IT'S FICTION MONDAY
Even though it's Tuesday - I'm a little behind
PART II
THE DOOR
If you missed the first part of the story, click HERE
2
“Merci,”
Bon said to the woman, turned and walked up the street feeling stunned. He heard the woman behind him saying,
“Monsieur, air you sure you air OK?” Bon
waved a hand, tripped on a crack in the sidewalk, righted himself and continued
on.
This was too unreal. He thought of asking someone to pinch him,
but he couldn’t remember the words in French, and anyway, he knew this was
real, as unreal as it was. This was no
dream – Bon could tell. “Everyone can
tell,” he thought. That whole “pinch me”
thing from the movies suddenly seemed utterly absurd. He was awake and he was, incredible as it
seemed, in Paris. He dug in his
pocket for his phone, swiped it on but he had no bars. He’d never imagined he’d need international
service. He didn’t have international
service. Digging back into his pocket,
he was relieved to find his wallet, that also contained a debit card (Bon
fortunately had several hundred dollars in the bank) and his driver’s license.
Nonetheless, the next three days
were extremely difficult for Bon, so to make a long – at least what felt like
an eternity to Bon – story relatively short, here are a few of the highlights of those three
days:
Bon went to a money exchange and
got some Euros, then to the American Embassy and tried to spin a story about
how he had flown into Norway, where they had not stamped his passport (a
reasonable story to Bon, because that very thing had once actually happened to
him) then, after a brief stay in Oslo, he had gone from Oslo to Bergen on the
train where he had procured work on, and boarded, a fishing vessel bound for England
and then France. The fishing vessel,
really a kind of factory boat, had let him off in Normandy, his new friend Olaf
telling him not to breath a word to anyone that they had hired someone from
outside the European Union. Bon had promised. He explained that during his train ride to Paris, all his belongings except his wallet had been
stolen, including his coat, where, he said, he had kept his passport.
Bon had difficulty remembering the
name of the fishing vessel, as well as any other name than that of his friend Olaf,
explained that his lapse of memory was because he didn’t speak Norwegian. The pretty young Assistant Consulate, Élodie,
with whom he spoke, reminded Bon, that if he had ever actually visited Norway, Bon might have noticed that Norway had the highest English speaking population,
per capita, in the world. Having in fact been to Norway, Bon knew this perfectly well, but hoped Élodie did not. Also, Élodie told Bon, that at this time, Norway was not strictly a member of the EU.
Knowing that if he started talking
about magical doors – and he very much wanted to: Élodie was so pretty, he
thought she might understand, like the pretty foreign girls in the movies
always understood – he might spend a long time…. If he told her, he might well spend a long
time, perhaps a very long time, somewhere he probably didn’t want to be for a
long time, so he stuck to his story, as absurd as much of it was. Why couldn’t they find his plane ticket? Iceland Air?
It doesn’t seem you were a passenger.
Are you a terrorist? Do you know
any Muslims here in France? What have
you been doing since you got here?
Bon spent a day and a half in
solitary detention. Although he was very
lonely and only had a very thin mattress on a concrete floor with only a paper
blanket to keep him warm – no books or TV – the food was excellent. Much better, he imagined, than it would have
been on American soil. For dinner he had
a steak (not big, but well-seasoned), fries and even a crème caramel for
dessert. In the afternoon of the second day, he was
escorted into an office, obviously to a higher-level Consular Assistant than Élodie
had been. Élodie had been French.
“Sit down,” said the big American
man behind the big wooden desk. He was
fiftyish, balding, with a roundish, clean shaven face that exhibited a tired
and very no-nonsense expression.
“Thank you sir,” said Bon, sitting
in a green padded chair with wooden arms, across from the man.
“Call me Mr. Burdens,” said the man.
“Thank you Mr. Burdens,” said Bon.
Mr. Burdens looked at some papers on
his desk, then stared for perhaps a full minute at Bon without saying anything.
“Bon,” said Mr. Burdens
finally. “That is how you say your name,
Bon?”
“Yes Mr. Burdens. Bon, like the German city - Bonn. Bon Ironsmith.”
“Not short for anything like…
Christ, what would Bon be short for?”
“Bonhommie, maybe?” suggested
Bon.
Mr. Burdens stared at Bon for
another 30, unbearable seconds.
“Bon, you’re full of shit. I’m not sure what kind of shit you’re full
of, but whatever kind it is, I don’t want it in nor around my Embassy anymore.”
“No, Mr. Burdens, I see,” said Bon.
“Bon.” Mr. Burdens paused for what must have been
another full half-minute.
“Bon,” he continued, “You’ve just
won the lottery.” He picked a thick
envelope up from the desk. “This is a
ticket to Philadelphia. Air France. Good Airline. And a new passport.”
“Oh, Mr. Burdens, than…”
“Bon?”
“Yes Mr. Burdens?”
“Shut the fuck up. Listen.
We couldn’t find anything on you.
