by Greg Ames
“Paige, listen to me. This whole thing, this mess—everything got way out of hand.”
“Savannah’s new in town and needs someone to show her around. Can I give her your number? I think you’ll really like her.”
APPETITES
Kafka fingers his begonias. He bends over them and frowns. I am seated on a lawn chair nearby, slurping a Long Island Iced Tea through a bent yellow straw. “Franz, what are we doing here, I ask you?” I ask him. He does not reply, merely spritzes the waxy leaves with the pump sprayer in his leather garden glove. “Guys like us,” I say, “we should be out boozing and brawling, picking up chicks.” Kafka drops to his hands and knees to inspect the soil. “With your ears and chin,” I continue, “my biceps and hairline, we would be unstoppable, my man.” Kafka ignores me.
Kafka on his motorcycle, speeding recklessly through the city. I am navigating from the sidecar. A crimson scarf flaps jauntily in the wind behind me. “Turn left here,” I say. Both wearing goggles, we are headed to the Stumble Inn for chicken wings and darts. Franz is meeting a chick named Sherry. She claims to have a friend for me. “Is mine cute, Franz?” I yell over the rushing wind. Gloved fists gripping the handlebars, Kafka ignores me, and flicks his wrist. I feel the acceleration in the pit of my stomach. Buildings blur beside us. Lips moving without voices. Pedestrians, road crews, stray dogs.
We meet the chicks at the bar. They’re already drunk and don’t understand our jokes and witty banter. Sherry, the shorter one, has an unfortunate tattoo on her left forearm: MEATLOAF WORLD TOUR ’82. She drinks Jack. Janelle’s lime green tank top appears to be crusted with vomit. She says “fuck” a lot and drinks bottled beer.
Kafka and I have a checkered history with women, probably because we want them to take all of our pain away and carry it for us, while we remain focused on our special projects behind closed doors, chasing immortality. We heap our psychic pain on women’s backs like sacks of grain because we are too weak to carry the load ourselves. This does not increase our popularity or make us intriguing candidates for marriage.
At 2:30 in the morning, Kafka pilots his motorcycle away from the Stumble Inn. He said the wrong things again and scared the chicks away. Hunched over the handlebars, goggles strapped on, Kafka sublimates with speed. My scarf is whipping above my head. Like a man cut free from a noose.
In the bathtub, Kafka has a death grip on my rubber toad. “Franz, take it easy on Mister Toad, would ya?” He tosses it onto the floor. It squeaks and comes to a halt near the brown wicker clothes hamper. We sit in silence. “Franz, hand me the soap,” I say. He does not move a muscle. “The soap, Franz,” I say. “Hand. Me. The. Soap.” Kafka turns his head away. His bony chest and rib cage heave with each breath he takes. Angry silence. We do not look at each other for a minute or two. “It was my toad,” I say finally. “If it was yours, fine. You have to treat other people’s things nicer.” Kafka ignores me.
In his presence I feel windblown, flighty. On the beach I ask him questions that I know he can’t answer, but I cannot refrain from speaking incessantly. “Why do dogs chase their tails? What do you like about the theory of relativity? Are you thinking about me as much as I’m thinking about you?”
I’m fumbling in my pockets for change. I’ve just purchased two Nutty Buddys, one for me, one for Franz.
Now I have both ice creams in one hand and I reach out the other hand, the hand with the money, reaching out and angling my torso forward at the same time, careful not to jar my paperback loose from my armpit. The pages, I notice with some aggravation, are still damp with bathwater. “Renovations,” says the ice cream man, accepting the money from me. He nods at something over my shoulder. “Right,” I say, confused. I don’t know what he’s talking about. “Long time coming,” he says. “Taxpayer dollars.” “Well.” I shrug back. “What’re you gonna do?” “Grin and bear it.” He hands me a tiny napkin. “Thanks,” I say. Walking away, I hoist my ice creams in a toast. “Nice talking to you.” “You too, buddy.”
