Things We Didn't Say Yesterday #13

In the end, not everything stops

He thought Brussels would be a good place to start--a city more ambiguous than London, not a place where people hide. Years ago in New York City Chris had met Sharon, a Canadian who worked her way through and around Europe sometimes as a waitress but usually as a busker who specialized in juggling and magic. "You learn to work the crowds in one place, you can do it anywhere," she had said. She had told him that the trick was to get the crowd involved physically and engaged mentally. "You get a couple of men in the show," she'd said. "You have them hold something or help in a magic trick. Sometimes I do some stand on their shoulders and juggle, and I try to get them to look up at me. The smart ones, they noticed that I'm wearing a short skirt, and if they look up, they might see something. Sometimes the husbands and fathers look up and I can tell by how they suddenly drop their eyes and look into the audience that they think they'll be in trouble with their girlfriends or wives later, just because they looked. Once when I was drunk during a show--I was a lot younger then--I wasn't wearing anything. It was a stupid thing to do. I'm not afraid to show a little tit now just to keep the guys looking, but I'm not over the top about it. I mean, I am Canadian."

Everything was packed again, though this time he would be putting the boxes and furniture into a storage unit. When he'd given his notice at work and told everyone how the divorce had shown him how he hadn't been happy in his job for a long time, most people walked away as though he'd said he hadn't been happy with them. Rebecca, who was in the initial throes of divorce herself, said that she didn't blame him at all, that if she wasn't taking care of her invalid mother, she'd join him.

Phillip had seemed exasperated about the whole thing. "This doesn't make a bunch of sense, Chris. Europe? Christ, you're not a kid, you know. You're supposed to be mature, contributing to society. That stuff. What the hell will you do in Europe?"

"I really don't know," Chris had told him. "People have been venturing away from home for a long time, haven't they?"

"What about Cindy--you told her?"

"Yeah."

"What'd she say?"

"She said that I should have fun. She said that in the end, not everything stops."

Phillip at looked at him. "What does that mean?"

"I don't know. But it's all she was going to say, and I really don't need her permission."

Phillip knew that Sharon spent part of the summer in Brussels and France, but he didn't think the odds were good at finding her. "Buskers are like gypsies, but we earn a pretty good living," Sharon had said. "We all stay with friends when we can. When I'm in London, I stay with Mike and Tracy. They're great jugglers, and they do tightrope tricks, too. We all go from festival to festival. Mike's the one who taught me about getting the crowd to get as close to us as possible, so we can see their faces. When everything's over and we ask for money, we want them to feel like they know us. Or, maybe that they owe us."

Chris figured that with his savings and the vacation and sick time he'd cashed in at work--not to mention what he'd gotten for selling Cindy's wedding ring--he could travel for at least a year before having to find real work. If he avoided the expensive cities, a year might even be conservative. Now, he looked at the boxes that held his possessions and wasn't sure if he should feel proud or sad at how little he'd accumulated over his lifetime. He had not yet given up the idea of leaving behind some type of legacy, but for the life of him he couldn't figure out what one might be.

"You hate flying, Chris, and you're headed to Europe," Cindy had said during their last phone conversation. "You hate living without a schedule, and you're doing this."

"I'll be okay, I think," he'd told her. "I really do."

Phillip would be taking the boxes to the storage unit, and he already had a key to the apartment. When the airport shuttle arrived and Chris climbed into the blue van, he tried to imagine what would happen next. The driver had his window cracked open, and the warm July air flowed through the van. He thought about what Cindy had told him, that in the end, not everything stops. He missed her, and he often thought that he still loved her. But as the van passed the park where they'd exchanged wedding rings, he barely noticed. He pulled the small Dutch dictionary out of his rucksack, and he leafed through the pages until he found the instructions for saying "good morning."