Dating : The Waltz

I was passing through Kansas when I hit the first real speed bump in this journey I put myself on. It had been a week since I’d left everything behind and after screwing around in the woods with a gaggle of aging hippies, I had hit the road in earnest to find out several things about myself. I can’t imagine these things would be important to you, so I’ll keep them to myself for now but maybe if you’re good you’ll get the rest of the story later.

I was headed west when my car began to shake like it was mixing paint every time the needle went over fifty miles per hour. The engine whistled and a red light shaped like a can flashed manically at me, like in Morse code, asking why I still pressed on. It seemed like a good idea to stop so I forced it to the side of the road and turned off the engine, giving it several minutes before attempting to wake the engine again. A click and a clunk and then nothing at all. Well, dang.

“Come on, My Car,” I said to it. “You and I have to go.”

“I cannot,” it told me. “I am sorry, I never wanted to let you down like this, but I just cannot, and that’s all there is to it.”

“OK. Take a nap. I’ll be back with help soon-ish rather than later-ish, hopefully.” This part of the story is embellished for dramatic effect. I do not have a talking car. Yet.

I walked down the long, empty road, searching the distance for a sign of anything that might have a working telephone. Endless farmland with no homes in sight, do you have a phone I can use? No? Piss off. My feet began to ache and throb with a bright-white feeling and I could see the hurt moving through my veins when I closed my eyes against the sun. But I had to keep going for — I don’t know why, honestly. I could have just bought a new car, pretty easily in fact. Money was not much of an issue to me at this time, so I could have called someone to come get me and take me somewhere to buy another one to roll around in and just leave the smoking red husk to rot on the side of the road. I couldn’t bring myself to, though. It was all I had left of that old life I’d run out on and I was determined to hold onto it for at least a little longer because the world was strange and scary, and I was only surrounded by things I didn’t know or understand. The inside of that car was like an anchor and I really needed it more than I thought I did.

It was hot out that day. I thought the heat back home was unbearable. This was something new completely, a trip through hellish Hot Soup Country if ever I went on one. It was July in Kansas, but it may as well have been July in Hell. Walking underneath the bastard sun made me feel as if underneath my feeble flesh there was only salt. Every movement was a labor. My legs felt unreliable and alien, my whole body, really. I was more like some barely autonomous thing wearing a “me” suit. Not really an uncommon feeling for me, all told. Pity me. Pity me, I said.

The road was completely straight, lined with nothing on either side and more nothing for as far as I could see. I’d been walking for an hour with no sign of relief in sight. Where do all these flat people live in this flat state? I wondered. Where were their houses, where were their cars, where were their bodies? Did they exist anymore? Did they find out I was coming to town and decide to amscray? It wouldn’t have surprised me. There was a dot on the horizon, and a faint something, something like music. I thought that maybe that musical dot could help me out of my jam.

As I got closer, the music gained weight. A billowy, slow accordion blowing a melancholy ballad. The dot, now more like a line, stood alone on the side of the road, played its sad song for only itself. Maybe the line lived nearby? Maybe he had a refrigerator with an ice cold can of soda inside it for me. Maybe he had an air-conditioned living room and a comfortable couch I could take a nap on. Maybe he had a pool we could swim in. Maybe he was a psycho killer and he was going to murder me and live inside of me. What an imagination. Sometimes I think about how lousy it is that that last one is usually the one most likely to be true, and I think that God really dealt mankind a crummy hand. Then I think that maybe it isn’t God’s fault, maybe we did it to ourselves, and God decided He couldn’t fix what was broken so He went to bed for the long night. I don’t know. I won’t pretend to. I’m not here to discuss philosophy. I’m here to tell you a story about when my car broke down and I had to walk a long time to find someone to help me out.

I was close enough to see that the stranger was a man wearing a tight, faded grey suit, Windsor knotted tie around his neck, penny loafers shined to reflective perfection. He had a slight overbite and he was balding, even though he looked relatively young. He was small, narrow-shouldered and slight of frame, about four inches shorter than me. A bouquet of daffodils lay on the ground next to his feet. He didn’t even notice me as I approached. He wasn’t standing playing with his eyes closed like some kind of loon. He was looking out across all the flat nothing with his face blank, but something lively in his eyes, like a whole world behind them that the rest of us weren’t lucky enough to live in with him, and he was just here to remind us that he had that, and we didn’t, and we never would.

