The Potential of Zeroes

by Eric Mattys

  “To Moesuddha!” They all threw back their shot of rum.

  After they recovered from the shot, Mew explained, “Moesuddha has hizown garden, an’ cooks hisown food.”

  Moesuddah smiled. “It’s a little magic.”

  Terese asked, “What makes it magic?”

  “I have a permit that allows me to grow my own medicinal marijuana.”

  Max nodded. “Wow. That’s really cool.”

  “Yep. There is nothing I love more than being able to wave my permit right in the cops’ faces, and you know, since it’s legal to have an eighth or less… it’s kind of like heaven.” He laughed, and the laugh bellowed from the cavernous depths of his belly and wheezed out through his lungs. “Do you guys smoke?”

  Mew raised his eyebrows a little. “Can’t say I smoked since my private school days.”

  “Neal and I smoked a few times back in college.” Terese added, “Iss like, you ever cross-stitched… on weed.” Only she laughed at her own joke.

  Neal quickly interjected, “For me, i’was moreova private kinda thing.”

  “‘Cept for when you were braggin’ ‘bout it in your super cool gangsta raps.” Terese wrapped her arms around her shoulders striking an old school b-boy pose and promptly broke into a laugh.

  Neal rolled his eyes, putting a hand of protest in the air. “My skillz are undeniable, okay.”

  “Whatev, Neal. You and the Young Republicans League treated your little Mary Jane expeditions like top-secret vacations. Didn’tchyou guys take a’ oath a secrecy to preserve your potential polit’cal careers?”

  “I’ve no recllection regarding the ‘vents of which you speak,” stammered Neal.

  “Well,” Moesuddha asked, “Would you guys care to smoke some this evening?”

  Mew raised his eyebrows even higher. “Could we do that here in the bar?”

  Moesuddha frowned. “In the bar? No. You can’t smoke anything in the bar, but all we have to do is go to the smoke patio out back and then take a little hike into the alley… No one here cares.”

  The four of them exchanged looks. Neal’s eyes widened, and he showed his nervous teeth. Mew left his eyebrows at their highest, tilting his head slightly considering the offer. Terese looked to Max who bit his lower-lip and nodded.

  “I’ll let you think about it. The offer’s on the table. I’ll let you know when we’re going to take our… little hike.” He laughed again and got up to talk with someone else at the bar.

  Max smiled a larger than normal smile. “It’s quite an offer. I think you know where I stand on the matter…”

  Neal shook his head slowly. “I’ss like... too good an offer. He didn’t say a thing ‘bout cash.”

  Mew smirked, “I don’t think he’s gonna charge us anything.”

  “Tha’ss all the reason more not to trust’em.” Neal concluded before asking, “What’s he gettin’ outtuv it?”

  Terese looked quizzically at Neal. “Camaraderie’s still a thing, right? Friendship isn’t all quid pro quo all the time.”

  Neal looked over his shoulder. “Maybe he’s tryin’a hook us high-end customers on his super weed so we get addicted like everyone else here. Maybe all these people started out with some comfy life before they tried the super grass and ended up trollin’ the bottom of the social pyramid.”

  Terese rolled her eyes. “No. Neal, that’s stupid. Drug dealers are only like that in the D.A.R.E. program.”

  Neal squinted. “I juss… don’t trusta free anything.”

  Max leaned in toward Neal and whispered, “Peer pressure, Neal. Come on. Don’t you wanna get high with us?”

  Mew chimed in, “C’mon, Neal. All the cool kids are doin’ it.”

  Terese opened her eyes much larger than normal. “Yeah. Do it, Neal.”

  “Alright. Alright. I’ll do it. But don’t leave me by myself cuz there’s totally guys lookin’ like they wanna get in my pants.”

  Moesuddha gave a head nod in Max’s direction. Max gave a head nod back and they followed Moesuddha to the back exit. The back patio opened to a grungy parking lot. Moesuddha led the way past the end of the parking lot and into the alley. Neal’s heart pounded like a tabla in varying tones, and his brow wrinkled as if dealing with a client he knew wanted to take advantage of him. He checked his back and both ends of the alley for cops again and again. Around the corner was an abandoned garage that could have held a semi truck, open to the alley for the entire length, dark and out of sight.

