The Tour Van

Reverie (n.) : (12c., Modern French rêverie), from resver "to dream, wander," a word of uncertain origin (also the source of rave).

I’m working for a tour company riding in a dilapidated van, watching a video on a screen mounted behind the driver, and Indigo Bandini, a guy who started only three days ago and is someone I introduced to the management because I knew him from a wine bar in a rundown shopping center where he claimed to be a level-14 sommelier which I always found highly improbable but never investigated, though I considered him a nice fellow who’d fallen on hard times, is weirdly the one I’m hearing in the voiceover, and he’s imitating a PBS documentary-style sonorous voice about how management’s always right and how so many good decisions are being made by management these days, and I’m thinking he really sounds phony when he talks like this, and it’s making me uncomfortable, and then he starts saying, One of our colleagues who is a fool was recently busted for selling dope, and the picture on the screen is of a rock, a large boulder which several pairs of hands are busy wrapping up with silver and white tape, and I’m thinking this image must symbolize the arrest of the person who’s being talked about, and I immediately wonder if that person is me, and this is making me feel even more uncomfortable and nervous, and I’m wondering if this entire outing is a set up, and when we finally arrive someplace I’ll be arrested, but I’m also laughing inside a little because I know I haven’t been doing dope lately, much less selling any because dope doesn’t agree with me, it has the tendency to make me paranoid and introverted and self conscious and it lowers my body temperature and I start shivering and become excessively aware of physical sensations like the feeling of individual hair follicles growing in my ears and nostrils, and the sound of blood surging in my arteries so loudly that it drowns out traffic noises, and people talking and other environmental hubbub that’s typical of city life, and this makes me feel I’m on the verge of a heart attack, but simultaneously I start to wonder if I’m standing weird, or if my hands are in a weird position, or if I’m just looking weird generally, and this thought makes me try to re-adjust the angles of my body and cough and clear my throat, pull in my stomach, and square my shoulders which, when I try to do it all at once, causes dizziness, and I have to sit down and I feel even more exposed and awkward, and when I look up at the people who surround me I see hidden agendas in their eyes, and the words coming out of their mouths seem even more shallow and meaningless than usual, so now when I’m out with people who enjoy doing dope I always politely refuse, but if this team-building field trip is not a setup to get me arrested then I’m forced to wonder why we are all together in this bus? 

But of course the answer is obvious, it’s because it’s part of our jobs to be here, and everyone else is here so I’m glad I didn’t make an excuse this time, though so far this training video has not really touched on anything germane to our actual work, but there is one thing that’s very interesting and that is the driver of the van is a professor of neurobiology I once knew, in fact we had been best friends long ago, and for many years whenever he came to the city he used to stay with us and talk at great length about the latest discoveries in his field which I found to be only slightly interesting, though I tried to ask intelligent questions and appear to be engaged, when what I really wanted to talk with him about were things I’d been doing or thinking about in his absence, because I rarely had the chance to speak about these things with anybody else, but compared to his groundbreaking work these sorts of personal subjects seemed trivial, and they never managed to reach the surface of our encounters, and then he stopped visiting us, and the birthday greetings which I sent him each year were ignored, never responded to, and it worried me because I could not think what it was I had said or done to cause him to never answer my texts or emails, and now many years have gone by and here he is driving this dirty old tour bus which is making loud creaking sounds whenever we go over the slightest imperfection in the pavement, and I’m wondering why he’s doing this, is it a sort of surprise for me he’s planned, a sort of funny joke where he’ll suddenly jump up and say, here we are again together at last? 

