What We Are (39 page)

I recite in my deepest oracular voice:

”
The Poet Will Be Uxorious from Here On Out

You have used in our most recent days together
erudite terms like malleable, eclectic, aesthetic,
and with a wink of insinuation (the poet's right to be),
solipsistic. (Don't you know by now
that little jabs will never get by an ex-boxer?)
Between you munching La Paloma nachos
and your standard horizontal moans in our shifty
double-backed beast (“You know me—Oooh!”
you'd cried, “so pliably!”), I saw a picture of you
at the library, unfolding a book of “Brobdingnagian” length.
The Oxford perhaps, or maybe Ulysses,
something large to lend vocabulary.
I love you most for that generosity:
It isn't phoniness.”

She has her cherubic little hands over her heart and the cell phone is shaking like crazy and I'm looking through the blue-gray windows of her eyes and finding nothing at all attractive about the growing tears there.

That's me, me, me! her crying is crying out. That's me in that poem, not Beatrice!

I nod:
That's you, you, you! Who the hell is Beatrice? Gimme some money
.

She says, wiping at her eyes, “I love that book. Your celebration of beauty makes me warm with life!”

Why should I mention how the book came into pornographic fruition, its creation myth of purging my head of filth?

“Okay,” she says, nodding to herself over and over, eyes closed. I realize that she's building up strength. “I'm gonna go to bat for you.
I don't care what it costs me. But I need something to show the higher-ups. Do you have a contract or anything? Some papers I can, like, show them?”

I say, “Can I borrow a pen and a Post-it?”

She reaches into her drawer and pulls both items out, handing them over with the leery look of a gas station attendant giving out the key to the lavatory.

“Don't worry,” I say. “I'm the poet, remember? I've a beauty obligation to fulfill.” I point at the picture of La Dulce in the
Metro
article. “Here's this lady's phone number. Ask for La Dulce. She'll tell you what you need to know about the author.”

“You, right? That's you.”

“Yeah. Exactly. Me. But just keep that on the down-low, if you don't mind. And please don't tell her I talked to you. Is that cool?”

“Oh, for certain,” she says, looking down at the triumvirate of framed ladies atop her desk. “But what if she won't give up the name?”

“She'll squeal like a piglet. So what's next?”

“Okay. If everything goes through, you'll get an e-mail in a week.”

“I don't have e-mail.” I don't have a computer.

“Okaaay. What's your cell number?”

“Don't have one. You can call the guesthouse of my—”

“Okay, like, how
do
you live?”

“Well. Should I call you?”

“Don't worry,” she says, standing, “we'll take care of it.”

I stand at once, bow to show deference, say thank you in a language she doesn't know—”
Fa'afetai lava
“—to appear mysterious as a poet should, and quickly get out of the National Organization of Women Silicon Valley office. I'm pushing my luck so hard I'm gonna snap soon like a schizophrenic in need of his meds, like, not tomorrow, like, not later, but, like, right
NOW
.

I GET BACK IN
the swing of things midweek, work and vanilla milk-shakes coming together into one. Tali stopped by the guesthouse one evening and said three words: “Keep not talking.” In the absolute spirit of her advice, I didn't say hello or good-bye. Today there are hundreds of lamps and desks to move from the San Jo office to a warehouse in Burlingame. I label them for later placement on eBay, tape a Post-it to the base of each item.

Chinaski, once I've got the truck loaded up, will be driving. He's sitting in the cab, apparently preparing for the long road ahead. I've got the layout of the inside of the truck loosely planned out when my uncle calls and says, “Oh, God, I hate this job. I'll be at the restaurant.”

That means meet him at Original Joe's in downtown San Jo. It's not even lunch yet, but when the boss calls, you go. I don't know what to say to Chinaski except, “See ya,” and not, “Do you wanna join us?” or “Isn't it funny how life works out sometimes? It's actually you who's gonna break your back today despite all those fake maps spread across your lap.”

