My car's gone when I come out of the laundromat. The police dispatcher says they towed it. Parked illegally, unpaid tickets dating back years. I've been sleeping in the back seat, now what? Maybe Fran will like me better now? After we broke up she wouldn't touch me with a ten foot pole; with social distancing, maybe that's down to six. This pandemic's a joke to me, like everything else.
But Fran doesn't laugh at my pole routine. Her front door's cracked open, and I see a pale strip of her, cute face to slender hip. I'm breathing hard from carrying my duffel bag upstairs. It's stashed to the side of her landing where she can't see.
She waits for me to subside, then flicks a tendril of hair away from her eyes. "Phil,' she says softly, "I did touch you." And with that I'm on fire, stupid me. Getting back in bed with her would be great, but all I need's a place to sleep. I gaze into her living room, a question of a couch in my eyes. "Still taking classes?" she asks. Her nose quivers. "Um, you need a shower. Where are you staying?"
"Who is it Fran?" a male voice calls out from inside.
I turn and start down. "Staying with my brother," I yell, and she yells something back like "The one you hate?" I shrug and descend quickly, and only remember my bag when I reach the bottom.
The thought occurs, don't bother, like go catatonic, and at least avoid the pain of more stairs. Keep moving around, and the prospects are limited. Yet I do have alternatives. Two. I wasn't exactly lying to Fran about bro' Alfie, just improving on the truth. Then there's always Susan. Up I go.
……… ……… ……… ……… ……… ……… ……… ………
Fran thinks I hate Alfred the Great because we never have anything to talk about besides his car, his house, his whatever. But nothing interests me more now than the story of possessions, the glory of having. I board an empty evening bus to Piedmont, determined to learn more.
The driver, a substantial black gentleman, peers at me over his mask with sad, disapproving eyes. I sit up front, but he won't talk to me. As if he thinks I'm making him drive me to the ends of the earth on a doomed, illicit mission.
I get off within trudging distance of my brother's house. A vision of his fridge opening pops into my mind, and my step quickens. Breakfast at the laundromat was a candy bar, lunch nothing. Screw dignity.
His gate's locked, and an array of hidden LEDs strobe me when I shake it. A topiary hedge in the shapes of birds follows a stone slab path to the house. There's a grove of potted bonsai trees on the front porch. Lights pulse above the door, as if the house were signaling a turn.
Alfie's voice comes out of a small cage hanging on the gate, which I'd mistaken for a bird feeder. "What's that Phil?" he asks, and a little red laser dot scurries across the bag by my feet.
"Cool security system!"
"What are you on Phil? What do you want? It couldn't be to make something out of your life."
"The world needs nobodies," I say, "doctors can't just treat each other."
Silence from the cage. The street is quiet too, the lawns of the neighboring houses empty. I was wrong, I do have a shred of dignity left. Enough to prefer a private spat to a public one. But Alfie declines the gauntlet.
"People do appreciate us," the cage says, "there's a pandemic on. You may have heard talk." The front door opens and my brother walks toward me, wearing a surgical mask and gloves. He stops more than 6 feet from his side of the gate. He ain't gonna offer no fridge, no couch.
"What's going on with the dentist?" he says.
"Fran. She's a dental assistant. We were just talking about you."
"That's still a big improvement."
Over Susan he means, who he dubbed "the loser English major." He looks down at my bag, and at me, working toward a question he can't quite reach. "Hang on," he says, and goes back inside.
Discreet street lamps have come on by the time he emerges, holding a small cooler. "I'll buzz you in," he says, "and then …."
"I'll open the gate, get the goodies, and take my leave expeditiously," I volunteer.
"Good luck Phil," he says.
I open the cooler at the bus stop. Baguettes! Cheese! The thought occurs, say thank you first, to someone or something. My prayer comes out as "I am SO effing hungry!" I call that grace.
……… ……… ……… ……… ……… ……… ……… ………
Susan answers the door with her nose and mouth covered by a blue bandanna. She looks astonished by my luggage, maybe because the face covering exaggerates the raised eyebrows effect. "Do you realize what time it is?" she asks, bidding me enter, but keeping her distance. She nods toward an antiseptic wipes container, and I use them on myself and the cooler. Then she tosses me a surgical mask, and watches me put it on.
"How's it fit?" she asks, gesturing toward the back of her head like she was twanging a strap. I shrug, and she grabs the cooler and leads me into her living room.
We plop down on opposite ends of a couch, facing a TV. A talking head looks serious. "Thought you never watched," I say.
"Do for national disasters, the World Cup, that sort of thing."
The head's replaced by paired country names and numbers: Italy 7,000; China 3,000. "Couldn't be the World Cup," I say, "too big for soccer scores."
She grimaces, acknowledging my comedian vocation. "Strength in numbers," she says, "the guy thing. Numbers, numbness, real life hurts, better off keeping meaningless scores."
I grimace back, acknowledging her Susanness. Always the smartest one in whatever class we took together, she does micro-performances, like the numbers riff. She writes poems too, and I never know what to say when she recites one to me.
She turns off the TV as if slamming down the phone. "Here's a number for you," she says, "0. That's how much you still matter to me. Let me guess. Fran turned you away, and the cooler's because she felt sorry for you."
"Untrue."
"Which part?"
I don't say 'the 0,' although in times of various kinds of deprivation, I rely on her wanting me back. Instead I play lawyer: "Not coming from her place."
Susan rolls her eyes, then struggles up from the couch and exits. She returns with a hefty plastic basin. She takes items out of the cooler, examines them, and puts some in the basin, others on a coffee table. When the cooler's empty she sits back on the couch.
"Phil, what do you think," she says, with accelerating tempo, "is there's a subtle yet crucial distinction between a woman on the one hand, and her natal cleft on the other?"
She's a comedian too? I mug thinking hard. "No way."
"That part's yours," she says grimly, indicating the coffee table clutter. So she wasn't joking; evidently, she's just completed our final accounting.
I do understand. One time I spent the night and "borrowed" cash from her purse in the morning. She never said anything, but now I see it in her eyes. "OK, I'll go find me a park bench," I say, playing the guilt card, "keep all the food."
"Thanks, and you can keep the mask" she says. Guess she's beyond guilt, she's not getting rich as a free lancer. "There's a pandemic on, you may have heard," she adds, sounding like my asshole brother. Then she tops off the basin with some of the coffee table delicacies, and lugs it into the kitchen. I hear a fridge opening, the sounds of foodstuff placement.
But she never actually said "get out." My remaining minutes of warmth could morph into hours. I picture her returning from the kitchen and retreating wordlessly into her bedroom, granting me the couch by sufferance; then we'd talk things out over breakfast.
Right. "The real truth," I actually say out loud, "is that I'm welcome nowhere."
Susan's still in the kitchen, but a voice answers: "Then lean into it." Explain, I think. "Don't wait," it says, "welcome nowhere, nowhere welcomes you. I'm the black hole that tried before to pull you away from the rejection tribunal. The nothing that wants you to sleep on its couch. Come."
I take off my shoes, bolt for the front door and step outside. Cold pavement slaps the soles of my feet. Susan appears behind me, looking quizzical. I smile, wave, say "you're a talented poet," and start running. Pain escalates with every footfall. I'm thinking I'll dive behind a big bush and curl up; I'm thinking I'll dart in front of an oncoming car. Whichever comes along first. Whatever converges quickest on the vanishing point.
© ยต 2020
