Look Again

2

DEXTER

As I toss my suitcase into the trunk of the Uber, I double check that the bag’s really mine, see my initials, big as life, and force away a flash of guilt. I mean, sure, I could have handled that better. A lot better. But it’s been a terrible day, and after waiting an hour for my bag to roll off the luggage return—what could have possibly taken them so long?—I was in no mood to humor that woman, no matter how pretty she was.

Very, if you’re wondering. Very pretty. But as a rule, I ignore all the very pretty people getting off the plane at the tiny airport, because I’ve learned from the mistakes of others that chances are good the same young lady you chat up on the plane or while waiting for your bag to arrive will end up in your third period class, smiling and batting her eyelashes and calling you “Mr. Kaplan” with way too much air in her voice. Or so I’ve heard.

So, I was curt.

Okay, honest reflection requires me to confess that I was rude. But the woman was trying to steal my suitcase, and it’s not like that’s polite airport behavior.

She deserved it.

My driver has his music turned up loud enough that I have no reason to try to make small talk. This guarantees him a large tip. If the campus shuttle weren’t such a jouncing, sickening mess, I’d take that instead, but I hate arriving at campus carsick. The price of a seat in a small vehicle is definitely worth it.

I lean my head back on the headrest and close my eyes. As the car carries me into the hills and toward the Chamberlain campus, I catalog the results of a summer spent in New York City.

Too much and too little.

Too much time. Too little schedule.

Too much noise. Too little silence.

Too many auditions with too few callbacks. The limited summer runs are perfect for my school schedule, but I was, apparently, not perfect for any of them.

Too many dinners with my mother. And let’s face it: two would have been too many. Too many motherly opinions. Too many reminders that I have let the best parts of my life slip into the past. Too many unsubtle hints that I’m disappointing. That I’m disappearing. I have learned to chew louder to try to drown out her litany of disenchantments.

My life is not what she always hoped for me. But it’s my life, and she can learn to deal with it.

Sometimes the loud chewing works. Mostly I just annoy myself.

Too many times I picked up the phone to call or text someone, only to realize nobody really gets this—my life, my concerns. I don’t have friends in the Broadway world anymore. Either they’ve aged out, by choice or by someone else’s decision, or they’ve become huge, and I’m beneath notice.

I choose not to think about that for very long. Tends to lead to panic about being good enough, and then to overconsumption of cookies and coffee. Bad habits I picked up when I was a student at Chamberlain.

I look out my window and see the lush late-summer forests surrounding the road and just breathe it in. There are a couple of times each semester when I look out the window and feel suffocated by all the trees and by the lack of skyscrapers tethering me to earth, but mostly I love these mountains. I love this weird little world of Chamberlain. I love teaching, and I love the kids I work with. But just like the void here where a city’s buildings aren’t, there’s that wish for something more.

More exciting? More challenging? More meaningful? I don’t know. Just more.

My phone buzzes. A text rolls in from Hank.

‘Almost here?’

I smile. Hank Grantham is one of the best parts of Chamberlain. He’s a perfect blend of Oxford-educated British literature scholar and scruffy gamer-nerd.

I lean forward and tap the Uber driver on the shoulder. He turns his music down enough for me to be heard. “What’s the estimated arrival time?”

He glances at the GPS app on his phone, mounted to his dashboard. “Fifteen minutes?” He says it like a question, but he’s not expecting an answer, as his hands go straight back to the volume control and all the space in the car fills again with his music.

I answer Hank’s text. ‘Few minutes. You moved back in?’

He responds with a photo of his bed. At least I think that’s what’s supporting what looks like an exploded suitcase. He’s a disheveled mess, like always.

Another text: ‘Starving. Can’t organize on an empty stomach. Must eat. Hurry.’

I drop my phone in my lap and smile. With a friend like Hank, everything is easier.

I feel the buzz of another text.