It is morning and all I can think about is Harmony. I wake up early, fishing my Reeboks out of my suitcase as if it were some fine deep sea aquatic delicacy, lacing the cushiony slippers on each respective sole before looking behind me. Justin is still out for the count, sleeping on his mattress, little cartoon caricature of birds oscillating around his forehead in miniature ellipses. I try to envision the subtle brush of her lips against my neck last night as I again carefully secure the hotel room door, traipsing down the side staircase waiting in the lobby for the fellow athletes ready to enter into the British country side with a morning run.
The group of runners is lead by Dan, the counselor for group one, as well as Tarnisha, who plays Volleyball at Georgetown. Dan is counting heads. Along with Josh, Indiana from my group, there is a fluffy-cheeked girl heavy on the 80’s makeup next to Josh. There is also a girl with almost strawberry-blonde hair who is smiling in my direction and two short-haired jocks from bus two who mention running as a prerequisite conditioning for baseball back home.
We are stretching, forming pyramids with our thighs and hamstrings.
"Do you remember me from last night?" The blonde haired girls asks me, she is nothing but smiles. I squint. I don't recognize her. I wonder if she was the blonde at the table with the group of seniors I sat with while I was momentarily salivating over Tamara.
"I'm Meg. I'm in Harmony's group."
"Yes!" I say, cupping both her hands as if I am being presented with a lifetime achievement award. I want to ask her if she has spoken with Harmony since the dance. I want to inquire if she just so happens to know off the top of her head what room Harmony is staying is so that I can call her later on this morning before we leave for Warwick castle. I want to inquire if Harmony just so happened to have inquired about me in the discourse of the last six hours.
The moment I retouch her hand Dan tells us it is time to go.
Our group
breaks off into a staccato of strides panting into the dawn of British morning. Josh the Eagle Scout keeping the
lead. Dan, watching over us like a lighthouse, encouraging all of us
to stick together, Tarnisha bringing up the rear. We are lagging at a steady
canter as the heavy yolk of the morning sun breaks free, its rays floating and
descending as if a bra unstrapping itself in slow motion. As I try to break
ahead, endeavoring to train at a reasonable pace, Dan offers us the caveat,
telling us to stay as a group. The flaky girl who Josh has had his eyes on
hiccups as she tells the group as a whole that she really, really wants to run
a marathon someday.
“England
There is about seven of us, sneakers galloping across the cobbled roads of Stratford, running out through slim arteries into the country. We continue to run, our arms fastened wrenched in with every gyration. It is Friday, but seems more like a Tuesday since we have had the whole week off from the outset. The pretty, daffy girl who wears make-up and earrings even as she sweats just want stop talking about her future plans as a daffy world class athlete someday. Josh (Indiana) who was dancing last night seems to take a magnetic inkling to her. As we run, into the country, the past halcyon houses and pastures, the wet vernal green of the continent wet with the dew of morning, as if it beckons to somehow be kissed. Dan seems to feel the insoluble need and keeps on apologizing in advance, stating that it might be hard for her to keep up with us since she plays varsity volleyball at “
“Her knees
are bad,’” He says, as she lags behind the pack. I think about
I am running.
As if our bodies are harnessed to some invisible carriage toting the arrival of indelible youth, the cluster of slanted elbows and crooked limbs emblematic of our group continues to peddle forward into the orange light of another day.
The girl who splatters overt amount of blush on the side of her cheeks who was dancing with Josh last night is running next to him. The sun seems to be some sort of thespian stage light that just seems to drip over the quilt of British countryside. I thank Dan for allowing me the opportunity to run this morning albeit our pace is little more than a distilled canter.
I tell him
it is track season and that I run every day. I tell him that last summer I was
running three times a day and that I was on the verge of breaking records until
I got a stress fracture. I tell him that I have a picture of Noureddine Morceli who ran a sub 3:30 1500 meters and who always bows east towards Mecca at the end of every run in my locker
in high school. The girl with too much
blush turns to my direction.
“So if you used to run every day did you run a marathon
then?”
I tell her no. I tell her I used to do a lot of half-marathons but I’ve never done a full one. I tell her that I’ve run twenty miles in a day before. Lots of times. Only split up into chapters.
“I would
love to run a marathon someday.” She says again,in a voice that is high-pitched and
annoying. I remember Vivian commenting that the marathon is in London is this
weekend. I ask her what is the furthest she has ever run. She says a five-kay and then says that’s he
ran that in about a half-hour so it shouldn’t taker her too much longer to run
a marathon.
I try not to roll my eyes. Even Josh, who is breathing
heavier than me, lets go of a subtle smile that comes off as a sigh.
