I’m Not Saying, I’m Just Saying is a new novel in flash fiction by Matthew Salesses.

In 115 chapters, all shorter than a page and some as short as five lines of text, Salesses details a man’s life that is simultaneously falling apart and coming together.

A boy who is apparently his moves in with him after the mother passes away. Yet the man continues to juggle two affairs on the side while maintaining a passable relationship with “the wifely woman.” Meanwhile, his career advances, with no discernible effort on his part.

Possibly medicated (prescribed and otherwise) into ambivalence, the narrator puts in appearances where and when necessary most of the time, trying to stave off the genuine pain that comes from true engagement. And yet, by taking his poison a thimbleful at a time, the bite eventually seeps in and both the narrator and the reader come to an understanding about his place in the world.

Salesses is a husband and a father. His writing has been published widely. Recently, he took the time to share some thoughts about I’m Not Saying, I’m Just Saying with GR.

1) Is it harder or easier to write against type? I can tell you’re a nice guy and a good dad, so what is it like to write about a man who is ambivalent about relationships and fatherhood?

I’m not sure whether it’s harder or easier, in general. It’s harder for me to make up someone than to use myself as a character. One thing I like about nonfiction is that I don’t have to worry about how to create fully rounded characters; I only have to worry about how to represent people/myself as fully rounded.

The reason to choose fiction over nonfiction is to get at a truth that can’t be gotten at, or can’t be presented, as convincingly in an essay. Which means that in fiction I’m often writing against type, because I want to tell a story, and I don’t generally make a lot of interesting things happen in real life.

In this book, that choice meant using the voice of someone more directly conflicted than I am. I could have written nonfiction about my own fear of commitment, but it wouldn’t have been as interesting or convincing (coming from a married man with a daughter) as the story of this narrator, who is deeply afraid and makes choices out of that fear.

I guess to answer the question, it would have been harder to write this particular story if the narrator was nicer and a better dad.

I’ve never actually seen an Easy-Bake Oven, but I love the myth of it.

2) Flash fiction. Here to stay as a viable format, or something that, in the future, will date all work to 201X?

Here since at least Kafka, or maybe oral myths, and here to stay.

Also, I remember teachers telling me in undergrad to write fiction that is timeless and would last because it couldn’t be dated. I don’t think I believe that, now. I like fiction that represents a particular time and place, whether that’s Homer’s Greece or our present, and I don’t think that timeliness prohibits something from being timeless.

3) How and when did you determine that your narrator wouldn’t have a name? Was it a conscious decision or did you put it off and then realize he didn’t need one?

I don’t name a character, especially a narrator, unless I have to. If you call a character, “Mom,” then the reader brings up an immediate image (for good or bad), but if you call her Alice, the associations aren’t as evocative or useful–at least until you make her Alice.

4) Regarding the cover art, what were the circumstances that you first saw it? Does a fish on a line symbolize the narrator’s life? He’s thinks he’s somewhat free, swimming in the air, and yet he’s really caught?

I found the cover art years ago, and years before I started this book. I was looking for a cover for the magazine I edited then, Redivider. The image has stuck with me–partly because it tells a story of its own. There is a symbolism to it in the context of the image itself–the kite-fish is pretty clearly a symbol in the drawing.

Why I think it works as a cover for this book is that the association can be made between the story told by the cover and the story told by the novel. That is (I hope), it multiplies the associations and symbolism in a way. I wouldn’t want to say it means something in particular.

5) What are your favorite toys?

The Easy-Bake Oven–I’ve never actually seen one, but I love the myth of it. I love people’s reactions when it comes up in conversation.

My favorite toys as a kid were sticks and the bullet shells my friend and I used to find in the sand dunes behind his house. A toy is just something you make into play.

I love seeing bands start from scratch, evolve, and get over. But it ain’t so bad to catch them when they’re ripe and ready for world domination, either. Such was the case at the Troubadour on Monday night when METZ and White Lung took the stage, coming all the way from the Great White North.

But first up was San Diego’s Mrs. Magician. The Swami Records band plays garage rock that is so melodic that it’s more like carport rock. So many super-catchy-yet-subversive songs, including “There Is No God,” and they just get better each time I see them. Stoked that they rounded off the bill.

White Lung totally blew me away with their relentless brand of post-hardcore jams… Completely aggro vocals by frontperson Mish Way matched by the laser beam like guitars of  Kenny William with Poison Ivy-esque bass coolness from Grady Mackintosh and pounding drums from Anne-Marie Vassilou add up to the real deal. This band has been toiling in Vancouver skate shops and basements for years and is ready to explode.

The Jesus Lizard, Shellac, Hot Snakes–go ahead and add METZ to the list of bands that can joyfully and purposefully destroy eardrums through riffs. The noisy Toronto trio’s sound is as raw as their hardware store-purchased stage lighting and the blue collar work ethic matches it. I was lame and missed the band when it made the rounds at The Echo and Spaceland, but at least I caught them at The Troubadour before they move up to the Fonda or El Rey or the next-level rock palace. The LP rocks but you gotta see them live.

PUBLICATION REVIEWS

80/90 by J. Grant Brittain
This 48-page black-and-white zine puts JGB’s world-class photography in a new, raw light. Shadow, texture, and composition that are overshadowed in the color pages of TransWorld or The Skateboard Mag emerge and so do the personalities of Hosoi, Gator, Cab, Blender, Natas… The who’s who list of skaters goes on and on and the locations are just as iconic: Del Mar, Upland, Baldy, Encinitas… Zero filler, extremely well printed, and limited to only 200 from Arkitip. Order one here.

Long Beach: Work in Progress by Martin Wong
Disclaimer: I conducted the Q&As, took most of the pictures, and handled layout of this program/zine for last week’s Imprint conference. That being said, where else will you find Pulitzer Prize winning food writer Jonathan Gold; members of T.S.O.L., The Vandals, and Dengue Fever; skaters/advocates Chad Tim Tim, Justin Reynolds, Ricki The Dude Bedenbaugh, and Paul Kwon; and John Jay from W+K Garage and jeffstaple from Staple Design? I grabbed a couple of extra copies if you want one. And if you like the Q&A with authors Jennifer M. Volland and Cara Mullio about Case Study House architect Edward A. Killingsworth, read on…

Edward A. Killingsworth: An Architect’s Life by Jennifer M. Volland and Cara Mullio
This brand-new, over-sized, lovingly-made hardbound book from the authors of Long Beach Architecture: The Unexpected Metropolis details the life of the Long Beach-based Case Study House architect and surveys his work from the Frank House (Case Study House 23) and Opdahl Residence in Long Beach to the Kahala Hilton and Halekulani hotels in Honolulu. I’ve gawked at his houses in Southern California and spent time with family in his stellar Hawaiian projects and didn’t even know who made them. Now I know and I highly recommend you look him up, too. Volland and Mullio actually spent time with the architect and share uncommon insight into the person as well as his works in this essential Hennessey+Ingalls book.

This Sunday, May 5, Jennifer and Cara Mullio will be signing copies of their new book, Edward A. Killingsworth: An Architect’s Life, at Apostrophe Books on 2nd Street in Long Beach (11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.).

Photo by Ken Byrne

Gina Apostol’s fascinating novel Gun Dealer’s Daughter has just been published in an American edition. This incredible book traces the seduction of Sol, a young privileged girl, by a romantics in a revolutionary group during the heady Marcos era in The Philippines. The first-person narrative is colored with defective memories and unreliable (but sympathetic) narratives. The reader will fall apart with Sol when she realizes too late that she’s sealed the cruel fate of the one person who truly cared about her.

I recently had the pleasure to read Gun Dealer’s Daughter and Gina agreed to a few questions and answers for Giant Robot readers. For those in New York City, Gina will be reading with Sabina Murray at The Asian American Writers’ Workshop on Thursday Sept. 6.

Congratulations on writing such a stunner of a book. Has anything changed editorially from its original 2010 publication on Anvil in the Philippines and the American W.W. Norton edition earlier this year?

I cut some sections of the opening, mainly. I had always thought the beginning was too slow. But I was also attached and wanted to keep everything. I did keep most of it, like the carousel ride, etc., minutiae the reader would not remember but I thought were crucial to my design—the book was designed with a circle in mind. My editor helped me cut. It was great to work with an editor who was, to my mind, always on the same page with me, but had a sharp eye for killing, killing, killing all the lice—Flaubert’s term for the incidents and words you can get rid of, but don’t want to, because they have already sucked your blood.

 I was once at this coffee shop in Baltimore listening to this incredibly stunning kid go on and on about Salinger and why she loved Catcher in the Rye. She turned out to be Winona Ryder talking to her boyfriend at the time, Johnny Depp

I couldn’t help but feel a certain vibe similar to the film Heathers. The feeling of play-revolutionaries mixed in with adolescent infatuation careening into something horribly real. How far would the teenage-girl narrator go in her zeal to impress Jed? On a different day would Sol (the girl) and Soli have changed places?

I just found the novel’s old Mac disks (those cute, colored squares that slide into the 1990s Macintoshes—I still keep that computer in my closet, like a sad robot of things past) and they were labeled Fil CITR —Filipino Catcher in the Rye. Oh, snap. It was only when I had finished the book that I thought—the bookend of carousels is a secret nod—of course!—to Catcher in the Rye. Heathers is a very good reference. All those films and books about adolescent stupor among the beautiful who become the damned. Now if Winona Ryder could also sing the Internationale as well as epater le bourgeois girls, she’d be Sol’s sister. I was once at this coffee shop in Baltimore listening to this incredibly stunning kid go on and on about Salinger and why she loved Catcher in the Rye. She turned out to be Winona Ryder talking to her boyfriend at the time, Johnny Depp. He was in town doing the movie Crybaby. He had a huge pimple on his face because John Waters kept making him eat Cheez Doodles or something during the shoot. What one learns from such models is that it is not good to take your teenage angst seriously. You might come to a bad end. In Winona’s case, she shoplifted; if only Sol had done the same. I always thought if Holden in Catcher had grown up in the Third World, he’d have turned into a good Maoist instead of just wandering drunk on Fifth Avenue and wiping off graffiti from the Egyptians at the Met. For me, of course, the difference between Heathers and Holden and Sol—and Winona—is that in Gun Dealer, adolescent angst is diagnosed as a political matter—even our malaise has consequences beyond the small pool of our local disenchantments. As for Sol’s thing with Jed—it is, I think, a cover for other lusts—above all the lust to be “real.” She has the Velveteen Bunny around her, after all, toys, the illusory world her parents bought, but like the bunny she wants to be real. Jed is a screen for that hunger, but I think even Sol knows she’s fooling herself. If you asked me, I’d have told her to get rid of Jed, from day one. Guy’s a dope. But I am not Sol. The thing about Sol and Soli is that they are meant to be somehow interchangeable, I think, but I am not sure. That Sol has, perhaps, a desire to be that other one, Soli, her ethical self, maybe, but she’s locked in her own merry-go-round of security, her carousel of comfort.

I fucking don’t care if Mitt Romney has ever felt alienated in his life

People tend to think kids who grow up in rich families have it so easy. But as we see through Sol, it can be an isolating and detached experience, and inbreeds the need to feel something “real.” Does Sol hang out with these revolutionaries in order to find “family” as opposed to the handlers that her parents seem to function as?

Kids in rich families have it easy. Period. Wealth makes a huge practical difference; it’s just not nice to be poor. I don’t believe, really, that one is ennobled by poverty or deprivation. Nor is a poor little rich girl actually pathetic—she’s rich. My book is not sobbing over the sadness of rich people; I fucking don’t care if Mitt Romney has ever felt alienated in his life (though I hope he has, and much good that will do us). And I believe this country, the United States, should be ashamed to have poverty in its midst—absolutely. I guess my book uses Sol’s angst to get us to recognize that everyone, rich and poor, is part of the iniquity of inequity, the way we think it is okay for some to be rich and powerful and some to be poor and helpless. As if it is a rule—there must be First World and Third World. Which is what we do every day in the world in which we live. We condone poverty and despair everyday. In a sense, I’m trick my reader to side with Sol: because, you know, we always side with money. It’s very obvious in Manhattan. We are always sidestepping it, maybe feeling guilty, giving one dollar here and there to people on the subway. We must be paying for our guilt somehow in anxiety and depression, but maybe I am being optimistic. On our good days, we are all, in some way, like Sol—when we agonize over our role in the world. On the other days, we just buy another pair of shoes (at least I do). The novel is asking why we have such disparity of economic and social chances. In many ways, the causes are simple—corruption and greed among the powerful, who collude and are criminals, period—in this type of world they just get away with everything. That’s the tragedy my novel is getting at. It’s a problem to live in an unjust world. I’m glad when readers empathize with Sol’s lack of “reality” and family, because I worked hard to make the reader feel for her somehow, recognize her pathos. But to be honest, really, who cares about someone like Sol? And yet she is lonely, and like everyone else she seeks friendship (revolution isn’t her friend, you know—it is her salvation). But that is the novel’s point—it requires the reader to be both humane—and ruthless—about Sol. Her narration demands a complex response. The real tragedy is that those who have the means escape—justice does not come to them. Justice never came to the bankers on Wall Street in 2008. Justice did not come to the real criminals in Gun Dealers’ Daughter. The book is asking—why not? Why is justice not served? The novel is like a secret caped crusader, Captain Third World, demanding liberty and justice for all.

Amnesia and the inability to recall events properly is a running theme. Do you think a certain forgetfulness of past political events is necessary for the Philippines to move forward? Or does it need to be talked about in the open and dealt with? In the present day, Sol could benefit from that, right?

Amnesia is an ethical issue in the novel, and it is tied to language. In my mind, the expense of spirit in a waste of shame is tied to language. Shakespeare knew it, too—and note that he wrote mostly about rich people. Forgetfulness is not a good thing, and words are its hopeless prop. So to forget with words is to be doubly doomed. Sol’s amnesiac confession is a symptom of an illness—a social illness, perhaps—an inability to confront truth. True, it’s hard to come to terms with the history of the Philippines—I know that is why I keep writing about it. It’s a tragic history—especially, it is a history of loss. I dwell on the revolution, for instance, as if it had just happened yesterday—as if the katipuneros who trusted in the Americans in 1898, before Dewey’s dumb Battle of Manila, were still waiting to reclaim their city—only for America to betray them and invade instead. I see these things like a novelist, I guess—I see the arc of horror. But in Gun Dealers’ Daughter, the deliverer of this message of political tragedy is complicit in its horror—and she does not have the way out of being a novelist—so she is falling apart, which is, at the same time, key to the novel’s language, the novel’s artistry, if you will. I wrote the novel with that double bind in mind: that to speak of the past, to dig at the truth of our past, is to speak horror: but my problem as a writer was—what is the language of horror? Oddly enough, for Sol the language of horror is literary. It is poetic. Poetry is a mode of amnesia, wordplay is a matter of dementia. As she says, even alliteration might be a crime. Every day as I wrote this novel, I kept thinking—wow, the beauty and play of language is a pox—a criminal may use it as well as a poet. In fact, a criminal might use it better, because a criminal needs beauty to keep his soul going. The English language, to my mind, is also indicted in this novel: the language of T.S Eliot, the language of Coleridge. It’s the way, after the war, speaking German seemed abominable to Paul Celan. Everything Sol touches, you know, is not gold—her home’s gilded leaves are tainted, and so are her literary, erudite words. And yet, you know, it should be fun, too. The book should be a fun read. We’d be philistines if we didn’t enjoy the fun of words. So I would say amnesia lies in the layer upon layer of words used in this novel—and yet candor is never wasted on this speaker. She in fact sidesteps the truth, until the end. And this is how I created a novel: it’s what art is. A pox, a niggling at the truth. Art is an illness, but it will have to serve. So no, absolutely not, I do not think the inability to recall events is a way to move forward. That is Sol’s problem, not her solution. I think we must always be trying to nudge the truth into being—unfortunately, like Sol, words are all I have. I claim a good reader as my solution.

Duality is another theme in the book. Did you ever feel like you were twins with somebody, such as Olivia Newton John? What was/is your relationship like?

I am always a twin with the characters I am working with, the ones I am creating. I’m in love with doubleness as a form, as a transparent part of my work, because I know very well I am doing that every day as a writer—I am always being duplicitous, duplicating, and for some reason that gives me a weird thrill: I am lying at the same time that I am trying to convince people I am telling the truth. There is something really thrilling in doing that every day. I am a joyful liar and happy double-crosser. Maybe because, if I believe in anything, I believe the world is an illusion. (Only my daughter is real: Hi, Nastasia!) On the other hand, I don’t like being twins with real people, because their reality can be a drag on my independence.

In a previous interview, you’ve said that finishing this book took a decade. What advice would you have for other writers struggling to finish their novels?

I’m with Scarlett O’Hara: tomorrow is another day. I write shit the whole afternoon, and I think, oh well, Clark Gable will still love me. One day. Or he’ll be sorry. You’ve got to accept the fact of the shit that you do and come back and do it tomorrow. Tomorrow is another revision. One day, it works out, because you are a secret caped crusader. Of Art. The novel has to happen, because it must. You also have to give it time—it has taken each of my novels a decade or so. I see nothing wrong in that—I mean, I still like them. That said, you also have to make time. Sit! None of this saying—but I have to do laundry, I have to make a baby. Sit! One trick—find the thing about your novel that most makes you happy—find the part that is pleasurable and work your novel around that. Once I figured out that Sol, in this novel, is a word-freak, that her madness was word-bound, it was much easier to write—I enjoyed finding word games I could use in the novel—it gave me a handle every time I sat to write. Another trick I have is to imagine a structure: a visual form. As I said, I thought of this novel as a circle—but the real problem a novelist has with form is time. How do you structure time? Time is your clay, the thing you’re shaping. I structured this novel chronologically as a V, that is, the plot goes backward at first in time, then at one point (I know which point this is in the novel), it starts to go forward. I kept the V-form in mind as I revised, especially, and having that fake format in mind (it’s kind of arbitrary, but arbitrariness, in my opinion, creates), I finished the novel. The reader does not need to know anything about these things, by the way; the novel must still work even if no one knows—and of course, because you made up the rules, you can cheat. Readers want character, plot, emotion, and you should give that to them. In some books, there’s a hierarchy—if the trick ruins emotion, the reader’s relationship with the character, you can break your rule. In other books, the trick is paramount (like the great OULIPO books of Georges Perec, which I currently love). But you, the writer—your job is just to finish your novel. So you can keep your tricks to yourself, the ways you trick yourself to keep going—and let your own humanity do the rest.

What’s the strangest email you’ve gotten since publication?

Well, some guy named Giant Robot just sent me a note…

Seiichi Hayashi from Japan, Charles Glaubitz from Mexico, Jason from Norway–every time I attend Comic-Con I encounter at least one international artist with jaw-dropping, original talent who seems to redefine what comics can be. This year it was Brecht Evens from Belgium. His translated, painterly graphic novels, The Wrong Place (2010) and The Making Of (2012) are gorgeous slices of life that convey the power, drama, and luminosity of life without tights or capes. Or outlines or word balloons, for that matter.

Brecht’s storytelling ranges from stream-of-consciousness to dreamy and his panels swing from hyper detailed to quite sparing. But his gorgeous, voyeuristic pages always have a natural pace, truthful tone, and resonating message about the art of being human.

After meeting Brecht at the Drawn & Quarterly table, attending his panel with no visuals but plenty of interest, and then having dinner with the same crew as him at Comic-Con, I followed up with some questions about his work via email.

MW: It was a pleasure to meet you in San Diego, and I hope you enjoyed your visit. What were some observations that you took away from your first Comic-Con ?

BE: Thank you, and thanks for showing my comic book to the actress who played the scientist who tells the President the world is going to end, in The Day After Tomorrow!

