Curtain Fall

We're Wednesday 16th of August. From the outside of the city, everything looks fine. The sky is bright with small clouds. We’re going down a little bit, closer to the buildings. We are close to Alexander Platz. Here, all you can see are the big cubicles stuffed with people. If we move even closer, just to touch the windows, you can see a wide open-space. Even through the glass, it looks like a total mess. Bosses’ yelling against interns, phones ringing all the time, calls from all over the room, noise from printers and faxes. In the middle of this war field, you have Paul.
He's obviously not very attracted by his job, mostly paperwork. He's just learning that curiously, the more mess there is somewhere, the more you will be quiet. But the phone is ringing. For a second, Paul tries the “leave me alone” stare, but the phone is inflexible. He sighs and hangs up the call.

“Hi, it's mom.”
“Oh, hi. How you doing?”
“Not very well, I'm afraid.”
“Oh. What happened?”
“Look, you know your grandma have been sick recently?”
“Yeah, yeah, I know ? What happened.”
“I'm sorry but... She passed away yesterday?”
His eyes are now very white.
“...”
“Paul?” She sounded worried” “Are you okay?”
“What?”
“Are you okay?”
“No, I mean... How, why?”
“Well, the doctors discovered she had a generalized cancer.”
“What the hell? Didn't she pass almost every exam on earth last month?”
“I know, I'm not sure what to thinks.”
“...”
“The funeral will be next Sunday. Just make sure you'll be there.”
“Hum, yeah, I guess”
“Just don't worry about it, we'll pay this for you.”
“Okay, cool. Hum. I'll call you back.”

Paul just wakes up. All the room is very silent. Not a word, just a small ring tone from a purse. He looks all around. They are all staring at him, their eyes melting with pity and compassion. Her boss comes around, grabs his shoulder and whispers.
“Are you okay honey?”
Then louder, to make sure everybody hear it.
“Look Paul, if you need to take a break or...”
“YES! Yes. I'm off home.” He stands up and gets out of the room.

It's Friday, almost the end of the work day. He plans to go home by plane right after it. It is going to be long. Berlin to Zurich. Then Zurich to Paris, because it will be cheaper, even if it is then twice as long as a direct flight. At one moment, he looks outside. The big TV tower of Berlin is right in his sight. Such an useless building, so expensive to visit. He is thinking that this thing would be way better on the floor. He hates it since his last girlfriend broke up with him at the restaurant, on the top of the tower. Where is Godzilla when someone needs him.
Then the plane comes in.
In slow motion, the plane pops up on the left side. The smile of Michael Jackson smiling weirdly, printed on the Airbus A380, crush itself into the TV tower very tightly. No explosion yet, no blast wave breaking the windows. From here, the fire and the falling fragments of the tower are so tiny they look like falling sand. Just imagine this huge plane stocked in a bubble of glass and steel, a thousand feet from the ground.
Then the plane blow up.
The bubble literally disassembles itself, like if god had wanted to see how it was made, and had separated every pieces to take a closer look. It bursts, but with a carbonized pop. The explosion blows up the windows in a crystalline counterpoint. The screams and shouting come right after as a musical choir and suddenly his own bubble of silence and clam burst as well. He finally notices some of the glass shrapnel cut him on the face. The music falls down and everything seems cliché in the reactions of his workmates. The “Oh my god”, the tears, the “It's not happening, it can't happen”. He realizes everyone is reacting like in movies, this is such new they don't know how to deal with it. It scares Paul. He just wants to go home. He looks down the street to see the Central train station. As he is considering taking the train to go to the funerals, the whole second floor of the train station explodes as well, much more commonly than the tower, by the way. Again people repeat their symphony for disaster and panic.

We are now into the elevator. Even if outside the world is crushing down, an elevator will always be a place of calm, peace and crap music. A long and silly melody stretched until it is just a soapy three note piano song. Paul breathes deeply, he is stressed, and he doesn’t know how he will be able to go to the funeral.
In his mind, an image becomes obvious. The rails are down, the planes are crushed, only one thing is left: the road. Paul is thinking. Will he steal a car, will he rent it, will he be thumbs up? The choice is tearing him apart for a long time. Then he remembers that he has no drive license. It is a kind of problem solved, isn’t it?

