Brief Encounters with the Enemy (3 page)

To make matters worse, my car happened to be in the shop, and according to the bus map, I had to catch three buses I’d never heard of. So what should have taken me twenty minutes was going to take an hour and a half. Sitting in the back of the J-23B with the air-conditioning barely working, I stared out the window as we crawled through residential neighborhoods whose houses were all hung with flags. There was no breeze, and the flags hung limply. Some of the homes displayed the MIA and POW flags from bygone wars, and every so often there’d be a sign stuck in a window that said
PEACE
or
NO WAR
or something to that effect, but those were few and far between, and for the most part everyone was on the same page. Ten minutes into the ride, I was sweating heavily; rivulets ran from my armpits down my sides and collected in the elastic of my underwear. This is what it must feel like for soldiers on the transport heading to battle, I thought. I was wearing shorts
and my thighs adhered to the bus seat so that whenever I shifted, my skin peeled away from the plastic. The other passengers were old hands and obviously knew what was in store for them because they’d come equipped with things to fan themselves, things like newspapers and magazines and even a flattened cereal box. Out of the corner of my eye, the rapid motion resembled birds alighting. Twenty-five minutes into the ride, I retrieved a discarded supermarket circular from under the seat in from of me and tried to use it as a fan, but the paper was too thin and kept flopping over and I wasn’t able to generate any current. I folded it four times and then gave up and tossed it back under the seat where I’d found it. A woman looked at me with disapproval. She was waving a book in front of her face.

“It was already on the floor,” I said. I smiled.

She shrugged. She didn’t care.

At every corner, the bus hit a red light, and we’d have to sit idling for sixty seconds, stewing in the pot, and then once the light turned green and the bus made it through the intersection, it would stop again to let passengers on and off, elderly people who took forever, fat people who took forever, a man in a wheelchair who took five minutes, and by the time we arrived at the end of the next block, the light would be turning red again and we’d have to stop and idle and do the whole thing all over. It was abysmal urban planning, humiliating and crushing. I kept urging the bus forward by tensing and twisting and leaning forward like a bowler who imagines his body language can influence the trajectory of the ball once it’s left his hand. My skin peeled. I blamed everyone: the bus, the
driver, the passengers. I blamed Roberto for breaking his nose. Then I blamed myself for blaming Roberto. It wasn’t his fault. Nothing was his fault. His nose was just another symptom of his vulnerability, his desperation, a strange man in a strange land, hoping one day to magically transform into an American and have a real life. “I’m already an American,” he’d say indignantly, haughtily, in a clipped and formal way that was supposed to emphasize the fact that he had lost, through extreme effort, all traces of an accent. “I’m an American just like you!” But he wasn’t just like me. He was dark—dark-skinned, dark-haired, black-eyed, from some village that nobody had ever heard of and which he’d left twelve years earlier when his father was awarded a scholarship to study architecture at our university, all expenses paid.

I had discovered him in the park one afternoon about two weeks after he arrived, thirteen years old, skinny and solitary, unable to speak a word of English, tossing a baseball up in the air. “
¿Te gusta jugar al beisbol?
” I’d said, because I’d been taking Spanish for two years, though the teacher, despite providing us with an extensive vocabulary and showing us how to conjugate every verb backward and forward, had neglected to teach us how to construct a complete sentence save one: “Do you like to play baseball?” Roberto had gazed at me in confusion, almost terror, until finally he responded, “
Sí, me gusta jugar al beisbol
.” Four years later, his father graduated with honors and the family’s visa expired, effective immediately. It was time to go back. But Roberto had no interest in going back. So they went back without him, leaving him with eight months of high school to go, alone and illegal, in an
apartment that had been emptied of almost everything, including the furniture. I was there the day after they left. It looked like it had been ransacked. He had his bed and his clothes, but that was about it. The closets were open and empty, and the curtains were gone. Standing in the void of a three-bedroom apartment he couldn’t pay for, he tried to act chipper about his prospects at age seventeen. In his newfound independence, he had taken the opportunity to cut out pictures of Arnold Schwarzenegger at various stages of his career and paste them on the wall like wallpaper. There was nothing in the refrigerator except a jar of mayonnaise and a can of tuna fish, but it didn’t matter, because he didn’t have any dishes.

