Life Unbothered Read online

  “I don’t think that’ll be a problem.”

  “Good. Thank you and have a nice evening.”

  Brent nodded to the flight attendant, allowing him to relinquish my driver’s license. He imparted an unnatural smile as I lifted my limp hand to retrieve the license.

  After the two walked away, I saw Richard and Mundo in the middle of the terminal. They were talking to a small group of Fed types and a cop from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. I didn’t feel stable enough to walk over to join them, so I stood frozen in front of the empty ticket counter and waited for the outcome of their meeting.

  8. The Tightrope

  When their meeting with security was over, Richard and Mundo approached me as I stood in place, cemented to the floor.

  “What do you want to do now?” Mundo asked.

  “I want to go home,” I said in a shaky voice.

  “Let’s do a little gambling. It’ll get your mind off the plane ride. You’ll feel better once we get to a casino.”

  “No, Mundo,” I said. “I want to go back to Los Angeles.”

  “Come on Wade, you made it here. Yeah, maybe with some setbacks, but we may as well have some fun.”

  “Shut up, Mundo,” Richard bellowed. “Wade, we’ll do whatever you want. You want to go back to L.A.?”

  “Yeah, I really do.”

  “Let’s just go to a hotel—”

  “Mundo!” Richard’s eyes intensified. “Wade, do you want to fly back right now?”

  “No, I don’t want to fly. Anyway, I’m not allowed back on Festival Airways.”

  “Me neither,” Mundo broke in. “The security guys told me I violated like fourteen Federal laws on the plane and I was lucky they weren’t going to haul me to jail.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Richard said. “Let’s just get a rental car.”

  “That would be a lot better,” I said.

  We headed over to a row of car rental booths by the passenger ticketing area. Richard stopped walking about twenty feet from the Swifty Rent-A-Car counter.

  “Stay here with him. I’ll get us a car,” Richard said to Mundo.

  Mundo and I waited in silence as I attempted to remain as incognito as possible, not wanting to chance being noticed by anyone on the flight as passengers milled by. A lukewarm sickness arose in my stomach knowing that the flight had done irreversible damage. Perhaps years, even decades of airline avoidance engrained in the centermost crevasse of my soul. Maybe getting married to someone I didn’t love was an easier option than taking a forced flight with friends. No, it couldn’t be true, but the intensity of the moment made it feel as such. I stared at the back of Richard as he signed off on the rental car, but in actuality, I was staring at nothing. Shock was sweating itself off my body and my brainwaves turned nil as I waited. This was the common post-panic stage, body chemistry was diligently trying to rebalance itself.

  “Okay, I got a car,” Richard said when he returned. “We can go outside and get the Swifty shuttle to take us to their lot.”

  “You paid for a one-way rental?” I asked.

  Richard paused for a second and shifted his eyes over to me. “Well, not exactly. I failed to tell the agent that we didn’t plan to return. I figured we could deposit the car at an outlet in L.A.”

  “I don’t think you can do that,” I said. “I don’t want you to get in trouble on account of me.”

  “Wade, you’re the one who taught me that ‘one-way’ trick. Remember when we were skiing in Colorado and picked up that rental in Denver, but the snow was better in Utah so we spent a day driving the car over to Park City?”

  “Yeah, I remember.” I tried to smile, recalling the good time.

  “Well, you did the same thing at the rental place. That was a local rental, but you ended up dropping the car at the airport in Salt Lake City.” Richard looked at the well-traversed tile floor before he continued. “Now you’re worried about something like that? Shit, things have really changed.”

  I stared off beyond Richard and sank a bit in my shoes as it hit me how much I had changed. Just going to a bordering state assumed the form of a neurotic disaster.

  “Guys, there’s the Swifty shuttle,” Mundo said as he pointed outside toward the passenger pick-up area.