Nothing. Just that you’re some
flunky in an architectural firm in Philadelphia and live in a crappy
neighborhood. Everyone we talked with
gave you pretty good references, no one seemed to think you were capable of
anything alarming…. of anything really.
They WERE surprised you were somehow in France. Your mother….” Mr. Burdens rubbed his forehead. “Your mother gave me a headache. I…”
“My moth…”
“Bon. I said shut the FUCK up. After speaking with her for half an hour, I
found it hard to believe you weren’t already dead, perhaps having preferred to
off yourself rather than listen to her lather of… of… utterly nonsensical…
talk, if it can be called talk – ‘Oh,
Mr. Burdens, thank you so much for caring for Bon. Would you like a roast beef sandwich? Or perhaps you’d like to take a swim?’” Mr. Burdens rubbed his forehead again. “Now, seeing that, obviously, you are not dead, Bon, it’s hard
to believe that you haven’t turned to drugs or alcohol, to forget."
Mr.
Burdens paused, then said, “Bon?”
“Yes Mr. Burdens?”
“I want to forget.”
“I understand Mr. Burdens.”
“I very much suspect you do understand. And I want to forget you, or that you were
ever here. And most of all your mother.”
Bon was silent. He didn’t want Mr. Burdens to yell at him
again. He looked at the floor.
“Bon,” Mr. Burdens said, “Stand up.”
Bon stood up.
“Take this envelope. Go downstairs, out the main entrance. There is a little silver car there. Get in the little silver car, in the
backseat. It will take you to the
airport. I never want to see you
again. You are of course, welcome to
come to France any time you like, with a passport of course – this is your privilege
as an American Citizen. But, Bon?”
“Yes Mr. Burdens,” said Bon,
reaching out to take the envelope. Mr.
Burdens didn’t let it go.
“I NEVER want to see you again. If you are here, and you see me, say, walking
down the sidewalk, hide. Do we
understand each other?”
“Yes Mr. Burdens. We do.”
Mr. Burdens let go of the
envelope. Bon stood looking at him,
wondering what to do next.
“Go,” said Mr. Burdens. “Silver car.
Don’t say another word. You’re
welcome. Go.” Although Bon was thin, as he walked out of
the room, he had the peculiar feeling his buttocks were somehow enormous, the
most visible part of himself.
******************
“Flunky
indeed,” thought Bon on the trip home.
He had graduated from University of Pennsylvania, had done very well,
and landed an internship with one of the best architectural firms in the
city. Mostly they did corporate
interiors, which he wasn’t crazy about – like most architectural graduates he
had grand ideas of grand city plans and wonderful houses with waterfalls in the
living rooms – but it was starting to be good money and, in fact, he had been
hired on after his internship.
“So why on God’s Green Earth do I
live in this dump,” he thought as his cab from the Airport pulled up in front
of his house. Actually, he was kind of
glad to see it. Even though he hated it,
it was “home”, and there was comfort in the mere familiarity of it.
******************
Bon
began going down into the basement every day, especially around the time the “magical”
thing had happened, which had been just after getting home from work – that had
been a Friday, thank God: he had only missed two days of work. Nonetheless, the next Friday, nothing
happened.
He began consulting astronomical
charts, astrological charts as well, looking for evidence of sun flares, meteor showers, volcanic activity.... Nothing seemed to coincide with the opening
of the door. He would have liked to
think it had just been his imagination, but he still had some Euros in his
wallet, as well as the multiple calls per day from his mother, to prove that it hadn't been.
Gina, one of the new interns at the
office, kept asking him about France, what had inspired him to just take off…
She wouldn’t let it go. She sensed there
was something peculiar about his answers – most of the people in the office
didn’t seem to care or to even have noticed: they were too involved in their
own lives and projects. But Gina wouldn’t
relent. Gina was very young - 21 (at least to a 27 year-old, six years seemed like a big age difference) but she was also
smart, an excellent draftswoman, and she had fetching little ringlets of hair that surrounded her roundish, happy and very pretty face, with the most voluptuous lips Bon could ever remember seeing.
“If you’ll stop bugging me about it,
I’ll tell you at dinner tomorrow,” he said.
He had stopped at her desk, because yet again, she had said, “This whole
France thing. Quelle mystere.”
“That is, if you’ll have dinner with
me,” he said, blushing. He rarely asked women out because sooner or later he knew he'd have to show them his dump of a house.
“I can’t wait,” she said, seeming to
bob up and down a little in her chair.
Bon got the feeling she liked him. "Like, right after work?" she asked. Bon hated that use of "like". But people could change. "Sure," he said. "Like, as soon as we're done?" He was mocking her, but she just nodded happily. "Cool," she said. When was it smart people started talking like that? Bon smiled at her, and it was guanine. She was smart and pretty. Christ, she'd gone to Brown. Did everyone talk like that now? He felt warm in his chest as he walked away from her desk.
*******************
That
evening when he got home, after he took off his coat and made a cup of coffee,
he went to the basement. Light came from
under the door.
TO BE CONTINUED NEXT MONDAY
