Killing Time in Crystal City (12 page)

FUNNY THING

I
always thought libraries were merely books. And, maybe, free passes to the science museum.

And I always thought they were just dotted, here, maybe there, and okay one more there. The way chunks of dough are distributed in low-price cookie-dough ice cream just enough to be legitimate but not enough to make you really
believe.

That
was
when
I
lived
in
other
places, though. In other
people's
places.

Now, since I am living in a Crystal place that feels mine, in a life that feels mine, where nobody is overseeing me and I have to notice for myself . . . well, it's changed.

Libraries pop up where you need them. They magically materialize at just the point where you think,
This neighborhood could use a . . .

I suppose they were possibly there all along. Maybe I failed to notice, when I didn't need to notice.

Now I notice. It's no more than a block away from Stacey's hostel, on the very route I walked to get there, and it did not show itself before.

“Are those computers for anybody to use?” I ask the solitary librarian.

“No,” she says, “not just anybody . . .”

I don't even care who trained them to say that, or if they were in a huge auditorium with six hundred librarians repeating after him, “not just anybody . . .” I will look forward to hearing that in every library everywhere from now on.

I log on.

J: Y
ou did nothing wrong. No matter what you are thinking, you did nothing wrong.

Please come home.

Nice finish. You would think that the stupid, childish, pathetic welling up and welling over that my eyes are doing would be triggered by the words “Please come home,”
written by my friend when until recently I did not have one actual friend to my knowledge. But no, it's even stupider and more childish and more pathetic because I started losing it back at “you did nothing wrong.”

And then there's the other one.

D:
I canceled it. Canceled it all. Made a great, glorious mess, is what I did. A whole country, Peru, is mad at me, and it appears I am facing legal action of some kind from Michelle whose plans I have ruined, but I damn well dammit did it.

Funny thing. In some uncomfortable ways—financial, professional, social, etc.—this feels like the mayhem of breakdowns past.

But this time I don't feel bad. This time I feel like I did the better thing, consequences be damned.

I'm in my chair now, son. Settled and waiting for you to come back.

Like I should have been doing all along. Like I will continue to do.

Please come home.

My face is buried in my hands as I sense the librarian inch up next to me, professional-close but not weirdo close, and I feel like screaming out for her to get away from me but I am also screaming
in
to please, please don't go away.

When did these places become so complicated?

TRIBAL

T
he rain is merely mist when I join the guys again on the beach. They are sitting inside the raft now, and the three of them raise a big cheer as I approach them.

“Well, allll riiiiight!” Mickey whoops.

“Yeah,” yelps Howard.

“Whoa ho,” shouts Tailbone.

Now, this is more like it. It feels nice to be appreciated. Even though they might be stoned enough to think I'm somebody else.

Killing time here on Crystal Beach is not something you have to do, because it basically seems to kill itself. Time suicide. That sounds like a bad thing but it's not. In fact, it's a compliment. You slip into it, this Crystal reality, this pace that works for people with nowhere really to go. And before you have really clocked what's happening, not only have many hours chewed themselves right off the clock, but the beach itself has evolved and improved, till it's the equal of anybody else's beach, and you are damned well ready to fight to defend its honor.

People who at first glance you were snorting at become people whose company you now value.

All manner of folk suddenly make sense. There are all manner of tribes outside and beyond the ones I had always known and failed to fit. I won't always fail to fit, I know that now.

“I wouldn't ever want to live in a house again,” Tailbone says as he passes me the wine. I simply cannot stand up to as much smoke as these guys do, so eventually I volunteered to spring for a few bottles if one of the legal-age guys would go and get it. Howard is the oldest, at twenty-three, but more important he has the grizzled thing from when he was in the army, and the oft-broken nose and fingers and leathery outdoors face. He has a liquor store face, and is probably always the guy who does the run.

“Why not?” I ask. I feel now like I really want to know these things, about this life. I haven't even done anything wrong, and Stacey's made me feel ashamed and exposed and like I need to retake and pass an important test on the subject.

“Because all the time I lived in a house, with my ma and dad and all those little shit brothers and sisters, then later with my roommates, then, prison, I realized that all those years, all of them, I was always so tense, always like, crazed with the tension. And that was what made me mental, is what I think. Made me do all them things I shouldn'ta wanted to do. And from what all I saw of the people I was locked in with, in all those places, they all had exactly the same problem that was doggin' me. Every single person I ever lived with acted in a way that made me want to shoot 'em right in the head. Everybody feels that way, for sure. Tension, man, tension everywhere.”

“And this,” I say, “comes down to being indoors?”

“Exactly,” Tailbone says excitedly. “Exactly, exactly. You said that so well, Kiki man. Wow, it's so great to have a intellectual guy hangin' with us, isn't it, guys?”

