Two Tickets to Paradise

Early Friday morning in the office they said he died. Bad news travels fastest. There was no water cooler, but there was a giant copier where people stood around and talked rather than sit at their desk and do things they were supposed to do or nothing at all. The fluorescent lights and the smell of perfume and reams upon reams of paper in cardboard boxes nauseated me to the point that everything I ever heard or that was ever said inside the office was surreal. It was much like I was in a bad dream and I would wake up and it would be gone one day. Only it never was. It never went anywhere. And this dream went on and on for the last nine years and would go on for sixteen years more until I was old enough to retire. Twenty one more, if I wanted the better retirement package. The platinum plan. If I wasn’t completely insane and could do the additional five years of hard time. But by then I would be so conditioned by the past twenty-five years my eyes might twitch under natural light and I would get ill not smelling cheap carpet and terrible perfume. Not hearing bad jokes and bullshit. I might have seizures. Or I might not feel wanted if I do not walk through a security checkpoint every morning and beep and get wanded by someone who asks me how my weekend was. My weekend was fine, Chuck. Yours?

I didn’t care how Chuck’s weekend was and Chuck didn’t care about my weekend. It was just small talk and my life was filled with small talk and redundant reports and deadlines and fluorescent lights and artificial air that was always too cold and team meetings where someone always complained about something that didn’t matter anyway and paid holidays and blood drives and commit-to-be-fit initiatives and, once in a while, an email from the benefits department that said exactly how many days I had until retirement. And occasionally someone would retire and someone would buy them a cake and put it in the breakroom and everyone would swarm them and say how much they’ll miss whoever it is and ask them over and over again what they will do now. And that person will stare blankly back and say the usual things like they were reading them from a cue card. Spend time with the grandkids. Golf. Travel. But there is always that look of panic in their eyes because they have been conditioned and they are scared to suddenly not have a purpose because their purpose in life has been their job of 30 years. It is like they are falling off some horrible cruise ship and they don’t know how to swim.  

My God how do people manage to be so boring? Was it the stupid pop music on the radio to and from work? The dumb football games every week that don’t matter at all? The chemicals in their fast food? Were they doping us somehow to be so boring? Maybe it was in the cake. That retirement cake gets cut up every few months and the retiree is someone new, but the look never changes. And I see it, but I don’t say anything to them. I just cringe and dread becoming them. I smile and eat a piece of cake that tastes exactly the same as the last and as the next one inevitably will. I heard somewhere it is bad luck not to eat an occasion cake so I shove that plastic fork into my mouth and swallow and laugh at all their bad jokes because that is what I am supposed to do. I am a trained monkey.   

At lunch, I heard someone in the food line talking and they said it again. He died this morning of cancer. Cancer, they say grimly. What kind? I don’t know, the other answered. Cancer, they repeat fretfully thinking of their own colon or breasts or that pain in their pancreas. Then the one relates to the other of who in their family had cancer. And the other one lists off their casualties. Suddenly they have lumps that appeared like rain clouds and they think of the mammogram they should have got or the colonoscopy.  And these two women stand there and order the fish and I remember holding her to “Baby Hold On” when the rain began to fall that night so long ago at a concert in Pensacola where we went for the weekend. I could feel the white warm sand between my toes and the ocean breeze sweep across my face as I stood in the soulless cafeteria with the horrible art of fruits and vegetables hanging on puke-orange walls and sunlight streaming in through four-inch-thick glass windows, feeling like an ant under a magnifying glass. 

The overhead music in the cafeteria played “Two Tickets to Paradise” and I smiled and looked out those windows. It was a sunny September afternoon and I stared at a tiny plane in the distance and thought about that weekend in Pensacola and it seemed as though every detail came flooding back the way the sun filtered in and danced upon art-print bananas and all the drab faces of everyone who worked in the building who lunched in the cafeteria. I lost track of how many times we made love that weekend and how many beers we drank on the beach, pouring them into red solo cups and avoiding the scrutiny of lifeguards, pissing in the ocean, and scouring the seafloor for shark teeth. What a vast and infinite universe seemed to exist looking out into the endless blue theater of ocean and sky, and apart for some anchored ships, nothing seemed to exist besides us, or beyond us, floating there in the warm shallow water, occasionally kissing the warm salty water from each other’s lips. 

I last saw her five years ago and the years between then and now came and went fast. Years that weren’t saved as mementos in a junk drawer or in a photo book, but rather that seemed to just fall apart and disintegrate until there was nothing left of them at all apart from the pink swim trunks I bought in one of those kitschy tourist beach stores. I hadn’t even seen her in passing since then, though she worked in the government building across the street, and though we commute to work from the same small town thirty miles south of here. I sometimes look for her car, wondering if she got a new one or if I’d be able to recognize her at 70 miles per hour. I sometimes sit in the cafeteria and look across at her building and wonder if she is over there doing the same, but then I dismiss the thought, for surely she would have contacted me if she did. Then the hope that was birthed so spontaneously died before it took more than a few breaths and was gone, replaced by some meaningless thing that mattered little to my welfare and added nothing to my happiness at all. Some things are simply unsustainable and vacations must end for all of us worker bees. 

