Zippered Flesh 2: More Tales of Body Enhancements Gone Bad (46 page)

“It’s beautiful. What does it mean?”

“Man will never be left without language.”

Halfway through a ginger ale and an unfunny-romantic comedy on the seat monitors—soundless because he wasn’t interested—the Starbucks coffee wanted out. Whenever Gil needed to use the restroom on flights, he was never alone. A line of three needed to un-Starbucks their bladders.

He excused himself as he squeezed by the Indian brothers and joined the end of the line. As he moved up the aisle, he hoped to hear one of the languages he had purchased so he could understand the translation process. Most passengers were engrossed in the movie, occupied with handheld devices or otherwise silent.

That’s what the world’s becoming
.
Silent
.

After a dance with an overweight fellow returning to his seat, Gil noticed the Danish couple at the back of the plane.

As Gil moved closer, he was able to understand their conversation, as if by telepathy or a teleprompter in his head:

“Jeg begik en fejl,”
the woman said.
I made a mistake.

“Det kan man vist roligt sige.”
I’ll say.

“Hvad mener du?”
What do you mean?

“Det, jeg siger.”
What I am saying.

“Men du er jo nødt til at tilgive mig, hvis vi skal komme videre.”
But you have to forgive me, if we are to move on.

Forgive her for what? What could she have possibly done?

She touched her husband’s hand, but he pulled away and turned to the window. She looked at Gil, but she didn’t smile this time. He felt pity, and then guilty for listening in to this private conversation.

They were going through what he’d gone through months before with Nell. Their body language told him they’d fallen apart. They were at the end of something once wonderful.

“Det ved jeg ikke, om jeg kan,”
the Danish man said.
I don’t know if I can do that.

“Jamen, hvad vil du så?”
Well, what do you want then?

“Lige nu vil jeg bare have, at du ikke siger noget.”
Right now, I want you to not say anything.

The Danish couple’s fairytale relationship was just that: a fairytale. Whether or not Gil wanted to listen, he was going hear and understand their conversation. From their meeting at the gate, they believed he couldn’t comprehend their language, and probably assumed others couldn’t either.

Gil felt wrong, but he couldn’t turn it off. He focused his attention elsewhere, pretending ignorance, looking to the signs that read
NO SMOKING
and
NO E-SMOKING
, to the personal air vents and flight attendant call buttons and the overhead compartments, anything to hold his attention other than their words. He wanted to return to his seat, to hold his bladder longer, but the line had filled in behind him and he was trapped.

If he could turn back time, he’d return the damn language.

“Hold nu op. Alle begår fejl. Vi er kun mennesker. Og hvis vi ikke kan tilgive, hvor ender vi så?”
Come on. Everybody makes mistakes. We are only human. And if we can’t forgive, then where do we end?

Perhaps she had cheated on him. But it was none of Gil’s business.

He massaged his temples, trying not to listen, trying not to remember Nell, trying instead to recall the back of the Sky Mall digazine from the pouch in his seat—an advertisement for a perfume with a horizontal half-naked couple on a beach with a caption proclaiming the name of the perfume and a tide frozen in time, indefinitely lapping at their bodies. A fake perfect-happy, half-naked couple colliding on the sand in halftones with an illuminated heart-shaped bottle in the foreground, yet the words—

“Ti nu stille,”
he said.
Be quiet.

Words ever so right.

Gil tried to bring up the book, to hide in the digital pages stored in his mind, but the words weren’t there. Bradbury was gone.

“Så det er det?”
So that’s it then?

“Måske.”
Maybe.

“Skal jeg gå?”
Do you want me to leave?

He’d said the same thing to Nell. Different words, but the same words.

“Nogle gange er fejl så store, at de ikke kan tilgives. Vil du ikke nok tie stille. Jeg har brug for at tænke.”
Sometimes mistakes are so big, that they cannot be forgiven. Please be quiet. I need to think.

“Undskyld. Jeg mener det virkelig. Hvis jeg kunne gøre det om, ville jeg gøre det. Undskyld.”
I’m sorry. I really mean it. If I could do it over, I would. I’m sorry.

“Tak.”
Thanks.

Gil shuffled forward. The Danish woman caught him trying not to look at her this time and she smiled, but the passion hidden in that smile did not need translation:
passion
meant
suffering
. He saw that in her eyes. Although her eyes were dry, hurt welled instead of tears. She turned to her husband, but he gave his attention to the white blanket of cloud outside the window, so she focused on the child between them. That’s when the corners of her mouth curled and she silently cried, a single tear dripping onto her lap.

The primal language.

Action and reaction. Feeling. Emotion.

