Maxima snores on the couch, then gasps, says, “Ano ba? Ano?” Excel turns around, finds that she’s just talking in her sleep. It’s so strange to see her this way, curled up in her flannel robe and pink sweats, just beneath pictures of herself on the wall above—the eight by ten of Maxima in a gold gown, rocket launcher in hand; the other, in which she wields swords as she flies through the air.
She shivers. A throw blanket hangs over the arm of the couch, but Maxima is the lightest sleeper; no matter how carefully Excel lays the blanket over her, she’ll flinch and shoot up, instantaneously wide awake. The best thing to do is let her be a little cold, let her sleep until morning.
15
Excel wakes and thinks of money.
It’s been nine days since his return. He arrived in Colma with around $270 and now has $120 from Roxy, and with the fifty-two hours he’s worked at The Pie so far (if Gunter will be a halfway decent human being, he’ll pay Excel eleven dollars an hour, same as before), that should put him, after payday, at around $962. If he can maintain this rate, in ten or eleven (maybe fifteen weeks at most, given expenses?), he’ll have $10,000, plus enough for a Greyhound ticket back to Hello City, with enough left over, he hopes, to buy snacks for the long ride south.
He tells himself: The future is closer today than yesterday.
He gets out of bed, showers, and changes. He goes to the living room and Maxima rises, still on the couch. “I fell asleep,” she says.
“You were there when I got in last night,” he says. “I didn’t want to wake you.”
She rubs her eyes and clears her throat, stands up, and walks groggily to The Bod. She scrunches her face like she’s in pain.
“Everything okay?” Excel asks.
“My back.” She digs her fists into her hips, bends to the side. “How did you sleep on that couch, all those years?”
“Guess I got used to it.”
Breathing slowly, she reaches for the ceiling then arches backward, like she’s about to do a backflip kick from one of her movies. Her ponytail, straggly and loose, sways back and forth, grazes the rug. “You should’ve had a real bed. I should’ve gotten you one.” She straightens up. “I’m sorry.”
“It was fine.” More comfortable, he realizes, than the bed he sleeps in now. “I slept fine.”
She steps back and takes firm hold of The Bod’s shoulders, but instead of kneeing him in the gut she remains perfectly still, like she needs him to keep her balance. “I’m off to work,” he says. He bends down to tie his shoes, and when he looks up, Maxima is still the same, motionless, just staring at The Bod’s blank blue face. “I’m leaving,” he says, and she barely nods.
Excel walks out, shuts the door behind him. But he doesn’t leave, not until he hears it again, finally: Maxima strikes to start the day.
ONCE OUTSIDE THE LA VILLA AURELIA GATE, HE CALLS SAB. JUST one ring and she picks up, a gesture (intended or not) that makes Excel the happiest since he’s been back, but he warns himself: Don’t read into it.
“Hey,” he says, “did I wake you?”
“Can’t wake me if I haven’t slept.”
“Is something wrong?” His first thought is morning sickness, though he doesn’t exactly know what morning sickness is. “Should you go to a doctor?”
“Don’t worry. It’s just really hot. One hundred and two degrees yesterday. I was awake the whole night.”
“You need to keep cool. For your health.” And for the baby, he wants to say, but holds back.
“I’m at Lucia’s, blasting the AC. So instead of sweating to death, now I’m freezing.”
Fancy as it is, Lucia’s Airstream is full of what she calls “Helsinki-inspired Danish modern midcentury” furniture, every chair too small, too firm. He pictures Sab sitting upright, body tensed and shivering. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I should be there with you.”
“No, you shouldn’t.”
“I shouldn’t?”
“I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just saying . . .” She goes quiet, the blank of her voice filled in by the low background hum of Lucia’s AC unit, like white noise meant to lull someone to sleep. “I’m just saying you need time to figure stuff out. Hello City isn’t the right place for you to be right now.”
“Hello City is the right place for anybody. That’s why it’s there.”
“Excel. You burned down the Square.”
She doesn’t say it accusingly (there’s no accusing when it’s simply a fact), but there’s judgment in her tone, he can hear it. “I know what I did,” he says. “But it was an accident, and I’m going to pay them back. Ten thousand dollars. More, if that’s what they want. Gunter is giving me good hours. I can probably borrow money from Roxy. And that’s how Hello City works, right? You screw up, you fix it. And if nobody wants to forgive me even then, I can live with that. I just want us to be together, back at home.”
