Small Group (17 February 1989)

Small Group (17 February 1989)

 

 

One: Chaplin

 

Chaplin was flying, high aloft. He was flying a plane, alone in a plane, and he was doing it well. There was a whole city below him, but he didn't recognize it. The sun was bright in the cold day. Strangely, he saw a map of his continent overhead.

Chaplin woke up, with a feeling of lightness through his entire body. It was odd to sense how to fly an airplane, even a made-up one. He had been doing it. He'd been flying a plane.

It felt like a good omen for the day. It was a Friday, after all. He had the bar and grill to look forward to.

He got dressed, then he made himself some breakfast. His wife was still in bed and he figured he'd let her sleep and call her later. He had a plan for the evening, though he wouldn't reveal it to anyone.

The car had gotten cold, out there on the driveway in the darkness. However, it warmed up quickly enough, and off Chaplin went to work, with a heigh-ho and a second heigh-ho.

It's hard to suffer a freak accident, isn't it? I mean, it always seems somehow ... appropriate and deserved. Some nasty fact always stays behind that makes people say to one another: How ironic! or: Wasn't that just his luck?

He had to park his car two blocks away from his office because all his usual spots were taken. It wasn't the first time. Once he was standing on the sidewalk, he oriented himself to know the quickest way to the coffee shop he went to every single day. (They always had it almost ready for him.) The quickest way was through a narrow alleyway that backed onto the ballet school. Traffic was loud, as usual, and that was precisely the reason why he didn't hear the squeaking of the pulleys high overhead; that was also why he didn't hear the anchor of one of the pulleys give way, causing an upright rehearsal piano to plummet, down and down, five storeys and land right on top of him.

And so, Chaplin found himself re-incarnated.

 

 

Two: Scarlett

 

It was already eleven-thirty in the morning, and Scarlett was determined to be dead by noon.

The dreadful dreams hadn't let up. Early that morning, she'd even dreamed about not only being killed in an explosion but also about being the cause of the explosion. Who could go on living like that? Being afraid to sleep? What had she done to deserve this curse? Something from some past life? Scarlett wasn't a firm believer in the transmigration of souls, but she didn't have any solid evidence against the idea. It was either that, or she had a psychological trauma from childhood blah blah blah.

She got Ann to come up with her to the hospital roof to smoke a couple cigarettes. It seemed to her to be a fine place to be, nine storeys up. She saw herself doing it: Ann goes away, Scarlett runs and jumps. There wouldn't be anything more to it than that. Gravity would take care of everything else. It would be messy, but that would be someone else's problem.

Plans for the weekend?

That was Ann talking.

Scarlett replied: No, not doing anything at all.

We're going out to Henry's parents' place in the country. Except for two dinners, we're more or less on our own. It's not really the country, you know; it's a suburb, but they're right on the edge of it. Farmers' fields all to the east, concession after concession. And it doesn't seem like the farmers are even doing anything with their fields. I suppose they're going to be all houses in ten years or so.

That's the way it goes, I guess, said Scarlett.

Yes, that's the way, said Ann.

They scrunched out their cigarettes and looked at one another as if into mirrors. Scarlett gave up on finding a way to remain on the rooftop. She had to get Ann into the building and back to work. Noon would come and go without her suicide. The timing wasn't right. She had all afternoon, really.

Thus, it wasn't until two hours later that Scarlett was re-incarnated.

 

 

Three: Jair

 

The engine got up and turned over once again. Jair got the car out onto the road and headed down to where the major artery was, from one street to an avenue and from thence onto a thoroughfare, joining the other corpuscles who all seemed to have the same idea, except for the ones leaving the body (thus going in the opposite direction) in order to get home and feed their oxygen-starved cells.

He was happy on highways. It was all so extraordinarily orderly, miracles of engineering, to use his own words. Who built these concrete overpasses? Who bolted those signs onto those things overhead? Did they do it before putting it up, or did some guy climb up there with a wrench? And the lines all over the place, directing folks this way and that in order to ensure they have a reasonable and logical journey, who did that? What kind of paint got supplied? There were so many questions that passed through Jair's head as he zipped along, counting the minutes in his head and watching the distance to his destination diminish with every sign after each on-ramp.

He took the exit that was posted as being three miles away and found himself on a thoroughfare with four fewer lanes. Down through a valley he went, knowing exactly what he was going to do when he got to his destination, and also what that destination was going to do to him.

Miles later, he drove onto an even smaller road. The time was nigh, and he had covered his tracks well. He'd actually gone in a different direction; with a different task; to meet different persons. It's a pretty ordinary scenario, which happens all the time. People don't keep very good track of one another, unless it's a parent-child relationship. Normal adults and normal peers leave one another pretty much alone most of the time.