A few blocks from the infamous Maple Tree Heights, I had to transfer to the K-4AB. It was just pulling away when I arrived. I chased after it as it sailed down the street. Some elderly black women passed me pushing shopping carts, and one said, “That’s a shame, honey,” and another said, “That’s how they do you up here.” At the end of the street was a hill with a sharp ascent, and a billboard that read,
WELCOME TO MAPLE TREE HEIGHTS
. The billboard looked brand-new except for the fact that someone had crawled up and spray-painted, “Don’t come on in here.” Every week there was a report on the news of some unfortunate event, many involving white people who had lost their way and wound up wandering through Maple Tree Heights, where they were set upon and beaten for sport. Most recently a mathematics professor had been whipped
with a snakeskin belt. I reflected on how the scrawled message could be interpreted less as implied threat and more as honest warning. It also seemed possible that the message was not being directed outward at all but inward, at those who already lived in Maple Tree Heights and might be contemplating moving to some other part of the city.

It was ten o’clock in the morning and already muggy, slushy, the air slow-moving. “Hitting ninety today, folks,” the weatherman had said. Everyone was saying that if it was ninety in May, what was it going to be in August. The sky was cloudless, and I could feel the undiluted sun beating straight down on the top of my head. There were various empty buildings surrounding me, and I had the sensation that I was being watched by someone somewhere. I felt exposed in my shorts, my whiteness made manifest by the paleness of my legs. Directly across the street was an Arby’s with an American flag draped across its giant cowboy hat. I should go inside to wait for the bus, I thought. I’ll be safe there. But as soon as I thought this, three black guys about my age came out of the restaurant with their roast-beef-sandwich bags and big boots and baseball caps and stood underneath the hat, smoking and staring at me. I put my hands in my pockets casually and looked up the street as if I were fixated on what was coming. Nothing was coming. The empty air wobbled in the heat. When I glanced back, the guys were still smoking and saying things to one another, low things, conspiratorial things. They had expertly tilted their baseball caps down so that I couldn’t see where precisely they were looking, but I knew they were looking at me. I thought about running, but running implied terror.
Or capitulation. For a moment I had a clear picture of myself disoriented, panting, turning in error up into Maple Tree Heights.

Then I heard my name being called. “Dean!” I heard. “Goddamn, Dean!”

When I looked back at the three guys, I saw that they were smiling and that I knew them, two of them; we had played together on the football team in high school. And here they came from underneath the Arby’s hat, laughing, yelling, their bags of roast-beef sandwiches in one hand, their cigarettes in the other. “Goddamn, Dean,” they said. “How long’s it been?” There was some initial awkwardness as we tried to coordinate the hand slapping and the hugging and the sandwiches and the cigarettes, but eventually we managed to greet one another properly.

I introduced myself to the one I didn’t know.

“What’s up, my man?” he said. He looked skeptical.

“We thought you were the police,” Quincy said.

This made everyone laugh. The man I didn’t know laughed bitterly, and I laughed out of relief at this fortunate turn of events. Troy blew smoke out of his nose, and Quincy blew it out of his mouth, and I wanted to ask for a cigarette, because I was eager to fortify our bond and because I only smoke when I can smoke for free. The man I didn’t know removed a handkerchief and wiped his forehead. Then he took out his sandwich and bit into it, and I could smell the roast beef, which in the heat made me queasy.

“What are you doing all the way out here, Dean?” Quincy wanted to know. “This here is no-man’s-land.”

“I’m waiting for the bus,” I said. “I’m on my way to see Robbie.”

“Robbie?”

“Robbie Díaz?”

“Spanish Robbie?”

“Goddamn, man!”

“How’s Robbie?”

“He broke his nose.”

“That ain’t cool.”

“Tell him I said what’s up.”

“Bus?” said the man I didn’t know. “There ain’t no bus here.”

I pointed to the sign above my head.

“There ain’t no bus here,” he repeated. He was the kind of person who offered the minimum amount of information possible.

