Four-twenty Lobby...

When I arrive back to the room there is no sign of Justin. The television is still on. I place Harmony's coat like the shroud of Turin on my bed. I smooth down the contours. I sprinkle just a tab of my very British S & M sounding English Leather cologne of the labels before splashing a generous slap on my own cheeks. I fill up the bathroom sink again  baptize the top of my head and begin to re-sculpt and spray my hair.

The television is showing pictures of tanks. The stubble-chinned BBC man is again stating that it is a fiasco bordering on genocide.

I pick up Harmony's coat holding it gingerly as I head towards the lobby.

In the elevator I see Eagle Scout Josh.

"Ya'll have a nice run this morning?"

Eagle Scout Josh says yes. Eagle Scout Josh says that there was just a handful of serious athletes who went.

"Where did you guys run to?" I say pressing the emblem for Lobby.

"Pretty much the same route we went yesterday."

Josh makes it a point stating that they all stayed together and went at a modest pace and no-one felt the need to show boat and claim he was a world class athlete by sprinting ahead. It seems like every time I take the elevator today I am chided simply for pressing the integer.

It seems like I just can't win.

I ignore Josh's asides and think about how I ran with Meg Weaver yesterday and the sweat on the top of her brow. I think about how we danced tersely last night.

I think about her smile.

The elevator blings open. The moment  turn to the lobby Eagle scout Josh tells me not to forget.

"Yeah, I'll be there running tomorrow. As much as you belittle me I am a serious athlete and I go into withdrawl if I don't run everyday."

Josh is swiping his head back and forth.

"No, don't forget tonight."

I say what. Josh says the skit.

"Do we even know what we are doing yet. I know the Big Ten vetoed that skit you wanted to perform."

Josh seems pissed.

"Yeah, and the skit is tonight and we don't even have a clue what we are going to perform!!"

 Josh stampedes ahead. As I enter the lobby there is light, sequined orbs dotted against the tapestry of noveau ottoman architectural flare of the front room.  I pass the tall kid with the pituitary gland malfunction whose name I will learn is Jeremy. The boy with the mustache and trench coat is loitering near the shushing doors with Elbert. On one of the three couches forming an overhead pi emblem around the gilded Stag Long Horn has his entire body sprawled out, thwarting any other member of the trip from sitting down next to him. Several of the female counselors from the older group can’t go two seconds without posing for a makeshift group picture. It is nearly impossible for the middle-aged double-shinned feminine adult Guest from Spencer’s home state to take a picture without using the words Kodak and Moment. Dimas is for some reason wearing a derby cap with the name of a British water polo team stitched on back.  A female counselor is wearing an all pink sweat suit which looks like something a grandma might wear.  7/10^th of the Big Ten are meting with 4/10ths of Daisy’s group. Kenny is going around picking various members of  Daisy’s group up like a torch and then drop them like he was ding last night before the lights flicked on at the dance.

Sheila and Tamera walk in back followed by Greta and another girl from their group who is African American.  I think about what one of the girls at the table said about Sheila and Tamera  A kid wearing sunglasses and kicking a hackey sack says that maybe we should pay homage to the date and celebrate 4-20.

Still no optical wink of Mark. 

I see the Polite Baptist boy from Hunstville Alabama walk into the lobby and I literately pull a Nat Pflederer and swivel into the converse direction hoping he doesn’t see me. I see Sam and Vinny. Vinny is taking close ups with his camcorder. I give Sam a pummel-fist pump in much of the same way Mark addresses me whenever he sees me.  I give him a Euclidean arm lock around Sam’s head.I give him a noogie trying not to mar Harmony’s thoroughly scrubbed coat in the slightest. He laughs. The counselor is asking if he could see Vinny for a second, there is a grave look on his face like Vinny has just gotten in trouble for chronicling something of the trip he shouldn’t.

“Dude, I was worried about you last night Sam.”

Sam smiles back. He says sometimes the sentimental button just  gets pressed a little too hard.

“It was hard being on the Thames and dancing and watching all the other couples hold each other and everything.”

I tilt my head in commiseration still holding Harmony’s coat.

“But I totally did what you told me to do. I went home last night and wrote Samantha a letter. I told her about London. I told her how being on that boat that night made me think about her.”