“Yeah,” Howard says, raising one of the other wine bottles.

“Yeah,” Mickey says, on his knees tending our modest, discreet campfire.

The weather cleared for a while and then veered back in the direction of wet and uncomfortable as the night got deep. It's made it difficult to keep a decent flame going, but it's also kept the numbers down here on the beach, so that is a fair exchange in my mind.

I have never seen the beach this quiet. Even with us yammering away, the modest sound of the surf slurp is with us all the time.

“I even like the rain,” Tailbone says.

“I do too,” I say, then I tip the wine bottle way back and gulp big, to murmurs of support from my crew.

“Frisbee,” Mickey says out of nowhere, and everyone responds by jumping up.

Oh. Well. Maybe jumping is a bit ambitious right now. My legs do a wobble and I am almost down crosslegged in the dirty mud-sand again. But I catch myself, give my head a strong doggy-at-the-beach shake, and I am ready to join the guys for Frisbee.

The guys who, by the way, suffered none of my shakiness despite having pounded themselves with at least three times as much of anything as I did. I find myself aspiring to their hardcoreness, even as the thought unsettles me, and my stomach.

I give myself a full-body doggy shake as I get in the Frisbee rotation.

“I think we should get a dog,” I say as I catch my first throw. I drop it, of course, pick it up, and pass to Howard.

“Awesome idea,” Howard says, passing on to Mickey.

“That is a lot of responsibility,” Mickey-the-Dad says, passing to Tailbone.

“Dogs suck,” says Tailbone, passing sharply to me.

“Listen,” Mickey says serenely, “we'll think about it, Kiki, okay. I can't make any promises, but we'll consider maybe getting ourselves a dog at some point.”

“But we already have
Howard
,” Tailbone shouts.

Howard takes off on what probably feels like a ferocious bull charge to him but looks from the outside like a lanky penguin running with his head down. He barely grazes Tailbone, goes tumbling right past him and down into the sand. Then Tailbone drops down on top of him. A form of wrestling ensues.

“C'mon,” Mickey says, tugging me by the shirt to walk with him down to the water's edge.

The rain is refusing to be ignored now. But it's still somehow not hard to live with it, despite the fact my previous feeling about any precipitation was that it was a curse sent down to smite me personally for whatever transgressions I had committed. This evening I feel like I'm sharing it, and that it's a benign presence.

“Do you skip rocks?” Mickey says.

It is mostly dark now. There is enough light left that you could see the crests of waves or the ticks of a good flat rock across the surface of an otherwise invisible sea. But mostly, visibility really isn't much.

“Is that some kind of freaky code you're speaking now, Mick?” I ask with high comic seriousness.

He pauses the pause of a smart guy on dope.

“I wasn't,” he says thoughtfully. “But that's pretty good. It's funny, right. And it fits, too. Which is why it's good. Nice work.”

“Thanks. I try.”

“But if you wanna speak that code, we could do that, too.”

Oh. A seriously inadvertent turn there. Jeez, now what have I done?

“Are you saying what I think you're saying?” I say.

He is crouched down, there in the dark sand under the dark sky, raking around for flat rocks, presumably.

“I don't know. Depends what you think I'm saying. What do you think I'm saying? Maybe you should just say it.”

“Ah, that's what you would
like
me to do, isn't it? I'm falling right into your trap. You get your jollies making me say what it is I think you're saying. Then, you practically don't even have to say it because I've done it all for you.”

Mickey looks up at me, with a clutch of rocks in one hand as he balances his crouch with the other. “Is this another code? 'Cause I think I fell behind here.”

I extend my hand to give him a lift up, even though I'm not exactly the rock of steadiness myself.

“Nah, man. I was just saying that yes, I used to skip rocks like a champion, but haven't in a long time. And right now my equilibrium is in a state where, it's not the best time to try again.”

He seems—then I realize, pretends—to be working hard to decipher my words.

“Right, so you used to skip. But you don't anymore.”

“Correct.”

“Funny, I'm the opposite. I never used to skip. I was dead against that shit, man. Then, gradually, when I was living on the streets I became more . . . universal. Call it the enlightenment of deprivation maybe, but I decided after a while that if somebody wants to love you, let 'em. Today, I skip all the time.”

I do wish I could see his expression as he approaches the water to sling his first stone.

“This time you were definitely speaking code, right?” I say.

“Yes, sir, I was,” he says, and I hear his first throw plunk into the water without a single skip.

This seems like a good point to throw rocks and not talk.

•   •   •

There is probably a point beyond which rain doesn't matter, has no more effect on the human body, but for whatever reasons, Mickey, Howard, Tailbone, and myself are still on the beach way past when any sense, common or otherwise, would tell you to go home.

