Down and Across

by Arvin Ahmadi

  We stepped into the health services building at George Washington University and approached the reception desk. Trent placed one elbow on the desk. “Hello,” he said, coming on strong to the receptionist. “My friend Carlos Zambrano here just suffered a horrible biking accident and requires immediate attention from a health services professional. He can’t seem to locate his wallet or phone, and his memory seems to have suffered somewhat, but you can look him up in the student database.”

  “I’m sorry, but we’re closing early today,” the receptionist said.

  Trent pouted his lower lip ever so slightly. His eyes were kind and patient, and they stayed fixed on the receptionist.

  “One moment,” she said, shuffling to the back.

  “Carlos Zambrano? For real?” I whispered. “I’m not even Hispanic.”

  “Whatever, your face looks rough enough that it should work,” he said. “Carlos goes to school here. We work together over at—”

  We heard the receptionist coming back. “All right, Mr. Zambrano, there’s no need for your student ID. I found your file and informed our after-hours nurse of your circumstance. She’ll see you right away. Follow me.”

  Trent winked as I walked off with the receptionist. True to my made-up brain injury, I was dumbfounded. Who was this guy?

  The nurse cleaned me up quickly without asking too many questions, wrapping my wounds with Band-Aids and medical tape, and the receptionist referred me to a neurologist in case my memory had actually suffered. As soon as I left the building, I crumpled the referral and chucked it into the trash. Trent was waiting by the door.

  “You’re looking a lot better,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I said. The word lingered on my tongue for a second. “For everything. You didn’t have to do that, you know.”

  “Come on, you think I was gonna let a kid like you sit there and suffer after an accident like that? It was the least I could do.”

  It struck me that Trent wasn’t just a kind stranger; he embodied the Mount Everest of moral high grounds. He could have walked by the pay phone, but he stopped to help me up. He could have called 911, but he brought me to the health services building. He could have left me there, but he made up a story to get me admitted. And he could have left right after, but he stood outside and waited. I felt further comforted by his slight Southern drawl, which drew out words like “suhhhfer” and accented his sincere manners with a layer of hospitality.

  We walked slowly to the phone booth. Trent bent over to pick up what was left of my bike—a mangled clump of aluminum, chain, and wheels.

  “So how the hell did you drive this thing into a phone booth, anyway?”

  I laughed nervously.

  “Well, I just got into DC today,” I said.

  “No kidding. That makes two newbies in town!” Trent said, slapping me on the back. “I moved here last month. Just graduated from College of Charleston. What brought you?”

  I explained my story to Trent—my track record of failure and how it manifested itself as this failed quest to meet Professor Mallard. I even told him about the peculiar blonde girl who gave me her bike just a few hours earlier.

  “Well, she wasn’t that peculiar,” I said. “She was insanely pretty. And nice, like you. Fiora, that was her—”

  “Fiora Buchanan!” Trent bellowed. “She’s been up in Philly a lot lately.”

  “You know her?”

  “Abso-freakin’-lutely. She’s about the only person I know in DC. We were best friends growing up. Fiora’s a couple of years younger than me, but our fathers did business together back in Charleston. Paper business.” Trent froze. “Wait a minute.”

  “What?”

  He shook his head and started to laugh.

  “What?” I said louder, my voice cracking. This only intensified Trent’s laughter.

  “You must have biked through Washington Circle, didn’t you? It’s smack in the middle of Georgetown and GW, with a big ol’ statue of George Washington, a bunch of students hanging out on the benches. Philosophy types . . .”

  “I was coming from Georgetown, so, probably?”

  “You, my accident-prone friend, were riding around on a stolen bike.”

  “Huh? No way.”

  “Yessir,” he said. “She’s always challenging herself like that, Fiora. . . . Doing risky shit for the hell of it. Last week she told me she was stealing her TA’s bike to teach him a lesson. They, um, have a rocky relationship.” Trent let out a sigh. “I used to try and talk Fiora out of these things when we were kids, you know? But she’s stubborn.”

