I know what you want, part 1

Another ship comes in, its lovely silver hull wavering through the heat. It's like a piece of jewelry. The heat that touches me here on the hill is only the heat of the sun, but it's hot, and I fancy I can feel the heat of the dock, that furnace of light and ozone. It's a beautiful day in San Francisco and I can almost taste the money I'm about to make.

It takes me only fifteen minutes to walk down the hill to the shore. My shadow is huddled under my bare feet. Even through my shades, the light gleaming off the newest ship leaves blue streaks on my vision. Now I feel the heat of the engines. It's hard to even draw in a breath.

I come up to the gate and lean on the railing and watch. There are a lot of tourists... I want somebody my own age for once, a young one. A young, happy one. My eyes follow the stream of men and women clanking down the ramp. They wear such dark clothing in space. They're so serious.

I see a couple--older, by the way they carry themselves--so unconcerned--already pulling out money and heading for a tram. They're wearing head-to-toe black, they both have short hair, they have gold-plated shades. I like that couple. All business. They know where they want to go. But I want... there's a group of young guys, so full of energy, dragging a girl after them, laughing. They're loud, and I don't understand what they're saying. I love their accents but I hear so many dialects here and even I don't understand them all. It could be fun. To rope them over, grab one of their bags, try to convince them by gestures to follow me. But I'm tired after last week and I just want an easy, sweet young tourist, wide-eyed and deep-pocketed.

They come here to have fun. And you can have fun in space, but it's amazing how heavy everything can be in a place known for its lack of gravity. All the good drinks are so expensive. Hell, the ships are expensive. One rowdy night and you're paying for a new titanium fixture for the rest of your life. And watch out who you hook up with because in space, word gets around. Personally, I think it's the vacuum. When you're separated from deadly emptiness by only a foot of cold titanium, your whole life, it's bound to make you serious.

It's funny how folks from out there think of Earth as dangerous. Because it's got animals, because it's got weather, because it's not clean. But I'm here to play into that. I'm here to be your tour guide.

I see several unaccompanied guys on the dock now, gathering their bags and looking around. Blonds, brunettes, redheads. There's one with a guitar on his back... yes, I could take that one. It's so easy. It's easy because I know what they want. Nobody comes to Earth who doesn't want it--at least, not to this station. They've come to get in touch with something, something they've read about, seen on a screen... they want something authentic... most of all, they want to let go of being their serious selves and be Earthlings for a little bit. Just for a vacation, understand. Just temporarily. They want a good excuse to be wild. It tempts them and it scares them at the same time.

But I'm here. So reassuring. And it's so easy. Because I know what they want better than they know it, and that little edge gives me all the confidence in the world. I don't even have to move yet. I did my work ahead of time, mostly the outfit. I look exactly like what they expect: nothing but a pair of shorts, a bandana and a deep tan. And I've gone half-blond from the sun and sometimes I let myself get a little stubbly, but I don't pump iron. Too fake. So I'm a little soft. But it's amazing how the scruffy Earth-boy thing works: someone always ends up making a beeline for me. Stereotypes are so reassuring!

But I want that one--he's walking now, toward the gate, and I push my shades onto my head and just watch him. Without blinking. He's so tall and lean, and straight, I feel like I could plant him here and he'd grow into a poplar in a few years. His black clothing makes him look even leaner. Is he a singer? Maybe he writes poetry too... those dark eyebrows. So serious. And here he comes, drifting with the other passengers through the gate.

"Tour guide!" I yawn at a passing cloud. A clump of dark tourists clank through the gate without making eye contact. "Native Earthling... I know all the places you won't find in the books... reasonable fees..." And as he passes, I grab his elbow and pull him out of the stream with a big grin. "What's your name?"

He stares at me for a moment, looking a little scared. His eyes are, what do they call it, hazel. When they don't fit the label of any other color. "Rafe Savitz," he says.

