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.I felt as if I was not of this world and then suddenly I was.“Really?” I said.“And now it’s one past eight,” he said.“A.M.”The earth closed in on me.My eyelids grew heavy.Gravity.My back ached.My right knee was throbbing.I wanted to stop the Odyssey.“I’m stopping at the next stop I see,” I told Dan.I hung up the phone.I felt lost.I felt unattached to the world.I did not know where I was, finally, and the prairie outside the van looked like the plains of Mars.The next stop appeared and it was much like the stop in Pennsylvania.Nothing surrounded by more of the same.I pulled in and braked hard in a parking spot.The minivan shuddered to a halt and Takeshi was thrown forward.I could feel my heart pounding through my shirt.I undid my seatbelt, crawled into the backseat, and lay down.I was probably asleep before I closed my eyes.I was probably asleep a long time ago and didn’t even realize it.Take Me to the RiverTomas comes down to my office.He has no reason to be in the basement so I’m assuming he wants to talk.“Sorry to bother you,” he says.He’s also being polite.“Later, I’m going down to the Gulley, make a fire.Maybe pop back a few beers.”“Aren’t you working?” I ask.“It’s my day off,” he says.“OK,” I say.“Which gulley?”“The Gulley,” he says, in a way that means I haven’t learned anything yet.The employees’ geography of this place is foreign to me and it shouldn’t be.“I’m inviting you to join me.”“You’re not going to kill me, are you?”He smiles.“Don’t flatter yourself.”Arrangements are made.Tomas will bring beer.At the appointed hour, he meets me by the trailer.The night’s chill is awesome.The wind descends from the north.It’s Canadian.“Let’s go,” Tomas says, and we walk off in the direction of the stables.We walk past them, past the horses and their braying, past the earthy, musty smell, to one of the minor trails that takes hikers toward the mountains.He’s almost jogging.We reach a gulley, formed by the streams that come down from the mountains, and he leads us down a rough trail until he’s at water’s edge.He puts the beer down in the stream and starts collecting sticks and branches.“There’s a fire pit here somewhere,” he says.“This is the Gulley?” I ask.“People come here for privacy,” he says.“You know.”“Meaning you want to fuck me?” I ask.Tomas dumps some branches on the pit and starts looking for more.“I don’t play for that team,” he says.I follow him to help gather wood.He climbs out of the small ravine and goes off into a grove of trees.He’s more nimble and agile than I would’ve guessed.Tomas has the body of man who tastes too much of his cooking.He’s not fat but he’s soft in a lot of places.I pick up some kindling and dump it on the fire pit.Tomas returns with three small logs, perfectly chopped.“Look what I found,” he says.He stands over the kindling.He reaches into his pockets and pulls out some newspaper.“In the spring, this is full of water, with the snowmelt.The stream becomes a river.It’s torrential.” He tears the newspaper up and bends down and places it beneath the kindling.He puts more twigs on the pile.He reaches into the pocket of his windbreaker and pulls out a box of matches.He lights the paper and soon the kindling is cracking in the heat of the small fire.Tomas walks over to the stream and fishes out a beer.He twists the cap off and puts it in his pocket.“‘Give a hoot,’” I say.“Now there was a campaign.” I study the fire as it grows and put two of the logs on top of it.They catch quickly.Sparks fly off into the night.“And there’s more logs,” Tomas says.He sits down finally and we both get lost in the dance of the flames.I don’t know anyone who can watch a fire and not stare.It’s an attraction that makes no sense.We’re supposed to run from danger, aren’t we? “So what’s this about?” I ask when I’ve broken free from the fire’s spell.“Last year, a woman came here with her cat.We don’t allow pets normally but she was a rich lady.She’d rented two of the tents.Her husband, two kids.And the cat.They were staying for a week.Height of the season.She and her husband owned some software company.From San Francisco.So she has her cat.Calico, I think.And then two days later, it’s gone.And she’s worried sick naturally, and Athena has three guys looking for this thing full-time.The lady is beside herself.And it affected me.I became worried about her cat.I kept thinking of the wolves around here.It affected my work.I couldn’t think about anything but her cat.”There is no way he brought me here to tell me this story.“So what happened?” I ask.“We found it two days later.It was hiding behind the kitchen.It had made its way to the Dumpster and I found it underneath.I heard it and there it was.”“So a happy ending.”“She was irate.”“But you found it.”Tomas takes a pull of his beer.The wind blows past us.The trees rustle.“I’ve been thinking a lot,” he says.“I’ve been thinking about this place.About my place in it.”I sit back, leaning on my elbows.“And you want to talk about this?”His face glows orange in the fire.“I thought so, yes,” he says.“You have no history here.You have history, I know that, but not here.I came here two years ago.I was excited.This place has been a constant source of excitement and inspiration for me.And now I’m feeling maybe the thrill is gone.”There is a long silence between us.The sounds of the crackling fire, the rushing of water on its downward journey toward the sea.Why is Tomas unloading this on me? He finishes his beer quickly and stands to get a new one.“I have a general worry,” he says.He returns with a beer and sits back down.He pokes the fire and adds a log.The fire flares up and sparks rise before disappearing.There is no wind tonight.The glow of the fire is a zone of warmth.“Maybe I worry about stupid things.”“Like what?” I ask.“I left Chicago for a reason,” he says.“I saw what was happening.I was becoming famous.Stories were being written about me, articles.First in local newspapers.Then in local magazines.Then the big food magazines.The national ones.And then the critics turned.There was talk of television.Cookbooks.I saw what was happening and I looked into the future and I didn’t want it.I didn’t want to become a celebrity chef.I didn’t want to become more important than my food.Or my restaurant.I didn’t want the hassle.I didn’t want to write cookbooks or have a cooking show or a line of spices and sauces.I didn’t want to endorse knives or Crock-Pots.I didn’t want any of it.”This sounds eminently reasonable [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]