Culture . 02/22/2008 06:55 AM . Tim Raveling

Section 1

Damian Porter stepped through the doorway into China.

This street in downtown Beijing was little different than the one he’d just left in Chicago. The old buildings were squatter; the flags flying above the commissary at the end of the block had red and then yellow instead of the blue and white. Damian had seen it all before.

Today he didn’t feel like Chinese for dinner. He walked down the street, ticking off options in his mind. Sushi? No. Tokyo was blistering this time of year. American grease? New York was loud, and served nothing else these days. Pasta in Rome, no, the best Italian places weren’t even in Italy anymore; hell, this whole street wasn’t worth much. He took a right into Munich, caught a glimpse of a starlight and stone, and took the first left at Albuquerque.

Skyscrapers in the New Mexico desert. Too urban. He found the locals a block or so away and stepped through one into a little bar a hundred or so miles south of the Mexico border, filled with the smell of cigarettes and cheap tequila. Tin Spanish guitar drifted from the speakers above the bar, and a fat man in a greasy apron eyed him with disinterest.

“Burger,” Damian said, swiping his cash card, “medium.”

He took the hamburger—smashed bun, soggy pickles, mayo, ketchup, cheap meat—to the exit sign and stepped outside to eat.

The heat of the New Mexico desert washed over him dry as bone dust, and the warm breeze that swept across the plateau was tasted of sand and desolation. Two pieces of metal rusted in the sun in front of the grill building, marked in faded red paint with the words “diesel” and “unleaded.” An ancient cracked road disappeared into the distance, asphalt surface falling to pieces, desert scrub reclaiming its territory piece by piece.

There was nothing out there, nothing for miles, Damian thought. No need to be. The little grill would have its electricity from the tidal farms in the Pacific and its water from the springs in Russia, every pipe and wire snaking through a little door of its own. Damian shook his head. The universe around the planet Earth was beginning to look like Swiss cheese.

A lone hawk drifted in the blue sky far above, riding the thermals in wide and lazy circles. A tumbleweed rolled across the desert in a cloud of dust.

Damian finished his burger and walked back into the bar. Noise; the same mix of culture and language you heard anywhere else in the world. Department of Transportation said the doors brought the human race together, and they were right, but hell, Damian thought, if this was “global culture” then McGrease’s was fine dining.

He stepped back into Albuquerque, then walked through Boston to Casablanca.

It was late evening there, and the tendrils of a red sunset were lingering on the Atlantic to the west as the first stars came out above. Damian sat down on the ancient fortress wall above the crashing surf, dangled his feet off the edge, and breathed the warm wind. The ocean was empty, the old port reclaimed by artificial beaches where a few packs of teenagers were lighting the first bonfires of the night. The hulk of an old cargo freighter lay rusting in a historical exhibit half a kilometer away, decrepit shadows in the gathering dusk.

“You look lonely.” A voice to his left.

A girl stood there in a long coat. Her short blonde hair haloed her head in unruly tufts, and her eyes were the clear blue of a summer’s day. He blinked. The phrase might have been a clichéd pick-up line in another situation, but from this girl it was simply an observation.

She laughed. “You deaf?”

He shook himself. “No,” he said. “Sorry. I was thinking.”

“Dangerous.” She sat down on the wall beside him and turned to face the sea. Her legs dangled over the edge and she kicked them absently. “Might come to realize something you didn’t want to know.”

Damian looked at her. “You are …?”

“Eva,” she said. “I’m Eva.”

“You have a last name?”

She shrugged.

“Well, Eva,” he said, in his best Bogart impersonation, “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

Eva looked at him quizzically. He felt old.

A cool sea breeze picked up off the ocean and ruffled through Eva’s hair. She breathed it in and sighed. “We’re like that,” she said, nodding out at the sky. “Like the wind, I mean.” She glanced away and shrugged, slim shoulders, an almost boyish figure. “Maybe a long time ago we were like this,” she tapped the stone wall they sat on. “Little atoms that never moved, right next to the same people in the same place your whole life. Maybe later we were like that,” she gestured out toward the sea, “staying with people you knew, but always moving.” She was silent for a moment. The first stars began to appear in the darkening sky above the light of the city. “Now,” she said, quiet, “now we’re just atoms in the wind, you know? Flying through the world and bouncing off each other, meeting for a few minutes and then never seeing each other again.” She glanced back at him. “Like us.”

The girl was very pretty, and very young. Damian swallowed and looked back out at the ocean. He tried to smile. “Saves money on taxi fares.”

The quizzical look again, and again Damian felt old.

“Maybe that’s the problem,” she said.

“It’s a problem?”

“Damn it,” she said suddenly, cursing with the self-conscious defiance of one new to the art. “I want to explore! Today I saw Japan, Norway, Paris, and Brazil. I saw them all, and they were all the same, and they were all easy. Like watching them on TV.”

Damian thoughtfully turned his watchband on his wrist. “How old are you?”

Flush of the cheeks. “Sixteen.”

“You’ll grow out of it.” He glanced at her. “Your parents know where you are?”

“Who cares? It’s fifty meters to the door to my bedroom.” Her chin sank onto her knees. “You can’t even run away anymore.”
Damian’s watch chimed, and he glanced at it. He had work in ten minutes.

“I have to go.”

“Bye.” She glanced at him once, then looked back out at the ocean. As he was turning to leave, she spoke again. “Do you really think I’ll grow out of it?”

He paused. “Yeah. I think so.”

“Oh.” She sighed and sank her chin on her knees. “That sucks.”

to be continued…

Tim Raveling is a freelance writer.


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