Rafe. Raphael? His voice is too deep for his skinny body, and he has a little accent... of Gamma Station, perhaps... it's so hard to tell. I wonder how old he is. "I like you," I say, keeping the big grin on my face. "You look like you'd know how to appreciate Earth. Not like most of these folks... they come for a week, they eat and drink a lot, they never see half of what they came to see."

He blinks.

"Look, smile! You're on Earth!" I poke my knuckles in his side and he grins spontaneously, and I think I'm just about going to die. If he's sweet, this could be good. "Look around! Sun's out, birds are singing, we've got a whole city and a beach and a jungle to explore... how long are you here for?"

Rafe adjusts the strap of the guitar on his shoulder. "Just for three days. Then I'm going to Tokyo."

All right. "All right. Listen--" I lean in, looking right in his eyes. "For ten thousand a day, I can show you Earth--the real Earth--I mean, things your friends back home have never seen. Or done. No resorts. No tourist traps. Just real city, real wilderness, real people. All right?"

The guy is beaming. There's a light in his eyes that makes me feel warm just looking at him. He glances around now, looking for copies of me, trying to decide if I'm for real. And there are other tour guides here, Steph and Visor and Jim, working the tourists, and they're all good. I mean they're good at making a dollar and they're good at showing a tourist a good time. But I have this big grin on my face saying "Let's get out of here, just you and me" and somehow Rafe knows I'm not just in it for the money. And I'm not just in it for the work. I want him.

I want that light in his eyes. I want to see his wonder. I want him to have a very, very good time on Earth. Look at him! And there's nothing I love more than making a customer happy... he's so genuine... right from space, with his long fingers, his serious face and sudden smile... I love people but I love this guy. And I've got him.

"Yeah," he says, shrugging the guitar up on his shoulder again. "Okay. Let me get my money."

Mosquitoes

Fear of not being good enough
Fear of car breaking down
Fear of losing the apartment
Fear of not making enough money
Fear of having to find another job
Fear of not liking a job
Fear of being trapped
Fear of not knowing what to do
Fear of not breathing right
Fear of fear getting worse
Fear of derision
Fear of not being able to face the fear
Fear of being asked to do the impossible
Fear of missing the boat
Fear of missing a deadly physical ailment
Fear of not doing things right
Fear of not knowing what's expected
Fear of strange things
Fear of having a spider crawling over bare feet
Fear of not knowing what's wrong
Fear of being broken
Fear of doing irreparable harm to a body part
Fear of being paralyzed
Fear of not being able to enjoy anything
Fear of not being able to enjoy something
Fear of not being able to enjoy going out
Fear of being crazy
Fear of going crazy
Fear of doing something wrong that will lead to going crazy
Fear of not knowing the right thing to do to keep from going crazy
Fear of others' impatience
Fear of losing friends
Fear of strangers
Fear of not knowing what to say to strangers
Fear of the telephone
Fear of not being able to see what's in the water
Fear of having something brush against a leg
Fear of dying
Fear of dying in fear
Fear of this continuing forever
Fear of rapists
Fear of bears
Fear of being alone in the woods
Fear of wetting pants
Fear of being bullied
Fear of alligators under the bed
Fear of other people not helping
Fear of letting people get the better of you
Fear of letting dogs get the better of you
Fear of being no good
Fear of being too arrogant
Fear of
Fear of not feeling enough fear to be able to practice feeling fear
AHA!
**swat!**

Hell is not partial

Becky couldn't catch her breath. The air was so muggy. Her skin felt sticky. It was dark and hot and close under the trees, and the roots perplexed her feet. It was the jungle. She was on a path in the dark, or in just enough light to see the path... the moon was up there, somewhere, tonight... and she wasn't lost. She knew where she was. She just didn't know where she was going. The path was growing fainter and fainter, becoming just a harder patch among softer soils.

Then she saw something and then a split second later a wave of fear washed through her. Her tongue tasted electric. She was shaking. There was a snake... a large snake... on the path. She stood and saw it. It seemed like a dream snake, lying there across the path in the dark, and she didn't know what it was doing. That was the most dreamlike thing, the not knowing. It was an alien. It was unknown.