I am smiling. I tell Sam attaboy. I tell him I am proud of him. Sam brushes me with his arms as if to say there is more. I step back. from my periphery I see Intellectually riveting Ginny and Polite Baptist boy. I feel like snapping at both of them again. Polite Baptist Boy does a half-wave and then presses the center of his glasses into his forehead. Everyone runs into everyone in the lobby. Still no sight of Harmony or Mark. The polite Baptist boy is standing by himself in the corner. It looks like he is verifying the corporeal essence of his existence by looking at his reflection in the mirror adorned behind the check-in counter. Someone in the group says that they are almost out of Travelers Cheques so do you think en route to our next stop the Bus driver could pull into the nearest Western Union it will only take a second, I swear. Apparently after the skit tonight there is a separate Xeroxed itinerary that the thirty sterling merit scholars who have been selected a la nepotism  for lunch with Lynn Minton and the British teenagers on the last day .

Selected by the human I have pledged my every pulse or this sojourn.

This is our second to last day before we go home

I still need to get razors for Granpa Salm.

Several more titans who didn’t sit in at our round table discussion are debating the on Bus four are debating the Waco Siege. When Elias Das brushes past me I want to say something like ‘good thing the Agency of Firearms and Tobacco took out those yahoos in Waco because, purportedly,  the pin factory in Amarillo Texas was next,’ only judging from the outcome of the last debate, 

I refrain. 

Mark comes up to me. He gives me a signature shoulder fist pummeling dab. He has a smile on his face. It was mandated that, even though we are seeing a Dignitary this morning we don’t have to wear a tie.

“That’s my boy, no tie, yeah!!” 

Several of is friends are next to him. There is New Yawker Denis whom I have already met and hung out with several times as well as a boy named Matt.

“What did you think about the dance last night on theThames.”

Mark smiles back at me. He tells me what he told me when I first met him about how he only dances with certain rave and industrial tunes.”

No, that girl you were dancing with was hot I mean, I’ve never seen anyone dance so adroitly. It’s like you were waltzing even though it wasn’t a waltz.”

Mark offers a shrug.                            

“What’s her name, Rachel?”

Mark has a nonplussed look sewn on his face.

“That girl you were dancing with, last night. The spritely blond headed girl who is a member of Tamera and Greta’s group.

Mark still looks confused. He then says oh, her.

“Rachel, right?”

‘No. Rachel has curly hair and wears glasses your thinking of Moran.”

“Moran,” I say the name poetically. Mark nods and says yes.

“It’s a beautiful name. It sounds like she it could be enya’s middle name. 

“Mark & Moran.” I say again. Mark seems indifferent. 

“Yeah, she’s pretty cool. Although I have a feeling she’s a minx.”

“A what?”

“A minx. Yeah, Moran’s a minx. She’s kind of daffy and flippant upstairs. The only thing between her ears is a tube of cherry lip gloss. Yeah, She’s a minx.”

 She’s a minx.”

Mark Greta and Tamera have the best vocabulary of anyone I have ever met. We stand in front of a large monument

“What about that girl you are dancing with. You guys seemed pretty intense.”

I smile. I say Harmony’s name aloud. I Tell Mark that we were on the phone again last night

He gives me another fist pump. Denis is smiling before he begins to speak

“Yeah, little Miss Large and in Charge.”

“What?” I say, not gleaning the reference. From a distance I see the hotel Manager hand Vinny something.  Vnny’s counselor is looking at him with his arms draped over one shoulder. I can’t help but wonder if Vinny is in trouble. If perhaps he got caught Video tapping something he wasn’t suppose to, like the crown Jewels. Nat seems to socialize more with his group. His girlfriend still has black rings around her eyes from where she has been crying at Breakfast earlier this morning.

I step back. I still have Harmony's coat draped over my forearm like fresh linen.


 There is a voice.

It is dulcet and pure. It feels like spring massaging against the side of my body

It simply says hey.

...not Rita....

I look behind. Her forehead looks like an ice sculpture. Her hair is back. She is smiling. I can't understand why she is always by herself.

It is Rita.

I have yet to speak with her in earnest since she gave me her phone number and I somehow lost it. I spent all last night looking for her on the Thames and was only able to espy the back of her head as if in a dream.

