At the Buckaroo’s in Murfreesboro

Sally downed six mini-Coronas in the parking lot when we figured out it was a dry county; now she’s swatting at the waiter whose cold sore is shining like Christmas under the greasy halogens. Sally isn’t, really and truly, a violent person—she’s a painter, and I tell her to call herself as much. But we’ve been four days of circles, punctuated by the occasional motel, so it’s just the shakes of the road, the tick of each invisible mile, that makes her reach for the waiter’s collar. Poor guy. I can’t explain it to him. He can’t know all she’s lost between here and Smyrna.

And too, Sally’s resentful toward me. You can see it in the way she jabs me with my name, like a flathead into the ignition, twisting around desperate for the turnover.

Even keeled, half dragging the rattled waiter across the linoleum, the manager arrives before a weepy Sally. She asks what the problem is, though almost as soon as she’s said it, she recognizes something in the map of tears. I watch the manager’s glossy hands wrap around Sally’s shoulder, the cornflower nails on her collarbone. I think of Renaissance art, of how difficult it is to tell the saved from the damned, the human from the holy. Imagine the miracle of this woman’s corded neck as she bends toward Sally’s ear. Her pinned name tag falls to the floor. I’m searching for the glint of an odd halo.

“Dearest Sally,” I want her to whisper. “This man is not your problem.”

Still, the waiter is writing out the check: one side of mashed potatoes, one cup of chowder, one Diet Coke. It was all we could stomach. He clears his throat as he slides the bill to me. No mercy or transcendence here.

I’m counting out change, eyeing the distance between the front door and the car, trying to cue Sally that we might have overestimated our budget. But she’s in the embrace of the manager, moon-gray hair blotting out her face. There’s a fist-sized bandage above the manager’s bent elbow, barely clinging on. She flexes further, loops her arms around Sally, and the bandage lets loose, falling to reveal a Tweety Bird tattoo: the cartoon bird’s expression is serene and saintly, a word bubble above its head with nothing written in it, as though the cartoon is saying precisely nothing, speaking not a word, but there is substance and dimension to that nothing, an oval-shaped blankness that contains all that could be said.

Yes, this is what I would’ve liked to have said to Sally when her husband found out about us and drove off with the kids and could not even be moved to yell or cry but only to nod and say, “I might’ve known.” I’d have liked to tell Sally some big nothing without words when we took I24 south and passed the Rutherford County Community College, that cinderblock slab where I taught her the difference between Expressionism and Impressionism, among other things. Instead, I watched her wrench the ring off her finger and toss it out the car window. Two days later, we doubled back and crawled on all fours in the gas station parking lot looking for it. The attendant came out after a while, a girl with neon braces chewing on a straw, asking if we needed help. There was the ring, flashing jaundice yellow on her pointer finger. “Dropped a dollar bill,” Sally said, and we took off just after. I couldn’t look at her in the car and spent my time memorizing the billboards for Tennessee’s largest personal injury law firm. Had I seen Sally’s face, I might’ve known what she meant when she said, “Looked nice on her.”

Sure, it wasn’t a real diamond, but what’s real anymore?

Then we bought some mini-beers and chucked the empties down the interstate, not talking the whole way like we’d learned to do after so many miles.

When the manager lets go of Sally, they’re both a little syrupy, rubber-armed, and dour. I’m pulling lint, shifting around the receipts in my wallet. The bill becomes a magic trick before my eyes and disappears in the manager’s palm. But they’re all looking at me, Sally too, like I was the instigator, like I was the one bashing on the table asking god to wring my neck, to smite indiscriminately.

What can I say? I fled from the Buckaroo’s and called my ex-wife who’d been laid up at the hospital for two weeks. She wouldn’t take me back, but she’d let me sit beside her while she convalesced. And there too, I’d be the best at saying nothing.

Levitation

When I ask, he offers to teach me. I tore his number off the telephone poll but waited weeks to call. The energization exercises, he says when I arrive, will make my days better. My days are not good now. He breathes twice. That’s a double breath, he says. One for each lung, I say. No, he says. Both lungs. Should I be thinking about my body? I ask. We will think of our bodies in parts. We will start with the hands and move to the head. That’s the only part of my body I think about, I say. I know, he says. I only ask questions because I take this seriously. I know, he says. And I respect it, I say. I know, he says. And I want it, I say. That’s the place to start, he says. We stand beside each other, tense our bodies upward. My palms touch, then pull apart. The motion of opening a door when you can’t stand to see what’s inside. Calf, thigh, and upper arm, forearms and hands, buttocks and lower back and upper back, shoulders, neck—tense and release. Then we tap on our skulls from forehead to occipital. Rap the cranium to wake the brain. I ask how hard I should hit. Like me, he says. How do I know how hard he’s hitting? He isn’t hitting me. Fingers to the scalp. Medulla massage. The medulla is a word I’ve heard: an object, a location. Though I can’t recall what it does—what it’s for. Does a brain do something or is it for something? I ask. This is the mouth of God, the place where energy can reenter your body. His mouth on my brain? I say. Don’t think of yourself as separate from God, he says. But can I think of God in parts? His mouth, his calves, his hands? The real work is done in your sleep, he says. Sleep is the mirror of consciousness, and you can only see God in a mirror. I don’t sleep much these days. But when you place a mirror in front of another mirror, you see the same image growing smaller until it’s reduced beyond perception. When will I levitate? I ask. In my pocket, a dozen more numbers torn from telephone polls. Acupuncturists, car dealers, garage sales, free cats, and lost dogs. Levitation does not mean levitation. But he tells me to let go of my body like a hot perfume dissipating into air. Am I the air or the perfume now?