Waylaid (7 page)

When the last day of the Labor Day weekend hit, the summer season was over. The town looked like a tornado warning was in effect and a massive evacuation was underway. Bennys piled into their cars and pointed them North for the fall, winter, and spring. Cars with New Jersey and New York license plates were lined up, smashed headlight to dented trunk. That was when the town released all its anger against the Bennys. Locals would line up along the highway that led back to the city with signs reading, “GO HOME, BENNYS!” and “GET THE HELL OUT!”

I walked along the highway to the hardware store to get the type of AC adapter that screws into a light-bulb socket. My bike tire was out of commission, and I didn't feel like fixing it now. There was too much broken glass on the road, and I was repairing so many flats, I felt like I was running a bike shop.

A local man, wearing a Pac-Man Fever baseball cap, a tank top, and a tank-like belly, shouted across the bot-tled-up highway at me.

“Hey, you fucking chink, you get the hell out of my town!”

I stopped and stared at him. He smiled at me a little, then waved and turned back to the Bennys.

My new teacher in the fall was Mr. Hendrickson. In the summer, he worked as a rent-a-cop pounding the boardwalk. Mr. Hendrickson showed authority as he weaved through pedestrian traffic, his huge frame sweeping through the boisterous crowds by the boardwalk games. I'd see him moving through people like a shark fin above water when I stopped at the boardwalk for a game of Berserk! or Space Invaders before going to the hardware store.

But he also had to sweep up broken bottles, popsicle sticks, and other trash. That wasn't too different from what I had to do. When he was young, he probably would have fit right in with the Bennys. Now, his sixfoot-six frame looked more bloated than brute. But there was no doubt that the man could do some damage, even in his overweight and graying state.

About a week before school was going to start, as the Bennys were having their last shot at destroying our town, a mini-brawl had broken out on Mr. Hendrickson's turf. Three shirtless, drunk guys were grappling with each other, knocking over folding chairs by the lemonade slush and cheesefries stand. Mr. Hendrickson stepped in and grabbed a Benny with each hand, but that left the third guy free. Mr. Hendrickson woke up flat on his back with two other rent-a-cops standing over him and a gash on his face that required stitches.

I'd read about the incident in the paper. They'd put the story on the same page as the television listings. The name “Hendrickson” stood out because I knew he was going to be my teacher that fall. I saw the scar the first day of school. I thought a broken bottle would leave a circular mark, but instead there was a thin, crusty scab about two inches long that ran from the center of his forehead to the top of the bridge of his nose. The skin around it was puffy like a caterpillar.

Mr. Hendrickson had a big St. Bernard's head, jiggling jowls, and eyes that dripped behind glasses smudged with greasy fingerprints. He reeked of alcohol and cigarette smoke, like one of our hotel rooms, only we tried to cover the smell up with air fresheners. For some reason, he thought that nobody could hear what he said when he took his glasses off.

“Now this is Greece and this is Italy,” Mr. Hendrickson said, circling all of Europe and the northern part of Africa with the skittering tip of his wooden pointer. “The Romans and the Greeks had philosophy and art. Sometimes they had to fight, too. They were some of the world's most advanced civilizations ever. The United States has been around for only two centuries. We probably won't last as long as the Romans and the Greeks. We'll probably be conquered by Japan or maybe even Mexico someday.”

Then his glasses came off, and he rubbed each lens with his tie, muttering, “Goddamn, fucking bullshit. Tired of this shit.”

The glasses popped back onto his face, as simple as on a Mr. Potatohead, and the lecture continued.

“Mexico was the last country to invade the United States, not England, in the War of 1812. A lot of people don't know that. It was Pancho Villa. And a lot of people talk about the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Hawaii wasn't even a state yet! The next time the japs bomb the U.S., it'll be San Francisco or Seattle. Definitely something on the West Coast.”

The first week, all the kids were terrified by Mr. Hendrickson's Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde routine. But we soon realized he was harmless, and got used to it.

I ignored the lectures because I read the right stuff in the textbook. The only thing that changed through the year with Mr. Hendrickson was that his scar healed into what looked like the fake stitches on a Nerf football.

School was well underway, but summer wasn't truly over until it was time to drain the pool. I sat in a battered pool chair next to Peter and Mrs. Fiorello, watching the noisy pump chug out water and flood the lawn.

