Sweat (13 page)

Jake's Subaru stalled at the intersection of Constitution Avenue and Fourteenth Street, and nearly conked out again at a red light in the 1800 block. He made the prudent mental note to take the car to the mechanic as soon as his next paycheck arrived. He pulled a u-turn across the double yellow lines in the middle of the road, a perfectly legal driving maneuver in the nation's capital, and putted his way into an empty space left by a vacating van. It was four blocks to the intersection of Twenty-Second Street, an easy hoof.

Jake took his time strolling down the wide sidewalk under the old elm trees that gave more than ample shade but did little to alleviate the city's brutal humidity. It was going to be another scorcher and the humidity was already stifling, clinging like an electric blanket on a summer night. The nation's capital was built on a swamp, millions of tons of earth poured into wetlands to create half of the city. And despite the paved roads and grandiose architecture, the water remained in the ground like a hidden ghost, invisible piping insuring a never-ending supply of moisture to the local climate.

Summer tour buses clogged the road, unloading kids on summer vacation and foreign visitors from the far corners of the globe. A group of Australian tourists stopped Jake and asked if he would take a picture of them in front of the bronze Einstein statue that went undiscovered by most tourists.

“Thank you,” a young boy in the group said as Jake returned the camera.

“You're welcome,” Jake replied, patting the boy on the head.

Traffic snarled at the intersection of Constitution and Twenty-Second, and it wasn't the result of driver error. The Department of Transportation had cleverly designed the intersection in such a fashion that Route 66, a major highway, dumped directly onto an already congested twenty-five mph street. For added confusion, and to test driver reaction time, a stoplight rested at the foot of a very short off-ramp.

Well here I am
, Jake thought, checking his watch.

He sat down on a dark green park bench with its wrought iron legs and stretched one arm along the back as if making a move on an imaginary date. He checked his watch again. He was right on time.
Here I am. Where are you?

The light turned red and Jake's attention turned toward the homeless man in the median who went to work on the cars stopped in traffic. He approached the window of every vehicle, holding a sign that simply, and quite needlessly, read “Homeless.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Jake whispered to himself.

Jake let the morning sun wash down on his face as he watched the cycles of the cars stopping and the homeless man making his silent pitch. It was an amazing study in sociology. People in suits, in air-conditioned cars, with the windows up, and the radio on. People with breakfast in their stomachs and a three dollar drive-thru super soy latte resting in the cup holder. The privileged going face-to-face with the unfortunate.

The homeless man seemed oblivious to his own plight. He was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, both of which were old, but neither of which were dirty, torn, or tattered. He held his head high and looked the drivers in the eyes. In ten minutes he successfully panhandled his way, through pity or determination, to two dollars and twenty-three cents.

Jake was ready to give up. He looked over his shoulder at the wide stretch of grass and a group of people his own age playing Frisbee football. It was a beautiful morning, even if he was being stood up on his blind date. It had only taken a few weeks of work to realize that sitting on a park bench was better than being in the office. Jake turned back to the homeless man just in time to catch his sociology lab rat heading right for him.

“Follow me, Jake,” was all he said as he passed in front of the bench, the stench of
eau de homeless
trailing behind him.

Jake sprang to his feet, mouth gaping, and fell into position two paces back. The unshaven man in jeans, t-shirt, and worn sneakers walked fast, back straight as a board, a posture rarely seen in the slouching Generation X and seemingly spineless Generation Y. He walked with an unmistakable purpose, and given the direction they were heading, Jake surmised the only possible destination was the Potomac River.

Jake followed his leader into the shadows near the riverbank, the concrete arch of the bottom of the Roosevelt Bridge forming the homeless man's roof. He shared the barren ground and man-made retaining wall of the river with two other address-lacking tenants. Boxes, plastic, garbage bags, and winter clothes were stacked neatly in piles, wrapped with bungee cords of various colors and lengths.

