Adverbs (22 page)

Sam could not hear the Katydids anymore. Either it was over or Egg and Andrea had switched records as soon as she left, or she was simply too far away. There could be a simple answer. Overhead the weather was strange like something might happen, but there was a whole flock of nothing in the sky. “You have a girlfriend?” Sam asked.

Mike blushed, but “Yes,” he said. “You’re the first person I’ve told. She’s older than me. She’s way older.”

“That’s nice,” Sam said. “Tell her happy birthday, your old girlfriend.”

Fuck him. Fuck that bastard kid. She could give the bird to anybody. She knew the whole damn city. She could get a job driving a cab, and when people leaned up to give her the money the bird could peck out their eyes, or she would drive it south for the winter when it got cold, out of the kindness of her heart. She knew the names of each and every one of the Marvelettes. She had lots of people in the neighborhood. She crossed the street and knocked on the door of the opposite place.

Love is a story, usually a love story. The main characters are
what matter. The guy who works at Zodiac doesn’t matter here, and Porky doesn’t matter, or Helena or the houseguest she married or Mike or Egg—none of these people are in Sam’s story. The main characters are Sam and her friend. Sam heard the bare footsteps, and then the woman opened the door. Thank god she was wearing a robe. The ugly terry cloth sagged, though, and if Sam cared to turn her attention to it she could see one boob. On the wall was a print you could not see from the opposite apartment, but Sam had seen it before. It showed a woman in the woods who looked not unlike the woman who lived in the place. She had a big dumb smile.

“You found my bird!” said Sam’s last friend. “Petey! Petey!” and somebody help her, this is the only story Sam is in.

I
n the United States, where this love story is set, we all get to make decisions about love, even if we’re not citizens or if we don’t know what we’re doing. If you get into a taxi and you fall in love there, no laws passed by the government of the United States will prevent you from making a fool of yourself. If you have someone in mind for the prom, you do not have to submit this person to a vote. If you want to be a lover, that is your call, no matter your mother’s advice or what the song on the radio is going on about. The love’s yours, in the United States, for the time being.

If you’d rather be a criminal, however, we have a different system for that. In the United States, twelve people get to decide if someone’s a criminal or not. There’s not anything that anybody can do about this. It’s not the same twelve people—it’s different every time, like a dozen eggs. Also like eggs, it’s a process that’s been described as messy. Joe had eggs that morning, a big breakfast.

A big breakfast weighs you down in the United States, not what you want to eat if you’re going to work at stopping a disease. Nonetheless Joe had eggs. He worked at a place called Stop AIDS Now, a political and/or social organization the aim of
which is to stop AIDS, a terrible disease that has killed millions of people and which is spread through two acts much associated with love: having sex and having babies, now. At the time of this writing, let’s face it, nobody knows what to do about this. There’s drugs but they don’t work, and there’s bigotry which for some reason works real well at the job of making everything worse, and people keep on performing acts of love and then dying, all over the world all over the place. Joe’s job thought that enough was enough, among other strategies. It was a worthwhile job and so paid not that well, but Joe told himself he didn’t need much money, which is a common and surprisingly not-that-difficult thing to do. Eggs are cheap. Joe tried to stop AIDS now Monday through Friday except when he was sick or really wanted to go to a movie instead of to work, or was called—summoned, they call it—for jury duty. What happens with jury duty is, for a week maybe you get to be one of the twelve people who decides if someone’s a criminal, maybe nothing happens. Neither is really that taxing. Thus eggs.

Character description: Appropriately tall. Could dress better. A body you could like if you liked that sort of thing. Using a United States metaphor, if everyone in New York City is staunch and traditionally heterosexual and up and down the West Coast, from Seattle to San Francisco, there is nothing but lesbians and gay men, put Joe in maybe Kentucky. There are men so handsome that to pretend Joe did not notice and desire them would be wrong and absurd respectively. Everybody notices. Not to mention curiosity, which is normal as omelettes and consumed at least as often. But Joe dated women and was married to one once.
Very nice person. Worked hard. Had big lips. Represented to Joe qualities which were enviable and true, mountains of etiquette and integrity, lakes of charm and goodwill and resourcefulness, well-chosen outfits of tenderness and shiny cloth, all these desirable and inutterable things which no one can list in love. Buttons, the way she buttoned things. Aluminum foil looked better on things she had cooked. The way she said, when she said it, “Put your shoes on, baby.” Conversations, the interesting people she brought home or knew in childhood or who ate at her diner or she overheard in the park. Several friends who told jokes that were funny when Joe heard them. Paying for things with cash or a credit card, this woman’s hair, the wild laugh at certain lines in a movie. “What am I, an acrobat?” would make her laugh, “It’s a party!” would make her laugh. Kissing all the time which the lips are good for. Sense of envy from copassengers in elevators, from plants even, from houseplants on the very good days. In the United States this often leads to weddings unless you’re gay, although this too will change, for how could it not, and perhaps it has by the time this is published. For six years love reigned over Joe and then something else, a new phase of the button moon. The chicken of love laid another one. Her elbows suddenly were ugly. There wasn’t enough money, or maybe the night the restaurant closed around them, Chinese men in tuxes putting the chairs up on the tables like big spiders in a museum, closed for the day, closed for the evening, the lights turned low and the shimmering music off and two coats and only two coats standing off to one side on a glum rack of pinging wire hangers, while they fought, husband and wife, until they were both in tears.

