What We Are (43 page)

“I'm leaving,” she says. She looks off into the lot, without moving her legs, her shoulders, or anything.

The words come out too fast to control. “I mean at my place. Would you like to have a drink there?”

She looks down at the ground, over at the street.

“I have olives.”

Her gray roots mingle nicely with the golden shimmer of the highlights. It's visual alchemy, sparkles in a starlit sky, good to look at. I hope she says yes. She raises her eyes, smiling, and—just barely—nods.

I say, “You gotta drive. My ride's inside.”

“Okay.”

She takes my hand and guides me away from the middle of the lot. We walk along the periphery of the Pheasant in leftover light and struggling moonbeams, not a word between us, no name exchange, no cheesy raison d'être. There's an honesty in the silence, and it's nice.

We get into her Beemer, and before she starts the car we're all over each other. Her mouth tastes of peppermint and cherries and the skin of her neck feels leathery, dry like the epidermis of some desert lizard. I slide my hand underneath her sweater and she hunches her shoulder, gasps, but in an instant relents, giving me access. I reach around with the other hand and make her seat horizontal. One breast comes out and lies flat across her ribs like a pancake. I close my eyes and dive down and tongue the areola, a hungry infant, paramedic on the patient's mouth. CPR of the nipple, erogenous zone rejuvenation. I reach down, palm her across the pelvis, slide a finger into her dryness. I put my mouth out for the other breast and nothing's there, not even a nipple.

I could stop and look up and say
Did it hurt you when they cut it off?
or
I'm glad you're alive and here with me tonight
but I recover gracefully in the act of discovery because I can hear in the held breath above me her fear and shame of exposure and I want her to know it's okay. I move right over the dime of keloid down to her trembling ribs and, to prove for good that I'm unrattled by the flatland scar of breast cancer, I up the sexual ante: “I'm gonna kiss you down there,” as I probe with two fingers.

“I have lube.”

“No,” I say. Tonight she's gonna get a chance to shun the pause, postpone the end, WD-40 the rust, and shine in use. “I want to please you, baby.”

“Okay then,” she whispers, and there is hope in her voice. “Yes. Yes. Okay.”

I move down onto the floor of the passenger seat, and she caresses the top of my head as I wind her G down the thighs, past the knees and surprisingly muscular calves, ankles, feet.

“You have beautiful legs,” I say. “You must have been a runner.”

“Still am,” she says. “I like your olive skin.”

“It's just the light.”

“Are you Italian?”

I think it over. “Human.”

She lifts the leg nearer me and I tell myself,
Don't don't don't think on it. Get Sophocles and Oedipus and Freud out of your brain. Be patient. Don't assess the ironies. Don't—by God—don't enter the figure of Aunt Lanell, pinned somewhere in this suburb recalling her exploits of yesterday to some Afghan youth. Just pet the closely tended, acid-blonde landing strip. Kiss the glistening at the long, gray mouth of the groin
.

Bring this poor woman to life.

Well
, I think,
I'm ready
, but I know right before contact that it's just about to end.

I'm in, in, in, then out. In, in, in, out. In, out. In, out. Out. Down. It won't happen. Can't. I push myself up, wipe my face across the forearm and wrist, plop into the bucket seat, sticky hamstrings on the velvet, say—
what else?—
“I'm really sorry.”

She spins and twists, buttons up, thrusts her hips forward, slides back into the G. I'm amazed by her dexterity: I'm sitting limp as a corpse, and she's already in the fucking lot, leaning against the car, the placid eyes of a mortician.

“Make sure you lock the door,” she says.

Then her own side slams, the car fidgets, and she's headed back into the joint. Another round of eros at the Pheasant.

You know how this kind of stuff goes: I'd like to chase her down a second time, whatever her name is, nuzzle her neck and kiss the word into her ear:
Sorry
. But deep down, everyone understands why we're here. The whole thing's anticlimax. I mean, if there's such a thing as a victory lap, then there's a defeat lap, too.

I WAKE UP
filled to the throat with corporate bile, my larynx and the lining cilia clogged with shit. I wake up spitting, like some vile reptilian creature of the jungle. On the rug, in the sink, out the bay window, right into the oval eye of the mirror. I run down to the lake, unleash a string of phlegm that wings into the water's edge, run back up the hill, gagging.

