World in a Bubble
by Rochita Loenen-RuizHe had swallowed the world. Downed it in one shot. It tasted just like vodka - electric. Arousing images of asphalt streets and concrete highways, industrialized terrains where huge trucks loaded and unloaded their burdens.
Jim Navareno shivered, and the world inside him trembled. He felt the sea rise and surge against the sandy beaches in Bali, where the tropical sky had turned pink and the tourists lay indifferent to the change in the atmosphere.
Of course, Argo didn't believe him.
"If you've swallowed the world, then why the hell are we still here?" Argo asked.
It was half past two in the morning and they were the last customers at the bar.
Jim patted his belly and burped. He smiled at the look of half-disbelief, half-fear on Argo's face.
"It's inside me," Jim said. “Sandy beaches, homes with white picket fences, mommies with their kiddies."
He grinned at Argo's look of horror. He had ceased to look like a white collar, managerial type. Now he was more like a child who had heard a horror story, too scared to move, and yet just skeptical enough to question the truth of what was said.
Behind the counter, Mango, the bartender was busy washing the glasses and putting them back in place. Jim wondered how many strange conversations Mango heard at the bar, and how many came in here and downed the world in a bubble.
I don't believe you," Argo said.
"Try going outside," Jim said. "Tell me what you see."
He already knew what the streets outside the bar looked like.
Out there would be a world engulfed in red mist and the rugged surface of soft tissue, through which the steady drone of corpuscles could be heard as they rushed through an intricate connection of arteries. The drone of constant motion sounding much worst than the neighbor drilling a hole in the wall at seven o’clock on a Saturday morning.
"I'll prove you wrong," Argo said. "All I've got to do is open the door and walk out of here."
"Go ahead," Jim replied. And he smiled as he tossed down another glass of vodka. He imagined white rain pouring down on Cuba and the children dancing in the streets with their arms outstretched.
He could imagine them screaming that it was snow, could almost see them stretching their mouths wide open to catch the hard, metallic taste of vodka rain.
Argo, white-faced and desperate for home, had forgotten why he'd come with Jim in the first place.
"Come with me, man," Jim had said. "We'll drink a few beers - we might just get lucky."
"I don't know if that's a good idea," Argo said.
Jim could smell the straightness on him. He imagined Argo's life. He'd probably grown up in a white picket fenced house, had an apron-clad mother, a nine-to-five working father. Argo, a serious A student, conscientious son, who married a prime candidate from an all-girl university. He pictured Argo's life running on smooth wheels - at least until Baby Jeanne was born, and his wife lost all interest in him.
That was how Jim had found Argo in the men's room weeping on the toilet, pouring his heart out and wondering if Anne had another man on the side.
"Might be one of those post-natal things," Jim said.
But Argo shook his head.
"She's changed, Jim. I'm scared. What if she up and leaves me and takes my little girl with her? I don't know what to do."
In the end, Jim convinced Argo that ending his life wasn't the solution, and crying wasn't going to solve anything either.
"What are buddies for?" Jim had asked, and he'd taken Argo down to Mango's bar, where it was slow and quiet.
A good night for drowning sorrows in drink, Jim thought.
And then he'd seen the bubble, a clear blue sphere with white clouds and green spots on its surface floating around in his drink.
Funny, Jim thought to himself. It looks just like the world.
He'd raised the glass, and still looking at that bubble, he'd downed it in one gulp.
Now Jim watched Argo stand up and walk to the door. His footsteps were unsteady, and when he stopped to lean against a doorpost, Jim saw the hesitant look in his eyes.
"What about Anne?" Argo asked. "What about my baby?"
Jim shrugged.
"You'll have to open the door to find out."
He watched Argo place his hand on the door, saw a tremor pass through Argo's body, saw his fingers shake against the hard wood of the door before he snatched it away.
"But how?" Argo staggered back to the bar. "How could you swallow the world, and what about everyone else? What about my family?"
Argo burst into tears, leaning onto the counter of the bar, his shoulders heaving as he sobbed.
"Perhaps you're better off without them," Jim said. He turned to Mango.
"Give me another vodka."
"I want my family back," Argo cried. "My little baby Jeanne and my sweet Anne."
"If you're going to cry about it, you can step outside," Jim said.
Argo straightened up. "What's going to happen to me if I do?"
"I don't know. I've never swallowed a world before."
Jim kept on staring at Argo, "I don't have any clues for you, Argo. As I said, I've never swallowed a world before."
"How'd the world get into the vodka?" Argo asked. He leaned across the counter and grabbed Mango by the collar of his shirt.