“What are you studying in school?” asked Mrs. Fiorello.

“Greece.” It was only the second week, so I was really only fitting on book covers cut from shopping bags.

“Yeah, the Greeks were the first civilized people in this world,” said Peter. “The buildings they put up back then are still standing now.”

“How old are they?” asked Mrs. Fiorello.

“Millions of years, from when dinosaurs were still around.”

“The dinosaurs died out before there were people,” I corrected. Peter threw his hands up in the air. A small clump of ash from his cigar skittered across his bare chest.

“Who's to say, no one really knows,” said Peter. “It was way before I was born and way before you were born. They'll be here long after we're dead.” Steady splish-splashes from the pump continued to sound in the background.

“You know what happens when you die?” asked Mrs. Fiorello, adding in a hushed voice: “I don't want to scare you, but I've told your mother that you should go to church.”

I had thought about going to church. Probably a lot of girls there. Maybe the ones in church had tits. I was-n't going to find out, though. I was too busy cleaning rooms Sundays.

My parents never read the Bible, although every room had a copy. Why go to church? Jesus wouldn't bring in more johns.

The newly installed chain-link fence closed off the hotel's back yard, which would have been a shortcut to the church. We had to put up the fence because our neighbors to the back complained of finding Bennys in their pools or beer bottles and cans on their lawn.

The pump chugged away, and the level of the pool sank a fraction of an inch. A thin film of green stretched across the surface like a slice of cheese on day-old pizza. The Fiorellos got up and left, Mrs. Fiorello yawning and Peter scratching his forehead with the end of the cigar that had been in his mouth. I took a look at the pool furniture around me, dreading the task that awaited me. I would have to drag them all one by one and stack them up in the once-again dead burger stand. When I was done with that, it would be time to pull out the splinters that bit through the leather work gloves.

I closed my eyes and listened to the chugging sound of the pump. It sounded like a worn-out heart.

In the late fall and winter months, when business was dead and even johns barely trickled in, we dropped the rates to $60 a week. The loneliest guys you'd ever seen would straggle in. These old white men might have crawled out from under railroad platforms. They didn't get much sun and their clothes were damp and dirty. They were mostly widowers abandoned by their own children, of whom they still spoke fondly. They lived off of Social Security checks and Twinkies and Suzy-Qs. God knows they didn't have enough money to get drunk.

They would come into the office and talk away like it was a general store and we were sitting down to a checkers game on the flat end of an upright barrel. My mother hated talking to these old men, and when I came home from school, she'd make a quick exit and force me to keep them company, or at least to make sure they didn't walk off with a newspaper without paying for it.

Around March, the weekly rate would go back up to $125, squeezing their cash flow, and the old timers would leave. Sometimes they'd come back the next winter. Sometimes you heard that they'd died.

The stragglers came back again around Halloween. How appropriate. These lonely old guys never earned more than minimum wage their entire lives and had more fingers than teeth. Like a flock that instinctively knew where to fly to find warmth, they honed in on and migrated to residences on the shore, where rents were dirt cheap in the off-season. All the young people were gone, which probably suited the old men fine. When the hookers and johns rolled in and out, they were already dead asleep.

The temperature drop chilled the seasonal businesses of the shore. The boardwalk stands stripped of their toy prizes looked like a row of abandoned outhouses. The drive-in across the street pulled its wooden benches up over the glass windows, chaining them with their legs sticking out, as if preparing against an amphibious landing. The hardware store cut back on their hours and was only open on the weekends. Sometimes hotel repairs would have to wait a week or more before I could buy the necessary part.

The hotel shut down most of the rooms, leaving only around 20 open. That was about the right number: we could still expect about three or four johns at any one time, four or five people were actual customers who would spend the night, and we needed about eight rooms for the old men.

For $60 a week, the old men would get an electric hot plate with two burners and a tiny refrigerator that could hold about two boxes of Twinkies. They also got a portable electric heater. Those rooms got pretty damn cold — the drafts through the battered air conditioners bolted into the wall neutralized the power of the central heat.

There were never enough heaters to go around, so when someone complained about the cold, my parents would give mine out, then theirs. Sometimes I went to sleep to the buzzing warmth of the heater only to wake up cold in the middle of the night, the glowing metal strips replaced by darkness, my heater given away to a customer.