  Max commented, “Thissiza pretty convenient location you got here.” A pigeon’s wings echoed in the far corner, which made Neal jump.

  Terese failed to notice the pigeon. All of the alcohol making its way through her system dizzied the sounds and her surroundings. Her eyes couldn’t keep up with the movement of her head. She took a deep breath and steadied her body.

  “The only downside is that there’s no music here,” Moesuddha said as he began rolling a joint.

  “What’s the story with your name?” asked Mew.

  “Mohammad, Jesus, and Buddha all wrapped up into one. No matter who you are, I got something you can believe in.”

  Neal asked as cooly as he could, “So, what we owe you for this smoke we’re ‘bout to… smoke?”

  Max tightened his jaw. “Neal, don’t kill the vibe of random human connection with dollar exchanges.” He turned to Moesuddha. “I’m sorry for our friend.”

  “No worries. Truth is that if I ever get caught selling the stuff I grow, I can lose my permit and go to jail. It’s a strange sort of regulation. They don’t want any of these medical grower types to get too big by selling to the general public. It’s not worth the risk when I can sell it to people with a prescription legally. But…” Moesuddha sealed off the joint with his tongue. “If you wanted to buy me a shot back at the bar, I wouldn’t object.” Moesuddha smiled and held up the joint. Max smiled in awe of Moesuddah’s smoothing of the situation. “So who’s going to spark this off? Max? I’m looking in your direction.”

  “I can’t say no.” Max brought the tightly rolled joint to his mouth, flicked the lighter on, and inhaled. Max saw the end of the joint as tiny, bright orange wolves howling into his lungs, disregarding the rules of men limited by grids and walls and properties and paperwork and deadlines. He held in this wordless howl and passed the joint to Moesuddha who took a quick hit and passed to Mew. The smoke coiled in a nearly straight line until Mew took a drag. He passed to Terese, hunched over in her still narrowing frame of view. She inhaled and passed to Neal before bursting into rough coughing. Neal asked if Terese was all right. She nodded as she continued to cough and tear up. Neal inhaled and joined Terese in uncontrollable coughing while considering that he might be the first marijuana-related death, and that each heave from his lungs might be a tumble down the social hierarchy. Max took up the joint and made the wolves howl again before Moesuddha took one last hit without burning his fingers.

  Max suggested, “Le’s go grab another drink,” as Terese and Neal finally began to recover.

  They walked back inside where Max started to order five rum and cokes before Terese waved a hand of protest and changed it to four. Terese’s vision became a stop motion movie with a gradually decreasing frame-rate. The heavy eyelids caused continually longer periods of wait before the next frame recorded in her brain. She said to Neal that she had to use the restroom and then asked him to watch the door for her to make sure nobody gave her any trouble.

  Neal stood with his arms crossed in front of the door and let thoughts of paranoia weave through his mind. They probably think a terrorist is in their bar with his dark skin and bushy eyebrows and convex nose. They probably think only a fundamentalist would guard the women’s bathroom like this. They probably hate for no reason at all. They probably want to put his name on a list and monitor his phone calls just because they can. It’s never reasonable.

>   As Max walked past Neal on his way to the men’s room, he asked, “Havin’ fun?”

  “If by fun you mean scared for my life, my future, and my asshole, then totally.”

  Max laughed louder than normal and slapped Neal on the shoulder as he entered the men’s room. He bypassed the urinals for the toilet with a door and more privacy. Someone else entered the restroom and Max assumed the standard bathroom blank facial expression staring six feet beyond the wall in front of him. Max heard the stranger’s footsteps approaching his stall. Right as he wished there was a lock on the stall, the stall door swung open and clanged against the wall.

  “You lonely in there?”

  Max nearly broke stream. “Um. I consider the men’s room a place of solace and reflection.”

  “Thiss lil’ bathroom’s way too small for all that.” The stranger, whom Max could not see, hung onto the doorway of the stall for drunken life. Max saw the corner of the stall jostle.

