Panorama City (17 page)

 

I was awakened by a tapping at my window. It was one of those nights where the wind picks up only after the sun is down, one of those nights when you awaken in the dark to the sound of the world being torn to pieces, and so at first I thought it must have been a branch tapping the window, which happened in Madera all the time, and so in my half-awake state I thought I was back in Madera, a Madera branch tapping at my Madera window. Of course once I had climbed what I like to call the ladder of awareness, I realized, first from the squishy feeling of the air mattress, then from the odor in the air, the odor of freshness, of Aunt Liz's air fresheners, I realized I could be in only one place. But there couldn't be a branch tapping against my window, none of Aunt Liz's trees came anywhere near touching the house, she'd planted them all well away from the house and kept them neatly pruned. The one time she had visited us in Madera, you can imagine how she felt about our patch of wilderness, the one thing that irked her most, her words, were the trees right up against the house, which in her opinion was like a billboard of ignorance, only the ignorant let trees rub up against their houses, that was how rats and squirrels came in and nested, that was how moisture and rot took hold, and, what should be obvious to everyone, it was a fire hazard. It finally came to me, someone, some person, was tapping at the window. I remembered my prayers. I don't dare utter even the beginning of her name. I rolled off the air mattress and onto the floor, my legs tangled in the sheets. I raced across the room to the light switch and flicked it on, but then I couldn't see out the window, I could only see my own reflection. I turned off the light and went to the window again. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust, I had been blinded by the light. Then I saw that the person standing outside was not who I had been praying to but Paul Renfro.

TAPE
6,
SIDE B;
TAPE
7,
SIDES A & B

My friend, he said, I need your help. He stood outside the window, briefcase in hand, giving me that newly hatched alligator look, that tiny smile at the corners of his mouth, as if nothing was out of the ordinary, as if we had just seen each other the day before, as if this was the typical way someone came to visit, knocking on your bedroom window in the middle of the night. I asked him where he'd been. He shook his hand in the air and explained that he'd had to untangle himself from his real estate problems, meaning his penthouse patio and the zoning board, and jump through what he described as a series of hoops before he could again pursue what it was he had been called upon to pursue. Hoops, his words, specifically arranged to prevent any kind of original thought or action on the part of the individual. He was lucky to have the practical knowledge, he called it, to be able to navigate all of the hoops, else he wouldn't be standing outside my window but rather rotting away in a cell somewhere while the human race expired from its own stupidity. Look at Galileo, his words. He started to come
in through the window, but I sent him around to the front door. Aunt Liz was catatonic with her sleeping pills, night mask, and white noise-nature sound generator. He wore a dark blue suit with a crisp white shirt and a striped tie, in the light of my room he looked like a businessman, or he would have if his clothes had fit, the pants had been rolled up and the jacket sleeves extended well past his wrists. His briefcase was still made of cardboard but had been cleaned or replaced with a new one. He sat on my desk chair and explained that the period in his life ending with the antioxidant cream was over, that he was changing his stripes, going the straight-and-narrow route. Anything less than the straight-and-narrow route would be unfair to those who stood to gain most from his thinking, meaning mankind. I must set aside the personal, he said, this is not about me, none of this is about me, I am but a humble representative of my species on this planet, I have no more right to assert myself individually, he said, than an aphid. I feel no need, he said, to stand outside the race of man, I am a humble servant, a humble servant of the future of mankind, and I have resolved now, in this period of clarity, in this period of utter and complete clarity, in this period so clear I have experienced the ability, twice in the past week, to see through solid objects, I have resolved to use my powers for good, and good alone, which I was doing before, more or less, which I have been doing all my life, but which I have hampered with a modicum of selfishness, an infinitesimal modicum I have since erased, he said. Then he asked me how I had been adjusting to life in Panorama City.