“Excuse me, mister,” I called out, hoping to get his attention. He looked up at me, fingers still dancing over the keys, arms moving in and out as the accordion hummed along, like it was being playing something programmed into it.

“Hey? You look familiar to me.”

“No, I don’t. My car broke down a few miles back. Do you have a telephone I could use to call a tow truck?”

He nodded and stopped playing long enough to dig a phone out of his pocket. He lifted a knee to keep the organ from falling to the ground.

“Thank you,” I said as he handed me his phone. I went to look up the number of a tow truck but hesitated as he began to play again. “If it’s okay, can I ask what you’re doing?”

“I’m playing my accordion,” he said.

“Yep. But why are you playing it here?”

The man sighed with great effort. It was such a gloomy song. The notes moved up and down, rising only a bit so they could fall long and hard. It cut through the air, slapping me in the face and asking me if I had ever really lost anything in my life.

“Oh, it’s just what I do. Every day for the last three years,” he said.

“Why here?”

“Well my wife, you see, she was killed in a car wreck, on this spot, three and a half years ago.”

“Oh,” I said. There’s not a lot you can say back when someone tells you that. You’re safest just saying, “I’m really sorry.”

“It’s okay. She’s gone, but she’s still with me, you know? I always thought that was the most ridiculous thing you could say to a person when they’ve lost someone they love. Obviously, they’re not still with you, that’s why you’re sad. But I understand it now. I’ve lost her, but she’s still around. Do you know understand what I’m saying?”

“Not really, no.”

“Are you a religious man?” he asked me.

“No.”

“I’m not either, mister,” he said. “When Melissa died though — that was my wife’s name, Melissa — I at least tried to start believing in heaven. She always believed in all that but I’ve been skeptical since I was a kid. But I tried to believe in it, for her sake, and mine, too. Maybe all this wasn’t it. Maybe there’s more, after. That she was happy somewhere and we’d be together again someday. Me and her, always, like it was supposed to be.”

“Tried to?” I asked.

“Yeah, tried. So, I kept doing everything, making all these decisions, saying all these things, whatever, with the thought that, ‘this’ll get me into heaven, this’ll get me into those arms again.’ Her angel arms, I’d always say to myself, because she’s an angel now, you see.” He smiled and laughed. What do you call that kind of laugh where it’s just a quick exhale out the nose? A chuckle? A scoff? I don’t know. Please write to me. I left a P.O. box in Georgia and I’ll check it if I ever make it back around that way. “She has to be. If she isn’t, who is?”

“That didn’t work out?”

“Well I realized one day, everything I was doing was for the next life, if there even is one. How gross, right? Here my wife is taken from me, that’s already a bad joke. But then, I choose to squander the life she helped me build because I’m banking on there being more? I’m not living for each day, I’m living for some weird future where I’m in the clouds and she’s there with me. I’m not living for what I can see and touch and what I know is there, I’m living for what I hope will be there when this has all left me behind. And I thought, ‘wow, she’d be so pissed if she could see me right now.’ Wasting it all like that. So, I decided to stop and just carry on as I always had, because that’s the man she loved, and if I do make it there, and I’m not that man, who’s to say she’ll even still want me?”

He played a few notes.

“And how weird is heaven, as a concept, I mean when you really think about it? Is it really forever? What is there to do in heaven? And what if she isn’t there? But I can’t think of anything dumber than that, that if there is a heaven, it’s too good for her. Yeah, right.” He said “ha” in a mocking way, in disbelief.

“How did you meet her?” I asked him.

“I met her in a bar. My dad always told me that no girl worth meeting has ever been met in a bar, but my father was wrong about a lot of things. He didn’t even graduate from high school,” he said. “Did you graduate from high school?”

“Yes,” I said.

“It’s not really a big deal, graduating from high school. People act like it is but come talk to me when you’ve gotten your first college degree. You can show up to high school and graduate. Anyway, I’d seen her there before, at that bar I mean, but I always talked myself out of saying ‘hi’ to her. I didn’t think she’d be very interested in a balding musician who drank by himself. Maybe if I played songs like those dorks in Mumfords and — what, Brothers? Mumfords and Company? Oliver and Company? Who cares.”

