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The following is an excerpt from Bill’s Quest, |
Bill’s Epiphany
( or When Our Naive Hero Gets Drunk On Mezcal
and Assaults A Statue Of Tom Cruise )
Bill’s gaze fell from the faraway hill to two people in the foreground across the road. The two people were a woman and a man. The man wore silver make-up on his face and on his hands. He wore clothes that had been painted silver. Also he wore sneakers that had been painted silver. Also a silver sombrero. Also he held a silver gun.
The woman was blond. She wore flip-flops, short shorts, a tanktop that was loose and a bra. The silver-painted man had one arm around the woman. With his other hand he gripped the gun. The gun was very long. Its muzzle rested on the temple of the woman. Extended in front of herself, the woman held a stick, a metre or so of stainless-steel metal alloy. Affixed to the end of the stick there was a phone.
This is strange, Bill thought. I am seeing something strange.
Bill sipped from the blue drink in front of him. He looked to the small opening of the straw. Many times in his life Bill had heard that things happened for a reason. He could not say where he had heard it. “Everything happens for a reason.” Somewhere. Many times. Bill was certain.
But there’s gibberish, though.
Is gibberish one of the things that happen for a reason?
Bill looked from the opening of the straw to the window across the room. A scooter brushed through the frame. Somehow the woman and the man hadn’t moved. The muzzle of the gun remained resting on the temple of the woman. The woman held the metal stick with the phone. The phone did not seem to want to take the picture. Too much time was passing. The camera that trembled. The two flexed faces. The long silver gun. Everything inflating beyond the point you would think that it could.
But there were reasons, Bill knew. Purposes. The woman would get a picture. The silver-painted man some money.
But me, Bill wondered.
I am on vacation.
I’m a tourist.
But for what purpose?
Bill wondered if perhaps his whole vacation might be a type of gibberish.
Or trip?
“Trip,” Bill decided immediately, was better than “vacation.”
But was his trip a type of gibberish?
A car blurred through the frame of the window. Bill looked into his large blue drink. The ice had melted. He watched the umbrella very slightly drift. Again he looked out the window to the muzzle of the silver-painted gun. The woman held her smile perfectly. So did the silver-painted man. The camera trembled. The camera wouldn’t take the picture. Bill looked to the dark hill. He looked at the spot on the hill that the sun was behind.
“Mezcal,” Bill said quietly to himself. He had never seen the word before. He read it on the menu of the bar in his hotel.
Bill carried the small glass using all ten fingers. He set it down on a table in the sand. He sipped the mezcal to the bottom. Immediately he felt elated. He went back through the lobby into the bar and ordered another and returned with it to his table. Bill did not often drink alcohol. It was fun, he decided. The elation came mixed with excitement and surprise. He made several more trips between the bar and the table. Before very long he was drunk.
Bill slumped in his chair and considered the pale wood surface through the clear liquid in his glass. A dignified little scene. Dignified and serious. Bill imagined a large blue drink with an umbrella in its place. It was very obvious. The glass of mezcal was much, much better.
He lifted the glass and swirled the liquid. He drank it. He remembered the sounds of the waves. He tuned into the sounds. Soon he was bored. He looked to the waves. He remembered the wax museum. He stood and threw back the last sip. There wasn’t one. He threw the glass into the darkness. He moaned. In his mind the moan was something like a howl.
Inside the hotel the lobby was still. Bill wanted to chat. There was nobody behind the counter. Next to the counter there was a stand. Pamphlets. Bill picked one at random. He leaned on the counter. Promising to inspire, the volcano hovers in the mist over Puebla silently stating her immortality.
“Big volcano,” Bill said to himself.
He threw the pamphlet hard at the floor. He pushed off the counter. He entered the wax museum.
The wax museum was a long, narrow room. The figures stood back to back in a line down the middle. Bill rolled against the wall— shoulder, chest, shoulder— then pushed off with his elbow. Between each pair of shoes golden nameplates passed by on the floor.
María Félix Diego Rivera Jared Borgetti Cuauhtémoc Pancho Villa
Bill didn’t recognize any of the names. Pancho Villa maybe but he wasn’t sure. Diego Rivera maybe. Bill felt no warmth toward the names. They held meaning indirectly. He knew that other people knew the names. That the names belonged to people whose lives had held meaning. After death the meaning had continued on. It had travelled by wax through time. Bill felt jealousy. He saw himself as wax. He saw himself as a figure lined up with the others in the long narrow room. Travelling.
Hernán Cortés John Lennon Jesucristo Vicente Fox María Rojo
Bill’s shoulder touched the wall and he rolled. He turned the corner. He looked up and stopped. A familiar face. Bill pointed at the face.
“Tom Cruise,” he said.