I get down to San Carlos and First, and the light of day dies the minute I open the heavy door of the old-school lounge at the rear of
O.J.'s. I squint and peer into the musky darkness, my eyes adjusting, and find my uncle at the end of the bar. He's in his work shirt still, but his tie is untied and hanging two-ended over his chest. He's already got one sitting there for me to his immediate right, along with a shot, both full, untouched.

“Listen, nephew,” he says, as I sit, say, “
Salute
,” hit the shot, chase it. “You've heard about the latest with the banks?”

“No,” I say. “I don't pay much attention to that stuff.”

“Well, you should. There's a hundred-thousand-dollar loan out there with your name on it.”

“I couldn't get a fifty-dollar loan, Uncle.”

“There's a house with your name on it, too.”

“A moonshine shack?”

“No, the real deal. Three-bed, coupla baths, running water, nice yard, plenty of fenceline, civil neighbors.”

The barkeep approaches. This guy's shady, he's got the meandering eye. Says, “So what can I get da two of yous?”

I don't say anything, just nod at our drinks. This restaurant, Original Joe's, an Italian joint founded eighty years back when the city's Italianos still spoke it, hires fake mobsters like liquor stores attract alcoholics. This guy's name—or so he'll claim—is probably Frankie or Paulie or Sonny. I don't know who's worse out of the South Bay: the one-sixteenth-Cherokee white boy who powwows for a Native American housing grant or the one-eighth-Napolitano white boy who thinks he's mafiosi because he's seen
The Godfather
and
Goodfellas
eighty-six times each.

In a nation with an identity crisis, you can be anyone you want to be. That's right, invent yourself. Sure, everyone'll laugh behind your back, but no one'll say you're a fraud to your face. Everything is so watered down by now that the authenticators are nearly extinct, anyway. All you gotta do is stay away from the reservations and casinos. Avoid the heart of Little Italy on your next New York vacation.
But even there no one'll say, That really ain't you, Kemo Sabe, the pigtails and wampum don't cut it; nah, I don't think so, Collogeno, the gold chain, hairy chest, and
Volare
ballad just ain't enough.

“So da two of yous is good?”

“We'll have another round,” says my uncle. “Thank you kindly, Luigi.”

“Fuh-ged about it,” he says, walking off.

“Get outta heea,” I say.

“He's a nice guy,” says my uncle.

I say nothing.

“He's just a little confused is all.”

“Luigi's real name is John L. Smith the Third.”

“Come on now, nephew.”

“I trip out on all these poor-man Al Capones. They're everywhere now. Luigi has got it ass backward. I mean, think about it: this guy takes in a few Prohibition movies, likes what he sees, and proceeds to worship an age and an image he ascribes to the race. I mean, if you're gonna act Italian, why not go after the best and brightest of a given people? Dante, Leonardo. This guy takes murderers and con men as his idols.”

“Last I checked, you weren't too innocent yourself.”

“Hey! I don't want anyone idolizing me either.”

“Let's get back to the loans.”

“That fool reminds me of a line from Ferlinghetti:

Which one's my maybe mafioso father,
which one's my dear lost mother?”

“The loans, nephew.”

“The salesman in you is coming out, Uncle.”

“Let me have a shot,” he says, “of getting at the truth.”

“Salesman—truth. Bad mix.”

“Cut it, will you?”

Luigi is telling a story to a patron, his mannerisms punctuated by his two Billy the Kid hands. He's got his fat little index fingers extended like gun muzzles, his fat little thumbs as hammers.

I say, “All right, I'll bite. But before you go off on your pitch, let's get the fuck out of here. Take a long walk to my car. I can't stand that wannabe goombah.”

“Okay.”

We stand and I say, “
Ciao, testo di cazzo
,” and he nods really coolly. “See da two of yous latuh.”

“What'd you say back there?” my uncle asks as we hit the street.

“Good-bye, ball sack.”

We make our way up First toward the (“One dollah!”) Vietnamese sandwich shops and the Victorian halfway houses, the paint and scrollwork chipped, the porches and stairways packed with parolees. There's not a word between us. The city is loud. Fifty yards ahead on First and San Salvador, a near accident: sounding horns, diatribes. The endless racket of La Dulce returns to my head. I try to drive her out by taking the light wind tickling my ear as a trigger to romance: Sharon, nibbling, love.

