What We Are (28 page)

WHY NOT GROW A HEART ON A YACHT?
reads Chinaski's bumper sticker.

We make our way into the suburbs, this great classless society where there's no wrong side of the tracks. No plantation mansions with Italian names, no families with Borgian pull, no inherited social customs. And no character either, no life force. Everything appears even, yes, fair, but facelessly dull. The monotonous train of banal architecture needs no mason, “giveth no man a house of good stone.” No Usonian vision could spice up this endless drywall of conformity, where the streets fill up with junk like its inhabitants.

One wonders why: there are no kids in view to enjoy the junk. The houses here aren't vacant: more cars than trees in the neighborhood. More cars than people. The rest of the world would build the most elaborate and sturdy jungle gym on the playground with our (metallic) scraps on the table. All through the merit of hunger and hope.

Consume, baby! Consume, amorphous beast!

I recall now the message of our good Prez one day after 9/11: Just go right back to what you're doing,
mi Americano hermanos
, don't let them change your lifestyle. In other words, don't let this travesty be a lesson. The meat of our economy, the good Prez was saying, driven by our lifestyle.

Our
lifestyle
? Our impermanent lifestyle—Impertinent lifestyle! Consummate insult to the world!

Where have we heard that before, Romans of the Seven Hills, Mayans of the Yucatan? I don't remember seeing silicon implants and weekly therapists and bathroom spas and
Dancing with the Stars
and cordless laptops slotted into Maslow's pyramid of needs, not even
as a bottom brick. Just like my newfound nameless friend said,
we're gods on earth
, or so we think. We've elevated our wants, wants, wants to the status of needs, needs, needs, this Pillsbury doughboy society, us Pillsbury people, rolling toward our comeuppance day of getting baked in the oven.

But these are moot points now, I know, since my adoption of the mature American attitude of earning an honest buck. The capitalist's euphemism for Get it, baby, just get it. There's no more internal dilemma in me: I know the code: At all soulful costs, get it!

Oh, I got it all right: Chinaski pulls up to the newly erected house of interest, the acreage of dusty plain in front of us, ripe for rampant construction. Ninety percent of the homes are empty out here, awaiting the resident heartbeat. He opens his door, steps out, and reaches back into the car. I lean back accordingly with my straight right cocked, but he goes for some contraption that he's been sitting on the whole time: an inflatable red cushion, horseshoe in shape, the words
Roid Void
in creamy white logo across its hollow center.

There's no way that a guy with a droopy body like Chinaski's takes animal tranquilizers, human growth hormone, or crushed African tree bark. Even if he never worked out a day, there'd be some sign of strength in his frame.

When I realize that the shortened Roid has another meaning, he's already guiding me by the elbow (which calmly I keep trying to reclaim) up the lamp-edged walk, past the crucifix of a Santa Clara Real Estate West sign with an
I'M PRETTY INSIDE
placard staked into the stark green lawn. It's artificial-turf shiny, level as a bocci ball course, porous where the dirt has been punched out to oxygenate the soil. Its designed order reminds me of the hair implants on this drip of a Polish sausage, dragging me along with one arm, his customized hemorrhoid cushion tucked under the other.

“I'm gonna teach you how to prep a sale today,” he says. “You just follow my lead.”

He veers me under the door into the empty (but pretty inside) house. Two stools are positioned on the unscathed hardwood floor of the living room. He points at a stool and I take it. He lays the Roid Void across the other stool, which is nearer the kitchen, plops down, says nothing. I'm twiddling my thumbs round and round, and he puts his hand out and covers my little rotary. I let my hands sit there in my lap for minutes upon minutes, thinking of the rotten, stagnant, backwood home life this idiot to my left must lead—his poor neighbors, his poor banker, doctor, grocer—when she finally glides in, owning the house and anything in it.

“Shhhhh,” whispers Chinaski.

She goes right to the window and slides it open, looks around the barren living room with a detached yet possessive air, sniffs, looks at us with disappointment, sniffs deeper, looks at us again, through us, above us, appearing to grow angry, walks toward us, her heels clicking like a bomb about to blow. Despite his sphincteral affliction, I can hear Chinaski nervously shuffling on his stool, and as she zips by without the least acknowledgment I feel a tug on my elbow.