"Hey!!!" I add.

                                               

I ask Rita how she enjoyed the dance. She smiles and tells me it was okay.

“Did you see the sunset over Big Ben and Parliament?” I inquire. She responds with a simple nod.

That was beautiful, wasn't it? That was just perfect. I mean the dance floor and everything was perfect.

Rita tells me that she didn’t spend a whole lot of time on the dance floor.

“I was mostly on the back of the boat looking out.”

Rita is beautiful. She is intelligent. I’m surprised more lads from our group don’t gravitate around her.  She looks at Harmony’s coat dripping over the stem of my arm stage curtain to a puppet show. I tell her it’s a friends’.

“Oh,” she says.

There is a silence. Daisy is talking to the guy she danced with last night that for some reason hoping that Spencer somehow notices her talking with a guy and 

I tell her I bet that I was nice. Not knowing why almost inscrutably I have somehow pledged my every poetic pulse to Harmony.

Rita is looking down into her shoes as if to verify that they fit.

I am trying to explain to Rita how I was trying to call her up. I am trying to explain to Rita how in a way I want to hang out with her. I am holding her coat when there is a slice over my eyes. I am blindfolded. Like doves. Fingers. At first I think it is Jim Baker fucking with me.

When I turn around it is Harmony. 

She is wearing her lavender shirt with the flowers on them. She is wearing my coat. Her hair is auburn and seems to drip past her neck.

"Hi." I say confused. I am holding her coat. She is smiling, looking at me.

She offers a hello.

Harmony. is wearing the same dress from the night we met. She is holding the granite slab of petrified art that was chiseled from Mount St. Helen that is to be a gift for the Lord Mayor of London from the good people of Spokane Washington. She smiles when she sees me holding her coat veronica-to-matador fashion.

There is a Big Ten give it up.

Harmony gives me a hug. even though she would not allow me to kiss her last night on the moon-flicked eddies of the Thames. It is the first time Harmony has initiated some sort of physical ardor. She is hugging me for a long time.  

I step back.

"Here, this is yours." I say handing her the coat.

She is nothing but smiles.

“Even when I was scrubbing off the syrupy Pepsi splotches I couldn’t help noticing how the coat still smelled like you.”

Harmony smiles. She asks me what I think she smells like. I tell her last night she smelled like a sea-angel on the river Thames and that sea-angel on the river Thames smells like eternity.

“Eternity with fins.” Harmony adds.

“Fins and a halo. A sea angel” I say. She smiles.  

The respective groups are being herded together. Rita is still behind me the entire time I am drooling over Harmony. Jennifer Flood is next to Miss Arkansas who is communicating only in a series of sniffs. 

We are facing each other.

Harmony smiles.

"Oh, and this is yours." She says removing my jacket from her anatomy and handing it back to me. I have more questions for Harmony. I want to ask her where she was at breakfast this morning. I want to inquire if we will be sitting together at lunch today. I want to ask her why she never asked me once to participate in the discussion with Lynn Minton. There is more of a call for the groups to congregate as one.

Harmony pirouettes into the direction of Janelle La Flaneur and tells me that she will see me soon.

I tell her to wait.I have been averaging a roll of film a day. I didn’t take my camera last night.For reasons I will not be able to verify twin decades into the future I have very few shots containing fellow Yong Columbusians.

I wish I had a picture of Harmony from last night on the Thames.

"Hey, can I snap a picture of you real quick. You know."

Harmony smiles. She nods. 

As I snap Harmony’s picture in the lobby of the Gloucester, a feeling of descent seems to droop somewhere inside the vacuous bucket of paint that is my heart as I come to the almost cathartic realization that in two days time we will all be saying goodbye, that our voyage will be punctuated with embraces and photographs and the exchange of addresses. That we will all be leaving—this beautiful mass of flesh will be severed, will be hurtled back to our various continental vectors from hence we came.

There is a colloquial Big Ten Give it up. I look at Jim and for a second swear that he is wearing a Toga.

It is the twentieth of April. It has been exactly one week since all of us met and abandoned U.S. soil.

In two days I will be back home.

                                          

In two days all of this will be gone.