These are the things we must know. This is information relevant to the case and the only judgment there is is: Joe—yes—Joe is nice. He’s a nice guy! He’s our hero! Let him have the eggs! Toast, hash browns, he ate all of it and never once thought about his wife. It was okay. Nothing tasted great, not even Top Ten in eggs, but it was time to go. The summons, they called it a summons, said 8:30
A
.
M
. and it was criminal not to show up.

Jury duty is, you sit in a room to see if you’re going to end up doing something, a room humming with nothing while people someplace else and invisible to you decide things. It’s just like work, but you’re not at work: you’re a juror, maybe. This is your brief new job. Doesn’t pay well.

Eventually you are called into a room, as we all are. Joe was, via number. His number was a hundred something and they called 104 through 110, which was him. He paid attention as he walked out of the room. What would happen now that his number was up? Nothing probably. But nevertheless the hallway was like a drum roll. He had been doing nothing for a long time, though they’d given him several breaks. He had a perfectly natural and appropriate sense of narrative suspense and desire: maybe he would be
sequestered
, a sexy word.

Courtroom, the usual thing, flags. The United States like all disobedient things has a father, and the father of the United States hung over the place where the judge sat, like a big full-color dollar bill wincing all over the proceedings. Joe took a seat, everybody took seats, take a seat and wait for the judge, when the judge comes stand up. That was not Joe’s favorite part, to tell the truth. Joe wasn’t crazy about the idea of a judge, spending his middle to late age deciding whose fault it was. Back in the restau
rant, there was only one moment of any peace. “I don’t think it’s anybody’s fault,” she said to him, and he realized he’d never forget those red chopsticks with the curled yellow dragons. “I don’t think it’s anybody’s fault,” and as they faded from one another this was the only thing that made it easier to get back to sleep when he woke up and found that it was still two years later. It wasn’t anybody’s fault and Joe didn’t like standing up for a judge who might decide otherwise, but you had to. You had to slide on down the bench and everyone slid on down the bench. Joe was next to a guy with somebody else on the other side.

“Hey,” the guy said.

“Hey,” Joe said back. Some people had been talking in the bigger room but Joe had just sat and let the eggs take care of things for a while. Maybe now though, Joe felt summoned to do some talking.

“Do you mind it,” the guy said, “if I talk over the pros and cons of working the night shift?”

Joe tried to decide. The guy had big fluffy earphones down around his neck like he might listen to some music later. The vest had stains. On one hand, it would be boring. On the other hand, also boring. “Sure,” Joe said.

“I’m not working right now,” the guy said. “Are you working?”

“I work at Stop AIDS Now,” Joe said.

“AIDS?” the guy said. Also, he was ugly. “The thing fags get?”

Joe decided that fighting bigotry wasn’t his job that day, what with jury duty. “Yep.”

“That’s rough,” the guy said. “You gay?”

“Nah,” Joe said. There had been three or maybe four very attractive people in the larger room, not relevant to the case.

“So I’m not working,” the guy said. “Not a lot of jobs since the catastrophe, but I’ve been offered a couple of things and they’re night shift. You know?”

“Where?” Joe said.

“Supermarket,” the guy said. “It’s night shift. There’s things to load but they’re not that heavy because you have a thing to wheel them around in. You know, here’s the lettuce. I did that before. But the place is crawling with rats.”

“Well,” Joe said.

“Yeah,” the guy said.

“Rats aren’t nice,” Joe said.

“They suck is what. They suck is what the rats are doing there, so what do you think?”

“I don’t think you should take that job,” Joe said.

“There’s more you need to know about my situation,” the guy said.

“I’m not going to give you any money,” Joe said.

“That’s not it either,” the guy said, “but my other choice is medical transcription.”

“Okay,” Joe said, but only because it seemed like he should do something while the guy wiped his lips with the palm of his hand.

