Everyone carries a room about inside him. This fact can even be proved by means of the sense of hearing.
Roger Samson, for example, though
nominally on a city bus, was in fact located in a small windowless
home office, to which the door was quite soundproof. His doctor had
recommended that he get hearing aids, but Roger remembered the days
of parchment-thin walls, and to these he was not anxious to return.
Thus Gloria Wibble had been quite
unsuccessful in trying to get his attention.
“Excuse me, sir, would you be able
to move your backpack? There aren't any other seats.”
Roger, on the bus, bristled and opened
his eyes; Roger, in the office, removed his headphones and tore
himself away from the game of Flight Simulator in which he was
perpetually engaged. There had been a knock on the door, and it was
growing quite insistent.
“Oh, here, yes, of course,” he
mumbled, opening the door to his clean quiet office by means of the
left backpack strap. He sat the lumpy object down at his feet and
once again the door was closed (he saw that his plane had crashed,
but no matter; Flight Simulator, unlike the extra-office aspects of
his life, always provided him with the option to start over).
Having seen Roger
securely back into the recess of his office, Gloria sat down beside
him and retreated to her own inner sanctuary-- except hers was less a
sanctuary and more a manifestation of her inner disquiet. It was the
roulette gallery of a casino, which would not have been surprising to
anyone else, had they been allowed inside-- Gloria's eyes resembled
nothing if not giant roulette wheels: there always seemed to be
something spinning inside them. Gloria was currently playing her hand
at the gumbo-recipe game. Where on earth had she put it? She needed
it for the potluck tonight, and she was going for broke. At stake:
her reputation as an appreciable or even adequate housewife (gumbo
was the only decent thing she knew how to make). All the numbers on
the wheel (fifteen spaces in all) were backgrounded by pictures of
places-- the glove compartment of her car, her recipe rolodex (too
risky a bet), her copy of Scrapbooking for Dummies, her son Robbie's
lunchbox, etc. Where had she last seen it? She wracked her brain and
fidgeted, aggravating the testy croupier. Finally she placed her bet
on 11, or “the kitchen counter behind the dishwashing detergent,”
and he spun the wheel. It revolved for several minutes and the
numbers blurred before her-- “Make it stop!” she yelled at the
croupier-- but it wouldn't, and she exited the casino in a daze,
determined to return when she got home. By then it surely would have
landed somewhere, she thought, and only
then would she be able to collect her winnings... or not.
Gloria moved her foot, and on the
other side of her little Andrew Grier was booted out of a tipi-- he
was young, and still allowed to migrate between rooms, having yet to
find the one that belonged best to him. Back on the bus, seated next
to the lady with the crazy eyes, he sensed in the bliss of childhood
that his only challenge was to find another room to occupy. In his
sensory travels he came upon a room with a solid, metal door, which
the scent of the crazy-eyed lady had allowed him to discover: she
smelled like wilted flowers, like the ones in the vases his mother
had left out for too long. In the room, which was sterile and filled
with bubbling test tubes, Andrew found a lab coat, goggles, and
notebook. It seemed that the mad scientist who was working here had
stepped out for lunch. No matter; Andrew could continue his work for
him until he returned. In the notebook Andrew found a secret: for
every person in the world, there was a perfume that would cause him
(or her) to respond in a certain way, to act precisely as the mad
scientist wanted him to. By brewing this set of perfect perfumes, the
mad scientist could control every person's every action, and thereby
RULE THE WORLD! Even Andrew had to cackle at the genius of this evil
plan, for perhaps, if he found the next few perfumes, the mad
scientist might let him rule the world sometimes too, at least on
weekends.
Clearly, the lady with the crazy eyes
had already been taken care of.
Next on the list was the bus occupant
across from Andrew, a scrawny old man with tufts of ear hair and a
snuffling snore. Andrew scoffed. Easy-peasy. The scientist had
carefully noted that this man could be driven into a state of frenzy
by one thing: peanut brittle. All Andrew had to do was mix up some
crushed brittle particles with a few essential oils and voilà!-- the
malevolent mixture itself was born in a fountain of bubbles, in a
vial that rapidly cycled through colors of the rainbow, finally
culminating in an irresistible peanutty tannish-orange. Andrew smiled
as the man jolted awake (outside the scientist's chamber, the bus had
hit a bump, but Andrew knew the truth).