There were a lot of nice people to meet at Comic-Con, but as a place, including the area around the convention center, it felt like walking around in a shopping mall for a week. Very peculiar.

MW: To those of us who’ve come across your work solely through the Drawn & Quarterly releases, it seems like you’ve arrived with your style fully realized. Can you tell us a little about how your work has evolved since you were an art student?

BE: I’ve mucked about a lot before making a big change in approach with The Wrong Place. My drawings were much more cartoon-comic-like, less varied in form and texture. It’s at art school that I was pushed to do this, and I’m very grateful for it. Art school for me was the opposite experience of Clowes’ Art School Confidential, which I remember as a complaint about arty-farty bullshit. It made my comics much better.

MW: Do you have traditional models when it comes to comics or are you applying non-comic book styles to your story telling? 

BE: Within comics there’s a lot of of good models. I have very innovative comic storytellers like Olivier Schrauwen or Chris Ware in the back of my mind, as well as quick, expressive ones like Jules Feiffer.

MW: The luminosity of your work reminds me of how film glows off a screen at the movies. Are you influenced by cinema at all? Any filmmakers? Do you hear a soundtrack when you envision your story? 

BE: Not particularly. There must be cinematic influence, but I see it as something to be careful with–and not make comics like you would a movie storyboard, like cinema on paper.

MW: There’s no way your work can be as spontaneous as it feels when I read it. What are some of the steps that go into a page?

BE: The drawing is pretty direct. I apply the colors without a pencil sketch below, so I have to stay alert and draw slowly. It’s probably drawn more slowly than it seems, with a lot of pauses for staring at the drawing and planning the next few brushstrokes.

MW: Your watercolors are loaded with power but sometimes when I’m reading your works, I feel like I’ve taken off my contacts. Can you describe the trade-off between detail and energy?

BE: A trade-off, that’s how it feels. Every detail added is weighed for its importance, because you pay a little price in spontaneity and movement. And as you say, because I rarely use outlines, sometimes the image can be too “flou,” a bit too soft.

MW: You mentioned that you prefer to tell stories about topics that you are familiar with. How are partying and making art (the subjects of The Wrong Place and The Making Of) complementary? Detrimental to each other? 

BE: Balancing the two is a challenge. I think the scale mostly tips toward play and not enough toward work.

Find out more about the Brussels-based artist at his blog or the Drawn & Quarterly site.

(Art by spoon+fork.)

When I got off the New Jersey Transit train, Johnson honked twice from his car and popped open the passenger door.

“Where’s the old sedan?” I asked.

“That was a piece of junk,” he said.  “I think they sunk it in the harbor to give the fish a new place to play.”  He looked me over carefully.  “Have you put on weight?”

“I eat more than I used to,” I said.  “I have more money than I ever had in my entire life.”

“I hope you’re saving some.  This city eats money as fast as you can feed it.”

“You are right about that, man.”

“LaVerne treating you right?”

“Yeah, I can’t complain.  It’s the most serious job I ever had.  I iron my shirts now!”

“I hope you stay on the straight path from here on out because I like you.  I want you to know, Sean, a lot of times I had to pretend to be mean.”

“I understand.”

“What’s that you’re reading?”

“Oh, it’s a mystery book.  I found it on the train.  I can see why they left it.”

“What did you think about the reading program when you were in jail?”

“The reading program?  Well, the library was great.”

“Yeah, those library books!  Did you hear the news that some communist groups have been filling prison libraries with their propaganda books and they had people on the inside who made sure they were distributed?”

“Was it illegal?”

“No, since the books were being donated, but the Church groups are hopping mad.  They’ve filed a lawsuit for equal shelf space.”

“That’s crazy!”

“It’s Jersey.  It’s standard operating procedure.”

“I don’t miss Jersey bullshit at all,” I said, surprising myself. “Any of it.”

“Naw, guess you don’t, ya city slicker!  Hey, you going to write a book?  Tell all about the whole drug thing?”

“I had thought about it.”

“And?”

“Let’s just say I understand why people wait until everybody else is dead before they write what really happened.”

“Yeah, you want to see me drop dead,” said Johnson, nodding his head.  “But that’s not going to happen.  At least not tonight.”

“Thanks for the invite to stay over, but I have that business trip tomorrow.  LaVerne’s taking me to the Los Angeles office.”

“Ah, yeah.  First time on a plane for you.  I understand.  For the first time you’re gonna get high the natural way.”

“What’s it like flying?”

“Stop sounding like a kid.  At least, don’t ask none of these guys at the bar.  They’ll think you’re a pussy instead of a hero.”

When I walked into JJ’s, shouts went up from everyone in the bar.  For the second time, I was the only white person in there, but now everyone wanted to come up and clap me on the back and shake my hand.

The bartender Curly came from around the corner and gave me a hug.

“Come on over here, I wanna show you a little something,” he said, walking me back to a spot by the jukebox.  There was a framed picture of me from the Asbury Park Press.

“You’re the first white man on the wall!” he said with pride.

It was true.  There was room made for me between two ancient pictures of doo-wop groups.

“I didn’t do that much,” I said.

“You stopped that towel-headed, snake-charmer motherfucker from selling more drugs to black kids.  That’s plenty,” Curly said.

Johnson cleared his throat.

“Come on,” he said, putting an arm around the bartender, “let’s get this man some drinks.”

Curly took a pewter mug down from the wall and washed it out.

“I’m gonna let you drink out of the John Vandyne Heroes Cup!”

“Who’s John Vandyne?” I asked.

“A great man,” said Johnson.

I was scared shitless the last time I was in this place, but in reality, it was one of the safest places in the state.  Nearly everybody here was an active or retired policeman, detective or security guard.

One guy was giving me the evil eye, though.  When I looked at him straight on, he came up to me and said, “What’s so great about you, huh?”

“Ike, clear off, okay?” Johnson told him.

Ike grunted and moved on.

“What’s his problem?” I asked.

“Some people try so hard to be what they think a man is, they forget how to relate to other people.”

After another beer and a game of Connect Four with a girl I didn’t know, I asked Johnson, “I did the right thing, right?”

“Hell, yes, you did.”  He put a hand on my shoulder but looked around to see if anybody was listening.  “Look, Sean.  Think of all the grief you’ve spared people.  Think of those families.”

“What happened to Mrs. Aggarwal?”

“I don’t know.  Last I heard, some Orientals came in and bought the Seahorse Hotel from the bank.  If anyone can make money in this economy, it’s them.”

“What happened to the money?”

“The money?”

“Yeah, Mrs. Aggarwal told me once she found a pile of cash there one day. She didn’t know how it got there.”

“I guess Raj Aggarwal spent it or got rid of it.  My boys didn’t find any money there.”

I hope she got the money, I thought.  I hope she got out of there with it.

“Can you take me to the hotel?”

“I told you.  Mrs. Aggarwal isn’t there anymore.”

“I just want to see it.”

A chilly, salty wind blew into the car.

“I’ve forgotten what this feels like,” I said to Johnson.  I looked across to the twinkling skies.  It was too dark to see where it met the ocean, but you could hear the waves.

“It’s like infinity,” I said.

“I should force you to do a urine sample now,” Johnson muttered.

“I’m just a little drunk.  I’m losing my tolerance.  I can’t afford to drink too often in the city.  I kind of have this girl now.”

“So I heard.”  He didn’t ask more.

When we came up to the hotel, the streetlight was out, making the whole dark building look a little sinister. The burger stand was boarded up. Our headlights swung onto an Oriental teenage boy, coiling a garden hose in a corner of the hotel parking lot.

I leaned out the window to get a better look at him, and he threw back the meanest stare I ever saw in a kid.  I dropped back into my seat.

“You’re right, Johnson.  This was a mistake.”

“See, I know what I’m talking about.  You can never go back, man.  The trees close in on the trail you came in on.”

“Like a forest path?”

“Sure.  You know, I have some Indian blood in me.”

He turned the car around.  The kid watched us until we left.

At the train station Johnson gave me a CD.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“That’s some of the recordings of you and the Aggarwal woman.”

“Is that it?”

“Yeah, not all the recordings came out.”

“Thank you.”

I turned over the thin plastic case in my hands.

I asked Johnson, “You ever come into the city?”

“Not too often.  I like to spend my time working and supporting the community.”

“I have e-mail now.  You should write to me.”

“I still don’t like e-mail, Sean.  I’ll just stay in touch with the new bug I stuck in your pocket.”

“I thought I felt you grab my ass.”

“Hey, Sean.  I know you’re not going on a business trip tomorrow.”

“I know you still got more of me and Mrs. Aggarwal.”

We shook hands and it made me feel warm.

The only free seat on the train car had some crushed potato chips on it.  I wiped the seat clean with my shoe and sat down.

In the apartment lobby, I got a package that wouldn’t fit into my mailbox, so the postman left it on the floor. I picked it up and took the stairs.

I put in the CD of Mrs. Aggarwal and me talking.  The first few tracks were of me mumbling curses.

I hated the sound of my voice.

I skipped ahead.  We were on the roof laughing and talking.  I decided to save it for later and stopped the CD.

I opened my package.  It was a knit polo from Crystal, the parrot girl.  I told her how cold the office was getting, with the AC on full blast.

Why she mailed it instead of just giving it to me in person is just one of those crazy things I can’t understand.

I lay out the polo on the back of my chair.  It looked nice.

Maybe too nice.

The tag said it was made in India.

I pushed the empty cardboard box under the coffee table, but it knocked over a small stack of books and magazines through to the other side.

I came around and saw that “The Corduroy Road” was laying on top.

I put the book behind my head and stretched out full-length on the couch. I closed my eyes.

I had once been so desperate to read that book, thinking it could patch up a little hole in my life.  Now, I didn’t even fucking feel like finishing it.

(And so our story ends. Thank you for reading. As always, feel free to swing by http://www.edlinforpresident.com.)

(Art by spoon+fork.)

A nice suit made me look sharp.  More importantly, it gave me confidence.  I’d never worn anything that gave me such a mental boost, apart from a protector cup.  I got my hair trimmed like Chuck told me, and before we got into the courtroom he took out a comb and tried to run it over me.

I flinched and grabbed his arm.

“Don’t give me your dandruff, Chuck!”

“Hey, it’s not my comb.  I just bought it!” he said.  “Anyway, you can do your own hair, Sean.”  Chuck handed it over and I repaired myself.

I got up on the stand and after they were done with the Bible, I got a good look at Mr. Aggarwal.

He folded and unfolded his arms and shook his right leg.  The lapels of his shirt were uneven and the tie knot was mushy.  His eyes were downcast and only slightly open, like his mouth.  Sometimes he would rub his ears.

Mrs. Aggarwal wasn’t around.

I had both feet on the ground and I placed my hands on my knees.  I made the left and right fingers mirror each other in the same exact spot.

Then I lied.

I lied like a motherfucker.

I had premonitions of what my testimony would be like.  I knew I wouldn’t be nervous.  I just pretended I was trying to get a girl to take a ride with me.

It was Mr. Aggarwal I was unsure of.  I had a vision of him lunging at me with a knife, or maybe the same wrench that he used to kill Howard.  On TV they always kept the murder weapons on the evidence table, like they were daring the murderer to pick them up and fight their way out of the courtroom.

But the wrench wasn’t there and because there wasn’t another camera angle to cut to, a sense of action was missing in the court.  I would have been incredibly bored if I weren’t testifying.

Mr. Aggarwal was completely still with his head down.

He looked like a boy preparing to meet the principal, not a man facing the death sentence.

We had a recess for lunch.  Chuck took me across the street to a lunch counter with a cracked-linoleum floor.

“Sean, you’re doing great!” he told me.  “I think you missed your true calling.  You’re a natural actor!”

“Oh, yeah.  So I’ve been told.”

Chuck took off his glasses and cleaned the lenses with his tie.  I leaned into him and said: “I’m one fuck of a liar, aren’t I?”

He looked at me strangely and when he put on his glasses I saw menace in his eyes.

“Don’t say that,” he said, his voice as faint as a lead pipe scraping against a wall in a back alley.  “Don’t ever say that.”

Chuck ordered a toasted plain bagel with nothing on it.  I got the tuna salad sandwich and a coffee.  I started with the chips first.

“I’ve already got a Star Ledger reporter who wants to interview you and get your whole life’s story,” Chuck said.  He only took a glass of water with his dry bagel.

“What do you think I should do?”

“Don’t do any interviews until the trial is over.  But in the end, it’s up to you, Sean, if you ever want to talk to them.  I mean, if you were the kind of guy who knew how and wanted to publicize yourself, then talk to them.  Someone could make your story into a book or into a movie.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.  Happens all the time with stuff like this.”

He took a bite out of his bagel and chewed.  Watching him eat made my throat feel scratchy.

“How can you eat that, Chuck?”

He shrugged and kept chewing.

“That’s got to have no taste.  It’s like eating seashells.”

“I have a bad stomach, and on top of that, I’m a little nervous,” Chuck said.

“If you’re not going to put anything on it, why not get an onion or raisin bagel?  Why did you have to get a plain?”

“The plain bagel isn’t plain-tasting.  It absorbs the flavors from all the other bagels around it.  It’s like getting an everything bagel without all the crap falling in your lap.”

The waitress refilled my coffee and I finished it in about five seconds.  Then she gave me a dirty look, daring me to ask for another refill.

“Hey, there, don’t be that way,” I told her.  “I’m a hometown hero!” It was good for one last refill.

After we were done eating, Chuck said I had to take the stand again.

“I thought I was done,” I said.

“You’re only half done.  Now the defense gets to question you.”

Panic went through me like a lightning strike.  I cracked my thumb knuckles and rubbed my tongue against the roof of my mouth because it felt numb.

Mr. Aggarwal’s lawyer looked like the rat-like bad guy from the first “Die Hard,” Hans, and seemed as mean-spirited.

He came walking straight at me with his black eyes sharp as spearpoints smeared with ink.

“How long has it been,” he asked casually, “since you’ve rejected Jesus Christ as your lord and savior?”

I put my hands over my crotch.

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“How long have you been working at the hamburger stand adjacent to my client’s hotel?”

“About three months.”

“Where were you employed immediately before?”

“I wasn’t.”

“You were in jail, weren’t you?”

Chuck spoke up. “May counsel approach the bench?”  The judge said yes and the three men had a conference.

Hans’s mouth swung open.   He stepped back to the floor. When he looked at me again, I knew the worst was coming.

“Are you familiar with the group known as the Dotbusters?”

“I have heard of them, yes.”

“What do the Dotbusters do?”

“They hate people from India.”

“And how is it that you’re familiar with the Dotbusters?”

“My co-worker, Howard, the murdered guy, told me about them.”

“Isn’t it true that he was a member?”

“Objection,” said Chuck.  “That’s pure conjecture.”

“I’ll rephrase.  To the best of your knowledge, was Howard a member of the Dotbusters?”

“He said he wasn’t,” I said.

“What do you know about the hate crime perpetrated against the Aggarwals?”

“Objection,” said Chuck.

“To the best of your knowledge, did Howard know anything about the posters that were put up around the Seahorse Hotel?”

“He told me he didn’t know.”

“I object to this line of questioning,” said Chuck. “The hate crime has nothing to do with this case.”

Die Hard villain said, “I’m trying to establish that the witness is prejudiced against the client.”

“I’m not prejudiced!” I yelled.  “Howard was!”

Chuck threw me the look of death.  I shut up.

“And yet you continued working with Howard,” said Hans.

“I didn’t have a choice.  I couldn’t quit and leave.”

“Wouldn’t you say were friends with Howard?”

“Not really.  We just worked together.”

“Do you resent immigrants such as Mr. Aggarwal coming into this country?”

“No.  I became friends with Mrs. Aggarwal.”

“Just friends, Sean?”

“Objection,” said Chuck, lazily.

“Did you have an affair with my client’s wife?”

“Objection.”

“Sustained,” said the judge.  “Counsel is warned that this is a frivolous line of questioning.”

Hans bit his lip and nodded.

When I got down and went over to Chuck, he muttered to me, “That was so fucking lame.”

“Me?”

“No, not you. The defendant’s lawyer. God, it was just pathetic. Was Aggarwal just trying to save money by calling 1-800-LAWYERS?”

“What happened earlier, when you walked up to the judge?”

“I told the judge that you were part of an undercover operation.  That any further testimony along the lines of your supposed imprisonment would put other undercover agents in jeopardy.”

“I wasn’t really.”

“No, it’s true.   I’m not lying. You just didn’t consciously know it.”

“What’s going to happen now?”

“I’d say Aggarwal’s done like Tandoori chicken.  Serve him up with some bread.”

I slid down in my chair and played with my jacket buttons.

That was the end of my testimony.  I was done with going to court.  Chuck told me to lay low and stay away from any cameras until the verdict came out.

The day after me, Mr. Aggarwal was on the stand.  There were other people testifying–Johnson as to how he found us up there on the terrace, and someone at the autopsy to say how Howard was killed–but it was basically me against Mr. Aggarwal as to what actually happened.

I read in the paper that he didn’t deny that he grew the pot or that he sold it to Howard.  Mr. Aggarwal even admitted killing Howard, though out of “temporary insanity.”  Howard had always made racist comments at Mr. Aggarwal, calling him a “dot” or “7-11.”

Mr. Aggarwal said he lost it when Howard accused him of sending the money to Al Qaeda.

He happened to have a cast-iron pipe wrench in his hand at the time.

The next thing he knew, something soft dropped on his foot.  It was Howard’s neck.

Judging from the demographic of the jury, they probably thought that Mr. Aggarwal was part of an Al Qaeda terror cell, too.  People on that jury were meatheads like me, Howard and Andrea Conti.

Mr. Aggarwal’s lawyer must have known what was going on.  He had Mr. Aggarwal’s engineering degree from M.I.T. passed around the jury, but it wasn’t enough.

Mr. Aggarwal hanged himself in jail that night.  He had ripped out strips of fabric from the waistline of his jail pants for the noose.

Chuck came to my apartment in person to tell me about Mr. Aggarwal.  I had been asleep and came to the door in my boxers.

I remember that when I heard the news, I curled up in a fetal position on the floor, crying.  Chuck didn’t know what to do and turned to leave.

I grabbed his ankle when he tried to walk away.  Chuck put his briefcase down and pulled me up to the couch.

“Hey, come on!  Pull yourself together, Sean,” he said.  “Look at you.  This whole thing is good for you!  You were the star witness, and now you’re a star!”

“I need to tell Mrs. Aggarwal that I’m sorry!”

“No!  Don’t ever contact her!”

“I killed him.”

“The jailors, the guys who didn’t take away all the things Mr. Aggarwal could hurt himself with — they’re to blame, not you.  Anyway, he killed himself.  Innocent and good people never kill themselves.  He was bad.”

“I was bad, too!  I was in jail!”

“Well, he was worse than you. Much worse.”

With such a dramatic ending to the case, the press came for me.  I talked with the Asbury Park Press, The Star-Ledger and the Philadelphia Inquirer.  I even had a telephone interview with The New York Post.

I didn’t really know why they bothered to talk to me, because it seemed that they already knew what they wanted to write.  I was a reformed drug user working undercover to topple the pot kingpin of the Jersey shore.

The New Jersey Devils and the Nets wanted me to come to pre-season warm-ups and meet the guys.  I went to see both teams and it felt like the whole thing was happening to someone else — someone bigger and taller.

But most importantly, Johnson arranged for me to have dinner with a retired detective who now ran a management consultation business in the city.  His name was Ron LaVerne and he looked like the guy who does the diabetes drug ad on TV.  LaVerne wanted me to come and work for him, starting out with a low-level office job.

What struck me, as I was getting set up in the city, was how similar my situation was to when I was on probation.  Actually, it was a little worse.

