Monday, Around Noon (or Empty-Headed Blondes)

Funny. More in my comfort zone than The Vampire Hunters.

There it is.

A light at the end of the tunnel, and quite reasonably, I panic. But where is my long catalog of memories to confirm I'm being killed and not born? Born. What would that word mean to a third-trimester fetus? Do babies think in these terms, forming complete mental sentences? Not very probably. My head should be a blank slate. A baby wouldn't apply such populist mortal connotations to something like a 'light at the end of the tunnel' either. I wouldn't be thinking at all yet, not in English, Mandarin, or Swahili. I am most definitely on the way out. My hippocampus has been whitwashed--no trivial reminiscence allowed in the afterlife. Just as well. Wonder where I'm headed? Should have given it more thought before now. Racking every crevice of my brain before total depletion is exacted, I search for a glimmer of my identity. For some reason, it's become very important, like I could smuggle it in with me and have a leg up on every other ghoul populating Heaven or Hell. Probably neither. Probably someplace I never heard of, no one's ever heard of.
I eke out some totems of success like crude Super 8 reel snapshots . . . red and black darts stabbed into a corkboard . . . Navy SEALs . . . a giant glass dragon . . . nonsense. Meaningless teasers. I snap my eyes open.

My eyes have been shut. There is still a light at the end of a tunnel, drawing my feet closer, some omnipotent general trying to trick me into thinking I'm dying of my own free will when really I have as much free will as those soldiers marching up and down the tarmac. Left, right, left, right. Maybe Hell is boot camp, always with that paralytic fear of war cresting on the storm of your mind, drawing nearer and nearer like a red dawn for eternity.

I try and make my feet stop. They are stanchioned to a sea of beige granite-like magma swirling and undulating. When I grope the wall of the tunnel, it's clammy and pelted with spines like some taxidermist's pet gharial. My hand glides over the spines and settles on a small square protrusion--a red box--emblazoned with indisputable English: EMERGENCY. My reflexes draw back, I lose my balance, stagger . . . into the light.

Over a dozen gray sparrows lounge on the power line above my head. The ones in the middle are bickering and the others scoot idly away like con artists as if to say, "Oh geez they're at it again." Swimming blue skys, calm pavements, and narrow green strips of lawn. The glass door thunks behind me like a skull knocking up against a wall. My hands still tingle where I touched it, where I leaned on the white hot panels and fell back into--well, bleary cognition. The anti-rabbit hole.

It's summer in Milwaukee, one of the J months, and the air is broiling hot with exhaust and sunshine, but an invisible lake keeps belching cool reprieve that doesn't find me often enough. I remember now: I'm on the lower eastside at Cass and Lyon, just a block down from St. Rita and the park. This is high-class compared to my digs. There are a lot of worse places to come to in.
Across the street is a regiment of skinny, two-story A frames. Some of them have upper level porches, such as the one directly across from me, and there is a man outside grilling. The spicy smell of bratwurst wafts down from his perch. He could be an insert in a brochure entitled Milwaukee In July . . . yes, July. A broadchested, shirtless man with spiraling mats of hair who maintains a fixed smile somehow as he whistles along to Def Leppard on a transistor radio. His complexion is swarthy; I seem to recall this neighborhood being rife with Sicilians. My stomach groans, unabashedly coveting his meat. I can see them now, snuggled up all neatly like blood-gorged parentheses, branded with grate stripes and ejaculating hot sibilant fat out chewy nodules that explode in the heat. Food . . . the diner! That's right, I have an appointment. I start right, then calibrate myself and start left.

"Hockett! Hey Humpty!"
Screams from on high.

I crane my head, eyes deteriorating in the torrid sunlight, and bring up my hand like a visor. There's a young black guy, also shirtless, bent out a window on the third story of the suicidal-looking building I just exited. It takes up as much space on the entire block as four stamps would on a baronial envelope, bricks alternately the color of pumpkin and dried blood. The familiar naked man is waving something at me. I hear a timorous pop and suddenly feel the skin over my temple being shredded off, from my eye clear to my ear. Blood swells my vision. I stumble backwards into the street, hearing my self scream. The vicious brown smudge in the window, my assailant--Will he shoot again? ". . . F**k me," the smudge moans and a window slams. I stand in the street, trying to smear blood off my scalding flesh-wound with jittery palms. The man grilling brats hasn't noticed a thing. He keeps whistling blithely,
I'm hot, sticky sweet! From my head to my feet . . .

Somehow I make it to Brady and collapse there at the unsheltered bus stop completely drenched with sweat. The nice thing about a beautiful day in the city is everyone is oblivious to you. Bicyclists attired in neon spandex tear up the pavement and weave perilously through stop-and-go traffic. Dog walkers and senior citizens and collegiates alike shuffle from the shade of one festive awning to the next, and I can hear Alto Bezwick, who sometimes sits in on chance sessions around town, blowing strident phrases outside the strip mall five blocks away. Exotic vapors from the Moroccan restaurant across the street further inflame my palate's miserable self pity. It's futile to try and escape the smell of food.

Inicidentally, my palms aren't marred too bad with blood and the only thing dripping off my head is sweat. I crave a pair of sunglasses but have given up buying them since they never seems to stay intact/in my possession for more than a week . . . I sure as s**t would've stolen Zeke's Aviators if only I'd known better, then maybe he would've thought twice about shooting me. Nearly boring my goddamn eye out! And to sit here on this hard, hot bench, savoring the irony of how all night I'd cringed and darted as Drew had been the animal waving that piece around, him and his indiscriminate fetish for all things violent. He'd shown up to the studio with that familiar M81 Double Eagle wedged in his waistband and sticking the in front of his T-shirt, trying to give all the old ladies on Ezekiel's corridor a heart attack. Only then he had to flaunt some new trifling attachment: an aluminum piston head "with a thrust bearing" that, from what I could understand, did absolutely nothing. But Jesus he was proud of it and hardly put the thing down even to pick up a controller when we, all three of us, signed into Xbox Live to commence the "marathon". Cormac was there too, as always, to mooch our snack/bud/beer supply, but no one resented him this time since he'd proved competent enough to provide the Methylin--a narcolepsy medication, if you can believe it--which was a thousand times more practical than anything our sorry clan could normally get its hands on and blasted us through the 36-hour time frame of unabeyed, undilluted gaming . . . or did it? Did we suceed?
Clearly not, because going by the rules, we weren't even allowed to have signed back off until an hour ago, and I have been unconscious for longer than that, though it's hopeless to state anything with certainty when I don't even remember leaving.
Ezekiel.
Shot me.

