The Very Best of Things

Pick love or money.

The Very Best of Things

His eyes, although closed tightly, suggested some mysterious pain that must have been as gray as his ratty hair. He never looked up as I walked by, and he didn't seem to care when I didn't bless his open guitar case with the sound of clanking change. He just kept fingering his old guitar and crooning a love song about Halle Berry �" a woman so famous he’d almost certainly never met her. The dull nylon strings buzzed subtly from what I presumed to be years of overuse. As an amateur guitarist, I couldn't help but wonder how much difficulty he must have had tuning it.

I imagined him waking early, at dawn every day, and tilting his ear near the old Ibanez's neck, his lonely chocolate eyes examining the faded sunburst finish on the guitar’s body as he plucked and tuned each string. I imagined his defeat when he first noticed the instrument’s gloss had been worn away, like how everything becomes dull in the moments before a snowstorm. I could picture his moment of realization, his frustration, when the guitar’s aged strings could no longer be tuned perfectly. I imagined that frustration growing into despair as his only tool for monetary gain began to fail him, when the case grew perpetually emptier of change.

“Love isn’t scary,” he sang, “just as long as I have my Halle, oh, my Halle Berry.”

His voice was raspy, perhaps the result of years of drinking, smoking, and sleeping in the elements. I felt guilty for stereotyping him, however, and began to focus instead on how pleasant he sounded, his voice not unlike John Fogerty’s, or Bob Seger’s, or even mine. I began to hum Seger’s classic, “Beautiful Loser,” as I continued on by.

Penny had once told me I should pursue music. “I love when you sing,” she’d said. “It reminds me of summer. You could make people happy.”

I’d chosen to walk the eight blocks to Penny’s house on the city’s west side. In fact, most days, walking anywhere was preferable to hailing a cab or taking the subway, depending on distance and weather, of course. I didn’t own a car for the same reason I avoided taxis: the streets were constantly congested and not worth the stress. The subway was almost always congested, too, each car packed with more people than seats, everyone standing and sitting around, coughing and sneezing as if in an over-crowded ER. It was gross. And the children always whined and cried or spoke louder than train whistles. Also, walking was cheaper than paying for gas or fares, and I would’ve done just about anything to avoid children.

I came across the old guitarist after six blocks. I’d probably never seen him before, but I couldn’t be sure because Chicago was full of men and women just like him. They lined the streets like children at a parade, but instead of candy, the homeless were eager for someone to throw them a dime or two. Many of them played guitars, too, hoping to impress a few passersby; hoping to make a few dollars every day; hoping to survive.

I imagined what this particular old man must have looked like in the middle 1970s, when he was young and exuberant; when he was confident and hopeful; when neither his circumstances nor his guitar had yet failed him. I imagined a friendly smile on a handsome caramel face, well before exposure and time took their toll, well before he lost sight of his life's dream, whatever that might have been.

I wondered what music had inspired him, and if he was, indeed, a Seger fan. I wondered if he’d ever seen a rock or folk concert, or if he’d been old enough to attend Woodstock in 1969. I wondered how long he’d been on the street and how much money he’d made over the years.

I’d been born and raised in the city, but I never cared much about homeless people until I heard the man’s dedication to Halle Berry. In fact, I wasn’t sure I’d ever acknowledged before that the homeless were human, comprised of the same blood and bone as me. The old man’s song confirmed this for me, as well as the notion that even homeless people long for love, perhaps even more than they do money.

I thought about Penny and hoped the old man knew tangible love beyond what he sang about in his song, that someone had shown him more happiness than Halle Berry's face on a billboard or movie screen could. I pictured his arms around a young woman, his fingers as sleek and gentle in her hair as on the neck of the Ibanez. I could hear them laughing. I could hear their joy.

As I continued my jaunt to Penny’s house, prodding somewhat quickly, his song gradually faded into the distant din of the city, overcome by the wail of sirens and the obnoxious sound of numerous road-ragers honking their car horns. I heard creaking brakes and shouting. I wished I could still hear, instead, the somehow pleasant buzz of the old homeless man's overused strings.

I looked behind me. The sidewalk vanished into the distance like an old drawing I’d once seen of a railroad track. The artist, my old freshman roommate at DePaul, Jeb, had explained to me in our dorm one night that the railroad was a metaphor for life. “We can run the straight and narrow,” he’d said, “and still, eventually, we’ll disappear into the horizon.” He explained how people we meet along the way only get a glimpse of a very small section of us, and that no person can every truly know another.

I was only eighteen at the time, eleven years younger than I was when I walked by the guitarist. As a freshman, I was too immature to see the truth in Jeb’s work, but old enough to recognize melodrama. As an art major myself, I’d also thought Jeb’s piece to be incredibly cliché, if well-drawn and somewhat effective. However, the idea never destroyed my hope, never sent my faith in the idea of knowing someone �" loving them �" tumbling down like a Jenga tower. Meeting Penny later that semester only solidified my hope, and our nearly six years together did nothing to destroy it, either.

“You’re full of s**t, Jeb,” I’d said in response to the explanation he gave for his drawing. “It’s people like you that make me not want to have kids.”

He laughed as if he agreed with me, but replied, “I’m just playing the game, man. That’s all. Just like you. Just like anyone.”

I never saw trust, or love, or companionship as games. They weren’t things we could put back in the box or take out again. We couldn’t win or lose at them. We couldn’t roll the dice and land on a space that made everything okay, and we certainly couldn’t have our hearts broken just by drawing the wrong card out of a deck.

I knew now, at twenty-nine, that Penny had only broken my heart because I’d broken hers first. I accepted it. I forgave her. And that’s why I chose to visit her today after being apart, though separated only by a couple miles, for all these years.

My thoughts drifted back to that day �" our last day together, five years earlier �" when our lives changed forever…

Penny stood like a lawn ornament, her feet fixed into her parents’ front yard as if cemented in, waiting for me as I approached up the driveway. She was as gorgeous as ever, like when you see that perfect sunset and you can’t bring yourself to look away until it’s gone. But something was different. Something was wrong. I moved closer.

Her crystalline eyes were two pools filling slowly, as if her icy blue retinas were melting beneath the sunset, ready to overflow and collapse down her cheeks. She was six inches or so shorter than my six-two, but she seemed even smaller somehow, frail. Her lemon hair was windblown and frizzed, and dull, as if she hadn’t washed it in days. I pulled her into my arms and welcomed her head against my chest.

“I don’t care what it is,” I told her. “I don’t care how bad. We will get through it.”

“Not this,” she half-sobbed. “Not you.”

“Just tell me. I’m here. I’ll always be here.”

She pulled away then, slowly, like stiff Velcro, as if she knew it would be the last time. “You aren’t working. It’s been two years since we graduated.”

“Times are slow. There isn’t much demand for people in my profession.”

She shook her head. Her face pinched together as she strained to tell me the news. “Then…work at a restaurant. Or a gas station. Just until you get on your feet, until you find something more suitable.”

“Please,” I demanded. My voice was harsh, blunt. “Just tell me what’s bothering you.”

Her lips moved then and mouthed something infinite, something catastrophic, something that made the earth beneath me crack and open. My bones were glass and I shattered.

“No,” I snapped, though she hadn’t spoken a word. The answer was in her eyes. It was on the tip of her tongue, cold and white and mysterious like the first snowflake before a terrible storm, and I’d seen it when she’d moved her lips. “No,” was all I could say.

We both stood there, forever, as if time had ended. It was worse than finding out someone close to me had died. It was as if a star had burned out. I had created life and yet, in the process, destroyed my own, reinvented it unwillingly, given it a new meaning that I didn’t believe in.

“I’m keeping it,” she said finally. “I can’t tell you why. I just…want to.”

“It’s a mistake,” I blurted. “I can’t do this.”

“This could end up being the best thing for us.”

I waved a hand at her, dismissing her, disgusted with her for reasons I couldn’t understand. Perhaps, instead, I was furious with myself, and in my desperation decided to unleash it on her. “You said it yourself, Penny. You said I don’t have a job. I don’t have any money saved up. I have nothing. How can I support a family? What do you expect of me? What do you expect will happen if you keep the goddamn thing?”

She shifted, almost stumbled, and her face twisted as wretchedly as if someone had flayed the skin off the bottoms of her feet. I’d never known before how capable I was of inflicting such pain. “I’m keeping it,” she said again. Her eyes were sad, yet defiant.

“Penny,” I pleaded. “You know I want you. I want you more than anything in this world, more than I can express to you. Let’s just…please…make this go away.”

New tears welled in her eyes. “You need to be the father of this child. If you care about me at all. Just please, grow up. Be a man.”

Rage. Fury. My heart pounded bass drumbeats in my head, growing to a palpable crescendo. There was no reason in her, no compromises. I had no say. She had made the decision without me. She had chosen some undeveloped, unnamed larva over me, over our relationship, over our life together. She was willing to risk it all, to risk her dreams, to risk mine, in order to keep this thing, this parasite that was already feeding on our future.

My hand flew out, slicing the evening air, ripping holes in the atmosphere, a rock of rage and despair, a solid mass with no concern for gravity, a meteorite that struck the planet of her face and left a crater that might never be repaired.

She put a hand to her cheek, shocked, hurt. She stared at me. A shadow fell over her icy eyes. “Leave,” she said. “Leave now, and walk away knowing that there is nothing left in you worth loving.”

My heart exploded. The gravity of what I’d done hadn’t yet registered in me. So I left.

Penny’s street looked almost the same now, five years later. Some of the trees that had been young back then were now grown to heights of ten feet or more. It occurred to me that I hadn’t once returned here since that day, that I hadn’t even been curious enough to walk by, to sneak a glance in the front window, to see Penny’s beautiful face again, to see my daughter. She’d written an email to me once to tell me that Violet had been born, and that she was healthy. I’d never responded and today, more than four years after Violet’s birth, I was showing up unannounced.

I walked up the steps of what used to be Penny’s parents’ house, but was now hers, as listed in my phonebook. They’d often talked about leaving it to her when her father retired. I wondered how life was treating them, and if her father had, indeed, retired from the bank and moved to Florida, as they had always planned.

I rang the doorbell. I saw Penny’s face. She looked young, the same as five years ago. There were tears in her eyes. I loved her.

"You can't be here," she said.

"I miss you."

She hesitated. "I miss you, too. But you have to leave."

“But you know me,” I pleaded. “And I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry.”

She looked down. She took a long breath as if she were hoping to inhale me, as if she thought I could save her life like I so desperately wanted to. I yearned to be a part of her, to see who she was in her entirety, to contradict Jeb’s cynical claims �" to prove how essential it is to cling to hope and to trust that love exists beyond human definition, and that it is the very best of things.

I pictured myself entering her lungs like vapor, both gas and liquid at once, surging my way into her veins, through her body, pushing and pushing until I finally entered her heart, a warm, bright place where I would live forever and ever, far from the parasitic jaws of shame and worry that had fed on me for years.

“I’m tired of being ashamed,” I continued. “I’m tired of this regret.” I dared to reach out and touch her forehead with the backs of my fingers, pushing away a stubborn lock of yellow hair from above her eye. “You know me,” I repeated.

She looked at me. Her tears had dried. In their place, I caught a glimpse of the familiar shadow that had been present years earlier when she’d told me to leave, and that I wasn’t worth loving. “Not anymore,” she whispered, and then disappeared behind the door.

The door closed with a reluctant click. I leaned against it and shouted desperately: “I have money!” I slapped the door with my palm. “Please! I’m a photographer for the Tribune! It’s a great job, Penny! I have money!”

I told myself I'd never leave, but I did anyways after some time.

On my way home, I stopped at my favorite Mexican restaurant. After I was seated, I stared at the empty seat across from me, a place where Penny’s smile was no longer real and the sound of her laugh faded away from my mind like morning fog or distant guitar chords.

I tried to remember good times, like when she dropped her cheesy nachos into her lap, but I could only recall snippets, as if I were seeing my memories through a stranger’s eyes. I was an old log in the woods: hollow, empty, and forgotten.

During my dinner, I couldn’t understand why nothing smelled or tasted the same as it had when Penny had come with me, as if everything had lost definition. Dissatisfied, I asked for a carryout box, paid my bill, and left.

I retraced my route home. To my surprise, the old homeless guitarist was still on the same corner, this time strumming a tune about whiskey. I noticed a few more quarters and even a few dollar bills in his guitar case. I knelt in front of him and watched him play. When he was finished, he opened his eyes and looked at me. He smiled and tipped an invisible cap. I did the same in response.

“I have money,” I told him, but he only shrugged.

“I’m hungry,” he said and then pointed at my carryout box.

I took a crisp fifty dollar bill from my wallet and dropped it in his case. “I only want to feel important,” I said.

He shrugged again. “I suppose we all want that.” He climbed to his feet, still clutching his guitar. “Where you coming from?” he asked.

I smiled at him. “There’s this girl…”

He squinted. “Who?”

“Just some girl.”

“Her name?”

I laughed. “She’s someone I love but can’t have. My own Halle Berry, I guess.”

He waved his free hand at me. “Bah. Halle’s old news around here. I’ve been playing that song for years now. No one cares. Anyways, I wasn’t talking about that. I was wondering where you got the food.”

I looked at my carryout box. “It’s Mexican. It didn’t taste right.”

“Sounds great.”

I handed the box over and smiled. “Say, do you have any kids?”

He laughed, as if my question had surprised him. “Are you serious?”

“I do,” I told him. “A daughter. Violet.” I felt an odd tug in my chest, as if I had lost some part of my ability to breathe. I realized that there are some mistakes we never stop paying for.

“Me too,” he answered finally. “A son. I tell you, if I had any money back then, things would’ve been different.” He snickered sarcastically. “I might even know his name.”

“Money doesn’t solve everything, you know.”

He shook his head, packed his guitar, and began to limp away, his feet no doubt sore from years without proper shoes to protect them from the elements. I watched as he turned around again to face me. “You have no clue,” he said. “What’s more important than money these days?”

“Love is,” I said. “It always has been. I just wish I had someone to share it with.” I hesitated.  “Enjoy that fifty.”

He shook his head again and continued on.

I walked away in the opposite direction. My mind drifted again. I dreamed up a scenario in which the old man and I were racing side-by-side, sprinting toward an invisible finish line. Our hearts were pounding. We struggled to breathe. We pushed our muscles to their limits and beyond. Fire burned under our skin. But we ran on and on, each of us unable to gain a step on the other, but each of us straining to get to the finish line first �" each of us straining to fall into the place where Halle Berry would forever stand in wait to make our dreams of lasting  love come true.

Author's Note

This is my final contribution to my first-year fiction seminar in graduate school. Enjoy!