“What will you do with the money?”
“I’ll go back home.”
“And then?”
“Consulting, most probably.”
“The prime minister’s right-hand man?”
I said these words without thinking. I had never been to Ethiopia, and didn’t much care that I hadn’t; I just assumed it would happen one day. Whenever a teacher first heard my name and feigned curiosity as to its origins, starting or ending with an insincere “It’s so pretty!” I wanted to protest, I’m American! What’s an Ethiopia? How does one come to be there? How does one come to leave it to go to an America? But in truth, I was only almost American, so I gave my explanations and nothing else of myself until the bell rang.
“Addis Ababa may not be a factor anymore,” Ayale said mysteriously.
“How do you mean?”
“Things change.”
“For the better, I hope.”
“Always.”
He gently pulled my hair as we slid into an empty space near the restaurant. I chose a table far enough away from both the door and the bathroom, while Ayale ordered two corned beef sandwiches, with extra fries for him and extra onions for me. He brought one of the napkin dispensers by the cash register back to our table because Ethiopians never understand that the napkins aren’t going anywhere; each food item requires a year’s supply, with a few concealed on one’s person upon departure. Ayale had already started eating by the time I returned from washing my hands. I watched as he drenched his fries with the hot sauce that no one but us ever used.
“Think you used enough dynamite there, Butch?”
“What a stupid movie.”
“Who is this guy?” I asked the restaurant at large.
“That’s not even the line.”
“One must improvise in times of trouble.”
“I’m troubled by your obsession with Robert Redford.”
“Are you referring to my devotion to a cinematic icon? A legend?”
“What about Denzel Washington? Robert De Niro?”
“This isn’t Highlander. There can be more than one.”
“Just eat.”
He let me chew for a few minutes before he stole more of my fries.
“How’s school?”
“Fine.”
“Lot of work?”
“It’s okay.”
“How’s math going?”
“I’m trying.”
“Ouch.”
I followed his hand as it poked around the greasy sandwich wrappers, hoping to unearth uneaten scraps, and as his fingers grazed the burnt end of a fry, I swiftly slam-dunked it into my mouth. I collapsed into shrieks as people turned and he shook his head.
“You can’t count and you’re heartless. Good luck getting married.”
I laughed harder. Our few neighbors were smiling as they turned back to their conversations, as if whatever they’d thought had been proven wrong. I didn’t let my mind linger on their reactions as Ayale pretended to slap me with a napkin.
“Are you finished?”
I nodded but then dissolved again. He chuckled.
“I’m going to get a coffee. Let me know when you’re done—I want to ask you something.”
He returned with a mug in one hand and another napkin dispenser in the other. I knew the latter was to make me laugh, so I did.
“What did you want to ask me?”
“How much is your allowance?”
I named the pitiful sum. He looked astonished.
“Per day or per week?”
It was my turn to look astonished.
“Per week.”
“Would you be interested in making a little extra?”
“I’m always interested in making a little extra.”
“That’s the most American thing you’ve ever said.”
I wasn’t in the mood for jokes anymore.
“What are we talking about here?”
“I need you to drop some things off for me, every week.”
“I can’t be home late.”
“When you get to the lot, your deliveries will be ready. You’ll go at the time I tell you, you’ll leave your things in the booth, you’ll come back, you’ll do your homework. An hour or less.”
“Could I do it before school?”
“Not possible.”
“Can I ask you another question?”
“Of course. How else will you learn?”
“What will I be delivering?”
“Relatives in Ethiopia get confused with addresses, which means things get lost in the mail. I thought the parking lot could be a kind of depot for Boston: everyone sends their packages there, and we make sure everything goes to the right place.”
“That’s a pretty good idea.”
“It means the world to me that you approve. Will you do it or not?”
His tone alarmed me, but he was still smiling, so I let it go.
“Yes.”
His voice lost its edge with the next question.
“Don’t you want to know how much you’ll make?”
