‘The man will remember me, reader.
The owner of ‘Eats’ is a man that claims to know a great deal, and it is men like this, men who are so caught up in knowing, that they aren’t much aware of the day-to-day details. They forget the names of their drivers, of distant, poorer relations. They forget employee birthdays- not individual birthdays (though they forget those too) but employee birthdays as a concept. They resent being reminded.
Of anything.
Their knowledge becomes a wall between themselves and the world. They carry the wall and speak through it and eventually forget that the voices on the other side are people like them.
It was my intention to include an interview with the owner of ‘Eats’ in this guide but the situation went awry. Suffice to say, the man will remember me.’
It has been a good long time since I have experienced the sort of nervousness that stretches several days, looming like a dark cloud over the landscape of my life. I have been plenty scared- I have been terrified- but terror leaves the body quickly and often with a great rush of relief. Terror gets me out of trouble. Nervousness hangs on me like shackles; it leaves me raw underneath.
It serves no purpose.
I am always nervous when I speak to someone who embodies an approximation of the zeitgeist. It seems, to me, a dangerous thing to align one’s beliefs too enthusiastically with those of the present. Beyond dangerous, it is blindly empowering. A train powers across the earth by the virtue of relying on tracks. It does not need to concern itself with steering, only with how quickly it is moving forward. The nature of a train is such that it will not be able to stop for something laid across the tracks, that leaving the tracks unexpectedly will be necessarily violent and damaging. The nature of the zeitgeist is the same.
I take the author at his word, that the owner of ‘Eats’ will remember something about their run-in, and I decide to continue in his footsteps. The owner’s house is well known about town. Not infamous, exactly, but enough of a local landmark that I don’t seem too suspicious asking. I drive by once before giving the man a call- a real gaudy place, not what I expected at all. A lot of purple paint. A seasonally appropriate flag waving just under the stars and stripes. Looks like Father’s Day is coming up. Who knew?
I call the house and explain I am writing a travel book. I tell the owner, Richard Jones, that I’m writing a travel guide and wanted to feature ‘Eats.’ I tell him it will only take a minute or two.
And he cheerfully agrees.
He doesn’t even ask my name.
I am nervous, reader, and I park my bike several blocks away so that I can build up the nerve to reach the door. I am nervous as I step under the man’s flags, flapping noisily. I hesitate on the stoop but eventually bring my hand to the bell. It rings cheerfully behind the curtained windows.
I wait, nervously.
The warning sound of a patrol car’s siren stops me from ringing it again a moment later. It has appeared in the street like a blue ghost, attentive and unmoving. I turn around and look both ways down the block and then back at the car. Sunlight on the windows obscures the officers inside. I can’t tell, at first, if I’m the suspicious one here.
When I reach for the doorbell again, the siren whoops and the passenger door of the patrol car swings open. A man steps out, an unsmiling police officer. He does not expect that I will run.
And I do.
Terror sends me fleeing through the neighborhood as it has led me through forests, fields, and highways before. I run without looking back and, somehow, manage to escape. I nervously return for my bike some time later and, some time after that, I do a little more research.
Turns out I was visiting Richard’s new place- the one before it burned down a couple years back in an act of arson. The suspect, a man that spoke to Richard shortly before the fire, was not found. The papers published a police sketch, though, and looking at it is like looking into a mirror.
-traveler