I just took a sip of this wine and smelled the bedroom of my ex-girlfriend, said the man behind the counter at the wine shop. I need to buy bottles of this wine. Cases of this wine.
He lifted the glass to his nose and inhaled deeply, then set the glass down and looked up at the ceiling, a small smile settling across his lips. We all breathed in, breathed out, breathed in again.
He shook his head. Let’s be clear, he said. I don’t want to go back to that time.
I introduced myself as The Instigator, and the man put a hand to his chest and stepped back. The Instigator, he said, and he chuckled. We need you at the Temple, so you can help us finish this build.
But I’m not a builder, I said. I would be of no help.
You would bring your energy, he said. That’s what we need right now. Instigator energy.
When I shrugged and smiled, he put up a hand. I have a shrine in my home to all instigators, he said. I’m very serious about this.
Wear your Playa finery, the invitation said, and so, decked out and dusty, we ducked through the dome’s opening into a dining room set with flowers and silverware, candles and skulls. The setting sun filtered through an opening in the parachuted draped above, and a gold-masked man explained the rules for dinner.
Outside, strange cars lumbered out toward the open desert. Riders sailed by, propelled by rusty bike chains, unaware that we were toasting with cocktails and dipping bites of fried chicken in lavender-infused vinegar.
We slipped out after dark, bellies full for our return to mayhem.
Feel how weathered these bones are? asked the man in the safari hat. He ran his hands over the tree adorned with skulls and femurs. There’s even a Tyrannosaurus Rex bone or two here. This is thorough work.
Where? asked the French photographer. I don’t see any dinosaur bones at all.
No one sees any dinosaur bones, muttered the old man wandering behind the tree.
Well, not their bones, the photographer said. But that doesn’t mean there might not be a Tyrannosaurus or two wandering, somewhere, out there on the Playa. Keep your eyes open.
The lightning was on its way for hours, racing out and back across the sky, carving veins through the clouds, but it was not until after midnight when it arrived.
This never happens here, she whispered, and she turned her head just enough to see his open eyes illuminated by a flash.
I know, he said. It has to mean something. There’s always an explanation, even for the strangest things.
She squeezed his hand three times, then, once to wish them safe, once to wish them well, and once to wish them love through storms.
Perhaps half the magic arises from the packing. There are always questions: Is it enough? Are we ready? After all, what we are truly preparing for is what happened some other year, or never at all. We have no idea what will arise before us, like a plume of dust, after we arrive.
The lists, the bags of what we deem necessary, the bins of sundries are what’s required to open us now to later freedom. We bind everything, wrap it in cargo netting, and set sail on it toward a lake as bewitched as our hearts.
On the bus ride home, he calls his mother, tells her how his son slithers between him and his wife at 5 am, about the nut tree in the backyard that drops detritus on the deck.
No, it’s not a black walnut, he says. It’s too small.
He watches the traffic crawl alongside as he talks, and the man crouched on the sidewalk next to the shopping cart. A group of school girls board at the 3rd stop, and they laugh as they pass him in the aisle.
Yes, he replies to her next question. He smiles. We’re fine.
100 Proof 