The first time I saw the apartment LaVerne had set up for me, on the fifth floor of a walkup way over on 10th Avenue and 52nd Street, I thought that there had to be some mistake with the address.  The neighborhood was poorly lit and the sidewalks were as dirty as the gutter.

In fact, the asphalt of the street was so high and the sidewalk blocks had sank so low, there was no curb.  When it rained, the sidewalk was the gutter that the water washed up onto and flooded.

People hanging out were a strange mix of elderly Puerto Ricans and Dominicans and young white college students.

My building looked like the others up and down the block. The cracked and chipped stone steps up to the lobby door looked like they belonged in a haunted graveyard.

The tile floor of the lobby was mostly pulverized or missing.  The staircase was in surprisingly good shape.  It barely creaked when you walked up. The handrail had so many coatings of lead paint that it was bulletproof.

My apartment faced the street and even with the window shut, I could hear people yelling and laughing no matter where I was — in the small bedroom, the small living room or the tiny bathroom.

The first thing I did in that apartment was put the goldfish bowl on the toilet tank.  I watched him shake his fins and sink slightly.

I saw some nails on the floor so I took a broom off the counter and swept them out into the hallway.  I heard a girl in the next apartment on the phone, crying.  I came back in, shut the door and locked it.

In the morning, I walked down to 34th Street and then walked past The New Yorker hotel on the corner of 8th Avenue to a generic office building.

I was ready for my first day.  After taking the stand in court, there wasn’t anything I couldn’t face.

I walked into the lobby and tried to read the quote that ran the entire length of the lobby mural.  The guard behind the desk gave me a look like I was lucky his trap-door button wasn’t working.

Up on the 10th floor, the receptionist was on her cell phone and buzzed me in without even looking at me.

Ron LaVerne wasn’t in yet.  It turned out he rarely came in on Mondays, or early in the week or early in the month.

I got a cup of coffee and took a desk in a cubicle in the corner closest to the window.  I had a few coffee refills before a tech guy wandered over to set me up on the computer.   He got Firefox up and running but he couldn’t get me an actual company account until the boss came in.  I killed time by looking for a used copy of “The Corduroy Road.”

Ron came in on Thursday and had me backdate my paperwork to the beginning of the month.

“Someone show you the ropes around here, yet?” he asked as he glanced at my Social Security card.

“Nobody’s shown me anything.  I’ve been getting the cold shoulder around here.”

“You know what?  People think you’re my mole here.  They all know you from the newspaper and that you work undercover.  The first few months might be tough, but they’ll soften up.”

“Okay.”

“Oh, you need an eight-by-24 phone, here.”  I found out later that that meant I was going to be handling the calls. I also filled out FedEx forms and took deliveries.  I became the go-to guy for Excel spreadsheets because I learned it quickly and soon took over for the woman who taught me.  Now that I think about it, I guess she let me pass her on purpose.

I didn’t have a computer at home, so I stayed a little late every day just to surf the Web.  I tried searching for where Mrs. Aggarwal was, but I kept turning up lists of professors and doctors.

I finally found “The Corduroy Road” at a used-book site.  Someone was selling a used one from a public school that had just shut down.  Jesus, how many years did they teach that book?

I did a Google search for myself, but as time went on, newspaper sites with my name started expiring and leading to dead links.  Hitting too many of them was always a signal to go home.

I was in a bar one night when I felt someone grab my shoulder.  I turned my head and stared into the face of a pretty green parrot.  Its head was cocked and a little tongue was hanging out of its beak.

His name was Money and he belonged to this Polish-American girl, Crystal.  I wish mom could have seen me now, dating a college graduate.

We were on and off, depending on how much money I had at the time.  I guess I was old-fashioned because I think men should have to pay.

LaVerne drug-tested at work every month and was also my landlord, so I didn’t dare smoke pot or even call in sick.  I was so paranoid, I wouldn’t even put oregano on my pizza.

My goldfish seemed more active in the new apartment, or maybe it was just my lack of pot intake.

Above the mirror in my bathroom, a sign read, “Promotion to Office Manager.”

Sometimes late in the afternoons there would be a loud hoopla from the mailroom.  Because all the managers in the office were white, they were too scared to go into the all-black-and-Latino mailroom to see what was going on.

Not scared for their lives.  Scared of looking stupid or square.

Because I sent out and received so many packages and flat-rate envelopes, I was probably the only white guy who went in there regularly.

One day my curiosity got the better of me and after a spirited series of hollers and high-fives from the mailroom, I got up, put my hands in my pockets and sauntered in.

The enthusiasm in the room died two seconds after I walked in.

“What’s going on in here?”

“Why, we’re only working hard, boss,” said Pops, the senior mail guy.  He had been there since the beginning, almost 10 years ago.  Pops had a kinky gray chin and head but clean-shaven lips.

Somebody quickly hit some keys on the tracking computer and then stood in front of the monitor.

“What do you know about the stock market?” asked Pops.

“Nothing.”

“Do you want to learn?”

“Not really.  I just wanted to know what all the shouting was about.”

“Well, we made our nut this week.”

“Your nut?”

“Yes, well, Sean, when a trading desk makes back all its operating expenses – things like rent, salary and other costs – it is said to be making its nut.  After that, everything’s gravy.

I didn’t understand a word he said.

Pops rolled up his sleeves and took a ballpoint pen from his shirt pocket and started clicking the button.

“This is what’s going on, Sean,” he said.  “We’ve opened an online brokerage account and we’ve been trading stock.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Look, nothing illegal is going on here.  Except maybe we’re a little distracted from our work at times.  We’re even set up as a limited-liability partnership.”

“Okay.”

“When we first got our WiFi network in the office, I noticed that my subordinates were spending a lot of time going over sports stats. One day I figured, shoot, if we’re gonna be putting that much effort into numbers, we might as well be making money off of it.”

“All right.”

“Legally.  Not with bookies.  I mean, I know how you’re the hero of the drug bust in Jersey, but there’s nothing here for you to sniff out.  Unless you want to join.”

“How do I join?  Um, what am I joining?”

The guy blocking the terminal broke in: “What are you asking him to join?  Just the investment club and not the book club?”

“Doug,” said Pops, “he can join either one.”

“A book club?  I like to read.  I’ll join that one, too.”

“Well, now, we have to take a vote on your memberships,” said Pops.  “Just wait outside for a few minutes for us to talk this over.”

They let me into the investment club, but I missed the book club by one vote.  The initial investment was $100 and I told Pops I’d have the money next week, after payday.

Just after congratulating me on getting in, Pops grabbed me by the shoulder and looked into my eyes.

“Tell me you have your 401(k) retirement plan set up.”

“I got the folder, but I didn’t read it.”

“Man, you gotta read that shit!  I’m enrolling you online right now.  Sit down!”

I sat down in the swivel chair in front of the terminal as Pops typed something on the keyboard.  It was a little too high, so I pulled on the lever on the side.

There was something very familiar about the feel of the lever.  I got up and turned the chair on its side to look under the seat.  It was made by DEPCOR, and maybe even by me.  I put the wheels back on the floor, sat down and slowly spun to the monitor.

“Now, what’s your last name, again?” asked Pops.

Johnson called me at work.

“O’Keefe!” I shouted into the phone out of instinct.

“I hate to admit it, but it’s nice to hear that name again,” Johnson said.

There are fables of people who wander into a hidden land of fairies and stay for a day and have fun. But when they leave the forest for home, they find out that in reality a number of years have passed — one year for each fairy hour.  You live in New York City in fairy hours.

When I heard Johnson’s voice I realized that it was now May, about seven months since the trial and everything, even though it felt like I was still in my first few weeks in the city.

May used to be a really exciting time for me.  The summer officially started in Shore Points with Memorial Day weekend, and before then, I had to get a job and a girl lined up, or at least my first job and first girl for the season.

Now it didn’t matter.  We went from winter to spring and the temperature and humidity of the office didn’t budge. It was the same fucking thing every day.

(Next week, the electrifying conclusion to Motherfuckerland.)

(Art by spoon+fork.)

Chuck worked out a deal for me and they released me to my overheated apartment.  The first thing I did was go into the bathroom and feed my fish.

I had been gone almost a week and was mildly worried I’d find him floating at the top.  He seemed hungry but normal.  I ran the water in the tub as I watched him eat.  I turned the fish food can over in my hand and read it for the first time.  I was shocked to see that the top ingredient was “fish meal.”

I knew fish in the ocean ate each other, but I thought tame fish were too civilized to do the same.  Would goldfish eat the flakes if they knew what was in them?

When the water was high enough, I undressed and got into the tub.

The reason I couldn’t eat the veal sandwich, and why I felt a little sick seeing Mr. Johnson eat it, was that my fourth-grade teacher Ms. Daley showed us some pictures from a veal farm.  She had pictures of cramped stalls with no windows and said veal was the meat of baby cows who were fed very little and had their legs chained or broken so they couldn’t develop muscle and their meat stayed white and tender.

She also had a picture of a dumpster that looked like it was filled with Corn Pops cereal.  But when you looked close, you saw that it was a pile of dead baby chickens.  The male chicks were thrown in the garbage and suffocated soon after they were born because they wouldn’t grow up to give as much meat as female chicks.

About once a week, she’d give us another reason to be a vegetarian.  Some kids were throwing their bologna sandwiches in the trash.

Then one day, instead of telling us about how bad our food was, she gave us all copies of “The Corduroy Road.”  After that, lunchmeat was okay again.  It hadn’t been a problem for me because I only had peanut butter, or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Mrs. Daley went on quietly drinking a can of V8 with nuts and dried fruits on the side.  She didn’t even say anything when the boy in the back killed his first deer and brought in some venison for the whole class to try.  I remembered that the meat was tough and tasted like sweat.

After a while the water in the tub grew cold and filmy.  I had to piss so I climbed out.

I lay in bed naked for a while.  I wasn’t sure what to do.  It was going to be some time before the trial and my big show.  Until then I had to fight the urge to go to the hotel.  Mrs. Aggarwal wasn’t there anymore, but I wanted to walk around on the motel roof again.  We had had some good times together and it wasn’t just the pot, either.  I had never had such plain and open conversations in my adult life, and certainly not with a woman.

She hated me now.  I was sure.  I wondered if she would have hated me more if I had chosen not to testify and let her spend a year in jail like I did.

On the other hand, I saved myself. I think.

“I’m not Jesus,” I said out loud. I plugged in my TV but now it was dead.

In the morning, someone was buzzing my door.  I got up, put on a towel and slippers.

I went over to the intercom, pressed a button and said, “Yes?”

“Sean,” said Andrea Conti.  “It’s me!”

I pulled the towel tighter against my waist.

“What are you doing here, Andrea?”

“Get down here!  I’m gonna take you to buy a suit.”

“I already have a suit.”  It was from the thrift store and some guy probably died in it, but the suit fit well.

“Just get down here, okay?”

I went to the closet and yanked the suit off the rack.  It smelled a little musty, like young tree roots just pulled out from the ground.  I threw it on the bed to let it air out.  I put on a clean pocket T-shirt and a pair of cut-offs.

When I got downstairs I saw that she was in a shiny convertible, a Sebring.  Andrea flipped her sunglasses up and said, “Hi, stranger!”

She threw the car into drive even before I got the door closed all the way.

“Jesus, Andrea, at least let me get my seat belt on!”

“Sean, you’re going to be famous.  You already are!  You’re in the papers every day!” She was chewing a huge wad of gum but it didn’t slow down her talking.

“I came this close to . . .”

“You know, we let these people into our country and they come in here and they don’t even try to fit in!  They want our money but they hate our culture!  Cooking that disgusting curry and dressing in those harem dresses!  We should just close the fucking door.  Put up a sign that says, ‘Please Go Away, America Is Full.’  I hope they deport that fucker and his wife on their flying carpet!”

“You’re talking like a Dotbuster, Andrea.”

“Maybe they’re just saying what everyone else is thinking.”

“Do you support the KKK, too?”

“Hey, I am not a racist!  I’m pro-American.  That Aggarwal isn’t an American, is he?”

I didn’t know what to say, so I touched my wallet and asked her, “Why do you want to buy me a suit, Andrea?”

“Aw, it’s from Michael.  You know, it says you worked at his hamburger stand, he wants you to look good.  Not that we pay you well, but, you know.  You’re an employee, so you’re sort of family.”

“Howard was family, too, right?”

“Michael is taking care of part of the burial expenses.  You know they found Howard’s dad in Florida?  He was completely broke and he hadn’t talked to Howard in years.  He’s trying to get the court to give him Howard’s bank account.”

“Did you have to get Howard a suit, too?”

“Did you get him a suit, too?”

“You know it was a closed-casket funeral, Mr. Funnyman.”

“I was in jail when it happened, Andrea.”

“Oh, that’s right.  Well, it was a nice service.”

She took me to the Men’s Wearhouse at the Freehold Raceway Mall.  I got two suits, one black and the other dark blue.  She insisted that I get a matching handkerchief for each, although I thought it made me look like Ricky Ricardo.  They seemed to know her there, and the tailor made all the adjustments in minutes even though there was a sign that said tailoring would take a week.

Andrea wanted to go see a race across the street at the raceway, but it was shut down.  They didn’t have racing in the summer because it was too hot for the horses, and it didn’t come back until late-August–a week away.

We looked through the plastic slats in the chain-link fence and saw an old riding lawnmower parked on the dirt of the track.  The metal seat had rusted to the same color as the soil.  The suit hangers were biting down into my hand, so I hooked them onto the fence and rubbed the grooves in my palm.

“Think that thing even works?” Andrea asked.

“Of course it works.  They wouldn’t drag it out there if it didn’t work.”

“It looks like a stagecoach after the Indians burned it.”

“You don’t know what a stagecoach looks like.”

For whatever reason, that set her off.

“Fuck you, Sean!  Don’t tell me what I know!  I went to college!”

“Well, you didn’t fucking finish, did you?”

“I went for a year!”

“Yeah?  Well, unlike you, I didn’t want to pretend that I could do it!  Anyway,  I knew I couldn’t pay for it!”

“Sucks to be poor, doesn’t it?”

“No, it sucks to be a greasy fucking Guinea bitch.”

She stalked off.  Over her shoulder, she yelled, “I’m one-eighth Indian, that’s how I know stagecoaches!  Now go pick me some potatoes, ya mick bastard!”

“You don’t pick potatoes–you dig them up.”

“You’re corroded, Sean!”

Andrea went across the road.

There’s a certain kind of walk a woman does when she’s had enough.  She puts her heels down first and turns her feet out like a duck.  Her upper body takes the form of two elbows pumping.  You’ll never see her happy face again and she’ll duck you at the mall.

Andrea hopped in the car and swung it onto the highway in no time. I think she gave me the finger but there was a glare on the window and I wasn’t sure.

I sat down and leaned against the fence where my suits were flapping in the wind.  Right there under the spikes of the bottom of the fence was a book of matches, half of it torn out.  I couldn’t believe my luck.

I took out a cigarette that I had bummed from the Men’s Wearhouse fitting-room girl and lit it.  It was one of the best non-pot smokes I ever had.  When I finished, I picked up my suits and walked down the road to the bus stop.  When I got there I only had to wait about 15 minutes.

(Part 20 next week.)

(Art by spoon+fork.)

The Jersey newspapers usually run national news in the front sections.  Apart from high-school sports and construction kickback busts, there was almost never any local news.

Mr. Angrywall made the front covers of every newspaper that they let me have in my holding cell.  Only his name wasn’t “Angrywall.”  It was “Aggarwal.”

He had been growing several different kinds of marijuana in a few of the rooms on the top floor.  Some varieties were new to the law-enforcement community.

Which included James O’Keefe.  Turns out that wasn’t his real name.  His real name was Shawn Johnson.  He was a detective with the Narcotics Central Unit of the state.  I found out later that they had put Johnson on me because I was evaluated to be the most at risk of recidivism.  They wanted to see whom I would go to for more pot.

My court-appointed lawyer was a joke.  He was a nervous Oriental guy named Chuck Shu. Yeah, I’m not kidding.

He encouraged me to “remember” some sort of story of how I saw Howard regularly get pot from Mr. Angrywall.

“Better yet,” he said, “say you went with Howard to buy pot from Mr. Aggarwal.”

“Chuck,” I told him, “I didn’t see shit.  I have no idea where Howard got his pot from.”

“You’ve been apprehended in another drug-related crime, Sean.  Under your prior conviction, that’s an, ah, automatic three-year sentence.”

“So you want me to lie?”

“Oh, no, no, no — don’t lie.  But think harder.  You might have forgotten.  It could be suppressed deep down.  If you can remember a certain scenario, and testify against Mr. Aggarwal, I can probably get you an immunity deal.”

“That means no time at all for me?”

“Yes.  It could even make you a local hero.  Mr. Aggarwal was found to have an extraordinary amount of marijuana plants and, ah, associated paraphernalia.”

“What kind of sentence is Mr. Angrywall looking at?”

“Probably 20 to 25 years.  Ultimately, it could be reduced to 10, I think.”

“They wouldn’t deport him to India?”

“He’s a naturalized American citizen.  They won’t deport him.  Can’t, in fact.”

“What about Mrs. Angrywall?”

“Mrs. Aggarwal hasn’t been charged.”

“What’s going to happen to her?”

“I guess she’ll be visiting her husband on the weekends, heh.”

In my holding cell, I got back into reading, but not books.  They let me have newspapers every day with the classified sections and personal ads left out.

They were saying Mr. Aggarwal may have been the sole source of the strong marijuana that was going around grade schools in Monmouth and Ocean Counties.

An editorial in the Asbury Park Press said that “Raj Aggarwal should have used his knowledge and intelligence for good, not evil.”

Some Indian kids had been beaten in school.  One badly enough to be hospitalized.

The hotel and hamburger stand were both closed by the Shore Points sheriff.

They said that my role in the whole thing was as of yet unclear.

One paper profiled some jerk who had also been arrested under the Weed Out The Garden State measure and was now working in a gift shop, packing seashells imported from Mexico and playing organ in church on Sundays.

He said that being in jail was a wake-up call for him and that it would be a shame if it hadn’t straightened me out, as well.

They took me out of the cell and escorted me to an interrogation room.  I expected Chuck to show up, but it was O’Keefe, or Shawn Johnson.

Something smelled good.

“You like chicken or veal more?” he asked.  There were two subs wrapped in tin foil on the table.  They smelled like parmesan cheese.

“I like chicken more.  I feel guilty eating veal.”

He pushed the one marked “C” on the foil to a seat across from him.  I sat down in the chair and unwrapped the sub.  I felt moist warm bread push against the roof of my mouth and I almost choked on the first bite.

“Whoa, easy there!  You’re like a dog, Sean!”

“I don’t drink out of a toilet,” I said.  I didn’t have the balls to follow Howard’s advice.

We didn’t say anything else until we were both almost done eating.

“Now, I know you’ve had a chance to talk to your lawyer, Sean.  You got a story you want to tell me?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Now let’s look at how things are, Sean,” Johnson said, finishing his sub and slapping the crumbs off his hands.

“Can I just call you O’Keefe?  It’s hard for me to call you Shawn.  That’s my name.”

“You can call me ‘Detective Johnson’ or ‘Mr. Johnson.’”

“Mr. Johnson, what kind of spot am I in?”

“You’re in a position to help put away one of the biggest drug lords in the history of our state, Sean.  Aggarwal didn’t care who got hurt or how many families got destroyed.”

“When I think of a drug lord, I think of ‘Scarface.’”

“Yeah, he was another guy who came to this country, tried to get ahead taking the low road, so to speak.  But now he has to face the music.”

“It’s just pot, Mr. Johnson.  It’s not cocaine.”

“‘Just pot,’ huh?  What if I told you that your late pal Howard was selling Aggarwal’s pot to kids at black schools?  I’m talking about kids as young as nine.  That coward sold it early in the morning before most adults in the neighborhood were awake.

