I’ve always been more than well-off, rather painfully rich. You’ll find this ridiculous, but I was curious how I’d be treated if I didn’t have any money.”
“Like shit?”
“You know it. But it was… educational to get away from my life.”
“You actually lived out on the streets?”
“Oh yeah. For two months,” Fash sips on what I’m sure is a very well-made cocktail. Mine certainly is. “It could have been 250
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worse, you ain’t going to freeze here, and I had a Kevlar jacket, but it was very tough at first. One night I woke up, someone was pissing on me. Another homeless guy. The whole of Miami to relieve himself in, he had to straddle me. That’s what you had to deal with. A couple of times I cracked, if I’d had a credit card or any money on me I’d have walked into a hotel. I cried after I gave you back your wallet. But I tell you what was enlightening.”
“What?”
“How fast you get used to it. You get used to it fast. Not washing. The dirt. When I had my first proper bath, there was a crust on the water, I turned the tub into a swamp, there was vegetation. All in all, I prefer to be liked for my money. But what I wanted to talk to you about is this: to offer you a job. I hope the offer of a well-paid job won’t offend you?”
“What’s that?”
“I want you to, how shall I phrase this? From a compassion and helpfulness point of view, it might jar against your position on compassion and helpfulness, all that forgiving stuff. I want you to… what’s the right word? I want you to destroy the Fixico sisters.”
G
“Driving a car,” says Dave. “Most of us don’t think about what driving a car means. For most of us, a car is a necessity, not a luxury. Without a car, most of us would be finished, but no one really considers how a car is as deadly as a pearl-handled Colt .45. No I take that back, as deadly as the M16. A Colt can’t cut someone in half. The deaths and the maimings. Take the Vietnam War. Five-star war, tanks, planes. A decade of war, 251
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fifty thousand dead Americans, all the hoopla, razzmatazz about it. The roads of America have that many fatalities every year.
Where are the sit-ins about the automobile?”
We are walking down a quiet stretch of Collins Avenue towards an art exhibition put on by Dave’s second cousin’s girlfriend when a solitary figure comes around the corner. There’s no one but us on the street for three or four blocks, and I fear that we’re in line for another mugging, but I see that the figure is tiny, a hunched old man with a walking stick.
When we get closer I see that he is wearing a singlet. Fashion is, of course, a personal statement, but when you get to eighty you shouldn’t be choosing clothing that highlights your roasted, wizened arms. Put it away, pops. We’re about to pass him, when he snaps:
“I’ll be taking your money, wimps.”
Dave looks at me.
The he-hag is having trouble standing up, his right eye looks blind.
He’s toothless. He can’t be far from ninety, and he was a small, thin man before he shrivelled up. We go round him, when he shouts:
“Give me your money, pussies. If you don’t give me your money I’ll tell the police you mugged me.” He produces a pair of dentures from his pocket, cracked as if by force, falls to the ground and shouts for help.
Dave reaches into his jacket, pulls out a wallet and hands it over.
“Tell me, what is it about me?’ he asks.
“You’re bitches. You’re not men enough to laugh about beating up an old fart.”
We walk on.
“What?” says Dave. “You were expecting me to beat him up?
Thanks. My wife she says I’m asking for it. ‘What do you mean, 252
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I’m asking for it?’ I say. ‘You’re always getting mugged you must be doing something to attract it,’ she says. ‘How?’ I say.
‘What exactly am I doing to attract it, dear wife,’ I say. ‘Please tell me.’ ‘I don’t know,’ she says, ‘but you must be doing something. Or it wouldn’t happen would it? Stop it before you get hurt.’”
“Acceptance is important. But it’s also dangerous because it’s very close to surrender. It’s standing right next to surrender. You have to look carefully. You have to accept certain things though. I have to accept that I couldn’t save my brother. I have to accept my face makes me muggee of the month. Yeah.”
Dave explains that from now on he will carry a dupe wallet, which contains out-of-date credit cards and some Haitian banknotes, street value, two cents top. “I thought about getting one of those booby-trapped attaché cases, give the thief an electric shock or blowing off his fingers. I liked that idea a lot.
I really did. Those fingers just flying away. But I’m putting this in the wallet instead.”
He hands me a card.
“You’re on the wrong path. You think you’ve got ahead just now. You’re not stealing from others but yourself. You’re stealing your future. Go to the Church of the Heavily Armed Christ for true help.”
“Finding a card like that would be freaky.”
“Hey, you wanted a higher body count.” Dave stares out at the waves. One or two big ships are on the horizon, almost erased by distance. “Survival. Survival is overrated.”
He gives me my cut of our latest winnings.
G
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My first job for the Fixico sisters is standing in front of the Omni, playing their tape and handing out leaflets. I keep wishing some policeman or authority figure would stop me or move me along, but, unfortunately, when you’re religious you tend to be ignored.
“Do you believe this stuff?” says one recipient.