I slump there with my fingers jammed in my eyeballs watching jellyfish play rainbow tag and zap each other when an overdressed man smelling of mothballs approaches and asks thrice to bum a cigarette before I start barking at him. He doesn't press on, just watches me perplexed, really wanting that nicotine and probably to curb stomp me in tandem. He misses his chance as the bus rolls to the curb, sighing down on its hydraulics. I stand into a patchy black void (Water!) and climb the air-conditioned stairs before fishing out my UWM student I.D. for the nice lady at the wheel, then select a seat in the middle, across from the rear doors. It's the section I'm most prone to, to which I feel most demographically acclimated, at least on route 15. As usual, a few Latinos crowd the horseshoe-shaped seats in the rear, staring silently at a patch of rubber floor like they were all tentative to make a grab for the same some stray quarter in fear of looking cheap. The cold transitional air makes me sick. I break out in chills.
The front of the bus is barren save for a few invalids. A woman with a wild, noodly hairdo grips a walker affixed with a wire basket holding mounds of empty grocery bags. She's wearing a Bucks jersey so big for her that almost every inch of an elastic, sweat-stained sports bra is exposed and she's either chewing her own tongue or muttering hexes at the man across from her: a pensive old Shriner gripping a tacklebox like a colostomy bag.

Glorioso's, the Sicilian grocery, passes by outside, and I think of the dark man grilling comfortably aloft right this second, subjecting everyone else, us lowly urban gophers, to his carnivorous volition. A few minutes from now how am I supposed to step into that diner and not buy anything? Just pick up Eunice and leave when my guts lack the most basic nutritional sustenance? Certainly I can afford a leafy green garden salad or a tuna melt or . . . when's pay day? Only Monday. Maybe Eunice can loan me a few bucks. Could I even afford a cup of coffee right now if I wasn't unequivocally certain that the tiniest sip of caffeine would demolish my synapses with synchronized explosions like a line of trip wires going off?
One of the Mexicans in the elevated rear section of the bus mutters something in Spanish to his neighbor and the neighbor nods. They are wearing matching green polos and tan baseballs caps. I clutch the silver support bar to steady my head as the the bus rumbles forth. Hedging the tops of the windows are advertisement tiles. The one looming opposite me features a dramatic black-and-white image of a baby in a large bed, sound asleep, its head propped atop a pillow. Jutting conspicuously out from under the pillow is a meat cleaver.
This is part of a fresh new campaign of shock-rock bulletins funded by the Milwaukee Health Commission after seven or so babies died straight in a row while sleeping with a parent either from being rolled on top of, suffocation, or sheet strangulation. The ads get their point across, I suppose, so why am I fighting back droll laughter? Just fatigue, that's all . . . Jesus, compared to most of my generation I'm a laudable humanitarian who's managed to avoid this pandemic desensitization to social issues! Segregation for one. If you ever want to convince a skeptic that Milwaukee is the consummate racial anachronism, tell them to ride one of the transit routes--almost any will do--from beginning to end. I discovered this for the first time about two years ago when I was still very passionate about film and returning from a Truffaut seminar down in lower Walker's Point. On the way home, early evening, I sat over the rear wheel-well and in no time at all found myself hemmed in by Mexicans, Columbians, Guatemalans, what have you. When we crossed into the Third Ward, naturally, more whites started piling on, and by the time we reached my turf, near Wright and Palmer, the shuttle had turned into a veritable race sandwich of white meat on a hoagie ala Duke Ellington's Black and Tan Fantasy. I'm not saying this is right or wrong, should be encouraged or discouraged, I'm just simply . . . saying. But I suppose the same goes for all major U.S. cities, at least to some degree.
"North!" sounds the driver.

This being a major intersection, half the bus stands up: a diverse collection of riders who've boarded since Brady without being registered by yours truly. I stand too and am the second one out the back doors because a kid holding a skateboard but too lazy or inept to use it budges in front of me. We're steered like common ox into the scurrilous heat.
I cut through a crooked bystreet, past some bars with patio seating, and cross busy Farwell into the Ma Frasier's parking lot. A police car is parked out front, facing the wrong direction, I can't help but notice, on a one-way street. Quite candidly, a man is being frisked beside the entrance. His flippant half-protests go ignored by the officers and he keeps shuffling his feet like he has to piss. On my way in, I hold the door for two old women and happen to lock eyes with the man under judicious scrutiny. He winks.
I step into the cool vestibule and immediately note Blamo at the cash register. He is consistent as a gargoyle and about as handsome as one; his counter bisects the rear span of the building's north half (the kitchen and coffee machines, etc.) from the front. Stools line the counter, booths along the windows, and tables fill the middleground. It's a fairly large place. A black dry-erase board propped on an easel tells me the specials in some waitress's loopy neon handwriting. When you walk in, there's a vertical dessert showcase immediately to your right revolving with platters of cheesecake and fudge cake, cream pie dolloped with strawberries the size of f*****g turkey hearts, nothing that costs under $4. Otherwise the place is reasonably priced. Blamo is a gentile Albanian who can look like the friendliest man in the world if he wants to, but when it comes to select cheapskate regulars (ahem), he can also glare like a Gestapo on Yom Kippur . . . "Afternoon Blamo," I mutter in dual fear that he'll hear me and that he won't, then scramble out of sight around the corner, nearly cutting down a busboy named Luis, toward where Eunice sits at her regular booth about midway down the line of them overlooking Farwell. The man being frisked is too far north to spy on from her angle.
Once upon a time, this diner's sprawling layout was utilitized as a smoking/nonsmoking dichotomy, but State mandate squashed that a year ago and now every public place is nonsmoking through and through. Blamo was in particularly bad temper for weeks following said legislation; butt-mounded ashtrays had been as eternal an ornament to his countertop as the stools themselves, and I guess he figured the new ban would hurt business, though I don't think it did, not for long. People adjust, whether they should notwithstanding.
I slide in across from Eunice.
"Hello Humphrey," she says pleasantly but without any special ardor.

