What We Are (2 page)

“Then you don't need me.”

“Trust me, brother, I'm dying. I hear the tinny chimes. Help me! I see the reaper, brother.”

“It's in your head, dog.”

“No, no, no, brother. I'm dying!”

I sniff in some air, indicating a step back from the conversation. Somehow he reads the insinuation and does just that: one step back, though he doesn't leave. He's balancing on the curb, heel to toe, and I'm waiting for him to spill over, then jump up and go sprinting down the street. This is the point where anyone else would leave. Not him. Me.

“What the hell,” I say. “I'll get you some food, man. Come on.”

He thinks it over, as if he has a better offer. Then he says, “Okay, brother. Okay. Where do you live?”

I laugh out loud, it feels good. The rain comes again, in one big orgasmic gust. As it is, I'm probably broker than this cat. “Hey, bro,” I say. “Gimme your money.”

He steps back again.

“Nah. Just kidding, man. Let's get to Jack in the Crack, dog. I'll buy you a burger.”

“So you got money then?” he says, and right there I know that unless this crankster has a midnight revelation, we'll be fighting soon enough over the $3.68 in my pocket.

I say, “Follow me,” and he does, staying a half step to my rear.

We walk through the rain toward El Camino Real. I remember the Pokémon umbrella, pull it out of my jacket, and hand it to the crankster. I don't think about why it's taken me this long to use it. He doesn't say thank you, doesn't grunt, nod. Doesn't pop it. He jams the umbrella into the pocket of his pants, a future tradeable good, and looks behind him for the ghosts of the past. All he finds is the Vuong Vu Video Outlet, an Afghan grocery store called House of Khan, and an Exxon station patched with the lights of skyrocketing prices. Each one closed, each empty of bodies. On the horizon the stars glisten behind the blur of the clouds, and if anything opens up tonight, I will welcome whatever comes.

He pulls out a bottle of good vodka from his pocket, takes a shot, repockets it.

I don't think on his hoarding selfishness. Ravished by greed and cowardice, a man of the streets gets villainous with needs. Breathing in the cool wet air, I drift into the warm realm of remembrance. The earth water seems to stimulate the senses: sky water, ocean water, river water. The Ohlone, I learned in fourth grade, call it
the blood of the mother. I always thought that accurate. Just to be there with her, or inside her, at the tips of life's fingers. Back then, at nine, I used to stand under the apricot tree in our yard and ask the big questions of God. I'd let the rain mix in with my tears. I'd address to the vast angry hanging sky those problems which my Sunday School teacher couldn't ever answer in front of the class. She'd always wait for the good kids to leave and then take me aside (“Now listen here, young man”), max out on the intimidation of adulthood, buttress her arguments with size and force and a mysterious alliance with my parents. When my folks split and my mother started taking us to the grand old Catholic Church, I addressed those same problems again at confession with Father McFadden, Papa Mac, a real gentleman, cool cat. He'd cleverly reverse the burden of doubt into ten assigned Hail Marys (“Salvation comes from within, lad”). But the core of every question I had was the rational position that I didn't believe.

My namesake, Paul, had died alone, sanctified in a Roman dungeon, and I, at nine, was certain to the point of excommunication that one either sank or swam when traversing water and that if five thousand people were fed by five fish, four thousand nine hundred and ninety-five people had lied and been left hungry and that dead was dead, however you looked at it and that some people who still lived in grass huts and sat naked around a savage fire at night had never even heard of Jesus. And I'd felt self-pity over this, over my fakery in the face of God.

When I wasn't struck down by lightning for my lie, the internal lie, the worst kind of lie, my living in itself was the true indictment of holy scripture, tangible proof of my doubt. Though I didn't know it, I was beginning a fifteen-year journey whose days began and ended with the same longing. The minute you eliminate God, everything else comes down like dominoes. I can see tonight without the haze
of zealotry, yes. But I'm not thankful or stupidly proud. The cost for clairvoyance is high and personal and ironical: I yearn to harness the pure, blurred, blood-rushing ecstasy of my species. I desire belief, faith. But I feel nothing worthy of a golden book chalice to save us. My psyche is fine and undaunted. I'm an anti-epiphany, ultra-knowing yet ultra-nothing, the new American.

