Zorb

I start thinking about myself.
My eyes are focused on the ceiling and I'm exhaling strong, sighing, and sitting opposite the cigarette in the ash tray on the small table in between us, which burns slowly. I think about thoughts as the purple smoke clouds over us. I'm watching a ceiling fan spin in a counter-clockwise position listening to her over the music.
She tells me it was beautiful.
"Italy is the most beautiful place."
"Oh?"
"I fell in love."
I wonder why all women in the Western world west of Lisbon and north of Grand Cayman fall in love with Italy.
"There is so much more out there," I say.
She takes a drag of the cigarette.
"Hardly. Love is in Italy. My heart is in Italy."
"Love is a strong word. Don't let love damage your heart."
She smiles at me as smoke expands over her head and it's a shallow smile.
I bring up the rest of Europe and she tells me it's a dump and I'm offended, culturally, and she goes on about the Italian men and the coffee and something about the architecture and the soccer and the history and the art.
Then fashion for a while.
"These cloths," she motions to her chest. "All my cloths are Italian."
"Congratulations."
"They really have to be, you know."
And I stop listening to her and picture her naked and realize, oddly, that the only thing pretty about her is her body and laugh because she doesn't know it.
She asks me if I've ever seen any of the world and I lie and say yes and all of a sudden I feel guilty for saying that because I really haven't seen much of the world - or enough - and at the moment I think about Fiji and postcards with beaches of Fiji and think to myself that I don't know what all the fuss is about. I want to know what all the fuss is about. And I feel shallow.
"I want to zorb. I'm not sure, exactly, what zorbing is, but I want to zorb."
"What?" She asks, almost coldly, as if I've interrupted. "I think it involves rolling off of something in a giant bubble, a cliff or something."
I'd like roll of something more often, I think, just build a bubble and fall and land somewhere totally new. It's good for your heart, they say.
And my mind drifts and I think of New Zealand and her, there, in Wellington, and what she's seen and done and her pictures of zorbing and all of a sudden I'm struck by how travel-starved I am.
Someone, who's merged with our conversation bubble and invaded my thoughts, points out that I'm a German-American born in California, who's lived in New York - the center of the world - and has Southern pride. And I smile.
"But I've never been to New Zealand."
"New Zealand can't...." And I've tuned her out again.
And I'm thinking of her, there, at the bottom of the world and think about the guts it takes to go to a place like that, just take your bubble and fall. Even Magellan never made it to New Zealand. Magellan had seen a lot of the world.
"New Zealand would impress you, I'm sure."
"I think I've seen enough of the world already," she says and smokes again, then looks at the cigarette and frowns. "I miss Italian cigarettes."
I stare at her and think about a girl I knew who may or may not have killed her boyfriend (bad story, but happy-ish ending), who was some way tied in with his death and had to leave her life and escape in a bubble and fall somewhere she'd never seen before to collect herself. She fell into Africa.
And I think about her pictures of Africa, and the places where she went, and think that Africa seemed like a world where you would find something.
"You know all of Christianity is based in Italy? Your soul feels free there." She says.
"Hardly," I say.
I think your soul is really free when you zorb, whatever that may be, when you take your bubble and fall and hope and see the beaches of Oceania or stare at those green hills of Africa, where ever they may be.
It starts raining in Lexington and I think about my adventures in Germany and remember that my soul really felt calm there, then remind myself that this is my fall and my zorb is here now.

Deadline.

I have a pen in my hand and I'm clicking the clicker as fast as I can, then stopping to twirl the pen between my fingers, then clicking as fast as I can again and doing this more quickly as the time rolls by when I notice the man next to me is starring at me with a pissed-off look on his face, watching me click in annoyance, and I catch his drift so I stop and say "Sorry" and stare back at my computer screen.
Then I'm angry that I said "I'm sorry." He didn't deserve it.
I stare at the computer screen and can't figure out how to end the story I'm writing.
I click the pen top again, faster, and the man next to me looks at me again, more annoyed. He has an old face and deep, sunken black eyes and this ashen skin and white hair and he always looks like he's frowning at me - not ayone else, mind, just me - and as I stare at him I think that this is journlism and this is my profession and I'm suddenly sickened tremendously by my surroundings: the pale walls, the sharp lights, the cofee-stained carpet, the word cursor that keeps blinking, waiting for me to finish the last sentence of the last paragraph of the last story I need to work on for the night. Trying to make deadline is hardest without the music to beat to. My music is the pen clicks, a thousand a minute.
Ash Face has a dying look on his face, the look of journalism, and I wouldn't be surprised if he missed the next deadline, due to death.
And I'm more frustrated at my sense of frustration and this frustration is vented in me clicking my pen, which apparently annoyes Ash Face. I think to myself that if he keeps on looking at me with his coal-black eyes I'll stab the pen in his throat.
And as I think that thought I begin reconsidering my life.
Because this my life.
I think that that thought was too much and too unnecessary.
Still, around deadline I come to the surmising that my future is this dead lined. No silver about the lining.