The long day was over and Elysia was temporarily released from the confines of her suffocatingly small cubicle at the New York Public Library were she embedded codes in books, day in and day out, her doctorate degree in literary criticism taken from his place on her moveable green felt wall and hidden in her desk.
Paroled to the claustrophobic cabin of her economy car, a tin box that sat motionless in a massive traffic jam at 179th Street just inside Queens, it was, she thought, as if the entire city converged there and suddenly stopped without reason.
She could see the outline of her building on the other side of the bridge counting down the floors she spotted the small window to her efficiency apartment. It was less than a mile away, but she guessed it would take her two and a half hours to cross over to the other side.
The setting sun baked one side of her narrow sallow face, yet its imminent departure from the day’s stage did nothing to lower the ceaseless, suffocating humidity that gripped the city.
She thought again, as she did every night, that maybe she should have taught English. What happened to that plan, she wondered? It was too late to go back to that. Her life, much like her car, were stuck in neutral, gridlocked, going nowhere.
Releasing her sweaty palms from the hot plastic steering wheel, she resigned herself to her motionless fate and slowly sat back and turned her face from the blinding sun and focused her soft blue eyes on the cement and concrete labyrinth of worn roads and colossal apartment buildings that surrounded her
She watched a tall man appear at the doorway of a convenience store whose window signs pronounced proudly, in bold red letters, that it sold Ouzo by the case. The tall man reached inside a small dull ivory colored plastic bag and pulled out a long brown bottle of beer. He opened it and took a long quenching swallow and then tossed the bottle cap and bag to the hot city streets. She watched the cap make a valiant effort to roll for Jersey but sadden when it was only able to make a few inches to the curb before it expired. But her hopes were renewed when a soft wind lifted the plastic bag up from where it had gracefully fallen, an inch from the gutter and then swept it gently in to the air.
She could sense that this was no ordinary bag.
Lifting itself up a few hundred feet it swayed softly along a jet stream and then smoothly lowering its altitude it bounced playfully on an unseen soft breeze.
This bag with wings of wax was perfect in the wind, perfect. It was Sinatra in the forties, it was Fitzgerald sober and writing, it was the Yankees of 63 seasons, it was the son of Zeus and Hera gliding elegantly towards his rightful home on Mount Olympus or over to the Jersey shore, which ever was closer. She needed this bag, she needed it to succeed. A broad smile came across her plain face as she watched its rise and then she heard these words float down from the skies above her.
“Nous sommes libres le moment ou nous etre libres!”
“We are free the moment we wish to be free.” She whispered and a tear came to her eye.
Well, it was probably from pollution but still, you know, it was a tear so it kind of worked out right. The near-tear arose from the fact that not only had the bag quoted Voltaire, completely out of context, but still, you know, it quoted Voltaire! In French! It spoke French! …okay with a slight Bronx accent, but still....I mean, you know, it’s a bag. And, although, like most Americans, she preferred Locke over Voltaire...well, she did have a liking towards Rousseau but sometimes he struck her as morally irresponsible but then again she wondered if her parochial school education just made him seem that way...but, anyway, moved by the moment, she leaped from her car...she didn’t actually leap, but she rushed from the car only to have the seat belt part that goes over your shoulder get caught in her hair and nearly choke her to death. But after that she more or less leaped from the car and still on fire with the passion of freedom burning white hot in her surpassed soul she raised a fist to the sky and yelled at the very top of her voice to the bag,
“Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things,”
Stopping to catch her breath she watched as the bag flew higher and she climbed on to her car’s hood and continued,
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark nor even eagle flew—
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.”
Hearing the deep passion of her words and seeing the bag fly its course so gloriously into the blue, a homeless man on the corner adjusted his aluminum foil hat, snapped the heels of his sneakers and standing at full attention, he raised his hand to his forehead in salute as the bag circled in the wind above him. The homeless man stood erect...in a bunch of different ways for he was easily excited when the medication wore off... he watched this magnificent bag rise up once more, up to the heavens escaping the surly bonds of Earth and the lonely grey caverns of Manhattan.
It chose to fly towards Jersey, although Elysia thought that personally she would have chosen Connecticut, but, she reasoned, perhaps the bag was thinking shorter commute, who knows? But southward it flew over the Hudson. But then she thought that if she could fly what would a shorter commute matter anyway?
As she pondered that thought and realized it was a pointless waste of time and she really has to stop doing that she turned attention back to the bag and saw now that the bag was sinking from the sky. Perhaps the sun was melting it or maybe the wet air of the nearby Atlantic had dampened it or maybe, exhilarated by the thrill of flight and unrestrained freedom, maybe it had fainted. She knew bags didn’t faint but she needed a reason.
Downwards and downwards it spiraled descending from the clouds to its icy grave below...but then she thought, well, okay, the Hudson probably wasn’t icy in mid-August but like, still, it was a crappy way to die, considering what they pour into the Hudson and everything. Rolling her tiny hands into tiny fists that she rose to the sky, she rolled her head back to face the heavens, closed her eyes and cried a mournful shrill,
“Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aero planes circle moaning overhead.”
She lowered her eyes in defeat and then lifted her gaze to the river and watched the bag that was so much more than just a bag land in, on or maybe near, the river and disappear.
“Give me a sign that you made it,” she cried and then hugged herself.
“Lady, “You’re blocking traffic over here already, what the hells the madda with you?” a voice boomed and she was disappointed because she didn’t think the bag would sound that gruff but ti wasn’t the bag it was the voice of a cop in a police helicopter circling behind her.
The road before her, now cleared of traffic across the bridge and all the way into New Jersey, was empty. Turning completely around she eyed a traffic jam behind her that further than her eyes could see. She looked to the man in the car directly behind her. His license plate claimed he was from Georgia, or at least his car was. He was staring at her. His lips were tightly closed and his eyes were wide as saucers and when she looked at him he very quickly diverted his eyes to the floor in a way that shouted, “Please don’t hurt me.”
It was now official. She was a crazy lady. She lowered her head and returned to her car. She gave a last look to the bag and recalling its valiant flight she vowed that her life would change.