North of Nowhere, South of Loss (19 page)

Solana skews herself sideways in the passenger seat and studies me.

“The problem is,” I say, “that if you won, the city would order the landlord to re-wire, re-plumb, re-roof, and God knows what else that is decades overdue. The city will say: if this work order is not carried out, et cetera, Eden Gardens will be condemned. And the landlord will say: condemn the dump, you're welcome, because a tax write-off is pure candy to him.
Ta-ra
! And you'll close off one more lousy chance of lousy housing for folks on the bottom rung.”

Solana says nothing. She goes on contemplating the right side of my face. It's not my good side. You want a magnifying glass? I feel like asking. After two miles of non-stop staring, I wind down my window and turn the air-conditioner off.

“Hell, it's hot!” she says. “Why'd you do that?”

“Is my profile up for audit or something?”

“I'm trying to figure you out.”

“Don't waste your energy. It's not required.”

“Why are you living in a dump like that?”

“Is this the long census form, or the short?”

“You a full-time bad girl? Is that your career?”

“It's something I'm good at,” I say, caught off guard. “Which has diddly-squat to do with anything.”

“Let me guess, white girl. College degree from Randolph Macon or some such deb hatchery Affluent Republican parents, daddy in the oil patch or in guns. Sheer pleasure to give them this much grief.”

“Way off base,” I say. “So far out in left field, you're in the wrong ballpark.”

“Was it you or Carol started Breathing Space?”

“What's it to you?”

“You two hired me. I could quit. I've got an interest.”

“It was my idea, as it happens.”

“That's what I thought. And that's what doesn't add up. You're not a bleeding-heart do-gooder like her.”

“Sucking up will get you nowhere.”

“You're prime-cut bitch, to be blunt. Cynical, pragmatic, and no illusions whatsoever about Tirana.”

“Watch your mouth,” I say mildly.

“You know how to run a business on federal grants, you're probably skimming some off the top, you're probably downright bent in a small-time-crook kind of way, but you're a cockeyed idealist all the same.”

“Just like you.”

“Not just like me,” Solana says. “Not just like me at all. You couldn't be more wrong.”

“Wrong about you being bent? Or wrong about you being a cockeyed idealist?”

I know I was wrong about hiring her, but I'm not going to tell her that yet. I brake for a red light and the radio from the pick-up in the next lane hits us like a tsunami. I give the driver a dirty look, then I notice the decals on his wing window and I concentrate on the road straight ahead. One decal says
Charlton Heston is MY president,
the other one's a confederate flag. The guy leans on his horn. He's on the CREDIT REPAIR side of my van.

“Hey, you!” he calls, jerking his thumb at my sign. “That really work?”

“Sure thing,” I say.

“What's the catch?”

“No catch.”

“Gotta be. What's in it for you? How'd'ja get paid?”

“There's a fee. You can pay in instalments”

“I'll bet. I'll bet I can. You got yourself a client, baby.”

The light changes. “Call my number,” I say, as we move off.

“Oh, I got your number, baby. You better believe it.”

All I need. Solana is smouldering. “Odds are good he won't call,” I say, but she's on a different track.

“It's anger drives
me
,” she says. “Not idealism.”

“Yeah. Well. I do anger too, for the same reasons. Easier than sadness or despair.”

“Oh please,” Solana says. “Don't make me puke.”

“Third degree burns,” Carol tells us in a low voice.

“Will he pull through?”

“They think it's doubtful.”

It's Regis, the three-year-old, and I have to look away. Jamika is sitting at the bedside, opposite the machines and the intravenous drip. The child is inside a kind of bubble, so she cannot touch him, but she is resting her hand and her cheek on his clear acrylic sky. She has the air of being inside an invisible bubble of her own. She has the air of someone who has always known the worst will happen and has been laying in supplies. “Mama's here, Regis honey,” she murmurs. “Mama's here.” She says it over and over again. From time to time, she puts her lips against the bubble's skin.

“Shock,” Solana whispers.

