Having discovered that we are eight years old again, Mularski, Nebraska and I sat in Seattle airport’s arrival zone, waiting for our belongings to be carted from the plane.
“I got it,” said Mularski, shaking his head. “We didn’t survive. This is the afterlife.”
“We’re here,” I said, pointing. “There’s the plane. This is too weird for an afterlife. Jeez,” I added, “you have a whole head of hair!”
“And you’ve got the buckiest front teeth I’ve ever seen. I’m calling you Bucky from now on. Are you saying we’ve gone back in time?”
“Doubt it. I didn’t know you when I was eight.”
“Maybe it’s some kind of a time warp,” said Nebraska.
“I guess she was wrong,” I said aloud, if to myself.
“Who was wrong?” said Nebraska.
“My grandmother.”
Nebraska shot me a quizzical look.
“I was running around the house,” I explained. “I must’ve been about eight. And Nan says, out of the blue, ‘Enjoy your childhood—it never comes again.’ It stuck with me. And now look at me.”
“Talk about stuck,” said Mularski. “Let me ask you, did your life flash before your eyes up there in that plane?”
“Started to,” I said. “But it stopped at eight years-old, when the plane came out of its dive.”
“Me, too!” shrieked Nebraska.
Mularski nodded, a serious expression on his usually comical face.
“You, too?” I asked.
“Yup. Eight.”
“I thought that flight was our exit ramp,” I said.
“Every exit is the start of a new adventure,” said Nebraska.
“Exit-stench-alism,” said Mularski.
“What’s that,” I said, “a philosophy from Turdistan?”
“Turdistanis believe in honest flatulence.”
The three of us broke out in giggles, as if we were… eight years old.
“Okay, so we’re all children again,” said Mularski. “Now what?”
I shrugged. “I guess we just continue our trip.”
“Maybe it’s the shrooms,” said Nebraska.
“The what?” I asked.
“Magic mushrooms. I took some before the flight. My guess is that I’m just hallucinating this.”
“But I didn’t take any mushrooms,” I said. “And I’m seeing it, and feeling it too.”
“How do I know you both aren’t trying to freak me out?” said Nebraska.
“Typical girl,” said Mularski. “It’s all about you. So what you’re saying is, we look and feel like eight because you’re tripping?”
“That’s my perception,” said Nebraska.
“And that means when you come down,” said Mularski, “we’ll be grown up again?”
Nebraska nodded.
Mularski shook his head. “Cosmic fluctuation is the only explanation. We’ve crossed a threshold.”
“More like a tabula rosa,” said Nebraska.
“What’s that?”
“A clean slate.”
“It must have had something to do with having a near-death experience,” I said. “In any case, we might as well keep going. Whatever it is, it’ll probably wear off.”
“So let’s just continue as normal?”
“What else can we do? If we went to a hospital they’d think we were nuts and probably lock us up, bind us in straitjackets and shoot us up with Thorazine.”
“Maybe it would help,” said Mularski.
“This is amazing,” said Nebraska, inspecting her face in a mirror she’d plucked from her colorful woolen handbag. She had blue eyes, one with a rust speck in her iris, a cleft in her chin, and full eyebrows opposed to the thin, plucked version of earlier.
“We have hotel reservations for the Edgewater.” I checked my wallet. “We still have credit cards. Let’s grab a cab.”
“You think a taxi will take three kids?” said Mularski.
I shrugged. “Why not?”
So, after grabbing our bags from the luggage we aimed for Ground Transportation.
At the taxi rank, a cabbie got out, popped open his trunk. “Where to?”
“The Edgewater Hotel?” I said with trepidation.
The cabbie nodded; we climbed into the backseat, Nebraska in between Mularski and me, exchanging glances with one another. He didn’t say anything about three kids traveling without grownups. So far, so good.
“Where you folks from?” the cabbie asked.
Nebraska giggled. She was dealing with metaphysical transformation and mushrooms.
“Santa Barbara,” said Mularski.
“Nice,” said the cabbie. “What brings you up here?”
“We just survived an air crash, mister,” I said. “It doesn’t matter where we are—just glad to be alive.”
“Really?” The cabbie turned. “What happened?”
We looked at each other and broke into hysterical laughter.
The cabbie retreated.
“Here comes the challenge,” whispered Mularski.
“Who-what?” I said.
“Three kids trying to check into a hotel. We may have to find a park to camp out in tonight. Moooohh.”
“What was that?” asked Nebraska.
“Oh, shit—I got it back!” said Mularski.
“What, the moos?” Nebraska giggled.
“It’s something I had when I was a kid.” Mularski gulped. “When I was eight.”
“What something?” I asked.
“It’s called aboiement.”
“A-boy-ment?” said Nebraska. “No fair. Is there such a thing as a-girl-ment?”
“Very funny.
“I made animal sounds,” said a sheepish Mularski. “They’re involuntarily. Baaa. See?”
“You mean you can’t control yourself?” I said.
“That’s sort of what involuntary means. Baaaa. Shit, see? I can’t believe this crap.”
“It is pretty unbelievable,” I said.
“I want to see the Space Needle,” said Nebraska, her eyes focused through the windshield.
“That way,” said the cabbie, pointing left-of-center. “It’ll come into view over there in a view minutes.”
We three sat transfixed in a game of Who-can-see-it-first.
“There it is!” hollered Mularski. “Caw-caw.”
“Jeez,” I said. “You’re a walking barnyard.”
Nebraska giggled. “He’s right—I grew up on a farm.”
Mularski shook his head. “I had four brothers who teased the hell out of me with this. And that’s not counting everyone at school. So maybe you could cut me a little slack.” Mularski concluded his plea by barking like a dog.
And all Nebraska and I could do was laugh at the incongruity of it all.
Soon, we were immersed in the grunge of a city. And I wondered why we had bothered coming to Seattle instead of a resort somewhere. Most American cities are hideously ugly—a mish-mash of buildings haphazardly constructed without serious planning oversight. Seattle was no different. Without the Space Needle we could have been Anywhere, USA.
I braced myself as a doorman outside the hotel opened the car door and greeted us. “Welcome to the Edgewater.”