  Max maintained despite forgetting the starting point of their conversation. “World gets smaller all the time, I s’ppose.”

  The man stood next to Max and started peeing in the same toilet. “Are you gay or straight?”

  “I’m straight.”

  He looked over at Max. “I admire that…”

  Max made no response as the sound of two streams falling into water continued.

  “Bet that makes my presence rather uncomfortable for you.”

  “Um… sure does.”

  “I’m sorry.” He stopped and staggered out of the stall. “Just thought there was a chance…”

  Max heard the man’s footsteps stumble out of the bathroom. When Max exited, Neal and Mew were supporting Terese.

  Neal shot a frustrated look at Max. “I called a taxi. We’re done walkin’.”

  “Fair ‘nough.”

  “Should be ready to go in a couple minutes.”

  Max found and downed one of the rum-and-cokes he had just purchased, gave the remaining three to Moesuddha, and closed his tab with the mountain-like lady bartender. He met Neal, Terese, and Mew in the taxi.

  Max shook his head for a second. “Yep. That happened.”

  “What happened?” asked Neal.

  16

  Brownies

  Max makes sure to close the taxi door behind him. Terese secures her containers of brownies in the trunk. The full taxi accelerates toward the homeless shelter depositing them at Walnut and Park Ave a few blocks from the homeless shelter. Terese, Max, and Mew each carry some of the brownie containers.

  Mew takes in a breath and says, “This is still hard for me.”

  Terese snorts through her nose. “Instead of thinking how hard this is for you, imagine how hard it is for the people who are there. Imagine having nowhere to go. With a family that can’t or won’t help you. Imagine experiencing some trauma that triggers bouts of debilitating depression and or anxiety.”

  Mew replies, “I get it. I get it. I’m an asshole for being afraid.”

  Terese continues, “Imagine all the things you haven’t experienced. No childhood abuse. No addiction in your family. No poverty. No malnutrition during school, no unfavorable treatment from teachers, no prison record that prevents you from getting a job. It’s not laziness that leads people to homelessness; it’s a series of unfortunate events. Just because you haven’t experienced them doesn’t mean you should forget they exist for other people.”

  Mew sighs, “Okay. It’s not like I’m going to go running out of there screaming or something.”

  Battling himself in silence, Mew remembers the way he felt walking down Colfax flipping off BMWs and Porsches thinking about class warfare. If you own a luxury vehicle, your morals must be askew. How can you justify the luxury when you could tip the scales of social inequality? In a world with such inequality, why do homeless people not fight and steal all the flashy cars and drive them into the sea or sell them on eBay to rebalance everything?

  Mew finally unleashes, “If class warfare were to break out, a homeless shelter would be ground zero. The twenty bucks in my wallet is probably more than what any homeless person has. Why would they differentiate between my wealth and someone who drives a flashy car around?”

  Terese blinks twice. “You’re giving brownies away, aren’t you? If this is ground zero, at least you’re doing something to show you’re on the right side.”

  Still whispering, Mew replies, “But the other side has drones, M16s, and Apache helicopters. Not real interested in picking sides in that fight.”

  Max interjects, “Soldiers are on our side, right?”

  Terese shrugs. “The war’s not here yet, so you don’t really have to choose anyway. Just think of it as good karma in case that war does come.”

  Mew wonders what class warfare would do to his karma levels but asks, “Does that mean the people in the homeless shelter have bad karma?”

  She raises her eyebrows. “I don’t really know.”

  Max chimes in, “So, they deserve being homeless because of their karma?”

  Terese responds, “‘Deserve’ is a complicated word.”

  Max looks up, “Does anybody deserve anything?”

  Terese shakes her head and shrugs. “All I know is everyone deserves brownies, good karma or bad.”

  Mew smirks. “You know what I’m getting at. Karma is just another way of assigning reason where there is none at all.”

  Max adds, “Yeah, like when people say that ‘I am where I am because of some good or bad deed I did in my last life.’ Or like ‘God chose us, so we’re the chosen ones. We only have to do these little things to make it look like we care about the impoverished.’ Vainglorious.”