  After a short shuttle ride to the Swifty lot on the outskirts of the airport, we located the white Chevy SUV rental. Under the bright lights of the parking lot, my body cooled and goosebumps rose on my forearms. The night sky was clear and the temperature hovered in the low sixties. My skeleton still felt shaky, but the relief of knowing we were en route back to a safe place brought on additional mental and physical stability.

  “I’ll drive,” I offered as we approached the car.

  “No, I’ll drive,” Richard said.

  “It’s okay, I can drive. I just didn’t like the flight.”

  “I know you can drive. I’m the only one registered on the rental, so I have to drive.”

  “I don’t care who drives, just so it’s not me,” Mundo said. “I want to stretch out in the back. How long of a drive is it anyway?”

  “Probably about five hours or so,” I said.

  Mundo jumped into the back seat. “Well then stop at a store on the way out of town and pick up some beer.”

  Richard navigated the SUV around the Vegas traffic and stopped at a Horrible Hearst convenience mart just before the onramp to I-15. We all got out of the car and went to our respective places in the store. Mundo opted for a twelve-pack of Coors, I grabbed a twenty-ounce bottle of Diet Coke without caffeine, Richard got a bottle of water and some sunflower seeds.

  We proceeded to get on the interstate and roll out of Las Vegas, almost as fast as we had landed on the flight earlier. I fiddled with the satellite radio and the GPS while Mundo enjoyed a cold beer, placing it between his legs during gulping sabbaticals. As the road gained altitude about twenty miles outside the city, the brightness of the Las Vegas skyline reflected through the side rearview mirror. I looked in the sky above Las Vegas and saw the tiered pattern of lights from airplanes on approach to McCarran Airport. I couldn’t imagine anyone on those approaching flights ever feeling like I did—the fear, the physical reactions, the enclosure of the cabin.

  As we passed through the first set of barren hills, eventually all that remained of the city was the light shooting skyward from the top of the Luxor Hotel pyramid, the brightest beam in the world. Las Vegas was vanishing.

  “Wade, you want a beer?” Mundo asked from the back seat.

  “No thanks.”

  “Are you all right now?” Richard asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  Richard turned his head to me. From the corner of my eye I could see a bluish tint on his face from the dash lights.

  “You sure you’re fine? I mean, what the hell was that back there on the plane?”

  “I just don’t like flying,” I said.

  “Don’t like flying? Shit, Wade, freaking out like that is a little more than not liking flying. What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “I guess my mind hasn’t been right for a while,” I admitted. “I feel detached. Like when I go somewhere, my head doesn’t feel right.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I hesitated elaborating, but these were two of my best friends. Guys I’d keep in touch with for the rest of my life, no matter where our paths went, or how many years between contacts.

  “I feel like I’m walking a tightrope, some high-wire act from hell. You know?”

  “I don’t know what you just went through on that plane, but you know what? Quit being so mellow and downplaying this, and stop talking like some political asswipe. Tell me what’s going on with you—in English.”

  We looked at each other. I could see the seriousness in Richard’s eyes, and it seemed he could discern the sadness in mine. I decide
d to come clean. Outside of my family, Richard and Mundo were the two best people to explain what I was going through. I gathered my thoughts for a moment as I glanced out the car window into the darkness.

  “Well, I’ve become fearful of flying over the past few years. I get in a plane and I have a panic attack.”

  “I get nervous when I get on a plane,” Mundo said.

  “No, it’s different than just nervous, it’s like uncontrollable terror.”

  “Yeah, I’m scared sometimes in my life, but I learn to deal with it.”

  I turned my head to Mundo. “It’s not about getting scared. It’s about signals firing in my head that don’t make rational sense. What the hell do you care about it anyway? Just enjoy your beer.”

  “What the hell do I care?” Mundo leaned his oversized head forward to fit in between the front seats. “I’m getting transferred at the end of the month to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. I have to move my family out there. I was supposed to be transferred earlier, but delayed it until after your wedding.”

  “I didn’t know you were being transferred.”

  “No shit. You’ve been such a hermit lately, nobody talks to you anymore.”