 

I told him everything. I'm not going to repeat it all, I told him everything I've told you. Afterward he explained that no matter how I entertained myself, making french fries for short-tempered people was a waste of my time, and that Dr. Rosenkleig was not interested in my scientific analysis of anything but was only trying to modify my behavior using a series of techniques first developed by Watson, Pavlov, Skinner, and others. Paul said that Dr. Rosenkleig would strip, using the language of science, using the techniques of science, hiding behind the mask of professionalism, would strip away every interesting part of myself and replace those parts with a prefabricated system, a program, a computer program but for the brain, a series of thoughts and behaviors I would run through from the moment I awoke to the moment I went to sleep, so that I would be left with only the vague feeling that I was not living my own life, that I was a shadow of myself, sleepwalking through my days, until my death. As for the Lighthouse Fellowship, from what I'd told him it sounded like the ultimate hotbed of spiritual and philosophical perversity. The revelation of an eternal soul should occasion drinking of beer and looking at the sky, Paul's words, because the word
eternal
means, above all, that we have time. But at the Lighthouse Fellowship the revelation of an eternal soul seemed to have resulted in the opposite reaction, resulted not in a sense of expanding time but collapsing time, resulted in an overwhelming sense of urgency. Which was baffling, utterly baffling, he couldn't think of a single thing more baffling in the whole wide world. And furthermore, Paul said, the lighthouse itself, as a symbol, made no sense. Someone had declared it a Christian beacon of some sort, but a lighthouse wasn't something that led you to a safe harbor, a lighthouse was something that you avoided at all costs, a lighthouse was something you stayed away from lest you and your ship be dashed on the rocks. The most perverse message a lighthouse could ever deliver, Paul's words, is come here and be saved.

 

I told Paul that I'd learned enough already about the life they were trying to squeeze me into. I wanted to quit my job at the fast-food place, I wanted to quit seeing Dr. Rosenkleig, I wanted never to go back to the Lighthouse Fellowship, I wanted to go wherever I wanted and do whatever I wanted, whatever it took, whatever it would take, to become a man of the world. Paul put up his hands. All aspects of Aunt Liz's plan were in direct conflict with the fundamental rights of man, he said, nobody could possibly argue with that. But he reminded me that there were times for planning, times for implementing, times for considering, times for reconsidering, and times for drinking beer while looking at the sky, and this was a time for planning and considering, not yet a time for implementing. We
were seeking homeostasis, his word. I did not know what homeostasis was and said so. For starters, he said, I need lodgings. The government had taken all his money, so he couldn't rent a room anywhere, and living on the streets was out of the question. Aunt Liz certainly wasn't going to let him stay. We discussed him possibly sleeping in the garden shed, but the gardener, being a professional, would rat him out, no question. We discussed him sleeping on the roof of the house but police helicopters were always in the neighborhood and would surely spot him. Then I remembered the access panel in the closet. I had poked my head up there when I first arrived from Madera, I had stood under the panel and pushed it out of the way and jumped up so my head poked through the opening. I'd caught a glimpse of the space above my room. It wasn't an attic, there wasn't room for an attic, it was a low crawl space of lumber with a peaked roof, lined with insulation and crowded with heating ducts and wires, but it was, as they say, our only option. I made a stirrup of my hands and lifted Paul so he could get a good view. He hauled himself up completely, which I did not expect him to do, which I did not expect him to be able to do, he was stronger than he looked. He asked for his briefcase and a flashlight. Aunt Liz had a tool drawer in the kitchen, not that she ever fixed anything herself, depending as she did on professionals for everything. I fetched a flashlight and pulled my desk chair into the closet. You never know when something useless might come in useful. I couldn't ever sit on the chair and also get my legs under the desk, the chair was too high, or the desk was too low, neither was adjustable. I had a plan for raising the legs of the desk, but after Aunt Liz's reaction to my wanting to modify the bed I had put it on the so-called back burner. But for these purposes the height of the chair was ideal. I stood on it and poked my head up through the access. I handed Paul the flashlight. I don't need to see, he said, I don't need my eyes, I need only to breathe the air to know that this atmosphere is conducive to advanced thinking, ideal for the kind of powerful thoughts I expect to assemble in the coming weeks.

 

Paul had not had a decent meal in a long time, he'd been subsisting on too little too long, he'd been subjected to, his words, cruel and unusual cuisine. I couldn't raid Aunt Liz's pantry without arousing suspicion, so I suggested that Paul and I step out to the fast-food place to find something to eat, the drive thru was open twenty-four hours, I was sure we could walk up and get something to eat, if the right people were working I could even get us a table inside, after all, I was about to be named Employee of the Month. But Paul seemed reluctant to leave the ceiling. He declared himself setting up for a long stretch of advanced thinking. Perhaps it would be better if he didn't show his face to the world at this moment. I understood. Some burgers, Paul said, and some fries, please. I'll be up here working and waiting for your return. Do not forget, he said, that you are advancing thought right now, and that if the great thinkers hadn't eaten, if the great thinkers hadn't been provided with nutritious victuals, we would still be dwelling in caves, instead of beautiful homes like this one.

