R.D. Armstrong on the Other Side of the
MANX TOUCHES THE MAGIC
Manx drove through the city, listening to opera. He wished he had a convertible. On days like this, he would put the top down and cruise through Hollywood, a big, nasty redhead sitting next to him. He could picture it with such clarity. He'd crank up the stereo. she'd tilt her head back, shaking out her hair and they'd both laugh as he drove her back to his palace above the Yamoshira.
But he only had his baby-shit brown, Mazda 626 and his stereo. And his opera tape. So on he drove with Puccini and Verdi blaring out of his speakers. Manx liked to listen to opera when he drove through the city. It gave the drive purpose and a sense of drama. It gave the gridlocked traffic a reason to exist. You'd have to go a long ways to find anything that would make traffic palatable, but he had, at least, found something that made it more tolerable.
He hit the downtown interchange just as Madame Butterfly wept for the return of her sailor boy. The chromium and glass towers shimmered in the late afternoon sunlight like so many disco-balls, their mirrored windows casting rectangular images on neighboring buildings, illuminating the canyons of concrete and asphalt below. Negotiating the interchange was trickier because the glare of sunlight bounced off every speck of dust on the windshield and blinded him. Manx raised his hand in protest. It didn't help.
He thought about the redhead, again. He was suddenly horny. Then, he flashed on the number of times he had driven through this interchange, alone. It must have been hundreds, even thousands of times: trips into the city on business or to see a friend or score some dope. He began to drift into the memory lane. A montage of fantasy and reality danced across his mind's eye, as his imagination fluttered like a monarch from one moment to the next. The stereo blasted out the other butterfly's delicate song. Even the buildings seemed to sway in the late afternoon breeze that swept eastward towards Duarte and Pasadena.
Manx was suddenly immersed in melancholia as the Mazda scooted through traffic. He couldn't help feeling the rising pathos of the aria as it headed for the crescendo. He allowed himself to be buoyed upwards, the hairs on the back of his neck, the goosebumps on his skin and his heart rate: all rising, as if in rebellion.
He rolled down the window and inhaled the air slowly. He held it and then let it out. Manx let the magic touch him, once more.
From The Manx Tales by R.D. Armstrong (Lummox Press)
© Copyright 2000