“She's under sedation.” Carol's lips move, but we have to watch them to hear. “He's lost most of his skin. There's nothing left for grafts.”

We can't look at the child and we can't look at each other. “Where are the others?” I ask Carol in a low voice. “Jimmy and the little ones?”

“Tirana's got them, didn't she tell you? She was here all morning. She offered to look after them as long as Jamika needs.”

“Jesus Christ!” Solana says. “And you let her?” Her voice comes at us low and intense, almost soundless, like a bullet from a gun with a silencer.

Jamika looks at us the way a sleepwalker blinks at an obstruction. “Tirana's been wonderful,” she says.

“Can I drive?” Solana asks.

I can't pretend I'm not surprised. “Sure,” I say. “If you want. I hadn't picked you for a '93 Ford minivan type.”

“You know nothing about my type.”

She guns the engine. I raise my eyebrows at her, but she's oblivious. “This is an elderly car,” I remind her, but she is fixed on some urgent target in her head. I've never seen my speedometer needle move so fast. We've passed take-off and gone straight to the van's wheel-wobble range. “Solana, for God's sake, you want us to fall apart on the Interstate?”

“I have to burn something,” she says.

“Yeah, well.” My mind skitters away from the plastic bubble and the small skinless body. “Better get used to it, though. Hey, slow down, slow down.” She's changing lanes like someone on speed and I'm pressing brakes on the floor-mat on my side. “Breathing Space is what we try to give them, but Crisis Central's more like it.”

“I don't think you get it.” She accelerates. Her foot is emphatic. “I'm talking about Tirana. I'm talking about Carol. I'm talking about shooting yourself in the foot. I'm talking about this whole endless merry-go-round of willed haplessness. It makes me so furious, I could –”

“Kill us?”

She weaves out of the fast lane, overtakes on the right at somewhere above eighty, weaves left again.

“High chance of success at this moment,” I say. I'm calculating my chances of leaning over and taking the wheel. I can practically hear the chemicals shloshing around in her veins: anger, exasperation, smashed idealism, despair. It's a white-lightning mix. Her blood makes the sound that skyrockets make just before they fizz into coloured moons.

“Any last wishes?” I shout.

“What?”

“Any final messages?” I'm feeling dangerously light-headed myself. “Last will and testament? Last rites?” I'm screaming at her now. I'm thinking about my kids who are with their father this week. “Any regrets? Anyone you wish you'd fucked or fucked over but never did, you raving maniac?”

She glances at me, and my face must sober her up. “Oh shit,” she breathes. “Oh shit, oh shit.” Her hands start trembling on the wheel.

“You,” I gasp. I'm slapping her: face, arms, anywhere. “Mother of all mistakes. Because Carol thought you'd be perfect, what a laugh.”

“Oh shit, I'm sorry. I'm a time bomb. I'm losing it.” Her hands are trembling so violently that the old rattle in the dash – the one I've had fixed – kicks in.

“Should've trusted my instinct” – slap, flat of hand on cheek, shoulder shove – “I knew you couldn't cut it. Useless law-school bimbo.”

“What the – Stop it!” she yells at me. “Stop it! Crazy white bitch, you want to kill us?”

We're almost down to normal just-over-the-speed-limit speed. I take a breath that goes down to my ankles. Another crisis come and gone, you get the knack of it. She scoots across four lanes at an angle of sixty degrees and I can feel everything south of my waist turn to mush, but then we've made it. A guy on our left leans on his horn and gives the finger and I give it right back, but then I tap my forehead and point to Solana and make a gesture of what-the-hell-can-I-do? with my hands. He grins and shakes his head and I grin back. Solana's oblivious. She's got the shakes.

“Hey,” I say gently. “It's okay. It happens. There's a Shoney's at this exit. Let's have some fries and a coke, then I'll drive us home.”

In the parking lot, she slumps across the wheel. “Jesus,” she says. “I really lost it. I'm sorry.”

“Forget it.”

“I think I'm going to be sick.”

