Erlend walked out of the office and into the Phoenix light. It was October, and the sun was not quite so powerful now. Pear shaped women walked leisurely in groups of three, hoping that the afternoon jaunt and yogurt would do the trick. It probably wouldn’t. He sat at the bus stop watching buses pass the wrong way. The trees did a little praise dance as the wind passed through.
Erlend thought for a while, and about how things fall apart, and how he was never quite the person who was ready for disaster when it arrived, though he could always see it coming from miles away. It was vexing to see the swirl, and watch, with chin on hands on arms on elbows on windowsill, watching as it comes and lifts your house up and around. It was euphoric when caught up in the wind.
Then you land and walk through the wreckage, with no good witch for guidance, no path of direction, or friends with courage, heart, and brainy wisdom.
The bus arrived after fifty minutes and the driver asked how his day had gone. “Pretty good,” he lied, getting off about five minutes later to transfer to the next bus.
He thought about the people. That’s the thing that always gets you. How you are, in fact, truly invisible to most people, and when you are gone, you are gone. You are Chinese on the other side of the world. You are a planet up in the sky and nobody looks up. You are the wind in their day, and then, gone. And unlike most people, he was gone before he was gone. This is what he thought.
“Where is my Lischka?” he said to himself the next day. He was up at 2am watching Christmas in Connecticut, where a radiant Barbara Stanwyck falls in love with a soldier. Somewhere along the way, he calls her Lischka, endearingly.
Erlend’s Lischka, he had realized, was beyond mere woman. It was an idea in his head where every good thing resided and late at night he could travel there.
He sat up on his cot, back to the wall, blanket over head, and music in ears. Eyes closed, air conditioner humming. The chill could be felt at the edges trying to seep underneath the cover but it was okay.
Lischka was more visible now.
“Come with me,” she said. Her hair was long, and dark and reminded him of someone he worked with, or rather, used to work with before quitting.
They walked down the hill toward the shore and sat down and let their feet dangle in the river. Erlend leaned back and rested his head in her lap, looking up at her face and the sky behind it.
This wasn’t the desert anymore. He could smell water and dirt and grass and flowers and see the insects flying about and nearly taste the air, flavored with honey and the smell of some scent she was wearing, cinnamon.
“What is that you are wearing?” he asked her and she said, “Nothing. I work at Cinnabun” and it made him laugh, and wake up.
The room was still dark with the music still piping into his ears. “Take me to Lischka, dear God,” he said, before lying down on the floor and falling into a deeper sleep.