“Shhhhh,” Chinaski reminds me.

I nod, not knowing how the hell this cat got the authority to raise a single child, let alone many.
Just let us alone, Daddy! Let us alone! Knowing which hole to put it in does not a father make, Daddy!

She's behind us in the kitchen flicking switches, closing cupboards, turning faucets and disposals on and off, tapping on Formica, her heels rapping on the floor in perfect count, suddenly saying in the most enunciatory voice I've ever heard second to James Earl Jones (
CNN
or
Cooome to the daahk side, Luuke
), “Yes, Mr. Gupta, I am presently awaiting your arrival. The door is open, and the lights are on in the West.”

The heel taps get louder, and as she passes under the arch of the kitchen I hear a rapid whisk and I know Chinaski's been hit. I look over and he's violently coughing from the fragrance glistening on his
face, as she pumps her Lavender Febreeze throughout the living room, heels a-click.

She's making her way into the back rooms of the house and I can hear toilets flushing, toilet seats dropping, windows popping open. Chinaski is still coughing but, since she left his presence, not covering his mouth, and at the precise moment I move my seat a yard or two away from my gagging one-up in the West, I am soothed again by Amadeus. His Eighteenth Piano Concerto now lightly flowing through the place, like a hovering hummingbird with chimes on its wings. Two miniature speakers hug the adjacent corners of the ceiling line, both of which I missed at my uninterested first glance.

Chinaski nods. “Yes. It's better if you sit there like we don't know each other. That makes two potential buyers of the house.”

I move my stool yet another yard away, trying not to think of the absurdity of the bidding couple: Chuckie Chinaski and me.

The clicking returns, too fast. As if she's read my mind's latest disturbance, she deposits a handful of red, white, and blue prophylactics into our laps. Despite his taxed system, Chinaski already has one in his mouth. He's breathing in through his nose, filling the balloon with his CO
₂
. Staying in theme, they read,
THE DOOR IS OPEN & THE LIGHTS ARE ON IN THE WEST.

I start to blow up my balloons (there are four in my lap), and she's right out the door. I'm silently excited by her exit and now work a little harder, which means I blow more hot air than before. I breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth, but not anywhere near the pace of Chinaski. I'm waiting like the proverbial crook for the pop of the picked lock, dying to hear the car start, signaling her departure. Little Engine That Could,
fire up, fire up, fire the fuck up!
Spontaneously combust with her in it, seat belt fastened. Nobody need tell me what it takes to be successful in this industry: presumption, trickery, slopes.

My hope for her parting graces is premature; she's coming back up the walk. Chinaski grabs the unblown balloons in my lap and starts in anxiously, expert lips first. She's got a grocery bag in the base of her bent arm and a pile of leaflets, no doubt Xeroxed articles from the free local papers about her recent sales, the top three in value highlighted (probably by Chinaski the stoolie), her résumé going back to the honors bestowed upon her at Realtor's Institute, her attendance five years running at the National Association of Realtors Convention, a bundle of business cards, plus a listing of community events and farmer's markets, cultural fairs and wine festivals. Pinched between her elbow and waist, a rolled newspaper.

She drops the grocery bag and newspaper on the faux-brick raised hearth, and Chinask slaps my arm.

“Not it,” he says. “You're the crumpler, baby.”

I join him on my knees at the fireplace, assuming that “crumpler” means the guy who crumples newspaper into kindling. I start with the front page, which is weeks old, and find an article of minor note in the Local section. There's a photo of me being hoisted in chains to the van. The header of the three-sentence article is
ARE HATE CRIMES ON THE RISE
? and the last sentence reads, “The suspect, Paul Tusifale, has a history of public violence.”

I shake my head, add myself in handcuffed repose to the airtight ball of kindling, throw it in the fireplace.

Chinaski's carefully taking the firewood out of the bag. “Put it in the middle, Chicken Little,” he says.

I almost say, It
is
in the middle, you idiot, but stay silent instead, reach into the fireplace pretending to move things around.

He carefully leans the logs vertically against one another, around the newspaper, a skeleton of a tepee about to go up in flames. I haven't heard the clicking in some time, but there's a new sound, just as mnemonic. It's a thousand flies. Not quite in my head. Not yet, anyway.