I nod hello and wait for Luis to bring me water. Right now he's only toting caf and decaf. I toy with idea of heading over to the supply cart and pouring my own glass--who would stop me? Luis is a charming, impassive fellow. Blamo is not within viewing range. But I'm so tired, so feeble-minded, I can't trust my own judgement. Maybe it would be rude, audacious, downright obscene, and under reasonable sobriety I wouldn't entertain the idea for a second! Eunice, of course, has a full cup before her, beige-colored liquid like the tiles of Ezekiel's apartment corridor, and a mess of empty cream cups and sugar wrappers are strewn all over the place. I busy myself shovelling these into a neat pile, brushing the stray sugar granules off on my shorts.
The southern half of the building is divided by a 4' mahogany balustrade topped with frosted glass panels and a long brass pipe. Seated on our side of the balustrade at one of the square tables is a man dining with his teenage daughter. His plate is smeared clean and he's got ketchup in the corner of his mouth like he just got punched. As I observe shamelessly, he does all the talking. He's wearing a gray double-breasted suit and has a bristly head of thin copper wires. He might not strike me as so old (honestly, I doubt he'd strike me at all) if his daughter wasn't the vivid epitome of summer youth. Her blonde hair flips out at the shoulders and she's wearing a raspberry-plaid dress that stops halfway down her thigh. Legs crossed, I can see a bulging lateral muscle and admire the way her skin fits, like another dress, this one made of rich creamy latex. She's so engrossed in her father's discourse I know I can get away with staring and do so like the rotten bloodshot voyeur that I am until Luis suddenly crowds my view with his hulking frame to bring me iced water and add a superfluous inch to Eunice's coffee. She thanks him ever so coyly and reaches for another creamer, the last in the slot. I leave her alone about it today. It seems the first words out of my mouth are always: "Why do you bother putting in coffee at all?" She must be awfully tired of it. I know I am. Even as I pass these banal judgements, I usually think, "What a loser. Why doesn't he lend something intelligent? Who does he think he is, her father?" Today, my lips are sealed.
Eunice is the sort of girl you can be totally silent around or yap your head off and it's all the same to her. She won't like you any more or less. Of course, when I say "the sort of girl", I suppose I imply there are others like that, which by my experience is debatable. I chug half my water before Luis can walk away and ask him pretty please to refill it. "A hot one today, huh?" He grins as he does.
"Uh-huh." I affect an intelligent smile like I just responsed intelligently, but in fact my head feels so pulverized that I'm incapable of bestowing anyone with all but the most primitive social graces. Luis strides away unoffended, Eunice sips her coffee, and I devour more water until it clenches me in brainfreeze and I have to cross my arms on the tabletop and bury my face.
Oh, the rascal jellyfish! How aggresive they play!
"Humphrey, are you ill?"
"Nnnhhh."
The muddled consonant echoes in my private formica-reeking cavern. She hasn't noticed the gash in the side of my head yet, so my hair must be covering it. I've been putting off getting a haircut because all I can afford is a once-over with my own electric buzzer and my head shares the same unlucky proportions as Frankenstein's. All the same, the weather is making this moppish surfer-do sweatily unfeasible.
"Janie was ill today," Eunice mentions. "So ill she couldn't make it to class. Maybe there's a virus going around. I read in the paper today that a man caught a very nasty virus somewhere in Africa, then caught a connecting flight in Germany and brought it back with him to the United States, so now people are catching the virus both in America and Europe. Plus Africa of course. But I can't for the life of me remember what it was called. The virus, I mean. Donna would know. Or even Lionel, he's very interested in world events. I'll have to ask him when I get home."
I raise my head just enough to gaze at her. "Who's Lionel?"
"Who's Lionel?"
"Yes."
"My landlord, silly."
"Oh right." I sip my water slowly, cautiously. "Can I ask you something? It's nothing to be offended by . . . just something I've noticed about you lately."
"Sure, you can ask me anything."
"Whenever you have news to share--global news, I mean, that pertains to anywhere outside America-- you always tell it to me with a British accent."
"That's simple."
Thrown off guard. "What's simple?"
She twists her cup on its saucer like a potter's wheel, spilling fluid over the sides. "It's easier for me to relay things I heard on the BBC if I use a British accent."
I sit up straight and nod concurrently. That is simple. "How's your coffee?" I ask, making an effort to forgo my woes and engage the poor girl.
"Sweet," she smiles, sinking her head into her shoulders as if she just professed the most saucy tabloid gossip.

Eunice Hockett is my sister. We have the same cobalt-gray eyes and brown hair. Other than that, we look little alike. She is two years my senior and has a broader build. She's not fat, but neither is she endowed with the bullshit Hollywood proportions that magazines extol and pop-culture indoctrinates. Her forearms look like they could pack a punch, and she does in fact take a self-defense class every week, but more to the point, I haven't seen Eunice express even remote insecurity since her sophomore year of high-school; and though she adores her Cosmo subscription--along with People, Glamour and the like--she doesn't follow popular trends or fashions. Most of her clothing she makes herself. Or at least she'll buy a plain, unembossed sweater, dress, or turtleneck from Goodwill and sew on patches, abstract bead designs, sequins, feathers, or strips of lace. Today she has on one of her masterpieces: a black sweatshirt (never ever short sleeves) bespangled with cut-out, woolen, hand-drawn cats. At least a dozen of them. She doesn't feel impelled to splurge money like most women, and when she does it's always on something productive like art supplies or those Aikido classes. Mostly, Eunice is a creature of habit, but that doesn't at all mean she's not open to new things.
Her long hair is pulled back in a ponytail. She wears plastic-framed prescription lenses, isn't much for jewelery (her ears aren't even pierced), and keeps her fingernails trimmed abbhorently short but always painted some gamut of colors. Today, it's a cotton candy theme: pink and sky blue.

