lickhaven

[I have no recollection of having written this, but I don’t think some strange being inserted it into my “finished stories” folder]

The road stopped but the car did not. It went on. I often feel that the car is the one who drives. I say, “Go, car,” and I get somewhere. This time I got lost.

I should provide some background. For a while, I believed I was an investment banker. For a period of perhaps 17 weeks, I shifted great amounts of money around, but then one day I saw that I was still working in a direct-mail office, pasting labels on letters. It’s strange the lives your mind can occupy.

I also believed, now and then, that I was married and the father of two children, a boy age 13 and a girl age seven. This is the composition of the ideal American family, though not the mean age distribution  – I thought myself 12 years older than my wife. But then I found myself living, as usual, in a small apartment with my cat, who is illegal according to the lease. My cat says “Meow” and I say “Shush,” because the cat should be seen, not heard, or I will be put out of my apartment. I tell the cat that if it cannot be quiet it will be homeless and have to live on refuse.

This may sound like a sad life to live, but it is (was) not, by any means. It was full, since my imagination took me to so many places and circumstances. I once climbed to the top of the Eiffel tower stairs unaided and shouted my glee so loudly that it was heard two miles away, in the center of Paris. That is, if the center of Paris is two miles away from the Eiffel Tower.

At the moment, I have no idea exactly where I am, and my car won’t say. My car is a Honda, a Japanese car, and it becomes smug if it thinks it has the upper hand. Possibly it does not know where we are either, but it would hardly admit as much to me. I wouldn’t if I were in its position.

Last April, when the tulips had just begun to bloom (but before the cherry trees had come out), we went (the car and I) to a small state park noted for its display of bulbs. They had been planted originally by a group of Dutch settlers, then maintained by their descendants for over 200 years. We drew off to the side and admired the view, but when I got out of the car to walk in amongst the plantings, the car tried to follow me. I was severely reprimanded by a park ranger, who said I had no regard for growing things and should never come back to the park. After that, I gave the car its head more often, thinking that if it planned the route, it would be less apt to cause me problems once we had reached our destination. Instead, I think it simply became spoiled.

We are somewhere in a pine forest, or perhaps hemlock, large feathery coniferous trees (I’ve never been good at tree identification). I very much enjoy the feel of the bed of needles under my feet, the sinking-yet-supporting of semi-resistance. I have gone far enough into the trees that my car cannot follow, but if I go much farther I will lose sight of it (the car) and perhaps never find my way out.

You may wonder, If this man does not know what job he is performing or whether he is or is not the head of a family, isn’t it possible that he may, in fact, be not in a forest, but rather in the small company lunch room?

As it happens, I have been considering this myself. Normally, I simply look up and notice that where I have been is not actually where I am. The change comes without warning but is not, as you might expect, disorienting. I find it almost refreshing, even though, almost invariably, where I have been was preferable to where I find myself actually to be.

This is the one reason that the question of where I am at this moment may be of importance. I feel somewhat frightened, mildly afraid that I will not be able to return to my small apartment and my cat. Yet if this woodland is not where I truly am, and if it is preferable to where I will find myself when I return to where I truly am, my condition when I return may turn out to be far worse than in the past. I can’t understand why that should be the case, why any sort of catastrophe should suddenly strike my contained life. Nonetheless, the possibility is unsettling.

You might think that if I could turn the car around (or ask the car to turn itself around), I should be able to retrace our path and find the end of that road that gave way so abruptly to woodland. But there are two problems with that approach. First, the trees and shrubs hem us so thoroughly that I don’t believe the car has maneuvering room. Second, when the car stopped and I looked back, I could see no continuity of trail, no specific ruts, no straight line that we had traveled.

Of course, it’s difficult to get completely lost in the modern world. Hunters in the wildest spots imaginable find bodies left by rapists and serial killers; it happens all the time. So though I see ourselves (the car and me) as lost, it may only be a matter of relative displacement, not true concealment. If we sit perfectly still, in time someone will come across us. I might starve, I suppose, but the car would not. A good lube job would have it back on the road in no time.

Shortly after I was an investment banker, I delivered secret documents for an undercover agency dedicated to finding and exterminating terrorist organizations. One time I delivered a bomb which was used to obliterate the headquarters of a fanatical Libyan faction. Strangely, when I returned to my pasting of labels, I read about the bombing incident in the morning paper. Somehow, my worlds had tended to spill over into one another.

I hear the beep of a horn. Perhaps my car has relented – I’ve felt all along that it knew the way out. In one sense I feel relieved, but in another, disappointed. The possibility that I might move forward into nowhere, trek into the great beyond and be swallowed by time and space, is exhilarating. I might eventually reach the point where all the lives I have inhabited merge into the single sparkling entity that supports my existence.

Far more likely, though, I would come to the overpass of a superhighway and be pinned in place by the realities of modern transportation, the inescapability of external connectedness.

So I expect I will get in the car, say, “Go, car,” and return to my apartment. And feed the cat.