We were informed the night before at dinner that all boys are required to wear ties and girls are mandated to wear skirts and pantyhose. Of the two silk ties I have brought with me remain pre-configured in a silk noose by my father the night before I left. Justin and I dress for success, staring at ourselves in the mirror, clawing at the air-occluding gasket pinching inches above our Adam’s apple. Morning in
“We got the dinner/dance on the Thames tonight? You gonna dance with Harmony?”
I look at my tie the gentle guitar-calloused fingertips of my father knotted a week earlier and smile.
“You find any cute girls yet? I mean, those Italian girls are still out there.”
“I told you,” Justin clears his throat and begins to speak rather adamantly. “I already have a girlfriend back home in Lincoln, Nebraska. None of the girls here on this trip are even in her category. None even come close”
There is a pause. As is routine I stand brandishing the jaundice tines of my comb in one paw and my loyal can of whatever passes for British aqua net in the other like a scepter. The pestering barks of the caricatured canine has all but ceased. The bald headed British anchor man gives an update on the situation in Texas, involving the cult of the man who claims he is Jesus Christ and uses biblical references to sleep with twelve year old girls.
“Or there’s little Armadillo pin girl, she’s pretty hot.” I note, in between ozone-penetrating squirts.
“I told you,” Justin says again, letting out a grunt as he zips up the front of his red jacket post-autopsy and corpse fashion before strutting over to my suitcase and helping himself to a hyphenated row of Fig Newtons without asking my consent.
“I know,” I say again, noting the FBI tanks performing reconnaissance ballet around the Texas
The phone rings. I grasp the handle, heralding thoughts of her voice, wishing me good morning, the sweet mellifluous foam of her voice chiming into my ear like oceanic waves gracefully raking against the shore. But no. The voice on the other end is male, recognizable as the lanky altar boy haircut lad addressing me as Mario.
“Merry-oh, we need to hurry up Merry-oh. You’re so full of shit.”
“Dude, I’m not merry-oh.” I say, mimicking his inflection.
“Merry-oh, you are such a fag., Merry-oh. I know it you. Put your panties on, its time to go.” The altar boy says in a high-pitched voice. I think of him telling various members of the Big Ten clan on our first full day in London
“Wait up.” I tell Justin as we exit our room together, walking down the elegant stream of hallways til we get to the elevator, joined by a procession of red coats and ties and youth and eternity.
“Who was that on the phone?” Justin inquires, just as the elevator door is beginning to split open.
“Wrong number,” I add.
I enter the elevator and press the letter L in hopes of descending straight down as soon as is humanly possible.
The lobby is a bustled level three hurricane of red jackets, males creeping index fingers around the stump of their necks in an effort to accumulate the passage of air. As is the case the Big Ten seems to orbit around themselves, with Spencer who is talking about the Daisy Train. Everyone in the BIG TEN seems to either have forgotten about OPEN JEWELS or are too sore to instigate round two.
“All aboard on the Daisy train.” Jim Baker notes, stating that today he wishes to be the conductor.
More red jackets flood from the elevator like blood eking from the wrists of a fresh suicide. I continue to hunt, my glasses tucked into the side of my pocket like a checkbook. A few members from Sam’s group say good morning to me and address me as Tony. Near the front desk I see Rita and offer her a smile.
I need to apologize. I need to state that I really wanted to speak with her on the phone last night only I somehow lost the napkin with her phone number on it.
“Having a good morning?” I ask, noting the crescent of her smile is in the same time signature of Meg Weavers, it is the same color of the sun breaking into my window earlier in the morning. It is indelible and sublime and eternal. Something tugs at the labels inside my chest. I think of Harmony who I was on the phone with for three hours last night and lose myself in the meadow of snow that is Rita’s forehead, wondering if I am being faithful to the woman I have, for some inexplicable reason pledged the temperature of my trip to be all about.
“Listen,” I begin to warble, trying not to picture her listlessly waiting by the phone last night with hopes of hearing my voice.