As I toss back another long gulp of water, having already forgotten about the brain freeze, I happen to glance over to my left and catch the man in the gray suit French kissing his daughter over the table.
"Are you okay?" Eunice tenderly inquires when I start choking.
Michelle, one of the waitresses, brings over their bill and they get up to leave immediately, pretty much tripping over her apron strings on the way to the counter with lubricious gleams in their eyes that I try to discount as just another symptom of my imagination's morbid hyperbole. Eunice starts up about that damn virus again and it's no great wonder if my behavior is setting the girl on edge.
"Enough about that," I interject. "I'm perfectly okay, just tired. I need to go to sleep. I work tonight, remember?"
"Didn't you sleep well last night?"
"I didn't--" Cutting myself short, I decide to avert the whole deprecating synopsis. Why give my sister good reason to scold me? . . . About six hours into the marathon, I start reciting to myself the talking fox's line in that Lars von Trier movie where Willem Dafoe ejaculates blood. The fox, as it eats its own leg, forebodes two words: "Chaos reigns." By then we are all covered in welts from Drew's outbursts with the Double Eagle. The curtains are drawn and no one is slightly aware that outside children build sand castles, whole streets are barricaded for concerts and art fairs, people eat gyros on park benches and pigeons swoop down to collect the droppings, or even that a sun warms the planet. We write off the insufferable heat as sheer molecular effluvium off our foul, compressed bodies sitting there in plain boxers amidst a sea of Cheetos, cables, cans and laundry. Drew locks himself in the bathroom for forty-five minutes before Cormac's gigantic Coors intake logically makes him have to piss. So, for a while, Jacob and I are the only ones playing, while Cormac screams through the bathroom door. Jacob is so regaled by his second lieutenant's ongoing success in transporting enemy mines to our flag base that he doesn't even flinch as I look over and see Cormac pulling down a fire extinguisher from the fridge to bash the doorknob off with. "Booze run!" I yelp, and pause the game--a poor fiduciary action on my part. Jacob will never know how much he owes me for parting with my last Jackson on excess rum just so he wouldn't face certain eviction. Cormac stands there in freezeframe with the extinguisher raised above his head like a mammoth bone and remarks joyfully that he'll "supervise", as I knew he would. While Jacob demands to know what the hell he thinks he's doing with that thing, I throw on my pants and take a quick hit off Izinagi, the dragon bong, because I've distractedly fallen behind in our regimen and the speed is taking too fierce a hold. We leave. We return thirty minutes later with a bottle of Meyers, our replenished lungs choking on the stagnant yellow air. Drew is still in the bathroom, the same 90s playlist still loops out Jacob's iPod dock (if I never hear Cake's "Going the Distance" again, that'd be fine) and Jacob himself plays on alone, illuminated like a scoliotic Lama before the turbulent screen. He is on the telephone, screaming tactical maneuvers into the receiver, then alternating back to his headset to tell Rochelle, his fiance, how much he loves her but this isn't a good time . . . "Are you done with your coffee?" I segue.
"Yes, but I have to use the bathroom before we go."
"Alright."
"Can you watch my bag?"
Eyeing her tiny checkered purse that couldn't capacitate most wallets, I say, "Sure, but can't you take it with you?"
"No, I mean this bag." Then she lifts a much larger burlap satchel off the bench beside her. Its material is frayed and bruised with dirt.
"Where'd you get that?" I frown.
"Before you got here, another man came over and sat down right where you're sitting now."
"Did you know him?"
"Well, after we talked I knew him a little. He complimented my cat sweater and used very polite language."
"What was his name?"
"I don't know."
Growing impatient. "What did he want?"
"He wanted to talk."
"And?"
"And he gave me this bag. Isn't it nice?" She raises it higher in case my angle is poor.
"No," I snap. "Truthfully, it's a piece of garbage and you should've told him to flake off."
"Well, he said he didn't want to take up much of my time, just that he was passing by the window there and happened to notice how small my purse was."
Aghast. "How small--?"
"Please don't interrupt, Humphrey."
Despite myself, I can feel blood rushing to my cheeks.
"Yes," she continues. "And he said if I didn't have anything more suitable--or not suitable, what was the word he used? Practical, yes, anything more practical to carry around my possessions in he would be obliged to offer me this durable satchel as a gift. Can you believe that, Humphrey?" Her eyes sparkle with wonder behind their thick lenses. "A gift from a perfect stranger."
I feel about ready to drop dead on the spot, clueless as to why I got so worked up about a dumb bag in the first place, why I'm so distrustful, so oppressively protective of a grown woman. I mean, it's not like he charged her for it, like so many beggars on the street try to sell you their f*****g pocket lint.
A gift. What's the harm in that?
And then I shake free from this delusional stupor. "Eunice, tell me, what did this man look like?" She considers it for what seems to me an absurd amount of time since apparently their confrontation took place just minutes before I arrived.
At long last, stirring the tepid remnants of her coffee with one blue fingertip, she decides, "Well, he was quite handsome ."
"Objective facts, Eunice!" I growl. "For example, was he black?"
"Black?"
"Yes, black."
"I should say he was quite black. A very rich African black. You know how there are varying degrees--"
"And what was he wearing?" I'm poised now, fully alert, one buttcheek hanging off the pleather booth. "Did he have on a red and white striped shirt, like Waldo?"
"Umm, I don't know a Waldo. Except Wally from the bookstore, his proper name--"
"The shirt, Eunice!"
"Oh, how'd you know? It was striped, yes. Red and white. Like that funny cartoon man from the I Spy books."
Before she can finish ("oh you mean that Waldo"), I've used the momentum of my lunge to propel me across the room, past the dessert tower, and around the vestibule to gaze out the picture window of the erstwhile smoking section. Two of Milwaukee's Finest are still loitering on the sidewalk beside their illegally parked cruiser, but their little patdown is over and the backseat looks to be vacant. The man is gone, set free, and the cops are now engaged in roguish conversation with a pair of bright-skirted campus girls.
I hesitate, dash through the vestibule, and hold the door nonchalantly for a party of five while scouring up and the down the block, the hectic five-cornered intersection to my right, for any trace of Black Waldo . . . None. He's left his bag in the care of my sister and could be watching this very moment for her to rise from the booth so as to stalk her home like a feral puma. When I attempt to swallow my despair, my throat feels newly parched. The intense humidity combined with the A.C. flooding out the open door imbues me with a strange, deathly sweat the likes of which I've never ever known.
"You! You are cooling Farwell on my nickel! Shutty door Shutty door!"
I cringe under Blamo's gravel reprimands and do as he says, quickly shuffling past him back into the diner with a weak, obsequious grin. He has an inscrutably domineering appearance. Broad shoulders flexed high under his tight maroon uniform. Black pants and combat boots. A mercenary's goatee and greasy slicked-back hair. His skull looks comprised of solid granite, its eyes being no separate entities, but black as onyx, roofed with leechy eyebrows. He's one of a long line of Albanians who have run this place since the 50s, since Ma Frasier herself, immortalized in caricature on the sign out front: a brawny woman with clear bloodties to Blamo, although unlike her, I've never seen Blamo wink and indeed never hope to, for it could only mean the equivalent verdict of a San Antonio jury.
Back at the booth, Eunice is gone to the bathroom and has taken the scandalous bag with her. Blamo is muttering beside the counter to Luis, probably telling him not to serve me any more water. Luis takes all instruction with equanimity. I can feel their eyes pirouetting over my back as I slurp down what little is left from my glass and start chewing on ice chips. The booth in front of me is occupied by a large cacophonous family. The mother, a two-ton mass of chocolate pudding squeezed into a flowerly blouse, doesn't understand that they make the clam chowder with chicken broth here and is trying to flag over the waitress to send it back, or at least find out who pissed in her soup. I myself have exercised the right to call Ma Frasier's creative liberties into question but it's never gotten me anywhere; then again, my powers of persuasion are zilch. The father of the clan is recounting some uproarious (at least to him) story about an event "at the pen" to his wife, who's not listening, and curtails himself to slap the son's fingers for getting stuck in his sister's cake.

