Panorama City (14 page)

 

I didn't realize it then, I didn't even realize it when he did it a second time for a customer whose chicken bites weren't cooked as well as they should have been, I mean they'd been precooked, they weren't uncooked, that would have been dangerous, they just hadn't completely unfrozen in the center, and Roger had done the same thing, he had offered to do anything at all to make it better. Even then I hadn't understood, Roger had to explain it to me, he asked whether I'd noticed that nobody ever took him up on his offer to do anything at all for them. If he had offered coupons or vouchers or a refund, his words, they would have snatched them up, that's what customers did, they wanted to hold on to their money, it was their nature. But by asking them whether there was anything at all he could do for them, he was in fact offering them nothing. He was telling them that if they wanted something, they would have to ask for it, and if they had to ask for it, Roger's thinking, they would have to give up what Roger called the moral high ground, which customers cherished even more than money. If they managed to ask in a roundabout way, Roger explained, using words like compensation or recourse, he waited for them to ask directly for money or coupons, but they never did. The woman never got past the word
compensation,
she huffed and puffed and left without even taking her food to go, vowing never to return to the fastfood place in as loud a voice as she could muster, to which Roger replied in a calm and soothing near whisper, so that everyone in the restaurant had to quiet down to hear him, which they did, that she could make whatever dining choices she liked, that this was America, that she was free to go, and that he was sorry she was having a bad day.

 

Once she was gone, he shrugged his shoulders and apologized to the other customers for the commotion, as if to say that she was unbalanced and overreacting and we were all better off without her, or at least that's what it looked like to me, I had seen that look before, I didn't like it. Roger had been cruel to the woman, I thought, and I said so. He explained that he had been nothing but accommodating with her, but that she was clinging to an unrealistic expectation of customer satisfaction, that the problem lay in her mind, not in his actions, he explained that individual customer satisfaction was not important, it had never been important, that the emphasis on individual customer satisfaction was only a strategy, a business strategy, a means to an end, and that it had become shopworn, customers had begun taking advantage of it, which was damaging the business ecosystem, like picnickers feeding the bears. I told Roger that I had only wanted to brighten the woman's day with the same wonderful feeling of discovery I had experienced upon recognizing a very long french fry sitting atop a pile of otherwise normal fries, I had only wanted to provide a unique and exceptional dining experience, I hadn't meant to cause any trouble or hurt any feelings. Roger shook his head at that, he said I hadn't caused any trouble at all, what I had done was root out someone who was trying to take advantage of the fast-food place, I had eradicated vermin, his words, I had done a very good thing. But from now on I should maintain a consistent variety of fries in each carton, because people had certain expectations when they dined at the fast-food place, expectations that should be met, not exceeded or fucked with in any way, and consistency was the hallmark of the fast-food place, Roger's words, it trumped quality every time. Even though Roger said I had done a good thing, I couldn't help, I can't help but be haunted by the image of the spiraling fingernail.

