It is morning and it is our first day in London. The
phone is sunbathing on my bare chest as I wake up. Light the color of TANG is
staining the room orange. Outside traffic intermittently hisses past. We are
facing a row of Victorian townhouses with no alleys between them. I am
confused. I am still looking for Harmony. Justin is out for the count with a
half-pack of the Fig Newtons my mother gave me next to his bed.
The second I
place the phone on the receiver it rings. I think it is Harmony. It turns out
it is Trevor asking if we are up yet.
“Wake Iowa up. Big Day today. London baby!”
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I hang up the phone. It is 6:30. I remember flirting
with Harmony on the phone and being on some sort of a continental ship and
trying to find her and watching her roommate with no underwear lick her fingers
as if she had just consumed a chicken dinner before touching parts of her body
I didn’t know existed telling me that Harmony will never be mine. I step into my jeans and give Justin several
petulant shrugs informing him that Trevor just called and we need to get
downstairs for breakfast and then meet in the lobby.
“I didn’t get any sleep. You were on the phone the
entire night."
I tell him that’s not true. I tell him I was off the
phone by one.
“Just come down to the lobby when you are ready bro,”
I open the door and look both ways, making sure I am no longer stalked by
half-naked inebriated English teachers before heading downstairs.
Breakfast in London is also a buffet. I help myself to a scoop of eggs and sausage
gravy. There are a couple members of Zeke’s group who are not Zeke and who ignore me when I look in their general direction and a couple
members of Dan’s group eating what looks like oatmeal flooded in juice.
Breakfast is completely optional. The pleasant lad from Alabama comes in
wearing his fanny pack and sits down next to me.There is no Mark. There is an
older kid named Nathaniel and one named Jonathon who is from Michigan whose
last name is the country of God’ Chose race. There is a crisp blonde headed kid
named Connor who could be Mark’s body-double who has already been interviewed
by Lynn Minton in Stratford and who walks around like he inadvertently sat on the remote control to what I am learning Brit's commonly refer to as the Telly.
I am looking for Mark.
I keep thinking
that Harmony was going to call me back. I can’t understand why she seemed so
excited to hear my voice one minute and the next she seems completely elusive the
next. There seems to be nonstop chatter about stopping at the Hard Rock Café. I
look at the lad from Alabama and inquired how he slept last night. He returns a
smile. Several more members of the Big Ten including my roommate straggle
inside the breakfast area. Jim says that Spencer was on the phone for five
hours straight last night with Dandelion then makes a rattling motions with his
torso. He asks me if I ever hooked up with that drunk guy in the hallway I
still swear is my English teacher. I am through with the Big Ten. I get up informing the Big Ten that I will
meet them in the lobby. There is no reason to return to my room since I already
have my wallet on me and my camera in my jacket. As I enter the lobby I bump
into her, for the second straight morning.
It is Rita. I have not seen her since leaving Blenheim
yesterday.
“Hey!” I say, there is a smile wondering why I always
bump into her but can never seem to find Harmony.
She is smiling at me. There is something about the
magnetic yank of Rita’s smile that pinches at the bottom of my chest. For
inexplicable reasons she is by herself. She always seems to be by herself every
time I see her. She is always smiling. She is always looking at me as if she is
happy to see me.
Part of me wants to give her a hug.
I have finished eating breakfast but I walk back in the dining area with her. I am getting another
java refill while she gets a tray when Josh and the girl with the exorbitant
blush walks in wearing gym clothes. For the second day in a row it appears that
I have missed running.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know the group was going out
running this morning.”
Josh informs me that they did not.
“Dan said he wanted to have a day in London to scope
out a place for us to run before taking off and not being able to find our way
back home.”
“Then why are you guys dressed up in your workout
clothes?”
Josh is smiling. His girlfriend with all the blush
blushes even more as if they have a shared secret.
“We didn’t want to miss out on a day of running so we
put our workout clothes on and went to the lobby and stretched for fifteen
minutes.”
“You stretched?” Both Josh and his girlfriend are
smiling. His girlfriend adds that they even did Pilates. I ask Josh if he is
going running tomorrow morning. Josh says that he will let me know.
Rita has gotten her tray and is eating. She is always
by herself. It doesn’t make any sense. She seems to dissolve every other hour
into the British ether.
I try to make small talk. I ask her how she thinks
about London so far.
She is nothing but smiles.
“I can’t believe how huge it is.” She cuts into her
eggs. She says that she is from Kenosha
Wisconsin and the largest city she has ever been to is where her grandma lives in
someplace called Appleton.
“Yeah, I’ve been to the Dells.” I say, trying to make small talk. At
the world Dells she breaks off laughing.
Rita is always laughing. I just cannot get enough of
her smile.
“The Dells are so touristy.” She has a beautiful
smile, it is reeling me in. From my peripheral vision I observe several members
of Harmony’s group walk in sans Harmony.
“I have a question for you? How come you are never
hanging out with your group?”
She responds by asking me the same query. I say touché.
I ask again though.
“I mean, every time I see you you are by yourself. You
are like this mystical ghost and you are always by yourself and you just seem
to appear in blinks.”