Sister emits a glass-shattering denunciation!

I think my nose is about to bleed. I can feel strange liquid dancing around up there and chunks of my nostrils crumbling off. "Luis," I call out in a muted hiss, tippling my ice beseechingly. His eyes flit over to the cash register and I see him grin knowingly at the outright prejudice tension between his boss and I. "You order some lunch, kay?" he says, eyes crinkling, black hair standing on end while Mother Superior flexes inside one of his lean, veiny forearms--the one holding the decaf--flaunting her expression of divine serenity that I'll never in my life be able to mimic, not with all the dank in the world.
It's just as I suspected all along, but to have it confirmed! What ever happened to business ethics? "Please Luis," I plead some more, pinching my nose for affect. "It's an emergency."
"Try the Philly cheese steak." He pours for another table. "It's the special."
This roils me into such indignation I smash one fist down on the table just hard enough to rattle the silverware, but consciously restrained so it won't attract Blamo. "You know damn well there's a Chubby's down the block that specializes in far superior cheese steak seven days a week!"
"Excuse me, por favor." The mother steals his attention, while father and son eye me beadily. "You don't know if y'all got no clam chowder back there or not, do you?"
"That is clam chowder, miss," says Luis politely, and I stop listening.
I slouch in the corner where my booth meets the wall and watch the squad car out front finally pull a peremptory U-turn with its rack lights strobing but no siren. The college girls walk by seconds later, smiling and probably making fun of the cops (red jowly fellows) in their absence. Life is cruel.
This credo gets perfectly exemplified when I pay for Eunice's coffee with my last $2 and casually reach for a dinner mint. Blamo growls there's a $5 limit for mint eligibility or some such nonsense. We stare at each other for a full three seconds, me trying to look as incredulous as possible, but he doesn't back down. "Give Catalina my regards," I say just to piss him off and bustle out thinking Eunice is right behind me, while in fact Blamo has engaged her in some friendly weather chit-chat.
Outside at the corner, we wait for the light to change. Our backs are to one of two Landmark theaters in town, the Oriental, that play foreign and independent films which would largely otherwise fall under the populous' cultural radar. Its counterpart, the Downer, is just a few blocks northeast of here. Back when my student discount was still valid, I would hit up one, if not both, of them every week; but the box office, unfortunately, is much more stringent than the bus drivers about checking for the little hologram sticker that denotes when said discounts expire. To renew the discounts, you must renew your classes. Instead, I scratched off the sticker with my thumb nail months ago, knowing if ever the transit system stopped drawing assumptions from my age, well s**t, that'd be another $40 I don't have to spend on monthly passes.
As I mentioned before, North, Farwell, Ivanhoe, and Murray all converge here by the Oriental into a chaotic sort of amputated asterisk where brakes are always screeching and horns are always blaring and once a month an ambulance imperatively shows up. At every corner is a wedge-shaped pub. I try to line them all up in my mind and see if they form a complete circle.
"Too bad Catalina wasn't working today," Eunice mentions idly.
"You like her?"
"Yes, I like her. You should ask her out."
Times like this, waiting for a streetlight to change, it seems viable to take up smoking even though half the people I know over 40 are dead from cancer. "You say that about every woman I open the door for, it doesn't matter. If it was up to you, I would have asked half the city out by now. Married, single, gay, straight. And probably have gotten two dates out of it, if that." I realize by tacking on that last part how sorry and resentful I made myself sound. The light changes and we cross.
"But you do like her, you've told me so. I heard you mention her to Blamo just now." Eunice never inflects her voice, everything sounds like a courteous yet concise news bulletin. "And she likes you too."
"She doesn't know anything about me," I point out the obvious. "Other than I take my coffee black . . ." And have a degenerate staring problem. True, she's the nicest of the coop; and true, I drink considerably more cups of coffee whenever she's clocked in; but am I really the type to fall for the waitress? Geez, we'd tell the story to our kids and they'd be envisioning some rollerskate drive-up with Bill Haley on the speakers and mom tooling around in a poodle skirt. Somehow she must have found out I have connections to the Peck School of the Arts and wants to springboard off me onto some auteur who hasn't dropped out . . . though I realize this is working off the basic stereotype that all waitresses are aspiring actresses.
Eunice hoists the satchel's long ratty strap farther up her shoulder and it occurs to me just now to take it from her, or rather, to tactfully ask if she'll "allow" me her burden, and then as soon as the thing's in my clutches I rip open its side pocket with a loud Velcro sshhhk! and plunge my hand inside.
"What are you doing?"
"Searching . . . for contraband." A car honks at us to hurry up since the light has already changed back, and I sacrifice my grip on the satchel to flick someone off without glancing over. "I hate to tell you this, Eunice, but strange men don't just hand out luggage in diners and then dash off to get frisked by the police." Just as we mount the opposite curb, I wrest the main zipper open and a sea of naked limbs comes spilling out. Arms, legs, tufts of blonde hair. A flesh-entangled menagerie of Barbie dolls.
"Ooh!" Eunice claps twice with excitement. She squats down and gathers all the dolls that fell out like an Easter bouquet. Some curious onlookers linger on their way up the stairs into Von Trier, one of the wedge pubs aforementioned and a brooding piece of Rhineland architecture. "How man you think are in there, Humphrey? I bet fifty!"
"That's a highly implausible estimate." My eyes scour the boulevard for Black Waldo. I can hear the aloof laughter and dish-clattering of Von Trier's rear patio section, a stylized cobblestone area hidden from view of pedestrians by a tall gray picket fence. Finally we press on. This whole afternoon feels like an intended farce thrown in my face by God or Allah or Uncle Sam. I'm moodily quiet until we cross Oakland and head for the North Ave. bridge.
The Milwaukee River seeps into existence from somewhere up in Fon duLac county and gradually bleeds from green to brown as it transnavigates our fair city. Looking north I can see the Locust St. bridge, a mirror image of this one, and southward the river winds west, curling into downtown where fleets of posted signage apprise tourists of its inexpendible role in shaping Milwaukee into what it is now: the midwest's second most substantial port city. The sunlight plays like zebra print on its dusty surface, framed by lush foliage at the bottom of a steep grade where nothing more ambitious than a whiskey still could ever stand, almost giving it an Amazonian look from the right deceptive angle.
"It's a sign, Humphrey," Eunice concludes in a mystic far-off voice. "What do you think it all means?" She's stroking her dolls' mangled bushes of hair and I cringe to think what each synthetic follicle must be coated in.
"Here," I extend the bag. "Put those in here, keep 'em together. They're not your property yet, you know."
"What do you mean? They were a gift."
"No, there's still something very underhanded about all this. What we should do is take this monstrosity straight to the cops."
"You're right I suppose. Oh, how'd you get to be so smart?"
It's bad for her to encourage me this way, but I'll never in a million years tell her to stop. "Now that's a stretch," I say. "I'm just concerned about you is all. Call it basic brotherly paranoia. These things could have diseases injected into them or be stuffed with Los Zetas cocaine for all you know." I extract one of the top ladies and shake her by the legs--Empty. All the same, I feel sick touching them. They're the oldschool variety with rubber heads and legs. I drop her back inside and zip the satchel shut, resolving to change the subject. "Why don't you tell me what you taught in class today?"
She is staring down over the guardrail at the water. "It's really too difficult to put in words. I'll just have to show you sometime."
"Well, give me the gist of it. How many moves do you figure you know in all?"
Five or six weeks ago, Eunice spotted a flyer while she and I were spinning loads at the coin laundry on Wells like we do every Thursday. It was for something called Aikido, a Japanese style of self-defense where little offense is involved and you merely try to channel your aggressor's momentum against him or throw it off target so that he/she loses control, topples to the ground, and in some cases--if you've mastered the art--seriously injures themself. It seemed perfect for Eunice, who loves to fraternize with just about anyone (doll-peddling perverts not excluded), and on top of that, according to the flyer, little physical fitness was actually required. Not that I doubt Eunice could hold her own against any average girl if she wanted to, but it's so thoroughly impossible to imagine her in a less-than-benign state who's to say for sure? Anyway, after the month's worth of classes were up, Eunice had made so many friends and was actually so distraught to have graduated that they let her sign on as a volunteer instructor for the next batch every Monday. Apparently she'd shown quite a knack for upsetting equilibriums.
Not to sound like a negative jackass, but I always wondered if this is in fact the case or just a matter of people liking Eunice and condescending to her, as people are prone to do. So when we're about two-thirds of the way across the bridge, I stop in my tracks and lean the satchel down against the guardrail. Eunice pauses too. We face each other, sweat plummeting down my shiny forehead from the plastered tips of my bangs while besides a little flushing of the cheeks, she in her sweatshirt seems hardly discomfited. "Teach me something," I say.
"Here?"
"Yes, right now. Show me a move. Tell me what to do, how to come at you, and then deflect it. Nice and broken down so I can pay attention."
Eunice shrugs. Her shrugs are never apathetic, but always come across as: Yes, that's something to do now isn't it? Why didn't I think of that? "Okay."
"Oh, and Eunice, I know this goes without saying but try not to throw me in the road."
"I won't, Humphrey. Please get in a stance."
"I don't know what a stance is. You have to show me."
"Just a regular stance, like say you're going to punch me. Haven't you ever been in a fight?"
"Er, I suppose." So I make like I'm going to punch her but freeze myself in the action's premature stages with my left foot forward, weight resting on my right, and fist in the air at about chest height, cocked back. Traffic whizzes past just inches to my left; admittedly, I falter in my confidence that this is the healthiest interest I could be taking in my sister's affairs. Eunice just stands straight, hands at her side, and doesn't even bother to unlimber her purse.
"Now slowly," she says. "Come slowly and run your fist right towards my face."
So I do. And at first I think I'm going to be able to clearly analyze the mechanics of this Aikido defense as Eunice's right arm stops my fist, pulls it down, and her left goes for mine, gripping the elbow. After that, I'm lost. I feel the elbow make contact with my ear and my face comes harrowingly close to scraping the narrow pavement. One of my lumbar muscles goes berserk and the next thing I know I'm on my back with half my head jutting past the curb, cars slowing down to take a look at this fool's prostration by the whims of a woman in a cat sweater.
Two seagulls swim through the clear blue sky. I blink several times to ward off an army of squirming, psychedelic amoebae.
"Humphrey, are you okay?" She tugs on my right arm, limp as a fish, and shakes it urgently. "Oh no, I went too fast! Did you smack your head?" I manage to promise I'm alright as she pulls me into a sitting postition. "Yeah, kick his a*s!" a rabble of boys across the bridge are jeering. I'm not embarassed, I just want to go home and sleep off this brittle narcosis before my shift tonight.
"Hand me that friggin' satchel, would you? I'm fine."
The boys start applauding as I brush myself off ("Gotcho self schooled, boy!") and quench Eunice's apologies by telling her that the demonstration was, in fact, "very enlightening" and that I'm glad I don't have to worry about her walking the streets alone at night. Though her brow stays buckled with concern, this compliment seems to loosen it a notch.
After the bridge and a block-wide Catholic clinic, we are allowed some shade. North Ave. curves into a green little arbor at the summit of Kilbourn Park where tomorrow and every Tuesday until August there will be live music and a sizable plot of land is designated to the communal garden. Green veggies already sprout behind the chickenwire. The trunks of the canopic maples and elm trees frame Milwaukee's multihued corporate skyline, a much preferable concert backdrop, in my opinion, to some 100'x100' projector screen where you can gag on each ululating uvula and smell each widening pit stain.
But just as quickly as it came, everything changes.
Live in Milwaukee for a month or so and you'll warm to the idea that a single step can veto what f*****g world you're in. The threshold in this instance is Holton St., which bisects Riverwest, home to a plethora of well-off college kids, from Harmabee, a standard degenerating black ghetto but not the worst of the worst. This stretch of North Ave. I commute through every day is right off the interstate, and lots of upstanding people have to pass by and look at it if they want to get to the happening bar scene at our backs; hence, cop beats are more frequent here. Criminals generally do their business farther west, past the overpass, or 'Deep North'. Still, Aikido or no Aikido, if it's after dark, I go to Eunice--never her to me.
One thing I can say, rent is dirt cheap by city standards and we're talking a 1000 square-foot duplex, the top floor of which I inhabit alone. As of now, the bottom is vacant. A 'For Rent' sign has stood in the window for two weeks, ever since Jorge Guajardo, my landlord, had to kick three old fogies out for skimping on rent eight months in a row. Poor Guajardo, it should never have got that far, and I know the eviction still weighs heavy on his conscience. I was a little sorry to see them go too, particularly because they were so aged and rundown it had to be a pain in the a*s for them being homeless. I like to think they had friends, though sometimes no friends is healthier, as my eye can attest. The woman--there were two men and a woman--was a recovering meth addict whose age was hard to guess because her appearance was so sallow yet her personality so young and insouciant, however I do recall a 30 year-old daughter dropping by time to time. I won't speak ill of her. She was good for long, darkly humorous yarns about the past, and the two men made her look normal by a lightyear.
Lou and Gunther were their names, a comedy match made in heaven. Gunther was a beanpole intellectual with an incongruous potbelly who wore a broad-brimmed fishing hat, a bathrobe, and nothing else. When I happened to let slip I was a prospective screenwriter, he provided me every chance I got with "material" he'd dreamed up the night before. Some were amusing, very Woody Allen-style plots. In fact, one time I think he inadvertantly pitched me Manhattan Murder Mystery except with the setting moved to suburban Denver, where he'd grown up. Lou was his lifelong friend and Trisha, the woman's, lover. One of Trisha's main grievances was that he like to dip his fingers in the peanut butter at precisely 2 AM, then waddle back and attempt to rouse her with fervent, oily come-ons. Lou was in the Navy and tried to tell me he could speak nine languages when all along he could barely master English. He was a pathological hoarder (which didn't help their standing with Guajardo) and would often sit out in the pseudo-driveway (the entry is fenced over and there never was a garage, just a small toolshed) reading yellowed, crusty newspapers from the 70s. One afternoon he asked me if I thought Spiro Agnew would make a good president.
Things got quiet after they left, but I don't particularly care. The smell of bacon doesn't greet me on my early returns from work anymore, which is just fine because I'd grown to resent that one ex-junky and two nutjobs could afford bacon every morning and I couldn't.
Woe is me, right?
Eunice and I turn right off North onto Palmer, then two blocks down, another left, and finally the blistering walkabout is over. I peel off my David Bowie T-shirt shirt and sling it over my shoulder. As I unhook the chain-link gate, Eunice points out something in the adjacent parking lot that belongs to a shabby apartment complex with the nerve to call itself Carriage Manor. Without even bothering to form complete sentences about what's drawn her gaze, she makes her way over and leaves me to follow. This pointless satchel strap is biting into my shoulder and my knees feel wobbly. At the corner of the parking lot are three dumpsters arranged like a horseshoe. The lids are all thrown open because the trash is stacked so high, only I wouldn't exactly call it trash. What's burgeoning are actually neat stacks of laundry: mensware--shirts, slacks, sweaters, coats and vests.
Eunice is agog. "Who would throw out all these perfectly good clothes, Humphrey?"
"Someone probably died, a tenant from that building over there, and this is all his crap. Come on Eunice, I need to go to bed."
"First the doll and now this," she bristles to herself, not hearing my complaint. "What a wasteful world we live in. Waste, waste, waste . . ."
She may have a point.
The garments appear in fine condition. I mosey around and fold them back here and there to make sure. Last year, I had quite a lucrative racket going at the Brady St. Market Festival, pretending to be a certified vendor and selling off miscellaneous garbage that'd been piled in the attic and to which my three co-tenants laid no claim. No one, not even the law surprisingly, lifted a finger to stop me . . . The next festival must be rolling around soon.
"Eunice," I say. "Come up with me. We'll get some garbage bags and move these duds up to the attic. You're absolutely right, it is a waste. Maybe we can ensure they find an appreciative home and make a buck for ourselves on the side."
That being enthusiatically decided, we go back to the gate and climb a precarious wooden staircase affixed to the moldering blue clapboard facade of 926 East Wright. At the balcony where I fumble with my keys, the eaves of the roof sag so close to our heads we could, if so possessed, reach up and scoop a handful of slimy leaves from the gutter. The door swings open into a blast furnace. Down a short bare hallway of mintgreen walls and chocolate shag carpeting is my kitchen. A table is pushed up between two east windows overlooking the lot of sartorial dumpsters and a gravel alleyway running in between. I have minimal counter space but a small pantry, and cupboards surmount the refrigerator and stove. Two rooms lead off the kitchen, a bathroom and a living room. The bathroom also holds another doorway--doorless, as it were--and through that, right-angled stairs penetrate the attic.
After pouring us each a glass of water, I toss the satchel aside and fetch the garbage bags from under the sink, taking the whole box down because there's no fair estimate how many of the clothes are fit for appropriation or how much space they'll take up. We end up taking them all and stacking five swollen bags under the staircase for me to transfer into the attic at a time of my leisure. I'm not so bent on my scheme that I care if steals them. In fact, it'd probably amuse me.
I ask Eunice if she would like something to eat, banking that she'll give her usual polite refusal, since the pantry I mentioned may as well be a mouse hole there's that many scrapings stashed away.
"No thank you Humphrey, I'm on a diet."
"Diet?" I'm too tired to react half as sharply as I mean to, raking a soggy tangle of hair off my face with one hand. "What the hell do--"
"Oh Humphrey, you're bleeding!" She pounces on my head and I about stumble backwards over the bottom step in surprise. "I did hurt you, didn't I? But you wouldn't admit it."
"No, Eunice--"
"Are you able to see straight?"
"I can see fine."
"You must hate me!"
"Easy damn it, I say it wasn't you! This happened earlier, before we even met up."
"Really? It's a nasty gash, Humphrey, what did you do?"
"I was shot."
"Stop your kidding. You don't have to feel embarrassed. I hurt myself all the time too!" She pulls up one pantsleg. "Just this morning even I--"
"I'm not embarrassed, I really was shot, with an Airsoft gun. You know Zeke?"
"Ezekiel shot you?"
"He was out of his mind! Stark naked and hanging out the window like a kid's pissed-on comforter. Soon to be married, that a*****e, remember? Acts like a--like a--He better not have any kids, that's all I have to say. They'll all grow up to be sadists, like him."
We extrapolate this discourse on the way to the 21 bus stop, which will take her down by Marquette. Eunice doesn't board anywhere near me; I cover $100 of her rent every month to see to that, not because I don't like her or wouldn't enjoy having tater-tot casserole prepared for me every night, but because we already spent enough of our teen years skittering around this slum like hyperneurotic white beetles when the folks decided to make the move from backwater Hingham since all Eunice's doctors were here anyway and those bills were "b******s enough" without the rising cost of petroleum to account for. Living in the city, a car becomes obsolete, provided there's nothing or nobody to engage you on the outside.
The bus comes shortly and I walk home alone.

Two women are sunbathing side-by-side in lawn chairs positioned across the sidewalk since frontyards are a fable in this neighborhood, and so I step off the curb to circle around them. The spray-on glaze of their tight stomachs is being sweated off in streaks, exposing a smoother, richer core. Both wear glitzy sunglasses that hide their eyes while they chat breezily, but a small smile playing on the left one's lips tells me to look away. Down the block, a man is hosing suds off his car parked on the street while two kids run laps around it, lending their own Super Soaker streams and emitting shrill wails when they get blasted by daddy's hose. Another man jogging towards me in bright yellow gym shorts and put together like 50 Cent nods hello. Soon I hear him pause to address the bikini-clad sunbathers, his rubber-soled Reeboks and conch calves still padding away at the asphalt in place.
Inside, I have another tall glass of cloudy tap water and am adjusting the fan in my bedroom's windowsill, the blinds drawn low as they can go, when it comes to mind that I still have Eunice's satchel. Damn. Drained as I am, I'm not going to get a wink of sleep unless I run through one last cursory inspection; so I head back to the kitchen where I left it, unzip the main pocket again, and dump out all the Barbies on my oak, ring-stained tabletop.
I run my finger along the seams, press the satchel flat on the floor and frisk it all over with ironic symettry to the treatment of its prior owner, but there's nothing. Still, I want the thing out of my place. This flat looks dumpy enough without it. I sweep just about every day, thinking maybe I'll sweep the network of linoleum cracks right off the floor--but s**t, I could be doing a hell of a lot worse. I mean at least I'm not short on space. Truthfully, I've got more than I can fill figuring the attic. My entertainment center and TV and Play Station 2 and loveseat are all set up in the living room, as well as my respectable DVD collection of about twenty or so--respectable in quality rather than quantity. I'm a huge patron of the Criterion Collection. The loveseat I pulled off a curb and had to borrow Gunther's toolbox to take it apart. Then, with the thing halved, I coerced him into helping me muscle each part up the stairs separately and as recompense bought him all the beer he needed to stay drunk while his back spasmed for weeks thereafter. The oak table and chairs were bought at rummage sales. These articles comprise all the furniture I own. My clothes are folded in milk crates on the bedroom floor.
I rise back on my feet and kick the satchel underneath the table for now, staring at this weird mass grave of women where I normally eat. Out of all the lissome little w****s, one in particular catches my eye because she is the only singleton to bear extraneous markings. Drawn on the side of her neck is a tiny black heart. I pick her up to inspect further, realizing the mark is not drawn but lightly engraved. I run my finger across and wouldn't rule out an acutal tattoo gun being the source for this preferential treatment . . . What else? Something else must be different. I think about flushing the whole dumb scene and staggering back to bed. Instead, I wrench off her head and in the same impetuous motion, twist her upside down, watching something spill out onto my floor too fast for me to catch it.
Bass tones hammer from a custom Lincoln roaring out of the Carriage Manor parking lot. I scratch myself and go fetch the broom, a richer man.