“Home? Home is about a thousand degrees right now. Home is a bus with a busted fridge.”
“The fridge broke?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“We’ll get it replaced. I’ll send money. Whatever helps.”
“If you want to help, do me a favor.”
“Name it.”
“Don’t call. For real this time, please. Just let me”—her breath seems to catch, and she clears her throat—“just let me be for a while.”
“How long is a while?”
“Long enough to figure out what I want to do. And when I’m ready, I’ll call you, okay? Please.”
There’s no choice but to abide, he gets that. But maybe it’s worth a discussion, or even a fight, to persuade her otherwise, because an unforeseeable stretch of time without seeing her, without talking to her, is too much. Without Sab, what else is there? Excel takes a breath, ready to speak, to fight, if that’s what it takes. But it’s too late; Sab has ended the call.
GUNTER IS BEHIND THE CASH REGISTERS WHEN EXCEL ARRIVES AT The Pie, rearranging shifts on the work schedule clipboard, crossing out names, adding others.
“So here’s the deal,” Gunter says, without looking up. “We’ve lost Marta and Santos, so it’s double shifts for everybody today, probably all week. I hope you’ll make that work.”
“Double shifts? I’ll take whatever I can.”
Gunter takes the pen from behind his other ear, crosses out “Marta” and writes in “Lydia.” “By the way, you’re in the dining room today. I need you on the floor.”
The floor means tips, and a bit of good news for today. “That would be great. Thanks, Gunter.”
“Glad you think so. Because today, you’re the Sloth.”
Excel keeps his face a neutral blank but wants nothing more than to take the clipboard and slam it down on Gunter’s head. Being Sloth the Sleuth is even worse than ball pit duty, and gets zero tips. “I thought we retired the sloth, after the Svetlana incident?”
Gunter rolls his eyes, snorts. “Svetlana. Whole lotta drama for nothing. The girl didn’t hydrate. You won’t make that same mistake, right?”
Excel thinks of his budget calculations, his approximate timeline for getting back to Hello City. “Right,” he says. “No mistakes.”
IN THE BREAK ROOM, EXCEL LIFTS THE LID OF A LARGE STYROFOAM cooler and finds a face looking up. Like the animatronic version, Sloth the Sleuth’s headpiece looks drugged up and high, the eyes a pair of droopy slits, the mouth a dopey grin. “Fuck you,” Excel says, then takes it out.
The door opens and in walks Z, roll of paper towel in one hand, spray bottle of blue disinfectant in the other, which means Gunter has him on bathroom duty. “It’s Saturday,” Excel says, “you should be at home, relaxing.”
Z looks at the headpiece, gives Excel a look of pity. “You too.”
Excel pulls out the rest of the costume—a pair of black oven mitts, a papier-mâché magnifying glass the size of a pizza pan, a big bodysuit covered with matted silver-gray shag splotched with lime green, which, Gunter explained, is supposed to be algae (“That
shit grows on sloths,” he’d said). It’s 10:45 a.m. Excel has fifteen minutes before he has to get into the costume and be on the floor.
“Z,” he says, “if you were home, in Serbia, what would you be doing right now?”
“If I’m in Serbia”—Z takes a breath and sits, contemplating the possibilities—“I sit in the park. With my daughter.”
“You have a daughter?”
“Yeah, yeah. My youngest. Next month, fifty years old.”
Excel could imagine Z coming to California to join a child. But it’s another thing, he thinks, to leave one. “You’ll go back,” he says, “you’ll find a way.” He forces a smile, trying to feel positive, to amp himself up for the long shift ahead. He unzips and steps into the bodysuit, the legs and sleeves already itchy, humid. He picks up the headpiece, takes a deep breath, becomes the sloth.
NINETY MINUTES IN THE COSTUME AND EXCEL’S WHOLE BODY IS ONE big gush of sweat. The air inside the headpiece is a thick steam of disinfectant mixed with the collective perspiration of every person who’s ever been Sloth the Sleuth. The slits-for-eyes make it hard to see, and kids ram into him from all sides as he staggers table to table through the dining room. He tells himself: Keep going, do your job, this day will end.
