At sixteen seconds she says, “Well, don’t you have any friends?”
“Yeah,” I say, “I met this guy on the bus who seemed pretty cool.”
“On a bus?”
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“Oh. Earlier today.”
“Earlier today?”
“Around late noon.”
She looks at her watch. The shiny real diamonds are damaging my eyes. She rolls her wrist a couple of times to finalize blindness. “Five or six hours ago? So what’s this friend’s name?”
“How the hell should I know?”
“Lei loa igoa i le kama?” I pretend like I don’t understand a Samoan word she’s said. I know she’s only using her rudimentary skills to appear not only cultural but paternal. “You don’t know his name?”
“I didn’t ask him.”
“Okaaay....”
“I didn’t think I’d ever see him again.”
“And yet he’s your friend?”
“Yes. It’s one of the few things I’ve been dead right about in a while.”
“So where is he now?”
“Either safe in a dumpster in downtown Campbell or in jail.”
“Jesus, Paul. What am I gonna do with you? I’m calling Uncle, okay?”
“Nah,” I say. “Don’t bug him. He’s got enough shit to worry about.”
“He can help,” she says. “I don’t know why, but he loves you.”
“All the more reason not to call.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means why ruin a good thing?”
She’s dialing the digits, not looking at me any longer. “Quiet.”
“It’s too late.”
“He’ll be up,” she says, totally missing my meaning. “It’s only eight-thirty.”
I don’t say, Well, why are there no lights on in this place? or Why did your hubby hit the sack before his nine o’clock bedtime? but, “Don’t worry about it. It’s no big deal. I’ll just bounce right now and you get can back to your life. You deserve it.”
“No. You stay. You sit right there. Yeah, Uncle. Hi, it’s Tali.”
Once my sister sets her mind to something, it usually works out. Success is based as much on scope as it is on ambition, and Tali would never waste an imaginative second believing she could affect her race through poems. Tali wants to conventionalize me. Her belief is that you’ve got to try to get in line, just like everyone else. Why? Because there are people out there who care about you. And it’s not inhibiting. It’s not bourgeois, mediocre. It’s fair. But my metaphorical vision of life is like a picture of packed humans, randomly assembled, all looking around scatterbrained for something they can’t find, let alone comprehend. Much like a kiddie cover of the Where’s Waldo? series. My titular metaphor extends to Who’s Waldo?, What the Hell Does Waldo Want Amongst Us?, and Is Waldo Maybe Hiding for a Reason?
Life, I’d once read, is a long preparation for something that never happens.
But for the first time since childhood I find myself agreeing with Tali. I feel like I’ve been running in a circle, chasing my own tale, a spectacle few people can stomach. I’d like to go somewhere, do something, anything worthy of my life. Gotta turn some lever of rebellion off, try to be normal, something in me has gotta die so I can live. I suspect that my only real skill is being critical. Finding the flaw in the day, the sun, its light. I could pick apart the heart of Mohandas Gandhi if you gave us thirty minutes of alone time.
Before Tali hangs up the phone, she’s got a job lined up for me. Not even a second wasted on backstory. I feel grateful, I honestly do. She holds out the phone and whispers, “Don’t forget to say thank you.”
I nod and say, “Hey, Uncle Rich, whatup, how ya’ doin’?”
“Good, nephew. You sure you wanna do this?”
I know that’s his way of saying, You’re not gonna put me in a bad way, are you? The little white lies of business have already started. I have no clue what this is, but so be it. “Yeah. I’m sure I wanna do it. I really appreciate this.”
Tali smiles, less of joy, more of relief, and my uncle says, “Okay, old buddy. You got a place to stay?”
“Uh, not really.”
“The guesthouse is yours.”
“Nah, it’s cool, Uncle. No big deal. I’ll find me a vacant corner somewhere.”
“Listen. That damned thing is just collecting dust. It’s like an old art museum, a used bookstore. Move in tonight, tomorrow, whenever. The place is furnished, stocked. You don’t even have to stop in and say hello to your Aunt Lanell and me. Just fill it up.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Now, listen. Tomorrow morning. Eight A.M. sharp, huh?”