We reach Hamsun Park and quiet desolation. Streetlights dwindle in number. I imagine them from above: little matchsticks in the ocean waves of darkness. We cut across the grass and beneath the conical pines and through the piles of needles collecting in the puddles. Sand in the playground clumps like cafeteria oatmeal. At the barbecue pits is a scattering of empty Budweiser boxes, some intact and tossed to the side, others torn in half and smashed, a few shredded into strips, red and white tiger stripes on the lawn. Broken glass crunches under our feet. I slap at a piñata dangling from the branch of a dead birch tree. It's been split down the middle in one swift Caesarian whack, barren inner wall lined with newspaper. I remember a line from Hemingway:
The deer hung stiff and heavy and empty
. Little piles of streamers are spread across the grass: red, green, white. A few eggshells pool in dried yolk. Popped balloons, colorful scraps of rubber, all kinds of fiesta debris. There will be ample labor in the morning for the green-T'd park worker with a generic tree on the pocket.

The crankster speeds up so that we're side by side, and as I say, “What's your name, dog?” he shows me the blade, his hand jerking worse than his face.

I shrug, half smile. The tempests are loose. He's picked the wrong night, the wrong knife, the wrong person. A box cutter the size of a Pez dispenser won't break leathery skin like mine. And even if it does, who cares? I won't die on site. And even if I do, it'll be long after the fight is finished. And then the question is: What will I lose? It's not bravado; it's a desperate longing for happening: something, anything. I almost want him to stab me, just to see how
the thing turns out. Just to act without there strictions of conscious thought. Just to act.

His one eyebrow which still has nerves rises in apprehension. If he was hard-core or hard up, he would have stabbed me in the back to take my wallet. In fact, he would've done it before we'd ever talked. That he shows me the weapon means he doesn't want to use it, and it's that simple. He sees I've done the math, and suddenly his other eyebrow comes to life.

By now, at twenty-eight, I've been in a dozen situations twice as perilous. He couldn't know this, but he should've guessed. It's always best to keep wild cards like me in the public eye so that the mind, facile in darkness, doesn't wander into the isolated quandary of justified self-defense. Isolated, violated, I now have the right to kill this crankster, to leave his corpse to that same park worker for a life-changing discovery at dawn.

I say, “You're gonna get your burger, bro. Just take it easy.”

I turn around and start to walk. From behind, I hear, “Hey, hey. You. Hey.” I stop. He's poised like a half-ass wrestler, the knife loose and limp in his hand, not sure if he should get down any lower.

I spit into the ash of a barbecue pit. “So you wanna do something, homie? You wanna go there, you Christmas-tree looking mutherfucker?”

He doesn't move, but looks over one shoulder, then the other. This kind of language he understands, a simple proposition grounded in threat. He pockets the knife and his shoulders rise: the friendly beggar again. Walks over to me, stops at three yards, leans away as if he's about to race in the other direction and is waiting for the starting gun to fire, asks, “Is it okay?”

All huff and all puff but no blow.

“Yeah, man,” I say, reassuringly. “Just quit with all that stupid shit, man. Let's get you a burger so you can be on your fucked-up way.

“Okay, brother. Whatever you say, man. Anything you say, brother.”

T
HE TEENAGE BOYS
are shooting blanks against the wall, spit wads that dribble out their straws. The happy crankster and I are at the Jack in the Box on El Camino and Lafayette. I'm watching him eat his three-dollar burger. I didn't have enough cash for both of us, but it's cool. I may be doing myself a favor being broke. Saving my gut the unenviable job of processing dressed-up shit. When I get back to the motel room, I'll cook some Korean top ramen.

Two of the kids are blue-eyed blonds, the other a black-haired Southeast Asian, all in football jerseys big as gowns, sagging jeans with pockets down the leg, black and powder-blue baseball caps crooked on their heads. Gangstas without street cred, hard as steel out their two-story cribs with the four-car garages, a phat ride bought with Mommy's credit card. One girl emerges from the bathroom—one girl—and all three boys get immediately elbowy with one another. As she slides into the booth, paying none of them any attention, it's easy to understand why women are taking over the western world. Suddenly they just look dumb, these boys, court jesters kept around to entertain the queen.