Rita continues to smile and laugh. She slices into her
eggs again in a surgical fashion.
“Yes, I’m a ghost. I’m not real. No one in this room
can see you talking to me. From their vantage point you are having a
conversation with an invisible rabbit named Harvey.”
She begins to laugh. For a second I wonder if I am
being schizophrenic.
“I’m real silly,” She says flashing me that smile
before asking me if I am real by stating are you?
“I’m not sure anymore.” I say, falling just a little
bit in love with Rita’s smile, her laugh, her eyes.
***
In the lobby I am next to gilded Stag. We are scheduled to leave in ten minutes.
Trevor is walking around the room making sure everyone in the Big Ten is
accounted for.
There is no sight of Harmony. Near the elevators I can
make out Sam and Vinny. Bodies clad in crimson jackets are beginning to brew in
the lobby. I have rather stoically decided that the Big Ten has nothing to
offer me. I have rather stoically decided that I want to spend and much time
socializing with any male or female outside my group whose name is not Ezekiel Bosh-Midden .
As is the case there is no Harmony in sight. A girl
with amazing teeth and red furls is smiling behind me. At first I think it is
Greta only it is not. She has freckles. She is British tour guide umbrella
skinny. She looks like a cross between Olive Oil and Pippi Longstocking.
“So you are the one everyone says is either Harry
Connick or the older brother off of Blossom.”
I add a what. She is smiling. It feels like she is
stepping out of a smile. I extend my hand.
“No My name is David Actually. I’m from Illinois.”
The girl with the fiery red hair inquires where. I
tell her Peoria. She says where.
“Think of the entire configuration of the state of
Illinois as being one large elongated liver and somehow Peoria is
cancer-riddled splotch in the center.”
“No,” She says, as if stamping her foot. I lash back.
I say what.
“You’re not from Peoria. Peoria is in Arizona.”
“No Peoria is in Illinois. That is where I am from.”
“You are not from Peoria. she says, self-assuredly.
Her freckles are constellations. You can tell she won every spelling bee she
ever entered in grade school.”
“I’m from Arizona. There’s a Peoria, Arizona. The only
Peoria is in Arizona.”
I tell her that Peoria was christened as a city long
before Peoria Arizona came in being. I tell her that Peoria was the name of an
Indian tribe.
“No, I just wanted to meet you because I want to meet
everyone on this trip and people always say that you look either like Harry
Connick Jr. or that one guy from Blossom but I honestly have to confess after
having met you that you don’t resemble either of them.”
“What?”
“Plus you talk like, really fast. It seems like you
are nervous all the time. It seems like you are waiting for something that has
already arrived yet you have failed to see it more yet glean the significance
or it.
I ask her what.
She turns around and says that it is nice meeting you
David.
From behind me I hear a chuckle.
“So I see you’ve met our Wendy.”
It is Sam. I admire his jocularity.
“Yeah that’s our Wendy. She meets, she diagnoses, she
conquers, she moves on. Our Wendy.”
Yes indeed.
I tell Sam last time I spoke with red headed Wendy of that renown at least I
got a frosty and a baked potato out of it. Sam laughs and tells me that he
doesn’t get it. I tell him to forget it. Next to me Sam’s roommate Vinny is
continuing to chronicle the trip via camcorder.
“And-uh-ya, this is where our good friend Tony gets
dissed by everyone’s favorite Our
Wendy.”
I tilt my head. Instead of giving him the finger I
make a puppet face with my right hand snapping shush in a yawn.
“Why do you refer to her as Our Wendy.”
Vinny is still filming he doesn’t miss a beat.
“Because she’s the third person feminine pronoun.
She’s the tiara. She the all. She’s the goddess.
“She’s Our Wendy.”
The lobby is continuing to fill. The Big Ten are all
flirting with members of Daisy’s group, all of whom appear to be fawning their
heads back like they expect to be rescued. Kenny is still wearing his Spin Doctors Discman and picks several of them up below the caps of their knees as
if to show his strength. There is a
subtle jab on my back shoulder. It is Mark.
“Hey bro,” I say. He is wearing a cool jacket. I tell him
that I missed him at breakfast. He says that he slept in,
“So, you excited about seeing London. You excited
about seeing the Hard Rock café?”
Mark nods rather stoically like a male model. Out of
nowhere, inexplicably, Mark begins to sound like an encyclopedia Britannica.
“It was the first Hard Rock Café, founded in 1971.”
I am trying to be witty. I quote Wayne’s World. I tell
Mark that Garth, I was not aware of that.
He is stating that there is an Eric Clapton guitar and
one of Madonna’s burlesque outfit with white dunce cones for boobs available to view.
Again I tell him that I was not aware of that. I say
that most people just want to go to Hard Rock Café to get the shirts.
Mark mentions a military coat worn by John Lennon. He
mentions the Who and Cream.
Mark, the most brilliant creature I have ever met.
There is a Big Ten give it up. I slap Mark’s hand and tell him that I will
see him soon.
Sir Charles is at the bus verifying everyone is on
board.
“Alright boys, it’s time for London. London here we
come.”