But Gunter isn’t pleased with Excel’s performance. “You’re a sloth,” he whispers when he passes Excel in the dining room, “do it right.” Years before, at an employee training session, Gunter had demonstrated proper sloth movement by walking in extreme slow motion, shoulders leading and knees half-bent, holding the papier-mâché magnifying glass at eye level as he turned his head slowly from side to side. Two guys in the back snickered, whispering in Spanish, and one of them raised his hand and asked if Gunter could demonstrate a few more times. Gunter obliged, but when he finally understood he was being mocked, he threatened everyone in the room. “One phone call, you sons of dicks,” he said, “one phone call and you’re all back in the mother country.”
Excel turns to Gunter and nods, walks and waves in slow motion to no one in particular.
The Pie is even more packed by three p.m. Parents demand Sloth the Sleuth photos with their kids, but most are terrorized and cry in his lap. One kid—he looks like a six-foot-tall twelve-year old—just scowls and punches him in the chest. But Excel doesn’t break character (Gunter’s term, learned from an improv class), just holds up the papier-mâché magnifying glass, pretends to search the kid’s face for clues. “Spies don’t use magnifying glasses,” the kid says, and Excel gives a slow-motion shrug of the shoulders. “One more picture,” the kid’s mom says, and when Excel turns, he sees a baby—an infant—coming his way. “Be good, baby boy,” she says, then gently places him in the cradle of Excel’s arms. She steps back, tells them to smile. Excel sits, head bowed, trying to see the baby through the slits of the headpiece, but too much sweat washes down his forehead, blurring his vision.
He closes his eyes, tries to feel the faint weight of the baby in his arms. One minute, he thinks, let me have one minute. But the mom takes the picture, then takes the baby away.
Slowly, Excel waves good-bye.
He rises, still hot then chilly then suddenly both, like being inside an AC-frozen Airstream while the world outside bakes. Knees bent, he moves forward, giving lazy waves to the families he passes, then approaches the final booth, where an Indian boy with thick glasses sits, parents on one side, grandparents on the other. They’ve gone with The Pie Who Loved Me Birthday Caper—two large pizzas, a pitcher of Pepsi, a small cake with Sloth the Sleuth’s face. But both parents are on their phones, the grandfather keeps dozing off, and the grandmother, swathed in a blue, gold-flecked sari, looks irritated and bored, like she knows she’s too elegant for a place like this. All pressure to look festive is on the boy—he’s the only one wearing a party hat—but he just stares back and forth between the animatronic band and empty space, elbows on the table and chin on his fists.
The father puts his phone down, lights the candles; the mother smooths the boy’s hair, tells him to sit up straight. I should sing for him, Excel thinks, make him feel he’s not alone. But the boy just looks down at the table, staring at his name on the cake—Ranjit—and when he looks up from blowing out the candles, Excel knows, with absolute certainty, who he is: the boy from the apartment upstairs, the one who saw Excel standing in the middle of the Sharmas’ living room, the night he returned to Colma. “I know you,” Excel says, the words ricocheting and echoing inside the headpiece. He feels simultaneously compelled to sit with Ranjit and run from him too, and his body seems to act on both compulsions, like he can be in two places at once. He takes one step to the side in sloth slow-motion speed, waves an equally slow good-bye, and then, faster than he knows, begins to fall.
16
Weeks after Excel cut up the headlines, Red e-mailed him again. Help me smash stuff? he wrote, and Excel replied, Sounds fun.
They spent the next day carefully removing screens from the televisions, then smashing—delicately—each one, saving the shards in plastic bins (“We can always use them for something,” Red said). They replaced the screens with plastic sheeting, like Saran Wrap but stronger and thicker, a slight gray film on its surface. The day after that, they began stacking the televisions on top of each other, experimenting with different arrangements; each time, Red would take five steps back and study the configuration, rub the end of his beard between his fingers, then do the same thing again from another vantage point.
