Apres Warwick...

THE BIG TEN from left Chris (under Moathouse sign) Kevin, Kenny, Spencer, Jim Baker, Justin, Bryan.. w. camcorder, Vinny

It is lunchtime and I got her number. I am seated with the Big Ten, although Mark is one table behind. They are calling me Harry. I am informing them that I got her number. Jim Baker says that it's about fucking time. Kenny makes a reference to the Spin Doctors second single, telling me to just go ahead now and call her. Spencer pantomimes dialing on a rotary phone and then pantomimes talking to someone who has breasts before commenting that this is the third day in a row that we have essentially had roast beef and potatoes for lunch.

 I am calling her tonight.

I am calling Harmony.

I try to make idle chatter with Josh whom I went running with earlier this morning. When Josh isn’t basking in the presence of the girl wearing copious blush he keeps stating that the Big Ten as a contingent unit needs to get together and iron out the mechanics of our skit for the incumbent YC skit show the second to last night in London, the skit itself being in fact so brilliant that he refuses to talk about it, referencing it only as “the skit” before placing his pointer finger up to his lips as if he is blowing cobalt from the tip of an invisible nozzle, stating that we will talk about this when only group members are present. Josh who, with the exception of Spencer who always seems to be falling down mock drunk in front of Daisy, is the only other fraternal member of the Big Ten with a possible romantic female  lead.

"I really enjoyed going running with you. It was almost magical running through the British countryside like that."

"Yeah, but you didn't need to show off like that."

I ask him what he means.

 "The way you went ahead and sprinted at the end. You didn't have to do that. We were just all running together, enjoying the scenery and you have to turn into Carl Lewis."

"I wasn't trying to be Carl Lewis. Dan said it was alright if we sprint ahead at the end."

"Yeah, but then you go flying by trying to show off and everything."

I tell him absolutely not. I tell him that I'm essentially an athlete in training and that I'm focused on breaking the elusive five-minute barrier.

"Are you guys going running again tomorrow morning."

Josh shrugs. He says it is doubtful because we need to get ready to go to London and everything but he will let me know.

During Liz Madigan’s perfunctory post-lunch commentary she first asks us how many of us enjoyed visiting our first castle in England and thought it was everything they imagined it would be? She then makes a side note that its hard to put into perspective that some of the architecture we are witnessing is over a thousand years old especially since our country was only founded a little over two-hundred years ago.

Before noting the daily birthdays she tells us that we have a couple of notes.

“First off, let’s not have any of the boys go to the girls floor and go into their room or anything like that.” She then quickly reminds us that we are ambassadors emblematic of the finest youth America somehow has to offer and that we should be well behaved in terms of our relationships to the polar sex.

Heads oscillate around the room like grade school globes. Apparently there was action after the dance last night.  Liz quickly clears her throat as if that is all she is going to say on the topic.

“Also, remember, this afternoon is our meeting with dignitaries so everyone is expected to wear their formal Yong Columbus attire.”

Every head at the Big Ten table turns and faces Josh who has been wearing his formal Young Columbus digs all day. She states that many of you also have gifts from your individualized Newspapers back home to give to the dignitaries and if you do so, your counselors will tell you where to line up before we enter.

We are then informed that we are to be on our best behavior and that we are representing not only our Newspapers but also youth around the United States as a whole.

The last thing we do every day when the group meets as a whole is to acknowledge birthdays. How it works is that Liz hands the chrome phallic stem of the microphone to the person whose birthday it was the day before and they introduce the birthdays of the day as a prelude before the entire group breaks into a monotonous drone of HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU.

At the end of the trip the group en masse will have duly recited the chorus to happy birthday nearly fifteen times.

Today it is Heath's birthday. When Heath stands up behind me I hear Mark calling his name as if in ovation.

I am thinking about Harmony, standing by herself in the gift shop of Warwick castle, as if she has been waiting to see me once again. As if she herself too, wanted to see if last night was somehow real.

                                                                                  ***

“I remember  I wanted to go asleep at the back of the bus once we arrived only the counselor who was like practically only a year older than I was that said I need to stay up and couldn’t fall asleep when I got there because they wanted us to live through our Jetlag.”

Greta tells me fifteen years later, talking to me across the television screen of a computer, sending me a message in a box on something called Myspace.

There is no need to send letters with ink anymore.

It is 2007.

The Young Columbus trip was half a lifetime ago.

                                                                                 ***


We meet in the lobby after lunch. We are all wearing ties. The lens of the camcorder protrudes from the aquiline nose of the prominent Italian lad, the kid from New York, the bloke with hair the color of shiny shoe-polish that looks like it was shellacked in a vat of fresh tar. The kid with the camcorder. The kid filming close-up of girls who set their alarm clocks two hours early so they could attack their Hair with irons. The kid who circles in on a group of girls who ignored him on the variegated neon meadow of the dance last night, asking them question, interrogating how they are enjoying the trip so far, the kid who sounds like he is a smart ass even though he is really benevolent  and has decided to chronicle the trip in video, years later, perhaps cracking open a beer, plopping the rectangular shard of plastic into the agape lips of the VCR surrounded in front of the Moat House, staring at bodies, at youth, all of whom are ten years older now. 

All of whom he will never see again.