As he waited at a stoplight, thinking about that morning's dream of falling down a staircase, it hit him.

It was some time before he found out it had been a stolen sports car involved in a high-speed police chase. And so, Jair found himself re-incarnated.

 

 

Four: Kat

 

The curtains got pulled open and the overhead lights got shut off. The overheads were incandescent lights but they'd formerly been fluorescent lights, and the change had happened after Kat's son Del had taken a snit first time he'd come into the hospital room. Next day he came with a little ladder and some regular bulbs, just ordinary vacuums with filaments inside, and he managed to take out the ones and replace them with the others, so handy and thoughtful he was. Kat looked up at the bulbs with a kind of wonder.

How strange to have dreamed about having been shot!

The nurse, who she knew well, had been the opener of the curtains. Kat said: Good morning, there.

The nurse turned and said: O, up already? I've got your breakfast.

I think I should do without. Today's the day. Today's the miracle day. So, I think I should do without, because I know I'll be making a mess if I do.

The nurse arranged the tray anyway, saying: Maybe you'll think differently. French toast with maple syrup.

Kat nodded obediently. She had other matters on her mind. God was calling her. God was saying she should come to him. Kat had only heard God once before, and he'd meant business then, and, undoubtedly, he meant it now.

But it was a good morning, all in all. The sunlight on the wall was hard-edged, meaning it was a wonderfully cloudless day. A good day for flying.

I suppose your daughter's coming later today. That was the nurse speaking.

O, yes, I suppose so. Is it Friday already? Kat laughed.

All day, said the nurse.

Kat shrugged. I guess she'll be here in the afternoon.

The toast is made differently today. Let someone know of you like it or not.

I'll get to it, thanks.

They changed something about the batter, either more syrup or less, I don't recall.

That's just great, yes. Is there a newspaper?

The nurse handed Kat her newspaper.

1989, said Kat. Never thought I'd get this far. 1989.

She read some of the front page, then fell asleep.

And so, Kat found herself re-incarnated.

 

 

Five: Lair

 

Lair was a strong guy. He knew it. He was twenty-eight years old, and constantly horny. Fortunately for him, he had two girlfriends unaware of one another's existence, and he was always ready for nights on the town, if you catch the drift. He was moving up in the world, too, and he felt no need to choose just one single girl. As his hero Duddy Kravitz said somewhere, who wants to settle on just one when there's so much stuff around?

So anyway, his appointed minder, girlfriend number one Maggie, went to the hospital with him to make sure he got home okay after the operation. (Girlfriend number two had no idea there was ever such a rôle as 'minder'.) After his three wisdom teeth were taken out, they'd go back to his place and, depending on his condition, they'd do whatever they felt like doing.

Soon a sexy nurse came by to invite him into the pre-operating room, and Maggie could come along for that bit. They got him to lie down on a table covered with plastic and they put his head in a sort of cradle. They gave him a shot of something, and told him to relax.

Told me to relax, baby, he said to Maggie, looked her up and down. He winked. Don't worry, you'll have your fun soon.

He relaxed, and Maggie was ushered out as he himself got wheeled into an operating room. He was all fuzzy as they shoved a thick needle into his forearm. He felt like he was sinking into the floor, which led him to recall a dream from last night. He'd fallen into an icy crevice and he'd been stuck there. He didn't recall anything more about it.

A warm feeling in his arm spread to his shoulder and into his guts. This isn't bad at all. Someone asked him to count down from one hundred. When he was halfway through the eighties, a distant black dot became a giant black void.

And so, Lair found himself re-incarnated.

 

 

Six: O'Keeffe

 

O'Keeffe gently soothed the audience in the cramped hall: A terrible thing happened to our city today, hard to know what to make of it, and we must keep it in mind, but we have to carry on, one two three four!

She sang and she played her guitar as her boyfriend the drummer laid into it loudly and clumsily. She didn't have any good explanation for anything, let alone a terrorist bombing committed by a guy who didn't like some book, and she didn't know why they were singing that particular song. No-one in the audience knew anything about what she was thinking, however; they were busy moving in time to the sounds that were hitting them.

She didn't feel there was a point to mentioning the bomb again, so she didn't.

It hadn't been an extraordinarily long day; in fact, it had been rather a middlingly long day. She'd awakened mid-afternoon to distant sirens. The news came in slowly and ambiguously about an explosion in a bookstore ... and then it was six o'clock, which was the time her day normally started, with a lunch, and rehearsals. But now it was two in the morning, and they closed the show with a rehash of two of their openers. Their work day was at an end, and now it was time to get something to eat and drink and party before it was time to go to bed at dawn.