Sometimes in little snippets of time, I am again on vacation with her. We got the tickets to see Eddie Money for free from a nice old couple who were having breakfast in the same hotel where we were. She had guacamole toast and it was the first time I ever tried it and it was delicious. It had almonds sprinkled on top. The old couple was going back to Memphis early because the man had been called to return due to some business matter. It was the wife who approached us and asked if we had any plans for the evening. We smiled and said no skeptically thinking she was going to ask us to come to some time-share pitch. But she took the tickets out of her purse and said she would “hate to see these go to waste.” Her name was Ruth. It is funny the things you remember and those you don’t. Neither of us really knew much about Eddie Money and I confused him by name with Eddie Rabbit and by songs with Peter Frampton. But we said what the hell and took the tickets and thanked her graciously. The man kind of resembled a clever pig and I recall him looking frantic behind Ruth and talking sternly on a cellphone. He smiled at us and waved when we said thank you so much and then they left our lives as quickly as they had come into them, having no idea the fabric they weaved.

I don’t know what made me toss out my grilled cheese and fries, looking at my watch to count the minutes down before I had to go back to my floor as I had done every weekday, excluding holidays, for the past nine and a half years. I had fourteen minutes and forty-four seconds left when I threw my half-eaten lunch in its earth-friendly cardboard biodegradable food coffin on the slow-moving assembly line trash receptacle and bolted for the fast elevator that wasn’t really fast, but in comparison to the other one. I raced out the main office doors and past the panhandlers and the religious folks passing out Bible pamphlets and papers that screamed Hell is Real! in bold white letters on small sheets of coal-black paper, many of which lay littered on the road from the people who grabbed them out of courtesy but didn’t want them after they safely passed the people with the weird smiles and funny eyes who gave them out. But they lay like confetti and blew out into the street and I couldn’t get the thought out of my mind – Hell is Real! I don’t disagree. It made me more determined to do what it was I was about to do because the inevitability of either outcome, Heaven or Hell, and Eddie Money’s death made me conscious of my mortality, my ticking clock, of everyone’s mortality. Of hers. Of us wilting away to time one building apart. Graying. Falling. Thinning. Fattening. Settling. 

I had never been to her office before. It was a busy street, I reasoned more than once. She is a busy person, I also told myself. She didn’t want to see me. So five years came and went that way, stuffed in a pocket, but there I was, racing across the street, still checking my watch like a Pavlov dog for when my lunch bell would ring. Going through security with people like Chuck asking me how my day was and me asking them how their day was and seeing my wallet, my keys, and my cellphone slowly going through an X-ray machine. I asked the security guard which floor was the state auditor’s office and he said the tenth and I hurried to the elevator and pushed ten. Muzak played in the elevator and it was “Rhapsody in Blue” and it was all coming together. We listened to that song on the beach. In five minutes, I bought two round-trip tickets to Pensacola, Florida for the following weekend. One presumptuously purchased in her name, the other in mine.  

I owe my emphatic sobriety to bill collectors. They call me all day and remind me of my debt in this life despite working full-time and paying them all but that which I use to eat, house myself, and for the occasional splurge on entertainment. They called me at the exact second I was birthed from the elevator to her floor. Usually, I do not answer, but for some reason, I was feeling drunk on romance and optimism that I could work anything in the world out in that moment of time so I answered and Farad said hell-o and spoke in a heavy Pakistani accent informing me that the call would be monitored for quality assurance purposes. Farad was calling from a Texas number and when I asked him if he was in Texas he said no he was in Pakistan, but Pakistan pronounced in such a way that I had never heard it pronounced. Instead of allowing Farad to give me his spiel, I cut him off and told him exactly what I was about to do as I waited at the front desk for someone to call back to her and let her know I was here. I regret I didn’t get flowers, I admitted to Farad nervously who became Fred to me. Fred from Texas. 

After not saying anything for several minutes, Fred asked, “Who is Edie Mooney?” and I told him it was “Eddie Money” and sung him the chorus to “Two Tickets to Paradise” and he sighed and laughed and said he knows Eddie Money, but it sounded like he said Edie Mooney in his English-Pakistani brogue. I asked Fred if he liked his job or if he felt as trapped as me as I impatiently waited for the receptionist to return to her desk and Fred reluctantly said he loves his job but also reminded me that it was a recorded line for quality assurance purposes, which I knew was his way of telling me if he said he didn’t like his job he would be fired or stoned to death but that he has a noose in his desk drawer. 