It was recommended that we each bring a roll of film for each day we are here.  Most of us have at least already gone through five rolls. It is rumored that columnist Lynn Minton whom we are not allowed to speak-with-unless-spoken-to is garnering a group of older kids to meet with Stratford teenagers at a local pub tonight to discuss global similarities and cultural differences.

 

In the lobby I see Mark. He is fingering the knot in his tie up and down like a zipper.

“I despise ties.” Mark says. He uses the word despise. He then tells me that he likes my tie.

“I can’t tie ties. My father always does it before church every Sunday.”

"I mean, David man, what's up with these ties?"

I only see Mark in the lobby as the groups are preparing or, if I'm lucky at dinner.  I inquire how he enjoyed Warwick.

“David man, I love this trip but I mean, they just don’t give us a chance to be independent. I  was really looking forward to being immersed in the British Commonwealth but it feels like I am on an It’s-a-small-world-After-All float at Disney. I mean, everyone is snapping film and wearing fanny packs.”

In that moment I deem Mark the coolest human being I have ever met. 

"Check this out man, you won't believe it, that girl I was telling you about,"

Marks says Harmony. I add a right and nod.

"Well, I bumped into her today. It was totally serendipitous. I bumped into her today when I least expected it at the touristy gift shop and I got her number so I'm gonna call he tonight."


Mark says that's my boy.                      

Behind us I see Sheila and several other girls from her group. There is the boy from Alabama whom I met the first day. His hair is always politely combed. I asked him if he is enjoying the trip and he tells me that he is really looking forward to meeting the Lord Mayor of Stratford. He says it is a great honor.  Mark his finishing his Kekulean knot in the center of his neck when he points over near the grandfather clock in the lobby.

"Hey isn't that her?"

"Who,"

"Your girl from last night."

Next to the grandfather clock I intuit what I perceive could perhaps be her. She is talking to two friends.  With my glasses off it is almost impossible to discern if it is actually Harmony or not.

"Hey, there."

She is beautiful. She has the same color hair as Harmony only it is a richer shade of almond.  It is pulled back.  She has rosemary cheekbones  I am thinking it is the girl who I held last night on the dance floor. The girl who Mark alluded gave me the proverbial glass slipper of the heart. This is not the same girl although she is lovely. Her eyes seem to skip when she blinks. Like Meg Weaver who I ran next to early this morning her smile seems to hook and bait something inside the aquatic gully of my chest.


 I am looking for Harmony. I am looking for the creature I danced with last night. The creature whose phone number I bartered. The creature who tattooed her breath on the corner of my neck like an artist signing his work in the corner of the frame.

 “You look like you are looking for something?” She says there is an innocence attached to her voice.

I am thinking about Harmony. I have not seen the girl before

"I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else."

I apologize again on what it almost borderline profuse.

I still have Harmony’s number in my pocket. I am still looking for her. The girl next to me is smiling. She has lithe cheekbones. She is affable.

“I’m sorry.” I say. I apologize profusely.

The affable girl is smiling. She says no problem. The red in the room looks like high school St. Valentines day bash. It is migraine-caliber. Before I turn the girl with the rosemary cheekbones asks me a question.

“Hey, did you like the castle this morning?” 

“Yeah, I thought it was pretty cool."

"Yeah, it's hard to fathom it's like dates back over a thousand years. I mean, that's kind of cool when you think about it. 1000 years ago in the states it was nothing but trees."

"Yeah, and now they are cuttin' them all down."


"Exactly!!!" The girl says. She is squeezing my arm underneath the akimbo mustache of the grandfather clock. She is friendly. I am looking for Harmony. I am about to mention how Europe felt the unerring need to sail west to find gold only they appropriated the land mass of North America and  made life a living hell for its innate inhabitants and, isn't there an almost contorted irony that our trip is christened under the aegis of Columbus. I am trying to evince all this. The creatures eyes are light-blue, the color of the planet Neptune. I feel like I should side step out of the conversation and search for Harmony when I feel a quick tap on my shoulder.

“There you are, dawlhin’.

It is Rose. From last night.

“I was kinda looking four use buts I lahse use on the dance flawher.”

I love her southern accent.  I love how she pronounces the second person pronoun as use.

I feel guilty for being chiefly enamored with Tamara and then drooling incessantly over the creature known as Harmony then hanging out with the fair-skinned affable lass. Rose is attractive. Other than the finely-trimmed lad from Alabama she has the most mellifluous accent. It feels like butter and maple syrup and what I can only surmise Southern comfort must taste like, it drip from her lips in tips of Ambrosia  It seems like I am playing an emotional hopscotch with the creature I for some inexplicable reason feel destined to meet. The Italian girls. The girl with the damn Amarillo Texas pins, Tamara and Harmony.

“Hi Rose,” I feel awkward. I thought I was finally speaking with Harmony. The girl whose back I mistook for Harmony has skin the color of unblemished parchment, as if awaiting the last sonnet by William Shakespeare to readily be composed.

Rose is trying to speak with me and I am lost at the creature I just met and before I know it I am being shepherded outside. There  is Big Ten give it up. We are all wearing ties. We are walking in the direction past buses because the City Hall where we are to have high tea with the Lord Mayor of Stratford is in walking distance from the hotel. 

There is no sight of Harmony.

I realize only when I am walking into the direction of our next port that I didn't get the girl with the rosemary cheekbones name.