  If I had any interest in Fiora before as a cute girl, a stranger who briefly distracted me from the stakes of my running away—God damn it. I couldn’t believe the man who chased me was her teacher. I couldn’t believe I was riding his stolen bike. I was furious. I breathed heavily, clenching the bike’s battered handlebar before throwing it to the ground.

  “Do you think she was trying to screw me over or something?”

  “Absolutely not,” Trent said. He looked simultaneously stern and sympathetic. “You need to know something, Scott. Fiora’s life these days is about as messed up as a bunch of lawmakers trying to do their damn jobs. She’s going through some big changes with her family. Lord knows she’s not the kind of girl to let the world get away with giving her a kick, so sometimes, she’ll kick back. Stealing that bike, giving it away—these things give her a necessary thrill. Does that make sense?”

  “It’s still messed up,” I said. “But whatever.”

  We dumped the remains of my bike into a garbage can, the aluminum frame and rubber wheels overflowing the top. Not to be outdone by Fiora, Trent insisted on walking me back to my hostel. The sun was glistening off the DC skyline, a fiery blitz of rays dancing along the shiny glass buildings around us. We passed important government agencies whose names were too convoluted to bother reading in full: The International Something Policy Something, the Federal Mediation and Something Else Center, among others.

  “What’s your background?” Trent asked.

  “Persian,” I said. “I mean, my parents are. I was born here.”

  “Is that the same thing as Iranian?”

  I gulped, reminding myself that Trent grew up in the Deep South. My parents said that people there still think of Iran as an Axis of Evil, no thanks to President Bush.

  “Yeah,” I mumbled.

  “Dude, that’s awesome! I didn’t grow up around a lot of, um, diversity,” Trent said. Diversity was one of those buzzwords that always annoyed me, but Trent made it sound like an exciting taboo. Something otherworldly. “I did know a Middle Eastern guy in college. Afghan, I think. Do they speak the same language? Arabic?”

  I smiled for a couple of reasons. The way he said words like diversity and Middle Eastern, Afghan and Arabic—Trent might as well have been speaking a foreign language. The juxtaposition of those words with his accent was like nothing I’d heard before. More important, though, his interest was genuine. Trent was looking to me as an expert, not an alien, and that felt uniquely special.

  “Iranians and Afghans speak the same language, Farsi.”

  “Farsi,” Trent said fondly. “Right. My friend taught me to say something in Farsi. Um . . . Basanam dard meekoneh? Something like that?”

  I stopped in my place and fell to the ground laughing. I told Trent that the phrase his friend had taught him translated into “My butt hurts.” He crossed his arms and grumbled, saying, “After that fall, I bet yours does, too . . .”

  Then he helped me up.

  I asked Trent what he was doing in DC, and the rest of our walk home took the form of an episode of The West Wing, guest-starring future US Senator Trent Worthington.

  “I’ve been obsessed since I was a kid,” he gushed. “It’s been my dream for as long as I can remember to get elected to Congress.”

&nb
sp; Trent’s hopeful gaze melted into reluctant cynicism when I asked him how a person gets into politics in the first place. He complained that it was impossible to land a job in DC without the right connections—like being the daughter of a Kennedy, or roommates with the second cousin of a slimy oil magnate. He sounded like a megaphone-equipped activist standing on a soapbox in the town square.

  “It’s not like I’ve got nothing,” Trent said, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead. “Between Fiora’s dad and mine, I could have gotten a job with at least half a dozen Republicans in this city. But my politics are particular.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  “I’m no fan of the Republican Party,” Trent said, “but I’m no liberal, either. There’s only one man in the US Senate right now whose views line up with mine. Renault Cohen. He’s an Independent. Open-minded on immigration and gay marriage, but he’s patriotic as hell and has all the right views on the economy. I applied for a job in his office right before I moved here but haven’t heard anything yet.” Trent sighed, his eyes tired but undeterred—the kind of expression that would go on a billboard for grit. “We’ll see if I can find the right connections in the meantime. Every day’s a new opportunity to network in this city.”