I begin my apologetic oration. From behind my shoulder registers a familiar dab. Mark's fist is gavel shaped and friendly, my mentor and the one that perhaps should’ve-been-but-never-was.
Mark’s tie is unraveled around the mounds of his shoulders in the fashion of a flaccid albatross.
“I despise ties.” Mark notes, fashionably steering the dual tendrils of cloth into a coifed pentagon below his chin, marshaling the stands of silk so that eventually is leaks down into the hemisphere of his waist.
“I mean, David man, comeon. These ties, man.”
I smile in the shade of my mentor and my friend. Behind me the gaggle of my fellow cohorts begin to discuss additional box cars they plan on adding to the Daisy train. Altar-boy walks up and tries to get into the action but he appears to be ignored. Charles is counting the back of heads, telling Big Ten to start to get ready to start giving it up come about five minutes time.
“Should be a good day today.’ I tell Mark and Rita. “The embassy dude should be cool.” Mark gives me a look as if he plans on composing a contentious epistle to the United States Ambassador stating the inefficacy of the mandate apparel. There is laughter. Mark smiles, tugs at the bottom plank of his tie and begins to casually saunter across the room. Rita looks like she is about ready to say something, her lips a half-wet beginning to perch into the scent of a smile when a registered ping causes my ears to avert from the soil of her sentences, seeing Harmony stepping out of the elevator, ravishingly attired in the dress, talking with Lynn Minton.
“I’ll get back to you in a little bit.” I tell Rita, turning around completely, neither caring nor cognizant of the look she gives the back of my red jacket as I quickly walk into the direction of Harmony.
Lynn Minton who we are not allowed to talk to and who is milking out narratives for her nationally syndicated column seems to be apologizing to Harmony. I walk up and say hello. Harmony offers me a wave that looks like she is trying to make a shadow puppet in the form of a butterfly.
Lynn Minton is apologizing. Harmony keeps on nodding. Rita is still standing all alone next to the statue of the Stag, as if waiting for a subway car that will never come. Both Harmony and Lynne Minton nod several times as if rehearsed. They then laugh by tilting their head back and jutting their chin in the direction of the ceiling lights. Lynn thanks harmony again by pressing her fingers on her shoulder. She then walks away.
Harmony is wearing the same dress she wore in Stratford-upon-avon when I first stumbled into her on the variegated slate of the dance floor and mistook her for one of the Italian girls . The dress that is embellished with flowers. The lavender dress that somehow is reserved for the formidable flavor of spring,
In her hand she is holding a rock dibbled with holes on the top looking as if it could be used as some sort of a flute or ocarina.
I acknowledge her by saying “hey you.” Harmony volleys back a smile. I point at the petrified rock in her hand.
“It’s a gift for the U.S. ambassador.” Harmony says. “It’s actually a work of art. It was taken from the lava-remnants of Mt. St. Helen when it erupted.
I tell her she looks nice. Harmony tells me she likes my tie. I tell her that I enoyed speaking with her on the phone last night. Spencer is still wearing his hood in the fashion leftover form last night, hopping up and down on a vicarious pogo-stick in front of the Daisy Train. Josh mutters something about everyone needs to practice again for the skit so that we don’t mess up. even though, as of this moment, we have no clue what we are actually doing. I want to ask Harmony about the dance. I want to know if she wants to sit next to me. I want to know if she wants me to hold her.
Instead I revert back to Lynne Minton.
“We’re going to meet with the British Teens Wednesday while the rest of the group goes to St. Pauls and then Harrods.”
I ask her if she is vexed about not being able to see St. Paul’s cathedral. Harmony tells me no.
“It’s exciting to work on this article. I finally got all thirty individuals to complete the paper work and he fact that it has a circulation of 80 million.”
I wonder where Harmony was last night when I kept trying to call. I wonder if Jennifer’s assumption about her being with some “really hot boy,” has any validity.
I want to ask her about the dance tonight. Instead, there is the mantra I have been hearing the entire trip.
Big Ten, give it up.
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