I wonder where savant Bryan Ferry, the nemesis, who could run 4:45 mile without a sweat is lounging. The group continues to run. Tarnisha
lagging behind. I inquire to Dan where he goes to school and what his intended
major is. He tells me he is
communications at Northwestern though he’s been thinking that he received a
devout calling to go to rabbinical school. Dan is also a collegiate swimmer and is ranked in the top of the Big Ten in his respective categories. I am fifteen and Lutheran and have
grown up in the cardboard visaged cloister in elders of my church congregation.
I have never seen the illuminating wicks of a menorah. I have no clue what the word rabbinical
means.
Thinking its some sort of practice in law I tell him that I hear that’s
going to rabbinical school is trying but that he can do anything as long as he
puts his mind to it.
I tell him that I am sure the degree is worth it.
I tell him that I am sure the degree is worth it.
Josh lets
go of another sigh.
I continue to marshal my limbs in
hard right angels. I continue to push. Dan the future Rabbi says that if we are
competitive athletes we are allowed to run ahead for the last 800 meters, to
find our way back to the entrance of the Moat House—I begin to take off, like a
newly advanced missile, my bottom limbs drumming across the the surface of england of the country I
have so longed to see, my shadow, an elongated film negative behind me, my
body, sprinting seamlessly into the fresh atmosphere of a spring, in the
British countryside. I continue to sprint, a faceless young Columbus
comrade seemed to stay near the far edge
of my torso for the first 50 meters and then I can hear him hunched over,
exchanging healthy drops of Oxygen for Carbon Monoxide, I run, I am thinking
about Coach Ricca, about how hard I trained over the discourse of last autumn,
about how the fissure in my leg kept me from snapping the Freshman record at
Manual, the record I inwardly vowed to annihilate, running trying not to think
about the Popsicle limbs of my coach promulgating 400 metre mile splits, I try
not to think about Renae now dating David Best or Dawn Michelle. I try not to
think about lower horizontal appendages of Kim Zemskal or about how I ran three
times a day last summer after the Music Man. I try not to think about Harmony,
from last night, her dress, the shadows of the spotlights and our bodies, the
way her arms seemed to fit inside the cervices of my lower arms and upper
shoulder like a life boat. I think about all this as the lushest country side
of the continent skips past my immediate vision in a blurred panorama of light,
charging towards the entrance of the Moat hHuse, my peers now a good 400 meters
behind me.
Meg Weaver from Harmony’s group trots near me bartering a smile that seems to fill the vacant bedroom of my heart as her lips arches into
her pale architecture of her lips like an angel stretching its wings as it
wakes up in the morning.
“That was amazing.” She says.
Meg is beautiful. Her hair is swirl of strawberry red coronation royalty by the gilded morning sun. Her skin is
pasty, the color of a saltine cracker void of sprinkled chemical flecks.
My lips offer a smile back at her.
I need to spit but instead nonchalantly swallow the salivating petrol,
commenting back
“Oh, by the way,” Meg Weaver amends, “Harmony says hello.
***
I sit with Justin and Chris at
Breakfast, still attired in my athletic garb. Breakfast at the Moat House
consists of a buffet of hams and eggs and fruits. We eat in a reserved patio.
The eggs are scrambled and have a fluffy taste, as if they were scrambled on an Easter morning cloud. Chris inquires if I got her phone number. I tell her
no. I tell her that we just somehow hugged in slow motion and then she
introduced me to her friends and then the head counselor of her group who just
so happens to be the hot one who all the males are salivating over on this trip
kind of intervened and then she dissipated in a wisp of fragrance and stars and left me face down drowning in a rivulet of wonder.
Chris nods his head. Justin tells me that in a way he’s sort of
glad that I didn’t even make it to the on deck circle and get her number since he
really needed the sleep last night. Josh the Eagle Scout arrives to breakfast back from running
wearing his tie.
“We don’t need to change until
later when we meet the Lord Mayor.” I say, only he doesn’t seem to care. I look around the dining room. A
few of the kids who are Nat’s group who look like they won the trip to England
by winning some sort of Dungeons and Dragons tournament sit at the table adjacent to us and begin to
talk about how they can’t wait to see the castle the tour will be visiting
this morning. A few of the older girls from Harmony’s bus who look like they
defied the rules and brought curling irons with them also treacle in looking for
plates, helping themselves to small portions of fruit.
The server comes by my table and asks if I would like some more coffee. She is old. She calls me love.
I tell her yes.
“Coffee will like seriously stunt your growth and its probably messing with your mile time more than you realize.” Chris adds as if he holds some sort of medicinal .
I tell him no. I tell him that a little caffeine in the morning helps flush out the toxins.