“Please have a seat, Jake,” the homeless man said, gesturing to an old chair with a torn wicker seat and cut-off legs. Jake took the offer and sat down, his knees nearly straight, his feet out in front of him. It felt like a beach lounge chair, without the sand, and it was surprisingly comfortable. The view wasn't bad either. Kennedy Center to the right, the Tidal Basin in the distance to the left.

Al Korgaokar, homeless person extraordinaire, emptied his morning's change into a small hip-hugger bag and zipped it shut. One of the straps on the bag was torn, repaired with a mix of string and rubber bands. Al pulled a red milk crate from his shelf, a crawl space in the upper reaches of the “apartment” where the ground met the bridge structure above. He flipped the crate upside down and sat down next to Jake.

“My name is Al Korgaokar,” he said, enunciating every syllable carefully. The measured, almost insultingly slow pronunciation was the product of forty-eight years of people butchering his name.

“You can call me Al,” he said trailing off into the first verse of the Paul Simon song. Jake's first thought was that Al could have been an extra in
One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
. His second thought was if Al was a singer by trade, he needed no further explanation for his homelessness.

Al Korgaokar didn't act homeless, even among the packrat existence of his living room. Deep blue eyes flashed both a warmth and brilliance, mixed with a certain inexplicable flightiness. His reddish-brown hair reached just below his earlobes and ran around his neck in a perfect line—a cut given by a local homeless man who specialized in hairstyles for his peers. “The Hairman,” as the homeless barber was known, charged fifty cents or a cup of decent booze, per cut. The man with the scissors and toothless grin never went back to the shelter broke or sober.

“Or you can call me ‘K,'” Al continued. “A lot of my friends here on the street like that one.”

“I'll go with Al. I'm Jake Patrick, but I guess you already know that.”

“Yeah. Knew the name was Jake. Jake the Snake—an average quarterback with a great name.” Al dug through his belongings for something he didn't find and looked up. “So, Jake, what can I do for you? What's your problem?”

“Actually, I don't have a problem.”

“Sure you do. You wouldn't be here otherwise.”

“Well, it is not really
my
problem,” Jake said.

“Even if it wasn't your problem before, it is now. You just learned the first rule of politics. Don't care. If you don't care, it won't be your problem.”

Jake shrugged his shoulders and nodded simultaneously in a sign of complete confusion. “I'm here because Marilyn said you might be able to help.”

“Jake, Jake, Jake. Keep up. I'm not a psychic and you're not famous, at least not yet. I already know why you are here. You gotta stay one step ahead—that is the first rule of survival.”

“I was answering your question.”

“Some questions are rhetorical. And your answer wasn't an answer to the question I asked.”

Jake wanted to leave, but knew he would regret it. “So you know Marilyn?” he asked dubiously.

“I know what you're thinking. How in God's name does Marilyn know a homeless guy?”

“Well, yeah, I guess that is as good a place to start as any.”

“How about a more tactical question? Something like…how in the world did she contact me?”

Jake didn't have the energy to keep up. “Okay. I'll bite. How did she contact you?”

“Like the rest of the world.”

“Which is…?”

“She called.”

“She called?”

“Jake the snake, for heaven's sake,” Al responded, laughing at his own rhyme before turning to the right and digging through a box of what any normal homeowner would call crap. He pulled out an article from the
New York Times
.

The below-the-fold headline read:
Thirty Percent of Tokyo Homeless are Homeowners.
Al handed the article to Jake. Jake glanced at the headline and put the paper in his lap.

“What's wrong? Don't believe everything you read?” Al asked.

“No.”

“Maybe you're smarter than you look after all.”

“So you're a homeowner?”

“Yes. I'm a homeowner. Don't I look like one? Own a car, too. Homelessness is nothing more than a state of mind.”

“Never looked at it that way.”

“Most people wouldn't.”

“Can I ask a question?”