I restrain myself from replying, “Of course not. You’re quite right, it’s the most outrageous rubbish and the paper’s too hard to wipe your arse with.” I reply:
“Have a good and profitable day, sir.” I mean it too. I’m in a good mood. I like the idea of most people having a good and profitable day. Just not the Fixico sisters.
It’s very tempting to openly sabotage the Fixicos at grass roots, but you never know who’s around.
Calvin, my team leader, for instance. Calvin’s a born crawler and a natural number four or five. Anything higher up the chain of command would be too much, but he likes belonging and mild responsibility. He’d be happy working in a bank or shooting captives in the back of the head in some ethnic dispute, but somehow circumstances have brought him to work as one of the Fixicos’ enforcers, checking up on us, the rabble, the street soldiers.
“You’re not standing right,” was one of the things Calvin carpeted me for. I straightened up, assuming I was being accused of slouching. “You’re not standing right,” he continued. I’m now so unslouched I am bending over backwards.
This is one of the golden rules of management, of course: you have to make it clear what you want. “You’re not standing right,” he shouts in my face again. Getting louder is often seen as a means of being clearer. I long to hit him – but this is the most important skill you have to have in life, working with people you hate.
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He points at my left leg. “Straighten that leg.” I’m standing on my leg, so by implication it’s straight. I will my leg straighter, but nothing happens, because it’s physically impossible to make the leg straighter. “Will you straighten that leg?” he screams again. I can’t make my left leg any straighter, and as far as I can tell – and I should know – it’s no more crooked than my right leg.
I smile. Always smile. I don’t understand why Calvin is screaming at me. The homeless who worked for the Fixicos at the beginning not only had very poor deportment, they flopped on the sidewalk, they fiddled with their balls and were encrusted in vomit. Is this a new order in the Fixico regime or is it directed at me? Are they trying to get rid of me? The sudden fussiness is ridiculous. No army would be this bothered
about straight legs.
It would be very easy to get angry about some failed lawyer called Calvin, a wimpy failed lawyer ten years younger than me, a wimpy failed lawyer ten years younger than me who is stupid enough to take the Fixico sisters seriously, shouting in my face: very easy indeed.
But I don’t hit Calvin. I don’t protest. I smile. The smile is a genuine smile because I’m promising myself when this is all over, I’ll take the time and trouble to find Calvin, and kick the crap out of him, vicious-style. It’s important to reward yourself.
I really don’t want another person to hate, I’m quite full-up, but sometimes you have to rise to the challenge. As Calvin tells me I’m not using my hands properly, I soothe myself by imagining his cries for mercy.
Calvin, though hard work, is easy to spot: very tall and he’s addicted to dark suits even in this heat. There’s no sign of him so I’m content for the moment.
I’m standing there watching the buzzards circle, some spread out to sun themselves on the roofs, being relaxed by them, when 255
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a black limo pulls up opposite. A window slides down and I can make out one of the Fixico sisters scrutinizing me.
I think it’s Margi, who’s the older one, although even close up it’s almost impossible to tell them apart as they dress and style themselves identically. Margi’s just that bit fatter and looser round the jowl.
Am I imagining it, or is she suspicious of me? Is she wondering why I’ve agreed to be one of her minions? She’s right to wonder, why has this sub-hierophant gone renegade and joined her ranks? But I’m doing the job to the letter. I must be the least-mad, most qualified leaflet-distributor in her empire. Her cunning is alerted, and she might want to find fault with me, but she can’t.
I’ve always been a good employee. Maybe not a great employee, but a good one, and this time I’m making a special effort.
The limo drives off. She smells danger, but can’t see it.
The Fixico sisters can’t know that if I have one talent, it’s for destroying the organization I work for. But happily, this talent is well hidden.
I can’t prove this, of course, but the results speak for themselves. Emptying the pews of the Church of the Heavily Armed Christ isn’t much of an achievement, but pulling down a long-established, major multinational criminal organization in the space of a few months isn’t bad. Those felons in their cells in Bogotá will be wondering where it went wrong. Were they weak in their bribing of politicos? Did someone grass? Did they tread on someone’s toes? They’ll never be thinking that one of their unknown, part-time delivery boys in Miami was the cause of their downfall. Of course, the lighting company took several years, but I was probably struggling against the good fortune of others.
I’m in no rush. I really have nothing much else to do.
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So now I’m giving up. Giving up can be quite enjoyable. I have to accept I’m not going to make it as God. What exactly I will do I don’t know, but I’m putting off acting by acting (action is often only speeded-up waiting). My preoccupation now is to deal with the Fixico sisters. Hatred can be as sustaining as love, even if there can be unpleasant side effects.
Los Angeles was where the Fixico sisters started. Then they moved east, through New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Tampa and now Miami, mysteriously acquiring money and influence along the way. Fash was appalled by how he saw them treating the homeless, and their philosophy of “give to receive” which concentrated, for the subordinates anyway, on the giving and not the receiving. Fash, who had worked for a few days as a boombox escort, was asked to leave. “They claimed I was asking difficult questions,” said Fash. “I only asked one: where’s the money going?” A vagrant, he added, who failed to return a boombox (they’re very basic so the resell value would only be almost nothing) was found dead. Of course, if you live out on the street your life expectancy’s not great.