The clubman very generously offered them a meal made from stuff that was more or less left-over, along with as much beer as they wanted (all in lieu of payment, of course), so O'Keeffe and her boyfriend-drummer ate heartily, and drank merrily. The clubman asked them to lock the door behind them, and away he went.

O'Keeffe noticed a piano, and said: I dreamed something about a piano this morning.

Really?

She grinned widely. It fell on my head.

They laughed about it. Darn Warner Brothers cartoons!

They staggered out eventually, and went their separate ways, because tonight wasn't a night for shenanigans. Walking on by herself, she slipped; she fell into the snow; it had become rather a cold night. She was comforted by the snow. It had its own kind of warmth. It had been a long day. She'd get up soon, after a couple minutes. And so, O'Keefe found herself re-incarnated.

 

 

Seven: Moby

 

It all started the night before for Moby. He was looking around his room, which was crammed floor-to-ceiling with years and years of items that would soon look like junk to anyone who looked it over in his absence but which was to him his world and which held so much meaning. He looked up high to the top of one of his bookshelves, and there he saw a copy of Fowler's, and he recalled he'd hardly given it a look at the time he'd purchased it, which much have been some thirty years earlier. Moby slowly got up from his chair, and reached high, to the book. It was under three other books: a French dictionary, something by Tom Wolfe, and a Henry Adams Education, and Moby held these three put while he tried to weasel out the Fowler's, but the Fowler's was stuck to the book it was lying on top of, and so Moby pulled at the top and, well, as a result, not to get into too many details, the whole bookshelf came crashing down on him, with Moby trapped underneath with who knew how many broken bones. He called out feebly, but it appeared none of his neighbours were around to hear him call, and soon he was too weak to call out at all.

Next day, he woke up in the morning, or gained consciousness, after dreaming about falling or jumping off a building, and a feeble consciousness it was, of course still trapped under all his useless books. Years earlier, his daughter had quite reasonably told him to sell ninety percent of them, but he hadn't listened. I don't know when I'll need one of them, he'd told her. Well, in any case, it was Friday morning, so far as he could tell, and so, with a bit of luck, he'd still be alive when the nurse came to check in at noon.... However, he could barely move his arm, or keep his eyes open.... And he thought also: what an embarrassment!

And thus, Moby found himself re-incarnated.

 

 

Eight: Nance

 

It started out a very ordinary day, at the bookstore, for Nance, although she'd awakened from a rather disturbing dream ... about a car crash. She didn't know who she'd been, there in the dream, or if she'd been herself driving, nor from whom she'd *maybe* received a licence to drive....

Nonetheless, she got herself together in no time, really, and went through all the morning ablutions to which she was accustomed, as the memory of the dream faded away to very little.

After Nance's junky brother visited‑it so happened to be his birthday‑the copies of 'The Satanic Verses' finally arrived. Most were already spoken for. They had luckily been in transit when the fatwa had been announced. The UPS guy had no idea what he was transporting! In any case, there were three unspoken for, so Nance put them out on discreet display, not in the window but rather on the second table in from the door. When she was in the back room someone had bought one, and then after lunch, at about one, a familiar professor bought the second, so there was only one left. At their store, that counted as a best-seller.

At around three-thirty, yes, it was around three-thirty, as she found out later, a man came into the store. Nance kept noticing him because there was something odd about him. He walked around the store, barely noticing, let alone touching, the books. Not quite the intellectual, she figured. So, what was he about?

A couple minutes later, she heard him ask Phyll: Do you have the new Rushdie book?

Nance moved closer as Phyll pointed to the second table.

When the man got to the table, Nance was nearer. She told the man: It's our last copy.

The man stared at it for quite some time. Nance pretended not to notice for a while, then returned her attention to the man when he sighed deeply and reached into his pocket to pull out a thing with a button on it. The man said something weird, something in a foreign language probably, and then he blew himself up along with everyone else nearby. It was the strangest thing.

And so, Nance found herself re-incarnated.

 

 

Nine: Dee

 

Dee early in the morning got out on the street, because there was opportunity there. He wanted junk so his junk got to be paid. What he'd dreamed about being some old lady in a hospital, who cared? It's crazy to be bothered with dreams anyway, not those kinds of dreams anyway. He had plenty to think about without worrying about some stupid dreams.