Becky stood for a minute and the dream feeling buzzed over her. She was scared because of the snake, but she was also scared because she suddenly didn't know who she was. In a jungle? Trying to escape? She was afraid it wasn't real, that she was going crazy. She was afraid it was real. Her heart was in her throat. Her breath was in her throat. Her tongue hurt and she was dizzy.

It was so dark. Things would look different in the light, but it might be 3 AM and it might as well never get light. It was the tropics... wasn't it? The sun might not come up until six... three more hours of walking... but there was this snake.

She felt she ought to go forth, let it bite her, strangle her, constrict her... she was already constricted... she couldn't breathe. She turned around and went back.

***

The next night, there was no more light, but she left again. After the sun went down and she tossed and turned in fear, she went out and slipped out to the path, and began to walk. Her thoughts were so loud in her ears she was afraid she was walking to her death--that she wouldn't hear the panther, or the boar, or a river before she tumbled down its banks into her drowning. It would be the river, her stomach told her. You will fall down a ravine into a river, it will be freezing cold, wet, it will fill your nose and stop your mouth and you'll be terrified for the eternity of drowning. You will be terrified.

It had been like this forever. Fear forever. She hated herself all the time for not being able to stop it and for not being able to go with it. She didn't dream anymore, but when she dreamed she dreamed once of wriggling, under a rock, wriggling like a spider and not going anywhere. Now she slept blackly and when she woke up she had a second or two of being Becky, and then she remembered she was in a nightmare and her chest felt tight as a fist again. It was like waking up and remembering your legs were gone, and would be gone every day for the rest of your life... it was like looking up from a book and remembering your lover has died and you're still grieving, and it all comes down like a ton of bricks.

So here she was in fear on the path. She was trying to get out. She felt she didn't have the strength, the smarts or the willpower to get out, but what else was there to do? It was not going to get better. She was a wreck. She shook all the time. She was covered in insect bites and she still couldn't stop swatting at the mosquitoes... her teeth throbbed from clenching her jaw and from not seeing a dentist in a year. She wasn't afraid for her teeth anymore. That was months ago. But she was afraid of--

The snake. Still there! The alienness of it gripped her. What was it doing? And in the split second between recognizing the snake and feeling the wash of fear, this time, she saw it, saw what lay across the path. It was a rope, a rope. Round and thick and careless, lying on the ground. Her nerves clashed with the afteraffect of terror, jangling like a tambourine. The night was a night of sirens. It was a rope. The snake was forgotten. There was no snake. She stepped over the rope and thumped down the path in the dark, swatting the mosquitos with shuddering hands.

Now she was on new ground. The moon was hidden, far away. The night grew full of sounds, droning sounds of insects and sharp unknown sounds, each of which pierced Becky through with a fear she couldn't defend against. It was like being six years old and sitting on the padded bed and having the doctor hit your knee with the little triangular hammer, and watching astounded as your leg leaped up. She heard the noises and she felt herself jolt with adrenaline and dismay after each one. She groaned aloud with exhaustion and hate. And she walked.

She had been nervous when she came to the Amazon. She had come to try to escape her nervousness. Worrying about her job, about the car, about her parents, worrying about making rent payments, worrying about her heart, about not being able to get into grad school, about being in grad school, about having enough time to volunteer, about not being nice enough, about not walking the dog enough, about her life slipping past and her not enjoying it. She needed help and she grabbed at this, at the opportunity to get away from it all.

She was thinking about these things when she realized she wasn't on the path.

She was so exhausted when the resultant wave of terror hit her that she barely noticed it. She looked up. She looked around. There was no light of dawn and she felt it must be about three or four o'clock. The moon was still up somewhere, but she couldn't see it, only the faintest glow on the ground, her night vision grainy and staticky like a very old TV. She could see things, rocks, if she moved around, if she didn't look directly at them. She turned and tried to go back in the direction she'd come. The soil was soft and spongy under her feet. She groaned again.

Then this is it, this is it, her mind taunted. This is how you die. Lost in the jungle. You'll wander lost for days, and die of starvation, terrified the whole time. This is your fate.

