinched a little. “Rather not say.”
He nodded. “Thank God I have another income stream. Whoops, there I go again. I’m the only atheist I know who keeps thanking God. Well, what do you expect, growing up with my mother? I mean, she made my father put a shrine to the Blessed Virgin in our backyard. Immaculate conception? Yeah, sure, Mom. So what do you teach?”
“American lit,” I said. “And writing.”
“Really? So you’re a writer?”
“Uh, yeah. Yes.” My answer surprised me.
“That’s what I’m doing this summer: writing a book.”
I nodded. “Publish or perish, right?”
“Oh, no, no, noooo. This isn’t part of my scholarly work. It’s a manual for the casino gambler. I’m going to show how the principles of chaos theory can be employed to beat the house. Gambling’s my other income stream, see? Know how much I pull in in a year? Go ahead, guesstimate.”
I shrugged. “Five thousand?”
“Try fifty thousand.”
I’d seen that suitcase of his. Who did he think he was kidding? “Well,” I said, “if you can teach people how to hit the jackpot, you’ll have a best-seller.”
“Oh, I can teach them, all right. Not that I’m going to give away all of my trade secrets. In Vegas? I’m banned at Harrah’s, the Golden Nugget, and Circus Circus.” I nodded, then closed my eyes and shifted my body toward the window. Mickey didn’t take the hint. “I get ten steps in the front door, disguised or not, and security approaches me. Escorts me out of the building. It’s all very cordial, very gentlemanly. They don’t make trouble and neither do I. I could, though, because it impedes my research. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of publication, right? That’s why I’m flying to Connecticut. To do research for my book. The Indians have a casino there called—”
I opened my eyes. “Wequonnoc Moon,” I said.
“Right. You’ve been there?”
I nodded. “It’s about ten minutes from where I grew up.”
“Biggest single gaming venue in the country,” Mickey said. “Or so I’ve heard. I’ve never been there before. Been to Atlantic City many times over. I’m no longer welcome at Mr. Trump’s venues either. Now I ask you: is it legal to ban me, simply because I’ve figured out how to beat them at their own game? If I could afford to do it, I’d sue the bastards.”
The plane lurched forward. The intercom clicked on. The captain said we’d been cleared for takeoff. Would the flight attendants prepare the cabin?
“Oh, boy, here we go,” Mickey said. He pulled the vomit bag from his seat pocket. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to puke. I use these for my breathing exercise.”
“Right,” I said. Closed my eyes.
Mickey grabbed my arm. “I was wondering if, when we lift off, would you hold my hand? It helps.”
“Uh, well…”
The plane began to taxi. “Oh, boy,” Mickey muttered. “Oh, boy, oh, boy.” Paper crinkled in my right ear. In my peripheral vision, I saw his vomit bag expand and contract like a lung. The plane turned right and started down the runway, picking up speed. “Please,” he said, his shaky hand groping for mine. Instead of taking it, I pushed it down against the armrest between us.
The cabin rattled. Mickey’s hand gripped the armrest. We rose.
With the whine of the landing gear’s retraction, he returned to his abnormal normalcy. “Fascinating stuff, though, chaos-complexity,” he said. “Order in disorder. Disequilibrium as the source of life. Can you imagine it?”
“What?”
“God as flux? God as mutability?”
His pupils were dilated. Stoned from whatever he’d taken, I figured. For the next few minutes, neither of us spoke.
The captain turned off the seatbelt sign. The flight attendants wheeled the beverage cart down the aisle. Mickey flopped down his tray table and began to play solitaire with a deck of cards that, in my peripheral vision, I noticed were pornographic.
I dozed, woke up, fell into a deeper sleep. Somewhere during the flight, I heard Mickey and a flight attendant joking about Mr. Sandman….
IT TOOK TWO FLIGHT ATTENDANTS to rouse me. I looked around, lost at first. Mickey was gone. Up front, the last of the passengers were deplaning.
Inside the terminal, I wandered myself awake. At the pay phones, I fished out my calling card and punched in the numbers. Back in Colorado, our machine clicked on. “Hey,” I said. “It’s me. I’m at O’Hare. Doing all right, I guess—a little groggy…. Guy next to me on the flight here was a lunatic. And there were these kissin’ cousins going to be on Jerry Springer. You want evidence that Western civilization’s in sharp decline, just come to the airport…. Hey, Mo? I’m a little scared to be going back there. Lolly’s my last link, you know?…Well, okay. I’ll call you tonight. Don’t let the dogs drive you nuts.” I stood there wondering what would come first: me saying it or the beep ending my message.
“I love you, Mo.”
I love you, Lolly: I should have been saying it at the end of every one of those goddamn Sunday-evening calls. Should have been calling her. I love you: Why did that simple three-syllable sentence always get stuck in my throat?…Well, I was flying back there, wasn’t I? She’d asked for Caelum, and here I was at fucking O’Hare instead of sleeping off my post-prom assignment. It was like what Dr. Patel told me that time: that “I love you” was just three meaningless words without the actions that went with them. Lolly’s crippled tongue had said my name, or tried to, and I was halfway there.
I walked—up one concourse, down another, in and out of a dozen stores stocked with crap I didn’t want. Walked past the smokers, sequestered like lepers in their Plexiglas pen, and a crazy-looking shoeshine guy, wearing a do-rag and muttering to himself at the base of his empty platform chair.
I bought a coffee and a U.S.A. Today. Sat and read about that Love Bug computer virus. It arrived via an e-mail titled “I Love You.” Opening its attachment, “Love-Letter-for-You,” was what infected you. Well, I thought, the diabolical prick who designed it understood technology and human psychology. I mean, something like that arrives, and you’re not going to open it? It was both a virus and a worm, the article said; as it erased your files, it raided your address book, sending copies of itself to everyone on your e-mail list and spreading the havoc exponentially. Like HIV, I thought. Like that chaos-complexity stuff. Small disturbances, big repercussions. God, we were all so vulnerable.
Walking