A few nights later, I told Aunt Liz I was going to take a walk around the block to settle my stomach, to aid my digestion, not that her cooking hadn't been delicious, it had been, I'd just eaten it too quickly. Which was entirely true until I started down the block and noticed a glow behind the sheets hanging in the window of the milky blue house. I had tried knocking on the door several times already, after work, to speak with the inhabitants about their lawn, or about their patch of wilderness, which took up the space where others would have kept a lawn, I wanted to introduce myself as a new neighbor, and let them know how much I appreciated their not cutting the grass to within a literal inch of its life, as Aunt Liz had done and kept doing, or as her gardener kept doing, I should say, on her orders. But nobody had ever answered. This time when I knocked a fellow who looked like a young Indian chief answered the door, his name was Chuy. I complimented him on the wilderness that was his lawn, but he said the place wasn't his, he was just visiting. He asked me where the pizza was, what had happened to the pizza. I told him I was
not the pizza guy. He asked me if I was the police, I said I wasn't. A car pulled into the driveway then, which turned out to be the pizza guy. Chuy disappeared with the pizza and someone named Nick came to the door to pay. He invited me in, it was his house, or his grandmother's house, or it had been, before she went into a home, she had memory and balance problems. Nick's hair was slicked back and he had a goatee, or part of a goatee, on the point of his chin, and a tiny mouth compared to the rest of his face, it was fascinating to watch him eat pizza with it. Chuy lit what he called some Buddha and smoked and passed it on to the other guy on the couch, who passed it on to Nick, who put his pizza down to have a puff, who passed it on to me. When in Rome, wear a toga, your grandfather used to say. I took a puff, I inhaled and then let it out quickly. I am not a smoker, I have never been a smoker, but I could see immediately that one of the appeals of smoking is that when you let the smoke out of your mouth you feel like a dragon. A few moments later, or a few hundred, who can say, I couldn't remember what I'd just thought, or what I'd said, or what someone else had said, and so I spent much of my thinking trying to chase down what I'd forgotten. I became uncertain about what these people really looked like. The harder I stared the less concrete their features became, like when you try to look at a dim star dead on and it disappears on you. The rolled cigarette came around again and I was offered some more, and I pinched it between my fingers as I had seen the others do and I held it up to my eyes
and looked at it closely. I wanted to penetrate, with my eyes, whatever this thing was, whatever was burning in there, but it was impossible. I could feel, I mean I could sense, how this thing was connected to maintaining one's yard in a wild state, I understood how these guys, or how Nick, specifically, might, were this something he smoked routinely, ignore many practical aspects of life, of which gardening, or landscaping as they called it down there, was only one. I asked Nick about his lawn, I asked him what his philosophy was. Chuy said, his words, Again with the lawn? Nick shook his head at Chuy. Plain and simple, he said, his grandmother's gardener was an asshole, he had problems with some of Nick's plants, strictly hobby plants, and so Nick had to fire him, which was why the lawn looked fucked, because also Nick had been too busy to mow it. Then he asked me to shit or get off the pot, his words, meaning pass the cigarette. As you can imagine, I was disappointed, as you can imagine, I was sad to discover that a respect for and fascination with nature in a natural state, or close to a natural state, was not the only reason someone might have a patch of wilderness around their house. I kept deciding to leave but my body felt like it had melted into the chair. I kept thinking I had come up with profound realizations but then found I couldn't put them into words. I felt hungry despite my full stomach and ate a slice of pizza and watched them play a golfing game on their television. After a while, or a hundred whiles, I became concerned that if I didn't leave soon I would never get up. On my way back to Aunt Liz's house my mind spiraled in a million different directions as to how I would explain my extended absence, how I would explain that I had gone on an hours-long walk, how I had stayed up long past our bedtimes. Except Aunt Liz was sitting at the kitchen table doing her crossword puzzle, and she looked up and welcomed me back and asked me if I'd had a nice walk, without any concern in her voice whatsoever.

 

I spent an eternity brushing my teeth. I stared at the picture with footsteps on the beach, trying to unlock its secrets. I kept having realizations, and then when I tried to remember them, or recall them, in words, I mean, I couldn't seem to put them back together. Every new piece of philosophy in my brain revealed itself to be a mirage, and yet I kept feeling I'd discovered something profound. I couldn't lie on the inflatable mattress, it was too wobbly, I lay down on the floor instead, I liked the way it felt against my ankles and calves and shoulder blades and the back of my head. My flesh felt like it was becoming part of the floor. I thought of your grandfather, I wondered what it had felt like to lie there while his body gave out, or whether his body had given out so completely that he'd never experienced lying there at all. I wondered what he would have said about me being down in Panorama City, I think he would have supported it one hundred percent, he had always wanted me to know something of the world. And yet I wished he had been there the other night at dinner with Aunt Liz, to confirm or deny what she'd had to say about my mother, your grandmother, and her destructive nature, which was supposedly half my nature, though I'd never felt destructive, I'd never been interested in destruction.

 

That night I dreamed, Juan-George, that I could read as well as any scholar, everything clicked, like those dreams where suddenly you can fly, and you sort of think, oh, that's right, now I remember how to fly. I had that feeling in the dream when I remembered, so to speak, how to read, and everything seemed clear to me, the world opened up like a book. Only to dissolve upon waking, as they say.

 