“Shoot. I've got nothing pressing,” Al said, inhaling deeply as he stretched his arms out to embrace his environment.

“If you're a homeowner and you are choosing to be homeless, why don't you just lend your house to someone who doesn't want to live on the street? Let someone live there who needs it?”

“I do, Jake. My brother lives there. He is more needy than anyone I've ever met.”

Al stared at Jake, sizing up the young man. Jake looked around at Al's belongings, his life on display.

“So Marilyn called you?”

“I have a phone line with an answering machine. I check it every few days from the phone booth at Potomac Point Park.”

“Why?”

“You never know who may try to get in touch with you,” Al said, more lucid than a minute ago. “So, back to the first question. How can I help you?”

“Your first question was actually ‘what's your problem?'”

“Touché, Jake. Touché.”

“I need help finding a girl.”

“Hey, buddy, don't we all. And if you think it is hard now, try angry, unemployed, and homeless. Those are not three qualities the ladies are looking for.”

Jake laughed. Al didn't.

“Who is the girl?”

“Her name is Wei Ling and she is Chinese.”

“Ling?”

“Yes”

“Well, there aren't too many of those. Why don't we look for a John Anderson in Chicago while we're at it?”

“She is from China, but she was working in the garment industry in Saipan.”

“The garment industry in Saipan?”

“Yes.”

“We call those sweatshops here in the real world.”

“I'm sorry?”

“You say ‘garment industry' and I say ‘sweatshop.' Let me educate you. Girls from poor Asian countries pay a couple thousand dollars, money they don't have, to work in these sweatshops for pennies a day. Saipan is sweatshop-central U.S.A.”

“I didn't think we had sweatshops in the U.S.”

“Most people don't…and as long as the price is right on their khaki pants in the Sunday advertisements, most Americans don't care.”

While Jake thought about the statement, Al continued. “Saipan is actually very interesting. It straddles a political fence. Saipan is a giant international employment loophole. Companies operating on the island don't need to adhere to the intricacies of United States employment law. Workers are paid well below the minimum salary their stateside counterparts receive, and it is all perfectly legal. As a United States territory, Saipan gives companies, domestic and foreign, an opportunity to manufacture goods that are officially ‘Made in the U.S.A.' These companies corner the market on cheap labor and U.S. businesses pay no import tariffs because the goods aren't technically ‘imported.'”

Jake's head was spinning. The heat and a homeless man giving him a speech on international labor gave him vertigo.

“What do you want with the girl?” Al asked.

“Marilyn didn't tell you?”

“I'm not asking Marilyn, I'm asking you.”

“I think the girl is in trouble.” Jake pulled out the fax and tried to hand it to Al. Al looked at it for a split second, and left it in Jake's hand without reading it.

“So what does this have to do with you?”

“Nothing, I guess. I just want to help. I want to know who she is.”

“Jake, Jake, Jake. If you knew who she was, what would you do?”

“I don't know. Find out if the fax is for real. Find out who is running the company, who is keeping her against her will. Write some letters.”

“Write some letters?”

“Yeah.”

“You go to school, Jake?”

“Yes.”

“What did you study?”

“I'm getting my Masters in English Literature.”

“No wonder you want to write a letter.”

“The pen is mightier than the sword,” Jake snapped.

“Oh Jake, now you are singing my song. I love banter. Shall we take a minute to flex our mental prowess?
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.
”

“What?”

“Mark Twain. I thought we were exchanging quotes.”

“No thanks.”

“You lose. So, who the hell are you going to write a letter to?”

“I don't know. This is Washington—there has to be some group willing to raise a little hell. There is a protest every week in this town.”

“Forget the letter, Jake. Why don't you just talk to your father?”

“How did you know about my father?”

Al looked at Jake but didn't answer the question. “Why don't you just talk to him?”

“I already did. He said he took care of it, but I don't believe him. I even called the Saipan Police Department and they said everything checked out.”