I am worried about our boys. They have identity crises worse than domesticated lions. My sister is raising one now, poor little Toby.
He may be the only person on the planet more confused than me. But he's just four, man, not enough mileage or damage to wonder why
cogito ergo sum
. He's supposed to be reckless and intrusive, bold and free with his body and mouth, but he just sits there, hungry or not, will wait till he's a teenager to eat, even talk. It's like he was lobotomized at birth. Tali looms over his wet little ass, and the kid keeps looking over, under, and through her for his father.

Where is the man I come from? he wants to say.

I want the damned kid to crash into walls and hang from bars on the swing set. I want him to take his tricycle to the creek and pedal right to the edge of the water, a narcissistic peek at his image, then howls of laughter as he jumps in feet first. I want him to climb the eucalyptus in the yard and scratch his elbows and knees on the bark and throw footballs in the rain, resist the peace of dryness. None of it will happen. His father is probably the very crankster sitting across from me now who masturbated into a test tube in a sterile white-walled room with a stack of
Penthouse
for forty lousy bucks and a red, white, and blue
I JUST GAVE SPERM
button. Poor little Toby doesn't have a father, and nobody, not even the father, cares.

In a lobby of after-hours drifters, the fifteen-to nineteen-year-old Helen in high heels has got everyone under her spell. Even the crank-impaired. If I cared and if I could, I'd die in a big epic war to reclaim her from the hostile shores of the enemy. How refreshing it would be to play a role with absolute clarity like my Aegean homie Achilles, to know exactly what you get from the king if you live: forego the harems and cities and treasure chests of gold. I'll take this Jack-in-the-Box vixen in the white cotton form-fitting sweater-skirt with a blue stripe at the turtleneck, the tight hem at the thighs, thick-and plump-hipped, clean- and supple-faced, long blond hair to the bosom, aware of so much more than we adults give her credit for. The smartest person in this room, too, by far: she knows what she wants and can get it.

The crankster interrupts my thoughts. Of course. He doesn't like the silence between us; it implies threat, even though he's eating on me. He's way past being concerned about implied judgment. The crankster looks over at the kids in the corner, back at me, thinks he knows what I'm thinking, risks it, and slaps my shoulder. “You ever hit a vrank shot, brother?”

Got no clue what it is, but I don't say so or shake my head. I'm about ready to go. Did my good deed for the day.

“Viagra and crank. You hit 'em both. Fuck for five hours straight, brother. Rub your shit raw.”

This time I shake my head.

“I'd love to take that into a stall right there.” He's pointing at the restroom. “Fuck that sweet little thing right up the ass, brother.”

“'Ey,” I say. “'Ey.”

He's got a frown on his face, gritting his teeth, as if he's in the act. “I'd drill that bitch for half a day spun on a vrank shot. Beat it up, brother, beat it up. Stretch that bitch out so bad she never take a shit again.”

“‘Ey, man.' Ey.” He looks up at me, breathing hard, face still in mid-frown. “Watch your fucking mouth, man.”

He takes a casual bite from his jalapeño burger, as if I didn't say a word. Just like that, I'm up on my feet, reaching across the table, an index finger in the wrinkles of his dirt-encrusted neck. I snag the burger out of his hand.

He doesn't say anything. Not with his mouth, anyway. He says something with his eyes, though—
Not afraid of you, brother
—and I slap it right off his face. He falls off the chair and catches himself. The vodka bottle flies out and rings dull through the restaurant. One of the boys at the other table shouts, “You see that, Bojeezie!” The crankster twists and looks up from the napkins and splattered ketchup.

“Hey, brother,” he whispers. “I'm sorry, man, I'm sorry.”

I throw the half-eaten burger at his face. “You
are
sorry, you punkass mutherfucker.”

“All right, brother. All right.”

“Don't call me brother, you fucking crankster.”

“All right, all right.”

I turn around, wipe the smiles off the faces of the boys. Scan for any adults I've missed. At the corner table, there's a paisa in a black-and-tan cowboy hat, dark green flannel, and a Pancho Villa mustache thick as undergrowth. He's chewing on his fries, as if this is just what he's expected out of us all along. Either that or he knows it may soon be time to take his green-cardless flight from this once-safe spot. I don't know why, but I love the hell out of the guy—or I love, anyway, what's on his face: silent immigrant in the silent corner who's seen worse, probably done worse, and knows a ten-cent sideshow like this ain't worth his time. He's got real business to worry about. The hombre intrigues me.