When she gets back from the bathroom, I've got our order. Over fries, I say: “You're not cut out for this. It's no big deal. We go through two lawyers a year.”

“I'm not quitting.”

“Then you'd better learn to think in a different way, or you'll never last. A completely different way. You have to approach each day like Sisyphus rolling his rock uphill or Hercules –”

“Where
did
you go to school?”

“Not Randolph Macon.”

“Where?”

“University of South Carolina, the Honors College, if you must know. To get back to the subject, you have to think of this like Hercules emptying the ocean with a shell. It's not that you're getting anywhere. You're not ever going to get anywhere. It's just something you do each day because you can't not.”

“Bullshit to that.” Solana crunches hard on an ice cube. “You're trying to believe I'm suffering from missionary burnout. I'm not. I don't have a single do-good cell in my body.”

“Oh right. You're just in Legal Aid for the money. Using a Yale law degree to claw your way up to the Public Defender's office, a well-known shortcut to wealth and prestige.”

“I'm in it for the rage. There is no possible way you could understand.”

“Oh no? I know what a rage high feels like. Who're you hooked on hating, girl?”

For a second, I think smoke might come out of her ears. I think she might stab me with a fork. Then she says: “My father. My tail-chasing work-allergic alcoholic bum of a father. My mother always took him back and gave him money and covered up for him and prayed for him and worked two shifts to put us through college and wore herself right into the grave at fifty-three.” She breathes a few fire breaths. “What about you, white girl? Who's pushing your stops?”

“My perfect sister,” I say. “The hot-shot lawyer.” I look Solana dead in the eyes. “You remind me of her. Everything she touches stinks of success.”

We smoulder at each other for a minute or so, and then she says: “We could arm wrestle for the Rage Cup if you like.” “

What?” I start to laugh. And then she starts. And then we can't stop. We're holding our sides, rolling about, knocking flatware off the table, until the waitress comes to ask what the problem is and all the other diners are staring and we still can't stop and then the manager comes and asks us to leave.

We're in the parking lot facing Tirana's unit, bracing ourselves to go in.

“You want a cigarette?” I ask.

“Quit years ago,” Solana says. “But I think I will.”

“It's pot, actually. Hand rolled.”

“Then I definitely will.”

We just sit for a while, inhaling, breathing out, inhaling.

“So you're a scholarship kid too,” Solana says.

“Yep.”

“And your father?”

“Construction. Small time. Odd jobs. Fences, decks, building screen porches, that kind of thing.”

“Honors College. So how'd you get from an Honors College degree to this dump?”

“Dropped out in my senior year, for a start. One of my many unfinished projects.” I inhale slowly and hold the sweet smoke in my lungs for a while. “I don't know. It sort of creeps up on you,” I say. “It's not like you decide on it as a career. You just get into the habit of expecting to fail or mess up, and after a while you simply find you know how to be a loser. You're good at it. You know the ropes, if you see what I mean. It's something you can count on.”

Solana says: “I can feel anger coming on again, just listening to you.”

“But that's it, you see. That's why the two kinds just separate out, winners and losers, like oil and water. That's why I choose to live here and not where you do.”

“Look, the reason people like my father and Tirana never change is there's always someone to bail them out. They
know
it. They know a good thing when they see it. They need the rug pulled out from under. They need a kick in the butt.”

I inhale and let the pot float around behind my eyebrows for a while. “It should work like that” I say. “But it doesn't. I don't know why.” I breathe out slowly. I think of the pot as white coming in, blue going out. When it eddies up from my lungs to my brain, it's an in-between colour, milky opal. “What happens is you realise that life in loser-land is not so bad. It's actually kind of warm and fuzzy, and you have this fondness for other losers. You know they've got the same little broken spring inside them as you have. It's not that they dug out this pit for themselves. It's just that they found themselves in it, and they know it's hopeless to try to get out.”

“I can feel a rage high coming on.”

“Feel free. Other side of the coin.”

“What? Bullshit.”

“You going to tell me you never panic about having your father's loser virus in your blood? I bet you wake in a sweat some nights.”