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I'm standing in the alley next to the trash and life is perfect. Even the smell
is just right - the Santa Ana winds are wafting through the garbage and the
air is hot and ripe.
"Mac! Hey Mac, for Christ's sake!" Art yells at me from the back door of the
7-11. He's the night manager and I really should listen to him, but I savor
these moments, when life itself is so full and satisfying where all seems perfectly
in place, even here in the wasteland of the San Fernando Valley. I ignore him.
"Hey, Goddammit, I need two cases of Michelob out front right now, what the
hell are you doing?"
"I am watching Sagittarius take aim. I'm thinking of Demeter's endless quest.
I just took out the trash," I tell him. If I had been smoking a cigarette he
wouldn't have asked.
"Watching what? Come on, man, I need that beer." His checked shirt is stretched
tight around his belly - I can't go through the doorway until he moves.
"What's the secret word?" I ask him, fingering an invisible cigar.
"Ya know what, Mac? You are a very strange guy."
I think about a time when I was small, my first day at a new school. I was walking
across the blacktop when I noticed a speck in the sky. A bird, I thought. It
grew larger. I stopped. It seemed to be flying to me. As I watched, it gained
speed and then hit me on the forehead. An older boy had thrown a rock from the
other side of the playground. So I want to say It's Life itself that's strange,
Art, not me. But instead I just tell him, "You don't know the half of it."
"I calls 'em like I sees 'em," he says. "Win a few, lose a few, right?"
"Hey, like I always say, nobody's perfect, ya follow what I'm sayin'?"
It seems that everywhere I work the words go back and forth like a ball being
tossed, only I don't know if the game is catch or dodge. Like at the impound
yard in Oakland, with the Dobermans and the wrecked cars. Every morning was
the same: "Hey, big guy, how they hangin'?" And I knew to say, "Hangin' loose,
Walt." And Walt would say, "Well don't let your meat loaf" and I'd say, "No
way, Jose." Then the other guys would laugh and Walt would ask, "Hey Mac, what
time is it on the equator?" And when I'd answer, "Could be anytime, Walt, anytime
at all," he would tell the guys, "Ya gotta get up mighty early to fool old Mac,"
and at that last line I wanted to dodge, or duck, or, better yet, turn invisible
again and start walking.
"When you're done with the beer I need you to get to the magazine racks. Fuckin'
kids got 'em all messed up again," Art says over his shoulder. I like cleaning
up the racks. DOG-FACED MAN MARRIES WORLD'S HAIRIEST WOMAN!, ABDUCTED WOMAN
GIVES BIRTH TO TWIN ET'S, and FAITH HEALER CURES MOVIE STAR WITH CRYSTALS! I
could easily get lost at the racks, just trying to take it all in.
The beer is in the storeroom, which is also the office. The room itself is a
mess, but I know where everything is. For example, the Michelob is against the
far wall, which is north from the doorway. Domestic beers line the west wall,
except for where the desk is. In the desk, in the top right drawer, is a big
black gun. I'd like to look at it but I get the beer instead and take it out
to Art.
"Thanks, Mac. Listen, catch the racks later. Some kid just dropped a bottle
of Gatorade over by the video games. Gotta get it mopped up. Get all the goddam
glass, OK?"
"You got it, Art," I tell him, and head back for the storeroom where the mop
is. One time when I worked at the Safeway, I was packing a man's bags. When
I finished and he paid he glanced at me - they never do - and said, "Mr. McFadden!
What in the world are you doing here?" I remembered him; he had been one of
my best students.
"I can no longer make the connection between Apollo's chariot and waking up
in the morning," I told him, without thinking about the answer. I have found
a freedom from introspection. A liberation from deliberation. He stared at me
for a moment, seeming to have more to say, and then took his groceries and left.
In the storeroom, I'm about to reach for the mop, but I'm really thinking about
the desk. It's cluttered on top with paperwork and receipts, candy bar wrappers
and styrofoam coffee cups. I sit down in front of it - on the wall in front
of me is a calendar. A girl with enormous breasts spilling out of a bikini sits
on a motorcycle, looking through me and smiling. I don't believe her. If she
were really here - whatever that means - she would still be looking through
me. In the top right drawer is the gun. I take it out. It is ugly but oddly
appealing. I take off my glasses and lay them on the desk so I can read the
print on the barrel. It's all in German - meaningless, but powerful! I put it
back and close the drawer.
One time, in Eugene, I worked in one of those little photo huts in a supermarket
parking lot. FAST-FOTO, it was called. I would look at the pictures and then
seal them back in their packets. The people would come. A packet to the man
in the red sports car - he had photographs of turds in a toilet, twelve of them.
Photos, that is. The rest were of his car in a driveway. A packet to the worried
looking woman in the beat up sedan. Her pictures were of a young girl in a leg-brace,
walking on the beach, blowing out candles and opening presents, smiling in a
playground swing. In this last shot the brace is right out front. A packet to
the teenage boy in a Jeep, with its loud, rumbling engine. He seemed to like
taking photos of marijuana plants. They were in a series: growing in the yard,
hanging upside-down from a clothesline, drying in the sun, and, finally, stuffed
neatly into clear bags and displayed on a bed. And again I want to tell Art,
It's life that's strange - don't you see it? It's not me at all.
I wheel the mop and bucket out to the game area. It's packed into a corner,
past the magazines and at the end of the aisle where the canned goods are. Three
kids are playing at the games, dressed alike in baggie shorts and long t-shirts.
They all have the same sneakers and haircuts, short on the sides, spiky on top.
I try to move into position to clean up the Gatorade under the middle machine,
Invisible Enemy.
"Hey, Pop, you're messin' up my game.
"I have to clean up under there," I tell him.
"I got high score of the day and three fuckin' rockets left, dude," says the
kid. These kids could play forever on one quarter. I mop at the edge of the
puddle by his foot.
"You better not mess with Bobby's game," says one of the other boys, who just
now ended his own battle with RoboCop. He looks about sixteen. I'm thinking
it's time to call Art, but instead I push the wet mop up against Bobby's tennis
shoe.
"Hey! You mess with my game I'll fuck you up," Bobby says without looking up.
He has a gold hoop in his ear. I pull the cord on the machine and bend Bobby
over so his forehead touches the panel.
"Bobby?" I whisper, "Can you hear me?"
He tries to nod. His friends are edged up against the racks.
"Bobby, I am the Invisible Enemy and you're all out of ships. What do you want
to do?"
"Nothing, man. Let me go."
"Bobby, I walked here from Seattle and worked twenty jobs on the way. What do
you think of that?" I ask him.
"Nothin'. I think you're a fuckin' wacko." He's struggling now, but I have more
to say.
"Wrong, Bobby. That's what I keep telling Art and all the rest of them. It's
life that's wacko, son. It's not me. Chew on that for a while. Here ..." I straighten
him up. I hand him the mop and slap a quarter on the game counter.
"Try to get all of the glass." I turn around and walk down the aisle, past the
magazines, past paper plates and Lipton tea, past the carousel with the sunglasses,
past Art, who's punching up fifty dollars worth of Lotto tickets for an old
lady (she buys her food here with welfare stamps) and on into the office. I
take off my apron. The drawer sticks shut and for a moment. I fear that it is
locked, but then it opens.
I'm in the parking lot now. I left my glasses in the office, but it doesn't
matter. I grasp the roll of flesh that's pushing at my belt - can this be me?
But the gun feels good tucked up against my skin. I wonder about the German
words. No one is paying any attention. I am walking, facing south again, invisible.
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