Dave

It started with Dave.  Or perhaps it only seemed to start with Dave.  Surely it started days earlier with Marlou.  She had this air about her, this look in her eye that, for the mother-deprived, easily can be misread as uncaring or inattentive.  And, in fact, always is.  Which is a polite and psychologically attuned way of saying that I was in a high state of irritation, rancor and general despondency.  Where had my wife gone?  The answer was, for once, easier and more superficial than I normally credit.  Where had she gone?  Shopping.  While my mind's eye was on the Titanic, seasickness bags and, above all, quite literally missing the boat...due to some horrible and unforeseen mishap in New York--Marlou's attention was focused laser-like on formal attire.  We were going to attend and, in fact, star in that most renowned of public appearances: black-and-white night aboard the Queen Mary 2. 

It is an essential genetic distinction defining men and women along the lines of from-Mars-from-Venus that the existence of black-and-white dining, dancing and celebrating is both known and appreciated.  As I say, the image in my mind, aside from the ship going down and my stomach contents going up, was the nonexistence of the wheelchair-lift-equipped van that was supposed to ferry us from our midtown Manhattan hotel to the docks across the East River in the Redhook section of Brooklyn.

In other words, without knowing it, I was focusing very strongly on Dave.  The body steels and adjusts itself to life's challenges even as the latter faintly appear on the horizon.  Disaster's early indicators are always vague and distorted.  Is that background radiation from a terrorist's bomb, the radiology department of the local hospital or the Big Bang?  Who knows?  If life's Geiger counter is ticking, it's ticking.  So, with Marlou obsessed, the pre-departure household in chaos and a grim foreboding dominant on my side of the bed, I set the alarm on that final night and tried to sleep.  There was nothing else to do.  Super Shuttle would appear at 5:15 a.m., yes, with a wheelchair-lift-equipped van...I had just called the reservation number to confirm.  And that was that. 

I barely slept, of course.  At 3 a.m. my eyes bolted open, my body sagged while my mind raced, and by 3:30 I gave up on sleep and headed for the bathroom.  The shower awakened something in me, and when I emerged from the bathroom, Marlou's voice awakened something else.  She was on the phone.  Her end of the conversation amounted to repeated admonishments that sounded like pleas along the lines of "you can't just call up at 4:30 on the morning of our departure and announce this."  I made my way gingerly from the shower toward the wheelchair parked in the hallway.  A certain steely fight-or-flight countenance already slipping over me, I wheeled to the desk.  Marlou handed me the phone.  Dave.  This was Dave.  He'd been working on the problem for hours.  He couldn't find a van.  Dave was from Super Shuttle.  Super Shuttle was from hell...I knew that and had always known that, and now I knew it more.  Breakdowns.  Sending the wrong van.  Drivers getting lost in the hills.  I had seen it all with these people.  Unfortunately, Super Shuttle has long had me by the quadriplegic balls.  When it comes to vans with wheelchair lifts, they are the only game in town.

I asked Dave why he hadn't phoned one of San Francisco's cab companies.  Many of that city's taxis are now wheelchair-accessible.  Dave insisted he had.  Didn't his company have a permanent arrangement with some van operator somewhere for such a wheelchair-passenger emergency?  Dave suggested that since I had such good ideas, I should phone the cab companies myself.  I thanked Dave for his sarcasm and vowed to have a word with the California Public Utilities Commission.  Go for it, Dave said. 

Mentally, I glanced at my nonexistent watch.  I was a naked man, sitting in a wheelchair beside a distraught wife who was fully prepared for the black-and-white ball.  But not for Dave.  I was.  Mentally, spiritually, I had been bracing myself for Dave over the last weeks.  I hung up on him, recalling that scene in the "The High and the Mighty" in which John Wayne, losing an engine on approach to San Francisco Airport, observes "no time to mess with it."  Which was why I was already shifting gears the way John Wayne shifted propeller pitch.  Socks on, Marlou being very adept at this.  Prescribed trousers and sweater on.  Watch.  Handkerchief.  House keys.  Suture.  Swab. 

Yellow Cab of Palo Alto was there within minutes, and Marlou and the bags were off to the airport.  And I was off myself, up the street, the still, stark 5:15 main street of Menlo Park, California.  The street lights glowed blue.  My wheelchair, battery charger weighing down the back, thudded down sidewalks and over intersections.  There was little traffic but plenty of danger.  There was always that.  And the dangers kept coming until the last one.  So, what the hell.  I went bouncing over the rails to the far northbound side of the Caltrain station.  The 5:30 northbound was on time and so was the sunrise.  By the time I saw it, I had changed from commuter train to subway train to airport terminal train.  And Marlou and I were back to our usual squabbles.  Was there, or was there not, time for coffee before we boarded?  Someone needs to remind us to set aside time for rejoicing. 

Because dawn was slipping over the hills south of Fremont, the southern end of San Francisco Bay, as we slipped into our seats.  And we were slipping out of town together.  Cancer, damaged spinal cords...even Dave.  What the hell.  Black-and-white or bust.