At the hotel I learned the life cycle of white men. Go to school, get a job, get drunk and laid every weekend, get married, have kids, get old, watch your family abandon you, and live off of Social Security until you die.

Every day I saw the various stages. Kids in school. A john stopping by at three in the morning. An old man waiting for the water on the hotplate to boil for instant coffee, saying he'd have the rent first thing next week. Peter Fiorello was the only old white man I saw who still had a wife and seemed to be happy.

White women were a little different. After they finished high school, they worked at fast-food joints or, if they looked good enough, landed in the porn magazines. If they were really unlucky, they might end up turning tricks in our rooms. There was no place for old white women at the shore. The only old white women I saw besides Mrs. Fiorello were on television.

Something strange about those Fiorellos.

When they stopped by on weekends in the winter, the Fiorellos spent nearly the whole day in the office, talking with my mother. Through the closed door to the office, I would hear muffled voices and my mother's high-pitched, fake laugh.

I was sleeping late on the weekends now, but sometimes my father would wake me up with a nudge of his slipper and tell me I had to help him in the crawlspace. Most of the time though, my father would already be off fixing something and I would sleep until about 10 or 11. After I woke up, I'd pop open a canister of generic biscuits and plop the sticky, doughy discs onto a battered metal baking tray that was dented like a cymbal from The Who's drum kit.

I was smearing chunky peanut butter on a biscuit when I heard my mother calling from the office. Her pleas were followed by Mrs. Fiorello's wail that she wanted to see me. I trudged out to the office.

“Don't you kids wash up anymore?” asked Mrs. Fiorello, tapping a finger against the right side of her mouth. I licked a spot of peanut butter away.

“You can't look this sloppy for customers,” said my mother. They were both in their customary discussion positions, Mrs. Fiorello on the office couch and my mother on the bar stool behind the counter. My mother would never leave the counter to sit next to Mrs. Fiorello on the couch. Although they could talk casually, Mrs. Fiorello was a customer, and my mother could never sit with her. Mrs. Fiorello once told me orientals had a hard time being close.

“Say something in Chinese,” said Mrs. Fiorello.

“What?” I said. I was letting those biscuits go cold for this? My classmates used to torture me with this stupid shit until I started jabbing pens in their arms and dumping out their desks.

“Say something in Chinese. Something easy, like, ‘Hello.'” Mrs. Fiorello wore a wide grin that stretched her face taut. Her cheeks were as shiny as lacquered wood. I looked to my mother, and she gave a short, artificial laugh.

“Why do you want to me to say something in Chinese?” I asked. A piece of peanut that had gotten stuck in my molars added to my annoyance.

“Just do it,” Mrs. Fiorello whined, “do it for me.” She said the last bit like one word: “formy.”

“Yee,” I said. My mother gave a genuine laugh. Mrs. Fiorello looked puzzled.

“He?” she asked.

“Yee,” I said.

“What does that mean?”

“One.”

“Hunh,” said Mrs. Fiorello said incredulously. “How come it's so simple? Aren't most Chinese words like, ‘Ching chango wing wong'?”

“No, not this one.”

“I'm so glad you speak some Chinese. You should know Chinese. It would be such a shame if you lost it. I only know food in Italian,” Mrs. Fiorello said. “But I'm an American, so it's too late for me.”

“Yeah, that's too bad.” I was thoroughly repulsed, not only by the conversation but also by how incredibly ugly Mrs. Fiorello was. Fat, old, and ugly. Those ugly freckles probably covered her fat-swollen tits and ass cheeks. Sweat was slick on her forehead and probably between her thighs, too. Her pussy probably smelled worse than licking-tuna-can jokes implied.

“You're such a cute Chinese boy, you should speak some more and be proud of what you are,” Mrs. Fiorello said. “Really, it's okay.”

I cleared my throat, opened the door to the living room, and withdrew to the kitchen. The biscuits were hardening. After I finished choking them down, I squeezed some detergent onto a sponge and wiped down the baking tray, the butter knife, and my plate. I took the dishrag and wiped the vinyl place setting until it glistened.