The statue of Tom Cruise stood without neighbours, alone facing the back wall of the museum. Tom Cruise wore a tuxedo. Bill remained pointing at the face. The face appeared tense and contemplative, as though reliving difficulties confronted in the past.
“Thomasss,” Bill said.
He lowered his finger and then whipped it back, “You frigginnn’…”
Nothing came. He pulled back his arm. He threw his fist, connecting hard with the forehead of the statue of Tom Cruise. The forehead was hard and glossy. It rebounded Bill’s fist. Bill lost his balance, stabilized, then lunged forward pointing. He breathed on to Tom Cruise’s face. There was damage to the face. The eyebrows, misshapen, appeared furrowed. It was as though Tom Cruise were looking down. As though he were obstinate. Like he refused to meet Bill’s eye.
Bill felt the bed suddenly underneath him as a vague feeling of regret accompanied him from sleep. He lifted his head. He recognized his t-shirt and his shorts from the day before. He felt soreness in his hand. He looked at the back of his hand. There was a strange glossy substance. He remembered. Tom Cruise.
Bill rolled off the bed and stood. He turned until he saw his suitcase. He began packing his clothes. He vomited on the floor. Crouched on the floor, he reached for the towel that was also a swan.
Some minutes later Bill stood with suitcase in hand, considering the door. He had four pre-paid nights remaining. Four nights until his flight back home. But now he had to leave the hotel because he had punched the wax Tom Cruise. He wasn’t sure where he would go. He wasn’t sure if he would die. First thing was to get across the lobby. He took one last look at his pre-paid room. He looked at the swan on the bed. It wasn’t a swan anymore.
Bill stared out the window of a bus. There were spaces between the trees. The sun was still low. Bill could see it behind the trees.
Fleeing from a crime now. I am fleeing from a crime.
The branches brushed the light. The tree trunks chopped the sun.
Bill sat in the sand beside his suitcase. He was thinking things over. Not everything was necessarily so bad.
Now I am not on a vacation. I wanted to not be on a vacation. I am on the run in Mexico because of violence.
No one was on the beach except for Bill. Sitting in the sand, thinking things over, Bill looked to the horizon. He saw a boat. It was so still. It could have been in sand instead of water.
After fleeing the hotel Bill had taken the bus to the first destination that was available. Upon arriving Bill walked the town until it thinned to a strip of green between the beach and a highway. The question was what to do now. Grasping an answer felt difficult to imagine. Eventually though, it was clear, an answer would have to come. And so Bill sat watching the still boat, conscious of its movement forward through time, and of his own movement through time, closer and closer, always, to the knowledge of what it was he would do. The question was the same question as where he would go. And behind this a third question, one that felt thin and spread to a wider breadth, filled the rest of the space in Bill’s mind. The question of why he would be doing the thing that he would do. He would go to a place and he would do a thing. But for what reason?
Bill followed the boat through the hours. The sun across the zenith. Finally Bill stood. He picked up his suitcase and began walking back the way he had come. The direction of the town. And he walked knowing now what it was he would do. And he knew the reason why. The reason he’d come to Mexico, even. The purpose of his trip. Sitting there on the sand it had become clear. There was a volcano that hovered immortally in mist. As he walked Bill could see the mist in his mind. Inside the mist hovered the volcano, glinting. Polished.
Not a trip at all.
I am a person who is on a quest.
Some people are different.
There is an urge.
Sometimes.
For some of us.
Maybe it is strange.
Bill walked with strong, deliberate strides where the waves sank into the sand. Already he felt different.
Back home it wasn’t possible.
Of course.
Home isn’t a place where you do a quest.
I had to travel to Mexico.
It was something Bill felt certain anyone would have been able to see. He saw himself walking. A man walking on a beach with a suitcase. Anyone, surely, could see it. The amount of purpose in this man’s stride.
Bill looked to the still horizon. The boat at the bottom of the tall sky. Waves silently fell from the horizon. Bill halted his steps. He had an idea. It was an idea for the immediate future.
An urge, more like.
An urge like a big urge for a quest. But this one was smaller. And immediate. A receding wave sucked his feet. He stepped back and dropped his suitcase in the sand. He took off his shoes and his pants. He took off his shirt. He took off his socks. He had never stepped into an ocean before. He stepped into the ocean.
“The ocean,” he said.
It struck Bill as odd now that he hadn’t ever noticed he was this type of different person. The type who had them. Urges to go on quests. Urges to just walk right into the friggin’ ocean.
Bill laughed. He turned on to his back, floating starfish as silent waves rolled underneath. Between waves the ocean wobbled. Bill felt his ears fill with water and empty, a transfer between two worlds.
—About the author, Jared Daniel
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