The baby cooing and the mother’s instinctual response of tending to a child too young for dialogue, just
goo-goos
and
ga-gas
and other nonsense noises. Pets cuddling when you’re sick, acting sad when you’re sad, happy when you’re happy. A baby crying because another baby is crying. Sadness answering sadness, anger countering anger, joy begetting joy, a smile met with another smile ...

Tongues only wrought confusion.

Virkeligheden er jo ligesom i eventyrene
, she’d said to Gil at the gate. He understood now. People often lived the fairy tale life, masking misery with ideals of happiness. The words had sounded beautiful; now they sounded terrible.

They sounded familiar.

He offered the woman a crooked smile, hoping she’d look up from her sorrow to see that
he
understood, to see empathy: something they could communicate without the need for words.

I don’t want them anymore
.

After touchdown in Portugal, he couldn’t sleep. His mind would not shut off. Every conversation required his attention, no matter the language, whether he wanted to hear or not.

And then all at once the pages of the flashbook returned.

To quiet the endless conversations translating through his mind—mixtures of Spanish-Portuguese-English-French—Gil referenced
Fahrenheit 451
, recalling and reciting the words as if one of its memorizing characters.

“The woman’s hand twitched on the single matchstick,” he said. “The fumes of kerosene bloomed up about her ... felt the hidden book pound like a heart against his—”

01100011 01101000 01100101 01110011 01110100 00001101 00001010

What’s wrong with this damn thing?

A woman wanted his attention, to ask him something, directions perhaps.

He kept walking out of the Lisbon terminal.

“Silly words, silly words, silly awful hurting words ...”

Gil skipped ahead to a favorite part: the end.

“And when it came to his turn, what could he say, what could he offer on a day like this, to make the trip a little easier? To everything there is a season. Yes. A time to break down, and a time to build up. Yes. A time to keep silence, and a time to speak. Yes, all that. But what else. What else? Something, something ...”

A man standing next to a white Mercedes with a lit
TÁXI
roof ornament hailed him down the moment he stepped out of the Lisbon terminal.

“
Americano, americano! Senhor
, you need taxi?”

Did he look
that
American?

“
Que hotel?
”

“Which hotel?” He checked his cellphone. “Yes, it’s uh… here it is. Sofitel Lisbon Liberdade.”

“Sofitel Lisbon, nice...
cinco estrelas
.” The driver held out his hands. “
Dar!
”
Give!

Give?

The man shook his hands for the luggage, and Gil understood without needing the words, which didn’t do him much good when translated; he was having trouble keeping up.
Cinco estralas
, the man had said, meaning the hotel:
five stars.

“Oh, yes. Thank you,” Gil said, handing over his suitcases.

Translation takes time
, Nell’s voice haunted.

“
Obrigado
.”
Thank you.

“Orbrigado.”

The cabbie opened the trunk, tossed his luggage inside. Gil made his way into the backseat, where he was surprised to find a man already seated.

“
Ei
.”
Hey.

Gil nodded. The man nodded. The doors closed, and that was that. Then something hot speared his leg in a way that made his muscles spasm and his jaw clamp.

“
Ser ainda
,” the man said.
Be still.

He had buried the needle of a large syringe deep into Gil’s thigh as the taxi sped away. The barrel stuck from his leg like a knife hilt. Gil controlled his eyes, but the rest of his body paralyzed; not numb, because the liquid burned along his leg, up into his groin, and blossomed in his chest. The sensation crawled up his neck. He’d clenched his teeth at the initial agony and now his mouth was stuck shut, lips tight.

Gil tried to scream at the reflection of the taxi driver, but the taxi driver smiled and repositioned the mirror so that Gil stared at himself.

They were going to jack him, and there was nothing he could do.

The man next to him felt Gil’s pocket and pulled out his handheld. He held it in front of Gil’s face to unlock it with the facial recognition security. Within seconds, he brought up Gil’s digital passport and banking information and scanned it into an antiquated touchscreen device.

“We’re sorry to do this to you,
Americano
. You have made recent purchases, no?
Tradução para a língua
.”
Language translation.

Gil’s sealed mouth made untranslatable noises.

“Our
amigo
entende
Portuguese.”

“
Vamos
, Abrahan,” said the driver.
Let’s go.

Abrahan didn’t translate to anything. It was his name.

“Bad luck for you,
meu amigo
,” said the man next to him. He pressed the handheld to Gil’s face, close enough to make it blurry and unreadable.

“
Lamentamos muito, meu amigo
,” the driver said.
We are very sorry, my friend.

“You found something you weren’t supposed to find.
Dados sensíveis
.”
Sensitive data.
“But your find is, how do you say ...
inestimável
?”
Invaluable.