Scrawny Alexander
Wasserman looked about in surprise. Peanut brittle? In the blankness
of his sleep, he thought he had smelled it-- he could almost taste
it, or perhaps it was just the remnants of the cashews he had eaten
this morning. Either way, he could swear he
had caught a whiff of those tantalizing blocks of legume-y goodness--
did someone on the bus have a bag? More importantly, would the person
be willing to share? He looked to his left, to no avail. He looked to
his right, and--
Transformation.
In that moment Alexander Wasserman
discovered that Sleeping Beauty did not live in a castle and her bed
was not obstructed by a thicket of thorns. She lay dreaming right
next to him, and the only obstruction was his own self-consciousness,
which manifested itself in a blush.
She had a copy of “1000 Nutty
Confections” in her hand, and her head was covered with
perfectly-set, unicorn-white curls. He began to sweat. Who was he to
wake her? What if she grumbled, what if she found him rude or
unsavory? Even worse, what if she didn't think he was handsome? What
if he tried to win her and flat-out failed? Perhaps she inhabited a
castle surrounded by thorns after all.
Time passed slowly as he dithered,
making Alexander even more conscious of the fact that he did not have
a mental room, at least not at the moment. He had lost the key to his
room long ago, after his son had been killed in a war. The
bug-catching meadow in which he had spent his spare moments had
scorched up and died, now that its other occupant was so far removed
and so painful to visit (the sight of the boy with the missing front
tooth and the miniature net now brought him to tears). From then on,
Alex had spent his downtime in a state of painful agitation, forever
stuck in the literal present. Only sleep, and peanut brittle, could
bring him relief.
Soon, however, it began to dawn on
Alex that the time had come for him to seek a new room. He had grown
tired of the perpetual sadness; it was exhausting, so exhausting not
to have a place to be content. He felt that had been searching for
this room for a long time, and here was the opportunity, in front of
him: he must find the chamber in which the sleeping princess lay.
But the bus was approaching his stop;
there were only two stops to go between Hartford Street and
Brooklane, the location of his apartment. Time was running out. What
to say, oh what to say? How to wake her so that she would at once
recognize him as smart, funny, and kind, her true love meant to be?
And what if she was married?-- but he didn't see a ring. He urged
himself: think, Alex, think!
The driver announced: “Talbot
Street, everyone for Talbot Street,” and the bus inched to a halt.
In his contemplation of her somnolent
tranquility, Alex noticed something about his love which caused him
alarm. At her feet was a tote bag printed with the words “Talbot
Street Market,” and she was carrying a recipe book. Perhaps she had
meant to go shopping, and what if she should miss her stop? In a
great fit of valiant anxiety, he slashed at the final vestiges of
thicket, overcoming his inhibitions. He reached for the key to the
princess's chamber, touching her left hand: what a beautifully soft
and graceful left hand it was.
The chamber door opened with the
princess's eyes.
“Excuse me, are you getting off at
Talbot Street? I saw your bag, and thought this might be your stop.”
Her features softened, blue eyes
aglow, as she caught the first sight of her prince.
“Thank you, sir, I was just on my
way to the market to get some sugar, because I'm making peanut
brittle tonight. You see, my grandchildren are coming over tomorrow,
and--”
The doors of the bus began to close.
“Why, it seems I've missed my stop
after all,” she said, and her eyes misted over with disappointment
(or perhaps Alex was only imagining such tender sensitivity, as he
sat in the chamber, by the side of her bed). He had not removed his
hand from hers.
“It's no matter. What do you say we
get off at the next stop, and I escort you to the market?”
“That would be lovely.” She smiled
and looked modestly at her dainty white sneakers (in the castle, she
sat up and removed the brocade quilt).
Thus Alex Wasserman found his next
dwelling place, which was almost as lovely as the room he would
physically occupy that night, a kitchen brimming with the smell of
peanut brittle. Of course, by that time, Andrew Grier had moved on to
concoct his next scent, as the mad scientist had never returned, and
his abandoned labor became Andrew's lifelong obsession-- he was never
the same afterward. Gloria Wibble had returned home, then to her
casino, and was collecting winnings in the form of compliments on the
now-famous gumbo. And Roger Samson? As one might imagine, Roger
Samson had gotten nowhere at all, figuratively, but that was just
fine with him. He had come full circle, at one with himself: he sat
in his home office, playing Flight Simulator.