Mango, who'd been behind the bar for as long as Jim could remember, shrugged and spread his arms wide.
"Don't go asking me that," he said. "I'm not the one who's gone and swallowed the world."
"Let the man go," Jim pried Argo's fingers loose. "It's not his fault. The world was just there, floating around, all ready to be swallowed up."
Jim breathed a sigh of relief as Argo plunked down onto a barstool. He could feel the fumes rising in his stomach, and he imagined the huge highway of public works, spiralling upwards around his spinal column, the mad regurgitation of wheels on the concrete streets of his intestines, the houses sprouting up one by one like fungus infections on the walls of his insides, and the people walking under a sky that was colored pale pink with the red bulbous shape of his heart. It would pump away in a rhythm that they all would hear until the day that he, Jim Navareno, gave up the ghost and died.
Jim stared at Argo. Argo was in need of sleep. He had not slept for days, and his eyes were bloodshot. Jim could see tiny blood vessels tracing pathways over his eyeballs. They made him think of little streets people could walk over.
Too much thinking and too little sex, Jim thought. As far as he was concerned, he was glad to be rid of shuffling through the motions of love before getting down to the act. He was rid of the weight of wondering why his Nelly turned her face to the wall at night and shrugged away his hands on her body.
Jim shut his eyes tight, imagining the feel of feet walking over his eyeballs.
"You've got to let the world go back to normal, Jim."
"Don't know how to do that," Jim replied.
"You just spit it out. Spit it out just like you swallowed it."
"I don't know if that'll work, old man," Jim said. He looked at his friend with compassion. "Swallowing the world is one thing, spitting it out is another. Say I spit out the world, or vomited it up. Can you imagine the twisted mess the world would be in? I can't risk you blaming me for the mix-ups you might find."
"I don't care," Argo said. "I just want to see my Jeanne and my Anne again. Spit it out, piss it out, do what you have to do, just get it out of your system and back into the place where it belongs."
"I'll do my best. It still feels kind of nice. I like the idea of having a world inside me." Jim said.
He laughed as he stood up and walked towards the jukebox. Reaching into his pocket, he found a coin and shoved it into the slot. Pressing a button, he listened to the sound of the record turning, imagined the needle settling down into the groove, finding the song.
"Love me tender, love me sweet," Elvis sang.
"Come on, Jim, you can't just leave it at that," Argo pleaded. "What if your heart gives out? What if your insides can't take having the world inside it? Everyone knows the ozone layer's gone to pieces, what if you get blood poisoning? What'll happen to the world then? What'll happen to my Anne and my Jeanne?"
"Stop hounding me," Jim snarled. He could feel the hardening in his arteries; he imagined workmen drilling holes into the lining of his stomach, pouring cement into his veins, raising up steel skyscrapers that would reach up to the top of his brain. A metallic taste burst on his tongue and his eyesight blurred.
At the bar, Argo was downing another drink, weeping and moaning into his glass, while Mango wiped the counter with a look on his face that said, this happens to me everyday.
"I'm not feeling well," he wanted to say. But he could not breath. He could feel the strength draining out of his legs. Pain radiated from his legs to his chest – spreading outwards to the rest of his body.
"If I can't breathe, the world will perish," he thought. And then he sneezed. It was a gigantic sneeze that silenced all the static and the noise inside his head.
Argo lifted his head and looked at him. Suddenly sober, Jim saw himself as Argo saw him. A middle-aged man with a paunch hanging onto the side of the jukebox while Elvis launched into the final refrain of his song.
He sighed. No use keeping the boy from his life. Jim's life might be crap, but that didn't mean Argo's life was headed for the dogs.
Heaving a sigh, he pushed himself away from the jukebox. "Go," he said. "Go home to your wife and kid."
He watched Argo stumble off the barstool, and walk towards the door. He breathed in deeply. The pain in his chest was gone.
The door slammed shut behind Argo.
Grimacing at the sound, Jim stumbled towards the bar.
"Give me another drink," he said.
"Sure you don't need to be going home?" Mango asked.
"Nah," Jim said. "Give me one more shot. I want to know what's in the next one."
Rochita Loenen-Ruiz lives and writes in the Netherlands. Her work has appeared in The Sword Review, Philippine Panorama, PATMOS (a publication of the Institute for Studies in Asian Church and Culture), Poetry Life and Times, and in Dragons, Knights and Angels Magazine. She currently writes a regular column for The Sword Review and for the Philippine-Dutch newspaper, Munting Nayon ( Little Town ).