THE SPORK ON THE ROAD

I wore Claire’s I LOVE NEW YORK sweater, which did not reach my belt. She had pulled it over my head on the second night, when the shaking came back, and taken my thin white shirt in trade. On her, it hung to her knees.

We slipped off the C-train quickly and silently, pebbles and dirt crunching under our feet in the tangle of tracks and parked trains. The sun was rising on the horizon, and for the love of God, that horizon did not belong to Chicago.

“Where are we?” I asked as we ran for cover beyond the station.

“Dubuque, Iowa,” Claire said confidently.

Then I saw the rather obvious sign. Welcome to Dubuque, IA.

“What happened to Chicago?” I asked, as we walked away from the Mississippi.

“I miscalculated. Sue me.”

“I would,” I muttered beneath my breath, “but I doubt I’m still a member of the bar.”

The day was cold and bright. We stopped in Dubuque’s main square, an open plaza with benches and a clock tower at its center.

“Okay, this is nice. Now what do we do?” I asked, as if Claire were the keeper of the How to Be a Homeless Person manual.

“Now, we eat.”

She sat on a bench, opened her duffle bag, and took out two cans of beans and two plastic spoons.

“Strange spoons,” I said. They had small spikes along their front edge.

Claire held hers up against the rising sun. “It’s not just a spoon,” she said, and, as if about to reveal the great mystery of life and death, she paused. “It’s a spork!”

“A spork?” I exclaimed.

“Yes.” She swallowed a mouthful of beans. “You see, these babies are both spoons and forks at the same time. They’re not just one thing or the other. They’re both and neither.”

I paused, mid-bite, and looked at the utensil. For a moment I felt that perhaps Claire had just revealed the great mystery of life and death.

She had an enthusiasm and lightness I had never had in my own life. I had always carried myself seriously. I wore a tie and carried a briefcase even as a boy. Claire was whimsical, happy, and free. We were a clash of styles, and yet I was drawn to the transparency of her personality. She was simply clear, an adjective that translated perfectly to her name.

When we finished eating, she stood and held out her hand. “How about we walk for a while and see what we can find?”

The sun had warmed the air to a tolerable cool. After two nights on the train, I saw no reason not to stretch my legs.

“Sure.”

Spring was just beginning, and the trees and flowers had begun to bloom along the small walkways of the Midwestern town. Then Claire pointed at an unexpected sight: a high hill that rose like a wall out of an otherwise flat country.

We climbed it all the way to the top. From the summit, we could see the Mississippi spread out below us, and the whole town of Dubuque, and a clear blue sky above.

Claire slipped her arm around me and we stood there, quiet. After a while, she looked up, and I looked down. For the first time in memory, I felt something I could only describe as completeness.

I kissed her, softly, and she kissed me back.

“I don’t know what this is,” she whispered, “but I don’t want it to stop.”

I had the dizzy, unmistakable sense that I was beginning to fall in love. I wished I could stop time and let that instant drift into eternity.

Then she grinned. “Before we move on, we need to do some shopping. You need a sweater, because I want mine back, Mister X.”

“Shopping? We don’t have any money, remember?”

“Ah, that’s the problem with you amnesiacs. You forget the great bounty of our precious land.”

After we came down the hill, she asked a taxi driver where to find the nearest Red Cross center or Salvation Army truck. A few blocks later, we found one: a huge truck filled with used clothing and other things thrown away by a consumer society that couldn’t bear the thought of wearing an out-of-date pair of pants.

“I bet this is the first time you’ve ever pulled clothes out of a thick Glad bag,” Claire said, as we dug through the black garbage bags.

“Not exactly,” I said. “The bags were nicer.”

I was thinking of my walk-in closet and my collection of Italian suits. But the strange thing was that it didn’t matter that I wasn’t shopping at an exclusive boutique. I had never been happier in my life than I was here, with this astute companion. How different she was from the women of my past, from Rachel and her demanding taste for the finer things. It had never occurred to anyone I dated that the finer things in life could be sporks and a cool breeze in west Dubuque.

“Here we go! I love a man in a turtleneck.” Claire pulled a black long-sleeved turtleneck out of a bag and held it against my shoulders. “Go ahead. Try it on.”

By the time I had changed, I was also wearing a pair of black jeans and army boots I had picked out. Claire had gotten her I LOVE NEW YORK sweater back and was in blue jeans. She took a few steps back to admire my new look.

Then her eyes locked on something beyond my shoulder.

She yanked on my sleeve so hard that she nearly tore it off my arm.

“We have to leave,” she said, in a muffled voice. “Now.”

I turned. Across the street, a group of people was getting off a bus. Inside the bus, standing in line to step down, was someone I had seen before.

I knew that face. I could not say from where.

“Run!” Claire screamed.

She was already sprinting when I started after her. I was confused, and I had no idea of the danger we were in.

I would never have believed that little Claire could run like a marathoner in her final yards, but there she was, always a few steps ahead of me, gasping for air and perfectly certain where she was going.

“Through here!”

We ducked through an opening in the metal fence along the back of a small shopping center. We raced past parked cars, large green dumpsters, and a couple of supply trucks, until we reached a small tan door with no markings. Claire pounded on it three times, in a rhythm.

An electric buzzer sounded. The door opened onto a flight of steep stairs, and we ran down into a basement.

The door locked itself behind us with a series of heavy clicks. At the bottom, a small camera above the second door swiveled to follow us, studying who we were. Then the second door buzzed open, and three people rushed out to greet Claire with hugs and smiles.

Once they had welcomed her, a woman and two men turned and approached me, slowly, solemnly, stopping just short of handshake distance. They pressed their palms together, closed their eyes, and bowed nearly to the floor.

“Welcome back, Roshi.”