We're passing the intersection and the two cars are still there, despite not having collided. The epithets are getting personal: “Asshole!” “Gook!” Lives are threatened. The traffic behind them swells like a wave about to roll over on itself. Sharon evaporates, who I was with Sharon goes with it.

My uncle is awaiting my full attention. The potential didactics of this situation concern me. But to show the spirit of neutral cooperation I'm learning to master here at the West, I volunteer a return to the earlier topic that has made my uncle what he is.

“Now: how can you land me—of all people—land, uncle?”

“Okay, look,” he says, happy that I've jumped back into the arena of instruction. “I'm gonna give you an accurate rendition.”
“Of what, your climb to glory?”

“Of the extremely recent history of no-interest loans in the Silicon Valley.”

“That's a hell of a qualification, Uncle.”

“No-interest loans are a hell of a thing.”

“No-interest loans sound almost anti-American.”

“Sounds that way.”

“Like pre-profit Catholic Europe. Pre-usury. Benedictine monk stuff.”

“Now hold up.” He pulls out a cigarette, offers me one. I shake my head no. “Jesus. Don't go all historical and Euro on me. We're in this century, this continent, all right?”

“Okay. Shoot.”

“Now. Somewhere along the line the banks and the real estate agencies realized they could work together. They were missing out on a pocket of profit.”

“Which is just a nice way of saying they found a new way to put the screws to the suckers.”

“Just listen.”

“Uncle, I don't have a dime to my name.”

“Well, you're the target. Precisely.” He's blowing smoke out his nostrils, a nicotine blanket being pulled up over his face. I think about switching sides to avoid the contention with this last bit of blood who will talk to me, but I don't want to disturb his train of thought. I'm worried, though; dread, an overfed bird, sits on the fence between us. “Listen. This thing's contingent upon your not having a dime to your name. Everyone else out there in the Valley is stacking up their Legos, so why shouldn't you?”

“I don't think like that, Uncle. Hungry or not, I don't covet my neighbor's property.”

“Okay. Better put: Someone in your unenviable financial position. Now just listen to this: They give you a one-hundred-thousand-dollar
loan to buy a house. You pay no interest for the first year. Doesn't that sound nice?”

“Yes. I guess. But I'm suspicious of the philanthropic integrity of my brothers and sisters out there.”

“Yeah, well, you should be.”

We pass Circle-A Skate Shop, where five youngsters are doing rails and ollies on their custom boards. Each one is fashionably filthy; the torn punk rock shirts in faded black and the loose Dickies slacks with chains growing from the pockets haven't been washed since the purchase. I remember in the pen where the only thing every race and crew agreed upon other than
Fuck the Man
was the need to wield clean threads. As if a starched collar and stiff hemline would flush all the shit of that place away. Then you get outside and discover that there are kids who are striving to be as dirty as you used to be inside. The principle seems different, but it ain't; only the context has changed. The urge remains the same: to escape the context.

In our business collars, we're initially unnoticed. One of the skaters detaches from the group, skidding past us along the concrete walkway. She lifts the nose of her board, swirls to a stop, drops down on her ass and I say, “Looks like we're gonna get a break-dancing show.”

Her dark eyes on my uncle, she lifts her palms in front of her chin, eyes to me, then back to my uncle. Is she serious? She has too much energy to be a panhandler. But maybe her filth is not a fashion statement and only the blind vigor of youth gets her through each day. I pull out a Fuji apple I've saved to devour after the drunken talk with my uncle and hand it to her as we pass.

“So the loans, Uncle.” We make our way up the street. “You were saying about the loans.”

“Well, the—”

Just then a zipping object explodes in front of us against the base of a magnolia tree. I know what it is even before it breaks up into a
dozen white chunks on the ground and I'm already turning and walking toward the agent of delivery, the bomber, who's back up on her feet, slapping hands with her dark-eyed cronies, the nose of her board pointed at me like a schoolyard challenge.