The baby nearly crawled off the airport food court table because we were too busy arguing. I threw down a wrinkled five-dollar bill and told her to just leave. I had a flight to Tulsa to catch and I was beginning to panic about being late, but she just wouldn’t stop with the gnawing upon my wooden soul. I called her a beaver and that pissed her off even more.

I snatched some pieces of paper from her hands. They were pages from my Book of Life, now partly crumpled due to her angry grip. I needed to use the restroom and walked off. I turned back to look at her from a distance. She boldly stood out from all the other people there. She was as red as a lobster and there was a ghostly white mist swirling above her head.    

I came upon a half-open door labeled MENOS. I stepped inside and it was a bathroom but also a bawdy place for leather-clad rebel rousers. I stood in line at the urinals and glanced over at the crowded billiards table. There was smoke and drink and loud talk in the air. There was a woman sprawled out on the orange velvet and she swam among all the colorful balls. Someone looked at me and whispered to a friend: “These perverts come in here to watch.”

I began to get nervous as I continued to wait to just use the urinal. Someone tapped on my shoulder, and I turned to look at a large man dressed in pearl white long johns. He looked like Bull from the television show Night Court. He went on to inform me that this restroom was only for “fighting men” and that I had to leave. I was horribly embarrassed but angry as well. I was still fuming from the fight with the wife that had been going on all day long. “Well, then where the hell is a restroom that I can use!?” I barked. Bull grasped me by the shoulder and shoved me out into a crystal hallway, sterile and cold, black trapezoidal chandeliers dangling in nothingness.

The next thing I knew, I was in downtown Tulsa leaning against a car and looking over a paper map. For some reason I was smoking a pipe. I looked up at the alabaster sky streaked with a purple bruise and saw a spaceship. It hummed methodically. It was circular in shape, as if a jumbo jet had been twisted into a cream cheese and cherry kolache. It was colored cranberry and aluminum. It was flying so low that I just knew that at any moment there would be a terrible crash and explosion. It never happened. I guess it landed at the airport and I was just crazy.

I found a Howard Johnson’s hotel and resort and checked in forever. I sat on the edge of the bed in room 413 and looked out the large window at the hostile skyline of the world. I studied all the hard edges of architecture and bemoaned the endless seas of broken hearts. The room was quiet until the window unit A/C kicked in. I lay back on the bed and there she suddenly was beside me. My wife. Sleeping soundly. The baby must have gone to Heaven. The anger must have dissipated as well. I don’t know. I never know. An end of day darkness began to swallow the room. I gripped a pillow and tried to sleep my way into another dream.

END