  Mew nods in agreement. “Sounds like so many flaming bags of crap being thoughtlessly stomped out. You end up with so much philosophical bullshit on your shoe.”

  Terese asks, “So people should just watch the shit burn?”

  Mew replies, “As long as the flame doesn’t get out of control and burn the whole house down? It’s better than getting shit on your shoe.”

  Max closes his eyes and puts a finger on his forehead. “Getting confused on your metaphor here. The flaming bag of bullshit is social inequality and stomping it out is like welfare programs?”

  Terese ignores him. “Helping someone else doesn’t require getting any shit on your philosophical shoes. Do you need a reason to help someone else? Do you doubt that we’re all made of the same stuff?”

  Mew sighs. “No. I’m not a selfish bastard. I don’t need a reason to help other people.”

  Terese continues relentlessly. “No one becomes homeless out of sound reasoning. Do you know anyone who wakes up in the morning and says, ‘Oh yeah. Homelessness. I’ll do that for a while.’”

  Max frowns and shrugs. “People go camping all the time.”

  “Hilarious. But that’s different and you know it. Homeless people don’t have a safety net or a rewards account at REI.”

  Mew reasons, “Maybe they don’t want one. Maybe being homeless is actually very freeing. No job. No bills. Maybe the homeless revolution is simply personally opting out of society. Or maybe class warfare is just around the corner.”

  When they walk in, the walls of the shelter are a gentle yellow pastel and the scent is a mix of lemon disinfectant, baby powder, and bleach used to sterilize and mask the smell of sweat and dry-mouthed human breath. Terese checks in with a staff volunteer who points to an empty table with chairs where she might distribute the brownies. Terese hops up on a chair and hollers, “Who wants brownies?” The weathered people of the homeless shelter smile and walk over. Terese, Mew, and Max hand out brownies to the people from behind the table.

  Max smiles through his discomfort. It’s a little cliche helping the less fortunate, but it beats boredom. Discomfort comes from a recognition in the people inside the shelter. Aimlessness
, illness, petty arguments, greedy fear of not having enough, an inability to plan for the future. Being honest, he shares all of those traits. The recognition causes a clandestine anxiety humming a tune with a repeated chorus: stay too long and you could join them forever. If blessed be the poor, what are their blessings? The term homelessness is just a term, stigmatized but still abstract. Catching glances of so many faces up close sharpened the term. To share a bitter look beyond disillusionment, dreamless and perpetually starving, existing in daily hunger and scrapping for shelter. It must stifle the chance to see something that does not yet exist. They’re not all like that, though. Maybe they’re smiling through the discomfort, too.

  Reality is better than fantasy, but being real the way people in the homeless shelter were real? No thanks. Max hands over another brownie. Count the differences for reassurance: a place to sleep, daily showers, cleaner clothes, less hardened skin, the semblance of sanity. Damn. Still the same humans, though. Still capable of love and hatred, happiness and torment, help and harm, life and death. Why do some seem more able to love, be happy, help and live? How could the same bodily form be so different in function?

  The hum of human sameness means it’s impossible to ignore how a small turn of events by a truly omnipotent fist could catapult anyone from home and friends at any time. Could be a car accident, or a brain hemorrhage or an unforeseen allergic reaction or cancer or a rampant cougar attack or a zombie apocalypse or falling in love or some other blinding addiction. The horror tune wails on about the whimsy of a universe out of control. Better to dance splendidly with this horror, waltz politely, bow at the appropriate time, take the lead if the chance arises. No sense in sharing this tune that no one else hears. Why share it when you’re more readily able to offer a smile?

  Terese looks into the eyes of a woman with a black bandana wrapped around her head, and two french braids resting just below her collar bones. Her hair is dirty blonde, eyes green. She wears a Sturgis t-shirt. Terese asks, “Excuse me, ma’am. I hope you’re enjoying the brownie. My friend here thinks that poor people might be here to start a class war. I’m just curious what brings you to the homeless shelter.”