First, he went over to Billy's house and he knocked and knocked and he even shouted up at his window once but there was no answer. He had to be somewhere and up to something. So, second, he went to where he thought Billy might be, probably wasted since it seemed likely he was with Jones and that they'd been up, in a sense, all night long. It was a couple blocks away so Dee fleet-footed himself over to the apartment building. The front door was open so he took the stairs two at a time thinking all the time about getting high as soon as he'd paid the courtesies of which there were very few. He knocked on the door rapidly, and Jones answered.

Jones smiled: What's up, man?

Dee bowed deeply. It's my birthday, man.

Say what?

Feb 17 was the day I was borned.

Many happy returns, many happy returns.

Dee peeked into the apartment. Say, you got Billy hiding in there?

Yes, but he's floatin' right now.

Dee went in and they all sat down on a raggedy couch as Billy came to.

Billy said: Hey, happy birthday, man. I heard it was your birthday.

Yes, it is.

Well, that's swell. Tell you what, I got a gift for you later.

Really?

Actually, just by chance. I got a ship coming in about noon, s'posed to be laden with a fine new blend from Peru.

Aw, man, that's so sweet of you! Listen, I'll catch you later. Be at you place at two.

Want a hit now?

No, I'll wait. I got self-control.

Dee went off to see his sister Nance at her bookstore. The visit was frosty, of course, but she wished him well, shrugged, and went back to work. Later that day, Dee found himself re-incarnated.

 

 

Ten: Earhart

 

The air was so open to Earhart, she considered calling herself Airhart; but, considering whom she'd been named after, it seemed to her that the gag was self-evident. She was at a low altitude that afternoon, passing through the cold air above her own town, swerving this way and that, feeling quite as if she was not in her small plane at all. She'd twist side to side to see the streets below and the little cars on the roads that looked like they weren't moving at all, as if time had ceased to matter at all. It was Friday, she remembered, so everyone down there in the afternoon was probably thinking about their February weekends. Unlike her, they weren't thinking about having dream-like wisdom teeth removed.

Even though everything seemed still down there in the city streets, she noticed movement in the long run. She saw police cars and a couple ambulances on one of the major streets. It was obvious something nasty had happened, about which she'd be able to read in the evening once she'd landed at the municipal airport. Or rather she'd see it on the six o'clock news, which was hours away. In any case, she knew it always took some time for the truth to come out.

She flipped over and found herself looking up instead of down, and what she saw there was almost impossible to describe: the entire sky had become like a shimmered mirror reflecting the land below: yet not a mirror at a near perspective, rather a mirror halfway to the moon, wherein you could see the entire continent: and with a little effort of vision there they were: the great lakes, the Mississippi river, the rocky mountains off to her right, and down ahead the gulf of Mexico with its azure waters. It was all so detailed and impossible but not an illusion. It was a giant Britannica page in the sky, and Earhart wanted to see what south America looked like, so she flew south, over the lake.

Eighteen minutes later, Earhart was re-incarnated.

 

 

Eleven: Osama

 

It was a bright and cheerful February afternoon when Osama left his apartment. He was clean and ready for the day. He greeted his neighbour Mrs. Norris as warmly as he always did, and made banter about waiting for all the birds to return in Spring. Spring wasn't all that far away, after all. Three months? Is that all? Tis but a moment in the larger plan of things.

Naturally, he walked. He walked for three miles. He was wearing a heavy coat, all buttoned up, so only his face was cold. Under the coat he was perspiring, and he hoped that wasn't going to throw a wrench into his works. In any case, he'd taken all the precautions outlined in the communique, so things were mostly out of his own hands.

He casually went into the bookstore. Mild music was playing from little speakers overhead, and all the walls were just chock-full of colours and pictures. He moseyed on over to the fiction section and checked out the R section, the end of the Rs, but there wasn't anything of interest to him there.

He wandered a bit, here and there. He checked out the Middle East history section, and then by chance he stumbled upon the Theology section, but there wasn't anything good there. The dream he'd had, in preparation to today: he was lying in a snowbank, looking up, and strangely intoxicated. He understood what it meant. The snow outside and all.

He calmly went up to a woman, a worker obviously, who was wearing a short skirt. He asked her: Do you have the new Rushdie book?

The woman pointed to a table and said: Right there.

A second woman, another clerk apparently, spoke. She said: It's our last copy.

Osama stared at the book with its predominately red cover. What a sacred colour to dare use for such a book. The second woman was still standing nearby, as if expecting something. He sighed, and said, in the holy language: God is greater. Then he pulled out the button.

And so, Osama found himself re-incarnated.