“I guess you eventually talked to her though.”

“Yeah. Well she talked to me, if you can believe that. Sometimes I still can’t! She sat down at the bar next to me and turned to me and asked, ‘What did Mr. Peanut say at his Friars Club Roast?’ I just looked at her a while and didn’t say anything, I was just amazed that something so pretty could even stand to be next to me. That she would sit down next to me, on purpose, and talk to me, on purpose. Talk to just me, and not just talk to me, try to make me laugh. So, I said I didn’t know. Then she said, ‘I’ve never been so in-salted in all my life!’ I laughed really hard, I started coughing because my throat was so dry because why was this beautiful woman talking to me? So I finished my drink to whet my throat or whatever, and she offered to buy me another one.”

“Did you say anything to her after that?”

“I told her a joke right back. Do you want to hear it?”

“Yes,” I said.

“’Someone told me you talk like an owl.’ And she goes, ‘who?’ And I said, ‘see?’”

It caught me off guard and we laughed together for a little while.

He took a deep breath and wiped a tear from his eye. “I’m not crying,” he assured me. “I just love a bad joke more than I love breathing, is all.”

“Do you mind if I take it with me?” I asked.

“Go ahead. What good is a bad joke if no one hears it?”

“Thank you.”

“So, what’s your story?” he asked me, still playing his accordion. “You don’t look like you’ve ever set foot in Kansas before today.”

“How do you know that?”

He shrugged. “You seem too hopeful.”

“Well, it’s really long and uninteresting. I’m just driving around, looking for something.”

“What are you looking for?” he asked.

“I’m not sure yet,” I said. “As lame and boring and tired as that sounds. I hate to say this but I’ll know it when I see it.”

“At least you realize what a jerk that made you sound like,” he said.

“Are there any words to this song of yours?” I asked him.

“Oh, you bet.” He cleared his throat and began to sing, his voice cracking. “’Near, far, wherever you are, I believe that the heart does go on…’”

I stared at him in disbelief for a moment before he started laughing so hard he nearly dropped his accordion.

“No, just a joke,” he said. “I’m not really a very talented lyrics writer. I just play instruments.”

“You’re a pretty funny guy.”

“I know,” he said. “And handsome, too.”

“What instruments do you play?”

“Oh, a little bit of everything. Sitar, drums, melodica, organ, piano, guitar… this, of course,” he said, jerking his head down towards his accordion. “I play the accordion for her though. It was always her favorite. Every day, right here, for thirty minutes. Long enough for her to know I’m always thinking about her, short enough for her to know I’m not wasting all my time with her ghost.”

He stared wistfully off into the distance for a few seconds, fingers bending and stretching over the keys. He turned back to me and asked, “Have you ever been in love, mister?”

“Probably not,” I said.

“You’re not one of those people that believe there’s no such thing, are you?”

“No. I’m sure it’s real, and maybe I have felt it, I don’t know.”

“You would know,” he smiled at me.

“That’s what they say.”

“If you ever find yourself in love, will you promise me something?” he asked.

I nodded.

“If one day you fall in love and get married and get a house and start a life with her, or him, if that’s what you’re into, and the two of you are expecting a baby soon, and she tells you that her brakes are acting funny, promise me you won’t just say, ‘we’ll get it fixed next week.’” His smile weakened, and he seemed to shrink for an instant. He cleared his throat and looked down at his feet, rededicated to his song.

I nodded and told him I wouldn’t. I called a tow truck and told them where I was, they told me they’d be there shortly to pick me up and take me back to my car. The stranger and I stood there in silence as I waited, with only the soft notes creeping out of his accordion and the wind blowing past our ears to keep us company.

The tow truck came sometime later and as I climbed into it, I shook the accordion man’s hand and he wished me luck.

There was nothing seriously wrong with my car. I’m not sure what exactly caused it to break down like that. The mechanic explained it to me but trying to talk to me about cars is a lot like trying to talk to an infant about the God particle. Five hundred dollars later, I was back on the road. I decided to go north a ways.