“I can’t help but take this personally.  You think black families don’t already have enough to struggle with?  Now Junior’s coming home all doped up, stealing money from his mother’s purse for more when she hasn’t got enough to buy groceries?

“Then farther down the line, Junior’s going to have to smoke more and more to get to that high again.  Then he’s going to try harder stuff.”

“Everybody I knew just stuck to pot.”

“I’ll bet nobody you knew was raised by a single mother who had to work two jobs to keep the family going.

“I don’t mean two office jobs, neither!  I mean shit jobs! Scrubbing toilets, mopping floors, and everything on the graveyard shift!  Getting paid like a parking meter!  And then she has to keep juggling jobs because they keep finding someone who will work for even less!

“There you are coming in late, not knowing where you been and all high or strung out and she’s left out a dinner plate for you in the oven because she had to go to another job and she’s praying every minute, every day that you’re going to straighten out your life on your own because she’s too damn tired to beat you or even yell!”

“You’re shouting, Mr. Johnson.”

He inhaled and it seemed like a full minute before he let it out.

“I don’t mean to shout.  I just get worked up.”

“I treated my mother badly, too,” I said.  He nodded.

“Sean, you have an opportunity to break this cycle of cruelty, of racism.  Don’t do it just for you.  Think about the children.”

“Do what?”

“Testify about what you know about Aggarwal selling marijuana to Howard, who then went on to sell it to kids.”

“I didn’t hear about anything about that.”

“You know Aggarwal was supplying Howard.”

“I don’t know for sure.  Howard could have been in that room for the first time and Aggarwal killed him to keep him quiet.”

“Just say you saw them meet up, or Aggarwal came around the hamburger stand, slipped Howard a package.”

“It didn’t happen. I never saw him come by.”  He leaned in close.

“Sometimes, Sean, you need a little lie to stop the bigger evil.  For example, if I didn’t pretend to be your probation officer, I wouldn’t have been able to gain your trust and plant a bug on you.”

“What!”

“The cell phone.  I was recording you.”

“Ha, I used to turn it off. . .from time to time.”

“The bug was a recording chip hidden inside that worked if the phone was on or off.  You talk a lot of bullshit when you’re high, Sean.”

“You can’t use any of that against me.  You didn’t have my permission to record me.”

“Au contraire!  As a convicted drug abuser, I had permission from the court to monitor your activities, your whereabouts and everything you ate, drank or smoked.  Do we understand each other?”

I didn’t say anything.

“And how about I throw in Mrs. Aggarwal for the abuse of drugs, too?  Be a shame to put such a sexy, spicy woman in jail.”

“What’s going to happen to Mrs. Angry–Aggarwal?”

“I knew you wanted to get with her.  Kinda disappointed you didn’t.”

“Hey, I could’ve.  She would’ve, too.”

“Of course.  I mean, now, she’s going to hate your guts for testifying against her husband.  But if you don’t fuck him over, you’re going to fuck her over.”

“I don’t want to fuck anybody over!”

“You have to fuck someone over!  Welcome to the real world, Sean!  You had enough practice fucking up your life and your mother’s!”

I wanted to hit him, but I was so mad I couldn’t even move.  Mr. Johnson brushed his sleeves.

“Personally, ” he said quietly, “I’d much, much rather have Mr. Aggarwal fucked over.  What do you say, Sean? Are you going to testify against him?”

I pushed my seat out and put my head on top my folded arms on the desk.  Mr. Johnson shifted in his seat to hold eye contact with me.

“What’s going to happen to your recordings of me and Mrs. Angrywall?” I asked.

“I’ll have a technical difficulty and delete them.”

“I want a copy of them.”

Suddenly, Chuck burst into the room.

“My client has nothing to say to you!” he stammered.

Mr. Johnson smiled and crumpled up the foil wrappers and tossed them into a garbage can.  He said, “We were just having lunch–a real good lunch.”

Then Chuck looked at the both of us and smiled, too.

(Part 19 next week.)

(Art by spoon+fork.)

Andrea Conti wanted to give me a handjob as usual, but I was done with it.  I think those anti-horny jail chemicals were completely out of my system.  I still wanted to jump on Mrs. Angrywall and I was mad at her for having that much control over me.  I guess I was mad at all women.

We were standing in the back of the walk-in van.

“Let’s not,” I told Andrea.  “It’s all right.  I held on to my zipper and pushed her hand away.

“What!”  She nearly dropped the sack of money from the hamburger stand’s receipts.

“Everything’s okay.  Just, you know, we’ll unload the food each week, I’ll give you the money, and that’s just fine.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.  It’s just. . .that’s how it’s going to be.”

“You don’t like it anymore?”  Her eyes were shining.  Christ, it was like trying to break up with someone.

“I’m gonna be honest,” I said.  “This just doesn’t do it for me anymore.  I’m tired of bunting when I step up to the plate, you know what I mean?”

“All guys are like this, aren’t they?  Deep down inside you only want to score, isn’t that right?  You just want to fuck!”

“Not all the time, but some of the time, yes, definitely.  I do have to get laid every once in a while.”

“Maybe I could suck you.”

“That’s nice, but it’s not going to do it, either.”

“I’ll give you what you want, then,” Andrea said slowly.  “But you have to wrap it and I don’t want to do it in the van.”

“Where we gonna do it?”

“How about one of the hotel rooms?”

“Here?” I said, nearly choking.

“Yeah, here.  What, are you scared or something, now?  You only want to talk about fucking?”

“Naw, it’s just that, I don’t know if they’ll let me.”

“Go ask the dot for a key.  She won’t give a shit.  You know what they do in her country?”

“Don’t call her a ‘dot,’” I warned.

“I’ll call her whatever the fuck I want!”  She crossed her arms.

“Wait here.”

“I’ll wait, but not too long.”

I rubbed my ears as I walked to the office.  I wondered if I could look into Mrs. Angrywall’s eyes and ask for a room key just like that.  Sure, she was going to ask what for.  I couldn’t lie to her, but maybe I should tell her that I’d clean the room up after, too.

Every potentially good situation always had something tough to overcome.  “Man Has to Be His Own Savior“ talked about it endlessly.  Mao had the Long March.  The American autoworkers nearly starved to get their right to a 40-hour workweek.  I could ask Mrs. Angrywall for a room key to get laid.

“You look positively gloomy, Sean.”  Mrs. Angrywall was reading through Auto Exchange, the free weekly newsletter of used cars.  “It’s a sunny day out, so chin up.”

“Are you looking to buy a car or something?”

“No, but I do like the little descriptions of the cars, particularly the antique models.  It’s a bit like reading tombstones, only one presumes the cars are still running.  I’m amused by the number of ‘easily repaired’ problems there are.”

“A lot of car dealers take out ads to make them look like some guy selling a car in his driveway.  But then you call them and show up at the address and it’s a used-car lot.  They’ll try to sell you another car for more money.”

“You speaking from personal experience?”

I thought about how I went with my mother to what turned out to be a used-car lot.  The guy was a snake.  Her instincts were good enough that she ended up not buying a car, but for whatever fucking reason she went on a few dates with him.

“No, I just heard,” I said.

“You on break now?”

“No, I just. . .I wanted to ask you for a favor.”

“I definitely owe you.  If anything, for that excellent weed this summer.  You name it.”

“Could I get a hotel room?”

“Are you throwing a party?”

“Not really.  I’ll only need it for an hour, tops.”

Mrs. Angrywall scrunched up her eyebrows and nose and tried to make them meet somewhere between her eyes.

“Sean?”

“Yes?”

“What exactly are you planning on doing?”

I put my hands on the counter and hunched down.

“I’m going to have sex with this girl.”

Mrs. Angrywall folded up the magazine and smoothed down her hair.

“Are you mad, Sean?  Just who is this tart you’ve brought in?”

“It’s Andrea Conti.”  I wanted to be as upfront as possible.

“She’s a married woman, you know!  Oh, I’ve forgotten! That doesn’t mean anything to you!  You can’t keep it in your pants!”

“Oh, it matters, all right.  But it’s not the biggest thing in the fucking world!”

“Is she aware of your plans, or are you thinking you can manage to seduce her and be through with her in an hour?”

“Andrea knows what’s going on.”

“I see.  Now, then, let me find a room appropriate for such debauchery.”

She turned her back to me to look through the key rack.

“Look,” I said to her shoulders, “I’m a man.  I’m human.  I have certain needs I have to take care of.”

“Yes, that’s completely legitimate.  All men should take care of their needs.  Otherwise they wouldn’t be men.”  She snatched a set of keys and came around the counter.  “Shall we inspect the room first?” asked Mrs. Angrywall, sweeping her arms to the stairwell.

On the second floor landing, she stopped and unlocked a small closet.

“You’ll be needing clean sheets, I assume.  I mean, for her sake, at least,” she said, standing on her toes to reach for the top shelf.  I dropped my eyes to her calves.  They were a sight I had missed from all our afternoons sneaking to the roof to get high.  They were incredibly tan, impossibly smooth.

She whirled around, two sheets over her left elbow.

“Wondering if you could seduce me, now, hey?”

“It’s not a crime to look.”

“No, it’s just rude to stare at a woman’s ass.”

“I wasn’t looking at your ass, I was looking at your calves.”

“A leg man.  And I once had you pegged for breasts.”

“You don’t know what men are like.  Hell, you don’t even know what people are like.  You only know plants, little fucking underwater green shit smears.”

“You think life is about doing whatever you want, never having to take care about anyone else.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry, in America we tend to look down on momma’s boys.”

“In India, any man who treated his mother the way you treated your mother would be a perfect pariah!”

“Well, maybe that’s what I am!”  I didn’t actually know what “pariah” meant.  Sounded French.

“Let’s go to the top floor.  Some of the storm-damaged rooms might fit your fancy.”

We went up and I looked at her calves some more. There was nothing else to look at apart from rough gray concrete.

Room 424 was at the far end of the west wing.  Walking across the terrace to the room, I looked down at the hamburger stand.  It looked lopsided from that angle.  Andrea was sitting in the driver’s seat of the van, the door open and her bare legs sticking out.  A cool breeze was coming in, raking thin wisps of clouds.

“Do you want to open the door, or shall I?” she asked.  The key dangled on her finger like a little bird.

“Is Mr. Angrywall around?”

“He might be.  Do you care who knows that you’re taking care of your needs?”

“I’ll open the fucking door,” I said.  I took the key from her and tried to stick it in the wrong way.  I turned it over and slipped it into the lock, but it still wouldn’t budge.

“It’s not working,” I told her.

“Let me see.”  She couldn’t get it to work, either.  “I’ll use the master key.”  Mrs. Angrywall reached into her wrap and pulled out a key with a brass circle tag.  The door opened easily.

There was an unpleasant smell, like the carpet was woven from dirty athletic socks.  You couldn’t see much of the floor, though.  Most of the space was taken up by potted marijuana plants under a complicated system of lights and water pipes.

At some point the plants had grown to about two feet high, but they were all dead and limp, lying around like washed up seaweed.

“Oh, my,” was all I could say.

“That fiendish bastard. . .” whispered Mrs. Angrywall.

The smell got worse closer to the bathroom.  The door was closed.

I saw my hand go to the door handle.  She cupped both hands over her mouth and nose.  We both knew what we were going to find.

Howard was sprawled out on the bathroom floor.  Half his face was caved in.  There were maggots and flies in his mouth.  The stench interfaced with the most un-evolved and primitive cells of my brain.  For the first time in my life, I could make my ears twitch.

Mrs. Angrywall was out on the terrace, screaming.  I stumbled outside.  She was sitting on the concrete floor, throwing her head around, spraying spit and tears.  Her fingers were tangled in her hair.

From the east wing someone was running over.  It was Mr. Angrywall.  He slowed when he saw me.  As he got closer, he smiled.

“I changed the locks, but I had forgotten about the master key.  I forgot she had a copy, too,” he said quietly.

“You killed Howard,” I said, my voice sounding like someone said it in back of me.

“Hey, buddy,” Mr. Angrywall said, “be quiet.”  He crouched down and held Mrs. Angrywall.

He was still there when several cops led by O’Keefe charged out of the stairwell and told us all to freeze.

Of course, Howard’s body was foremost in my mind.  But right up there, in second place, was the thought that I was going to be drinking water out of the toilet for at least a few years.

(Part 18 next week.)

(Art by spoon+fork.)

Howard didn’t bother to show up to work on Tuesday.  Didn’t get a phone call, either.

I wasn’t surprised.  It was just a matter of time before this would happen.  He’d been saying he’d be there for years, but losing the laptop probably soured that fucker.  He had enough money, anyway.

Based on my years of working down at the shore, the people who show up late keep showing up late the whole summer, if they don’t get fired.  That kind of worker doesn’t have the initiative to find another job or to muster enough courage to quit.

The diligent ones, the people who show up on time, are the ones who leave for good.  No two-week notice.  Their phone number and address aren’t good anymore.  Any personal stuff they had at the job was already brought home over time.  That’s quitting Jersey style.

So Howard actually broke the mold — he was the slacker who actually quit.

I was ready for my break in the afternoon when I realized I might not be able to take one.  The lock was in bad shape and I didn’t feel like jiggling my key in it for five minutes so I dragged a chair outside and propped it against the closed door behind me.

I stepped into the hotel office.

“Howard didn’t call here, did he?” I asked Mrs. Angrywall.

“Nobody’s called all day,” she said, crossing her arms and slouching lower in her seat.

“He didn’t come in today.”

“And I’m certain you miss him deeply.”

I scratched behind my right ear and said, “You know, if he quit, that means no more, ah, smoking.” Her eyebrows rose.

“I see. . .” she said.

“It’s probably for the best.  Every time I lit up, I was putting myself at risk for serious bodily harm from O’Keefe.  He’d probably get you locked up, too. Anyway it’s way too risky for me to find another dealer.”

“It’s a shame.  I truly enjoyed our time smoking together.  Are you still able to get away for breaks?”

“I don’t know.  I better call Michael Conti.”

“Smoke backy?”

“Huh?”

“Er, regular cigarettes.  Do you smoke them?”

“Sure I do.  It’s like drinking soda instead of booze, though.”

“This situation calls for a carton.  I’m off to the 7-11.  I’ll meet you back at your stand.”

I went back to the hamburger stand, found the phone number on a fridge magnet and called Michael Conti, my boss whom I had never actually met.

Someone who sounded as sleepy and unconcerned as Howard answered the phone.  I had to wait a while as he went to find Michael.

A deeper voice then said, “Yeah?”

“Michael?”

“Yeah?”

“This is Sean, at the hamburger stand in Shore Points.”

“Yeah, the pothead.”

“That’s me.”

“Is something the matter?”

“Howard didn’t show up today.”

“So spank him when you see him.”

“It would be a little tough working here by myself.  I can’t do a good job when it’s just me.”

“Take a break.  Put up one of them ‘Back In 10 Minutes’ signs.”

“Aren’t you going to hire somebody to take his place?”

“Aw, it’s almost August, that means there’s one more month left in the season.  It’s not worth it.  Look at the employee pool out there.  It sucks.  Just stick it out for me, I’ll get you a better job in the fall.”

“What if I get sick, Mr. Conti?”

“Then don’t come in.”

“What if I quit, too?”

The receiver made a sound like the other end scratched against a stubbly, scabby chin.

“What if you what!”

“What if I quit?”

“Ha!  You can’t quit!  You have to work for me for a year.  That’s the law.”

My heart sank.  Sure Howard was no help, but he was company, even if he did make too much noise when he ate or drank.  And the pot sure as hell helped.

“Come on, now,” said Michael Conti.  I didn’t realize that I was moaning.  “Don’t go blubbering on me.  I been good to you.  Who else would even give you a job, with your record!”

“Nobody.”

“That’s right.  Just hang in there, man, just a few more weeks and keep giving the money to Andrea.  And no skimming.  I watch them books like a hawk.”

“Okay,” I said.

I tried to make an iced coffee, but I hadn’t used enough ice.  I ended up making a lukewarm drink that I poured down the sink.  I had a hot cup instead.

I went outside and sat in the bad plastic chair.   Mrs. Angrywall came over and sat in the good one.

“Working hard or hardly working?” she asked.

“Fuck you,” I said.

“My, you’re rude when you’re not high.”

“I’m just keeping it real, girlfriend.”

“You like Marlboro?”  She shook her pack until about an inch of a cigarette stuck out.  I took the pack from her hands and caressed her for a few seconds.

“Sean.  Don’t!”

“I’m not!” I said, holding up my right hand.  With my left I pulled out two cigarettes, put them in my mouth and lit them.

“This is such a comedown,” I said, handing one to Mrs. Angrywall.  “It’s like Kool-Aid after red wine.”

“I’ve always despised cigarettes,” she said before taking a long drag.  “Irritates the throat.”

“Anything that burns makes smoke,” I said.  I was sucking hard and it wasn’t giving me anything.

“Back in college, my boyfriend had a vaporizer.  It was brilliant.  Just drop the leaves in and it heats them up.  You just have to inhale the little mist that comes out.”

“Those things are like a couple hundred bucks.”

“It’s worth it for the benefits, long term.  No smoke smell in the house and fewer toxins.  It’s also a more efficient delivery system.”

“Do you think marijuana is addictive?”

“Not particularly.  Anything can be addictive when you can’t find happiness in your life.”

“I was happy on Howard’s weed.  That made everything easier.  I forgot how tough it was to get through the afternoons.”

“It’s even worse indoors, trying to while away the hours,” sighed Mrs. Angrywall.  “Yes, Howard’s weed was certainly special, wasn’t it?  It’s so odd to me that my husband will never have such an experience.  He is a complete square.  A goody-goody good boy.  He doesn’t even like to light candles.”

She turned to me and tilted her head.

“Do you like candles, Sean?”

“You’re trying to seduce me, aren’t you, Mrs. Angrywall?”

“I’m just being playful.”

“But you really won’t have sex with me?”

“I can’t.  I’m married.”

“Well, anyway, do you wish we had slept together that night?”

“I don’t know.  But I would have regretted it incredibly if I had.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.  Sean, I think you repeat yourself more when you’re not high.”

I tapped my cigarette.

“Did the cops ever catch the Dotbusters?” I asked.

“No, but the police have assured me that the hate crimes unit is handling it.  ‘Hate’ crimes.  That’s quite ridiculous, right?  Is there such a thing as a ‘love’ crime?”

“Oh, yeah.  In this country we call them ‘crimes of passion.’”

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a car going by.  In that quick glance, I thought it looked like O’Keefe’s car.

Let him come over here, I thought.  I’ll blow smoke in his face.

One of the taillights flickered and the car took the corner.  I wasn’t motivated enough to turn around to watch it disappear.

The ceramic plate that I used to reheat burgers I stole from work blew apart in the microwave.  There was a crack in it early on, and it was only going to last for so long.

I went into the thrift store to find a good sturdy plastic plate, the kind the Brady Brunch kids ate off of.  Plastic plates get scratched up and change colors, but they last a long time.  Think about it.  The toughest dog-food bowls are made of plastic.  That says something.

I happened to pass by the bookshelf.  It was crammed with softcovers for a dime and hardcovers for a quarter.  I saw a tattered cloth cover that looked familiar, even though the title wasn’t.  All the pages were torn out of it, but the back and front covers were still attached to each other.

“Batten Down the Hatches!” was the title.  I definitely had never read it.  But the inside of the back cover listed other books from the same publisher.  “The Corduroy Road” was the fourth in the series.  Maybe this was some sort of sign from God, or maybe even Gaia.

I looked through the stack for “The Corduroy Road,” but of course it wasn’t there.

In the back of the store, I found two plates, one red and one blue.  I got a deal on them and two sets of silverware that amazingly matched.  I was on a hot streak.