“Yeah, but the way you drink it man. It will still stunt your growth. Your penis will probably stop growing. You won’t be able to satisfy your wife someday.”
I tell him that I plan to be young and eternal and fifteen for the rest of my life. He tells me I am weird.
I ignore him. I look around. I wield my glasses out of my side pocket and then harness my spectacles on my nose as if I am scrutinizing the fine print of a dead relatives will. I am looking for Harmony.
Still nothing. Josh begins to ramble about SKIT night in London.
“Wait 'til you hear what I have planned for our skit.” Josh tells me. I ask him what it is. He tells me its classified information and informs us that he can’t tell me because other groups might be listening and steal our idea.
The lady comes back and refills my coffee chalice. I am polite. I tell her thank you. I tell her that the eggs she just made are lovely. I tell her how much I enjoy her country.
She smiles. She has lived under the prestige and penumbra of William Shakespeare all her life. She has fallen in love with a US army man in world war two who made promises and never came back. She perhaps never married. She perhaps had been working at this hotel for the entirety of my parent’s life.
At the table next Jim Baker is making motions that seem that I am hitting on her. I ignore him. I do a quick optical scope around the room to see if I can somehow find the creature from last night.
The old lady tells me that she has been in this town all her life and that she will probably die here.
I ask if , a la Shakespeare, she plans on putting a curse on
her grave as well. She smiles.
“More coffee?”
I nod.
“Do all American boys like you drink that much coffee?”
“No,” I respond, with a smile, “Most drink quite a bit
more.”
Behind me Jim Baker is making little thrusting motions with his elbows and hips in my direction. Again I ignore him. I tell the old lady thank you.
I finish my caffeinated ambrosia in one elongated gulp setting
the cup down with a solid clack.
I then tell the group that I will see them in the lobby in twenty minutes. My glasses are doffed.
There is still no sight of Harmony, the girl in the
orchard-flavored dress who hours ago tugged at my shoulders and held me across the frame of time.
***
In the
lobby I am surrounded by bodies. I keep focusing my vision past the tips of my shoes,
hoping that maybe I might saunter into Harmony. Like a welt slowly beginning to
lash open and fill with blood the lobby begins to fill with clots of red coats. I feel a
tug at the back of my hood. For a moment I am temporarily asphyxiated. It is
Mark. He is wearing a trench coat. He is also wearing Birkenstock sandals with
socks. Somehow he has a different outfit for every day of the trip
“Good morning!” I say walking away from the Big Ten.
“I saw you dancing at the dance last night with Sheila. You guys were pretty cool.”
Mark exchanges a smile. He asks me how my night transpired.
“Bro, I actually met this girl. She was stunning. Just very beautiful.”
Mark says that he saw that I was dancing with someone but he couldn’t see who.
“Her name is Harmony. She from Washington State. Spoe-can.”
“Harmony,” Mark says her name, slightly tilting his head, “I met her yesterday."
"Hey, she's a really beautiful girl bro. Only I was so enamored with her smile I forgot to get her number and she just sort of dissipated and I forgot to get her number."
"She left you with a glass slipper then," He says. I don't glean his metaphor at first and then I do and then I feel petty for not gleaning it sooner.
Bodies seem to stir throughout the room as if in a blender. Over near the Big Ten Spencer is walking like decapitated poultry foisting a smile to bloom across Daisy's face. I look around. There is still no sight of Harmony. In the lobby of the Moathouse there is a grandfather clock next to several green chairs. Several Young Columbuses are at the front desk exchanging Traveler’s Cheques for currency. Apparently Dan had his group of Youngsters wear their incumbent dignitary-meeting ties all day. I am scoping my head around the room. Groups still tend to socialize within the context of their respective #’s/age/bus however is seems like these porous membranes of puberty appear to be starting to wane. The realization that we are a contingent unit each experiencing the wheezing hi-pitched defibrillation of youth for an emotionally muddled overlapped accelerated squeeze of shared years, realizing that we are part of an hormonal enterprise fleeting an evanescent, floating across the prow of a voyage, stretching across the neurological petri dish of adolescence, influenced by transient culture, B-movies, pop music, reared under the aegis of a static geometric slate, living room altar, finding meaning in sitcoms, youth cushioned with an ersatz laugh track, commercialized interludes, addled afterschool specials, wizened petals of youth bartering sentences, boomeranging smiles and facial assents, falling in love, each a part of a trip, the incubating cusp of adulthood, communicating, yearning, laughing, falling in love with leaving.
Falling in love with only being here for a short paragraph of time.
Including the counselors the avg. age of
the young Columbus participant is 16.7 years.
There is Big Ten give it up.
There is no sight of Harmony.
We are gone.