“I sit in a room and listen to tapes,” the guy said. “That’s all I do. That’s the whole job. The Jewish people work there. Everything that the doctors say, like white male with no preexisting conditions. Appears to be cysts. Stuff like that. Very rare
case. Nomenclature and incision, surgery right away. I do this and I look at all of the Jewish people and even though it’s nothing personal I know they are going to steal me blind. I’m surrounded by the Jewish people who want to steal all the money is what’s happening. They are Jewish and they are willing to break the law.”

Joe felt willing to break the law, although there are so many laws it is essential for the purposes of this case to differentiate. Joe was ready to break the law prohibiting prayer in government buildings. Joe didn’t want to decide something for himself, like could I please move somewhere else. He knew the odds. Not when there’s a flag. Nonetheless the longing, the prayerful sort of longing that does not stop when you know the house is empty and the last of her stuff is gone. The longing for the decision to be made for you, while you lie with the minions on the floor, please, please, please. Please powerful something. Some sword of justice. Some truthful brass gong. I will light any incense. I will renew my driver’s license fifteen times. I will never ask for any other toy, this is the only toy I want, please please will someone lift me out of this room. Could I please be lifted. Could today be the one. Could some large fist stop it for a second and open up the great palm of everything I started dreaming of as soon as I knew this would not last, could I be plucked, could something just pluck me out and up and over and through and away and any other parts of speech you would demand of me. Judgmentally judgmentally judgmentally I would believe in you and swordfight others who did not, any necessary sacrifice if you were in the mood for that. I would give anything. Open my
wallet and lungs. Take anything, you requisite criminals, you summoning thieves of this terrible place where every story seems to be set. I will drive you to the airport, O Lord our God, first thing in the morning if that’s when the plane is. Take all my breakfasts away from me but
let the jury duty end
. Don’t make me listen to the guy any longer. The guy keeps talking. Will not the King or Whatever of Hosts read my name out loud from the Book of Love?

“Attention if I read your name out loud,” the woman said too loudly. “Then you are excused from official jury duty for the year. If I read your name you are excused. Joe is excused. Several other people are excused. I will read their names out loud incorrectly and real slow.”

Joe! For the year! He stood up while other people were talking. They could not move their legs fast enough he was stumbling over them out of the bench so quickly. “I thought all week,” some people said. “How come her, and not me? Why couldn’t you tell us in the big room, and not me? Why are babies dying in faraway lands?” Not Joe. Joe didn’t ask a thing. He had after all promised not to in his prayers. Below the portrait of the father of the United States: In God We Trust. If we trust Him then we don’t point out that he doesn’t exist. It is rude. We promised. We take his impressive hand and we go out of the revolving doors to the sunlight of the bus stop of the downtown district of the city. The light shining on Joe is the prettiest thing in any book you have ever read. Thank you, thank you, thank you, you are dismissed.

They say love’s like a bus, and if you wait long enough an
other one will come along, but not in this place where the buses are slow and most of the cute ones are gay. “I could take the bus,” Joe said out loud, “but a taxi is better. Taxis are better than buses.” This felt good and a taxi pulled up due to the fact he was raising his hand, which in the United States means please pull up, taxi.

He got in. Filthy but so what? Taxis are better than buses. “Where to?” the taxi driver said who was a young lady hoping maybe this day might be the miracle.

“Um,” Joe said. “I don’t know. I just got out of jury duty. Everybody thinks I’m in it for the rest of the week. I could go anywhere.”

The lady said, “Look, buddy,” and then she turned around and the milk of human kindness flowed into her veins. “Well,” she said, and smiled at his grin. “Where are we going to go?”

“The best place in the city is the Black Elephant,” Joe said.

“On Grand?” the lady said. “That’s your favorite place?”

“It’s the best place,” Joe corrected. “The places in the city are ranked as follows. The Black Elephant. The Shanghai Express. Stirrup Park. My friend Mark’s apartment. The Eden Fruitery. Lambchop’s Diner, why did I not have breakfast there this morning? I’m crazy. It’s the sixth-best place in the city and the best place to have eggs.”

“Lou’s Kitchen is better if you want eggs,” the lady said.

“I don’t want eggs and no it isn’t. Then comes the museum and then movie theaters, all in a row: Rialto. Cinema Experience. And so on.”

“You seem very sure of yourself,” the lady said, and they smiled. It was a judgment call to smile but they did it. They
smiled like they already knew each other and the way the story goes, like they already liked each other but hadn’t been in each other’s company for years and now—
now
—now was their miraculous chance, but first they would pretend not to recognize each other, because why the hell not.