I had a scheduled meeting with O’Keefe and without Howard to cover, I just closed the stand and got on the bus to Highlands.

O’Keefe was sitting at his desk, fingers twisted into a big brown knot of knuckles on his desk.  We talked a little and I mentioned that Howard quit.

“How long,” he asked quietly, “has Howard not shown up at work?”

“Four work days.”  He exploded.

“Been four days and you don’t even bother to tell me!”

“You wanted to know?”

“You don’t think it’s prudent to keep me informed of material changes to your job?”  He untangled his fingers and pressed his hands flat like he was trying to hold the desk down.  “You need someone to slap some sense into you?”

Just when I thought we were something close to friends, O’Keefe was starting to scare me again.  There didn’t seem to be enough room in my seat for me to slide back in.

“O’Keefe, I didn’t think you cared.”

“Didn’t think I cared!” he exploded.  “Boy, I’ve been cutting you way too much slack!”

“You never asked me about Howard.  If you cared so much about him, why didn’t you ever call the hamburger stand?”

“You told the police?”

“No,” I said.  “I should call the cops because somebody quit?”  O’Keefe stomped, stood up and wrestled his suit jacket on.

“C’mon!  We’re going to the hamburger stand now!”

We got into his car.  The engine was making funny sounds at red lights — the same growling sounds O’Keefe had in the back of his throat.

“Sounds like there’s something wrong with your car.”

“Ain’t nothing wrong with my car!” he thundered back.  “Some friend you are!  Guy goes missing a few days and you don’t want to help!  You’re not concerned at all!”

“O’Keefe, a guy not showing up for work isn’t something to worry about.  If I had quit, I wouldn’t have bothered to call.  I’d let Michael Conti figure it out.”

“Yeah, and you woulda been figuring out how to put your skull back together when I found you.”

I turned to the window and watched my reflection float over the gutter.

For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why he was so pissed.  Was he that much of a control freak that he wanted to keep tabs on me and everyone I knew, too?

I guess Howard was a friend.  Hey, if someone who gave you free pot wasn’t a friend, who was?

We got to the hamburger stand and I unlocked the door.  O’Keefe charged in first.  He poked around near the chair Howard used to slump in and eat noisily.

“He didn’t take anything,” I said.

“I’m looking for clues, son.”

“He never brought anything, never left with anything.  The one time he brought something in was his laptop computer.  That got stolen.”

“Course it got stolen.  Only a dumbfuck would bring a laptop into a place with a bullshit lock like this place.”

When he got sick of looking around, O’Keefe straightened up and folded his arms.

“His last day, did Howard say anything unusual?”

“He always talked strange.”

“Did he say something about how he had to go see someone urgently, or that someone was stepping on him?”

“He didn’t seem to have any problems.”

“Did he ever mention drug suppliers?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You either know or you don’t!”

“Then, no, I don’t.  You wanna give me a lie-detector test?”

O’Keefe wiped his lips with his entire left hand from the fingertips to the wrist.

“Now I’m going to ask you something really easy,” he said. “Even a stoned white boy can answer this: Where does he live?”

“I swear,” I said with my voice breaking, “I don’t know.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“It’s true.  I’ve never been to his house.”

“You have no idea where he lives?”

“Somewhere, not too far,” was all I could squawk.

O’Keefe exhaled heavily and stared into my eyes the way all of my principals did.

“That hindu woman know?” he asked.

Leave Mrs. Angrywall out of it, flashed in my head.

“Why don’t you call up Michael Conti?”

O’Keefe brought his lips together and nodded.

“I can see that you didn’t smoke all of your brain away, boy.”

When he turned around to dial on his cell phone, I gave him an elbow-bird.

“Yeah, lemme speak to Conti.  Yeah, Michael.  Speaking, eh?  Hey, this is Sean Kerry’s probation officer.  Oh, yeah?  How’s he doing?  Well, he better be.  Anyway, I’m actually interested in another one of your employees, Howard, the other boy, er, guy you had. Where does he live?”

I got up to fix myself a soda.  O’Keefe shot a look at me.  I pointed to the soda fountain and then back to him while raising my eyebrow.  He shook his head and hand at the same time.  I made myself a mix of Sprite and Coke.  O’Keefe continued on the phone.

“Can’t tell me, huh?  Privacy, I see.  Feel strongly about that, huh?  Well, how about I put a call into my cousin over at the health inspector’s?  Oh, not for the hamburger stand, for your main restaurant!  I’m sure everything’s as good as it was since the last visit, right?”

O’Keefe turned to me and smiled broadly.  I took a long sip from my soda.  I felt better now that O’Keefe had found another target.

“I see, I see.  Well, you can trust me, Michael.  Who could ever know?  That’s right, that’s right.   Where’s that intersection? DuPont and Surf Avenue, huh?  Okay, I’ve got it.  Thank you, Michael.”

I barely finished off the soda when O’Keefe grabbed my elbow and growled, “C’mon, boy!”

We crawled down Surf Avenue, which ran parallel to the shoreline.  It was popular as a cruising street during the summer and a racing street in the off-season.  DuPont was just past where the boardwalk ended.  On the weekends, the sidewalks glittered amber and green with smashed beer bottles.

O’Keefe eased up next to a typical DuPont rental, which looked like a trailer that had been bricked in.

“This is the place,” he said.  O’Keefe reached over and jerked the glove compartment open.  It smelled like roller-skate ball bearings, oily and metallic.  He pulled out a gun in a leather holster.

Run, I thought.  Get out and run fucking run run run.  That motherfucker’s crazy.

“You look scared, Sean,” O’Keefe said casually.  “You shouldn’t be.  This is for our protection.”

I got out of the car and I couldn’t stop rubbing my kneecaps.

“Get up there!” O’Keefe said, indicating the front door.  “Get up there and knock.  Say you just want to talk.”

I went up to the front door.  In the late afternoon light I could see at least three layers of paint flaking off in the sea air.  The doorknob was crooked.

O’Keefe snuck up against the house, under the front window.

“C’mon, c’mon!” he whispered at me.

I looked behind me.  The street was empty and no people were around.

I knocked.  There no answer.

“Call out to him, Sean!”

“Howard,” I yelled.  My voice was louder than I meant because of the adrenaline pumping through my system.  “Howard!  Howard!”

I tried the door.  It was open.

“Shit!” said O’Keefe.  “Let me through!”  He pushed his way in.  I don’t know why I followed.  The place was a mess.  That wasn’t out of the ordinary, especially for a single stoner guy.

There were piles of videogame magazines and porn.  Two opened and empty boxes for Macintosh laptops sat on the couch.

In the bedroom every dresser drawer had been jerked open, with long-sleeved shirts crawling out like wounded soldiers in a trench.

The bathroom was disgusting.

In the kitchen there were three bottles of beer in the refrigerator.  O’Keefe took out two and handed me one.  He slammed the cap off against the counter edge and took a deep drink.

“Bitch took off!” he growled.

I knew Howard wasn’t coming back to the burger stand, but O’Keefe insisted he might.

“I’m going to be prowling just around the block,” he said. “Don’t be surprised if you turn around and see me in your back pocket.”

“I don’t think there’s enough room for you back there.”

“Don’t tell me there ain’t room!  You with your skinny ass!  And let me tell you something else: Don’t you even think of trying to warn this Howard to stay away.”

“He’s not my friend,” I said weakly.

“Well maybe he is and maybe he ain’t.  All I know is — and this is from extensive field testing — is that you white people always stick together and back each other up.”

“That’s not true!” I said.

“Like hell it ain’t!”

“That’s not true!” I said again, but not as clearly because my throat was closing up.  “None of my friends came to visit me in jail.  My mom didn’t even send me anything.”  My nose was caking up with mucus and I had to breathe through my mouth.

“Well, that’s what you get for only having white friends,” said O’Keefe.

I felt tears dripping off of my chin so I wiped it with my palm.

“Can’t we be friends?” I asked O’Keefe.

“Only if you stay clean.  Then we’re friends.”  He had on a tight little smile.  “Believe me, you don’t want me as an enemy.”

That was the truest thing he ever said.

(Part 17 next week.)

(Art by spoon+fork.)

When I staggered into work two days later Howard took a look at me and said, “You just lucked out big time.”

“Why? I’m not late.  Am I?”

“No, cops just left!  The Dotbusters came here last night and put posters all over the place!”

“Jesus!  Are the Angrywalls all right?”

“I don’t think they’re hurt.  Just some property damage.  The guy was pretty pissed off, yelling at the cops and all.  Like that’s gonna help, Apu.”

“I’m going to see if they’re OK.”

I put on a pot of coffee before leaving for the motel office.  When I got closer to the door, I saw two fliers wheat-pasted to the glass that both read: “Go Back to India Smelly Curry Motherfuckers — the Dotbusters.”

The office was empty, but I heard some grating sounds coming from the stairwell.  I found Mrs. Angrywall there, working with a butter knife on the fliers.

“Bloody cowards, all of them!” she yelled, her voice sounding huge and ethereal in the stairwell’s spiraling chamber.  “They put most of them in here where people in the street couldn’t see them.  They only had enough balls to put two up on the office door before running away!”

“Maybe you should get those two in the front first.”

“No!  I want to keep them up!  I want everyone to know that this is a business run by dots!  And that we smell!”

“Where’s your husband?”

“He went down to the police station to harass them some more.  They had the nerve to blame us for not staffing our office 24 hours a day!”

“I’m going to get a knife and clean off the front doors.”

“Sean!  Don’t!”

I left anyway and came back with a rusty old spatula I found under the hamburger stand’s sink.

Mrs. Angrywall sailed out with her finger pointed at my throat.

“Put that down!  Don’t touch that front door!”

“I have to get those fliers off!”

“Why do you need to get them off of there so badly?  You people put them up!”

“Don’t blame me, man!”

“Well there isn’t a chance in hell that someone black did it!  Only a white man would have the entitlement to tell us to get out of his country!”

“How do you know?”

“I know!”

“Well, anyway, there’s no point in leaving it like this.  If you let them vandalize your office, they win and they’ll be back to do something worse.”

I stepped around her to get to the door.  She grabbed my wrist.

“Don’t you dare!  You. . .you. . .motherfucker!”

I was shocked at her outburst and loosened my grip on the spatula.  She ripped it out of my hand and winged it.  We listened to it clatter on the concrete.

We both turned to the door.

“Why us, Sean?  Of all the hotels, of all the Indians in this entire state, why us!”

“Because you were here and they saw you.”

“Can’t they tell by the way this place looks that we haven’t got money?  Why don’t they go after the big hotels and the rich Indians who are prospering on the Jersey shore?”

“These Dotbusters, I bet they’re like high-school kids and they’re not too bright.  And the better hotels probably have an office open 24 hours with staff walking around.”

“You’re probably right,” Mrs. Angrywall said.  Then she ran her hands through her hair and shifted her feet.  “You don’t happen to have any idea who did this, do you?”

“I really don’t know.”  But Howard might, I thought.

She turned and walked away.

“I swear, I have no idea!” I said, following her.

“I believe you,” she said without turning around.

“Really, most people you know, around here, aren’t racist.”

“How would you know, Sean?”

“We’ve got good people here,” I said, amazed that I was sticking up for my town, the town that had me thrown into jail.

“That sounds odd, coming from a convicted criminal.”

“Hey, I’m out on probation now,” I pointed out.

We had arrived at the shop room of the motel.  She pulled a string and turned the light on.  Tools and buckets of parts were neatly arranged in rows on wooden tables.  A cot was pushed to the side.

“What’s the cot for?” I asked.

“For sleeping on.”

“I know. Why here?”

“My husband likes to nap here sometimes.”

She was rummaging around and I watched the fabric tighten around her hips as she bent over.

“What are you looking for?”

“For some solvent.  If you want to get those fliers off so badly, you’ll need some.”

“That makes sense.”

“Before you do, though, I want to take a picture first.  If I’m ever feeling too comfortable in this country, I want to remind myself where I stand.”

Mrs. Angrywall found the can of solvent but instead of giving it to me, she sat on the edge of the opened cot and cradled the can.

“Look at this pathetic workshop, Sean,” she said.  “My husband is trying to hold this place together with little more than his bare hands, and failing miserably, and still the Dotbusters single us out!”

“You’ll feel better when we get rid of the fliers they left,” I said.

“Out of all the hotels and motels!  Out of all the Indians on the Jersey coast!  Why us?  Why not those wealthy Patels?”

She was sobbing now.

“They deserve it!  They’re asking for it!  Not us!”

“It doesn’t make things better when you wish bad things on other people.”

“It fucking does!  It’s better to see someone suffering who can afford to!  Someone who can send their maintenance man to clean off these notices from your friendly local Dotbusters!”

I sat next to her on the cot.  She glanced at me, then looked down at the can of solvent and picked at the paper label.

“Your co-worker Howard knows the Dotbusters, doesn’t he?”

“I don’t know.”

“He doesn’t like us, you know, never has.  Never says ‘Hello’ or ‘Nice Day.’  He probably tipped them off on when to come down and leave their mark.”

“I don’t think Howard had anything to do with this.  He’s all talk and no action. Believe me, I know.”

“You told me he was badmouthing Indians before!”

“I’ll ask him about it.”

“Yes, tell him that if he wants to, I’d be willing to talk to him, too.  I took karate in college, you know.”

“Sounds like you want more than a talk.  But you have to realize. . .”

“What?”

“My pot comes from Howard.”

“Ah. . .well. . .”  Mrs. Angrywall lay back on her elbows and rolled her eyes.  “Ask him if he knows anything. Ask him nicely.”

“Let me take care of this first,” I said, lifting the can from her hands.  I got up and walked to the door.  “Did you really want to take a picture first?”

“No, no,” she said, springing off the cot. “Not worth the space on a flash memory card.” She wiped her knees. “Back to the stairwell for me.”

I managed to clean the office door off pretty easily.  When I got back to the burger stand, Howard was irritated.

“How can you just go off like that and leave me all alone for half an hour?”

“Were you scared, little boy?”

“It’s just disrespectful not to inform me how long you’d be gone.”

“Howard, do you happen to know anyone in the Dotbusters?”

“Not personally.  Some guys who were in high school with us.  You probably know them, too.”

“Like who?”

“That kid who was the younger brother of the guy who stood up during the assembly on smoking.”

“What happened during that thing? I don’t remember exactly.”

“It was the time there was a guy who was wearing a body suit with the organs drawn on it and the lungs and throat were all black and brown?  At the end of the presentation he asked if anyone had any questions?”

“Uh huh.”

“No one said anything for a while. I guess everyone was hoping we would just be dismissed.  But the principal said he wouldn’t let us go until someone asked a question, so this kid stood up and asked the body-suit guy how long he’d been sucking cock for a living.”

“Oh, yeah!  Yeah, now I remember!  Mr. Hendrickson looked really mad at first and then he started laughing!”

“Then the body suit guy grabbed his stuff and ran out of the auditorium!”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“So anyway, the kid that asked that question — his younger brother is in the Dotbusters.”

“Are you friends with him?”

“Friendship for me means more than just knowing somebody, and I only just know him.”

“Then how do you know he’s in the Dotbusters?”

“He asked me to join, but I didn’t want to.”

“I’m going to ask you a big favor, Howard.  Can you go to the cops and tell them about these guys?”

“No way, man!  Think I want that on my record?  You rat on people, no one else is ever going to trust you again.  You even lose trust in yourself.”

“You saw what they did to the Angrywall’s place!  You don’t care?”

“Sean, you have to be smart about this kind of thing.  Don’t get personally involved.  You come in and start trying to help out, guess what?  You end up at the top of the suspects list!”

“What!”

“Think about it.  You just got out of jail, man.  You’re probably already at the top of the list as an ex-con.”

“I had nothing to do with this!  I am not a racist!”

“You smoke weed every day, right? How would you like that to come out in testimony?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Anyway,” said Howard, “how do you know it was the Dotbusters’ work?  It could have been a copycat group, or an ex-member wanting to frame them for this.”

“So what, we just sit around and pretend we don’t know anything?”

“I don’t have to pretend.”

I had trouble sleeping that night.  I listened to two girls down on the street talking under my window.

“If you leave with this guy,” one of them said, “I’m never talking to you again.”

“You don’t even know him,” the other moaned.

“You don’t know him, either.  Not really.”

“Don’t you want to have fun anymore?  It’s the goddamn summer!”

“I don’t trust him.  How come he had so many friends in the bar?”

“Because he’s not some goddamn nerd jerk!”

“Do you really have to sleep with somebody to have a good time?”

“Who said I was going to sleep with him!”

“You think you’re going over to play cards or just get high?  He’s going to be expecting something when the pot is gone.”

I woke up in the morning with a funny feeling in my face.  I had had a nosebleed overnight and the dried flakes of blood were tickling my nostrils.

(Part 16 next week.)

(Art by spoon+fork.)

I was about to cross the street, far from the crosswalk, when I had to stop for a Jetta coming down.

It was moving just fast enough that I couldn’t cross the street but also slow enough that the driver wanted me to know he was holding me up on purpose.

I swept both arms to the left to suggest that the car speed the fuck up.  To my amazement, the car turned slightly and bared down upon me.  The sun was low and threw a glare on the windshield so I didn’t see Mrs. Angrywall in the driver’s seat until she was nearly on top of me.

“I thought it was you, Sean!” she yelled out the window.

“Hi, Mrs. Angrywall.”

“Can I give you a ride?”

“Where are you going?”

“Nowhere in particular.”

“You’re just driving around?”

She smiled and shrugged.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” I said.  “I don’t want to piss off your husband.”

“It won’t piss him off.”

“He looked pretty mad last time I saw him.”

“That’s how he gets from time to time.”

“I don’t know.”

“He’s out of town right now, if that really makes a difference to you.”

I shook my head and came around to the passenger side.  I sat down and strapped myself in.

“Which way?” she asked as she let up off the brake.

“Go down to the third light, make a left.”

“Are you just going to go home now?”

“That’s what people do when they’re done with work.”

“No!  The Americans go out and have fun in tacky corporate pseudo-pubs!  Go down to Applebee’s or TGIFs!”

“I’ve never been to a TGIF!  That’s for yuppies!”

“Do you want to go now?”

“God, no.  What’s gotten into you, Mrs. Angrywall?”

“I don’t quite know.  I got into the car, intending to go buy some groceries and on my way to the supermarket, I realized that I had already done the shopping for the week.  I just didn’t want to go home so I started driving around.  Then I found you.”

“Who’s watching the hotel now?”

“Gaia, perhaps.  I just locked the office doors.  There are so few customers, anyway.”

We were at the second light when I said, “Make a right here.”

“Oh?” she asked.

“Let’s go to the Clown Drive-In.  That’s a fun place.”

“That sounds fantastic!”

The Clown Drive-In was, I think, the last roller-skating wait-service in Ocean County.  Mostly old people and tourists went there, but I figured Mrs. Angrywall hadn’t been there.  The asphalt was freshly paved although the building itself, which was shaped like a circus tent, needed serious restructuring.  It was lopsided.

Girls in jeans dragged themselves around on skates with tight uniforms that were supposed to look like ringleaders’ outfits.  They probably looked sexier in the days before Hooters.

There used to be a drive-in movie theater in the back, but they chained up the entrance and let the trees and plants grow wild over it.

“Wow, where do I park?” Mrs. Angrywall asked.

“Anyplace next to the tent.”

“It’s quite like ‘American Graffiti’!”

“What’s that?”

“You haven’t seen the movie?”

“I’ve never even heard of it.”

There was a tap at Mrs. Angrywall’s window.  She wound it down.

“Could you bring it down all the way?  I need to fit this thing in.”  Our waitress had to be younger than 18.  I was good at sizing up women’s ages.  But I would have never guessed 40 for Mrs. Angrywall.

