What We Are Read online

  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.”

  2

  The Teenage Boys Are Shooting Blanks

  THE 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.

  I reach down, grab the vodka bottle, say, “You gonna go for your little Swiss Army knife, you piece of shit?”

  He’s coming down off the crank, talking to himself in our mess. I�
��m already turning away, as he utters, “No, no, brother,” and then, calling out after me, “It’s cool, man! It’s cool! God bless you, brother! You can have the liquor! It’s okay, okay?”

  I’m walking right toward the table of boys and not one of them can look me in the eye. For once, it’s exactly what I want: it’s how it should be. All I get from the paisa is the top of his hat. The girl watches me—I can feel it—out the exit and back again into the darkness of night. If I hear the whining sirens of authority, I’ll run. But if she sheds the boys and follows me down the street, then for the sake of her courage, or her lunacy, we’ll split a free bottle of blueberry Stolichnaya as I escort her highness wherever she wants to go through the shadows of this valley.

  3

  I Can See Through the Fuzziness

  I CAN SEE THROUGH the fuzziness of hangover a sliver of light behind the morning clouds. The Stoli is right there beside me, and I wince at the thought of my liver, heavy with labor this morning. I guess it’s good that the empty bottle is upright, uncracked, but it still feels like someone busted it over my buzzing head. The girl’s nowhere to be found. She may have never made it here, I don’t know; she may have been shy about drinking in the heart of a Christian mission. I remember saying, “It’s a school now, don’t worry, been a university for a hundred and fifty years, I know, I went here for a while, trust me,” and her insisting, “You did not have to hit that guy in the Jack in the Box.”

  I look up at the bottom of Jesus’ palms, his forearms laced in flowers and rosaries. In the midnight hour my freshman year at the University of Alviso, I used to sit at the feet of this chiseled statue. The courtyard would be drowned in the kind of layered silence that seems to let out the tiniest of sounds, a soft whistle, beaded in the center of your ear. Now I push up to my elbows to see why I hear Spanish everywhere, Mexican Spanish, mixing in with the symphony of blackbirds and finches.

  About twenty paisas are standing, hands in pockets, at the base of the mission steps. They’re wearing variations of the same threads: Pendletons, paisley flannels, L.A. Dodgers baseball caps with little Mexican flags in the mesh. A couple in cheap rodeo gallon hats. All with breath clouds coming up before them, a few sipping coffee, their long mustaches steaming at the wet ends.

  I gather up the last thread of spittle in my mouth, aim it at the bushes, and let it fly. It’s like I sucked on cotton all night. I hear from behind, “This is going to be a beautiful day.”

  I rub the crusty sleep from my eyes and find Father McFadden, my old priest, standing above me. Been almost ten years. He’s got those same clover-green eyes, a little tired now, but still alive and jovial behind the thick black-framed militaristic glasses. He’s completely bald, pink and beige sunspots mottling his scalp. He’s reaching down, lightly clapping my shoulder, almost with felicity, saying, “Paul. Paul.”

  There’s a young student in the gathering, model-thin, almost-white-haired blonde. She’s very clearly undamaged and clean, healthy-pored. On her hands and knees etching into a cardboard sign with a big black marker. She hasn’t done a thing to me, but I already know I don’t want to talk to her, and that I may soon, and that she’ll do most of the talking, and at length.

  This must be a march: they’re about to take to the streets, starting here at the Alviso Mission. The blonde is nearing. You can see it in her eyes: she’s a believer. Nothing else in the world matters at the moment. She’s probably a poli-sci major, minoring in sociology. Maybe a leader here, an organizer.

  Father McFadden says, “I’m proud of you, Paul. You’ve done the right thing.”

  I say, “I was trying to pray at the shrine last night. I fell asleep I guess.”

  He puts his hand up to stop me from self-indictment. He wants to believe in me with the same desperation that I’d wanted to believe in God as a kid. I feel bad for him, for his calling, for the sadness he must feel every Sunday when his master’s beatific house of stained-glass splendor is four-fifths empty. I can see the refracting light of blue and red tickling his trembling cheeks at the altar, the imported marble saints collecting dust in the crevices of nostrils and armpits, in the four corners of the crucifix.

  But he must be used to the faithless by now, to his flock being daily lost to tech and science and genetic manipulation, MTV and the Internet. An electric ocean of amorality. I can see the struggle in his face as he’s retrieving for the first time in many years certain failures in faith that I’d had as one of his lambs. Things that seemed harmless then, perhaps even endearing and precocious, but blasphemous now, as a man. I’m not the prodigal son this father’s looking for.

  Still, he gives it a shot. “God watched over you.”