“Bus stop is over there,” Quincy said. He pointed up the street to an abandoned building with broken windows and a sign that said
TEXTILES
Something-or-other,
INC
. The words had eroded.

“Hey, Troy,” I said. “How about letting me have one of those cigarettes?”

Troy aimed his pack in my direction, and out popped a cigarette halfway. A surge of nostalgia and tenderness coursed through me for our old football games. I put the cigarette to my lips with great anticipation, but Troy’s matches were moist or stale, and each time I struck one, it would flare up for a second and then fizzle out. After the third miss, I asked the man I didn’t know if I could use his lighter. He handed it to
me grudgingly. It had a picture of an American flag on it. When I flicked the lighter, the flag fluttered as if waving in the wind.

“Let me see that,” Quincy said, and we passed the lighter around, flicking it on and off, marveling at the trick, until the man I didn’t know said not to waste any more fluid.

“I was just thinking about getting me a tattoo like that,” Troy announced. “Right here.” He pulled up his shirt to reveal a saggy and swollen stomach. “Here to here.” He outlined the image like a teacher standing at a chalkboard. “Here’s where the flagpole goes.” He indicated his belly button.

“That would look good,” I said, but I didn’t think it would look good. I was dismayed by what had become of his body. He was round and spongy, as if he had rolled in a pan of chocolate dough. So was Quincy. The man I didn’t know was the opposite, tall and stringy, with ropy muscles and long fingers and protruding knuckles. He was thin but sweating the most. Sweat streamed down from under his baseball cap, and he dabbed at it with his handkerchief. He was oddly genteel about this. Then he cracked his knuckles loudly, aggressively, and it made a sound like tree branches snapping. Troy pulled his shirt back down, and I had a vivid recollection of him standing in front of the locker-room mirror after one of our games, completely naked except for his socks, flexing and preening. At fifteen, he already had a man’s body—shoulders, chest, and cock. He’d scored three touchdowns that game and knocked the opposing team’s star player unconscious. Coach Slippo had given him the game ball. He had five game balls. “I’ve got some cuts in here for you,” Troy had told the equipment manager, running his fingers through the creases of his stomach
muscles and down to the edge of his pelvis. Everyone had laughed. The equipment manager had blushed. Troy thought he was going to make the NFL. All of the guys thought they were going to make the NFL. They didn’t even make college.

I sucked the smoke in and blew it out, and as I did, it felt like my mouth was a furnace door that I was opening. The smoke was hotter than the air, and it made my face fiery and my eyes water. I felt light-headed, and the smell of the roast beef was sickening. There was a thrumming in my eardrums. I feared I might puke on the sidewalk.

“You okay, Dean?” I heard Troy say. “You good?” His voice was far away. I wasn’t sure if he was asking whether my life in general was good.

“It’s hot out here,” I said. It was all I could do to maintain my balance.

“This ain’t hot,” said the man I didn’t know. “If you think this is hot, wait till August.”

I was happy to engage in weather talk. “It’s probably going to be a hundred degrees in August,” I offered.

“A hundred degrees?” The man I didn’t know was incredulous. “A hundred degrees?” He was outraged. He looked at me hard. “If it’s ninety degrees in May, how’s it going to be a hundred degrees in August? I’m telling you, my man, it’s going to be hundred and
twenty-five
degrees in August.”

Against my better judgment, I took another drag off the cigarette, and it had a surprising calming effect. The smoke came out white and round and hovered around my head in the still, heavy air.

“Hey, Dean,” Quincy said suddenly, “you looking for a job?”

Troy said, “Dean don’t need no job.”

“They’re hiring,” Quincy said. He nodded to the textiles building down the street.

“Who’s hiring?” I said.

“Mainframes, man,” Quincy said.

“Chemicals and whatnot,” Troy said.

“I don’t ask no questions about what they make,” said the man I didn’t know.

“You watch,” Quincy said. “Once the war starts, they’ll be opening factories all up and down this street. There’s going to be an industrial revolution right here in the ghetto.” This broke them up. They slapped one another’s hands, stinging slaps. I smiled but I didn’t slap.

“Where you working at now, Dean?” Troy said.

I told him.

“Damn.”

“Damn.”

“That’s a good job.”