  “Mundo, I’m sorry,” I said.

  “I don’t mind the transfer, but it does piss me off that you don’t think I care. Hell, Wade, everyone cares about you. Richard and I both got liberty passes from our wives to take you to Vegas tonight. Of course the bachelor party we had planned would have been a tougher sell to my wife. But since we heard about the canceled wedding, everyone has been concerned. That’s how much we all care.”

  I stared at him a moment, not knowing what to say.

  “So explain to us what’s going on,” Mundo said. “I know you just think I’m a dumb jarhead, but at least try.”

  “Yeah, tell us,” Richard requested.

  I sighed, then started my explanation. “Well, what I have is panic disorder, or at least that’s what the doctors call it. It’s some kind of mental condition that causes unprovoked bouts of severe anxiety and fear for no obvious reason.”

  “What does it feel like?” Richard asked.

  “You know like when you’re in a dangerous situation and your body starts reacting?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let’s say you’re walking down a sidewalk and an out-of-control semi truck came barreling directly at you. Or better yet, the truck is trying to run down Mundo.”

  “Thanks,” Mundo said sardonically.

  “When you see the truck, a reaction occurs in your body. A fight-or-flight response kicks in.”

  “Fight or flight,” Richard noted. “I’ve heard of that.”

  “Yeah, it’s a survival mechanism in all of us. In most cases, unless you’re suicidal or on crack or something, you wouldn’t remain on the sidewalk as the truck approaches closer, or fight it, so the flight response kicks in to produce the physical ability to jump out of the way to safety. That’s why when you’re scared, your adrenaline flows, your breathing increases, there may be trembling… all products of fight-or-flight. The aftermath is a natural ingrained avoidance of getting in the way of semi-trucks, along with most similarly dangerous situations.”

  “Yeah, but that fight-flight thing is healthy, it keeps you alive,” Mundo noted.

  “True, it is healthy,” I agreed. “But imagine you’re in a restaurant with your wife eating a leisurely dinner when the same reactions arise—like the semi-truck was about to run you down. There’s no danger present, but the same physical and mental reactions occur for no distinct reason. After repeated episodes, all of a sudden your brain tells you, ‘hey dumb-ass, don’t go into restaurants’. So you avoid them.”

  “You’re scared of restaurants too?” Mundo asked.

  “I’ve avoided them in the past, but it’s only out of the fear of having a panic attack. It’s not like I truly think restaurants are dangerous.”

  “Well some are. You should have gone with us to that chorizo place in Harbor City a couple of weeks ago. It almost gutted me,” Richard said.

  “Serves you right,” I said. “But the avoidance can grow to other things. In severe cases, some people are so consumed by panic attacks they haven’t left their house for over a decade.”

  “No way, I don’t believe it. How long have you suffered from this?” Richard asked.

  “From what I can tell, it started in college.”

  “Yeah, I figured that. You seemed like you started getting depressed while we were in college.”

  “Depression has been a byproduct of this. The panic attacks can induce phobias that lead to depression. It’s like having a physical handicap that cycles in and out.”

  “I just don’t understand what you’re going through,” Richard said as his hands fiddled to reset the cruise control to a faster speed.

  “I know it makes no sense to you.”

  “All I remember Wade, are things like that trip we took to Europe and Africa eight years ago. Remember that guy we paid twenty bucks to show us how to get to the top of one of the Great Pyramids without getting caught?”

  “Yeah, we had to wait until after midnight, after the touristy light show to climb up to the top.”

  “I still have that picture on my wall. The one taken the morning we woke up on top of the pyramid at sunrise.”

  “I wonder what would have happened if we got caught up there spending the night. That guy who got us to the base of the pyramid was all paranoid,” I said.

  Richard laughed. “We could’ve gone to an Egyptian jail. That was the same trip we took that ferry from Spain to Morocco just a couple of days before.”

  “Yeah, I remember. Our passports were pulled and we got locked up in that cement room for twenty hours.”