Have you ever been in love, Fred? I asked. Yes, I am in love. Are you with that person, Fred? No, I am not, Fred replied morosely. He said he lived in a large city and she lives in a small neighboring village where he is from. He said she sells flowers in her father’s flower shop but she is married to someone she doesn’t love. I told him to hang up the phone and go find her and tell her exactly how he feels. For a while there was only silence then I suppose logic and reason overcame Fred because he went back to explaining why he was calling and that thing again about it being a recorded line. He said he was calling on behalf of Commenity Bank and I told Fred that Hell is real and he is living in Hell by not pursuing the woman he loves, and then I hung up.

A few ladies walked out of the secured door and it hung open long enough for me to grab it and I was in cubicle land and phones chirped and I could hear the pitter-patter of little keys as they were struck by busy body fingers making music more dreadful than modern country-pop or mewling rap. It was an office much like my own and it was like there was a mirror in the middle of the road and I was inside the mirror. Even some of the people looked the same. Looking down at my watch I had only seven minutes and two seconds left before my lunch break ended, but I didn’t give a shit anymore so I took off my watch and buried it in my pocket. Time is the first thing you must kill to be free. Money is second, but I had killed that long ago and people like Fred from Texas were calling me to remind me that I was a slave still in their mind because they presumed that I valued my credit score or a civil judgment. The cellphone and TV also must die in order for you to have freedom. So too should guilt and obligatory attachments.

I was determined to be free as a bird. I went up and down the rows of cubicles and searched for her. The people in those carpet walls barely noticed me and looked like busy gophers in holes moderately decorated to seem homier. Like they were preparing for winter. I saw the same pictures of husbands and kids and inspirational Maya Angelou quotes one after another until I got to the end of the third row and was greeted by a sole picture of a palm tree on an 8x10 sheet of office paper. It hung outside the cubicle under her nameplate and I stopped as I got to it as though my shoes were glued to the carpet. What determination and will to live I had seemed to suddenly wash away like some extraordinary sandcastle with very little effort by the remorseless waves of the ocean of my self-doubt. But I figured since I came this far, I might as well go the distance.

She was packing her things in boxes when I walked up. She stopped when she turned and saw my face.

“He died,” she said.

“I know.” 

“That’s why you’re here. Isn’t it? Because he died.”

“Well, I think it’s more than just that.”

“The strange thing is I was leaving just now. I took a job in Cleveland and today is my last day here.”

I swallowed.

“So what did you come over here for after five years? To sweep me off my feet? I’m in a relationship, you know. I’m moving to Cleveland this weekend. He’s already there waiting for me. We have an apartment and a dog. Sorts of things you can’t erase.”

I stood there silently just looking at her. I guess I hadn’t thought things through and I was about to crash and burn miserably in front of her. I would be forced to resign myself to the old adage, at least I tried, and I would have to console myself with beer and all the useless aphorisms about failing and how there are other people in the world better for me than her. Plenty of fish. Oh, hell, I thought, figuring I had about three minutes to make it back before my lunch break was over when my supervisor would be calling me and asking about a report that was due by the end of the day. I could feel my feet moving backward when I stopped and dug into that abysmally-patterned carpet. 

“I just bought us two tickets to Pensacola, for next weekend. Plane leaves next Friday at six. I came to ask if you wanted to go with me.”

She dropped the box she was holding. Then she laughed, picking the box back up which I could see contained a cactus, rubber stress balls, scissors, tape dispensers, and endless packs of thumbtacks. I don’t suppose her incredulous chuckle was an answer. She smiled in disbelief and looked down at the contents of one of her boxes. “You know, I really don’t need this stuff. I don’t need any of it. I have no emotional attachment to anything inside this box. But here I am, packing it all up like it means something to me. I spent the past five years hoping you would come across the street and say something like you’re saying now, but when you didn’t after a couple, I guess it all got buried with stuff like this. Bills. A few boyfriends who barely stopped to say hello. But like I said, I’m leaving for Cleveland and my – boyfriend – is waiting for me.”

“I wanna go back,” I replied. 

“Then go back,” she said with no apparent emotion. “I’m going to Cleveland.”

“Cleveland? To another cubicle? What kind of hell is Cleveland?”

“I don’t believe in hell anymore,” she sighed. “Or heaven. Thanks for coming over, though. It was nice of you to think of me. I hope you have a good trip.” 

