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When the package arrived at my apartment three weeks later, there was no return address. Just a stamp, narrowing the origin to Russian River, California. I stood in my cramped entryway and leaned against the row of corroded mailboxes. I ripped the package open, sending my nose in first like a weed canary. Hank wasn’t kidding. It smelled like the inside of a padded envelope. At the bottom was a small bundle wrapped in layers of packing tape.
Once inside my apartment, I turned the envelope upside down. I was excited at the prospect of a souvenir, a symbol that those days had really happened. Mostly, I just wanted to smell it. But the bundle made a surprising thud. As I tore it open, I heard the contents before I saw it: a miniature version of Margeaux’s wind chime along with a note from her that read, “A little something to remember the country by. Ps. Have you seen my cake pan?”
I lifted the wind chime in front of my face, holding it by its tail like a dead mouse. Out of some sense of duty, I hung it from the fire escape, where it blathered away in the breeze, mocking my inability to ignore it. I tried to push through the sound as I wrote, rereading the same paragraph over and over again, attempting to will myself into a California state of mind. Hank and Savannah wouldn’t let themselves be perturbed by a wind chime. Then again, there were a lot of things that Hank and Savannah would do that I wouldn’t. I was not new me. I was parallel me. And parallel me lasted approximately thirty seconds before flinging open the window, ripping that thing down, and getting back to work.
The Chupacabra
Locals in Vermont have spotted an animal that they believe to be a chupacabra, a mythical South American creature said to feed on the blood of goats. Witnesses have seen it wandering through farms and graveyards, its skin blistered, its eyes possessed. While the chances of it being a rabid dog are good, no one is ruling anything out. So a magazine sends me up north to see if I can find it. I am a less-than-ideal candidate for the job. I don’t specialize in mythical-creature hunting or even run-of-the-mill hunting. But the unspoken point of the enterprise is not to find the chupacabra, but to find myself instead, to make a larger point about the power of the imagination, to discover a tick on my shin after traipsing through the woods. Won’t that be fun?
I spend two unfruitful days stalking animals that turn out to be deer or, in one case, a rusted car. At the end of the second day, I return to my roadside motel and collapse onto my bed face-first. Having covered what feels like most of southern Vermont on foot, I limp over to a black binder on the coffee table. Inside is a series of laminated advertisements for pizzerias and diners, tourist attractions and kid-friendly activities. On the last page, there’s a small square. Printed in Comic Sans (is there any other kind?) inside the square is the word Relax! and a number for Fran, a “24-hour masseuse.” It’s hard to reconcile the childlike font with the adultlike “24-hour masseuse.” But I decide to give it a shot, reasoning that I can always leave if it turns out Fran and I are on different wavelengths. I call the number. She’s just had a cancellation and so I drive to the address listed in the ad. Which, as it turns out, is her house.
A slight, cheerful woman in an apron answers the door. When I guess her name, she corrects me. She is Fran’s housekeeper, finishing up for the day. She escorts me to a paisley love seat in the living room where I can wait for Fran. The room is wood paneled, with wall-to-wall carpeting and shelves that sag with the weight of self-help books. A large flat-screen TV is showing a reality-television series I’m too old to recognize. A geriatric Maltese by the name of Chartreuse, according to her collar, pants at my feet. Chartreuse is afflicted with an excessively crooked neck, which the housekeeper informs me is the result of one too many seizures. The white fur around her eyes is stained with years of gook so that her eyes resemble quotation marks. Like she’s only sarcastically a dog. She moves back and forth across the room, an inquisitive puppet.
After several commercial breaks, Fran emerges in pink slippers, a pink muumuu, and pink latex gloves.
“How is your evening?” Fran asks, by way of a hello.
She invites me to follow her so that we can select some invigorating oils together. The housekeeper takes my place on the sofa, intently watching a young woman on TV wearing a microphone bigger than her bikini ease into a hot tub. The woman announces that the hot tub is hot. I trail Fran down a hallway, to the massage room, quickly adding up all the people who know where I am.
Fran instructs me to get undressed and shuts the door, leaving me alone. The room is lined with china figurines inspired by the major motion picture Misery. I lie down, pulling the sheet back, adjusting my head in the massage table’s head-doughnut. Fran enters the room, lowers the lights, and douses me with enough oil to alert the EPA. Then she gets to work. Within seconds, I know this will be the best massage I’ve ever had. Fran’s pressure is perfect, her fingers homing in on the muscles in need. She cleans the knots out from beneath my shoulder blade as if she were sweeping leaves from a gutter. I begin to drift off, thinking of the elusive chupacabra, thinking the solipsistic thought that there’s not much of