Of course, I know, go
home
is not an option for any of them.

But go
somewhere
certainly is.

The four of us are sitting under the lifeboat, which is once again upturned. Up and down our little line a joint is passing, along with a cigarette and the remains of one bottle of red wine and one bottle of rosé. We are all pointed in the direction of the ocean, though with the darkness and lateness and weather heaviness and eye blurriness we could just as well be facing into the back of a garage except for the fact it is the ocean, and for the fact that we know.

“You know where you're going to go, tonight, to sleep?” I ask.

“Oh, yeah,” they all say in their own distinctive ways of saying the same thing no matter how many times they say it. Nobody, however, adds any detail to that answer.

They don't even ask me. By now I reek of it, what Stacey said about me and my being all taken care of, kind of privileged, and I loathe it.

“Do you not ever worry,” I ask, “about being out, and exposed, and vulnerable to whatever might come along?”

“No,” Howard says as he and I trade red wine and a cigarette. “'Cause I have them.”

“Exactly,” Tailbone adds. “I mean, two bigger assholes you'll never wanna meet. But . . . I can't imagine these days sleeping without 'em. Probably couldn't even get to sleep, I imagine. That's the truth.”

“Family,” Mickey says matter-of-factly.

Am I the first person ever to be envious and longing to be accepted by a gang of homeless bums?

“Is it okay for me to ask how you guys wound up . . . well, here, in this situation, in the first place?”

“Women!” all three roar, in tune, in time, and as if they have been waiting for this question forever.

I know, as I laugh, that this is a far more serious thing than it sounds. And I know, that if I probe even just a little further, that there will be no shortage of horror stories, delivered with gusto, and venom, and bile, and possibly even dollops of truth, and that none of it will be truly funny even though the soliloquy will certainly be. I know, and I laugh even harder.

I know, men blaming women and believing it. I know, and I laugh, because it sounds funny and if it's not funny, then what else is there? If it's not funny, then what is it?

The fat rain now bouncing loud off the rubber protective inflatable roof above us sounds funny, and soothing.

“So, fair trade,” Mickey says. “Now, tell us how you got that cast.”

Fair. Fair trade. Well, yes. These guys, yes, why not?

“He broke his arm trying to wipe his own ass, because he never had to do it before,” comes the voice from above, from above the blobby bouncing raindrops.

“Stacey?” I say, leaping up reflexively because even if I didn't recognize the voice, the words would have spoken for themselves.

I have flipped the raft straight up into the air and into the breeze. It sails back and away from us, revealing a soaked and serious and steely Stacey.

“Hi,” I say.

“I knew you'd sink when I sent you away,” she says, “but I didn't think you'd sink to this level.”

“I haven't,” I say, accomplishing what, exactly, I have no idea.

“Would you like to join us, fair lady?” Mickey asks as Howard scampers to re-collect our shelter. Tailbone just stares up at her as if she's one of those cement St. Mary statues that suddenly started weeping real tears. His open mouth should be collecting a load of fresh rainwater.

“Thank you, but no,” Stacey says in that ultracool Staceyness that is more impressive and intimidating than anything else I have seen in my travels.

I, naturally, am up on my feet and up close to Stacey, thrilled at the very presence of her.

“You're here,” I say.

“You're perceptive,” she says.

“I'm sorry, Stacey, for coming by . . . your place of work, and your home and everything and being, like, a bother and all. I feel really stupid and sorry and, like, yeah . . . .”

“I didn't make it back for curfew tonight,” she says, the rain running down over her face.

“Oh,” I say. “Oh. Where were you?”

Tired, wet, and inconvenienced Stacey is not a person one should ask something like that.

“I'm here, right now, talking to you, under these conditions. Do you really need to start questioning stuff like that, Kiki Vandeweghe?”

Before I can offer my obvious and simple answer, Mickey takes the wheel.

“No. Nope. No way. Not at all,” he says.

“You want to stay here with us?” I ask hopefully. “It's not much, but at least it's—”

“Are we a
tribe
, Kiki?” she asks firmly.

“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, absolutely.”

“Are we a something, a whatever, a God-knows-what-you-were-thinking, but here we are?”

“Um, yes,” I say. “Yes, absolutely.”

“You do not belong here, sleeping in the rain, do you?” she says.

“No,” I say, because I will say what Stacey says.

“So, do I, then? Belong here, sleeping in the rain?”

I shake my head emphatically, no.

She stands there with her arms dropped at her sides and the rain pelting the whole of her.

“Would you like to see my father's book of poetry?” I say, finally.

“Well,” she says, “that sounds wonderful. But I bet you say that to all the girls.”

“You know,” I say, taking her hand, which feels quite specifically drenched to the bone, “you
are
all the girls.”