On those days when I didn't have to see Dr. Rosenkleig, I got into the habit of going to the Lighthouse Fellowship after work. Someone was always there, there was always a friend to make, and as part of my clinical trial of Aunt Liz's plan I did my best to stop thinking, in the name of science I did my best to accept the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal savior. I didn't reserve any part of myself from pursuing Aunt Liz's plan, I didn't go through the motions while my heart was somewhere else, I was genuine in my intention. And yet what I felt in my heart wasn't faith so much as effort. When you feel only effort in your heart, Juan-George, you know you are on the wrong track, my philosophy. I met effort with more effort, I wanted to absorb as much as possible, Scott and JB had
given me my own Bible, it was black and the pages had gold edges on them, you could see the gold when you had a bunch of pages pressed together, it was symbolic of the flock, JB had said, I wasn't sure how. It also had a built-in fabric bookmark, no symbolic function, and in the New Testament some lines were written in red ink, which meant that Jesus said them. I would go to the Lighthouse after work, I would go to the Lighthouse and sit at one of the tables with a tall glass of ice water and open my Bible and listen to people talk. These were not always biblical discussions, in fact I was surprised by how few of the conversations were biblical discussions, to some extent it was a relief, I didn't feel like people were going to pop-quiz me in front of everyone, but on the other hand I enjoyed hearing people talk about the Bible, if only because I became more and more curious with each passing day what lay between the pages of that book. Sometimes I sat alone, staring at the words, picking out a few here and there, trying to teach myself to be a stronger reader, and someone would see me concentrating very hard on my Bible and look pleased. I couldn't get too far and I didn't want to sit there always staring at the first page, so I turned to pages farther in and stared at the words there. Your grandfather used to say that my gift was gab, by the time I figured out a couple of words in a row, I would forget the words I'd just read, I couldn't quite decode words and hold a sentence together in my head at the same time, I still can't, it's like the machinery is missing, I hope you won't have the same problem, people tend to make judgments. Not Paul, of course, Paul helped me see the value in what I thought had been a handicap. Reading and writing are mankind's greatest tools, Paul's words, but we've abused them, we've managed to turn our own tools against ourselves, we've managed to bury ourselves with our own shovels, bury ourselves under piles of nonsense left behind by people from the past, nonsense that muddles our vision, that makes it impossible to see things as they are. Not reading and writing means not being muddled, and an unmuddled vision is invaluable, which means valuable.

 

I was staring at the words when Scott Valdez walked up, I hadn't spoken to him since I had first met him, I had spent more time with JB and others. Scott stood in front of me with his pineapple of a head and said that he had noticed my studiousness, my seriousness of purpose, his words, and my interest in the Old Testament. And then he said the name of the chapter I was reading, which I realized as he said it was pronounced like Joe with a B at the end, and not like a job you would work at. Which is the thing about reading, just when you think you've solved a word, it turns out to be wrong. He asked me what I thought. I told him I was doing my best to understand. He said that God tests us each in our own way. I agreed with that, everyone was different. It wasn't until later that I was able to absorb the words of Job, right then I had no idea what Scott was talking about, really, and I don't lie, I don't like to have to keep track of an alternate universe that doesn't exist, but in that moment I didn't feel like telling Scott I wasn't getting anywhere with the Bible, I didn't want to disappoint Scott, I wanted to understand the Bible. But as I said before, Scott was a thinker.

 

Scott waited until I was about to leave, I hadn't made it much farther in the Bible than where I'd started. He asked me to come into his office, which in some ways reminded me of Roger the manager's office at the fast-food place, I mean it was about the same size, except that instead of being cluttered and full of piled-up things it was neat and organized. Scott sat in his chair, which looked adjustable but was locked in an upright position. His short arms moved a computer monitor to the side so we could see each other. I was terrified that he wanted to talk about Job, I felt like I had been caught in a lie, a lie I hadn't really told, but a lie that had settled on me, like a pigeon. He told me how much he appreciated my help around the Lighthouse Fellowship, how much my enthusiasm meant to him, how despite my short time at the Fellowship so far I'd become a part of the family, thanks in large part to my friendliness and can-do attitude. He thanked me for all of the light-bulbs I'd changed and apologized for taking advantage of my height, of my being the tallest person in the Fellowship. Getting down to brass tacks, his words, he wanted to give me a token of appreciation. I let him know that I enjoyed being
helpful, that I didn't need anything. He handed me a tape recorder. I thanked him, I didn't know what to say. He told me the gift would make sense in a moment. He pulled open a file cabinet, grabbed a thick zippered binder, something a businessman might carry around, and set it down in front of me. I unzipped the binder and looked inside. A dozen plastic pages with four cassettes on each page. I didn't know what they were for, I spent a minute counting them up, waiting for Scott to talk. He told me that it was the King James Bible, old and new testaments, with music and atmospheric sounds. He didn't say anything about me not being a strong reader, he didn't say anything about how I would be able to get through the Bible on tape but not on paper, he never said anything about my reading skills or lack of reading skills. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for him to say that since I obviously struggled with reading, I should listen to the Bible on tape, it would have been completely natural to say that, but Scott didn't say that. Juan-George, I did not yet know that the Lighthouse Fellowship was a hotbed of philosophical and spiritual perversity, I did not yet know that while I was trying to be faithful, while I was trying to understand, I could not be, and I would never understand. But I want you to know that regardless of his beliefs, independent of his beliefs, Scott Valdez was not only kind to me, but kind to me in a way that involved thinking and use of the imagination, he had taken a moment to picture the world through my eyes, and he had seen that my gift was gab rather than the printed word, he had come to that insight, he had acted on it, and yet there was no sense of victory. He wasn't interested in gloating over his powers of perception, he wasn't interested in stepping into my shoes and then stepping right back out, it was more important to him to help me achieve what I was trying to achieve, which at the time was to read the Bible.