Nobody knows me like Franz does. He understands pain, loneliness. The two of us sit quietly on this wooden bench. We are licking, chewing, not speaking, watching the sun set orange over the purple pier. There is no cause to be frightened. We are safe here. No one is allowed to hurt us here. Enjoy the ice cream, enjoy the light. It’s been another good day. Women are not the key to our happiness. “We need to learn to love ourselves,” I say. Solitude enhances self-awareness. Kafka nods and licks off a creamy white ’stache of vanilla ice cream. I watch his eyes. I know what he’s thinking and I turn my head. “Where?” I ask him. And then I see her too, long legs swishing together, approaching where we sit.
THE WIND IN THE STREET
A muggy night in August. I’m hanging out in Molly’s cramped apartment on Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn. A hot breeze blows through the open windows, rippling the once-white curtains. It has only just stopped raining.
“We need more beer,” Molly says, staring into the blue glow of her laptop. She’s working on a status update. Her nose ring sparkles in the dim glare of the naked bulb overhead. She taps my knee and smiles, making eye contact for the first time in half an hour. “Will you go buy some?”
I still have a lot of work to do tonight. I stopped by Molly’s only to say a quick what’s up before digging in to my own work.
“Get a twelve-pack,” she says. “There’s money in my purse.” She waves her hand to indicate a non-cyber world where a purse might exist.
“I have a lot to do tonight.”
“Don’t say that.” Finally she looks up at me, pouts. I’ve known her since elementary school. When she was ten, her black hair was bobbed and clipped back with a yellow barrette. She wore Lee jeans and western blouses. We all wanted to poke her with our no. 2 pencils. “There’s a bodega on the next corner.”
“That’s not the point.”
“They’ve gotta be kidding,” she says to the screen. “A unitard? That’s ridiculous.”
Molly wears too-small T-shirts that expose her midriff and expensive jeans slung low on her hips, her peach or purple underwear always visible in the back. She looks away from the screen long enough to flash me a smile. “It’s just a block away,” she says.
I stare at the opposite wall. A rickety metal fan rattles on high speed in the open window, blowing in pizza and garbage smells from outside. Empty beer bottles and sticky glasses crowd the coffee table, the tops of speakers, the kitchenette counters. A change of scenery might not be so bad. A promenade might inspire me in some unpredictable way. I’ll just have to work a little later tonight, that’s all.
I stand up and head to the door. “Fine.”
Molly smiles approvingly at her laptop. “You’re awesome.”
Outside her building, a bearded man in sunglasses squats in the doorway of a vintage clothes shop. He’s dressed in a heavy overcoat with a dirty gray fur collar, wool trousers, and yellow flip-flops. “Raaaaa,” he says to me. “My name is Lucifer, the Prince of Darkness, and I am very very scary. Fear my wrath. For I am Lucifer. Raaaa, raaaaa.”
A car alarm clamors on the next block.
“Don’t you walk away from Lucifer,” he shouts at my back. “Give Lucifer a quarter.”
I don’t have any change. “I’ll give you something on the way back,” I call out over my shoulder.
“You’re lying!”
“No. I promise. I’m just heading to the bodega to buy beer.”
“In the book of Revelation …” he begins, but I have no time to stop and chat about religious doctrine. I bolt across the street as the traffic signal turns yellow.
“Do that again, Beansy, and I’ll kick your fucking ass,” a man shouts outside a bar.
“Yeah?” another man (presumably Beansy) responds, taunting him. “Bring it.”
There is a palpable feeling of malice on the street. Men are everywhere, in doorways and in parked cars, doing nothing and thrilled about it. Cruel, furtive eyes. Suspicious glances.
“Hey hey, dude. Wanna buy som
e weed?” A teenager with bleached hair and black sideburns waves to me from across the street. “I got the kind bud, fella.”
I take a little detour. “Weed, huh? How old are you kids?”
“Seven hundred years old,” the blond kid says.
“Yo, this is the wheelchair weed, son,” his freckled buddy says. This one’s the muscle, the redheaded enforcer, a scowling child in a Kangol cap and Timberland boots. “Two hits and you’re paralyzed.”
“Perhaps I’ll stop in for a moment,” I say. “But I’m heading to the bodega, gentlemen. My girlfriend Molly is waiting for me. Well, she’s not my girlfriend technically, but we have a connection that—Anyway. And more importantly I have quite a bit of work to do tonight. It’s looking like it’s going to be an all-nighter.”