As he is walking toward a subway station, hitchhinking, an old Volvo stop by him.
“Where d’ya wanna go son?”
“you’re not German, aren’t you”
“Does ma friggin nationality bothers ya?”
“No. No, not really”
“What’s yar destination?”
“Anything that makes me western than now.”
“Runnin’ through da country, ‘see.”
“Sort of, yeah. What’s your destination?”
“Anywhere I can go, but right now, I’m onto Netherlands chicks”
“Seriously?”
“Sixty-five years old, an’ still banging right”
“That was gross”
“Think so ? I’d better let you go son. But driving alone is so damn boring” He insisted onto the boring word so long, Paul thought he was stuck. “Can give ya a ride ‘till Hanover”
Paul stopped walking. Face to him, a long never ending avenue was unwinding it tarmac to nowhere precisely. Hanover? It was half the way through Germany. He moved his weight his other leg. His feet were itching; His back is sweating thanks to the hot summer.
“Worth the try.”
“Good boy. Throw yar luggage backseat and come in.”

Some dozens of miles behind them, the old man finally dares to speak to its very new and silent mate.
“Come on. What’s the big deal? You look so gloomy, you look emo.”
“Yeah, sorry. I guess I’m not the best hitchhiker on earth.”
“A girl broke your heart? HA! those sluts, it’s their favourite game.”
“Not really. Oh, well, I suppose… No. Wait!
“What?”
“You’ve lost your pirate young faked accent.”
“Yeah, you know what? After few hours, it starts to be annoying. Plus, I don’t have any parrot.”
“What a shame.”
“I sense some cynicism. Got your tongue back from death?”
“Yeah, it brought back a message for you. It says See you soon old boy”
“Oh, and wittiness. You might as well be an awful hitchhiker after all.”
“I know.” Some random silence breaks the discussion.
The sky starts to darken. The car is going straight on the Autobahn. All the seats are leather, black leather, and smell old used leather, quite impossible to define. Some warm and living smell, with a bit of leather cream in it. Paul takes off of his jacket and sinks down into the seat. It is awfully comfortable but Paul can see he should not fall asleep. His saviour is expecting conversation. He is waiting for the big talk. Paul thinks of a nice topic to start with, but damn this leather seat is way to smooth to be inspired. Okay, let’s go with a…
“So what’s your purpose in life?”
The old man looks at him. He starts to laugh terribly. A huge, deep, from low to high pitch, laugh. He laughs so hard he hits his own wheel. “Honk honk honk”.
“Man, you’re something.”
“And you’re not answering” The old man is suddenly serious. “I don’t even know your name.”
“Mine’s Otto. What’s yours?”
“Paul”
“Like a saint”
“I’m curious. Why have you taken your car?”
‘It’s like, complicated”
“You speak like an American right now”
“I should have been a joker”
“And you could’ve asked me why I was so serious.”
“That would’ve been horribly mainstream.”
“Seriously Otto, what are you doing on a sunset in a Volvo car, driving to the land of hookers and weed?”
“Because of those two things.”
“That’s unusual.”
“I’m driving to run away.”
“From who?”
“My wife. My – insert long series of swear words here – wife.”
“You doesn’t seem to like her much, am I right?”
“Ha, so says the visionary. What makes you think that?”
“Instinct”
“Haha. I’m running away from her because she cheated.”
“That’s a violent reaction”
“With a stupid 25 years old boy.”
“Okay, didn’t say a thing.”
“She must be like Hugh Hefner in her old mansion. She’s rich. And I hate her”
“I can understand that” A smooth melody comes out of the radio. While talking, Otto had twiddled with the buttons and now Neil Young is singing for them. “We're changing highways, In heavy traffic, See the lights turn, To something graphic”
“You see, she decided I was no longer reliable for her. She had cruel words, she had lots for me.”
“And you stood still.”
“She had bodyguards too.”
“Too bad.”
Paul waits an answer. None comes out. Otto is somewhere else now, eyes on the road and mind staring at the setting sun. It’s all blurred by the window, but the orange and blue are quite nice, dancing on clouds.