 

 

Twelve: Smith

 

Smith didn't ask any questions that morning. She didn't know why Phil wanted to go upstairs to the empty apartment above to have sex. The apartment above was empty because the whole building was going to be torn down, and almost everyone had left already. Smith didn't know why Phil wanted to go upstairs. She was willing to go anywhere with him. Maybe it was the idea of trespassing that turned him on; but, even if it wasn't, it turned her on.

The affair had been going on for quite some time; a long three years it had been since the first time they'd kissed. They never talked about leaving their respective spouses, probably because they were living in a la-la-land when they were alone together, during which they had the hottest time either had ever had. That's the way it goes sometimes.

The building was rickety and doomed. In the room in which they did the deed (on a blanket covering an abandoned foam mattress), the window glass was distorted and the trees would hop left and right with each rhythmic pelvic thrust. The spiders seemed to be the only occupants who felt like they had lease.

To take a break, they walked around the apartment that almost exactly mirrored his, Phil's, one below it. The were both naked as they wandered, and he almost got her to step in front of a window. When she demurred, he said: The sun's the other way, oh, never mind. He said: Oh, but there is something up here that's quite different.

He led her over to a door and opened it. It led onto a staircase, a steep and long staircase the likes of which she'd never seen before. Phil said: It goes all the way down to the basement. More than two flights, more or less.

She was looking down and suddenly Phil blurted: Saved your life! and grabbed onto her arm; however, she jumped away from him and he lost his grasp, and she lost her footing, and down she tumbled, down two flights of stairs, breaking bones along the way, and as she lay at the bottom she thought: How will he explain this? And so, Smith found herself re-incarnated.

 

 

Thirteen: Tick

 

Strange indeed that Tick had dreamed of getting blown up, on that day of all days. Of course, it was just a coincidence when he heard about it on the news that evening, about some people in a bookstore getting blown up. Still, he thought it was curious to have dreamed such a thing, and he was still pondering the whys and wherefores of experience as he put the leash on Sparks to take him out for his eleven p.m. walkies to the park up the street.

As they walked together through the park, Tick thought about his wild luck. How had he gotten to a normal life, after all those lost years? (There'd not even been two, but they seemed to have lasted a lot longer.) Then one day he'd gotten bored of all the drugs, and he'd simply quit. And now, here he was, unleashing Sparks so the dog could have a chance to chase silent shadows and dumb squirrels.

Yes, he felt pretty lucky, and not blown up at all.

Fifteen minutes later, he called Sparks, and Sparks came. Tick leashed up Sparks, and together they headed back the way they had come.

Tick felt a curious pain in his chest: a sudden and sharp pain. He involuntarily and automatically put his hand there: the area was damp. Perhaps one second later, he heard an explosion from up the hill or thereabouts ahead of him. He fell to his knees because he was dizzied. He didn't want the idea to register that he had been shot in the chest. It could not have happened, because it was after eleven o'clock at night, and the park was dark, and there was no way to see anything. It was also impossible because he'd left that all behind, and his enemies, why, how could they ever have found him? Why would they go through such trouble? Over a lousy fifty thousand dollars? Nevertheless, sometimes, your past comes back to haunt you.

Sparks whimpered.

And so, Tick found himself re-incarnated.

 

 

Fourteen: Agate

 

As Agate and Stan were hiking in the hills overlooking the city on a clear winter's day, the stopped to look down on it. They were too far away to see anyone, nor could they see any automobiles. It was all so still, and yet they knew it was the hive of activity it always was. Stan made the remark. So still and clear. Can you see the mist on the other side?

Agate looked past the city to see the mist coming off the lake. She nodded. It looks a little like the drug-haze I was experiencing in my dream last night. Oddest thing. Did I mention I was a guy? And a friend named Jones?

Stan shrugged and said, Watch your step. These rocks are slippery.

Naw, I got these great boots. She proceeded to slip away a little and seemed to stop just where she wanted to. There's nothing they can't handle.

Five minutes later, she had fallen down into a tight crevice and she was looking up at about fifteen degrees of sky. Her pelvis was wedged against virgin granite, and it felt to her she was bleeding down there. She scrabbled at the black wet walls but found no place to get a grip. Stan had run off to find help or a rope or something. Agate wasn't breathing right, she knew.

She remembered the lie about her, or was it? She'd come across a crossword competition in a classroom. She'd asked quietly when it had started, and the referee said since Sunday. Agate was amazed, since it was a Thursday. Next day, she found out people were making fun of her, because she got quoted as asking: When did this starts? to the referee, which was something she most definitely did not say. She never found out who had spread the lie, or why. She didn't know anyone in that classroom competing in the crossword puzzle contest, so why....

And so, Agate found herself re-incarnated.