It's out in the street.

Chinaski stands up to look out the bay window and says, “Oh ... my ... God.”

“Chuckie!” we hear from the porch.

Chinaski jumps at the sound of her voice, pulling at and tightening the belt of his pants, I strike a match, put it to the kindling, listen to the paper catch and the crackling wood speak its first words in the flame. I have no interest in what's going on outside. It's funny—or sad: we long for company in the dark corners of our solitude, and then when company comes along we aren't happy.

A cell with myself or a day of freedom with Chinaski?

Pick 'em.

I don't have time to decide. “Ms. Clannonite wants you!” he shouts from the door, the sound of the buzzing flies growing. Chinaski tosses me the keys to his car and retrieves his Roid Void from the stool. He passes both times as if I'm a statue in the park covered in dried birdshit, and then he's out the door. At the street he tosses the Roid Void in its place on the driver's seat. Then he trots off, a stalking jog down the sidewalk, ducking as he runs, his progress slow but determined, surreptitious as a charging rhinoceros. I shrug, pocket the keys, and head out the door of the house to meet our empress.

Ms. Clannonite is looking down at her planner, leaning against the passenger side of her four-door silver '06 Benz, a shiny bullet on wheels. I nod; she doesn't look up. I haven't seen her operate yet with her potential clients (“Everyone's a client of the West,” I can hear her say correctively), but I'd hazard a guess that she gives them all the eye contact she doesn't give underlings like me. She's flipping through what looks like a series of portraits with PowerPoints, colored portraits.

“You're a good-looking guy,” she says.

An illicit romp already?
I think.

“You've got a hell of a future here in the West if you play your cards right.”

I don't say anything. I anticipate a favor of some sort. Not
from
her,
for
her. She's a go-getter all right, a first-string capitalist quarterback. She knows I'm the big boss's nephew. If I were even a waterboy on the capitalist gridiron squad, I'd have the West already in my back pocket.

Suddenly she stops scanning and is intently reading one sheet with a photo of a couple at the top. From my view, the picture is upside down, but I know the couple is Hindi from the
sindoor
on the broad forehead of the woman. It dawns on me: These two dupes are the Guptas.

Meanwhile, Chinaski has disappeared down the block. The buzzing is returning behind me. So today the flies come in the form of your average suburban runt. A wild-haired, pudgy-faced, Hindi/Punjabi kid in a red Adidas windbreaker, iTunes line running from an ear to his unrestrained waistline, munching a hot dog with one hand, steering his scooter with the other, the bending aluminum frame beneath his obese type-2 diabetes ass making welder's sparks on the unscruffed blacktop.

I don't know if I should feel excitement at seeing an actual teenage boy enjoying what's left of the elements, or if I should be bothered that he needs a lawn mower motor to escort his shrinking frankfurter around the neighborhood. I can't tell his age: Is he a supersized thirteen-year-old bound for early twenties gout or a stunted seventeen-year-old still riding his Mickey Mouse scooter? He can't hear his own engine, hooked up to his top-thousand tunes. The vision of his passing puts a dent in one's hope for the future.

This junior porker is the soft result of winnerless-loserless PAL soccer matches on wet and foggy Saturday mornings. When one team scores, guess what? Don't worry, no tears, stop weeping, the other team scores too: 1–1, 2–2, 3–3, free yourself of the harness of competition, Peewee. Everyone's a winner. It's one big lovefest! Work ethic, athleticism, courage, decisiveness, savvy, precision—all merely
foreign forces of an older, more savage age to whose dead rules we no longer need pay homage.

Line up at halftime, kids, for your combo meals from Carl's Jr. Or do you want tacos and chalupas, boys? After the game, we'll go to the video arcade aka our living room and loosen on a plastic button all that pent-up energy that wasn't spent on the field.

He's weaving down the street, he's tossing the bun into the bushes of this house, he's issuing us the middle finger, he's gone. I remember the transient at the county jail who required an imaginary Little League scenario for me to tolerate—just to look at—him. This kid's got the exact opposite problem: he's got so much parental compassion dripping from his pores that he's impossible to handle, like a manatee.