“All right, Uncle.”
“That’s tomorrow, Monday. Just in case you’ve lost track.”
“I’ll be there, Uncle. I promise. See you then.” I look at Tali and she’s nodding like a delirious coke addict chopping up a lump for the first time in five months. “Looks like I’m back in the world, sister woman.”
“Get some sleep,” she says. “You’re gonna need it.”
I hit the sack scrunched up on a two-seat couch in the living room and lie there for an hour contemplating nothing. Then I walk down the hallway, find I am in none of the five dozen pictures decorating it, nor are my mother and father, and decide to look in on the kid to see if he’s all right.
His room is empty, the bed made.
I walk a little panicky over to my sister’s double-door room, slowly open it, and find the three of them asleep in the biggest bed I’ve ever seen. I don’t dare wake my sister. Back in my nephew’s room, I lie down on his bed, pull the Thomas the Tank Engine blanket to my chin, and fall asleep....
The next morning I wake and put the edge of the razor to my face. No blood: the hair of the cheek, chin, and neck comes off clean. A good sign. Have to believe in this new deal on the horizon. There’s a desperation in my faith that I’d rather not ponder right now. Self-inoculation: that’s the only answer.
I sit down with my sister at the family-assembled IKEA table to a warm bowl of oatmeal topped with a swirl of honey and sprinkled with fresh blueberries. This morning my muscles feel strong, my flesh tight. I’m like an Olympic athlete. I breathe in deep through the nose and begin to eat.
She doesn’t say anything. Watching me with the seriousness of a psych on call at a suicide watch, even squinting, putting an index finger to her beautifully fat Polynesian lips. Deep down, and even though she set the thing up, she deems this new sentiment of mine to be pure scam. The old attitude bubbles up in rebellion—or, rather, in support of her expectations.
“I gotta get in my antioxidants. That way I can take a dip of Cope during my first break, hit some heroin in the stall at lunch. Got any wheatgrass?”
She doesn’t even smile. I feel a little pity for poor Toby and McLaughlin. Her two children, separated by thirty-one years. They’re both nowhere to be found. And I can’t hear the tiniest sign that they’re back there in the house, sleeping, pissing, brushing teeth, weeping. I resume eating.
“I’m gonna give you some sisterly advice,” she says.
I stop eating.
“Hopefully you’ll take it in the spirit it’s given.”
“With condescension?”
“Don’t start. You haven’t even set foot in that place yet.”
“I’m purging, mi hermana. Getting it all out of the system before I punch my time card.”
“That’s what I wanna talk to you about.”
“Yeah?” I start eating in small spoonfuls. “Where’s McLaughlin and Toby?”
“Now,” she says. “I know how tough it is for you to turn that wild brain of yours off. No one’s asking you to do that. Just scale it down. Trim off the excesses.”
I look up, eating, “Like prime rib?”
“Now.”
“Can you stop saying now?”
“Just listen! I’m gonna help you tie down your brain.” She
pulls from her purse a gift sealed in the green wrapping paper of Barnes & Noble. A golden sticker across the middle is shaped like a bow. Despite dwindling readership, the corporate arbiters of literature seem quite happy these days.
“Sister. You’re kind and very thoughtful, but I ain’t about to read your latest self-help manual by that dingbat Texan.”
“Dr. Phil tries to help people.”
“He tries to help ladies. And himself. He’s a balding Alpha male who beats up every man that sets foot on his stage.”
“Okay, let’s not start the day out this way.”
“He’s like a big fucking phallus up there. The women just love to serve Daddy at the pulpit. Love to get lectured on how to cope after the parakeet dies. He’s got them all over his knee, paddling their backsides. Oh, Daddy! Meanwhile his wife sits there at the sermon loving that all these women want her man. She’s just bristling with possession. It’s disgusting.”
“Paul! Will you shut up? It’s not Dr. Phil, okay? Jesus. Just open it.”