 

I snuck out the front door and made my way to the bus stop. The wind gusted and howled, the air was full of dust and debris, I wiped the fiberglass bench with the edge of my hand and I sat and waited for the bus to come, I lifted my binoculars to my eyes and scanned up and down the road. But it was too late, or too early, I should say, it was well past midnight, and the buses weren't running yet. Paul had said before, he had said that the history of mankind is full of bad ideas perpetuated by hungry thinkers, by thinkers who if their blood sugar levels had been higher would have seen the error of their thinking. Look at the Bible, he said, it is one extended chronicle of malnourishment in barren lands leading to cockamamie visions swallowed whole by a famished population. I didn't have time to wait, the quality of Paul's thinking was at stake. I knew the way, I knew how to get there, I had seen the landscape from the front seat of the bus, it would not be complicated to walk. When I had first driven into Panorama City with Aunt Liz, there had been no difference between Panorama City and whatever it was we had been in before Panorama City, but now I had come to recognize intersections and businesses, I had come to understand the landmarks that made one block different from another. All intersections had at least one mini-mall, unless they had a gas station or a fast-food place already, and most mini-malls had liquor stores, but only one had a butcher shop. The way to the fast-food place would take me past that butcher shop, then three liquor stores, two check-cashing places, a house where someone had parked a tractor-trailer in the yard, a boulevard with palm trees running down it, and a big chain drugstore. The streets were deserted. I could have walked down the middle of the road the whole way.

 

When I was a boy I would sometimes pretend that a catastrophe had wiped all other people from the earth. I pictured not having to go to school, and instead going into town and picking out any bicycle from the shop and riding it up and down the aisles of the grocery store and eating whatever I wanted to eat. The pretending stopped, usually, when your grandfather's voice reminded me I was not alone, your grandfather's voice calling me to breakfast. But somewhere along the line he stopped calling me to breakfast, he started staying in bed through breakfast, and so I could keep the pretending going past the door of my room, past the porch, even keep pretending as I rode my bicycle to school, until I saw the first car cruise past in the distance or someone in their driveway fetching the newspaper. For a while it was thrilling to imagine having the world to myself. If there's nobody, there's nobody to tell you what to do. But the thrill wore off, Juan-George, the thrill turned into something else, which was that I needed to feel the presence of other human beings, even if it meant I couldn't do whatever I wanted anymore.

 

There were no cars in the drive-thru, I walked up to the window. Ho sat with the headset on the countertop, he'd set up his computer game, he was playing video poker, waiting for customers. Ho worked more hours than anyone, it was a matter of pride with him, he used to joke that he didn't like to sleep, bad dreams. I tapped on the glass, which didn't sound like glass, which looked like glass but sounded like plastic. The wind whistled through the drive-thru. I must have been quite a sight, standing at the window in the middle of the night, my clothes flapping in the wind, but if Ho was surprised at all he didn't show it. He nodded at me before I even said a word, left his chair and computer, and walked around to the side door to let me in. When I got inside, he simply said hello and asked me to help myself to whatever I'd like, someone named Carlos was working the kitchen, he could help. That was Ho. Stand too close to him with some french fries at the counter and he wanted to kill you, but appear out of nowhere on a windy night, looking like a maniac, and he became a gracious host. I went to grab burgers and fries from under the heaters, but Carlos insisted on making them fresh, Carlos said he wouldn't have me eating the garbage that had been sitting there all night, it was destined for the dumpster, the late-night
borrachos
had had their fill hours ago. Carlos made the burgers fresh, and the fries, too, while I waited. The smell of cooking made me hungry, I hadn't realized how hungry I was, my body needed fuel, I needed to feed myself before the long walk home, and so I ate a couple of the burgers and some of the fries. Then Carlos made more for me to bring home. Throughout all this Ho remained focused on his video poker, he didn't budge an inch. Which contributed to the feeling that time had stopped.