I sensed that if I didn’t get excited about the money, the blade in his voice would return.
“How much?”
“Thirty bucks per delivery.” He laughed at my expression. “We’ll start on Friday. Good?”
“Great,” I squeaked.
He gave me a closer look.
“You need to start sleeping more.”
“I try.”
“You need to eat more.”
“Stop eating my food then.”
“The key is to take naps. Look at me: I don’t exercise, I don’t watch what I eat, I smoke, and I’m never sick. Why? A strict regimen of napping. Every day. Even if it’s only for a half hour, I close my eyes, I go away, and when I come back, I feel fresh.”
For Ayale, feeling fresh was the highest degree of health and happiness that anyone could hope to achieve.
“Naps make me feel worse.”
“You’re not letting yourself get used to them. You need to create a schedule of sleep and stick to it.”
“How?”
“You find a time when you’re never busy and you take a nap then, for however long you want. You keep taking a nap at that exact time, for that exact same amount of time, every day. Soon, your body will get tired on its own and it’ll teach itself to feel fresh afterward.”
Ayale was a slave to no one, not even his own body. I could picture him as a kid, riding a zebra out the door past curfew, unfazed by his mother’s screams. It wasn’t power I wanted, just impunity: I didn’t care about riding a zebra, I only wanted to be sure that no consequences would follow, no zebra tax would be imposed. If Ayale ever got caught, he would just explain the inherent rationale of what he was doing, the authorities would admit their stupidity, and he would emerge victorious.
I recognize that some might meet Ayale and not get swept up in his spell, might find him unkempt and horrible, especially in light of what happened later, but he remains the greatest man I’ll ever know, and unlike some, I’m not ashamed to say it. Sometimes, however, the best people are the worst for us to love; I’m learning to accept that.
“It seems like a lot of work.”
“Nothing’s more important than your health.”
I felt drunk as we drove back, without knowing what that was. Deliveries could lead to greater responsibilities, could lead to trust, could lead to friendship, could turn into family. And once you’re really family, you can never be kicked out. You’ll never be alone.
“Does Solomon’s family know what happened?” I suddenly asked, talk of Ethiopian relatives having brought to mind the rumors swapped by mainstays of the lot.
He nodded.
“His siblings left to see their parents.”
“Is it true that he stole money from the store?”
Ayale gave me a look.
“I think what’s true and what’s not when it comes to the dead is none of our business.”
Withi
n weeks, I’d forgotten about Solomon.
My father began to demand that I hand over my keys after getting home. I flirted with the idea of asking Ayale if I could live with him, but the potential humiliation and hurt of him saying no was too nauseating to consider. Instead, Ayale had one of the attendants make multiple copies of my keys, so that he’d always have a spare. My father only managed to keep me from the diner once, and I spent the day excessively moping and being hungry, no matter how many spaghetti products were shoved into my face. If my father learned that I had found a way around his rules, he never mentioned it. He started shutting himself up in his room, materializing only to use the bathroom or go to work. Days would go by when we wouldn’t see each other. Only once did he ask if I had anything to tell him, and I replied no. I imagine now that during those weeks of silence, he was steeling himself to watch as I betrayed him again and again and again. Perhaps his staying put was penance for not doing so before.
Sometimes, when we were lucky, Ayale and I would see the sun rise on our way home from the diner. However, what with air pollution and the sun growing reluctant to rise over this rapidly spreading wasteland of fitness centers, condos, and an ever-dwindling Chinatown, it was a rare thing.
ON THE SUBJECT OF HOW I CAME TO GENUINELY SUSPECT
Three months later, I’d made eighteen deliveries and zero friends. Ayale paid promptly and often tipped, and while I enjoyed the newfound affluence, I had nowhere to spend my money, and I sometimes felt like the servers and busboys he tipped extravagantly, even in fast food places, where they often forgot to thank him as they furtively slipped his twenties into their pockets, a blatant breach of the no-gratuities rule. I knew I should be grateful for his money and time, but the effort made me irritable with everyone else; suddenly, there was no more room with the unpopular Asian girls. I took to eating lunch in the third-floor bathroom, vacant since Kelly Dylan’s suicide, fourth stall down.