I follow her instructions. It’s a planner, my first ever. I flip through the pages and see that everything is organized in boxes: by time, by date, by activity. I smile and my sister says, “Do you like it?”
I can’t tell the truth. “Yes.”
“I thought it’d be perfect for you because there’s a Thought of the Day section on each page. That’ll keep you confined to one observation. One idea. That’s it. And it’s gotta be succinct enough to fit into the box.”
How befitting. “Yes, thank you.”
“Now. There’s no excuse. Stop running around and wasting your talent. You’ve got to figure out a way to live.”
I can’t help but be a little skeptical about the redemptive qualities of a fancy planner. This is all I was missing in my life? Might we once and for all revitalize a flatulent American economy by mapping out our collective future in these neat little binders? Should we have Psych-Ops airdrop these babies into Baghdad like so many propaganda leaflets and untarnish our reputation in the region? The Kurds, Shia, and Sunni united at last around a little box of To-Do’s for the Day, like Neanderthals squatting over the first flames of fire. I remember the old man Cyrus and his reflexive yet genuine expressions of gratitude.
His silence, his silence.
I stand up, nod. “Thank you very much, good-bye.”
“Don’t let us down, Paul.”
“Speaking of us, where’s McLaughlin and Toby?”
“Getting their rest.”
I want to ask, From what? but don’t. I’m out the door.
“Good luck!” Tali shouts.
As if I’m going off to war and there’s better than a gambler’s chance that the next time we meet I’ll be blank-eyed, supine, harmless on the reused sheets of a casket.
22
I Arrive
I ARRIVE at Santa Clara Real Estate West an hour ahead of time. Take a shy peek into the tinted window of the entrance, but no one’s in the office. Walk up a winding cobblestone path along a flowing stream and an ivy-strewn bank into the interior of the quad. The songs put out by the winged musicians in the knotty-trunked sycamores are fortissimo as I pass. There’s a bench near a gushing fountain under the cool shade of the thick oaks, and I take it quietly, trying not to disturb the scene. The branches overhead have reached out to one another over the decades, intermingling into a polygonal enclosure, a virtual apse of nature. Early morning light streams through the cracks of the green leafy roof in the crisscrossing angles of a disco ball, blessed angels in some encrypted gilt-edged Bible of yesteryear floating down, kissing my skin, my brow, warming me. What beauty. Manmade beauty. Or man-fabricated beauty, bucolic farmed fish. What a beautiful, man-fabricated lie.
The truth comes when the people come. Does the place remain majestic when polluted by the presence of man? That is the question, the test. It’s easy to fall in love with ghost towns, condemned strip malls, weed-laden Little League fields. When no one’s around.I could find beauty in the gutter, as long as it’s empty of another heartbeat. Hell, I fell in love with a four-by-eight cell in the hole in Quentin for chrissake. Used to wake up smiling. And yet, I know it’s people who make a story. No such thing as intrinsic story free of the forward-pressing fingertip of man. No Adam and Eve? Then no garden, no apple, no snake. No Noah or Gilgamesh? Then no ark, no flood, no beastly tandems. The very first set of eyes that claimed this place brought a thousand other inchoate stories to it. The fragrant mountains of pine and the valleys of towering elm and the untouched oceans and sparkling rivers were merely pools of oil, yet to be put on canvas, awaiting the order imposed by the artist, tranquillitas ordinis, the preservation skills of the framer.
Awaiting the redeemer, the destroyer.
But this morning no one comes. I spread my arms out across the bench like a free-falling skydiver, breathe in deep through the nostrils, listen to the orchestra of birds above and around me, trickle like dripping water into a dream.
