SHAKESPEARE IN CHANEL
(Introduction)

Peter hated his car.

He detested it with a burning usually reserved for the gruesome punishments doled out by the Olympian gods of ancient Greek literature. Peter wished he could simply transform the useless bucket of bolts into something classic, like the tail-finned convertibles that earned the title ‘vintage’ instead of the more dubious moniker of ‘old.’ Every day his dilapidated steel steed coughed and sputtered its way from Peter’s one-bedroom apartment to the newspaper office at the corner of Third and Main: battered, defeated, and broken. In the car, nothing worked—not the power windows, not the power locks, no power of any kind. Definitely not the power to turn heads.

No, that’s not entirely accurate.

Heads did turn when they heard Peter’s Honda chugging along, but the barf-green vehicle only inspired looks of pity, not passion. A new car? Not this year. Not in this economy. Not on a reporter’s salary.

Peter liked to imagine himself as ruggedly good-looking, the type of journalist Hollywood screenwriters concocted, a reporter who was one part Indiana Jones and one part Ernest Hemingway, able to skillfully weave metaphors into well-crafted paragraphs in a dirty and worn fedora while running with the Pamplona bulls. Peter liked the image because it made him feel more deserving of Emily. Every time he tried to rise above his desperately ragged bank account and dilapidated car, he sabotaged it; he turned in the application late, carelessly forgot to send in a list of references, or got lost on the way to the interview. Secretly, Peter was afraid that he was one of those head cases who feared success, one of those pathetic tales of citizens who could have really “become something” if they weren’t stuck in an endless cycle of mediocrity.

He told himself that he sabotaged his chances of success because success would pull him away from the North Carolina coast, and he didn’t believe Emily would put up with a long distance relationship, nor did he believe she would leave the inlet community where her family name still carried political clout thanks to a grandfather who was a Congressman way back when…and in the South, there was no difference between “way back when” and yesterday.

Peter wondered if coloring his graying beard would magically shave ten years off his age and melt twenty years of bad memories from his psyche. Memory was always his enemy; no one could remember his name, not even the sophisticated attorneys, bankers and CEOs who frequented Emily’s fancy dinner parties. Emily would introduce Peter and two minutes later, her friends would stammer cluelessly--- Paul, Penn, Phil, Perry---like a nervous third grader giving a book report. Maybe that’s why, when filling out surveys, Peter always checked the box for ‘Pacific Islander,’ even though he was white. It made him sound more interesting, anyway, and interesting people were always remembered, right?

Peter resolved that maybe he was just one of those destined to be forgotten. Instead of philosophers and songwriters searching their souls for the finest vocabulary to immortalize the melody of his life, Peter would be stuck with the balladeers who had too much to drink and were improvising while stumbling noisily down the steps.

Peter always felt moth-eaten and bare around Emily. He couldn’t place his finger on why, but he always felt naked and exposed. Maybe it had to do with Emily’s three-by-five, black leather journal, trimmed with a ribbon that was a sickening shade of Barbie pink. Every day, she would pull the small journal out of her Gucci bag, her Mont Blanc pen following. She would scribble random observations—the weather, the strange shade of blue in the waiter’s tie, the answer to the Final Jeopardy question---observations that fed what Peter suspected was a budding case of OCD. When he worked up the nerve to ask if she had visited a therapist, she rolled her eyes.

“Therapists,” she said, “are sooo nineties.” As if she needed a stylish disease to seek treatment.
Peter put up with it because Emily had incredible legs and gorgeous, piercing green eyes that made Peter feel as if he were in third grade and noticing girls –really noticing girls---for the first time. She always wore her raven ringlets pulled back with hair accessories that looked like chopsticks. He loved it when she would playfully remove the chopsticks, letting her mane freely cascade down her equine neck, creating a portrait of energy and elegance….
…but then, the journal would somehow reappear—always—as if it had been nesting in her luscious locks, awaiting the opportune moment to ambush Peter.

Buzz kill.

Emily insisted that she needed the journal because she was fascinated with patterns and people, trying to present herself as some type of non-starving artist, a Shakespeare in Chanel, a Dickens in Dior, preserving the literary history of the mundane and unimportant. The journal was also the source of the recorded history of the many, many, shortcomings of Peter’s car.

One afternoon, en route to dinner, she checked his odometer, pursed her lips, and asked, “When was your last oil change?”

“I got the oil changed a few weeks ago.”

“Hmmm.”

“Hmmm what?”

“Nothing,” she said. Which always meant that it was something. “You know when you get over
150,000 miles you should really get it changed every week.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.” Peter tried to make it sound like a friendly joke, but there was bitterness beneath his baritone that rattled to the surface.

“You know, next time, we could take my car. It has an iPod plug in.”

For Peter, there was something totally emasculating about letting a woman drive during a date. Maybe it wasn’t so much about driving as much as the laundry list of conditions that applied any time he got into the soft leather passenger seats of Emily’s Beamer. Toss that cup of coffee—I don’t want to stain the interior, you’ve got some mud on your shoes and I don’t want to stain the interior, roll up the window because I don’t want pollen to float in and stain the interior. It was as if the entire world were mounted in a conspiracy against her, and catastrophic events like earthquakes, global warming, or guerilla wars were really just facades the universe used to distract people from its real purpose—ruining the tanned and flawlessly seamed interior of Emily’s Beamer.