But there’s no indication so far that he has any intention of doing this, he’s simply driving and driving and not saying anything and if it were true that his intention was to reunite with me, it’s something he would have done the minute we started out on this trip, because it goes without saying that I was going to recognize him since we’d spent so many hours together in our youth, up through our late twenties, going to hear bands and to parties and bars and on long hikes and having many interesting conversations that continued even after he had taken his prestigious job at a major university, while I had remained a menial worker doing one lousy service job after another, until I finally became a tour guide which is not a well-paid or exalted job at all, and now I can’t make up my mind if I should speak to him while there are a lot of other guides aboard, a dozen or so all crowded together with our shoulders bumping against each other, while the stupid video keeps droning on with Indigo Bandini’s phony-sounding voice about how great the company is, which combined with the unresolved and awkward situation with the neurobiologist driver, is making me more and more uncomfortable and nervous, and we are about to pass by a familiar carwash a single story building in the middle of a parking lot covered with bright red and yellow signs with words that are mainly hyphenated ones like soft-touch rinse-free steam-clean standard-fee spa-treatment deluxe-plan touch-less white-wall vacuum-strength blow-job shammy-smooth auto-dry flat-rate, and the signs show prices for all these services in different shades of blue, foot-tall helvetica-bold type, and I’m feeling nervous and uncomfortable, and suddenly I yell to the neurobiologist driver, Pull in here! and I’m talking loudly over the overly-modulated irrelevant nonsense of Indigo Bandini so that everyone can hear me, These people who work in this stupid carwash never come out to help us, I’m speaking with authority and nearly yelling, and several of the guides have slowly turned to look at me, They never greet us, they never offer to wash us, I don’t know what’s wrong with them, I don’t understand their business, and now I want them to clean our van because it’s filthy, it’s disgusting, so wait here while I take care of this. 

Our dingy van is pulling into the lot, nobody is objecting to my plan, and I’m sliding the heavy side door open and slamming it shut, walking purposefully toward the building, breathing the cool air, feeling liberated, passing through the front door to find out what’s inside, and it’s only an office, a low-rent sort of office with rows of cheap desks, and cheap-looking chairs, and middle aged men in sloppy-looking business casual, sitting behind crummy desks, chewing gum, smoking cigs, and there’s a copy machine, a half-empty water cooler, in other words all the standard elements of a small sales company or insurance office or some other small-to-medium-sized service business, no car wash equipment to be seen, but two salesmen are stationed at a counter near the door and when I ask them if we can get our van washed they refuse. 

You washed our van before, don’t you remember? I say although I am not quite sure if this is true, are you refusing us just now today or for forever? 

They’re glancing at each other and one of them is giving me transparently made-up excuses, something about calibrations to the mechanism, and the second one is chiming in with numerous other incomprehensible technological issues such as a malfunctioning water spigot, a broken soap transmogrifier, and this goes on for quite a long time until completely aggravated with their lies and obfuscations I interrupt, Is that it? Or is it that you just don’t like us? Let me put it this way, the first one is saying, he must be the boss, We don’t like your dirt. 

This results in me grabbing him roughly by the collar, and I’m quickly wrestling with the entire staff, there are approximately a dozen of them who come out from behind their desks to join the fray, and as soon as I’m punching one of them and he’s staggering off another one is on me, and I’m fighting all of them until one guy is pinning me down and he’s trying to pull off my glasses, but I’m wiggling away, jumping to my feet, and fighting more and more violently until all of them are lying on the floor, prostrate on their desks, or struggling to extract their heads from one of the several small black plastic waste baskets, all exhausted except the one who’s clinging to my back, but I’m bucking him off, flipping him up in the air where he turns a beautiful airborne somersault like a professional acrobat in the chinese circus, and he’s landing on his feet with a sort of languid physical poetry, which I’m finding very aesthetically pleasing, and I’m immediately slapping him on the back in a friendly way, and complimenting him on his athleticism. 

I’m straightening my rumpled shirt, and going from employee to employee asking their names, shaking their hands, and complimenting them, I’m shaking everyone’s hand and one of them is russian, I can tell from his looks, Rusky eh? I’m saying to him winking, and then after taking a last look at the overturned desks, the broken chairs, the smashed water cooler, the xerox machine laying on its side, I’m heading for the exit. 

The only thing you guys are good at washing is rubles! I’m yelling, and slamming the door behind me.

I’m chuckling a little as I walk back through the parking lot but I’m finding myself wondering what should I tell the other guides, shall I tell everyone that they don’t like our dirt, and if I do, will it enrage and offend them, or will they be angry with me for making them wait so long while not resolving anything? And this is the moment when I realize for the first time what the problem is I’ve been having with this company for so many years. 

My problem with this company for so many years is simply that I can never tell what anyone is thinking, and as I’m getting closer to the van I’m seeing that my friend from my youth, the neurobiologist, is sitting like a statue with two hands on the wheel, staring straight ahead in the style of a professional chauffeur, not like a tour guide at all, he’s not engaging with his passengers who’ve all been waiting with him for some time, and I’m wondering if I should finally break the ice and speak to him, but I’m worrying that if I do I’ll be uncovering a secret that will damage me in some deep and inexorable way, and I’m wondering for the thousandth time if it’s really always such a good thing to know the truth, and I’m reaching for the silver handle to slide open the heavy door.