  “You got locked up in Morocco?” Mundo asked.

  “More like detained. We happened to pull into Tangier the day of a government coup attempt,” I explained. “It was just bad timing on our part. But they gave us our passports back and we got the hell out of Tangier and took a train down the coast to Casablanca.”

  “That was the greatest trip I ever took,” Richard said.

  “Yeah, that was a good one.”

  “I just can’t believe you’re the same person. I mean, an hour flight and you freak out?”

  “I know,” I said with resignation.

  I sat silently for a while, mesmerized by the road as I reminisced about Arizona. I had been there for nine years through college and my stint as a mediocre businessperson. After the plane ride, it was obvious I couldn’t lead a normal life if I continued burrowing myself into an inky grotto of instability. Change was needed.

  “Hey Richard, you really serious about the job you offered?” I asked.

  “Wade, it’d be great if you were to move back to California and come work at my company. I mean, you can work on this panic problem at the same time. I think you should get away from Phoenix and come back.”

  “I guess you’re right. I’ll come back and work for you… and thank you for the offer. I just wish I could have flowed into society without a hitch like you and many other friends. Everyone’s married, getting careers, going places. I’m having a hard time establishing anything.”

  “Promise me two things,” Richard said. “Don’t claim to be a victim, and quit feeling sorry for yourself.” He stared at me intently with wide eyes. “I just hope you’re not trying to shit on your doily.”

  “Shit on what?”

  “Your doily,” Richard answered. “It’s something a few of us made up one drunken night to describe some of our friends from high school. You know, we all grew up in a nice area, most of us came from families with parents who work hard and make a decent amount of money. Our lives were kind of like doilies, nice and pressed—like your pants always are. Some guys really fucked that up when they got out into the real world.” />
  “No, Richard, I’m not trying to soil my doily in the least. I just have some mental challenges that are affecting my life. It’s like there’s some corrupt bling bling in my brain, fat gold chains of despair wrapped around my genes.”

  “Well, you better cut those chains or life may be over, my friend.”

  “Thanks for the advice. I’ll work out the details and timing for me to move back. I’ll get rid of the house and move my stuff over later this month. I have to be back for a doctor’s appointment in a couple of weeks. How about if I start after that?”

  “That’s fine. I’ll make it worth your while,” Richard said, as we knocked knuckles to seal the deal.

  Some sounds came from the back seat. Mundo’s head was bobbing to the flows of the rental car’s suspension. It took only half the twelve-pack to do the job. I tapped Richard’s arm and directed my eyes to the back seat.

  “Typical Mundo. He always goes out like a light in a car,” I said.

  9. The Return

  We arrived home just before four in the morning after a hazy-headed, yet panic-tolerant drive from Las Vegas. After the first hour, the drive was fairly uneventful. It beat worrying insistently about the location of the next road exit. My brain was too tired from the flight and had to wind down. I decided to spend the rest of the short night sleeping at Richard’s house so we could return the rental SUV the next morning and retrieve his truck at LAX.

  We woke up at about nine and Richard drove me to pick up my car at Poquito Gato where I had left it the night before when Richard and Mundo kidnapped me. The restaurant was closed, and my car sat alone in the parking lot.

  I followed Richard to the Swifty Rent-A-Car lot on El Segundo Boulevard, in close proximity to the Los Angeles International Airport. Richard went through the drop-off procedure while I stayed in my car. I tilted my head back and let the sunrays soak my face. The warmth was relaxing, but it didn’t strip away my sullen mood. I was embarrassed of what I had become and ashamed I had ruined the trip with Richard and Mundo. The flight had further stripped my esteem of any sense of traveling adventure. I believed my current passport would expire with no other country stamps, except for the two dozen that were already in there. What about the states within this continent? I had been to forty-five of them—would I ever see the other five? Would my feet ever reach the soil in Alaska, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota or Vermont? I hoped the incident on the flight was the bottom of the emotional curve and some kind of reversal of fortune would breathe new life into me.