Sinister: It Feels Like Overground

[P F]

English voices grow harder to credit the longer the
trip goes on, the further I get from the sodden
island. Charles and Camilla the story like an Amis
replay. Running along moving walkways, running and
gasping at airports, always the walking way. Behind a
lady flying to DC, beside a dude who sleeps then
watches a movie. The mechanics of flying bring less
thrill than sometimes – no equivalent of the curling
cruise over Dublin bay; we rise above England and are
up in the clouds. A calm channel plays birdsong: it’s
hard to turn it off. Virgin aesthetics: the safety
video with its cartoons of cool people, a long way
from the real fear of a crash, voiced by Behr and
Reeves. Even the sickbag has its own commissioned
painting, perverse defiance of the object. Garden
State’s first shot is inside an aeroplane, heading for
a crash: extraordinary what it’s OK to show on a plane
nowadays; so much for censoring all worries. The
film’s atmosphere ought to be right – NJ, autumn,
rain, drifting – but it’s just like a mediocre TV
show, a Portman’s Creek, resorting at times to ‘this
is the part of the movie where you’re supposed to say’
type lines. Alfie is worse still. I have managed not
to see Law much in films all these years: here he’s
utterly obnoxious, and not in a way foreign to his
reality. The style of speech, the expressions, the
voice, the confidences – it’s all his as well as the
character’s, makes me think him hopeless.

Turbulence, rocky times in the air, but at Dulles I am
back in the USA. Think of Ireland again, the stony
ground of the casual airport. Customs line: long time
since I’ve been framed as such an alien. Perhaps
they’re tougher on all this now, amid their flags and
painted soldiers, while a TV above dismally shows the
Beckhams, of whom thousands of miles have not spared
me the instant sight. The green cards asking if you’re
involved in terrorism, or crime; somehow the request
whether you were involved in the German government
1933-1945 carries a different piquancy, in its
political specificity, its tabbed years. They
photograph your face and thumbprints, in a scared new
world. The voices gone across now, transferred to
another accent, seeking Transfers, sent back from
those heavy queues to Check-In where it’s sparse,
light, downtime in the great halls. Miss the flight,
lose my case, lose my jumper. I am surprised at
Customs making me unlace and cool my boots, then
abandoning me to don them again on the other side.
Boarding gate sprint down modern, down contemporary
culture vacuum halls: risen above the runways are the
coffee shops and the stalls selling US T-shirts
including don’t blame me, I voted for Kerry. How that
smarting wound lingers. I think I could be late – no,
I am early still, the pilot and hostess assure me; sit
and read, they advise, for the plane’s delayed. The
boarding gate moves, the number changes: a customer
like a cheerier Merritt inquires about it. I wait with
The Fortress of Solitude, black and white boys playing
stickball and talking Spider-Man. How books, like
records, can claim a place, fill a time, a Washington
hour. The light changes a little, from a 1950s
afternoon to a drowsy American evening. Smaller plane,
internal flight. I’m beside a mid-aged brother,
working man with a mobile. Lights of DC golden
circling below; I wonder where the big famous things
are, the white sepulchres, whether W is in town, why I
can’t see the Beltway. My man thinks we’re going over
Philly when it must be Jersey.

Newark's bliss of no more Customs, that ordeal fully
performed: up and down escalators and stairs, round
one dulled carousel after another. Directions are
remarkably bad: half the time in New York I will give
better directions than the natives. Talking polite
English doesn’t quite work with some of these folk;
not till the Hotel Mona Lisa will everyone be so
polite back. At Info they tell of a door-to-door van:
I go get $100 out, sign up for the van at a panel of
redcoated characters, 2 Hispanic, one lady like it’s
1985 and Queen Latifah is back. Bill Murray needs to
walk into shot and begin some banter. In no time I
hear them call my name (I hear them call my name) and
a tubby Colombian is showing me how my suitcase rolls;
reassurance of this Virgil, this agent of the last
lap. Others in front of me, Europeans maybe, don’t
talk through the journey: it feels like a roundabout
route to Manhattan, for the great landmarks are
visible on the skyline out left from the start, and we
drive away from them, plunge into stilled Jersey
traffic, slow roads at eight o’clock like it was still
rush hour. Towers, freeways, factories coming and
going on either side; cars with their number plates
declaring New Jersey / Garden State, don’t remind me,
or occasionally a more specific New York / Park
Avenue. The radio is on, dumb perpetual news whose
casters also read the adverts: you enter a world and
find how fixed it is on these local vexations, local
news and chances. Madison Square Garden to buy ground
for a new stadium. Bigger things too: you can
encounter large changes through the sudden slant of a
foreign radio. Vicious New AIDS variety discovered.
And the one that counts for most: Miller was the
author of Death of a Salesman, also wrote The Misfits
for his wife Marilyn Monroe… the past tense tells you,
like with Diana, what’s happened. Broadway dimmed its
lights tonight to honour playwright Arthur Miller. The
news goes round and round.

Through the Lincoln Tunnel into Manhattan at last,
uptown, a ways to go to drop off these passengers and
get down the grid. Lights, buildings, avenues and
streets, thrill of signs, yellow cabs, this world like
no other, Broadway boogie woozy. It may be hard to
realize at the instant but this is as vivid as
anything that will happen: the first New York hour is
the epiphanic centre of it all. One by one the van
sheds its load; a woman writing on psychology and here
‘to party’, no, she doesn’t mean it (but it’s funny
the way Yanks say ‘party’ for having fun), is the last
before me. Then my geezer drives me a long way round,
giving me a tour, the Park there, Rockefeller Centre
flashing by on our right, 5th Avenue, - you’ve heard
of Mr Donald Trump? Look, his face on the side of this
building; polite interested responses and questions;
he lives in Queens, goes to business school, yes it
has things to do; he tells his associate he has 3 more
to drop off when it’s only me. Madison Avenue, the 
narrow front of the Hotel Sal Mineo: he’s out on the
sidewalk telling the doorman who I am, and that dude
in his suit is fulsomely welcoming the minute I get
out. Their management must make a big deal of first
impressions, sidewalk encounters: where would it count
more to treat the customer right? I am at an intense
centre of politeness, consumer manners, attentive
positive discourse. I try to clamber to their level.
Thank you, it’s great to be here, I say, like I’m
celebrating the triumph of the journey. I’d make a
good Yank, all this positivity. He loads the case onto
a rack and all is happening at once – I pay my man $20
and keeping the change is taken for granted, I keep a
receipt, now my man is wheeling me in, I grab my bag
and we walk in to the lobby, muted yellow light,
taste, chic, a live jazz band playing to our right, he
smiles at this, hey, that’s nice.

- Would that be the *real* Jacques Derrida, sir?
- Oh, I wouldn't go that far.

Up to reception where two pretty uniformed girls wait,
and they’re kind of pros, not menial, this place is
high class: even menial work here is a cut above, is a
career. She swipes my card to cover expenses, they’ll
be big don’t you worry. It’s about 2:30am my time, I
tell her, I think I’d better just get some rest. The
room with one wall orange, three white, a minibar that
looks enticing till you see the price, everything
provided but everything you use bearing an ogre of a
cost to pay at the end. After 21 hours on the go you’d
think I would sleep long. I don’t. I wake at five in
the morning, fourteen flights up.




	
		
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