It’s a day twenty-one years ago in an elementary school classroom of second-graders. I am there in the front middle of the class, for one school year. I am in love with our teacher, a widow named Mrs. Garcia, whose brown eyes and short brown hair keep me awake. I follow her all day. I am her shadow, her one true admirer. I follow her at recess and she takes my hand and says, “Paul, don’t you want to play with the other kids?” I say, “No. I’d rather help you.” She is kind and lonely and I wonder how anyone in the world could ever be prettier. After class she asks me if I might stay behind to help her clap the erasers, and I say, “Oh, yes, Mrs. Garcia.” She says, “You know I adore you, Paul, you’re a wonderful boy,” and I say, “Okay.” I stay. She turns away from me in the shadows of the classroom, and when she turns back around she is taking off her blouse. There in her bra and cotton skirt, she walks toward me and pats my shoulder gently and says, “It will be okay.” She sits down upon her chair and hands me a brush from her purse and I climb up on her desk and do what she asks. I stroke the bristles down her upper back in straight lines, my hand shaking, my breath so short in my throat I feel dizzy. She says, “It’s okay, Paul. It’s okay.” The moles are dark against her fair skin. I pretend that I’m painting. The room is quiet like reading time, and out the window I can see the birds on their branches watching us. I am in love like never before and happy like Christmas morning all over again but worried in my stomach like the times when you lie and are about to get caught by your father, and when she is head down, crying into the bowl of her hands, I am saying back to her, “It is okay, it is okay, I will not hurt you. I promise, Mrs. Garcia, I promise.” I know what they will do and I will not hurt you. I don’t care about them, Mrs. Garcia.
I am awakened by a rattling of pots. I’m not sure what the dream means on my first day of official business, but I may get to the bottom of it if I forget about it. If it comes back under a different consciousness, which is just a fancy bullshit new-age way of saying if it comes back later. Without my knowing it. Without willing it into being.
Meanwhile, the rattling pots aren’t pots. It’s the heartless tinman’s distant cousin in desperate need of a can of oil—a clinking, clanking, cluttering collection of collagenous junk!—the engine of a gray early eighties two-door Honda Civic hatchback that is sputtering into the lot. Once it stops, my uncle emerges—or escapes—smiling.
“Hey, nephew! Are you ready for the big adventure?”
I’m walking toward him and I realize I’m ecstatically nodding, nodding, nodding. I don’t know why so much but I treasure the kindness in my uncle’s pleasantry and that he’s not ashamed to be seen by his peers in a little box that should have been diced up at your local chop shop way before we transitioned to the new millennium.
If I were to reciprocate the kindness in my uncle’s voice I’d stop right here and now, U-turn down the cobblestoned path, and sprint. All to avoid whatever kind of hurt and disappointment I’m about to bring to my uncle’s life. But I can’t think like that anymore. Gotta meet t
he expectations of conformity, exorcise myself of the self-demon: Out! Out! Out!
I hope I stay shut.
“Morning, Uncle.”
“Wanna take her for a spin before you punch in, bud?”
I realize the Civic jalopy is for me. I’d like to say, “No thanks, Uncle. Driving that piece of shit down the road will mark me as a target for the EPA’s hit squad.” I go with the truth instead. “I don’t deserve this, Uncle. I don’t mind catching the bus to work, honest. Even walking. I like walking in the morning when no one’s awake. Plus, I don’t want to put you out, man.”
“Nonsense! Really, Paul. The deal cost me very little.”
“I guess you’re not the biggest realtor in the Bay Area for nothing.”
“Listen, I didn’t do a thing. Just drive it around, for Pete’s sake, and see how it feels.”
“Okay, Uncle.”
“You gotta get around in this job. I have eight offices in the South Bay alone. And I may want you to do some work at a few of the offices on the Peninsula.”
“Okay. Thank you very much, Uncle. Again.”
He looks down at his watch, back at the car, hands me the keys, and says, “Okay, I gotta go. A guy named Chinaski is gonna be your supervisor. Now hear me out really quickly. You’re ten times smarter than he is, okay? I want you to get used to taking orders from people like him. That’s business. No way out. I’m telling you ahead of time, as a warning. You gotta smile your way right through it and produce. If you get through Chinaski and his bullshit, you can get through anyone. He’s gonna give me a report after a couple weeks. Just think of it as business boot camp.”
“You’re prepping me for business war, Uncle? Corporate mergers and acquisitions?”
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