The ginger peckerwood holds the front door open for me. “You’re going for a ride, Knievel.”
His bravado is oddly touching.
The blond kid introduces himself as Smokes. He talks about himself in a manic, high-pitched voice: his folks are on vacation for a week in Cancun; he’s a really good drummer; his band kicks major ass; they sold out the community center up in Golden’s Bridge.
His freckled friend treats me to an array of savage looks, heavy-lidded and disapproving. His jeans are clownishly loose and puddled around his ankles. He has to hitch them up when he steps in any direction.
I follow him inside, my boot soles sticking to the kitchen’s linoleum floor.
I take two or three hits of the weed and a full hour passes before I’m able to speak again. When my tongue no longer feels like a slumbering gerbil in my mouth, I try to push myself up from the couch. I am vaguely aware that Smokes has been on the phone for some time now, cajoling a nearby pajama party to switch locations. He’s speaking in a complex patois that is beyond me. His bodyguard has disappeared. It’s possible that I fell into a temporary coma. I can’t get off the couch.
When six high school girls sway through the front door without knocking or ringing the bell, I feel suddenly like a creepy chaperone or a prehistoric hominid primate lounging on the couch. Australopithecus Robustus.
“Hey, Smokes!” they call out. “What’s up, sexy?”
The apartment door bangs behind them. All but one of them are tall, scrawny, heavily made-up teenagers with durable hair and prominent breasts. They’re attractive in their way, but the one who intrigues me most is short, squat, and sullen. No make-up or jewelry. She wears a baggy peasant blouse and ragged sandals. She straggles behind the others.
Despite the lingering numbness in my legs, I escape to the kitchen where I mix myself a drink. “I have work to do,” I say aloud. “Why won’t anyone let me get my work done?”
Smokes cranks the stereo in the living room. I hear the opening notes of Blood Sugar Sex Magik by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. “A golden oldie going out to my man,” he announces in a voice loud enough for me to hear. Smokes waves me into the living room—“Yo, son, come meet these bitches”—but I remain where I am, chopping a lime on the cutting board. I’ve decided to build a margarita, something gay and festive to keep my spirits up in these challenging times, but when I discover that there is no tequila in the liquor cabinet, I’m crestfallen. Why do I even bother? Eventually I locate a full bottle of Tanqueray gin, and I recover my mirth. “Good to be alive,” I say aloud.
The short hippie girl—Ashley—joins me shortly after I’ve made myself a cocktail.
Ashley has a round and ruddy face and a radiant smile as close to perfection as anyone could wish, but she suppresses it as one would a nasty secret. Too much will have to change in the world before Ashley will smile freely. She scowls instead and talks about migrant workers in Mexico as if they’re her favorite old uncles.
“Look at them,” she says with disdain, sweeping out her arm to implicate her peers in the living room, “they have no conception of true oppression and hardship. Three billion people in the world make less than five bucks a day. But here”—and she casts her dazzling critical gaze at me—“here they just waste and waste and waste.”
I sip my Tanqueray-and-tonic. “True,” I say, “but they’re just kids, Ashley. Once you get older, into your mid-twenties, like me, partying becomes a lot less important. You realize that you have work to do.”
She says, “I just want to get away from everything.”
“I hear you, sister.” I raise my G & T in toast. “You’re preaching to the choir now.”
She scrutinizes my face. “America sucks,” she says, her gray eyes gleaming. Her lashes are long, lovely. “We’re on a crash course for cataclysm. No hands on the wheel. It’s all smoke and mirrors. Doesn’t matter who is president.” She glares at me as if I’ve had something to do with it.
“Mm-hm,” I say.
In the living room, Smokes brings a joint up to his lips. He sucks on it with great force, his eyes closed. The ember glows, brilliant orange. A seed pops. Tiny black flakes of paper see-saw to the floor. His voice emerges from somewhere deep in his throat. “Smokes is in da house.”
“I want to live in the woods,” Ashley says to me. “Grow my own vegetables.”
“Sounds nice.” I swig my drink. “I could get into something like that myself. A fresh start. Get some frigging work done.”
