Another Disaster, This Time Concerning Maps

I spend the day at the office, huddled at my desk, my guts seized and knotted, my dry brain spinning but going nowhere. I was hitting the rough part of the week. At least this particular week.

That evening, I was supposed to receive some company at my home. An old Philly cohort?who's been living in Pittsburgh for the last several years with his wife and two kids?was at a weeklong conference of some sort or another in Connecticut, and figured that was close enough for him to drop down to the city for a visit. Though we'd stayed in touch, we hadn't seen each other in at least five years, maybe longer. I couldn't remember, exactly.

My short-circuiting nerves had little to do with Jim himself?it would be good to see him. It was just the whole concept of "company" that screws me down tight. I don't know why, it just does sometimes. At least he'd given me a week's notice?but even that's both good and bad. If someone were to just show up on my doorstep, I'd never answer the door. Give me some notice, though, tell me that you're coming, and you just give me that much time to fret myself into a nausea over the prospect.

Part of the problem this time, I think, was the next day. Some fellows I know in a musical band were going to be in town to play a show the next night, something they hadn't done in a while, and they'd suggested getting together at some point beforehand. I'd already told them that it sounded like a good idea before I heard from Jim.

Now, here's the problem?it wasn't just seeing people, which makes me nervous enough. When Jim and I used to get together in Philly, well, the beer, wine and whiskey always flowed free. I can't remember a single time we were out together when one of us didn't black out or get involved in some sort of scuffle. If that happened now, I'd be in no shape for anything the next day.

Nevertheless, when I got home that afternoon to wait for his call (he told me he'd be in town sometime between 6 and 7), I cracked a beer in an effort to calm my stomach.

Then I cracked another.

At 6:45, the phone rang. It was my folks.

"How's everything?" I asked.

"Oh, fine, fine," my dad said. Then he paused. "Well, maybe not so fine."

My stomach began to clench up on me again. If my dad's admitting that things are less than great, it means things are very, very bad.

There are a couple of things my folks typically do when they have bad news to share with me. More often than not, they simply don't tell me at all?or at least wait until the worst is over with. But if something compels them to give me bad news before it happens, they drag out the story as long as possible before hitting the dark punchline. I think it's an attempt on their part to soften the blow, but it just doesn't work that way.

"See, I go out walking every day," my dad began. "And for the last few days, I noticed that I was getting these chest pains as I was walking up the hill."

"Uh-huh?" I said, flatly, not liking the sound of this already.

"I'd stop for a minute, and they'd go away. But after I started walking again, they'd come back."

The story went on and on, detailing his recent visits to a couple of doctors. About eight years ago, my dad had a sextuple bypass (something else I wasn't told about until after the fact). Since then, he's visited his doctors regularly, exercised, watched his diet, and everything seemed fine. This was the first sign of any sort of trouble.

The second doctor, his cardiologist, put the fear into him.

"So I have two options," he said.

"Uh-huh." By this time, I'd pretty much gone numb. I'm very close to my parents, and as they get older, I find myself growing increasingly panicky about their health.

What it boiled down to was that he was having a diagnostic test two days later, and that test would determine whether or not he needed more open-heart surgery. The first operation was touch and go for a while, and now, as he approaches 70, well?

When I hung up the phone, I was a wreck. I called Morgan and gave her the news. I still hadn't heard from Jim.

Finally, at 7:20, the phone rang again.

"I'm just a few blocks away," he said. "I'll be there in a couple minutes."

Since the buzzer in my apartment doesn't work (which I find a relief), I put on my shoes and coat and went downstairs to wait for him. At least it would be a distraction for a few hours. I needed another drink, and badly.

I waited on the steps, smoking and listening.

Probably can't find a parking spot, I thought, at about the 20-minute mark. At the half-hour mark, I decided to go back upstairs to see if he'd tried to call again?maybe he'd run into some kind of trouble.

There were four messages from Jim waiting for me, each one slightly more frantic than the one before it. I started to get a picture of what was going on when, in one of them, I heard him mention in passing that he was on "Avenue of the Americas."

Oh, man. I picked up the receiver and dialed his cellphone number. He picked up almost immediately.

"Hey," I said, "where the hell are you?"

"I'm standing in front of your address," he said. Then I knew I was right.

"What's the cross street?" I asked, yelling to be heard over the traffic behind him.

"Ummmm... Houston, it looks like."

"Jim, ahh," I told him, as gently as possible, "you're in Manhattan."

"Oh, fuck." he barked. "Well, that explains it then. As I got closer, I was looking around thinking, 'Y'know, none of this looks real familiar.' I didn't remember your neighborhood being this built up."

"Yeah, well..." I started rummaging around in my brain, to see if I could come up with directions from where he was to where I was, but I was stumped. Just not all that familiar with the streets of lower Manhattan. "I was thinking that we probably should have discussed directions before you headed out."

"How long would it take me to get over there from here?"

I thought back to the various and few cab rides I'd taken over the river during the past 10 years. "Well, if there's no traffic, figure maybe 20 minutes, half an hour. If there is traffic, you might want to double that." From the sounds behind him, I could tell there was traffic.

"Ahh, fuck. I'm such an asshole. This whole trip has been a fucking nightmare. It took me almost an hour to get out of Stamford."

We talked a while longer as he wandered around, trying to remember where he'd parked his car. It turns out that for directions, he'd punched my address into one of those computerized Internet map things. Unfortunately, he'd forgotten to specify the "Brooklyn" part.

"You know, I'm thinking," he said, "by the time I got over there, I'd just have to turn around and head out again. Way things are going, I should probably start trying to do that now."

We were both quiet for a little while, until he said, "Well, it's been fun!"

After I hung up the phone, thoughts of my dad flooded back. I picked up the phone again and called my sister. Without fail, she's more hysterical than I am when it comes to most everything, but at least I know I can count on her to tell me things my parents wouldn't. Unfortunately, all I could get from her, after sifting through the sobbing and the wailing, was pretty much the same story my parents had given?though the added crying made things sound much more hopeless.

The phone rang again a few minutes later, shortly after I'd opened another beer.

"Hey," Jim shouted, "I was trying to get onto 294 West, but I got shunted onto 294 East instead?and now I'm going over some big fuckin' bridge?am I on my way to Brooklyn?"

"Ahhh....do you know what bridge you're on?"

He started reading off signs to me as he passed them, and before long, it became clear that he was on his way to Queens. The giveaway was the big "Welcome to Queens" sign he passed.

"I...I..." I stammered. I had no clue how to help him at this point. I apologized, but by the time I did, he'd started following the signs to La Guardia. Once he got out there, he'd be on more sure footing, he thought.

"I'll keep my fingers crossed," I told him. "Good luck out there." Then I called Morgan again, to give her an update on, well, everything. I was exhausted at this point, and still numb, and not nearly drunk enough. I opened another beer, thought of maybe eating something, but didn't really feel like food.

Half an hour later, the phone rang for the last time that evening.

"I think I'm gonna be okay," Jim shouted.

"Really?"

"Yup. I've set the car on fire! And now I'm gonna take off all of my clothes, and start running back and forth across the goddamned highway!"

Yeah, I thought, I've had days like that, too.