And it was a few minutes and she realized with some surprise that she was on the path again, and the packed sand of it made a little noise beneath her sneakers. She blundered back to camp, tired to the bone.

***

On the third night, she set out exhausted and walked for hours, the noises and the terrors becoming so familiar to her it was like wearing a costume for the sixth week of a play, a long-running play. It was very hot and uncomfortable and it was not her, but she was so used to it. She was terrified and used to it. She hated it and was used to it. Her insect bites were miserable, and the sensation was so familiar to her she felt she could write a full-length book on bites. On itchiness. On the raw pain of too much scratching, the bleeding, the shaking of a body flooded with histamine. On finding her own blood dried under her nails days later. On looking like hell.

She was beginning to get good at being terrified.

When she saw the rope she stepped over it without hesitating, then stopped. She turned around. She was curious. It was so strange to feel something beside fear and pain that for a moment she was awed. And still curious. She followed the rope, heart pounding, and followed it up to the thick tree beside the path... followed it up the thorny bark of the tree... up to where her eyes lost it in darkness. She gripped the rope in both hands, feeling its age and fibrous strength. She could smell it. It was a hemp rope. She set one sneaker then another against the thorns of the tree, and pulled with her shaking arms, lifting one sweating hand over another, pulling herself up the tree.

When she had climbed ten or fifteen feet, she felt a wooden platform above her, and was too tired to be surprised. She grasped breathlessly for something above it, something to hold onto, found a lean weathered board and put all her strength into hauling herself onto the platform. And all her strength was not enough, and she slipped back down, her hands still adequate, cramping, leaving her dangling from wood and rope while her whole body shook.

Without thinking she tried again, trying to try harder, put even more into it, clench her whole body... and she felt herself lifting up... and took her hand off the rope to reach up and grasp, found something unknown that held her, and beached herself on the small platform.

After a minute or two she tried to sit up. It was pitch black. She couldn't lean back against the tree for the thorns, and the platform was only a couple feet wide. She felt above her. There was more rope, and wooden slats of some kind. But she was gone, empty, and wanted to rest. She would rest until it got light.

She didn't notice when the sky began to lighten. She was thinking about the people back in camp, and then she noticed she could see again, just barely. There were slender trunks all around her, giant leaves in places, and behind her the thorns on the bark were taking shape. She could see her hands. She wondered if they looked like her hands, or some stranger's hands. Everything had been so strange. She didn't even know.

She had come to the Amazon to join Right Intentions, a group of mismatched seekers trying to live harmoniously and help the natives and... she wasn't sure. She had been desperate when she saw their web site, she remembered. She had had a feeling that she had to go, had to do something like this, live more simply, reach out and help others, or she'd always be stuck in the same miserable and self-absorbed place in her life. She felt compelled and she had signed on and taken her dog to her sister's and booked the flight on the dull energy of compulsion.

Nothing had been like she'd expected. The living conditions had been not just primitive, but truly shitty, poorly looked after, falling apart. Dirty. Unsanitary, yes. Jerry, the leader of the group, was charismatic in a slightly hypnotic way... at least, his absolute confidence was attractive... but he was more of a jerk than anything else. He always worked without a shirt on, he called Becky "honey" and whenever she worried aloud about malaria, he laughed. Not a laugh that made light of her fears, but a laugh that enjoyed them. He thought she was funny. And he smoked. And then there was Matt, who was in love with Becky and who she felt she had to sleep with... his dirty hair and freckled, almost translucent skin that made her think queasily of her dog's belly... God... what did she just think? Why did she think that? Why should she have to sleep with him?

As it got lighter she realized there was indeed a ladder above her, and some kind of structure far overhead in the canopy. The birds were very active, all kinds, so loud they almost hurt her ears. There was one that made a noise like the metallic squeak her oven made when she opened the door to put a pan of brownies in at home. In a moment she would stand and climb up to the platform, to see if she could see a river or a town or farms in the distance, carved out of the jungle, places where she could make a phone call or hire a boat... She didn't speak Spanish. She was too numb to be afraid of that. She had felt desperate to get out, and now that she was out she knew the desperation was unnecessary, but here she was.

