What We Are (29 page)

I see Chinaski emerge from the construction site, follow at the same slow jog the path of the scooter.

“I learned a lot from your Uncle Richard,” Ms. Clannonite says, interrupting my thoughts.

I nod, shrug, smile to make up for the shrug. I'm determined to be just a good-looking guy. If only all the pimps and dealers out there could see how valuable their hustle would be in this field. If only a lot of things.

“He taught me how to farm.”

I try an inquisitive look—“I didn't know my uncle was a man of the fields”—but I really don't want to hear it. The less I know about my uncle in business, the more I can hold on to a working relationship. Not a working relationship in business, a working relationship in life.

“Farm lawyers,” she says, smiling assuringly. Her teeth are dry-wall white, purely lasered of plaque. “Farm bankers. Farm insurance agents. Build up five to ten each in your arsenal. Successful lawsuits, business foreclosure, home and life insurance referrals—all of it affects the real estate market.”

Don't want to hear it.

“He taught me to know my product and then to jazz it up. This place you're looking at is not a three-bedroom one-and-a-half-bath house. I defy you to call it anything but a cozy top-of-the-line, modern American domicile on a ventilated six-thousand-square-foot lot featuring multi-temperature bath and showers, hardwood floors, custom-carved oaken cabinets, earthquake-proof granite countertops, matching washer and dryer, forced air and heat, insulated by hand-carved panels, and an all-weather fireplace, adorned by a warm reading room with yet-to-be implemented alcove stacks, an emerald-green yard, and a secure two-car garage with an ADT alarm system, a sky-high redwood fence, and pre-set peripheral-motion lights.”

Translation: three-bedroom one-and-a-half-bath house.

“He taught me that you never forget past clients. Stay in touch. Send out birthday and Christmas cards. Past clients have family and friends in search of referrals. And eventually past clients get tired of the house you sold them and need a new one. Not just once. Not twice. Before the decade's over, three times. This is a valley of movers and shakers. And then: past clients get tired of each other. Your uncle taught me that divorce is good in this trade. It's healthy. When past clients go to court to finish their life together, you've got two new sales at opposite ends of the valley. There's no such thing as a past client. Even when dead, past clients will appreciate a visit to the funeral home where you can make their grandchildren into future past clients.”

I look at the crucifix on the lawn:
Yes
, I want to say,
but are you pretty inside?

“The past and the future do not shape me. The time is now. A sale starts with the confidence of attitude. Of not merely being
in
the moment but
being
the moment. You prospect for but don't hope for a better future. Hope means nothing. Your uncle is a
now
thinker. Do you know why you're moving all that office crap to Burlingame?”

I don't say,
Because I was told to and I'm trying to be a cooperative guy
.

“Because we don't have an office anymore. We have a weekly meeting at the Fairmont, paid for by your uncle. You see, he's a visionary. He saw that everything could be stored on some database on his laptop. That he could eliminate not only rent but a secretary as well. And he did.” Here she smiles. “That's right, your Aunt Lanell. Whatever you lack in not having an office can be made up for on-site. Clients are interested in the house they're about to buy, not the office they visit. Your uncle understood this and—not one by one but all at once—closed each of his offices in the valley.”

Yeah, sure. He was probably afraid you were gonna steal his files and torch the place
.

“He taught me that it's about the five senses of sales: sight, smell, sound, touch, taste.”

As I'm about to break my vow of silence from the gutter of my imagination—
Taste? Taste what?
—a stripped and beat-up Ford Tempo pulls up, blasting mariachi, and a young paisa emerges from the car, carrying yet another grocery bag up the walk of the house. I can smell the chicken tikka masala from fifteen feet away. The kid's about to speak but thinks better of it. She's already breaking him off a twenty from a roll of green bills, as if the sound of crisp papers separating from one another were rather a soothing way of saying
shhhhh
, the Esperanto language of love.

He takes it, bowing, and she says in perfect accent, “
Muchas gracias, Miguel
.”

Suddenly I'm famished: for healthy servings of Indian food off the nude belly of the Godmother of the West.

So you're just yearning to be authentic Americans, Mr. and Mrs. Gupta? Okay. All right. Why not walk in on some Americana in the
raw? Witness us being “in the moment.” Observe the screw screwing. This is what your children will be doing on MySpace in no time anyway
.