Late at night, at the beginning of a highway. Thumbs up again, waiting another miracle. Paul feels quite lonely right now. It is freezing and nobody wants to stop. An hour later, a BMW stops. It is a black berline, with stained windows. A young man in a suit asks him if Dusseldorf would be fine for him. Paul says that yes, that would be great.
Inside the car, everything is very white. The man too, wrapped in an all white suit. He smiles a lot, with a strange light in the eyes. He seems satisfied, pretentious. He has one hand on the wheel, on the other he smoke a cigarette. A long and white Davidoff cigarette

“I’m a business man, you know?”
“Are you?”
“You know, I don’t usually take hoboes in my car. I mean, that would be dangerous.”
“I’m not a…”
“But, but, I couldn’t help myself to notice that you were well dressed.”
“You mean I have a suit.”
“That’s part of it.”
“But I’m not…”
“You see, it is quite good to see that we have good looking and well dressed bums in our country. You won’t find that in France.”
“Since you’re speaking of it, I’m…”
“Let me show you something.” He turns up the speakers, takes a record from his arm rest, and pushes it into. Some notes of music resonate in the car. A German experimental ambient group, doing nasty things with synthesizers and guitars. All of a sudden, the car runs cold. “Do you like it?”
“I’d say yes.” And deep inside he’s thinking “do I have a choice?”
“They are very good. Every time I listen to them, it warms up my soul.”
“I see, yeah.”
Trapped into this portion of ice field, Paul looks at this guy, beating the time of music, warming up his soul to the most depressive music humanity ever invented. The man really looks like a penguin in the middle of Antarctic, squeezed into his clothes, moving is arms with the rhythm.
“Genius isn’t it?”
“Hum?”
“True expression of feelings, so German, so Nordic, I love it”
“I guess so”
“You do not agree”
Oh man, bad luck. “I am just tired now, I didn’t understood very well what you said” and he added in his mind “Go back to your cold hell made of frozen arty music”
“You don’t know what you’re missing”
“I sure don’t, but the day had been exhausting”

One step ahead, Paul is in a hotel room. It looks cheap but a mattress is a mattress. The room is small, just enough place to set a bed, a dresser, a sink and a tv. Everything has the colors of cheap hotel, like the combination of white blue and green. So ugly and yet so used all over the world. How sad. How tired.

This is the morning light. It had rained during the night, and the smell of countryside drying overwhelms everything. His little luggage on his back, Paul is walking, still his hands risen, on the road. He is as usual waiting for the miracle to happen. He thinks this trip is really nothing but a chain of deus ex machina, but that is okay if he can reach Paris by Sunday morning.

At a moment, he gets caught up by another hitchhiker. She is not very young and looks terribly tired. Her eyes are turning black and she smells like an ashtray. Every time a car or a truck runs alongside, she wakes up and yells and jumps on the side road. And she hates every car that does not stop by her, swears at them. She overtakes Paul as she runs after an old Volkswagen and when she gives up, suddenly asks:

“Excuse me?”
“Yeah?”
“I was there first.”
“Sorry?”
“I was there first. Do not act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“Sorry?”
“Oh, come on. You’re just taking the good side.”
“I have no idea what you’re tripping on.”
“It’s simple, cars see you first, and so they stop for you and not for me. Are you dumb?”
“Wow”
“Retarded, mental?”
“Are you gonna keep on insulting me all day long?”
“Depends if you try to spoil me or not.”
A car slow down a little, but the driver see they are in an argument. As the girl runs toward the car, it moves away. Paul is trying to think of a witty line to end up the argument.
“That was your fault” she comes back.
“Are you gonna blame me for every bad stuff that happen to you?”
“You’re trying to avoid the discussion. You should apologize.”
“I give up”
“That’s what they say, always. But then, you turn your back” she joins the movement to the speech “And they stab you. What a felony.”
At this moment, Paul notices the little badge on her chest. It says Asylum club member.
“What’s that?”
“A meeting club, kind of.”
“Which name is Asylum.”
“It organizes blind date with cool people. We have nick names.”
“What’s yours?”
“The waitresses, they call me Paranoid girl.” Another car goes along. She screams at the driver.”Screw you, agent of capitalism.” She moves back “But I quitted, it was not working anyway.”
“What?”
“The dating club.”
“No wonder.”
“Do not attack me.”
“What? Hey, easy girl.”
“You wanna steal my turn on hitchhiking, uh?”
“Calm down, for Christ’s sake.”
“Yeah, that’s what the waitresses said too, in their white dress.”
“Leave me alone now.”
“Because, you see, if you don’t wanna give my turn back, I’m gonna be unpleasant.”
“Yeah, it was a very nice talk, but I’m running away now.” He holds up his brief case, and starts to run. Behind him, the girl starts to yell.
“Don’t you dare going away!”
A truck stops by Paul. Behind him, the girl screams even louder.
“HEY, that is my turn!”

It is Saturday afternoon. Paul is between Bruxelles and Lille. As he was trying to understand the directions in Flemish, lost in Belgium, a SUV took him to Lille. The driver looks strange, like a caricature of a biker. A baseball cap, a hunting jacket, blue jeans, army boots are completing his trimmed beard. He looks on his forties. On the backseats, Paul thinks he can see a rifle barrel. He feels curiously comfortable with it. In the background, there is American country music, The Soggy Bottom Boys. “I am a man of constant sorrow, I've seen trouble all my day. I bid farewell to old Kentucky, The place where I was born and raised.”
“Excuse me?”
“Yeah?”
“What are you dressed for? Hunting?”
“You could say that. I’m preparing for what’s coming.”
“What’s coming? What are you talking about?”
“Don’t you watch news, kid?”
“Not very recently, why?”
“Haven’t heard about the terrorist attack?”
“In Berlin?”
“Not only, in Moscow, in Bucharest.”
“Seriously? What’s going on?”
“It’s them, boy. The Sect of Michael Jackson.”
“…”
“I’m telling you, boy, they should have burnt the corpse.”
“Stop mocking me.”
“Ha, I wish. You don’t know anything at all?”
“No.”
“Those crazy bastards decided we should have faith in Bambi. They declared Wonderland a free country. In California.”
“But why attacks?”
“they say we don’t have faith. They say we should moonwalk the king of pop.”
“Sounds stupid”
“Sounds scarier when they say it.”
“And so, what’s the link with you?”
“I’m off to my own bunker.”
“You have a bunker?”
“yep, I built it for the last apocalypse.”
“the last… When was it?”
“in 1999, I don’t remember what it was about.”
“And now, it is the apocalypse to?”
“Don’t you think there’s enough signs.”
“Well I thought it was meant to be in 2012.”
“Bullshit. As they say in Neverland: This is it.
“Tell me about it.”
“Don’t mess with it. This is serious. They are burning Michael Jackson biography in Leipzig. There is group of Bamby fans in the streets of UK. They say they break into your house, and if you don’t have records of him, they play Thriller in front of you.”
“That sounds horrible.”
“Especially since they play the zombie thing for real.”
“What?”
“And they left a white glove on your left hand.”
“What a profanation.”
“The rumors say that if you wanna be part of it, you have to get esthetical surgery on the nose, and you have to whiten your skin.”
“You’re right. That’s absolutely apocalyptic.”
“Told you.”
“So, what’s your plan?”
“Hide for a couple of month. I have everything in this bunker. Food, water, TV, porn, booze and drugs.”
“I see you’re prepared for anything.”
“Do not underestimate human needs, son. Do not. It can break a man so quickly”
“You’re probably right.” Maybe he was, maybe not jerking off in a bunker could harm his health. Maybe his liver would start to rotten without its weekly scotch and soda. “But how about your family?”
“Nope.”
“you don’t have any?”
“None that deserves my attention.”
“Even during apocalypse.”
“None of my business.”
“I’m travelling 2000 miles to my grand-mother funeral.”
“Good for you, boy.”