“And, I trust I don’t need to mention that if you help me in this, as they say, I’ll make it very much worth your while…”
Fash said.
“I have no idea what they say, because I’ve never been urged to accept a well-paid job.”
“So you’ll take it?”
“No.”
I explained to Fash that he shouldn’t involve me directly in his plans to block the Fixico sisters. I would go solo, as the jinxer, and web myself into the Fixicos.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
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at the Church of the Heavily Armed Christ. But I’ve got some good ideas for your money,” I continued. His money would be better used to build up the Hierophant, buy some advertising and above all to remove the Locketts and Esther from the orbit of the Fixicos. Fash found a leukaemia specialist in New York who’s supposed to be the best in the country, who might help, and in any case New York is a long way from here.
I make a point of standing in the sun. I really like it.
G
“Do you want to talk about it?” asks Sixto.
“No,” I reply.
“Sure?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe I can offer some suggestions.” Sixto has now qualified as a psychotherapist, whatever that means. He is packing his best crockery away, meticulously, into boxes and is eager to practise.
“I don’t need suggestions. What I need is a new life.”
“Maybe I could make you see your life in a new way.”
“Sixto, I appreciate the offer. I have a problem – I’m not stupid enough to believe in nonsense.”
Sixto considers the empty boxes and his remaining bric-a-brac. We rarely go home. What we do is return to a collection of furniture to sleep with. A selection of objects to dust. That’s what centres most of us – our favourite dust-gatherers. Of course, I’d like my own collection of objects to come back to; it’s more comforting than one would like to admit.
Failure gets a bad press. Naturally, you have to fight the laziness for a while before you give up, but failure is the norm.
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It’s a big club. Most attempts end in failure. And all success ends in failure, eventually. Success can make you forget that. One of my neighbours had a mail-order business. I can’t remember the exact figure but I think she said as long as they got a 0.1%
response from their mailshots, that was fine.
Napalm comes in. I study him. Nothing.
“Hey, Napalm,” says Sixto. “We were just discussing the human race. There’s no hope.” Anyone who says this usually doesn’t mean it. Who says, “Have you noticed my nose is in the middle of my face?”
Napalm checks the fridge. He pours himself a large pineapple juice and goes upstairs. Nothing.
“Tell me about your mad love?” asks Sixto. I don’t know why I reply. Perhaps Sixto does have a skill.
“It was mad.”
“Who was she? What did she look like? Why and how did it end?”
“She was beautiful. Clever. Great nose. A great nose.”
“And?”
“She moved. I wrote a long letter, detailing the madness of my love. On very expensive paper. I wrote, and this was the killer line, I had chosen her out of the billions of people on this planet.”
“What happened?”
“The letter didn’t reach her – her mother was forwarding her mail. It ended up in the glove compartment of her mother’s car. A year later her mother discovered it and passed it on. The recipient of my madness got in touch and said how moved she was by the letter.”
“And?”
“I was married by then. I got married two days before she called.”
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“You gave up too easily.”
“No, I didn’t. I talked to her mother. ‘Has my letter arrived?’
‘Yes.’ ‘Have you given it to her?’ ‘Yes.�
�� I thought she had received it, but wasn’t interested.”
“That’s infuriating.”
“I used to get angry. You always wonder about those roads you didn’t take. How it would have turned out? But now I console myself with the thought that the roads untravelled would probably have been just as disaster-strewn as the ones I took.”
“That’s consolation?”
“Works for me.”
Sixto pulls out some long steel device from a drawer, some costly culinary tool. “You know what’s frightening? Not only do I not remember buying this, I don’t know what it’s for.” He tosses it into a box. I’m glad I travel light.
“So what important truth have you learnt that you would be willing to share with others?” I ask.
“You mean, if I had to distil the wisdom of my thirty-two years on this planet into one sentence? If I had ten seconds to transmit only one important universal truth, as my message to mankind?”
“Yes.”
Sixto pauses. After deliberation, “Most cats don’t like to be microwaved.”
G
“Inexpensive perversions. You have inexpensive perversions, you’re laughing,” says a passing woman, who looks like the last woman to make that remark. Perhaps her husband’s are expensive.
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“We all need a moral code to ignore,” her companion agrees.
As I have succeeded in collecting more in donations than any of the Fixicos’ other street representatives, I’ve been promoted to South Beach.
Calvin is unhappy about this, but cash is cash – and he doesn’t know that I rarely collect any money from the public, I simply hand in a few bills from my pocket. I’m not up against any serious competition: many of the others are so disturbed they would be as likely to eat a dollar bill as spend it.
And the money I am feeding into the Fixicos will do damage
– it’s been Tyndaled. Will I be lucky in being unlucky? Or will I be unlucky in not being unlucky? How should I look at it?
Calvin is desperate to find fault with me, but can’t. Doing your job is often one of the subtlest but most satisfying ways of needling your employer. It can drive them mad when you do exactly what you’re told.
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