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The Lava Dome
By George Sparling
John sat eating the lunch special, hating Jean Baudrillard. He died, and John despised anyone denying reality existed. John excoriated much now. Baudrillard, an easy man ( philosopher? ) to hate, focused John's attention. The world's billions would never believe reality was faked. If that were true, John's existence would be livable. Fuck Monsieur Baudrillard.
John sat outside the pricey Spanish restaurant, glad to eat a large and cheap beef burrito. The ad said the restaurant served "cuisine." John choked thinking that word until drinking a glass of water. Head in a paperback, he kept the real world remote.
A man and woman came out the restaurant, and onto the patio. A stranger, the man. But her voice: familiar, memorable. Who was she? John had swallowed so many atypical anti-psychotics the last ten years. His normally steel-trap memory lost its power. He'd have to wean himself off those pills, reduce them, at least, to re-claim his memory, his pride.
"I'll never leave," the stranger said to the woman. "I'm moving my family in next week."
John's friends, past and present, hadn't risen to getting commssions, selling property, as the woman had. Her voice drove its rhythm and accent like a tremblor through John's gut. Earthquakes. Had that been their link? Volcanoes? Yeah. He'd seen recent internet clips, Stromboli, long dormant for years, now erupted. Volcanology, John's strong interest. And not dilettantish, either. He'd been tossed like a sparrow when Mt. St.Helens blew.
"I've other tracts almost as good," she said. The man headed for a Mercedes.
"I'll tell my business associates," he said through the window.
He drove quietly out the parking lot.
Associates? Who talked like that? The woman needed characters like this for her job. She made a living, justifying contact with a guy so pompous and pretentious. She kept a healthy distance away, putting the gear into neutral, blanking out the client's personality.
Who the hell was she? John no longer wrenched buried thoughts at will anymore.
Stromboli John viewed alone on a used computer, downloading clips of it belching its heart out. But Stromboli's plume hadn't risen 80,000 feet high as had Mt. St. Helens that day.
He looked up. Her hair grayish, not jeans but conservative, dark slacks and shirt. Otherwise, Sylvia O'Keefe looked and sounded as she had in 1980.
"Sylvia?" John knew it her, but a question, rather a statement, came out. He understood himself then as humble. She turned, surveying the patio, then walked away.
"It's me, John." Two steps, then she stopped, pivoted, and said, "Whenever volcanoes go off, I see you flying through the air."
"When I landed, I thought I died.'
"Only a bloody gash on your cheek." She sat opposite him.
"Coincidences, our meeting, Stromboli exploding. Strictly B-Movie material."
"The Mayor of Casterbridge."
"The Da Vinci Code."
Sylvia's laugh revealed meshuga, John's meshugaas. She ordered a sandwich for him, a double latte for her. "I like caffeine, too," John said. trying to be funny, but Sylvia hated his usual whining. Even worse, his begging. He hadn't stopped asking too much, and she resented the pressure.
"A double espresso, then." She caught the waiter's attention. "Your pushing never stops." Bickering started.
"It's because I'm a chub," John said. "One shower and the die is cast." Crossing the Rubicon, Julius Caesar uttered those words. Sylvia reviled it whenever John told her trivia. If he told her the "die" phrase now, she'd puke. Regurgitating the obvious, almost sinful.
"Nothing's inevitable," she said. "We can always step out of our roles."
Eugene O'Neill's father played the The Count of Monte Cristo all his acting life. Stephen King wrote the same book for twenty years. Tony Bennett always had to sing, "I Left My Heart In San Francisco," at concerts, though he never liked it. Vaudevillians performed their identical acts in each town and city before television destroyed their show business careers.
"Lots of evidence to the contrary," John said.
One-upmanship, what folly, yet John hadn't control over it. Living alone, working at a Hospice, his main social outlet, combativeness asserted itself. With Sylvia, it only became more self-evident, hugh and glaring. John opposed the world. No one got away with that and lived truly human. Here, he fought hard against the adversarial habit, but failed. Repression never good for the soul, he told himself, looking straight into her eyes.
"Neal Cassidy was hooked on speed," she said. Paranoia grew, alerting him: she'd read his mind as he silently mind-mouthed determinism.
"He died on railroad tracks in Mexico," he said. "Is that the moral?"
Clouds disappeared, sun blasting, their faces less chiaroscuro. Spiritual and introspection melted with the heat.
"Our allusions are retro. We're old," she said. "Have you noticed people under thirty never say 'Jesus Christ' when they swear?" John's favorite profane phrase: Jesus fuckin' Christ.
"Like outhouses, a thing of the past."
"Belief receded," she said. Sylvia never mentioned Baudrillard, at least.
May 18, 1980, eleven miles from Cougar, Washington, the explosion. They took cover, and then came another one, John catapulting throuigh the air, landing into a heap in a thick bush. Blood dropped down his cheek, which Sylvia cleaned and dressed. Fifty-seven died. Back home, John thought a turning point had come. Weeks, months, years passed, but Sylvia never returned. She came over one day, handing John a painting of him borne through air, Mt. St. Helens red and purple. After nineteen years, she sat across from him.
"They're big Christian rallies in liberal cities," John said. "What's happening?"
The restaurant emptied, they the only patrons.
"Have you travelled since I left?" she asked, finishing the latte. "Was St. Helens the last trip?" He chugged the espresso dry. The waiter cleared the table. Nothing between them, no clutter. Nothing.
"The last big adventure." The drifting apart, like horse latitudes. When trade winds lulled and died, the sailors threw everything possible overboard, even the horses. They swam miles behind the ship, then drowned. This haunted the sailors the rest of their lives. Forever. The Martyrdom of St. John, he just another scared, dead horse? Burdensome, John felt Sylvia had to dump him, if only for self-preservation. The ancient rite of sacrifice prevailed.
"I read about Stromboli," she said, "and I remembered you, naturally."
"St. Helens was my Stromboli," he said. "The romance, that is." Of course, Stromboli would've killed him. A perfect end for a volcano lover. Sontag's novel? He wretched, imagining reading it. Under the Volcano, too, another big vomit.
"Have you read Sontag?"
"She takes risks. That's why I read it."
BookTalk? What about BirdTalk? BioTalk? PlagueTalk? Those subjects cemented their former relationship, according to John. Not to Sylvia, of course. Millions of birdwatchers in the world, and they weren't like Hitchcock's eccentric orinthologist in The Birds. She was accurate about birds, though. Birdwatchers weren't oddities and whackos, but normal folks. But he was loony according to The Gospel of Sylvia. No question in his mind about it: a fact of life. No one would have a different opinion than Sylvia's.
"Let's go somewhere," he said, "and..."
"Get risky?" She'd difficulty stopping her laughter.
They drove to his apartment.
"Motel's suck," she said.
When they entered, Sylvia said,
"Same stench."
"It'll move through you like music," he said. "You'll forget it.'
They stood in the living room.
"Ever think of order?
"Rage for order, lots of inventions, big ideas come from it," he said.
They watched clips of Stromboli erupting. Much more comfortable than sleeping on rocks in Cougar.
"My boyfriend listens to Billy Bragg," she said. "Have you heard his 'Ingrid Bergman' song?"
"No.'
John found the lyrics online. "'You make fire fly from the crater'?"
"It's dated."
Sylvia sat in John's computer chair. The complete song played over and over as they watched the Stromboli clip repeat itself.
John felt confident something different would happen, unlike before.They watched and listened.
The lava dome exploded over and over. After sunset, Sylvia stood, shaking John's hand as if he were a real estate client. She left, with a genuine smile.
John had no regrets. Better a stoic than a fool.
THE END
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