They removed wires from the TVs, then added new ones, connected them with what seemed like miles of extension cords. When the work day was done, a few other artists from Infinity Inc. dropped by to check on Red’s progress, and brought along a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon. They were strangers to Excel, and he turned to leave, but one of them offered him a beer and Red, who didn’t drink and opened a bottle of something called kombucha, insisted that Excel stay, to toast to a day’s good work.
EVEN IN THE DARK AND DESPITE ALL HE DRANK, EXCEL FOUND HIS way to the bus. Sab was drying dishes when he entered, had already eaten dinner. “There’s spaghetti,” she said, “but I ate all the sauce.” He said he wasn’t hungry and kissed her on the cheek, told her about his day and the artists he’d met, how he wondered if he should try making art too. “Maybe a collage or some kind of sculpture,” he said, “something where I take junk and make it cool. How was your day?”
“Just more thrills at Pink Bubble,” she said, “but now I have this.” She lifted her sleeve, showed a red welt on the side of her arm, just above her wrist. “I accidentally touched the edge of a boiling pot. So much for Lucia’s stirring technique. I hope it doesn’t scar.”
He kissed her again, said he was sorry, asked what he could do. “Nothing,” she said. “But if you want to do something artistic, you could paint the bus. It’s so gray in here, it’s depressing. And by the way, I still don’t have the picture of my mom. I called my aunt last week and she keeps forgetting to send it.” She walked to the front of the bus, leaned against the steering wheel. “What if we went back for it? Just a quick trip.”
It was late October. Almost two months since they’d arrived, too soon to even think of returning, especially since that was never the plan. “That’s a long way to go for a picture,” he said.
“It’s my mom’s picture.”
“I know that. All I meant is that we’re just settling in, and if we take a trip now, that’s hours lost that we could be working—”
“Working? I’m the one working full-time.”
“If I could find regular work, I’d take it.”
“Then look outside Hello City. Go to Whyling. Try El Centro. Maybe—”
“I can’t drive. You know that.”
She pulled the pins from her hair, let the loose bun fall, the purple streaks still there. “You can’t drive. Right.”
Until now, his lack of a driver’s license hadn’t been an issue. He’d always meant to get one, he said when they’d first met, just never gotten around to it. When
the subject came up again, on the drive down to Hello City, he admitted that he hadn’t been completely honest with her the first time, and explained that a car accident from childhood (“My uncle died in it,” he’d lied) was the reason he couldn’t be behind the wheel. Sab said she was sorry about his uncle, promised him that she didn’t mind all the driving. “I like being the one who can take you places,” she’d said. But seeing her now, leaning against the steering wheel, arms folded and eyes to the floor—he wondered if this was the moment to tell her the truth—If I drive, I might get caught—and to see what more he might confess. But she looked frustrated, even lonely, without her mother’s picture. There would be a better time to tell her.
“I’ll learn to drive,” he said, “soon. I promise.” He apologized if he seemed insensitive about her mother’s picture, and said they could send Sab’s aunt the postage in advance, so that she’d have no excuse not to mail it off. “We’ll get the picture,” he said, “and the bus will feel like home.”
She stayed staring at the floor. Excel couldn’t tell if she believed him or not, and he wondered if a secret was just another kind of lie. “My arm hurts,” she said. She opened the minifridge, took out a Cerulean Spark and pressed the cold glass bottle against the burn. Excel thought of lifting his shirtsleeve to show the scar just below his shoulder, as proof that injuries heal and that hers would too, but the scar was a story he didn’t want to tell.
RED MADE THE ANNOUNCEMENT AT THE NEXT TOWN COUNCIL MEETING. “I don’t know if I’m done,” he said, “but there’s nothing more I can do.” He would show his newest work the following Saturday. Everyone was invited.
The night of the opening (as Red called it), Lucia made dinner for Sab and Excel, a shiitake mushroom and caramelized onion flatbread (“‘Flatbread,’ not pizza,” she made clear). After, Lucia offered a joint (Sab accepted, Excel said no thanks), and the three walked to Infinity Inc. The gate was wide open, music blasted from all directions—bumping techno, electric guitar, bongos—and candles lodged into empty beer cans lit several paths into the commune. Dozens of people, more than a hundred, were already gathered, and most were not from Hello City. “They think we’re all kooks,” Lucia said, “but they know we have the best parties.” Then she waved to some friends, ran to join them.
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