Then I looked at the list of things I had to do, which was written in all capitals on a yellow, lined sheet torn from a legal-sized notepad. A magnet from East Coast Distributors held the paper to the fridge. The instructions read like telegrams, with their clipped English and lack of punctuation.

“ONE: IF THERE IS ICE ON POOL COVER SHEET BREAK IT UP AND THREW IT AWAY OVER FENCE ONTO GRASS NOT DRIVEWAY

“TWO: SHAKE SALT ON SIDEWALK FROM ROOM 12 AND FROM ROOM 11A

“THREE: GO TO HARDWARE STORE AND BUY THREE LIGHT SOCKET AC ADAPTERS GET MONEY FROM MOMMY.

“FOUR: PICK UP ALL LOOSE TRASH ON DRIVEWAY CIGARET CAN BOTTLE.”

Reading the list, I always had to insert “the” in the right places. It was already an automatic process from years of listening to my parents talk.

Nothing too strenuous today. There was no ice on the pool covering, and sprinkling salt was child's play.

The worst had been when my father bought surplus railroad ties and concrete bunkers to keep the Bennys from driving over the lawn. New Jersey Transit dropped them off, but refused to hammer in the iron spokes needed to keep them in place. That became my job. The calluses I had from slamming that sledgehammer down hundreds of times that weekend will be with me until I wrap my hands around a walking stick.

I went outside and threw salt around. I moved like an old man wandering around a park, feeding pigeons. I thought about what it would be like to be one of the old men. Old and worn out from years of getting laid hundreds of times, living by myself, eating Chocodiles and fruit pies.

As I drew closer to the Fiorellos' room, the announcements from a football game grew louder. I stood outside the door, one hand on the plastic scoop, the other holding the bucket of granulated salt. Mrs. Fiorello was still in the office, gabbing away. She had waved with manic intensity through the office window as I passed, but I'd given only a polite nod in response.

Through the curved triangle of space between the closed curtains, I saw Peter Fiorello watching the football game. It was half-time, and the cheerleaders were building pyramids. His back was turned to me and I saw his cigar wiggle.

Was this the end of the life cycle of all white men? Watching football in a hotel room? What happened to old Chinese men? Did they all withdraw into basement workshops like my father?

I had a hard time understanding Frank, one of the offseason old-timers, because he couldn't pronounce the letter “t.” My mother had enough trouble with people who spoke correct English. Frank had about three different plaid shirts and he never washed them. There was no laundry room at the hotel, but you could smell the hotel-bar soap on the clothes of the other old men.

Creases in Frank's filthy jeans were deepest at the knees, and it looked like broken chopsticks in his pant legs were supporting the fabric. He couldn't hold his right leg still, so he would stand at the counter and lean over sideways on his left elbow. Frank's right knee shook back and forth like a frog's leg hooked to a battery.

My mother sat on the stool behind the counter, legs crossed and hands thrust into her pockets. She hated being trapped in the office with Frank, but she wouldn't leave him alone there. The last time she walked out on one of these old men, he'd pissed on the office floor, then fallen asleep on the couch.

When I came in the office after school, she would get up, say good-bye to Frank, and gesture for me to sit on the stool. Over a number of excruciating afternoons, he told me a lot about his life. I never told him shit about mine.

The first time Frank saw me, he said, “You're preddy!”

It had obviously been a long time since he'd seen someone as young and as Asian as me. The last time had been when he was wandering the streets of Seoul, looking for hookers.

The fragments of Frank's story fit together as well as random pieces of peanut brittle.

When he was really young, he collected soda bottles in the streets of Chicago, drinking what was left in them before returning them to drug stores for a penny each. He was nicknamed “Pepsi” by the other kids.

He served in Europe in World War II, where he was shot in the leg before he ever had a chance to fire his gun. He was sent home, but later took an Army office job in South Korea, where he would meet two “ladies” every night.

Frank got married when he came back to the U.S., and an old Army buddy set him up in a lower management job with an oil company in Texas. He sat around all day, sharpening pencils with a pocket knife and passing cigars around for his newborn son.

Then he had a heart attack.

The company paid for his hospital bill, but wouldn't hire him again. The heart attack had left his speech slurred, and he lost partial control of the right side of his body. Even though he could still do his job, they told him that having him there was making everyone else in the office feel lousy.