“You know Peter, my Dad would let you have his old Mercedes. Well, he wouldn’t let you have it, but he would sell it to you cheap. He’s getting his Hummer next week.”

“Hmmm.” Peter said.

“What do you mean, ‘hmmm’?”

“Nothing,” he said.

Unlike Peter, she understood nothing to actually mean ‘nothing.’

But this afternoon, the notebook was the final straw. Emily pulled out her notebook, and Peter exploded.

“Put away the book. Please,” he said.

“I just want to write this down.”

“Write down what?”

“Stuff.”

“Stuff? What stuff?”

“Just--- just stuff. What does it matter?”

“Because everything is about stuff, Em. Writing about stuff, buying stuff, staining the interior of stuff…” Peter bit his lip, but his words plowed forward, like an arrow pulled across a bow, catapulting into the world with a force Peter did not anticipate, slicing the air with a sharp whistle. “Emily, would you please, please, please, please, please, please for the love of God please, put up that stupid book!”

She glared. With one motion, she threw her pen in her purse, and slammed the book. It made a small clicking sound, as if it had a lock similar to the cheesy pre-teen diaries that were decorated with blue unicorns and rainbows.

“Emily, I’m sorry, it’s just that---”

“Let me off here. Now.” She pulled out her iPhone. “I’ll call Sharon to pick me up.”

He pulled into the parking lot of one of the gazillion Starbucks that peppered the Wilmington landscape. She opened the car door with some difficulty-- the passenger side door always seemed to stick---but after gritting her teeth and adding a determined shove with her shoulder, she was free from the clutches of Peter’s clunker. She got out, stood up and faced Peter.

“I don’t want to have a life surrounded by things,” he said. “They’re just things.” Peter was trying to convince himself more than Emily.

“Oh, I see. Because I like nice things I must be shallow.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Because I have friends with ‘Mc Mansions’ you think we’re all Mc Bastards.”

“Then stop acting like you’re embarrassed to be seen with me.”

“Peter, I think you’re embarrassed to be seen with you. It’s not about stuff. It’s about taking pride in who you are.”

Peter scanned her Vera Wang dress, her Gucci handbag, and her diamond earrings.

“I dunno, Em. It kind of looks like stuff to me,” he said.

She slammed the car door. She dialed a phone number as she stomped into Starbucks without looking back. Peter swore and swerved back onto the main road and headed for the freeway. The freeway helped him think. It made him believe that he was actually going somewhere.

He wanted a new life.

When he approached Leland, one of the small bedroom towns surrounding Wilmington, small raindrops from a summer sprinkle started to pepper his windshield. Through the mist, he noticed a bright orange billboard declaring:

You are seven miles from Shangri-La, North Carolina---a taste of paradise with Southern charm.

Shangri-La? He had lived in the New Hanover area for years and never heard of Shangri-La.

Was it always here and only just now decided to use its name to its advantage, advertising suburban paradise promises of cheaper housing, better schools and Mayberry-like charm?

Maybe it was just recently incorporated to lure tourists, or maybe, like most of the world, it had thrived, grown and blossomed right underneath Peter’s nose, drowned out by the clatter of his noisy and cluttered life.

The sprinkle turned into rain.

Peter’s windshield wipers groaned. The blades were ineffective, and the rain, combined with pollen, dirt and grime, left dirty streaks across the driver’s side window—exactly in his line of vision. A few miles later, another orange billboard loudly announced:

Mannie’s New and Used Luxury Cars.
No Money Down.
No credit checks.
No Gimmicks.
LUX—UR—EE.
First right at the Shangri-La Exit.

The rain became insistent, beating his windshield and bullying the windshield wipers with heavy, syrupy, fist-sized drops that sounded like hail as they hit the hood. Peter’s windshield wiper limped ineffectively side to side, begging, like a fatally wounded animal, to be put out of its misery. Peter looked for a place to pull over until the rain subsided, but it was difficult to determine where the shoulder of the road began in the twirling sheets of rain.

CRACK!

At first, Peter thought it was hail, but then he saw the long, hairline crack meander across his windshield. Something in front of him must have kicked up debris. He pressed the horn, which gave a pathetic squeal instead of an assertive warning.

POP!

It sounded like gunfire. Not hail…but maybe gravel?

SMASH!

It wouldn’t be until one week later, when Peter finally explained the incident to his editor, that he would realize how ridiculous the entire situation sounded: he was driving past Leland and collided with random debris that shattered his windshield. He was then plunged helplessly into the merciless arms of physics, twirled, turned, and then dumped into the lap of Shangri-La. His editor would rub his eyes and shake his head as Peter explained how his car came to an abrupt stop at the bottom of the exit ramp, its back fender pummeled by the green highway information sign declaring Shangri-La with an arrow pointing to the right.

Peter would then describe how he gingerly got out of the car, testing his legs carefully like a newborn calf, while heavy dollops of rain ran down the back of his jacket. His cell phone---that he always kept dutifully charged and in his inside jacket pocket--- had mysteriously vanished, and the only road out of the rain and toward help was up the exit ramp to the Shangri-La business district, where he hoped to find a place to dry out, a phone, a garage, and, if he was exceptionally lucky, a good cup of coffee.

Peter’s editor would look at him with skeptical, cat-like eyes and grumble. “Did you get hit in the head? Peter, you’re sounding like one of those local loonies that we make fun of all the time. Nothing you’ve told me makes any sense.”

But the best stories never do, Peter would tell him. The best stories never do.