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Excerpt Three: From Chapter Two
By Brian
Pera
From Troublemaker
Later that summer Hurricane Andrew ripped cross-country through Florida, landed on the New York Post and Daily News under headlines like, Andrew’s Aftermath and Andrew Goes for Broke. Day in and out it hit the papers until maybe by force their front pages tore straight off and laid waste to the curbs and gutters of the city.
August was the hottest month yet, and I spent it in the company of one Herbert P. Myers, man who favored dark suits with stripes run up and down them. I hooked up with him after I seen I couldn’t make heads or tails of peoples on the outside; like Madam said but I weren’t ready to give her that. Figured if I didn’t want to end up with Mannie owning me like them others I seen out on the streets of the Square, I needed a steady, some place I knowed I could stay no matter what, without I got to think about it all day or sleep wherever if I ain’t come up with nothing. If I aimed to make it on my own I needed to get myself set up with somebody.
Myers was near bald, told me he was in the habit of wearing hats but just lately it was too hot, he’d have to go without. Without meant the top of his head got red and shiny from sweat and later sunburn. Sometimes when he talked to me I watched up there, focused in on one or two beads to see how long before they’d roll down the bulb of his head onto the hair just above his ears, which point he’d reach up a hand to smooth them over like pomade. Most times this hair round the nape of his neck took slick and looked like the bristle-whiskers, steel-gray and wiry, of a walrus I seen at the Omaha Zoo; big old fellar sat mostly up on a rock fountain middle of his pen. In my head I got to calling Myers Walrus.
Walrus worked on Wall Street nine to five, five of seven days a week.
"It’s all numbers and slips of paper," he said, "figures, tall buildings. Everyone stressed-out silly. You’re lucky if your office has a window, much less one that looks out past a brick wall."
That’s how he described Wall Street, but really I couldn’t say, cause I never seen it for myself. Before Walrus I only see Omaha, Memphis, the Madam’s, the insides of hotel rooms. More or less. So what’d I know? I only seen Wall Street from pictures, I guess – just skinny buildings scrunched up together, window on top of window all the way up same size.
I thought about Myers waddling up to a revolving door where other walruses slid into the hyped-up lobby of a building, all eyes straight ahead, not so much as a friendly shake of whisker to any passerby. I figured this much cause whenever he come home he talked about his day like that, and he weren’t none too patient with me as he scrambled out of his clothes like they’s on fire, couldn’t barely bother to look my way.
"It’s all fluorescent lighting inside," he belly-ached. "Along the ceiling in rows all the way down; a sick green color to everything from them and the glow of each man’s computer on his desk. We are all in rows there, right up against each other but you’d never know, never a word except about business. That’s not really talking. When I leave my things at the end of the day to come out into the light, it’s like getting out of a dark prison. But you don’t want to hear about all of this."
Once all the talk about work was done, Walrus mostly kept quiet with his hands to his self. In his cramped apartment, high up off Times Square, we sat one on each side of the couch watching movies; all day and nothing but on weekends. Disaster flicks like the one where peoples dressed in furry clothes gets caught under a giant avalanche. Everything fine, drinking and laughs in the ski lodge – until suddenly through the window the mountain breaks in half, comes crashing down to bury peoples without it so much as give them a chance to set their drinks aside, sirens coming from all over, the lights dancing funny on the snow.
His favorite was the earthquake movie come on one Saturday, five o’clock.
"Just when everyone’s getting out," he squealed like the revenge of the living dead.
The part he laughed hardest at’s when downtown splintered into cracks gone all crazy directions. The skyscrapers toppling; tenth floor become the third become the first. Boy he laughed and laughed. "Just when they’d be getting out," he said again, watching all the suits run out the crushed entrances, some of them jumping out the windows, their coats left behind – course, those was the ones didn’t make it. They landed on the ground like weren’t nothing but gravity and concrete.
"Those places are death traps," Walrus said, and he shook his head firm like it just gone to show.
He never really did reach across the couch to touch me, only sometimes a pat on the head or leg, which was fine by me. Still, he wanted me there at all times, even when he his self weren’t. He made no small talk about how he give me everything I could need, and how, it being so hot, there weren’t no reason for me to get out.
"I don’t like not knowing where you are," he’d say. "I like to know you’re right here."
And he’d pat the couch between us.
When he left for work, I waited five minutes or so to make sure he wouldn’t turn around and come back, cause early on sometimes he done. "Oh, I forgot something," he’d say, rustling some papers before he gone again, only after he give me a sharp once-over like even though he could see me right there I might actually be gone. Then I took the phone off the hook just in case.
For the rest of the day I turned whatever tricks I could find. Sure, Walrus give me things, but not "everything I could want or need," like he put it; more like what he thought I wanted and needed, and what did he know. I didn’t know neither, really, but that was for me to decide. He made it sound like he’d never get lost of me, but I couldn’t never be sure just from what he told me when I pressed him. Ain’t like I’s exactly used to peoples keeping their word. If there’s one thing I learned by then it’s a body’s got to make sure to put away for the future, and even though I ain’t never got that far I knowed from the start I got to get out and try. Never aimed to get locked up somewheres like at the Madam’s all over again; I just wanted a place to come and go from, place I’d know was always there. So: Walrus gone to work, and so’d I. Make my own rules, not lie in the house. Even if it just been to show I could; even if just to practice for when I’d start setting money aside. If things gone wrong doing it, weren’t nobody to kick me out of nowheres.
I mostly made it back before five, which point I put the phone back on the hook and went into the bedroom to lie down and make like I’s asleep. Like clockwork in he’d come, make some noises in the front room, walk into the bedroom where he’d stand over the bed and pat me quick on the back of the head, scruff up my hair. Undress saying how hot it was, then lay his self down next to me with enough room between us to raise a family, start rubbing my arm. Cluck cluck at me for tying up the phone all day.
"You’re not making any long-distance calls, are you?"
Like I got friends all over in high places – a direct line to the Oval Office.
But that was all just talk and he didn’t so much like talking. I knowed what he wanted, cause we been through it so much before; so I gone down below the belt and done for him what I been doing most all day on good days.
And after a while he’d say: "I’m ready to get off. Are you?"
It weren’t no different than with nobody else that day who paid one way or another, cause see, like I say: He didn’t touch me. None to speak of.
Still, sometimes I’d be bold, say:
"Well, I myself might need a little something," thought I’d of decked him if he tried, and anyway the dope I’s on weren’t exactly a firestarter. It was just the principle.
"What do you want me to do?" he’d grumble.
So I’d just say nevermind to him, and sure enough to myself.
Underneath his bed he kept a big cardboard box full of dirty magazines, and he’d dig one out, bring it up, turn on his side so’s his back was to me, start playing with his self. I could hear the pages flipping, like he wouldn’t be ready until he seen a little of every one. When he got done, he’d turn back my way, start to come, look at me out the corners of his eyes like to say, "Thought you said you was ready."
Then like he couldn’t be bothered, out his mouth like he held it in all day or week come language what could fry bacon, the likes I only heard from cops. "Fuck damn, Godammit, I mean FUCK," and in-between these blasts of breath like the steam shooting out a time whistle, end of a workday shift.
Copyright © 2000
Brian Pera.
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