“Certainly,” Mrs. Angrywall told the girl, jerking the crank some more.

The waitress pounded the tray holder into the window slot.

“You guys know what you want?” she asked.

“Can we get some menus?” I asked.

She shoved off and came back with two menus that were wrinkled and greasy like someone dirty had slept on them.  The waitress stood by, breathing hard through her mouth and chewing gum as we read over the menus.

“What would you recommend, Sean?” Mrs. Angrywall asked.

“Honestly the food isn’t great here,” I said, looking at the waitress and seeing no reaction from her.  “I’m just going to get a shake.”

“The pork-roll sandwich is good,” suggested the girl, who leaned into the car to gawk at us.  “Where are you guys from?”

“We’re from India,” I said.  “I’ll have a vanilla shake.”

“I’ll have a chocolate shake,” said Mrs. Angrywall.

“You guys want some fries?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Angrywall.  I already ate a pound of French fries a day, but I could eat some more just to be a sport.

“Raj, that’s my husband, would never come to a place like this.  It’s much too fun.”  She said that last word in a mean way.

“I have to admire him,” I said.  “Not everybody can fix up a hotel by himself.”

“Fix up,” sneered Mrs. Angrywall.  “More like fuck up.  I think he’s only been making things worse.  He’s too ashamed to even let me see what he’s done.”

The girl brought in our shakes and fries with a glass bottle of ketchup that had dried black crust running down the neck.

One thing that I’d forgotten about the Clown was that they used real ice cream for their shakes, which meant that they were undrinkable when you first got them.  If you tried to suck too hard, your brain would crawl to the top of your skull and shiver.

I put my shake in my crotch while rolling Mrs. Angrywall’s cup in my palms to melt it down.

“What are we to do?” she asked giddily.

“Just wait.  Or you can pop the lid and pour it into your mouth.”

“I don’t want to soil my sari.”

“Why do you dress like that, anyway?  I mean you’d probably be more comfortable in a t-shirt and jeans.”

“It’s my culture,” she said, “and it’s far more comfortable than anything else.”

“You know, I’m Irish.  I don’t have to eat corned beef and cabbage to prove it.”

“Culture aside, it’s pretty.  I wear it because I think it’s pretty.”

“But it’s probably why the waitress was staring at us.  You wearing this thing and all.”

“If I worried about people giving me looks, I wouldn’t have been able to survive in this country.  You don’t mind when people stare at you, do you?”

“Yeah, but I get that because of my good looks.”

“And you don’t suppose that’s why I get stares?”

“Maybe,” I said.

Were we really flirting here?

I hooked my right thumb into a belt loop in my jeans.

The fries got soggy in the ketchup and I used a fork on the worst ones.  Mrs. Angrywall couldn’t finish her shake so I poured hers into mine.

When we were pulling out the sun was long gone.  It would be even darker back at my apartment.  My dark and lonely and overheated apartment.  No sense in rushing back to it alone.

“Do you wanna see something really cool?” I asked Mrs. Angrywall.

“What is it?”

“It’s kinda scary, too.”

“Ooh, I like scary!”

First we stopped at a drug store to buy some baby powder.  Then I told her how to get to the Washington Street exit off of Route 9.  By this time traffic would be light enough so I could show her the trick.

“Pull off onto the exit, but stop before we get onto Washington itself.”

“Okay.”

When we got there, I said, “You see how we’re at the bottom of an incline?” I asked.

“That seems to be the case,” she said.

I got out and sprinkled baby powder on the front bumper.  Mrs. Angrywall leaned out the window.

“Sean, what are you doing?  Don’t make a mess of the car!”

“C’mon, it’s just baby powder.”

I got back into the car.

“Okay,” I said.  “Put it in neutral.”

She shifted.

“Let go of the brake.”

We sat there for a few seconds.  Then the car slowly started rolling uphill.  We seemed to be gaining speed.  She turned to me.  Mrs. Angrywall’s mouth was wide open and wet.  I smiled at her.  The car slowed near the top of the hill and then stopped.

“Oh, my!” was all she said.

“We call this exit Gravity Hill.  Back in the 1960s, there was a school bus that came off this exit and was hit by a cement truck when it turned onto Washington.  All the kids were killed.

“Now, when a car stops here before getting onto the road, the ghosts of those kids push the car away.”

She stared at me and didn’t say anything.

“Get out of the car,” I said.

At the front end, I pointed in the baby powder.

“See those little handprints?” I asked her.  “Those were made by the spirits of those kids, pushing the car up.”

She stared at the prints and even traced a finger around one of them.

When we got back in the car, we sat in silence.  I gave a triumphant smile.

“I’ll bet you’ve never seen anything like that before,” I said.

“It’s quite clever, I’ll grant you that.”

“Clever?”

“Yes, you see, although it seems that we’re now at the top of an incline, it only appears that way because the incline of Route 9 here is so sharp.  So while it appeared that we rolled uphill, we’ve actually rolled downhill.

“Those handprints on the front of the car were made by children, but not their ghosts.  Children are naturally curious and touch everything within reach.  When this car was parked at the supermarket or even back at the hotel, quite a number of children already got their hands all over it.  The baby powder mostly slipped off but some stuck to the skin oil from the handprints.”

I bit my bottom lip and shook my head.

“You know, Mrs. Angrywall, you really know how to take the fun out of everything!”

A shy look came over her face.  The moonlight made her skin look nearly blue.

“Well,” she said, “we’ll just have to put the fun back into things.”

I grabbed the back of her head with both of my hands and shoved my face into hers.  She rolled her tongue into a tube and pushed it just past my lips.  I bucked in my seat to get more leverage.  I ran my hands over her back to undo the latch on her bra, but she wasn’t wearing one.

I worked my fingers down to try to find an opening so I could touch her bare back.  The sari was tricky.  Every flap in the fabric seemed to lead to a dead end.

My tongue was furiously paddling around in her mouth.  Our combined saliva was oozing down my cheek and dripping off my chest.  I kept working at her sari and in frustration I just gave it a hard tug.  We both felt the rip.

“How dare you!” she yelled.  “What the bloody hell is your problem!”

“I was just trying to touch you,” I said.

“You don’t need to rip my clothes off in the bloody car!  I deserve more respect than that!”

“Did you want to go to a hotel?” I asked.

It was the worst thing I could have said to someone trapped at one 24/7.

She withdrew from me and sat back in the driver’s seat.

“Sean,” she said, looking directly out of the windshield.  “Have you ever had a fling with a married woman?”

“I don’t know if you’d call it a fling.”

“Have you had sex with a married woman?”

“Yes.”

“Did you feel badly about it later?”

“The way things were going, I would have regretted it more if we didn’t.”

“And the woman?  What happened to her?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think she felt badly about how she behaved?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what it’s like to have made a promise and live by it, do you?’

“I’ve broken lots of promises, Mrs. Angrywall.”

She crossed her arms and twisted away from me.

“I don’t know what I’m feeling anymore.  Perhaps I’m unable to feel.  He comes and goes as he likes now, but it wasn’t always this way.  At first, I thought I could grow to fit with him, maybe even love him.  Perhaps if we had a measure of financial success, things would have been different.  They definitely would have been different.  Better!”

She turned her head and stared me in the face.

“I’m so terribly bored, Sean.  I sit there all day behind that desk and wait for him to come home at night and he says so very little.  It’s a shame for me to be sitting there, unappreciated and unwanted.  That’s the main reason why I wear these saris even though I never go out.  It’s a shame to leave nice things where they’ll never be seen.  It takes away their purpose.”

I dug my hands into my armpits and stared at the dark void under the glove compartment.  Things weren’t looking good but I could turn it all around right now if I wanted to.  I knew I could.  Think of something, dammit!

“You can’t ever kiss me again,” she said.

“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Angrywall.”

“That’s the end of it, Sean.”

I turned on the radio and found a boring news station with a guy who spoke in soft, short bursts of words like he was talking in his sleep.  After a while she started the car.  When we got back to local streets, I showed her how to get back to my place and then I think we said good night.

I had just gotten into bed when I realized that I didn’t have my cell phone.  I must have left it in Mrs. Angrywall’s car.  I sat up and weighed the consequences.  I thought about O’Keefe’s foot on my neck.  I got up.

I walked briskly to the hotel.  I was hoping that I wouldn’t find Mrs. Angrywall still in the car, sobbing over the wheel.  But when I got to the parking lot, the Jetta was empty.  Luckily the door was unlocked, too.  I opened the passenger door and found my phone under the seat.  No calls had been received.

Just then, a pair of headlights hit me.  A Taurus came in and parked crooked next to the Jetta, although there were a lot of other spaces open.

Mr. Angrywall came out, stumbling slightly.  He came up to me, leaned on my shoulder and said, “Pakistan is a nation of terrorists, founded in terrorism and must be destroyed for the sake of world peace.”

“Yes, you’re right,” I said.  He was spraying me with globs of saliva.  Some got in my eyes.

“India will stop at nothing to protect itself and its citizens!” he declared, grabbing my shirt close to the collar.

“Yes,” I said.

“If there is a World War III, it will be in Kashmir and it will see Pakistan brought to heel!”

“Okay,” I said.  I had almost gotten away when his grip on my shirt tightened.

“Hey, buddy,” he said.  “You’re one of the good ones.”  Then he let me go.

(Part 15 next week.)

Dylan Williams started Sparkplug comics. It’s always been quite indie. He passed away and the company is still going. The three books he was working on when he died are still not complete. The fundraiser will help. I’m not posting each Kickstarter or Indiegogo project that comes my way. I get alerted to 5 a week. Each has their merits, well, almost. Some have very little. I’m only posting the rare ones that I have a personal attachment with. I can’t help everyone, but I can help the ones I most want to help. I’ve written about him in the past here at GR. (Dylan Williams)

(Art by spoon+fork.)

Saint Maximilian Kolbe, the Roman Catholic Church I went to before my father freaked out, was also the place where I went to get my flu shot.  It was especially terrifying because Maximilian was killed by a lethal injection in the arm by the Nazis.  Who designated this church to give shots?

My Sunday school teacher told me that despite how crass and crude the Italian race was, they hadn’t lost the True Religion, and that was to their credit.  The English had broken from God because Henry VIII was horny, she told me.   I was six.

If you didn’t do the rosary everyday, you could lose your faith.  The devil was real and was always working to get between you and God.

“Even I could lose my faith,” she admitted.

“How could the devil get you?  You’re a nun,” I said.

“When I dress like a nun as a matter of routine and not ritual, then I am lost.”

My father was a heavy drinker but unlike most alcoholics he was home a lot. He usually lay face down or up on the couch but he would get up to make coffee in the afternoons and to get the mail.  I looked forward to when I was old enough to drink and grow stubble.

One day he got a letter from his brother in Ireland that told him that his mother had died.  He folded it up and put it in his back pocket.

My mother begged for him to pray for his mother’s soul in purgatory, that we all should say the rosary together.  He refused.  She begged again.  I got scared when he laughed.

“Her spirit’s in another baby right now,” he said.  “She’s being born again.  She doesn’t need prayers.”

He woke me up that night, his breath stinging my eyes.

“The entire Irish race is being punished.  We let the Christians pervert our Gods and smash our altars.  They built churches over our sacred sites.  This is where the troubles come from. ”

I didn’t know what the troubles were back then, but I kept quiet.  I would have been stupid to ask him.  My father hated listening to anything–people, news or music.

He had something under his coat.  He took out a set of cheap dinner knives, still in the cardboard holder.  The metal looked like tinsel in the light coming in from the streetlamps.  They must have come from the 99-cent store.

“Boy, come with me.  We’ll throw knives in the water to celebrate grandma’s life!”

I suddenly had a premonition as bright as operating-room lights.  My father was going to bring me down to the beach, stab me and cut my throat.  Then he was going to throw my body into a marsh.  I would be found centuries after my death, perfectly preserved like those bog bodies I saw in National Geographic.

I rolled over and wedged my legs between the bed frame and the wall.

“No!” I cried out.

“Shhh!” said my father.  “You’ve gone bloody mad!  Want to wake up the neighborhood?”

I held fast and closed my eyes.  When I opened them, he was gone.

The next day, when my father was asleep, I was in the kitchen with my mother.  I told her about the knives.  She shook her head but held her tongue.

“What’s wrong with Daddy?” I asked.

“He came here because bad people were killing each other in the streets.  His sister was blown up by a bomb.”

“How come Jesus and Mary didn’t help?”

“Daddy doesn’t talk to them anymore.”

“Daddy doesn’t believe in Jesus because his sister was killed?”

“Daddy’s lost his faith.  We have to pray for him every day.  We don’t want him to end up in Hell.”

I prayed so hard and kept my thoughts so pure, I didn’t even think about eating candy.  I said Our Fathers, Hail Marys, and even the Apostles’ Creed, which was so fucking long.

My reward for my new fanaticism was my father ripping apart my Bible in front of me.  He warned my mother and I that if we ever went back to Saint Maximilian Kolbe, he would burn the church down.

I spent Sundays in my room, wondering what Purgatory felt like, if they allowed you to sleep when you were tired.  I was scared to walk into the living room and disturb my dad.  He would be asleep on the couch or doing the crossword puzzle with a pencil that he would snap and tape back together.  If the house wasn’t quiet, he’d make it quiet.

There was nothing fun for me to do in my room, so I started doing my homework.  I think my grades went up a little.  One day I came home with straight Bs on my report card.  I thought it would cheer up my mother.  I found her lying in bed, her eyes all puffed out and veiny like jellyfish.

She told me that Dad had found a ship to take him and most of his money back to Ireland.  He was over here illegally and was lucky he didn’t get taxed, thrown in jail and deported.

I asked her if we were going back to church.  She said that she was in her wandering years now but before she died she would get it right with God.

A few years later I became the last person in my family to lose my faith, when I shoved my fishing rod down that sewer grate.

When I got in, Howard was crouched over something on top of the ice-cream freezer.

“What have you got there?” I asked, looking at the dry cutting board that should have been dripping with tomato slices.

“Sean, I wanted to show you some of my poems, but I couldn’t get my printer working today,” he said, sitting up.  One hand was lightly perched on the keyboard of the laptop computer.  “I felt a little inspiration once I got in so I wrote a few lines, just off the top of my head.”

I went straight for the coffee machine.  I tore open two packets of grounds and poured them into the brass filter.  I pressed both palms against my eyes to hold back the headache that would get worse if I didn’t have a cup soon.

I needed to feed the caffeine monster before I could start doing the prep work that Howard had spaced on.  I always over-compensated, so the daily joint in the afternoon really took the edge off.

The machine pissed coffee into the pot.  I took two plastic cups and shoved them together.  I pulled away the pot with one hand and put the double cup under the coffee stream.  Spilled coffee sizzled on the burner.

“Hey,” said Howard, “You’re taking the strongest brew right off the bat.  You’re going to make the entire pot weak.”

“You’re weak, motherfucker,” I muttered.  When the coffee level was about to top off in the cup, I swung the pot back in.  The burner hissed some more and a coffee mist rose up.

I walked over to the order window.  I put the cup to my lips and blew gently.  Then I breathed in the smell and my sinuses crackled.

I looked at the window and saw small dots of paint on the glass around the handle.  I managed to get a few sips of lava-hot coffee.  I opened the glass window and closed the screen.  Air came rushing in with the salt from the ocean, spiced with the smog from the California kids’ cars.  They would drive even a lousy 10 blocks instead of walking.

I had some more coffee.  I stared at a dirty seagull frozen in space with his beak open.  I got the feeling that I wasn’t going to get laid the entire summer, and somehow I was okay with that.

The coffee started to kick in.

“Lemme see those poems, Howard,” I said.  “I’ll read them as long as you cut up those tomatoes and lettuce.”

“I’ve been giving you free weed!  You can’t expect me to do a reasonable share of the work!”

“Well forget it, then.  I don’t want to read them.”

“Okay, okay. You win!”  Walking like he was on the sea floor, Howard slouched off to the fridge and took out a crate of tomatoes and a crate of lettuce.  He opened up the hood to the condiment bins and found yesterday’s knife, unwashed and sticky.

I read his first poem as I finished my coffee.

“My bones, chewy as calcium tablets,” it started.

Even if I didn’t know him, I’d think he did massive pot.  I bit my tongue so I wouldn’t laugh out loud and hurt his feelings.  I moved down the page a little.  The laptop was really nice and the keys were soft as butter.  They didn’t even make clicking sounds.

I read the 10 lines and forgot them immediately.  I walked back to the coffee machine for a refill.

“Damn, you read fast!” Howard said, watching me.

“I’m a speed reader,” I said.

“Did you like it?”

“Oh, yeah.  You’re a deep thinker.  A real visionary.”

“I’m not a visionary.  Right now I’m just sticking to a personal context.  But I do want to move on to the next plane.  I want to take the long view on life and write universal themes.  We don’t see much art from Jersey because of the density of the population.  There’s too much stimuli to provide the isolation a poet needs to thrive in.

“Jersey has only really produced two true poets:  Springsteen and Danzig.  Songs are really poems put to music, and their verses have already stood the test of time.  In fact they are probably more poignant than ever in a post-9/11 world.”

“Hey, what about Bon Jovi?  He’s a genius.”

“That’s party music.  You don’t listen to it for the words.”

“Howard, how much was that computer?”

“Couple thousand.”

“How could you afford that?  I thought you didn’t finish paying for college.”

“I’ve been saving.  Keeping that college debt on my balance sheet helps reduce taxes for me.  If I really wanted to, I could pay it off today.”

We went back to the laptop and he threaded a thin metal cable through a security latch and looped it through the slot on the back of a plastic chair.  He snapped a special lock through the loop.

“Not that I don’t trust you,” he said.  “But people train like ninjas to steal one of these babies.”

When I came back from my smoke break with Mrs. Angrywall, I found Howard pacing outside the burger stand.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Look!” he shouted, pointing to the shattered back of the plastic chair.  “I went to take a piss and they stole my laptop!  I was gone two minutes!  They’re fucking good!”

“You call the cops?”

“No. Why bother?  You know how this ends up.  The police go on the lookout for a young black male and never find any suspects.”

“Did you see the guy?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“How do you know he was black?”

“Of course he was black!  You think one of those white California kids stole it?  Use your head!”

“You were really gone for two minutes?”

“Two minutes, tops.  Anyway, it’s not really the money.  I can get another one.  It’s all my personal stuff on my hard drive.  It can’t be replaced.”

“You can remember your poems and retype them, right?”

“I had a lot of contacts saved on there, too.”

“Contacts?  What the hell are you talking about, Howard?”

“People I stay in touch with!  In the working world, if you don’t have a support network, you won’t get anywhere!”

When Howard said he got another laptop the next week, I knew that he was a bigger dealer of modified weed and other things than I had previously thought.

(Part 14 next week.)

(Art by spoon+fork.)

The only reason Mrs. Angrywall came fishing with me was because I promised her we would throw all the fish back, even the ones good enough for keepers.

We went out on a cloudy Monday afternoon to Island Beach State Park, pretty close to where I had hooked the squirrel.  When I was a kid, it seemed to take forever to bike there.  Now it was just a 30-minute walk.  Usually the best time to catch kingfish was dawn or dusk, but when it’s overcast or storming, they bite all day.

I bought some sandworms from a bait shack and had selected the two most innocent-looking hooks.  I bet those hooks couldn’t pierce the rough patch on my right heel.

Now I was really glad I hadn’t asked Howard to go fishing.  I had enough of his ass, six days a week.  But I hadn’t had enough of Mrs. Angrywall’s ass.

There’s something very innocent about walking with a woman when you’re each holding a fishing rod, even when you think she’s more attractive every time you see her.  What hidden intentions could you have? You have someplace to go and your purpose is clear: fishing.

It’s not like you’re sitting in a bar, spinning a wet coaster on its edge and wondering how many more drinks it’s going to take.

Mrs. Angrywall had found the center of balance on the rod and carried it daintily, as if about to twirl it like a baton.

“This rod is quite elegant,” she said.  “As all instruments of death are.  You paid $10 for it?”

“For both,” I said.  “It was a bargain.”

“Death on the cheap.”

We found a spot on the beach away from some jerks trying to play ultimate Frisbee on the sand.

“The last time I tried to fish was right around here,” I said.

“How long ago was that?”

“About a dozen years ago.”

“Why did you stop?”

“Aw, my reel got all tangled up and I got disgusted with it.  I threw the whole thing down the sewer,” I said.  I went about tying on the hooks and weights onto our fishing lines.

“You sure you remember how to do this?”  Her arms were crossed and she was standing on her toes, making me a little nervous.

“Easy as shaking hands,” I said.

“People shake hands to signify friendship and peace.  Fishing is not a peaceful act.”

“It’s a relaxing act.  Try it, you’ll like it.”

“It doesn’t hurt them, does it?”

“Fish don’t have nerves in their jaws.  They won’t feel the hooks.”

“They’re going to be okay, right?  If we throw them back after?”

“Of course.  This whole act of reeling them in is like playing tug-of-war with a dog and a rag.  It’s fun for the fish to try to fight you.”

“Still, I feel badly.”

“You eat fish, right?”

“Yes.”

“Where do you think they come from?  You think they make them in a factory like Swedish fish?”

“It’s a bigger sin to kill the fish than to eat them.”

“None of us are innocent,” I said.  “You can’t live your life without sinning.”

“Let’s get on with it, then.”

Women can’t throw baseballs or cast lines.  Their bone and muscle placement aren’t optimized for those actions, an old gym teacher, a woman, told me.  Mrs. Angrywall did her best.  By her third cast, she was doing okay.

“You just have to feel the pull of it coming around,” she said.

“That makes no sense at all,” I said. “Are you high?” I wasn’t dumb enough to bring pot to a public place anymore, so I the only grass around were the scraggly weeds that struggled to grow in the sand.

“Hargh,” she said, because she couldn’t come up with anything immediately.  “I thought that fishing was about sitting back, falling asleep and drinking beer.”

I was reeling in my line slowly, watching her.

“You have to keep the bait moving.  Kingfish like to chase bait on the bottom. They don’t want it unless it looks like it can get away.”

She sighed.  With some reluctance she said, “I’ve always found fish to be the least interesting part of marine biology.”

“Why’s that?”

“I just relate better to plants.”  To prove it, she lay down her fishing rod, sat herself on the ground and pulled her knees up.

“Have you read a lot of books?” I asked her.

“Yes.  I have read many books.”

“Do you think any of them have changed your life?” She shrugged.

“I suppose all of them have,” Mrs. Angrywall said.

“But some are more important than others, right?”

“What exactly are you getting at, Sean?”

“Well, there’s this one book I never finished, back in fourth grade.  Now I wish I had.”

“Actually, now that you mention it, books I had read as a child were instrumental in my development.”

“Exactly!  I think maybe, possibly, that’s why I’m such a fuckup now. Because I didn’t finish that book.”

“That’s quite a leap, Sean.”

She pulled up her feet. The backs of her legs looked nice in those clamdiggers.

“How’s Mr. Angrywall doing?” I asked.  “I haven’t seen him around, lately.”

“Oh,” she said with a heavy sigh.  “I found something the other day.”

“Is he cheating on you?”

“Sean,” she said.  “It’s nothing like that.  I found a small bundle of money in the closet.”

“How much money?”

“There were several stacks.  I counted one and interpolated the rest.  It’s about $30,000.”

My head hurt.  Absently my hand continued to wind my reel.

“Why was this money there?” I asked.

“We’re struggling to stay afloat, I’ve told you that.”

“This money sounds like the answer to your dreams, then.”

“He’s been driving up and down the state to meet our fellow countrymen.  He comes home late.  He’s been getting to know people through this group for Asian hotel owners.  They’re Patels, nearly all of them.  In ancient India, they were the bean counters for the rulers, you know, so running businesses is in their blood.”

“Okay.”

Mrs. Angrywall drew circles in the sand.

“Apparently he’s been borrowing money to keep us afloat.”

“These people would lend him $30 thousand?”

“I’m sure it’s from a number of people.  Hotels are rich in cash flow.  The ones that do business, that is.”

“My friends wouldn’t lend me $30.  You people have so much trust in each other.  No wonder you do so good in this country.”

“We won’t be able to pay this money back.  Taking this cash from them is akin to eating our feet to keep starvation at bay.”

I saw that the Angrywalls were in an M.C. Hammer sort of fix.  They appeared to be well off, but in reality they were getting deeper and deeper into debt.

“This money will keep you going for a while, though.  Maybe business will pick up and you can pay it back.”

“It’s usually a loose arrangement, these loans.  But things are sure to tighten up in a few months or so.”

“Did you ask him about the money?  Maybe you have it all wrong.”

“I can’t speak of it.  He’s a very proud man.  It would really crush him if he knew that I knew.”

After a while, I sat down next to her and said, “Things could work out OK.”

Mrs. Angrywall didn’t say anything.  A seagull tried to laugh and sounded more sad than happy.  We watched the water sloppily moisten the edge of the beach.

Her hand moved to the right side of my jaw.  Her nails barely touched my skin.

“How did you get that?” she asked.

“Oh, that, just a little scratch.”

“Where is it from?”

“When I was a kid, I used to work sometimes on charter cruises, gutting and filleting fluke, or summer flounder, for tourists.  One day, I was on a boat having bad luck.  There were about a dozen people not catching very much of anything.

“On the way back to docking, this chump landed a small fluke.  It was getting dark, but I could tell it wasn’t a keeper.  There was no way it was even a foot long.  I got it off the hook and was going to throw it back, but the captain came over to tell me to cut it up.  I said it was too small, and he said that if I wasn’t going to do it, he was going to.

“With my left hand, I chucked the fluke over the side and I raised my right elbow to defend myself, because I knew the captain was going to swing at me.  What I forgot was that I had the knife in my right hand, and when I blocked the blow, the blade got me right there.

“I started bleeding and the captain freaked out.  There are usually private security guards or policemen on the dock.  He gave me a hundred bucks to clean my face up and not say anything.  I was used to a buck a fish, tops.  That was one of the best days of my life.  It wasn’t even that bad a cut.”

“It left a scar,” Mrs. Angrywall said.

“You’re the first one who’s noticed it, besides me.”

“I suppose you do most of your socializing in dimly lit places.”

“That’s the old Sean Kerry.  Now I only go to bars when my probation officer wants to meet me there.”

“That sounds odd to me.  Is that how it’s usually done?”

“I just want to get through the probation period.  I don’t want to question anything.”

“I feel like my life in the States has been on probation. More so in recent years.  We look so like terrorists, my husband and I, you know.  At least your probation is going to end.  I seriously doubt you’ll ever be caught with pot.

“Our hotel will only come to a bad end soon enough.  We’ll run out of money and then we’ll have to move out.  Then we’ll have to retreat to India.  The dot-busters are going to get what they want.

“The funny thing to me is that I think I’ve smoked as much pot as you and the whole lot imprisoned under the new marijuana law.  My mother and I used to smoke a little bit of bhang on the roof when my father and his sons would be out.  It’s like a weak joint.  Then my British tutors introduced us to ganja and charas.

“Charas was just too much, really.  I forgot how to use my tongue to talk.  Ganja was just right.  My father believed he was doing something right to have two happy women in the house, even though he is a right bastard.”

“You know, Mrs. Angrywall, I’m a bastard.”

“Really?”

“My mother’s parents disowned her when she had me.  They would have done the same thing if she had had an abortion, anyway, so my mother decided to have me.  ‘Erring on the side of life,’ she said.  And it was an error she lived to regret.”

I noticed the tip of Mrs. Angrywall’s fishing pole bending slightly.  I stood up and went over.

“Do you see that?  Looks like you’ve got a bite,” I said, picking up the pole and reeling in the fish.  “Feels like a keeper.”

I pulled out the kingfish and noted its prominent top fin.

She stood up and pressed the back of her fist to her mouth.  I was smiling because I felt like a kid again, the kind that doesn’t hurt squirrels.

Without thinking about it, I had the fish unhooked quickly.  I still knew how.

“It’s a shame we’re going to throw it back,” I said.

“I want the fish,” she said, and looked at me.  Her eyes were scared and beautiful.  “I want to eat it.”

“I was hoping you’d change your mind about it,” I said.  I took out a crumpled plastic bag from my pocket.  “Go fill this with seawater.  We’ll bring him back in this.”

We took a backstreet to the hotel.  The long shadow of its roof slanted down and pointed at us.

“You going to be okay with filleting this guy?” I asked her.

She opened the bag and took a heavy breath.

“I’ve never actually killed something and then eaten it,” she said.

“Do you want me to tell you how?  It’s pretty easy.”

“Could you just do it for me, Sean?”

“Yeah, that’s no problem.  I could just clean it and give you the fillets.”

“Yes, that sounds all right.”

We were standing in the parking lot.

“I’ll bring it into the office when I’m done.  It should just take a few minutes.”

“Thank you very much, Sean.”

I took the bag from her and messed with the hamburger stand lock.  I finally got it open and turned on the light.

Somehow it seemed brighter inside than it did during the day.  I heard something outside the door.  It was Mrs. Angrywall.

“I just felt that. . . I had to see it happen.”

I looked at her for second.  She looked like a little girl who had missed her school bus.

“Give me that hammer by the door,” I said.

I poured out the bag on the counter so the water ran into the sink.  The kingfish flopped just once then gave up.  Its eye had a fixed look in it, seeing something in the next world.

“I need that hammer, Mrs. Angrywall.”

“What are you going to do with it?” she asked, walking over.

“I need to kill it first.”

Her hand was limp at her side, holding the hammer loosely.  I took it and smashed the fish in the head.  She jumped.

“That was out of mercy,” I said.  I took a knife and cut the fish’s head off.  Blood was pooling on the counter and the tail wriggled slightly.

I looked at her again, and she was running outside.  I didn’t want to leave a job half-done, so I stayed and scaled the fish and then cut it up, throwing the guts and the bones in the trash under the sink.

I wrapped up the two fillets in some paper towels and took them into the office.  It could probably make a good dinner between the Angrywalls.

On the counter was a lopsided bag from Taco Bell.  Mr. Angrywall was sitting at the front desk while Mrs. Angrywall stood with her arms crossed.

“I wouldn’t have bothered if I had known you were out fishing,” said Mr. Angrywall.

“Well, I didn’t expect you to bring food back. What made you start?”

“That’s what I get for being considerate.”

“Sorry to interrupt,” I said.  “I brought the fish fillets.  They’re pretty easy to cook.”

“No thanks, buddy,” said Mr. Angrywall.  “I’ve brought our dinner home.”

Mrs. Angrywall turned to me.

“Why don’t you just take them, Sean?  Cook them for yourself.”

“Okay.  Good night.”

I always knew when it was time to cut out of a bad scene.

I stopped at the hamburger stand to get a lemon and some salt and pepper packs before going home.

(Part 13 next week.)

(Art by spoon+fork.)

I used to love fishing.  I never got so deep into it that I would make my own flies or drift live bait in the water.  I was a sandworms-and-frozen-spearing kinda kid.

It’s true what I told O’Keefe that I gave up on the filleting jobs on boats because they started making me nauseous.  But it was something else that stopped me from fishing altogether, and why the thought of baiting a hook made me feel sick for years.

I really wasn’t thinking the day that it happened.  That’s my defense.  You can think fishing is fun because when you have a fish with a hook through its cheek, you don’t hear it scream.  Other animals are different.

I went fishing at Island Beach Park, on the surf, with Al Lombardi.  We were about 14 or so.  Al was a guy who later got put into private school so this was one of the last times I ever saw him.

I had a sandwich bag of sandworms packed in seaweed to keep them lively.  Sandworms would be scary if they were bigger.  They have two fringes of hundreds of feelers on either side of their body.  Those feelers would wriggle around a lot, especially when you cut up the worm to bait on your hook.

Al brought a small pile of corn kernels from a can.  What the hell are you going to catch with corn kernels?  Nothing.  I let him use my worms.  I had to cut them for him, too, because he was such a pussy.

We were trying to get kingfish.  Despite its name, the kingfish is actually pretty small and only weighs a pound or so.  Bluefish and sea bass were made by God to be caught by men.  The kingfish was made to be caught by kids.

For whatever reason, nothing was biting that day.  No kingfish, anyway.  But we were pretty close to a cluster of evergreen trees and a squirrel was running in, stuffing his mouth with Al’s useless corn and then scurrying away with it.  He came back to refill a few times.

For a joke, I stuck a kernel on my hook and put it in the middle of the corn pile.  I didn’t think the squirrel was actually going to take the bait.  He could see it, couldn’t he?

Suddenly my line jerked.  The squirrel was rolling and flopping around.  It was screaming, too, like a mother bird when you’re too close to its nest.  I didn’t know squirrels could be so loud.

I was scared and I couldn’t move.

“What the fuck did you do?” cried Al.  He ran over and grabbed the squirrel.  He managed to get the hook out and released the squirrel.  Al’s hand was bleeding where he had been bitten and scratched.  I knew then he was way braver than I ever was.

The squirrel ran off about 20 feet.  It stood up, turned its back to me and stroked its face.

“It probably can’t eat anymore!” Al yelled at me.  “It’s going to die!”

I grabbed my pole and jumped on my bike.  I pedaled harder than I ever had.  Maybe I was trying to go back in time and make us go shoplifting instead of fishing, or at least far back enough so that I didn’t bait the corn.

I shoved my pole down a sewer grate and that was the last time I touched one before the thrift store.  Satan had acted through me to trap God’s squirrel.  I could never face Him again.

I had a dream about that squirrel years later in jail.  He came up and touched my face.  I thought he was going to rip my cheek where my fishing hook had got him.  But his face was smooth and furry like nothing had happened to it and his little claws felt soft on my skin. His black and bottomless eyes seemed to say that it was useless to say anything to me.

When I woke up I had a corner of the sheet twisted into my mouth.

I managed to get the reels untangled. I called O’Keefe and asked if he wanted to go fishing with me.  He sounded surprised to get my call, and not too pleasantly.  He decided he didn’t feel like it.

“You look like a fool out there,” he said.  “You look like a bigger fool when you don’t catch anything.”

“Come on, we’ll catch something.  It’ll be fun.”

“Not fun for me.”

“I’ll bet you’ve never gone fishing with a white boy before.”

“That’s true, but I’m not going to be your slave Jim gone fishing with you, Huckleberry!”

After he said goodbye and I hung up, I stared at the phone.

I used to know so many people.  Guys I could call and we’d go hang out.  Girls I kinda boomeranged back to (but of course if a guy picked up the phone, I had the decency to hang up).

It was a different world now.  People moved on, changed their numbers and e-mail addresses.  You find out who your real friends are when you are moving to a new house or when you get out of jail, my inmate instructor at DEPCOR had told me.

I turned the phone over in my hands.  What is a “real friend,” anyway?  I lay down in bed and played with the phone some more.  Was a real friend someone who hurt you for your own good?  Did real friends stop you from smoking pot or get you a nicer bong?

Sure, Jesus was your savior, but was He a real friend?

I turned on my side and saw the stack of books the prison staff had given me as a going-away present.  Three that had their spines to me were “Fast Food Nation,” “One Hundred Years Of Solitude” and “Down These Mean Streets.”  I had read more books in a year than other guys had read in 10, they told me.  Now that I was out, I hadn’t read anything.  I had reverted to a dope-smoking moron with a retarded job.

I thought about Mrs. Angrywall teaching me British English words in the marsh.  Maybe a real friend helps you become a better person.  I could have lay down and listened to her talk all night.  She could have re-taught me English right from “aardvark.”

Suddenly, I thought about this book I had loved many years before prison, back when I still could have been anything when I grew up.

The book was called “The Corduroy Road,” which our class read in fourth grade with Ms. Daley.  It was about a family of pioneers crossing America in covered wagons.  The title always made me think about my pants, but it really referred to the roads made of logs laid across lengthwise where the mud was bad so the wagons could cross.

The teacher had tried to section it out so we would stop reading the book on the last day of class, but everybody loved the book so much, we read it out loud for an extra half hour every day.  Because we were such wonderful readers, when the class finished the book early, we’d gotten to see movies for the rest of the year.

But I had missed the last few chapters and the big ending because I had something close to strep throat.  I was drinking a lot of Hawaiian Punch and Hi-C.  This girl brought the book out of my desk at school to my house.  She wanted to read me the last few chapters, but I waved my arms and shook my head.  I wasn’t in the mood to hear it.  When she ran out, my mother came in and for the first time looked at me as if she were the one I had hurt.  I would get that look a lot from her, later on in life.

My mother used to dream that I’d be the first man in the family to wear a shirt and tie to work. But every one of her dreams had been smashed to pieces and all she could do was watch them fall off the mantelpiece from the next room over.  When the truant officer brought me home from the arcade.  When she found a used condom in her bed.  When they wouldn’t let me walk in the high-school graduation ceremony.

The truth is that I felt terrible for her, but I also resented her for making me feel that way.  I really hate to say it, but she never should have hooked up with my father.  I’ve seen pictures.  She could have been in music videos.  She could have found someone really special, or someone really fucking boring with a decent job, but she threw herself away on an illegal Irish bastard.  Then she had a bastard herself.

People were talking about me and my family in church, but nuns would come up and, unprompted, remind everybody within shouting distance that Mary was unwed when she gave birth to Jesus and that all unwed mothers and their children were blessed by the Holy Father.

Maybe they were trying to be nice, but it didn’t hurt that I was a good-looking bastard.  I got my mother’s frigid blue eyes and perfectly symmetrical eyebrows.  I got my father’s feet, and their casual manner of walking away from things.  Too bad neither of them could give me brains.  Where I got my height from was anybody’s guess.

My mother still had most of her looks, at least the last time I saw her.  While I was catching up on reading in jail, she had my stuff boxed up and put into storage.  She moved in with some guy in Philadelphia who made it clear in a postcard that if I dared to show up at the door he’d put a pickaxe through my head.

Unfortunately, my mother had picked the storage place by the Holland Tunnel entrance.  It had burned down while I was locked up.  The only thing I had left from her was the shirt I was arrested in and got back when I was let out.  I still considered myself lucky, because some people had been living in those storage spaces and died in the fire.

I remember how upset I was when I got better and came back to school and my copy of “The Corduroy Road” was missing from my desk.  The janitor had taken all the books and stacked them up in the storage room.  He already had it in for me because I had Krazy-Glued his metal tools together earlier in the year. So I wasn’t surprised when I asked him to get one for me so I could finish it and he just laughed and laughed.

Nobody in class felt like explaining how the story ended because the teacher had cried and everyone got weirded out.

Maybe if I had let that little girl read me the end of “The Corduroy Road,” I would have turned out a better person. It made me a little sad.  Someday I could look for that book on eBay.

That pioneer family had to have made it all the way West.  There was no way they were going to let them all get killed by Indians, right?

(Part 12 next week.)

(Art by spoon+fork.)

Work on Monday was going as OK as it could until this guy spazzed out on me when I told him we were out of tomatoes.

“Son of a bitch, let me talk to your manager!”  He had on a pair of insect-eye sunglasses, the kind that only California assholes wear.

“We’re out of tomatoes, sir,” Howard called out.  He was sitting on a milk crate and slumping against the freezer door, just out of view of the customer.

“A burger’s not a burger without tomatoes!” the customer yelled, sticking his face in the opened order window and looking around for Howard.

“McDonald’s doesn’t use tomatoes, and some people think they sell hamburgers,” Howard’s voice called out again.

The guy flipped the sunglasses on top of his head and rubbed his temples.  One eye was bloodshot.

“All events are neutral,” he said quietly.  “It’s our own values that we put on them that make them good or bad.”  Then he looked at me and said, “I’ll have two hot dogs.”

I walked over to the freezer and pried out two hot dogs from the frozen mass of what used to be the lowest shelf.  Because of a power outage, the freezer had melted and frozen again. The inside was one big discolored sheet of ice that looked like polar bear fur stained with piss.

“Can you just deep-fry them instead of grilling them?” asked the man.  That was the classic New Jersey way of cooking dogs.  Most tourists didn’t want them like that because frying them split the skin and the flesh would burst out.

“The dogs are frozen solid, they’re not thawed out.  They’re not going to turn out right,” I told him.

“It’s okay,” he said.  “Frying brings out the natural goodness in foods.”

He was right.  At least they looked pretty good, considering they expired a few months ago and that the oil in the fryer hadn’t been changed all summer.

I even cooked one for myself later on, but couldn’t bring myself to eat it, knowing that it was old meat.  I gave it to Howard instead.  He ate it and I watched for something to happen.

“Let me give you some more career advice,” he said when he was done.

“Yes?”

“For the sake of practicality, get a shitty job in the city.  It will pay less than in Philly, but you only have to ride one train system instead of two and as the years go by, there will be more opportunities to advance than in Philly.”

“Going from NJ Transit to Septa for Philly does suck.”

“Those are rival state agencies that hate each other.  Nothing make them happier than when one of them is running late and misses the departing connection.”

“Howard, how long are you going to stay here?”

“Aw, I’m still working on my business plan.  Just two things are for sure now. I’m going to be the boss and I don’t want to leave the shore.  I need to smell the salt in the air to feel alive.  Maybe I need a few years to perfect the plan.”

“What are you going to do when it’s off-season?”

“I have all kinds of contacts.  There’s a senior housing facility in Bradley Beach.  A college friend of mine works at the reception desk there.  He already said he could get me a job as the indoor-activities coordinator for the fall and winter.”

“Worst comes to worst, Howard, we’re never going to be able to afford a house or even get married.  We’re going to be 30 and flipping burgers for Bennys.”

He nodded and smiled.  Bennys were the assholes who came down from Bayonne, Elizabeth, Newark and New York.  They didn’t mix in too well with the California kids.

“I’ve decided I want to be happy in this life,” he said.  “Did you know that you never really own a house?  The bank owns it–you just spend most of your life paying off the mortgage, the debt.  Even if you pay that all off, you still have to pay taxes on the property to the government.   It’s the same with paying for car insurance every year.”

It was hot and I didn’t feel like talking, so I went about making an iced coffee as Howard went on.

“The more money you spend, the more things you accumulate and the more debt you rack up.  I’m still paying off college.  But I’m glad I went if only because I took one class on poetry.  It’s taken me a few years to realize this, but I am, at heart, a poet.  I mean, deep inside my entrepreneurial spirit.

“You know, the Chinese poets isolated themselves from the world and got high or drunk to write poems.  Back then, everything was super organic and the highs were better and longer.  Lucky for me, this weed gets me pretty close to their plane.  Wu-wei.  The act of non-doing.”

After a while, when I didn’t say anything, he added, “I’ve been writing poetry at home.  I feel like my mind is only now becoming truly free.”

“I’m not into that, man.”

“I can tell that about you.”

I sipped my iced coffee to the bottom before asking, “How can you tell that about me?”

“You’re geared to material pleasures.  I’m not judging you, but I have to tell you that ultimately, it’s not going to make you happy.  You know, I can see Andrea Conti giving you handjobs through the windshield of the truck.  Me?  I don’t want other people jerking me off.”

I tossed my plastic cup into the sink and put my hands in my pockets.

“Well, that’s because you’re a fucking idiot,” I said.

“I just have a different focus.”

“Focus on minding your own goddamned business!”

“You know Howard well?” I asked Mrs. Angrywall.

“No, not well.  I’ve barely spoken with him.”

“He hates Indian people.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah!  He calls you people ‘dots’ and says you’re taking over the country.”

“Rude.”

“Aren’t you going to do something about it?”

“This being America, I suppose I should get a gun and shoot him in the head and the heart?  Perhaps in the balls, too?”

“Call the police on him!  I can be your witness!”

“Sean, anyone can say nearly anything they want to.  It’s a free country.”

“But he was saying racist things!”

“You should hear my husband talk about white people.”

I put on a baseball hat and pulled the brim low as I got within two blocks of the Goodwill store.  My mother used to cover herself up with a scarf and tighten my jacket hood before we went.

It was embarrassing to be seen going in, but the store wasn’t dirty or anything.  Most of the things there were pretty new.  Stuff bought by summer renters and then left on the premises.

I thought I could get by without a TV but I was breaking down.  The goldfish was getting boring to look at.  Even in prison I got to watch TV in the afternoons, I think because they were trying to rehabilitate us with the after-school public-service messages.

I cut across the parking lot by the 7-11 and went into the Goodwill with my head down.  An electronic chime went off to my left.  I went straight back to the appliances.

There were three coffee machines and a mixer missing a blade on the top shelf.  There was a bulky device on the floor that looked like a microwave on its side, but it was a bread maker.  Who in the world needed to make their apartment hotter?  I thought about the bakery under my apartment and my arm twitched.

Between a toaster and an ice-cream maker, I found a red, solid-state Panasonic television.  It was black and white.  Some yo-yo had slapped a Yankees sticker to the side.  It was $5.  There was also a color TV-VCR-radio combo unit, but they wanted $20 for that.

It would’ve been nice to have the VCR, but $20 was just too much for something that looked like R2D2.  “Star Wars” was dumb as hell, but the light-saber fights are great when you’re high.

I cleared off a shelf of crushed women’s shoes to get at the electric outlet in the wall.  I bent back the prongs to normal on the Red Yankee’s plug and pushed it in.  The switch had been left on and a howl of static came from the tiny speaker.

I adjusted the knobs to VHF from UHF and came across a soap opera.  Stray lines scrolled across the tube, but the picture looked good enough.  I messed with the antenna and it looked better. Aerial, Mrs. Angrywall would have called it.

Then I switched the knob off, but the Red Yankee stayed on.  The volume would go all the way down, but you had to unplug the TV to cut the power.  I could deal with that.

The TV was light enough to carry by the fingertips of my left hand.  I headed to the cashier.  I used my right hand to beat back two racks of wool suits that were closing in on me.

Then I saw, right by the book rack, two fishing poles that had fallen into each other, their lines entangled.  I went over to finger the merchandise.  The reels were still good and were barely used, but there was no price tag on them.

I picked them up and brought everything to the front counter.

“How much?” I asked about the fishing poles.

Behind the counter was a middle-aged woman with straw hair who looked sadder when she tried to smile.  She’d be a good model for someone who wanted to paint a portrait from the Great Depression, or just depression itself.

“I can’t sell them without price tags.”

“You can’t?”

“They have to be priced by a representative from the central office.  These rods just came in.”

“You can’t just say how much they are?”

“We have to account for everything here.  We’re not Enron, son.”

“Look,” I said.  “I’ll give you $10 for the rods.”  Her eyebrows arched and she looked down at the far end of the store.  A man was taking off his socks to try on a pair of flip-flops.

She rang up $5 for the Red Yankee and tax on the cash register and took the extra $10 for the rods and put it in her pants pocket.

I got back to my apartment and sat on my bed.  I had to cut through the tangled line and I didn’t have a sharp knife or pair of scissors.  I went to the bathroom and took the nail clippers from the shelf.

I looked at the goldfish, who could see the fishing pole clearly from where he was.

“Don’t take it personally,” I told him.  “I’m not going to catch anybody you know.”

I went back to the bedroom.  I plugged in the television, found a show to listen to and then went to work on the fishing line.

(Part 11 next week.)

(Art by spoon+fork.)

Before we got started, I offered Andrea Conti a joint.

Despite the close brush at JJ’s, I couldn’t stop smoking pot.  It became even more exciting.  Pot stayed in your body 90 days, as long as a warranty if you wouldn’t buy the extra protection.

“No way, get that shit away from me,” she said, as she continued to roll up her sleeve.

“Would you mind if I smoked?”

“No, it’s disgusting.  Don’t do it.”

Andrea was getting fussy, but wasn’t any less enthusiastic in what she did, even when it took me longer sometimes.

The rules were set pretty early on.  I couldn’t touch her and she wouldn’t take off any of her clothes.  All she was going to use was one hand.

“Andrea, do you have a boyfriend on the side?” I said, as she unzipped me.

“I’m married, I don’t need a boyfriend!”

“If I were your boyfriend, you’d have sex with me, right?”

“I don’t like sex.”

“This is sorta sex already.”

“This isn’t sex, this is like my service.  I like to make people feel good.  I would never cheat on Michael.”

“He doesn’t know about this, does he?”

“Who do you think set the rules?”

Suddenly I wondered if there was a camera somewhere in the truck.  Was this going out live on the Internet?  I was distracted and went a little limp.

“You want me to talk like a black girl?” Andrea asked.  “Would you like that, boo?”

“No, don’t do that,” I said.  I closed my eyes but the thought was in my head.

I imagined Nadine from the bar.

“There we go,” Andrea said.

Nadine looking sideways at me.  Slowly she changed into Mrs. Angrywall.  The view moved from her face and down the groove in her calf to her dark brown feet with toe rings.

I wondered what Mrs. Angrywall would be like in bed, with those toe rings jingling around my ears.

When I was up on the roof with Mrs. Angrywall that afternoon, I noticed that she was wearing a pair of low-cut Converses.

“How come you’re not wearing your sandals?” I asked.

“Oh, the damn strap broke.  I drag my feet too much.”  She took a drag on the joint and passed it back to me.  “Now I have to wear these evil Western shoes.”

“They’re probably made in China.  They’re still Asian so you should like them.”

“Ah, yes, because China and India are such good mates.  We’re all Asian, aren’t we?  That’s like me telling your people that the English are your brothers.”

“From what my father told me, Irish killed more Irish during the troubles.”

“Could be true, but the provos are far more intelligent than they’re given credit for.  There was no random violence.”

“How do you know about the IRA?”

“My boyfriend in college was Irish.  From Ireland.”  She took the joint back from me.  “Oh, don’t mention that to my husband.  I’ve never told him about it.  He thought it was a white wedding.”

“He thought you were a virgin?”

“He did.  My father did, my brothers, aunts, everybody.”

“How did you get around that?”

“Hargh!  A woman has her ways around a naive and younger man.”

“Hey, I talked to him.  He seems like an average kinda guy.”

“He basically didn’t watch TV or listen to music until he was 20.  Although he’s quite the conversationalist, he’s befuddled by. . .situations.”

“Didn’t anyone know you had a boyfriend at school?”

“I didn’t have any relatives in the States.”

“Didn’t your family come over for your graduation?”

“No, they didn’t bother.”

“Not even for Harvard?”

“It was a girl graduating!”

She had a bitterness that genetically modified pot couldn’t mellow out.

“How come you’re here now?” I asked.

“I’m here to support my husband’s business.  He bought this hotel with a loan from his parents shortly before our wedding.  Earlier, he had co-founded a dot-com that went belly up.”

“How is the hotel doing?”

“Sean.  We’re doing terribly.”  She shook her head and grimaced.  “Once upon a time, we had two clerks, but we’ve had to sack them.  Now it’s me behind the counter.”

“But you people seem to be doing well.  Almost every hotel here is run by hindus.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“If it was particularly lucrative,” she said, “do you think we’d be the only ones doing it?”

I shrugged.

“I guess everyone would be doing it.”

“Right.”

“Then why are you and your husband doing it?”

“It’s still better than running a convenience store, making our money from lottery tickets and lurid magazines and videos. ”  The joint was at the end and I ground it into a black smudge with my shoe.

“Sean, I have to tell you something.  I’m Indian.  Don’t call me a ‘hindu.’”

“Why not?”

“Do a Google search.”

“I’m not allowed to use the Internet.”

“Then you’ll never know why you’re wrong, and if you don’t know why you’re wrong, you’ll never improve yourself.”

“Well, actually, I have been improving myself.  I read this self-help book in prison, “Man Has to Be His Own Savior.”  You have to be completely honest with yourself.  You have to find what you love and persevere.  That’s the secret.”

“Not everyone’s free to pursue what they want.”

“Everybody is!  They only think they can’t.”

“At first, I was excited that the hotel was right on the Barnegat Bay.  It tied into my doctoral thesis on marine grasses and macro algae.  It was no Chesapeake Bay, but still it’s an important estuary.  I applied for and was awarded with a grant to carry out a study in the area.  But I had to give it up to work at the hotel.  They asked me to return the grant or at least my data so far, but I never did.  We didn’t have the means to pay it back and the scant information I had was useless.”

“If you could do anything in the world, you’d want to be studying sea grass?”

“Yes, I would.  I still read about submerged aquatic vegetation online,” she said, then giggled a little.  “Sometimes I even go into my small marsh and clear out the debris.”

“You have your own marsh?’

“I like to think of it as my own marsh, but really it’s one small part of Gaia.”

“Gaia?”

“That’s the idea that we’re all a part of one giant, super-organism.  Gaia.”

“Mrs. Angrywall, I didn’t go to Harvard, or nothing. . .”

“It’s got little to nothing to do with Harvard,” she said sharply.  “It’s. . .an idea.  We all have our own small part to do to keep the earth going.”

“I should probably get going and do my small part flipping burgers.  I can’t understand how our stand manages to stay afloat.  We must be cutting it pretty close.”

“Do you think you’d have a job at the burger takeaway if it were a money maker?”

“What do you mean?  We make a lot of money!”

“That stand is a tax-loss write-off for Michael Conti’s big restaurant!  He also gets money for letting an ex-con work there.”

“Hey, I understand that I’m in a pretty special situation right now.  But if I keep my nose clean a year, I can get an office job in the city.  Then I can really do my small part for Gaia.”

“You’re already converting oxygen to carbon dioxide.”

“Everybody does that.”

“Do you want to see my marsh, Sean?”

“Yes.”

She wore a pair of clamdiggers with her Converses and a loose cotton-knit top.  I saw her complete neck and upper chest exposed for the first time.  Dressed like that, Mrs. Angrywall could pass for a dark Italian.

We walked across a pedestrian bridge from the bay side of Shore Points that went out into a series of marshes.  Or maybe it was one big marsh.  The bridge seemed to be made of the same wood from the boardwalk and it kept us a foot or so above the muck.

Mr. Angrywall had gone to Asbury Park where they were auctioning off parts of a demolished hotel and ballroom.  He was looking for good cheap wood.

“How are the repairs going?” I asked Mrs. Angrywall.

“Slowly.  It doesn’t really matter, I suppose.  We couldn’t rent out the rooms even if they were pristine.”  Our footsteps sent thin ripples across the bubbly and oily surface of the marsh.  Vegetation that looked like little plucked cloverleafs covered up parts of our reflections.

“Did you know that we’re no longer in New Jersey?”

“We’re not?”

“We’re on federal land.  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife bought these small islands several years ago, after my disastrous grant work.”

“These little pieces of shit count as islands?”

“Believe it or not.”

“I can’t believe they still let you back here.”

“They don’t quite ‘let’ me back here,” she said slowly.  “In fact, you might say that we’re trespassing now.”

A dim memory surfaced.  My mother and I running in the rain, taking shelter in an abandoned shack off the boardwalk.

“We’re trespassing,” my mother told me.

“What does ‘trespassing’ mean?” I asked.

“It’s when you go somewhere you’re not supposed to be in order to get to where you want to go.  Remember the Lord’s Prayer?”

“Yes!”

“We ask God to ‘forgive us our trespasses.’  So it’s okay to do bad things as long as we always ask for forgiveness.”

The rain came down hard and seemed to go on forever.  My mother lifted me up so I could see above the boards nailed over the window.  The ocean was leaping into the gray sky.  Angry walls of water crashed against the beach and seethed in the sand.

“Why are there so many waves?” I asked my mother.

“Because people on the other side of the world are splashing around.  Maybe there’s a birthday party and some boys are doing cannonballs and sending waves all the way back here.”

We got to an area in the marsh where the water was the scummiest.

“Here we are,” said Mrs. Angrywall.  She raked her fingers through her hair and magically it seemed to grow an inch longer.

“Not much to see.”

“Without the proper instruments, you can’t really appreciate what’s going on here.  You have to sort of feel it.”  She sat down cross-legged on the bridge.  I sat down next to her.

“What’s happening now?” I asked.

“There are plants taking energy from the sun, generating oxygen and filtering water.  They don’t look like much but these little smudges of green provide the basic necessities for life in the marsh.  Take them out and the shellfish and fish die, the birds fly away and the water turns toxic.  Not necessarily in that order.”

“Life is funny isn’t it?  Algae is making this all possible.”

“Algae are making this all possible.  It’s a plural word.”

“You’re making me feel really stupid.”

“I don’t mean to.  Hey, let’s get higher than kites.”

“Now you’re talking,” I said, pulling out a joint I kept in the right cuff of my shorts.  We lit up.  After a while, I thought I could decode the language of the chittering bugs in the weeds.

One was saying to the other: “They are trespassing.”

I imagined Mrs. Angrywall doing her experiments in the marsh.  Snipping leaves into plastic bags.  Filling glass jars with water.  Scooping up mud and wiping it all over her breasts.  Pulling off all of her clothes and rolling around.

I closed my eyes, turned to her and said, “I’m sorry, but I keep seeing you naked in there.”

“Where?”

“The water.”

“There’s nobody there.”

I lay back and looked up at the sky.  My mind reset itself.

“How come you didn’t finish your project here?” I asked her.

“I was too busy at the hotel.”

“You could have come back on like the weekends, right?”

“The weekends are the busiest times for the hotel!  Very nearly all the rentals are for Friday and Saturday nights.  Oh, pardon me, I meant that they once were.”

“Is it too late for someone else to take over your experiments?”

“I suppose I could have left instructions for someone else to collect data, though I would have had to analyze the information.  I certainly didn’t even have the time to do that.”

After a while, Mrs. Angrywall said, “Every time I come back here, I can feel the magic of this place.  There’s a real, tangible life force with feelings.  I had a portable radio back here once and the aerial wouldn’t work.”

“‘Aerial’?”

“I’m so sorry.  Antenna.”

“God, it’s like you’re speaking a completely different language.”

“You still understand what I’m saying, mostly, don’t you?”

“I think so.”

“What’s a coach?”

“The guy who’s in charge of the team.”

“It’s a bus.  What’s a car wing?”

“Something Chitty Chitty Bang Bang has.”

“You call it a ‘fender.’  What’s polythene?”

“I don’t know.”

“Polyethylene!”

“I still don’t know what it is!”  We had the giggles for a little while.

When the silliness went away, I said, “You could still do it.  Later, I mean.  Your marsh project.  You’re still young.”

“Sean.  I’m 40 years old.”

Suddenly, I was sober again.

“Forty!  Oh my God!” I yelled out.  Married and 40.  Two reasons to really stay away from her.

“Thank you so very much,” she said, scrunching up her face.

“You. . .you look like you’re 28 or 27.”

“I feel 40.  Bloody hell, I feel 50.  This business, it’s never going to work out properly.”

“Can’t you use it as a tax-writer thing?  You know, try to lose money to make money?”

“It only works when you also have a profitable business.  You sort of get a discount on the taxes for your rich hand to compensate you for your losses on the other.”

“Oh,” I said.  I became aware of burbling sounds coming from the marsh and looked across the water.  I saw the sun’s reflection shimmering in the air and I thought about Genesis 1.

(Part 10 next week.)