You know how this goes: the apocalypse has arrived: judgment, aka evaluations. Today I get “eval'd” by a man who named his dog Boy Millionaire, whom his coworkers call Glory Days behind his back and his kids Upchuck to his face, who pumps Pink and Eminem in the company lot as if he were prom-bound, who drops a perverse twist of a presidential adage into any conversation within a higher-up's hearing range (“The buck stops with the buck”), who hid in an empty stall of the men's room to see if I washed my hands (I purposely didn't after spotting him in the reflection of the paper towel dispenser), who nonetheless has kissed my ass for half a month running in the hopes that the word gets passed along to good old Uncle, his boss and self-made hero, the goal he'll never reach: this guy is going to play the Man today?

Yes.

Assessed by a peon, the heir of Willy Loman: he's gotta find something substantive enough to say I'm not quite there yet (the slap) and yet (the stroke) that I'm doing much better than expected. He probably got back from the Pheasant last night and poured drunkenly over ten-dollar words and Hewlett-Packard How To books to get the language just right.

So this morning I'm hyperattuned to every sound in the world, even the commentary contained in my own head. I can't keep it down anymore; it's like an earthquake of observations; I'll “eval” the world right back. I knuckle at the collar of my shirt, walking—
click
goes the bathroom light, aftershave slap of a palm across each cheek, smooth as a good deal gone down, out the door of the guesthouse, a step down the walkway, stop (
goddammit
). Back up the walkway, forgot to lock the door. I'm inside the guesthouse and (
goddammit
) forgot to lock the back door. Free-for-all for any thieves tough enough to hike the hill to the estate. Fuck it, can't be late. U-turn in an ugly bitch of an knee-twisting pirouette, limping cursing right out the front door, which swings open by its hinges and keeps swinging like the double doors of an Old West saloon.

Limp right down the walk, snag the keys from the pocket of my ride which is miraculously there, and—
click
—the lock pops, shrug open the handle, slink into the seat. Start the car, a little too hard, go right to the madness of Don Amadeus and his tribute to the planet of Jupiter, see a hummingbird buzz from the gutter of the guesthouse to the juniper bushes of the lane, blurred fast-forward, rewind. I'm pounding on the thrashed dashboard to the fury of No. 41, accelerating down the hill of my uncle's property to the outer world.

And now the race: straight up Old Almaden like a corpuscle of blood through the vein, California-stopping through stop signs, rolling through lights so yellow they're red. I hit the expressway and cut off
anyone slow enough to get cut, Darwinian principles in the midst of concrete and glass, the evolutionary Gallapagan birds and bugs of the Silicon Valley in steel-boned, rubber-mouthed, leather-feathered sedandom. Whipping through time, doubling the efficacy of predecessors, even with the dollar down and Persian Gulf gas rates on the rise. Bumper stickers on the older beat-up models as if to say
I'm still alive, I've got some personality left, see? I'm still around. Vroom, vroom
.

Already at the 85 West entrance looping around, people trying to pass with no available space, drivers stretching, reaching, putting up palms and fingers and faces of at minimum a grimace, maybe more. Coffee cups and routinely brushed-on makeup and Egg McMuffins flying past my true civil advantage of stoicism. Of professionalism. I—
click
—snap out the borrowed cell from Santa Clara Real Estate West, hit 85 West full speed, thumb the number of the first superior on the corporate ladder, the author of my unpublished eval, squeeze a shoulder to the ear, say, “Chuckie.”

Nothing worse in the white noise vehicular chaos than silence.

“Hey, Chuckie.”

The eyeballs are bouncing from object to object to object to object.

Finally: “No, I'm fine. Great.... Yeah, I'm gonna be a little late.... What's that? Already late. Trust me, won't happen again.... I'm on the last rope of hope? I know, I know, no excuses.”

Green light, yellow light, red light above, cop car whirling blue and red in the rearview mirror.

“Oh, you shithead—no, not you, Chuckie. Fuck. I'll call you back, man. Promise.”

