BACK ON THE REST

The driver from the airport wasn’t thrilled to hear that Martin lived so far away, but then came a second thought—maybe the money from the fare, or the opportunity to get out into the country—and his face relaxed. Martin settled in, securing his backpack between his feet, slowly forgetting about the suitcase in the trunk. It had been on his mind all day, ever since the zipper-pull broke at check-in when the woman putting it up onto the scale had handled it too roughly. “My bag,” he had cried, and then been immediately embarrassed. It was just a thing. But it was a thing that had been a present from his ex-wife. He had held onto her by holding onto it. Somehow the breaking of the zipper-pull was like a truth delayed. His backpack, by contrast, was new. He had bought it on the trip. It had been front and center in the window of a beautiful boutique, next to a tasteful sign that described its attributes: the sustainable material it was made from, the way the onboard solar panel allowed for a full day outside. He hadn’t cared about any of it before he saw the sign, but suddenly it was everything to him, and he bought the backpack despite its high price and immediately started to feel pride in it. “Do you mind if I smoke?” the driver asked, and Martin started to say that he would prefer not, wondering even before he spoke why he was being so polite about it. “I’m just joking,” the driver said. “Even if you didn’t mind, I’m not allowed. And I have to tell you, it’s a real killer for me. The not-smoking, I mean, even if smoking is a killer, too. I’ve been inseparable from cigarettes since I was seventeen.” Martin shifted forward on the seat and put his head back on the rest. Here, he thought, were all the ingredients for a rich and complex dish: one man struggling with memory and its artifacts, another one situating himself within a predetermined system of freedom and constraint. It would surely make a good scene in a movie, and wasn’t that what he did? But he was tired, more than he knew, and he fell asleep before they left the airport.

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas