"You Shall Know Our Velocity" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eggers Dave)WEDNESDAYThe light was screaming through the windows, intent and wild, and I opened my portal's eyelid a quick few inches and we were coming at Africa at 300 mph, the ocean below striking the coast of Dakar with desperation. The neat shadow of the plane jumbled over the city's shoreline, the buildings glowing in tan and white and standing still as the water and wind came to them with all the world's fury – and then died. We were somewhere else. What were we doing here? We had no idea. Hand was awake. "Senegal," I said. "Senegal," Hand said. We had pictured Senegal green but this was tan. "West Africa I guess is tan," he said. "I really figured on green for Senegal." There was no gangway to the terminal, just a stairway to the tarmac. The air was warm and the wind was warm; the sky was clear, blue but bleached, and the sun hung still, bored and unchallenged. The baggage handlers, with green kneepads, watched us through their goggles, hands resting on their heads. "We're in Africa," Hand said. We stepped into the airport. "This is an African airport," he said. It was tiny, and open everywhere. It looked like a minimall. We sat on the cool linoleum floor and filled out our customs forms. When I was done, Hand rested his head on the wall. "I can't believe I got to Africa," he said. "I know," I said. "How did we get to Africa?" he said. "Already I don't want to leave. Did you feel that air? It's different. It's African air. It's like mixed with the sun more. Like our air isn't mixed as well with the sun. Here they mix it perfectly. The sun's in the wind, the sun's in your breaths." "I'm glad you could come," I said. We passed customs and the cabbies didn't touch us because we had no bags. Carradine was talking to a young lacy white woman, Blanche on holiday, too fair-skinned and fragile to be both traveling alone and sane. What was she doing here? Hair like dead brown grass. A large Senegalese woman in brilliant yellow appeared before us and asked us something. "What?" we said. "Wheech otel?" "The Independent," Hand said, cribbing it from a huge backlighted ad above us. "I take you," she said, pointing to a small bus out front. We asked her if we could get some money first. "Fine," she said, with an annoyed look at her watch. We were hers already, her children, and we were holding her up. We cashed $2,000 in traveler's checks – We stepped up into the bus. We were its only passengers. The woman sat next to the driver, and the driver never spoke. The landscape on the way into the city was dry and dusty, the color of stripped pine. The road gave way to shoulders of sand and adobe homes, condos next to shanties, the condos given ears by hundreds of small satellite dishes. Billboard PSAs featured Senegalese citizens frowning upon littering and public urination, and encouraged the drinking of milk. The road was busy with small blue buses and BMWs. Two cops rode by on matching scooters. When the minibus stopped at a light our open windows were full of faces, mothers with babies walking up and down the highway median pointing into their infants' tiny mouths. "Bebbe! Bebbe!" they yelled. Boys below them hawked candy and mobile phones. The babies were swarmed by flies. Everything was too fast. We weren't ready. "Give em something!" Hand yelled. "You!" "You!" Cars came the other way at 50 mph. We had money and wanted to give it to them – "Bebbe! Bebbe!" The shuttle woman was watching us struggle. Why wasn't she telling us not to give them money? She was supposed to tell us not to give them money. We expect guides to ward off their needy countrymen. Now the driver was watching, too. I smiled more and tried to look confused, flustered. I was innocent! Hand was looking flustered with me, though he was still only half-awake and his bedhead was ridiculous but finally the shuttle lurched forward and we drove on, until the highway narrowed. "Bebbe! Bebbe!" "Meester! Meester!" A gold sedan slipped in front of us, its driver on the phone and gesturing with fists. Soon the road was narrow and wound through the city, all of Dakar's citizens walking in their flat huge colors and selling small things. Men carried bike tires to repair shops. Men sold meat from carts, while others hoisted sacks of oranges to passing cars. No one was sweating, and no one was smoking. Outside a gated compound, a tousled-haired white tourist in an enormous Fubu football jersey was talking to two uniformed men with assault rifles while a group of students from Italy – Hand was sure it was Italy – in crisp white tops and black pants and skirts lightly dusted, whinnied by on mopeds. All of Dakar's residents, it seemed, were selling objects, or moving objects from one location to another – a city of small favors and short errands. The hotel, in the left-middle of Dakar, was dark inside, the lobby low and sleek and smooth with black marble, all of it cool, safe, immaculate. The reception man was tall and wiry and wore the same silver-framed glasses as the two tall and wiry reception clerks sharing his counter. He laughed at Hand's French and gave us his English. We asked for two beds and dropped our bags in the room, the view bright and facing both the city of yellows and whites and to our left the sea, all violet and sugar. "What time is it?" I asked. "Ten A.M." "How do you feel?" Hand asked. "I feel good. You ready?" "I'm dead but we should go." We walked out of the lobby and into central Dakar looking for a travel agent to book a flight out. We wanted all the information on all flights leaving Senegal; we wanted Madagascar or Rwanda, tomorrow. We'd set up the flight now, then look around Senegal today and tonight, ready to fly in the morning. On the street, immediately outside the hotel parking lot, we were besieged, men stepping up and striding with us, matching our pace, walking backward, asking "Where are you from? English?" while shaking Hand's hand. Looking at me: "Spanish?" I always get Spanish, with the dark hair, the eyelashes. "American." "AmeriKAHN, ah. Welcome to Dakar! You have accident! Your face! Need mask like Phantom! Ha ha! You like Dakar? How long you been in Dakar?" "Twenty minutes." "Oh haha. Twenty minutes! Very good. Joke! Welcome! Welcome! Do you need taxi? Tour? I -" And we ducked into the travel agency. Hand tried his French with the first agent but to little effect. We waited for one who spoke English. "I thought you said you spoke French," I said. "I do. Some." "Your dad's French, right?" "Not, like, "What are you wearing?" "What?" He was wearing a shirt declaring I AM PROUD OF MY BLACK HERITAGE. On a blond man with swishy pants it looked all wrong. "Where'd you get that?" "Thrift store." "No one's going to get the joke here. Or whatever it is. It's not even a joke." "No one will know. And it's not a joke. I liked the shirt. Did you see the back?" I nodded slowly, to communicate the pain it caused me. The back said ROGERS PARK WOMEN'S VOLLEYBALL. An English-speaker arrived and sat down at the desk opposite us. Hand leaned over her desk. "We want to find out what airplanes are leaving Dakar today and tomorrow," he said. "Where do you want to go?" asked the agent, a stately woman in cosmic blue. "We are not sure," Hand said, in English. "We want to see our options. Do you have that kind of in-for-ma-tion? All of the avail-a-ble flights?" This is when Hand started speaking with a Senegalese accent, without contractions and with breaks between syllables. It was almost a British accent, but then a slower version, with him nodding a lot. "Sir, where is it you want to go?" she asked. She too thought we were assholes. "We want to see all of the options and then to choose from them," he said. The woman stared. "You have to tell me where you want to go." Her English was good, her forehead high and tranquil. "Can you not first show us the flights out?" "No. I cannot." We thanked her and walked out - "Hello!" said a new man. "I see you at hotel. I also stay at the hotel. Mister has been in accident! [Now looking closely at me, too closely, examining like a med student] Mister is a toughman! You two party guys out for good time! So how long you in Dakar I know!" – and back to the hotel and straight to one of the two auto-rental desks. We'd go back to the airport, book a flight out, and then see basically all of Senegal, by car, this afternoon. At the counter, a round and broad-smiling man. We asked for a small car. He dispatched an assistant to get one. At the other rental desk, across the lobby delta, a man dressed for tennis was berating a different, smaller, clerk. The tennis-man was smoking and talking loudly and making a show of being amazed at the prices. He was speaking English and sounded American and looked it. His socks were white and Van Horned up around his calves. We hid behind our backpacks. With Hand watching for the car, I went into the hotel's business center to get on the web and check on flights out. A huge middle-aged Senegalese man was using the computer; there were three women around him waiting for a turn. But the man saw me and motioned me to come, that he was almost done. I smiled, trying to indicate, having no French, that he should stay and I could come back later, any time. He waved again, emphatically. I stepped over and smiled, hoping he'd give me English. He gave me French. "Sorry," I said. "No parlez pat francais. Mon frer -" I said, gesturing somewhere toward the door, in a way intended to mean that I had a friend who spoke French, an old friend – from kindergarten! from birth! – but he was out in the lobby waiting for a Taurus. I'm not sure if it came across. "English then," he said heartily. "These are my wives," he said, waving his hand over the three women surrounding him, all very pretty, all very tall. I half-laughed, in an attempt to split the difference between disbelief and courtesy. Three wives? Really? In the blush of the moment, I had to act impressed by him and respectful of them, without getting whiplash. The wives were smirking and talking to each other. They were dressed magnificently, one in the yellow of a rose, one in a rich and ancient orange, the third in a late-evening blue – three queens sitting on folding tables around an eight-year-old Macintosh SE being tapped at by their much older and heavy-sweating husband. "It will be just a moment," he said. "Where are you from? Let me guess. Texas." I lied. "Right! How'd you know?" I gave myself a slight twang. "Ah, Texas. I love Texas. I have been to Midland." "Oh," I said. "Did you meet -" "I am so sorry," he said, not having the time to get into it. "I must finish this note." He pointed to the screen. In a few minutes he finished and apologized and I apologized and thanked him and he and his wives left, the last wife, in yellow, floating around the corner in an ethereal way like a priest in his soutane. I wanted to go with the man and his wives. Would he take us into his grand and heavily guarded pink stucco home and leave us free to roam the grounds, to lounge by the pool as his wives or servants brought us beverages and lotion? Together we'd play squash. Maybe he played paddle tennis - Hand came into the room with two liters of bottled water, so cold. I held the plastic bottle and it made throaty sounds of deep satisfaction. "The car, it is coming," Hand said. "You have to stop that." "What is it you want I stop?" "I'm losing my fucking mind. Use contractions, goddammit. You sound like an alien." Online we checked planes leaving from Dakar. Nothing, almost nothing, without Paris first. We couldn't get to Rwanda without Paris. We couldn't get to Yemen without Paris. We could get to Madagascar, but only through South Africa. To get anywhere would take a full day or more. And visas. We couldn't even cross into The Gambia, the country stuck inside Senegal like a tumor, without a visa. Just getting across the continent, to Cairo, could occupy our whole week. Could we just drive from Dakar to Cairo? We couldn't. Mauritania wanted a visa, same with Mali. Neither was recommended for drivers. "Fuck," I said. "We're fucked." "Yes!" There was now a man on a computer behind us, one that had been turned off when I walked in. It was the dressed-for-tennis American man from the rental desk. It was his "My friend's in the Paris to Dakar rally," he said. "The big car race thing?" Hand said. "Yeah. He's in seventh place." His accent had something in it. He was looking at a page of results. "Wow. Motorcycle or truck?" Hand said. Hand was interested. Hand apparently knew what this guy was talking about. "Motorcycle," he said. "He's very good." Hand knew things like this, and knew how many guerrilla-killed gorillas there were each year in the Congo, and how many tons of cocaine were imported weekly from Colombia, how they did it and how pure it was, and how powerful, and who ran which cartel with the help of which U.S. agencies and for how long. And how Spinoza was actually autistic – he'd read this recently but couldn't remember where – but it was true! They'd studied DNA! – and that Herbert Hoover liked little boys (this he was sure about, though it might have been McKinley, or J. Edgar), and that you could grow the bones of dwarfs by attaching external bone-growing devices that looked like Medieval torture instruments – it worked! he would yell, he'd seen a documentary and one guy had grown almost a foot, though some dwarves objected, calling him some sort of Uncle Tom… On and on, for twenty years I'd heard this shit, from first grade, when he claimed you'd get worms if you touched your penis (I used plastic baggies, to pee, till I was eight) – and always this mixture of the true, the almost-true and the apocryphal – he'd veer within this emporium of anecdote like an angry drunk, but all of his stories he stood steadfastly behind, never with a twinge of doubt or even allowances for your own. If you didn't know these things, you were willfully ignorant but not without hope. He prefaced his fact spewals with "Well, you probably already know this, but the thing about zinc mining is…" As Hand and this man talked, I tried more connections on the web travel sites. Dakar to Zaire: no. Dakar to Kenya: yes but wildly expensive and through Paris. Dakar to Poland: no. Dakar to Mongolia: no. This was fucked up. Why wouldn't there be planes going from Senegal to Mongolia? I'd always assumed, vaguely, that the rest of the world was even better connected than the U.S., that passage between all countries outside of America was constant and easy – that all other nations were huddled together, trading information and commiserating, like smokers outside a building. "When does the race hit Dakar?" Hand asked. "Tomorrow maybe," said the tennis-man. "Some of the cars are here already – the ones knocked out of the race. There's one in the parking lot. You didn't see it?" We had seen it, on the way back from our travel agency excursion, a small Japanese pickup heavily stickered and spotted with dried mud. Dakar to Congo: no. Sudan: no. Liberia: no. Uganda: no. "Where are you from?" Hand asked the tennis-man. "Chile." "Your English is very American," Hand said. "I live in Fort Lauderdale," he said. There were flights to Morocco. Morocco didn't require visas. "Ah. And you're here waiting for your friend?" – Hand. Now I kind of liked the guy. Chilean but living in Florida and now in Senegal waiting for a friend riding a bike from Paris – he was like us, I thought, flattering myself and Hand – we were all world-travelers who defied God and moved and beat time in planes and rented cars. I tried to make his looks imply someone obviously South American, tried to pretend I should have known. Dark straight hair, wet brown eyes, oval face, short neat hair, good teeth, tall - "Yes. It's very exciting. Are you here for the race?" he asked. "No, we're here basically -" I started, but didn't know how to explain it. "We're here," Hand jumped in, "because it was windy in Greenland." The tennis man laughed loudly, then stopped. "I don't get it." "We were planning to go to Greenland," I said, "then the flight was canceled because of wind." There was a long quiet moment. "So are you staying till tomorrow, to see the rally?" he asked. "I don't know," Hand said, turning to me. "Maybe. We're actually trying to get find a flight out of here tomorrow." "To where?" "We don't know." "But why? Why leave?" "I don't know. We're a little jittery. It's hard to explain." "Are you criminals?" he asked. He was serious and hopeful. We shrugged. He accepted this. We introduced ourselves. His name was Raymond. I said I was Will, and Hand said he was Sven. They talked for a while about their jobs, Hand explaining weather futures – "… industries affected by the weather, like energy, insurance, agriculture… could hedge their risk… one industry wants rain, the other doesn't, they share the risk…" – in a way I was hoping, all the way through, would depart from his usual explanation, but did not. Then they were on to soccer. "Well," Raymond said, finally, "I have to go. But let's eat later. If you're at the hotel find me and we'll go and eat. I went to a fan He stood and shook our hands and - "Will, Sven, good to meet you" - He left. We checked at the counter; our rental was still twenty minutes away. It was eleven and we hadn't done anything. Planes, visas, cars. Waiting for cars! This was all so tough to take. The "Let's at least run around outside," said Hand. It was eleven A.M.! We'd done nothing! "Good," I said. The day was bright and gaudy and hot – the air like breathing through wool – so we took a path behind the hotel toward the water, twenty steps down from the hotel, past two boys walking up, carrying a lizard. Over a winding street, the path continued down. A guard at the right of the path, between street and downward stone stairs, stared at us and then closed his eyes to consent to our passage – because, we assumed, we were white. Below, an outdoor patio restaurant, next to a placid blue pool, around which lay dozens of Europeans, tanning while halving their paperbacks, in groups of two and three. We walked past, backpacks on, to the fence separating the deck from the shore of large rounded brown rocks below. There was no beach access. Over the fence and two hundred yards right, two Senegalese fishermen were bathing in the shallows by the shore, their beach crowded with small wooden fishing boats, painted recklessly in bold colors. "I could do that," I said. "Liar," Hand said. "For a few years I could fish." "I give you six months." It was warm. We wanted to swim but we would have to find a beach. And we needed to move. We had a plan. First, drive south along the coast to the Siné-Saloum Delta to see mangroves and crocodiles, then Slip into The Gambia, visas be damned, then Follow the River Gambja up to Georgetown, then Swing back up, into southern Senegal and Back in time for a late-evening flight to, ideally, Moscow. Easy. When we got back to the hotel lobby the car was still missing. Hand asked the rental-car clerk, who he'd been joking with and was now our friend, how many wives he had. "One," the clerk said. "Only one?" said Hand. "Soon, though, more. Soon, two." He held up a chubby finger for each wife. "Then three and four," he said, his grin growing with each wife-finger. They both laughed. I gave him a courtesy chuckle. I'd had no idea this was that kind of country. We watched the lobby's clientele of white businessmen and wealthy Senegalese, watched the men who served them at the check-in desk, all in grey suits and with identical glasses. We'd been waiting an hour and a half. We wanted to be in a car and driving. To a beach, then swimming, then to a national park stocked with monkeys and crocodiles, then onward and back here by night to catch the flight out. Along the way, today, we planned the giving of about $2,000 to passersby. Finally the car pulled up and as we got in two boys offered to wash our windows. We declined; they said they'd watch it when we parked it. We pointed out that we were leaving, not parking. They laughed. We all laughed. "Do we give some to them?" Hand asked. "Let's just move first," I said. "Out of the city first." "I'll drive." "No, I better first." We were moving, finally. It felt good to be driving. Around the square we circled four times before deciding which of the road's twelve or so offshoots to take. Hand found an American-music station on the radio and we left the center and looked for a highway. In minutes we were lost in Dakar's crowded narrow orange streets. The light was a dry white light. Seconds later we were driving the wrong way on a three-lane, one-way street, with dozens of crossing pedestrians in their unblemished long dashikis waving us back – back, idiots! – and then the car stalling, me with speedy elbows and much grunting executing a three-point turn in the middle of the road, a woman in front of us, an enormous tub balanced on her head, so many women with such things riding their skulls, all staring at us with amusement and disdain, then stall-start-lurch, stall-start-lurch, the honking ceaseless - And then we were off again – away! – the highway in view ahead – so close! All of Senegal and beyond attainable, Senegal! – and with Huey Lewis on the local radio, coming through with stunning clarity: "Do You Believe in Love?" Minutes later we were girding for death. What was this cop doing in our car? Or was he a soldier? He was taking us to the place where tourists were killed. If nuns could be killed in Colombia, we could be killed in Africa. Even in Senegal, which hadn't been billed as particularly dangerous, at least according to the few minutes of web research we'd done at the hotel. But what did we really know? Nothing. We knew they had an airport. We were fools and now we were driving to our deaths in a rental car. Janet Jackson was tinkling from the speakers, asking what we had done for her as of late. The cop was sitting in the backseat, leaning forward between us, directing our turnings. He was tall, about forty-five, thin, wearing a tan uniform and what looked like Foster Grants. He had been standing in the road directing traffic when he told us to stop. We did, pulled over, and through my open window Hand's French hadn't worked at all. Hand had tried to discern our crime, but the man could not get it through Hand's head. Exasperated, finally he just opened the back door and got in. Now he was directing us through alleys near the center of Dakar. One of us was going to be dragged around by his penis. Hand and I needed to put together some sort of plan and were speaking in very speedy English, in case the man knew any, which we were fairly sure he didn't. "Thisiswhentheydragyouaroundbyyourpenis," I said. "Notfunny. Shouldwetrytobribehimnow?" "Nonotyetwaitasec." This guy, he was one of the bad cops. In Senegal you weren't supposed to trust the police. "Areyouwatchinghimclosely? Shouldweworryabouthimandthe bags?" Our backpacks were both open on the backseat, and the cop was sitting between them. I glanced back to see his whole large hand resting disinterestedly inside my bag. It was so odd seeing his hand in my bag. No one's hand had ever been inside that bag. We passed small walled fortresses with driveways flanked by armed guards. "Youthinkwe'regoingtothepolicestation?" "Ihavenoidea." Hand was periodically turning to the man and trying more French, grasping at some explanation for this, or a plan for the future. I prayed that Hand wouldn't blather anything stupid, though I'd never know what he was saying anyway, so threw that worry to the wind. The man barked orders, with his big dry hand, the one not in my bag, near my ear, pointing left or right at every turn. We seemed to be circling. It was arbitrary. We were dead. "Maybethisissomekindofgame?" He signaled for us to pull over. I did, behind a taxi, in front of a bar. The cop pointed to a street sign, just in front of the bar. This was, we quickly realized, exactly where he had stopped us in the first place. We'd made some kind of elaborate and misshapen loop to get back here. The sign was a blue circle, bordered in red, indicating that the road prohibited the traveling on it of anything but buses and taxis. Ah. Hand and I made exaggerated sounds of understanding and approval. "Aaaahhhh!" Hand said, again and again. We were happy to be alive. We had broken a law and that's… oooh-kay! Now we'd pay a fine and be off. We all smiled and laughed. He had directed us around the city for twenty minutes only to bring us to the point of our crime, to demonstrate our misdeed. We laughed and nodded our heads. Stupid us! I wanted to hug the man but didn't know local custom. We would live. On the road, though, the one that prohibited non-buses and taxis, were dozens of non-buses and taxis. We tried to make this point but then saw no reason to bother. We would pay a fine and move on. But no. Now he told us to go again. He hadn't gotten out of the car. Hand started driving. And now we were scared. Now we would die. "Nowhekillsus?" "Whywouldhebotherwiththetrafficsignifhewasgoingtokillus?" We drove on through five or six more turns. The roads were so narrow. Pedestrians wondered why this man was in the car with two white tourists, one with a face like a skidmark. And suddenly we were in front of our hotel. We had told him at some point where we were staying and he was simply showing us the way. "Merci," we said. We were thankful. Our hotel. That was nice. Then he asked for money. We offered him 10,000 francs, about ten dollars. He shook his head. We offered 20,000. No, no, he said. He finally took a 1,000 franc note from our drink-holder and smiled and got out. 1,000 francs was enough. It was about a dollar-fifty. That was, apparently, the going rate. He waved goodbye and walked in the direction of where we found him. The car stalled. The car would not start. In the center of the city center, in the dead-middle of all Dakar's traffic, the car died. Hand jumped into the driver's seat to start it. Nothing. The honking was first insane and soon symphonic. We pushed the car the fifty feet to the hotel. Our rental man met us in the half-circle driveway, and we parked it next to the Japanese pickup truck covered in mud. "I am so sorry," the rental man said. "I knew this might happen, but I hoped it would not be so soon." He had known the car would die. Just not in his neighborhood. Hand finished the negotiations while I stood, unmoving, staring through a third-story window where two young white girls stood, looking out, watching us. They saw me watching them watch us and they ducked, disappearing. In the hotel room, waiting for a new car, we both fell asleep and woke at five. "Fuck!" "What a waste." "We've done nothing." No delta, no mangroves, no Gambia. We were hungry. We ran into the Chilean-American tennis man in the lobby - "What's his name again?" I whispered. "Raymond." "Thanks." "Hey Raymond!" I said. "Hello my friends!" – and had a taxi take us all the six blocks to the Italian place he liked. The streets were narrow and dark. We opened the windows and the warm air touched us with coarse hands. The buildings looked like buildings I'd seen before – they had straight lines and neat corners and windows in between – but they seemed closer to something imagined and built by architects of another world. We flew beneath their roofs and I grinned to the wind, because we'd at least come this far and that meant we'd won. The cabbie asked for the equivalent of fifty cents and I gave him ten dollars; he said thank you thank you, and that he'd wait until we were done to take us back, or anywhere else, anytime, while we stayed in his country, you friends! The restaurant was empty but for four drunk and round Italians at the bar talking to the drunk Italian hostess. "She's gorgeous, isn't she?" Raymond said. "That's why I had to come back." Hand agreed. "She "You too?" said Raymond. "I know. They are superb." Raymond raised his finger, about to make a point. "But," he said, closing his eyes slowly and raising his chin, "they are all whores." "What do you mean?" Hand asked. "You will see," he said. Hand and I stared at Raymond and blinked slowly. We were stuck with this man for a while, even though it was becoming obvious that he was not of our stripe. Friendships, even temporary ones like this, were based on proximity and chance, and so rarely made any sense at all. We knew, though, that we'd part with Raymond tonight and never likely see him again, so it made it bearable. The music piped in was a short, ever-repeating loop of Dire Straits, Pink Floyd, Eagles and It was the end of an epoch, and I didn't want to be around to see it happen; we'd traded anonymity for access. I shuddered. Hand, of course, had goosebumps. After dinner Hand asked the cabbie, who'd been waiting without radio or newspaper, to take us to see live music. "You know," said Hand, "like Youssour N'Dour." We'd read in the hotel lobby guidebook that Youssour N'Dour lived in Dakar and owned a club. The cabbie seemed to understand, began driving, and a few minutes later pulled up in front of an outdoor café. "Here is the location of the music that is live?" asked Hand. Raymond looked at Hand. Hand needed reining in. "Yes, yes," said the driver, waving us out of the car. "You like, you like." We got out. It looked fine, a French café sort of place, outdoor seating, inside warmly lit. But there was no music at all; just wrought-iron tables and a floor of white tile, a black slate bar with a bowl of Manet oranges. We walked in anyway. We'd get a drink and leave. All eyes jumped to us. There were groups of men and groups of women. The men were tourists and the women were local. I went to the bathroom. In the cool small space, walls like a cave's wet, and brown, I washed my hands with a small piece of round scallop-shaped soap that smelled of home. I found Raymond and Hand at a table outside, with two women, lighter than most Senegalese, both with long braided hair. Raymond stood and gave me his chair and grabbed another for himself. The girls surveyed me briefly and looked away. I wanted to tear my face off. There were drinks for everyone. I was introduced to the two, whose names I pretended to understand and whose limp hands I held momentarily and dropped. They looked about twenty, twenty-two. They were sisters and I felt again, as so many times with Hand and Jack, like deadweight, alone. "They're from Sierra Leone," said Raymond. "Refugees," added Hand. They were just short of glorious, with large dark eyes and crooked, oversized teeth. Raymond and Hand were trying to speak French with them. "We speak little French," the older one said. "Speak English. In Sierra Leone we speak English." "So you are liking it here in the Dakar?" Hand asked. Raymond looked at him like he was nuts. "What?" said the younger. The younger was taller. "Dakar. Do you like it," Raymond said, annoyed. "Yes. It's good." The older one nodded. Hand ordered more drinks and then leaned toward them. He was about to dig in. "So what's the situation like in Sierra Leone now? Is Charles Taylor still lurking around? I should know this, I guess, but it's been a while since I read about it. Have you seen any of the violence around the diamond trade?" They looked dumbfounded, turning to Raymond for reason, as if he might translate. Hand continued: "What did you do for a living? Are you students? When did you guys leave? I mean, are your parents still there?" The sisters looked at each other. "What?" the older said, smiling. "Your parents? In Sierra Leone?" "Yes. Live there." "So how old are you two?" Raymond asked. – Raymond, you're callous and cheap. – I've seen more than you. – That means nothing. – It means everything. – It's the laziest excuse of all. "What?" the girl said. "How old are you?" Raymond repeated. The older one, to whom Raymond had directed the question, laughed and looked at her sister. Her sister shook her head. She didn't understand. "How many years are you?" Hand tried. The older held up her hands in a "Stop" sort of motion, closed them, then did it again. "Twenty," Hand said. She nodded. "And her?" Hand motioned to the sister. She did it again, with eight fingers on the second flash. "Eighteen." She shook her head vigorously, laughing. Then she flashed the fingers again. Eighteen. "Eighteen." "No!" This went on for a while. Raymond laughed. "Your English is not very good, is it?" Hand said. "What?" she said. Raymond said it in French. His French was amazing. "Speak English!" the girl said. "We are from Sierra Leone!" Where was this going? No one could know. I wasn't listening anymore, and each girl began concentrating on one man – the younger on Hand, the older on Raymond. I watched the sidewalk over the café's low hedge. The place was stocked with chubby European or American men, mostly middle-aged and cheerful, patient. Some had garnered the attentions of the available women, others waited with friends, hands cupped around tall glassed beers. By the door was a man with no legs, sitting on a mat. Now the younger sister was laughing about something Hand said, making a point of grabbing his arm with both hands and burying her head in his shoulder to demonstrate the great mirth he'd generated. Hand rolled his eyes to me like a cat had jumped into his lap. More drinks were ordered. "So we go to disco now?" the older said to Raymond. Hand and Raymond looked at each other, then at me. I shrugged. They reminded me of twins I'd known at La Crosse, sisters who knew their skin was more perfect than the rest of ours, and who were very forgiving of the white boys' many fumbling entreaties. These sisters, the Sierra Leonians, had the same bright but complicated smiles. "No," said Hand, "I think we'll go home. To the hotel." It was clearly a lie. He extended his hand to his younger one. She and her sister stood up and glared at me and went back to the bar. "Let's go," said Raymond. When we'd been all together, and when I'd assumed Hand would ask me if it was okay to spend some time alone with one of the girls and that Raymond would follow, I'd hated them all. I'd felt for the girls, but then realized, uncharitably, that they all deserved each other. Now, though, we were leaving, Hand and Raymond were letting them off the hook, or rejecting them, and now I loved the sisters, and wanted to save them from the violence of rejection. I wanted to be with them alone. I wanted to sit with them, laugh at other people with them. But what did I do? I gave them the tight, smarmy smile I give to homeless people when I have nothing for them, always with a slight, quick shoulder shrug, and we were gone. I followed Hand and Raymond the two steps to the taxis and we were groped by the man without legs. He wanted money. Then an old woman, middle finger crooked through an actual tin cup, placed herself in front of us, sticking the cup a few inches from my mouth. One of the other women from the bar appeared before us – what she wanted she didn't say. We were surrounded. We backed into the cab. Raymond got in the front seat and closed his door. Hand got in the rear and I sunk in after him, but the no-legged man was now halfway in the car and the door wouldn't close. I could smell his breath, worlds contained within. Why wasn't the cabbie doing anything? He was supposed to tell us not to pay the man. He was supposed to push the man away but he was watching. Everyone in the café was watching. "Just give him something," said Raymond, laughing. It wasn't funny. This was some kind of thing that happened in India, or the Bible. I gave the man the coins in my pocket and while counting them he backed away long enough for us to get the door closed. The old woman appeared at the open window, thrusting her head inside. The car was moving, but her head was fully in our cab. Raymond's hand was on her shoulder, pushing her away. He shoved but too roughly – she fell back into the shrubbery with a shriek. We were off. "Jesus," I said. "That was wretched," said Hand. "These people are poor," said Raymond, without turning around, talking through the wind pouring through his window. "Listen," Raymond continued, now turning his shoulders to us. "You're here. You came here. You left the hotel. You walk these streets, you allow your path to be chosen by me, by [jerking a thumb toward the cabbie] this driver. You invite things to happen. You open the door. You inhale. And if you inhale the chaos, you give the chaos, the chaos gives back. You know this?" I felt my forehead tighten, indicating I was thinking – often my forehead starts thinking before I do. I committed what he'd said to memory – it was a jigsaw dumped on a rug but I was hoping I could put it back together, later. We rode in silence for a few minutes. "That didn't even make sense," Hand muttered. "The imbalance is there," Raymond continued. My tolerance for Raymond was waning. "It is just that we don't acknowledge it. We know we're stronger but we ignore this. We don't know our strength. You watch "Teleporting," I said, shocked at this train of thought, and how it had just plowed right into my own backyard. "Right," Raymond said. "They teleport in and out of those troubled planets?" "Wait," Hand said, actually raising his palm to Raymond's face. "You get "Of course." Hand snorted, impressed. "Okay, go on." "So this teleporting was based on a Cold War mentality. This was the American foreign policy model then. This was based on the American strength, the American ability to move and change the worlds they touched onto." The cabbie asked where to and we told him again: Youssour N'Dour's place. Raymond and the cabbie were arguing about something. I clenched and unclenched my fists. They tingled wildly, as if they'd just woken up. Hand noticed. "You know," he said, "you could go to a hospital here. It'd still be anonymous. No one could track it back here." "They could." "C'mon. Really. You should. Get all your shit checked out." I'd never gone to the hospital after Oconomowoc. We'd decided that if I went in, told the story and made some kind of official record of it, they'd know it was us if we went back someday and killed all three of them. But getting fixed up here, in Dakar, sounded almost feasible. The cabbie took a few more turns and pulled up in front of a club called Hollywood. "Is this the live music?" I asked. "Yes, yes, yes – you love it there!" he said, shooing us inside. "I wait here." Low-ceilinged and horrible, it was a small disco, pink and purple, full of large, framed movie stills in black-and-white-the decor of an antique auto museum. Life-sized pictures of James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, two or three of each, and one each of Tom Selleck and Sandra Bullock and Charlie Sheen, but also, strangely, seven different shots of Val Kilmer in "I could do that," Hand said. "Be a sailor? You're high," I said. "For a year I could do that." "Just for the pants. That's why you'd do it." Raymond ordered drinks and began talking to the bartender, a young Senegalese woman in a lace top glowing violet-white in the black light. She came around the bar and was by his side, touching his chest. She looked at me and sniffed. I reached over for my beer and waited for Hand to get back from the bathroom. The place was confusing me. I was sick of looking like a leper. Hand emerged from the back but was intercepted by a tall thin woman in a halter top and pleather pants. She was built like a fetishist's fantasy – her legs would reach my armpit and her rear (I can't say There was another couple dancing, a sailor and a Senegalese woman, but they were dancing with their reflections more than with each other. The man was staring at himself in a way, if directed at anyone but his own mirror image, would have to be considered lewd. The other sailors were talking with each other, uninterested in the bartenders or dancers. Who was Hand's woman? I watched them dance, Hand doing a moonwalk and then a kind of samba, laughing. Hand is the kind of guy who has rhythm and can move, but is ashamed of this, so has to goof his way through every song. Now he was doing the sprinkler. Then the shopping cart. He was teaching his new friend the shopping cart. After the song he came back with the woman, who was huge, easily six feet tall. She was too thin on top for me, but still, she was magnificent. Senegal: who knew? "This is Engela," Hand said. Something like that. "She's studying to become a lawyer." Hand bought shots for them both. He drank his, she left hers alone till he drank it himself. I shook her hand and her eyes met mine, scanned my nose and cheeks, and she winced. She played with Hand's ear. I was bored. If more people were dancing I could watch or join, but this wasn't working. Now two sailors were on the dancefloor, without women, admiring their own legs moving inside their tight tapered delicately bleached jeans. "It is a shame," said Raymond, watching the sailors with half-closed eyes. "This country does not allow its women dignity." I thought he might be overgeneralizing, but I didn't really know enough to comment either way. "There's Burma," he continued, "there's Thailand, there is Russia. All sell their women. Their souls are sold when born. The men are mice and the women are cattle." I drank two vodka-sodas. Soon Raymond didn't like his new friend anymore and wanted to go. Hand's date whispered something to him and he shook his head and whispered back, hand cupped around her ear. She jogged behind the bar and came back with a pen and a little notebook. He wrote something down. I went to the bar for a shot of anything. The woman serving me was wearing a white sports bra that looked like it had been mauled by tigers – desert isle chic. I turned again. Hand was showing his friend something. A piece of paper. A picture. What was it? I grabbed it. "What the fuck are you doing?" I yelled. It was a picture of Jack. Hand stood and looked at me, heavy-lidded with pity. "I told her we were looking for our friend," he said. "What does that mean?" He was drunk already. He couldn't be, so soon. "You know what it means," he said. "That doesn't even make sense," I said. "So what the fuck?" he said. "You're disgusting." "I can show him to anyone I want, fucker." "I don't know you." He scoffed. He was such a messy drunk. "Don't ever show that picture to some random waitress again," I said. "I'll do whatever." "You fucking "Guys!" Raymond said, with an arm between us. "Easy." I walked out and waited in the cab. I wanted an hour alone in Hand asked again that we be taken to the jazz club, and I wanted Hand back in St. Louis. He was the wrong guy to have brought. The picture. What kind of -? I couldn't go home, couldn't leave him, though, because we were in Dakar and only had this week. Five minutes through deserted streets and the next place was precisely the same but worse and without Val Kilmer. "In every part of the world," explained Raymond, "cabbies are trained to bring men to clubs like this. We go in, the cabbie gets a kickback, everyone's happy. We are merely cargo. The way you guys are traveling, you're gonna be targets everywhere. You're perfect prey." This time, immediately upon entering, we were all attacked in a very real way – women pushing each other to get closer to us, throwing jagged looks at each other, one grabbing Hand's crotch in a way less erotic than territorial. Raymond wound up next to a large woman with bursting eyes and Hand ran to the bathroom. I was being left more or less alone so ordered a drink and saw, across the bar, the two Sierra Leonian sisters, in the corner, beyond the dancefloor. They saw me too and laughed a warm and commiserative laugh. They were still on the make. The place was full – more French sailors, three dozen hungry Senegalese women, and the rest a hodgepodge of Italians and older European businessmen sitting alone, still waiting, waiting. We watched the dancefloor crowd, clear and change and at one point the Sierra Leonians were dancing alone and I decided then to give them the contents of my left sock, about $400, before we left. Hand returned from the bathroom with a story. Apparently there had been a few French sailors inside and they'd asked him his nationality. American, he said. "America!" they said, "you pay for the world!" Then they both cheered and patted him on the back. He probably made it up. "The crazy thing is," Hand said, "I think they were serious." "You show them any pictures?" I asked. "Fuck you," he said. "They're young. They'll learn," said Raymond. "Learn what?" Hand asked. "Derision," he said. I was impressed by Raymond. He could break out a word like I watched the dancefloor, full of slack shoulders and heads hung and swinging, arms reaching passively up, up. Women tucked their hair behind their ears and men pecked their heads to the beat, hands as fists. What was wrong with Charlotte? Nothing. Every complaint now seemed ridiculous. She had long dark hairs that swirled around her nipples and I'd seen this as problematic instead of loving her indifference to them. And I'd disliked her sighs. She sighed too much, I announced to myself one day, and worse, her sighs were too sad. Too full of sorrow. When I held her she sighed, and her sighs were weary, were groaning and exhausted, the sigh of an old person who'd seen everything and couldn't believe she was now being held, at the end of a journey she could never describe. The sighs were withering, were mood-killing, and finally I complained about Charlotte's sighs, to no avail. She'd responded with another sigh and that, I know now, was the end of the end. I was a fool. She was full of soul and now I was in this place, and the women here assumed I needed them. "Let's go," said Hand. "This is too sad." We moved for the door. A huge woman with enormous fingernails, not just long but wide, was tugging on me. I was flattered by the attention but it was unclear what she wanted. Another woman, her friend, smaller and with red-ringed eyes, patted my crotch like you would the head of a muzzled dog. Hand was ready, close to the door. But I wanted to unload the cash on the Sierra Leonians. They were harmless and hopeful next to the rest of these women. I slipped past the clawed woman and to the bathroom – just a hole in the floor in a room like a closet – to secretly retrieve the bills, wrapped around my ankle like a manacle. The wad stifled within my closed fist, I walked across the dancefloor and found the two young women sitting on a watcher's ledge, bored, and said "Sorry" to them while stuffing the bills in the older one's hand. She didn't even look at the wad; she felt it but kept her eyes on mine. It was, I realized in a shot, the first time any of these women had really looked at me. I jogged across the dancefloor, getting a running start before the throng of grabbing women at the bar. Raymond was outside. The street was crowded and the bouncers said goodnight – that was nice, I thought – and we waited in the taxi in the dark. Hand was not with us. "Sven's inside," Raymond explained. Hand emerged with the Sierra Leonian sisters kissing him on the cheeks and rubbing his chest – he'd taken credit for my gift – and he left them on the steps. He crossed the street and strode to the cab smiling grandly. He opened the door and got in with me and tried to close it but jesus – a body, again! – a body stopped the door from closing, prevented us from moving. It was my huge clawing prostitute. She had seen me give the money to the Sierra Leonians and wanted her share. She was enormous. I tried pushing her back but she was strong, at least as heavy as me, and was halfway in the car, preventing us from leaving or even closing the door. Her hand was out and she was talking quickly, in French. Then English: "Give me I see you! Give me I see you!" I found a 50 dirham note and threw it to her. It fell to the street. She picked it up and I closed the door, narrowly missing her head. She turned around quickly and walked back into the bar, stuffing it in her pants as we drove away. We were exhausted and home by one. In the cool black lobby we waited with Raymond for the elevator, watching the steel doors. "So where to next?" he asked. "Tomorrow." "Not sure yet," Hand said. "You?" "I go to Portugal, with my friend. A vacation after his race. Then back home." "You think he'll win?" I asked. "Win? Not a chance. But that's not the point." I thought it was the point. "Why not?" I asked. "The point is to offer yourself to death and see if you're chosen." Hand turned toward him. "He wants to make sure God wants him to live. So he spends a lot of time asking. He brings himself close to the edge and he feels God's breath on his back. If God wants to take him, all he needs to do is blow." "Jesus," I said. The elevator arrived and opened. "Not him." "Who?" "I don't believe in Jesus," Raymond said. "I think He would be horrified that we called Jesus Christ His son." He was losing me. Hand steered us back onto the main trail. "So Portugal," he said. "That should be nice," I said. I don't know why I said this. I didn't think of Portugal as nice, though I'd never seen a picture, or couldn't remember one. When I heard the word Portugal, I, thought of Madagascar, scrubby, dry, poor, the trees crowded with lemurs. I knew nothing, basically, but couldn't bear the fact that of the nations of the world, I had only ill-formed collages of social studies textbooks and quickly-flipped travel magazines. "Well," said Raymond, "I dread it, frankly. I love being here. I love wearing my clothes in these new places. Same shirt, new country! It's the only thing I love maybe – travel. I am finished with women," he said, chin jutting with a stagey defiance. Raymond's floor rang and the doors opened. "There is travel and there are babies," he said, stepping out. "Everything else is drudgery and death." I glanced at Hand. "It's early," Raymond asked. "You guys want to have a drink?" "Now?" I said. "It's only 12:30! I have Scotch. Good Scotch." I looked at my feet. I didn't want to stay up with Raymond. "Maybe," said Hand. "Maybe we'll stop by our room first and then meet you. Which is it?" "Seven-sixteen," he said. "This will be good. In Chile we don't end a night so soon." "See you in a bit," said Hand. At our floor we said hello to the teenaged security guard reading Victor Hugo by the elevator. "You plan to go back down?" I asked. "Doubt it," Hand said. I brushed my teeth and Hand did his and we laid in our beds and watched a French sitcom. There was an actual maid being chased by an actual butler. The laughtrack was loving it. I wanted to tear Hand apart for the picture of Jack. I couldn't make sense of it but didn't want us to blow up after drinking so much - "We're in Senegal," Hand said. "Senegal." "Yesterday we were in Chicago." "Yeah." "Now we're in Senegal." The fucker. "We came on an airplane," he said. We'd figure everything out tomorrow. Tonight I would allow him to be an asshole. "Senegal is in Africa," he said. "We're in Africa," I said. "We're alive and in Africa." "We got here on a plane." "Tonight we saw prostitutes." "And a man with no legs." "Yesterday we were in Chicago." "How's your face?" Fuck. "Fine." "It still looks pretty gruesome." "Listen Hand, just -" "Sorry." "I'm fine until I think about it." "Sorry." "You can't remind me. It's bad enough -" "Shit. Sorry. Now I know. "It doesn't hurt," I lied. "Good." "We gotta do better tomorrow," I said. I wanted more than parking tickets and hotel lobbies. "We will," he said, already drifting. He was asleep in minutes, his breathing too loud, his hands between his thighs, palms together as in prayer. Jack's mom had asked us to get the stuff, to drive up to Oconomowoc, where Jack had kept all his old things, because Jack's dad was too old, seventy something and now devastated, and she didn't think she could handle it herself. So about three weeks ago we rented a truck and drove the hour or so up from Chicago, on 1-94, passing trucks carrying John Deeres, past the drug companies, Teledyne and Baxter and Abbott, beyond the Mars Cheese Castle and the Bong Recreation Area – we'd tried twice in high school to steal that sign – and flew through the crabby grey farms at the Illinois border and then over to Oconomowoc. We stopped at the Kenosha Military Museum, a rolling lawn off the highway littered with sorry-looking tanks and helicopters. We'd probably been there twenty times since we were kids, and this time got out and jumped the fence and shared the one tallboy Hand had brought. It was January and nine o'clock and the place was desolate. Even then we were talking about leaving. "What about South Africa?" Hand asked, while touching a WWII tank someone had named Tigerbait. All the machines seemed flimsier than I remembered, and smaller. "I don't know," I said. "I hear South Africa and I picture Australia. Too familiar." "I always wanted to go to Turkey, too. Have you seen pictures of Turkey?" "I think so," I said. I had no idea, actually. Hand jumped onto a German tank and looked into its manhole. There was no way he'd fit in there now. He'd gotten a little thick in the middle, to tell the truth. "Churchill invented the tank," I said. "You told me that yesterday. You done with that book yet?" "No," I said. I was reading it slowly. I was savoring it. I wanted Churchill's life. I would take every last moment. Back on the road, Hand driving, we passed a couple sitting on their back bumper, parked on the shoulder. "What are you doing?" I asked. "I'm stopping. We have to." "I'm sure they've got a cellphone, Hand." They didn't have a cellphone. The car was an old Jetta, and they needed a push. Just forty feet, then they'd pop the clutch and be on their way. The man, in a Tina Turner sweatshirt, was round and couldn't push the car off the shoulder himself, and the woman, rounder and in overalls, didn't know how and when to pop. So the pushing would come to us. We rocked the car until it ground the gravel. It was light. They jumped in and we pushed it onto the pavement and started running – it was so light! Within a few seconds it was going fast enough, the man popped and it caught, and Hand was standing on the bumper, riding it. What the fuck was he doing? "Get off, dipshit," I said. He was still riding the bumper. I had stopped and was now watching as the car continued, with Hand riding it like a grocery cart. The brake lights came on and the man yelled something out the window, gesturing with a fist. I didn't blame him. Hand jumped off and the car sped away, while Hand ran after it, yelling obscenities. It had started so simply, with such good and simple intentions - The complex was a twenty-four-hour open-air paralleled trio of long low buildings in Oconomowoc, just west of Milwaukee, twenty minutes from where we grew up. Hand and I pulled into the storage parking lot, between Industrial Avenue and Wall Street, both tiny insignificant streets of weak pavement and poor grading, full of holes. Hand was still furious. The man with the Jetta had called him an asswipe and Hand felt that characterization unfair. We'd helped the couple and the round man couldn't allow us to enjoy the moment in our particular way. " "That fucking guy. I can't believe people like that." It was almost eleven and the place was empty. There were probably fifty units, positioned on a grid, each a white box of corrugated steel about the size of a small moving truck, each with a rolling door, a lock as anchor. We were alone in the complex. We parked in front of our unit and left the car running while we walked over to the Citgo market for food. There was a guy inside at the counter, Skoal circles whitening his back pocket, the frayed bill of his Blackhawks hat bent just so around his pink dry forehead. He was paying for about thirty Red Ropes. "You gonna eat all those?" Hand said. Hand talks to people. This is a problem. He talks to the elderly, asking them questions, and with his blond hair and clean face, his look safe but not too safe, they open themselves to him immediately. But when he's got something buzzing within him, anything can happen. "Eat all what?" the Blackhawks guy said. "The ropes. In your hand." "Huh?" Blackhawks understood Hand, but just didn't know why someone at the Citgo was asking about his Red Ropes. " "Fucking freak," the guy said. "What the fuck are you -" "No, what the fuck are Now Hand was yelling and they were standing close. Hand was taller, had two inches and twenty pounds on him. Blackhawks stepped back. "You backing up, little friend?" Hand said. "Fucking freak," Blackhawks said, and spit to his right. " Hand had gone off the rails. Blackhawks turned to get his change. The clerk, about sixteen, with the distended and hopeful neck of a turtle, had been finishing the transaction, ignoring the proceedings. I was trying to ignore everything, too, and wasn't sure why. Hand was my responsibility. "Puffer," Blackhawks said in a hiss and a fake chuckle. He was heading for the door. "Puffer?" Hand said, but Blackhawks was walking out. "Puffer? What does that mean? That's the best you can do? Puffer? You fucking pussy -" The guy was gone. I couldn't believe this. We were twenty-seven years old and Hand was talking smack in a convenience store with an Oco townie who couldn't have been over twenty. "Is there a bathroom here?" Hand asked the clerk. "Broken," the clerk said. "Liar," Hand said. We bought our food and outside, with the remaining half of his Butterfinger levitating from his mouth, Hand urinated on the side of the Citgo mart, while trying to figure out the meaning of "puffer." "I'm assuming he means I'm gay, right?" "I don't know." "But isn't the person who gets a porn star ready a puffer, too?" "Fluffer," I said, and wondered why I knew this. "Oh." Hand continued his emissions and I walked over to the storage unit. After rolling up the thundering silver door and before I turned on the light, I saw Jack Sikma. He was standing in the corner, a life-size cutout of slow-moving Sikma, totemic center for the Bucks, a huge awkward white man but not a bad player in the paint, here with a welcoming look on his face. I flipped the lightswitch and a single bulb at the back of the room went live. The place was full. Hand was now next to me, examining a stripe on his jeans where the wall had rebounded his effluvium. "Jesus," Hand said. The place was neat, rows of perfect boxes, stacked according to size, and to the right side were things that didn't fit, or things Jack had added at some later time. Mattresses. A net of soccer balls. A pachinko. A corner full of his old lunar maps. The night was so cold. "I'm gonna look around," Hand said. "What? Where?" "Around. There's a National Guard armory just behind here, up the hill. I'd rather not sit here with this stuff, watching you dig through it all." "You're not gonna help pack it?" "I am, but I know you want to look through everything first." "You don't want to see this stuff?" "Actually, no." "You can't take the truck." "I'm not. I'm walking." "Leave the truck idling." "I will." "You're gonna help pack all this up." "When you're done looking, I'll pack." "Fine." "I'll be back in a half hour or so. I'm going to see what's up there." "You're really going to -" "I'll be back." "Fine." And he left. He was a moron and a flake – he disappeared all the time – but I was happy for the peace. I opened a box of old school papers and drawings on construction paper, a stack of twenty, with eighteen renderings of Saturn, some with glitter. As eleven-year-olds, before I knew for sure that flying insects didn't enter rectums while you sat on the toilet and before my heart was irregular – I'll elaborate later but it was never such a big deal – Jack and I would get our posterboard and lie on our stomachs and draw our ideal future homes, the landscapes surrounding, the shape of the world in 2020. He was a better straight-line draftsman than me, so he did that stuff, and I did the grass and animals and people, big-handed and tiny-headed, but whatever we did, however we split the duties, the pictures never looked anything like we'd envisioned. But their ambition was clear, and thus they confused our teachers, who assumed we were as dumb as we acted. Soon enough, though, everyone realized Jack was different than me and Hand, that he had calm where I had chaos and wisdom where Hand had just a huge gaping always-moving mouth. But he was not cool, though Hand and I aspired to be and occasionally achieved some level of local cool. Jack didn't have the gene, couldn't move with any kind of fluidity or fury, couldn't push his socks down the right way, wanted his hair to work for him but spent too much time keeping it in place. He was careful and kept his corners crisp – we'd assumed it was because he was asthmatic, and was for years such a tiny kid, so much smaller than the rest of us, shorter, thinner, proportionate but almost anemic. He was coordinated, a fine athlete, really, but so small, a miniature kid – even his head was smaller. Until the last year or so of high school, that is, when he shot up, hit six feet, filled out, and with his liquid eyes and chin-dimple became a favorite of mothering girls who wanted both to coddle him and teach him things they knew he'd need to know. And he'd taken the new attention with a sense of responsibility, a solemnity even, that we found infuriating. The low rumble of our idling truck came to an end, and there were voices coming close. |
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