Hazards on, lane by lane, slowing, stopping, shift into park, leave the car running. Finger the—
click
—dropping glove compartment, finger the insurance and registration, finger the electric window down, feel the warm-wind breath of passing cars, driver-side elbow out, biceps over the lock. Be a storyteller, obsequious, the whole
spineless nine yards. Pretend I'm twelve, just a boy, begging uncle for tickets to the game. Think about uncle's lecture on the ways of the world, the price to play. Curl up and debass the voice, remember the red and blue lights behind you brightening, remember your rap sheet and the three-minute stint on Channel 11, eradicate the rebellion spurred by testosterone and personal history and the easy lure of self-destruction.

“I'm
so
sorry, officer—My kid was throwing up this morning—Everything he'd ever eaten came out his mouth—He couldn't go to school—second straight day—happens again tomorrow, he's off to the hospital—And the wife wouldn't let me leave—said it wasn't fair—I felt bad—I stayed and hugged her for half an hour—Ran out, tripped, and tore a ligament in my knee—My life is going so shitty, officer—and now I'm late to work—And now a ticket—or a felony—or jail—I'll—”

“Just relax for a minute and turn off your car. Let me see your paperwork.”

“I don't want to go to jail—I don't want—”

“Are there any warrants out for your arrest?”

“No, I just don't want my kid to have to visit me at the—”

“Are you on parole or probation?”

“No, sir. Absolutely not. Oh, my God, what have I done?”

“You're not going to jail, Mr. Tusifale. That's not how the system I work for works. Now listen to me.”

“I just can't—”

“Listen to me.”

Now the waiting, the unimmediacy of a powerless moment. Tech and modernity and salary going right down the gutter. The race is being lost: SUVs, trucks, vans, sedans, jalopies, mopeds are passing, me curled up gelatinously in the best furniture-moving clothes there are, T-shirt and jeans.

“Yes, sir,” I say, “I'm sorry.”

“Do you know what the fine for driving in the diamond lane is?”

Diamond lane?—Fuck. “Two hundred—”

“—seventy-one dollars. That's what that sign says, now, doesn't it?”

“Yes, sir. Two-seventy-one, sir.”

“Now, I'm just going to give you a warning.”

Just a boy, get the tickets, just a boy
.

“Any other officer would cite you. And some for not buckling up.”

Who the fuck has the time to wear their seat belt? Just a boy, just a boy
.

“I usually do, officer. Always do. Was just running so late. Worried about my—”

“I know.” Registration and insurance are handed back, the ticket bought, only the lecture left. “I've got a boy, too. We got hearts inside. Now. If what's important to you is your child, you've got to start prioritizing properly. Understand?”

“Yes, officer. Yes, sir. You guys are good people.”

Probably'd ten-on-one me if I made a peep. Rodney King redux
.

“If you get into an accident, where's that going to leave your son? Or your wife, for that matter? Or you? Or the people you've—God help us—injured? You see where I'm going with this?”

“Yes, sir. I have to stop thinking about myself.”

“Exactly. Every day I pray I don't have to zip up another body bag at work.”

In this lustrous part of San José? Gimme a break. Just a boy, just a boy
. “Just a boy.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing, sir. Was just thinking about my boy.”

“Well, that's what I'm trying to tell you. Get your priorities in order. Are we straight on that?”

“Straight, officer. Straight.”

“Have a nice day.”

I start the car, gently this time, pull the seat belt down when he looks up from his reports. Wait for him to pass, nod and wave when he looks over, indicate the blinking reemergence into the race, into the infinite bustle, stick the arm straight out for emphasis. Look over the left shoulder, move leadenly into traffic as if I were in an Amish horse and carriage, thoroughly lose the race until the black-and-white's taillights are gone. Then pick up the pace and use the goddamned rearview mirrors like they're meant to be used. Pop the cell—
click
—finger Chuckie's button—
beet-doot-doot-doot-deet-doot-doot
—wait for the pickup.

“Chuckie.... Yeah, sure, I'll hold.”

Nothing worse than the computerized rundown of the morning's plummeting Dow Jones backed by—
click
—
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
. They should turn off one or the other.
Business and art, together, never run smooth
.