My fantasy is starting to get loose, and the beast from below is responding with surprising vigor, here on the edge of no-man's-land, when the lady of the private showing counts out five twenties—”
shhhhh
“—and lays them seductively in my palm. Before I can say that my services are worth a wee bit more than that, ma'am, she adds her business card to the pile: Kelly Clannonite. I look down on her flawless smile, the clean glare of teeth like a ceaseless reminder to visit the dentist, and say nothing.

“Today's clients will buy the place,” she says. “Know how I know?”

I shake my head no, but inside I'm rolling my eyes. I can think of nothing I detest more than when supposed specialists think their acute observational faculties and marked experience equate to Nostradamus prophecy. This is the kind of romantic self-inflation that has gotten many a world leader into irreparable trouble.

“The Guptas just came from an apartment complex in East Palo Alto. Know what that means?”

I think,
That they've learned the vernacular of modern American West Coast gangs?

“It means they're desperate for quiet. Now I ask you: What's more quiet than a half-built neighborhood with virtually no occupancy?”

Genius
, I want to say.
But you've a little problem with the Punjabi porker
.

“Just keep an eye on him for the next five or ten minutes.” My guess is she means Chinaski. “Often his motive to please gets the better of his limited reason.”

That makes me smile. Definitely Chinaski. She takes advantage of my affable silence and walks off toward the human nest for sale. I, too, walk off, but in the opposite direction. Up the street toward
the buzzing sound, empty houses right and left, behind me and in front.
Keep an eye on him for the next five or ten minutes
can mean any number of things.

I put up a soft whistle of the Mozart I heard back at the house, and before I've finished the ditty I reach the corner of the block, stop, and wait. Chinaski is squatting behind a fire hydrant facing the street. I step back behind a fence but I can see him through the gaps. He needs another fire hydrant to hide adequately. But no one's around; the brand-new houses are empty. Chinaski is breathing hard, as am I for some reason. I sense something twisted about this setup, I feel as used as a wet handkerchief.

Chinaski has his dress shirt unbuttoned and then—
what's this? Oh, no, don't do it
—he pulls the shirt over his shoulder and off altogether like a cheap stripper. His head pops out and he shakes out his spaghetti hair wildly, rock star extraordinaire. Thankfully he's wearing a T-shirt underneath, this one all green with a yellow Green Lantern insignia on the chest: the same superhero symbol that dangles from the rearview mirror of his green '06 VDUBBUG.

Chinaski's one of those grown men who camped out in the hailstorm at AMC theaters for tickets to
Incredible Hulk
. Braved snow and ice for
X-Men
. Making big bucks for the comic-book folks. Yes, it was the kids who dragged him out there. One likes to think that nurturing the imagination is a good thing—
Imagine all the people living life in peace
,
you-who-oooo
—but a position like that is no longer impregnable in this lame age: by what mutant superhero do I define myself?

Imagine all the people living life in orange polyester jumpsuits. Cuck-oo-ooo
.

It's no wonder men are on the decline.

Well, I don't want any part of it. What else is new? I don't want any part of a lot. Of metrosexuality. Of militias in Idaho. Of peace marches in the city. Of absolute capitalism. Of (microscopic) ear
and mouthpieces. Of celebrity mania. Of scrolling a screen for your soulmate. Of SUVs and three TVs for the kids. Of psychotherapy and Prozac nation. Of the Minutemen with too much time and land on their hands. Of infantile Me-Gen authors. Of Sean Hannity. Of Michael Moore. Of Cindy Sheehan and of whoever is her flag-waving opposite moron:
I don't want any part of it!

How could I sidle up to one side and call myself wise? There are twenty-five answers to the question. Twenty-five more questions after that. Then you can turn a single page of the twenty-five-volume questionnaire. No answers in the back of the book this time, no all-knowing master to guide us into the future.

Hell, while I'm at it, I don't want any part of Chinaski rising slowly as the kid emerges from his house, a fat slice of pizza in his hand. No part of the zealot at the temple, the cannonball-bellied cannon fodder. I want no part of this “service.” That's what this preposterously is: a simple transaction with Ms. Clannonite, the Godmother of the West: “Ask the kid not to ride his scooter for the next hour.”

Chinaski steps out from behind the hydrant in a predatory crouch, fists pumping like dual hearts at the end of his arms, and then he's up the grass of the house, scooter now in hand, underneath him, fired up, a simultaneous spinout and wheelie past the kid. Chinaski slides down the grass and flies over the walk, down the street at full speed, the steel on concrete a dragon tail of Chinese firecrackers.

