American Dreams

"And this wicked tongue says, 'you know, you're not really living', and it stares into the sun, and it flies from star to star, cursing everyone."

I'm sitting on a bench in the park at the centre of Grosvenor Square, watching the Stars And Stripes ripple in a breeze that's blowing in the wrong direction for this particular view. The stars are in the top right corner instead of the top left. My mind, ever the tracer of lines from the past to the present, thinks of Thompson and Amerika. Back when this whole thing started, he was still alive. Phoning in columns about sports and politics and gambling for ESPN, yes, but still a good six months from putting a shotgun in his mouth.

It took me a year and a half to get here and all my heroes are dead.

I light a cigarette, savouring the taste and the cold of this bright winter morning. The nerves are a memory now, played out in the million short films I've been running behind my eyes these last three weeks. None of it really matters anymore. We're down to yes or no, down to a tired boy with a battered copy of Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas nestled down inside his rucksack like a lucky charm, crushed into a corner by multicoloured folders full of application forms and various identifying documents, down to the business end of this whole agonising process.

Christ, I'm not sure I've ever felt this exhausted. I've been sleeping badly for the last week or so, auto-piloting through my last few days of whoring myself for the Home Entertainment people. If I get through this, I'm swearing off customer service forever. The necessary evils of getting to my wife have done for any notion of compromise I might once have entertained. If I get through this, it's fourteen weeks before I have to work again, and I've already made a vow to spend a large portion of that time writing, finishing something. I need the other half of me, I need to climb out of this hole, I need my life back.

If I get through this, it's all there.

Off the bench and walking, out of the park and onto the road, approaching the railing and taking my place in a short queue headed by an inappropriately bright and jolly sign announcing this is the place for visas. We shuffle forward and then I'm flashing my letter and my passport for the bored security guard, getting the okay to move inside the railings, down the path to a portacabin like a miniature customs area. I dump the contents of my pockets into a tray, send that and my bag through the X-ray machine while I walk through the metal detector and come away clean. On the other side, a policeman with a machine gun in his hands and a pistol in his belt sends me anti-clockwise around the building, retracing my steps to a reception at the rear of the building where I flash my letter and my passport again, get told to switch off my mobile phone.

"Go up the stairs and take a number," the guy says.

Up the stairs and through into something a little different than I'd imagined. Somehow I'd thought there would be less people than this, sitting in plastic chairs around the edges of a smoke-filled room with coffee, perhaps talking in low voices while they waited their turn. The reality is a hall, windows to the outside world on one side, windows to Embassy officials on the other. The end closest to me is taken up by a desk for the courier service that delivers visas and a couple of machines that print numbered tickets. It's like the meat counter at the supermarket. Take a ticket and wait.

A disinterested woman helps me with the ticket part and I find my way to a seat. The hall is divided by three large screens that display the queues for different types of visa, which number should be at which window and who's up next. Every few seconds, a disembodied voice issues an invitation and somebody gets up, watched by the rest of us. I look around me, wondering if the others are getting that little tweak in their stomach each time someone gets called. It's pretty relaxed, on the whole, but there's an undercurrent of tension, of sweaty palms and shifting buttocks. All these futures in one room.

It's like something from a movie, maybe a hundred people on each side, the two groups facing each other, divided by the screens, watching the graphics and listening to the voice. I keep getting distracted by the sunlight that streams through gaps in the blinds.

"Number eleven to window fourteen."

That's me, lucky number eleven. I 'excuse me' my way to the end of the row, passing polite smiles and eyes that grab mine before cutting downward. I leave the hall and head up a corridor to room that's all interview windows, where a woman a good few years younger than I am offers a terse smile and asks me for my letter and my passport. It's all process and not exactly thrilling. She asks me for everything they'd asked me to bring in the order they'd asked me to bring it, making marks on a checklist until she reaches the bottom and I let out a breath I hadn't even realised I'd been holding.

"You'll need this again," she says, handing back my number along with a form. "Just fill this out and wait for your number to be called."

I nod, distracted, and she smiles, perhaps recognising the effect this place has on people.

"Good luck," she says.

I don't want the screens and the voice and the people so I take a seat at a row of tables just off the main hall, filling out the form I've been given (name, address, and phone number for SMS, the courier people) and then trying to read a little. Interview window number eleven is to the other side of the wall just in front of me, and I can hear the guy dealing with the girl there saying "Hey, slow down, relax," in this calm voice. Then: "Put your left index finger just there. No, facing downward. That's it. No, towards me, like you had a second ago. No..."

I saw the girl walk up to the window but I can't see her now. I imagine her flustered, close to tears, and I can hear how the guy is losing patience. I think about getting up and walking around the corner, just taking her hand and putting her finger when it needs to be. The machines they use are pretty much identical to the ones at US customs, of which I'm a veteran.

"Number eleven to window fifteen," says a human voice, not the machine, and the little drama playing out just a few feet away disappears like I'd imagined it.

This part's the interview. From what I read, most people just breeze through it. They ask a couple of inconsequential questions and then it's "Welcome to America," and you're on your way, dancing out into Grosvenor Square like Gene Kelly. Only that's not how it's playing out inside your head as you walk up that corridor. Fuck, no. Inside your head they're asking that one question you don't know the answer to.

"So, Mr. O'Mahony, what size shoe does your wife wear?"

"How old's her cat?"

"What's her mother's middle name?"

Trying to smile at myself, I make my way to window fifteen, where an alarmingly severe woman takes my number. "Mr. O'Mahony?" she says, except she says Maharney or Mahoney or some shit because she's American and therefore possessed of an accent to which my name is a mouthful of unpronounceable.

I nod.

"Raise your right hand," she says.

I do.

"Do you swear that the information you've presented to us today is, to the best of your knowledge, the whole truth?"

"Yes."

"Okay, sign these."

She pushes a couple of forms through and I sign and date them, push them back.

"Okay, you need to take that form to the desk by the door and pay for the delivery of your visa."

"Okay," I say.

She starts shuffling papers and I stand there at the window for a few seconds before I realise we're done. For an insane moment, I'm going to lean forward and tap on the glass and go "My wife works in insurance, we met over the internet in July of 2004 and then in person in November of the same year. We got married in April of 2005. I've been to America three times in the past two years, but only for weekly visits. Oh, and my wife, Jennifer? She's a Leo."

I bite my tongue and turn away, walking slowly back down the corridor and into the hall, where I make my way to the SMS desk and present the form with my details on it. I pay the fee, take my receipt, walk back down past reception and outside, where security open a gate for me and I walk back out onto Grosvenor Square. A little dazed, I stand there for a few moments before reaching into my jacket to turn on my mobile phone. It's 10:50am. I have been in the Embassy only an hour and twenty minutes.

I start walking, thinking about the train home, thinking about lunch, like it's just another day. I'm only just beginning to process what's happened and what it means for the exhaustion and the headaches and the constant feeling of low-level dread. It's like Kevin Spacey at the end of The Usual Suspects, how each step takes another twist out of the muscles and the mind, how I look up and see what a beautiful fucking morning it is, how I finally stop and close my eyes and just feel it for a few seconds, like a hit from some strange new drug.

It's not crying when it's laughter with tears.