  We exchanged numbers at the steps of the hostel. I thanked Trent endlessly for coming to my rescue today—no problem, no worries, don’t sweat it, he kept repeating—and I told him to text me if he ever found himself in Philly.

  I MISSED THE bus to Philly.

  I went to bed exhausted Monday night, and I was expecting to wake up feeling equal parts refreshed and displaced. I did not get that luxury. The hostel roomed me with a trio of French backpackers who were shuffling around noisily at the crack of dawn. One of them opened the curtains, inviting a flood of premature sunlight into the room. I pulled the sheets over my face, but light still managed to slip through, not to mention I could hear the sound of their footsteps. This went on for two hours, from about six until eight in the morning.

  After they left, I fell back asleep and snoozed through my alarm. I woke up three hours later. My 9:30 a.m. bus was long gone.

  I also saw that Trent had texted me.

  Hey man, how much longer are you in town for?

  I texted him back.

  Funny that you ask. I missed my bus this morning.

  He replied almost instantly.

  Aw I’m sorry man, that’s pretty shitty. When do you think you’ll leave now?

  Good question, Trent. I put on my thinking cap and ran through my situation. I’d already prepaid for two nights at the hostel. I didn’t have a grit assignment or an internship to jump into back home. I was feeling exhausted. Verdict: I was in no rush to leave.

  I guess I’m stuck here till I can get another ticket.

  Trent replied fifteen minutes later:

  Free for a goodbye drink tonight then?

  Ha. Part of me wanted to say, “What the hell, sure!” and make the most of my last night as a runaway. The logical part reminded me that I’d literally met Trent yesterday. He was a nice guy who helped me out—but still a complete stranger. I played the underage card:

  You know I’m not 21, right?

  Kevin and Jack wanted to wait until college to drink. They said it would be less risky when we were on a college campus, and there weren’t many parties at Tesla, anyway. So none of us drank. I tried convincing Jack to throw a party once when his parents were out of town, but he was too afraid of getting arrested. Fiora would have probably said getting arrested was part of the adventure.

  Yeah that’s fine. Let’s meet at Thomas Foolery.

  It’s angry hour from 4-7.

  If my age wasn’t going to be an issue . . . What the hell, sure. I looked up Thomas Foolery on Google Maps. It was on P Street, which stemmed out of Dupont Circle, so it wasn’t even far. Actually, it struck me that there were a lot of streets coming out of Dupont Circle. Ten, to be exact. If you stared at the circle and its surrounding streets, it vaguely resembled a sun—the kind I used to draw as a kid, with a circle and some lines coming out of it.

  All right, see you at 5.

  Instead of getting out of bed, I scrolled lazily through my Facebook newsfeed. I was surprised to see Kevin had posted a picture in the middle of the night. He and Jack were jumping in the air outside a massive Chinese pagoda. Caption: WE FOUND WIFI IN WUHAN! And a 2000-year-old tower! Mixing up that old and new. #win #hotasballs #chinasoven #SEAsiaYouthLeadersTour

  I’d almost forgotten my best friends were off exploring a new continent together, meeting other like-minded kids from around the world. Kevin the aspiring economist and Jack the aspiring diplomat. Compared to them, I felt like an aspiring nothing.

  It was hard to believe the three of us met in the same globalization seminar freshman year. I never understood how those lessons had such a profound impact on them yet did so little for me. It might have had something to do with Peggy Zuckerman, the wackiest teacher in a school full of wacky kids. On the first day of class, Mrs. Zuckerman placed an inflatable globe about the size of a basketball on her wooden podium, only to squash it with a thick textbook. “The world is flat,” she said crisply.

  Most of the class exchanged skeptical looks, but Kevin, Jack, and I were sold. We spent our lunch breaks studying for her Human Rights Violations (pop quizzes) and guessing what antics she would pull next. We relished her peculiar simulations, like the gummy bear arms race. Who would have thought you could demonstrate cultural hegemony and strengthen your friendship with seventy-five packs of Haribo gummy bears? The three of us appreciated Mrs. Zuckerman’s class for different reasons; I found her lessons amusing, while Kevin and Jack were genuinely inspired. Early on, this didn’t matter. But lately, as their passions solidified and mine didn’t, I’ve felt us drifting. As if it wasn’t enough dealing with my own future, I’ve been having doubts about our future as friends, too.