It was around this time that Fiker arrived, on the heels of another murder. A full-page article provided the details. Name: Kebede, although everyone (Americans) called him Kebs; employed at the Ukrainian Orthodox church; killed while cleaning candles (ever industrious); no children, no wife; whereabouts when he wasn’t fulfilling his liturgical duties unknown. The journalist described him as reserved, although how he’d reached this conclusion about someone no one seemed to have spoken to was one of the many tricks the press hid up its black-and-white sleeve.
Older Ethiopians recalled there being a scandal in his past, involving war, Italy, a dead sister, but it was the sweet-and-sour irony of blood-soaked hands working in tandem with the sacraments that proved irresistible: everyone had just the right proverb or verse to explain, define, or justify. By the time of his death, Kebs was nearly a deacon, fifty-seven, and his passport hadn’t been renewed in twenty years. The news story confirmed that it was murder, with all other details pending. They continued to pend by the time I left.
Days later, I was dragging myself to the lot, teetering under the combined weight of textbooks, notebooks, and graded binders. It was about to rain, a constant state of affairs. I was almost level with the first cars when I saw Ayale, nodding his head at an enormous man. I had never seen Ayale allow someone else to speak for this long without interrupting; he seemed rapt. I didn’t like it. I ran back in the direction from which I’d come, took a breath at the corner, tired myself out with internal debate, decided the only way out is forward, and sauntered toward the lot, looking at the sky, the ground, the trees, anything but my intended destination. Ayale was sitting inside the booth, smoking a cigarette, reading one of his daily papers. He smiled at my arrival, but I was too busy looking for the giant to reciprocate.
“Where is he?”
“Who?”
“The man you were talking to.”
Ayale closed his eyes.
“Were you spying on me?”
“No! I forgot something, over there”—I gestured in the vague direction of behind—“and when I came back, he was gone.”
He opened his eyes.
“Don’t you have homework?”
I retreated to his car, doors open because the windows no longer worked. From then on, I kept my mouth shut and my eyes open. In the next few weeks, I noted how the kinds of manila envelopes I’d seen on my first day were a daily presence in the booth. When Ayale left to buy cigarettes or coffee, the packages were stuffed into his pockets or, if too bulky, entrusted to an attendant, who couldn’t leave his side. They looked nothing like my neatly wrapped deliveries, and were immediately passed to others, the receiver of the parcel acting as if he and Ayale had bumped into each other, victims of clumsiness or narrow streets. These recipients were sometimes wearing Boston Police Department uniforms, were sometimes a woman named Elsie (whom I’d later find out was Fiker’s wife), Ayale’s boss Lentil, or the Sudanese security guard across the street whose name was Thomas and whose front teeth were missing.
I found Ayale increasingly evasive. He couldn’t remember how he had decided to work there, he wasn’t sure if they received overtime, he wavered on how he reconciled his profound fear of the police with his constant cooperation, he didn’t want to discuss how so few customers were turned away, he pled the fifth on his feelings toward female attendants, he had no memory of speaking with a large man who had now vanished. Our conversations became cat-and-mouse chases of inquisition and avoidance, casual inquiries into money, cars, Thomas deftly turned aside by generalities and expressions of fatigue.
Around the same time, my father and I started getting used to each other and I joined a summer theater company, where I learned stage fighting. That kept me going until September.
That fall, Ayale taught me how to smoke with his Winstons. The first lesson was inhaling, and took up the better part of a week. The second lesson was style. My fingers immediately fell into a placement unintentionally copied from my father; I lacked the nerve to buy a cigarette holder and smoke like Bette Davis. I’ve always loved the smell of cigarette smoke, although I’d thought I would never smoke myself; I was too afraid of cancer, aging, losing my teeth, losing my eyesight, losing my sex drive, losing my sex appeal, whenever I managed to find it. Nonetheless, when Ayale offered me that first cigarette, I accepted without question.
