11/2/05
Driving across country in a 1970’s van. It’s not the same van as my childhood, which was a Dodge Ram – this one is a vintage Ford. Many adventures ensue, none of which seem to have left an impression.
Still, it’s getting late, and there’s one helluva traffic cock-up by the time we reach Woodbury. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Finally, just before sundown, I get fed up with the lack of progress and decide to reverse course. The easiest course of action looks to be if I make a right turn into the driveway of a catering hall near where we’re idling.
We make the turn. Immediately, I realize that it’s a mistake. The driveway for the catering hall is one way – you have to drive around the back of the building to get to the exit out the other side. No wonder – it’s so narrow. There’s really only just a van width between the outer fence and the white-painted cinder block wall of the building. Not to mention the giant “No Trespassing/Do Not Enter” sign over the entrance gate that I somehow failed to see in my haste to stop playing in traffic.
Still, we’ve made a choice, and it’s apparently irrevocable until we clear the building. With a very conservative tap on the gas, I move the van forward. I reason that since there’s a very large, very raucous wedding (of some unknown ethnicity) going on inside the hall, there’s a very good chance that no-one will notice us and we can make the trip around the building and out without any trouble.
We complete the first third of our journey. We’re ready to cross the rear of the building. There comes a complication: the entire rear wall is instead a giant picture window, from which the entire interior of the hall is visible – and all the revelers have a great view of the rear parking lot and two dilapidated garages behind the hall. There’s no way that we can pass this without being seen, but, again, it occurs to me that they’re partying so hard that no-one will give us a second thought.
Besides, the sun has just gone down, so –
Uh-oh.
Whatever ethnic group this is, it turns out that a part of their wedding celebration is a very long period of silent, open-eyed meditation – facing the window. They can’t see us here by the corner of the building, but if I move the van even an inch, the jig is up.
The meditation period lasts several hours. Whatever passengers there are in the van with me seem to have given up the ghost, and I wait the empty hours over the steering wheel alone and anxious.
Finally, the sky to the east begins to gray, then pink, and the celebration resumes. I take my opportunity and pull around the back and other side of the building as swiftly – and quietly – as a thirty-year-old American made van can. There’s a certain element of throwing caution to the wind, at this point. I’ve realized that, even after all that waiting, my best bet is just to make a run for it and hope that no-one catches the license plate.
Looks like the bet's paid off, too. There’s the exit in sight! But…
Shit. There’s a traffic island here, and you can’t make a left turn out of the lot.
The sun comes up and I shut off the ignition. Erik and I get out of the van and regard each other blearily. It’s been a long night, all for naught. I shrug. Just then, the side door of the catering hall opens, and a stewardess-like bowl-cut blonde invites us inside to get our problems sorted out. We follow.
The side entrance doesn’t lead to the main hall – instead it’s a hallway that’s reminiscent of many mid-century institutional buildings. Fluorescent lighting overhead, pale blue walls at the top, with the bottom half covered in glazed green ceramic brick. The floor is, or course, the mottled linoleum that one would expect. In the entranceway, there’s a large window to the front of the hall that faces due East, and the sun coming over the rumbled mountains floods the space.
The blonde in the faded aquamarine jacket, skirt and matching cap leads us through what seems like miles of twisting corridors, and whenever we reach a staircase, we only ever descend it. Hardly surprising, given that the catering hall is a single story building, so if there are stairs… But, still, all this dropping is making Erik and I a little uneasy.
We come out of a stairwell, and I notice there’s more sunlight coming in, but I can’t see the source. It’s also ruddy, like sun through smoke. Erik makes a comment that we’re way too far underground for sun to reach, and the stewardess shows us what’s really going on: someone has made a glass-enclosed diorama, and gone to all the trouble of creating some kind of artificial sun for it. Can’t imagine what purpose it’s for, or who’s supposed to see this – after all, we’ve been walking down here for hours, and in all the long corridors and sideturns, nothing but silent air and empty rooms behind glass-paneled wood doors.
I want to take a closer look a the diorama, which seems to be of some kind of rural harvesting in the mode of Grant Wood, but our cupcake hostess is walking the other way, and we’re about to get left behind. Erik has apparently decided he’s had enough walking, because he sticks around to really drink in the craftsmanship – but I’m determined to stay with our host, so I follow her around a corner and Erik is lost from view.
More speechless walking. Corridor, turn, stairs, fluorescence, tile, brick, muted colors, corridor. On and on, down and down.
Finally, she turns the corner to a dimly lit and dusty oubliette, home to a single tiny waiting room bordered by a bland hunk of laminated pine for a door. The whole thing has an air of years of uselessness. She opens the door to the room, turns on the light and, standing just outside the frame, gestures for me to go inside and take a seat. I do.
Standing just outside my room, with one hand on the frame and the other on the door, she gives me a little instruction.
“If you can find your way back out,” she says mildly, “then you can leave.”
She swings the door so that it’s barely ajar; through the gap I can just see as she departs the oubliette and leaves me to my fate.
(Dreamt 10/30/05)