  I smile.

  “You’re a lucky young man.”

  “Yes,” I say, “I believe that, Father. But it doesn’t help.”

  “Hungry?”

  I don’t want an allusion to the bread of the Lord. “Well.”

  “Here.” He hands me a Sausage McMuffin. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Paul.”

  I don’t say anything. Like, for instance, that the first thing out of my mouth this morning was a lie. Passing out drunk and delusional doesn’t pass for devotion at the shrine.

  Shit, man, I wish a drop of the old demon water was all I needed. If I could find God in liquor or weed or any other hallucinogen necessary, I’d be the first to volunteer at whatever Monte Cassino the paltry handful of priests of this valley begin their training, AA and NA be damned, the health of my body temple be damned. I’d be just like that crankster, wandering the streets for my next fix. I’d be a son of Jameson’s whiskey just like I know the good Father is, or I’d be a reefer like a Rastafarian. I’d make premium boc in the Belgian lowlands, a monk’s brown hood and brown frock and how to brew good German beer my only earthly possessions.

  But any altered state I’ve tried just seems to induce sleep. It’s temporal, flighty, and I become an eyesore to myself, can’t look in the mirror at the broken-down man. And I don’t forget a thing about this life, and the dreams—even as I’m dreaming them—I know to be false. That’s perverse, pointless. Like telling the punch line of a joke not last but first.

  “You know,” he says, “this beautiful mission came to life at the hands of a people in toil. Today we’re going to get them what they deserve.”

  “Father, I—”

  “God’s children endured true pain for their heavenly rites.”

  The blonde has arrived, observing me as if I were a colorful anemone on the reef at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. With curiosity, yes, superior spinal cord curiosity. This close I see that her legs are crisp with blond hair, having recently changed her mind about shaving. Now she’s straight barbarian/bohemian.

  I sit up, shake my head out, rapidly blink to rejoin the world.

  She shouts out, “And what is your purpose here?”

  Verbal judo, just like I predicted. Father McFadden nods so I relax a bit, leaning against the rainworn pillar of the shrine. Her sign reads, HOY MARCHEMOS, MANAÑA VOTARAMOS.

  I don’t like her arrogance or the way she stands, with one hand on the high end of her thin hip, neck slightly tilted toward the same side, so I say, still sitting, “The sign is wrong.”

  “Excuse me?” she says, like a drill sergeant.

  “That sign is wrong.”

  “What someone like you needs to understand,” she says, “is that these people have a right to be here. They’re working the jobs that people like you should be working.”

  “I’ve been employed by McDonald’s,” I lie, “for the last five years of my life.”

  She’s stifled, can’t say a word. I’m not an envious wino trying to pilfer from the cause. I’m just someone who knows how to win an argument. Genuine in purpose, I like to think, or hope, however disingenuous in fact.

  I push out the McMuffin. “Bite?”

  “I won’t go near dead bovine.”

  “Is there another kind?” She exhales really loudly. “By the way, nice leat
her purse.”

  “It’s pleather.”

  “My name’s Paul,” I say. “And you are?”

  “Busy,” she says.

  Father McFadden says very politely, “This is Athena, Paul.”

  “I can introduce myself, Stanley.”

  Stanley. I never knew. I nod at the father to assure him that, despite my theological issues, I’m definitely not on her side. To prove it, I say, “Athena? Birth name?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Sort of. I mean, if one takes the name of a Grecian goddess of wisdom and war, it matters. You know. Like if I called myself Zeus or Thor.”

  “I matter,” she spits out. “And that’s all that matters.”

  “Does conjugation matter?”

  “You’re drunk.”

  “I wish. But I’m only hung. Over.”

  “And vulgar.”

  “The sign’s wrong, Madam Athena. As I said before. It should read HOY MARCHAMOS, MAÑANA VOTAREMOS. Los verbos estan marchar y votarer.”

  The father nods. Spanish, a good Latinate language. Perhaps he remembers my parochial promise back in the day when I was an educatee of the Jesuit institution that wouldn’t hire him because he didn’t have the scholarly chops. But I always liked his intellectual humility.

  The goddess is looking back at the paisas, then at me, comparing notes. Am I a Mexican farmer incognito? Too tall, too muscular, no cowboy hat, no accent, too American sassy. No chance, just like her.

  “I guess you haven’t taken your GE in Spanish yet.”

  The arrogance comes back, like rushing blood. “I will take care of this immediately,” as if it’s my fault for pointing out her error. I smile, she shouts, “Hereberto! Go get that marker for me, will you?”

  I say, “I don’t think he speaks your native tongue.”