Later, he would wish that he’d spared me a habit that prevented him from visiting Ethiopia, since spending eighteen airborne hours smokeless was unthinkable. Ayale came to see smoking as his personal curse, while simultaneously believing that his life had only begun on the day of his first puff. This, he told me while we traded bites of ice cream, was a little bit like a catch-22. I told him that I’d read the book, and he said, Reading a book is one thing, seeing events as they unfold is totally different. I tried to hide just how much I loved smoking.
We were sharing the last of a pack, mere weeks into eleventh grade, when I decided to confront him.
“What’s going on?”
“Many things.”
“Who was that man?”
He sighed.
“Everything is going to be all right.”
I tried a different tack.
“You would tell me if something was going on?”
“I would tell you if something was going on.”
“Don’t just repeat what I say, tell me like it’s something that you genuinely believe.”
What I left unspoken was just how desperately I needed to believe it as well.
“I would tell you if something was going on.”
“You sound like a bad actor.”
“You’ve become a bit unbearable since that theater thing.”
“You didn’t come to any of the shows.”
“I didn’t have time.”
“You don’t work on the weekends.”
“I don’t like American theater. It’s too American.”
“But I was in it. It doesn’t matter what you think in theory when there’s someone important to you who’s involved. You support them always.”
“And that applies to everything?”
“Please, don’t turn this into a grand, overarching statement about the Ethiopian political atmosphere, and what this means I think about it, and how what I think about it is precisely the wrong thing to think about it, or shows that I’m not exercising my mental capacities in the way that I’m capable of. Please. Just answer the question you know I’m asking.”
I loved Ayale more than anyone, but he was beginning to exhaust me.
“You say that like it’s something I would actually do.”
I laughed in spite of my irritation.
“Look, if I support you no matter what, would you do the same for me?”
Ayale’s sincerity was heartbreaking on the rare occasions when he displayed it, perhaps only because it was so rare.
“Absolutely.”
Ayale thoughtfully opened a new pack. My father didn’t know I smoked. He finally spoke.
“His name is Fiker, and I will tell you whenever and if ever there is anything to tell. That’s the rule for both of us.”
We shook hands, kissed two times on the cheeks, and then I walked to the T because Ayale had a few stops to make before he went home. He gave me twenty dollars for transportation because he didn’t trust my T pass. I tried to be happy about it.
ON THE SUBJECT OF SOME TEACHERS I ONCE HAD
With no answers forthcoming and three free periods to fill, I threw myself into photography, which our high school would offer for two years before concluding that the accumulating visual evidence of the world around us was wreaking irreversible emotional harm and inciting the increasing cases of depression. The real artists took it the first year because their parents were ex-hippies who had dabbled in art before settling down to be bank directors, doctors, and small business owners. The second year was when everyone else took it, after discovering that nothing set a person apart more than a camera around their neck, like a noose. I was one of the second-year kids. I was always one of the second-year kids.
The photography teacher’s name was Andrew Phillips, but everyone called him Philly. Philly wore floral dress shirts and got away with it. No one called him a fag, even out of his hearing. He had half a goatee, and I wondered if something had happened to him, because it didn’t occur to me that someone might do that intentionally. Philly was the palest man I had ever seen. His skin was shiny without being oily: he glowed. Philly was so tall that his head regularly hit the ceiling, his hair was floppy chestnut, and he spoke like a clever quote book, with the benefit (or grace) of making it seem as though these statements came to him on the spur of the moment, the way others conjured up articles and conjunctions. It was how I imagined Mark Twain or Oscar Wilde to have spoken. I used to write down what people said if I found it funny, and I now see that if anyone overused the word “proverbial,” it was Philly.
The Parking Lot Attendant Page 7