I'm jogging over to help the kid and snitch off Chinaski to the authorities when I stop in my cold hard tracks. The kid drops down on his ass and bawls, “Mom! Mom! Help meee!”

I can't push out of my head the image of Cyrus fighting off his attacker. This kid just watched it happen, a reality-show television stunt. His whining pierces my eardrums, and I half turn at the sound, pause at the sight. Can't help the kid up, just can't. He's got enough soccer moms to patch up his boo-boos. If he's lucky, he'll learn to live with this wound for a few years.

I U-turn and speed walk like the ladies at the track, as Chinaski leans into a turn on the scooter, his dopey pumpkin head hanging over the handlebars like the crude tributary bow of an ancient Viking boat, his thread implants flat across his head as if someone heavy has sat on them.

The back of his Green Lantern shirt reads
THINK ENTREPENEUR: GET THE BLING
. In his own warped and what-he-thinks-to-be-heroic mind, he's just saved civilization.

He rides up the construction site with surprising skill, swerving to avoid the pitfalls of abandoned housebuilding materials, and then he and his buzzing machine are gone, dust clouds in lazy chase. The idiot has found the perfect mode of seatless painfree transportation.

I expect that should count as “keeping an eye on him.”

In the reflection of a corner window, I see the Punjabi porker stand up, still crying to himself, the lost child at the mall. If I had gone over to ask if he was all right, he would have shaken his head no, as if it were too awkward to move his mouth without a Whopper to masticate; he'd have asked me for five bucks to go buy nachos at the 7-Eleven. I would not have said, “Nachos are a buck and a half, kid,” because he would have fired back, “I need a Slurpee to wash them down.”

Naturally.

So I start to jog. To sprint. Yet again I'm on the run. But this time I've got a good out (the asshole in the Green Lantern shirt did it) a good escape (the asshole's
VDUBBUG
), no witnesses like Robin of the Cookie Monster sweater anywhere in sight. Even without Chinaski (
a father, he's a father!
), the Godmother of the West, and the kid and his scooter, I can't help but think of the exchange of property as something altogether lacking in seriousness. Something inessential here, something not real.

So what's new?

The apple-green hue of Chinaski's ride lures me in and—as I pop the door, wing the Roid Void down the street like a Frisbee, and drop down into the leather seat, wondering why it's so quiet and feels so empty—I look over at the crucifix on the lawn and see a
SOLD
placard swinging in the wind of Kelly Clannonite's hurricane departure. So it ain't pretty inside no more. Mr. and Mrs. Gupta got duped-a after all, hah, hah, hah: cheap joke, cheap sale.

I fire up the VDUBBUG, drive off, don't look back. Chinaski, Ms. Clannonite, and me: we each got what we wanted from this scene. Everyone in the West leaves with haste.

A
ND SO THE DAYS PASS.
Every hour blends into the next.
We measure out our lives in coffee spoons
, a damned good bard once said. The day is diced up by triple mocha lattes and harmless and hurtful gossip both and flatteries from down low and diatribes from up high and every form of fluffy communication in between, and incoming/outgoing calls and lulls in the day that are longer than an hour and eased by a flask of Stolichnaya and female dress in various stages of disrobe, and Altoid chasers for the aforesaid vodka and litigational summons the length, inconsequence, and antiquated Latin of a doctoral dissertation in Medieval Studies concerning which cut of mutton should be eaten on holidays and new cars on the cusp of the manufacturing year and Alhambra delivered on Tuesday afternoons by a paisa named Pablo with his lazy acquired American swagger and pepperoni-free (for the six employed Hindis), sausage-free (for the four employed Muslims), chicken-free (for the three employed hippies), vegan pizza at the vacant Fairmont and the public alliances of family, company, and GOP people staid in their stares and Bill Buckley theories and secret signs of swinging clubbers constantly whispering into each other's ears like wannabe Gotti mafia bosses,
and rivalries at the racquetball courts and on the beachfront lawn of an eighteen green, and adultery of every imagined combination while all throughout these trivialities the region is bustling with lots of hits and dozens of barren semitoxic lots are sold for the highest overpriced bid in which legal yet ridiculous commission is made and spent on cats and tits and yachts and invested in hot or conservative stocks as I, looking up from my bottom rung on the corporate ladder of Santa Clara Real Estate West, reflect with deep Dalai-Lama nearly hallucinatory fervor on the richness of vanilla milkshakes.