The 10th of August in Scarborough

I've always known I'll die alone. That's why I'm so angry to find myself bleeding to death on the pavement surrounded by about two hundred people in various states of alarm.

The paramedic holding the bag over me is in a calm state of alarm. Her eyes are intense, light brown, and she's very serious. She's in her 20s and I wonder if I'd find her pretty if I wasn't bleeding to death.

Someone dragged over another person... I feel like there are people lying all around me, dying. It's eleven o'clock in the morning on a... on a Friday and it's August and I'm in Scarborough, outside the mall... I can hear myself narrating in my head. Why, Jesus Christ? I can't feel my limbs and I wonder how I'm still breathing, yet somehow the narrating never stops.

"Hold that," the paramedic says to another woman. I have to get out of here. I tried to say something when she first caught up with me and made me lie down, but she ignored me. Pretty soon I didn't feel like I could get up again anyway. But--

"I have to go," I say, feeling ashamed.

"Just hold on," the girl mumbles, ripping open a package of something white. I want to go. I can't be here. This is crazy. They can't be putting that on me. This is just getting worse. Everything is getting worse.

There was a noise, I heard the noise and I thought a tiny thought for a split second that the escalator was breaking down, and then I saw the ceiling start to collapse.

But it's August and it's a chilly day, like it's September already... I think it's just like fall... I think it's just like when the twin towers went down... which also strikes me as wrong, cheesy somehow, like it'd be in a bad poem. The leaves are green but the air is brisk, and it smells like exhaust. If I could get out of here I'd go for a run. I turn my head.

To my left across the concrete is an old guy, his work shirt sticking to his ribs with watery blood. His eyes are closed. He looks like he's sleeping. I'm telling myself how cliche that is when he opens his eyes, rolls his head over and looks right at me.

He doesn't say anything. Then he says, "You look like hell!"

This is crazy. Jesus, could that siren be any louder? It's not enough that I'm apparently bleeding all over the sidewalk, they want to burst my eardrums too. Even once it's turned off, I have no idea what to say to this old guy.

"You haven't got any right to talk!" I say. I can't take this. I stare at the guy for something to do. He has a thick face and a beard and looks like he'd be married to somebody frumpy. He looks like the minister of the church I went to with my grandmother as a kid. Or like the old guy who stocks shelves at the grocery store.

"I'm Roger," he says.

"I'm Neil," I say. "Can't shake." Eleven o'clock, Friday the 10th, Scarborough Mall collapses, my mind says. Paramedics rush to the scene. I look around again. The building over the hump of my white-swathed belly looks messed up, like a kid built it. I can see the big windows of Sears still standing up there, but over to the right it's crumpled, really carelessly. I feel angry again.

"This isn't supposed to be happening," I tell Roger. He's getting his clothing cut open with a pair of blunt scissors.

"Tell me about it," he says. "I'm supposed to be at the dentist's right now. I have a tooth that's killing me."

"I'm freaking pissed," I say, really angry. Really angry. "I am not dying today."

The paramedic says something, and I don't catch it but I think it's something stupid. I feel she's stupid, and I'm not sure why.

He has a tooth that's killing him?

I look at Roger again. This is ridiculous, this is insane. "How's your tooth feel now?" I ask. His face looks so pink against the concrete.

I'm ashamed to say it but I had a dream... it was just a dream, I remember. I was twelve years old. I dreamed I was dying, alone somewhere... the feeling of where wasn't very strong, but the feeling of being alone was very strong, and when I woke up I just knew I'd die alone. I knew it like you know you're hungry, or tired, or know you're going to be in trouble when you get home.

But it was a dream and I was 12 years old. Now I'm 27 and I'm dying surrounded by people.

"We need to get him in before he loses any more..." the girl is saying, and Roger is laughing, and I feel very light. It's the 10th of August in Scarborough and I am not dying alone.