We’re on the A1, between Lille and Paris. It is Sunday sunrise and Paul is in a very nice car, an old ford Shelby coming from the past and USA. Its purring is making Paul fall asleep. He waited all night, wandering between late bars and the train station. Wandering between his hope to get a car and his eyes closing. Now that the few vodka red bull are sparkling down, he is munching a croissant to stay awake. He is very curious at the guy who took him. He is a young black man. A very young one. He looks sixteen or something like this.

“My name is Paul.”
“Mine’s Kele.”
“Like Bloc Party singer?”
“Like who from what?”
“Nevermind. That’s a cool name.”
“Thanks bro.”
“Tell me. Where did you got your car.”
“I found it.” He says. “On a road. The door was open and the keys were on.”
“You didn’t think it belonged to someone?”
“No. I figured they wanted to give it to me.”
“That’s like stealing.”
“You wouldn’t have done it?”
“No.”
“Well, then you’d have lost a car.”
“This logic doesn’t seems right.”
“Think twice man. It’s a Shelby.”
Kele grabs a cassette. A cassette, one of these lonely abandoned music makers. Soon, some riffs of guitar tear the silence off. It is Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. It says “My mama taught me better than that, Don’t play with angels, If my lost soul could be given back, It would be fatal…”
Paul faces the window. Outside, the countryside unfolds a long green ribbon through hills and fields. Sometimes, the rhythm seems to match obstacles outside, in a simultaneous choreography. Chin in hand, Paul starts to think over what happened recently to him while the lead singer unties its blues.
“Paul?”
“Hum?”
“Where do you come from?”
“Berlin.”
Kele let a little whistle cross his lips.
“That’s a long way to wait for altruism.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Especially with everything happening right now.”
“What about you? Where are you driving to?”
“Nowhere.”
“That’s not a good destination.”
“It’s a destination, that’s enough.”
“Even in these tough times?”
“Ha, you mean this sudden raise for religiosity? I don’t care. If they try to convert me, all I have to do is turn the engine on.”
He is surprisingly quiet. His eyes were swallowing every mile he drove. He wants to listen to every road, and taste every highway. He wants to feel them all, until he turns full of black asphalt. Whoever was the previous owner, he might as well died from it, and the gift were there, ready to take someone else. Paul wonders if Kerouac would be proud of this young teen with probably no drive license, if he was a worthy to be a son of the road as Moriarty was.

They enter Paris, the dreadful city, where cars get hit and hit and bitten. Kele drive smoothly, perfectly maneuvering his jewel into the jungle of Paris. Paul remembers he needs to change for the funeral. The reality hits him back. He asks the permission and change inside the car, while the car runs toward its destination. While knotting his tie, he tries to remember deeply what he just lived. He stays silent for a couple of minutes, turning the personality of each person he met. He remembers the heat of Neil Young voice and the cold metallic sound of this weird experimental band. He thinks it would have been easier to fit in the role if this trip had taken place in the US during the 60’s. Paul gets this strange feeling of time lag. He wonders, what was this?
They arrive at the square, where everyone is waiting. He can see his family, his cousins, all in black. He can see they expect him to act normally. Nothing happened until our beloved grandma will be buried by the rule book.
The car stops. Kele understood what is going on. He doesn’t make a move, having his own minute of silence for the lost one. Paul breathes deeply, very deeply, three or four times.. The classiest apparition of his life, wearing an all black suit, going out of a American dream car, and it is for a funeral. He puts a sad smile on his face, thanks Kele for his help, and gets out of the car. He feels relieved. It is ten O clocks in the morning, and it is time for the last play.
Curtain falls.
End of the act.