Ashley rakes her hand through her long auburn hair, and she leans against the countertop to get a better look at me. “Are you serious, man? Because I know a place we could go. Tonight. I’ve been thinking about it for months.”
“Sounds totally feasible,” I say, smiling tolerantly at her dreams. Once you get to my age, you realize that your life is basically already over. But you can still appreciate the naïve hopefulness of a teenager who hasn’t yet been vanquished.
“Listen, Ashley,” I say, “it was nice meeting you. Good luck with everything. My girlfriend Molly is waiting for me. Well, technically, she’s not my girlfriend. I mean, Molly doesn’t really like to be tied down by labels or obligations, and I totally respect her independence, but I think it’s fair to say we’re good close friends, considering the amount of physical intimacy we’ve shared over the years.”
“I knew you wouldn’t have the guts.”
“Yeah, it’s just—well, somebody has to go out and buy the beer while Molly is checking her Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and her blogs and stuff.”
“We won’t need modern crap like that where we’re heading, man. The only thing we’ll need to worry about is hunting, survival.” She drains her drink and leaves the cup on the counter. “You ready? Just follow me.” She walks right past her friends in the living room, as if she has never seen them before.
I follow behind her, suspecting that we’ll soon turn around on the sidewalk, amused by our little joke, and rejoin the party.
As her Toyota Corolla wheezes down the BQE, Ashley regales me with tales of her early years. Strapped into the shotgun seat, I sip my sploshing G & T and stare out the window. I had the foresight to freshen up my cocktail before heading out the door. After her folks died, she says, her grandparents raised her in Portland, Oregon. “I hated it there. They treated me like a pet.” Finally, she met an older man, an anarchist poet named Geoff, and he showed her a whole new life. Soon she was living in an abandoned building with a faction of young radicals in Eugene.
“I never felt so alive,” she says, turning to me. “We caused a lot of damage. I can’t really go into the specifics.”
“That’s okay,” I say. “Just watch the road.”
“I learned how to make my frustrations felt on a grand scale.”
“Wow, that’s …”
Half an hour passes. In the passenger seat I nurse my drink. Despite my efforts, I can’t make it last and lean my head against the window and doze off for a few hours. Dreaming. A childhood friend presses a bowie knife to my throat. “Don’t cry,” he says. Gravel crunches beneath the tires. Her Corolla shudders to a stop.
“Wake up.” Ashley shakes my shoulder. “We’re here.”
“Are these the Catskills?” I’m stomping through the woods behind her. “Where are we, Ashley?”
“Shh. This way,” she says. “Follow me.”
We hike for what feels like hours through the darkness. Ashley holds a flickering lighter over her head. I clutch the hem of her blouse. We get turned around many times and twice lose the trail completely, and Ashley twists her ankle and we decide to rest for a while, but in the early morning we step out into a bright sunlit clearing. A windowless church, blackened from a fire, looms before us.
“I think this is it, Tom,” she says.
“Todd,” I correct her.
“Anybody here?” she calls out.
A barechested man in canvas shorts and muddy work boots strolls out of the church wiping his hands on an old T-shirt. “Help you?” he says. His black-bearded chin juts out like a pugilist’s.
Ashley announces that yeah, sure, he can point us to the commune, because we’re prepared to give up everything, including the clothes on our backs and every penny in our pockets, to get away from the stifling and traditional bullshit of American corporate culture. We will work hard, eighteen-hour days if need be, to aid the community.
He laughs. “Well, well. This might be the right place for you then.” He introduces himself as Dallas.
I hoist my hand for a high-five. “Todd,” I say. “Todd Gronski. A pleasure.”
Dallas leaves me hanging, then he sits us down on a rock like little kids at summer camp and explains to us how the community works. “And it does work,” he says, eyeing me with suspicion. “If you want to be a part of this, friend, listen to how it works.”
I’m still holding my empty highball glass in my hand. I lick the rim to get the last speck of gin into my body. “What makes you think I’m not listening?”
Dallas warns us that our per capita rates of consumption of non-renewable resources have to be close to nil. He expresses his concerns about soil erosion and trace mineral deficiencies and the unscrupulous use of artificial fertilizers, not to mention the disturbance of natural cycles of animal and plant life.