  Suddenly I felt restless. I jumped down from my bunk and threw on my shorts and T-shirt, still damp from yesterday’s sweat shower. I didn’t want to sit around and keep moping about Professor Mallard or the bus or my friends, so I stepped outside to explore this sun-of-a-neighborhood. First, I wandered into a bookshop off Dupont Circle called Kramerbooks. It was cramped and smelled of burnt rubber, but the books were stacked high and wide, so I stuck around. I picked up a Steve Jobs biography and skimmed the first few chapters. I found it fascinating that the guy dropped out of college, backpacked his way through India, and still managed to build one of the biggest companies in the world. It made me wonder if success was less about grit and more about the journey.

  I left Kramerbooks and walked around the corner to a café called Afterwords. Exhausted, I found a table and whipped out my phone. In an effort to exist in a pretend state of stability, I opened a news app called Flipboard. Not because the world was a particularly stable place, but because reading the news was something that stable, levelheaded people did.

  Flip. The situation in the Middle East is bleak. A small terrorist organization funded by a larger terrorist organization tore through a village in Syria, killing 290 civilians. Sixty-six were children. Flip. It’s worse than I thought. Shit’s going down between Israel and Palestine. Flip. Amanda Bynes . . . Shia LaBeouf . . . I can’t keep track of all these former child stars getting arrested. Flip. Speculation about who’s running for president. Flip. Democrat hints she’s running for president. Flip. Republican criticizes said Democrat’s economic policies. Flip. 12 Adorably Teeny Animals That Will Make Your Day. Flip. Flip. Flip.

  Cecily Mallard Explains Why Grit Matters More Than Talent.

  I flipped out and knocked over my cup of iced tea.

  “God damn it,” I grumbled. Fortunately, there weren’t more than a few sips left, and the man sitting next to me jumped in with a stack of napkins.

  “Thanks,” I said, smiling half-heartedly.

  “No proble
m,” he said, wiping away at the liquid. The man appeared to be in his forties, wearing a tank top and in better physical shape than me.

  “I just saw something that triggered me on this app and freaked out.”

  “Really? What app?”

  “Have you heard of Flipboard? It’s one of those apps where you swipe through—”

  The man smiled. “Oh yeah. I know all about those swiping apps.”

  “Well, I was swiping, and I saw this professor I got rejected by the other day and . . . Yeah. It was awkward, so I guess I spilled my tea.”

  “Happens to the best of us,” he said with a delicate lisp. He smiled at me again, and I smiled back. We finished wiping down the table, bumping hands twice.

  “I’m Arnold,” the man said. “Can I buy you another coffee?”

  I pondered for a second.

  “That’s very—um—”

  “Are you . . . ?”

  Arnold looked at me like I had misled him somehow, and immediately, I realized what was going on. I shook my head intensely.

  “No. No, sorry.”

  He rolled his eyes, strutted back to his table, gathered his things, and left. I was pretty aware of what just happened. I stared blankly ahead as the man made a dramatic exit. When he was gone, I pulled my phone back out. Flip.

  I’d never been hit on by an older person before. He probably thought I was a college student, so I couldn’t totally blame him. But it still felt weird. Maybe it felt that way because the man was gay. Believe it or not, I didn’t know anyone gay personally. My parents’ only friends were other Iranian parents, and they were all straight. At Tesla, there were seven or eight “out” students who were members of the Gay-Straight Alliance, but they usually kept to themselves in the physics hallway.

  My dad used to say people were full of surprises. As I walked over to meet Trent at the bar, I wondered about every person I passed. Is this woman gay? Is this man a violin prodigy? What if I have a surprise in me? By the time I reached Thomas Foolery, I realized I’d go crazy if I kept thinking like this.