She didn’t make eye contact after that and she went back to packing her boxes. I could feel the depression in her and I doubted myself again, which I had done as well as anyone for the past five years. I didn’t want to leave, but I suppose instincts kicked in, and rather than stay to plead my case, our case, I gave up. In this day and age, romance is respecting one’s autonomy and buying expensive gifts. It is maybe a love letter on a kitchen counter or a text, but it is no longer expressed in bold declarations, and never to strangers or former lovers. Once something is done it is meant to be done regardless of how or why it ended because we have bought into all those terrible euphemisms about moving on, and plenty of fish in the sea and that variety is the spice of life and that everything happens for a reason – when it’s bad. We give up too simply because everything is expendable and has a shelf life and an expiration date clearly written on its repackaged label. We are all disposable and we are all consumers and if someone or something doesn’t want you, there is always someone or something better who does. We have become victims and survivors to the extreme and all our romantic bones have turned to dust. 

So I left, defeated. I blew back across the street like those “Hell is Real!” leaflets back to my office five minutes late from lunch. I put my watch back on and passed through the metal detector and Chuck asked about my day and I asked about his. I took the elevator to my floor and sat in my chair that groaned and people were talking about their weekend plans a cubicle over, which sounded boring as hell. The usual. State game and a cookout. The day went on and finished as all days finish and I drove home, again looking for her in traffic. I had dinner by myself on a large IKEA dining table and the empty Norwegian blue chairs seemed to gather around and stare back at me. A fake flower centerpiece mocked me and ended up in the trash. Fake flowers never get anyone anywhere, I said over the trash can.

I stumbled through another week at work and on the following Friday I called off with the excuse that I needed to pack. Packing takes me all of ten minutes, so afterward I was alone in a quiet house and decided to listen to Eddie Money songs before I headed to the airport. Everyone cared about him dying last Friday, but today, one week later, he was all but forgotten again. That is how celebrity deaths go. They shoot up like a rocket and burst all over social media and then the next day they fizzle back to the earth, an indiscriminate piece of singed cardboard. I’m sure he had a fan club though that probably missed him like he was a relative. I don’t know why I gave it any thought, but I wondered where Eddie Money was now. Was he in Hell or Heaven – which I capitalize as though they are cities, or countries, or planets. Or were there no such places and he was just nowhere, floating in some eternal waft. Perhaps, the soul lives on in something like radiofrequency. I don’t know. I like to think so. I guess we will never know until we get there and who even knows then what we will know or not know. 

As the songs played I decided to get drunk and then the phone rang and I looked down and it was a Texas number. Fred from Texas. I answered and there was none of that malarkey about a recorded line, Fred just wanted to tell me he decided to take my advice and it turned out the girl he was in love with was in love with him and she left her husband who abused her and they moved to Trinidad. He said he went into the flower shop and sang “Two Tickets to Paradise” and it all worked out. I was happy for Fred and Fred said he would keep in touch and invited me to join them in New York where they intended to honeymoon after she divorced her husband. I said okay. I would love that very much. And when he asked me about my situation, I said it hadn’t worked out so well. There was a long silence on the phone and he told me in that thick Pakistani voice to keep my faith and I assured him I would and congratulated him once more and hung up.

I drank more of the brandy and decided I had enough and headed out for the airport hours too soon so not to get too drunk and miss my flight, figuring I would get drunk on overpriced drinks and eat food I wouldn’t remember eating the next day, but for the wrinkled receipt shoved into my jean’s pocket. My flight left at six and it was only one. Sitting in the airport bar, people came and went. It was a high-end bar and a woman next to me was drinking a screwdriver and she bought me a drink and I thanked her and she said no worries. She was a traveling lecturing psychologist who was relatively famous, she said, trying not to sound pompous. I refused to ask her any psychological questions though I had many because I figured it must be annoying when people do. She was flying to Detroit and wished me safe travels when she left. 

A few beers later, “Two Tickets to Paradise” played and I dropped my head and said, “Oh, shit.” Then I realized it was even worse than being on the radio. It was Friday afternoon karaoke and a small crowd was on the other side of the bar and they were smiling and laughing. The invisible woman was a pretty good singer, but the song sounded off with someone else’s voice. I ordered another drink and the song mercifully ended. Then I had a shot of something the bartender said someone bought me, but there was too much noise to hear who. The traveling psychologist, I figured, before she left. Then “Baby Hold On” began and the same voice sang it and I turned in aggravation to glare at the provocateur who was standing right behind me, smiling, with a bag by her pretty sandaled foot. I stood there and listened to her sing and she smiled and seemingly everyone in the bar, besides me, sang and smiled with her. 

I realized how it was a beautiful thing, to have hope and to love despite unfortunate circumstances, and I knew where Eddie Money was. Like so many before him, he was the glue in life that binds all us foolish people together. In a karaoke bar in Columbus, Ohio. Or in a flower shop in Pakistan. Some people live on just as love lives on even after it expires. We sang a duet. Meat Loaf, “Paradise By the Dashboard Lights” and I couldn’t remember if he had died or not. We got drunk but made our flight and when I apologized for the five-year hiatus, she smiled at me and said, “Better late than never.”