Bo's Café

by John Lynch

  I try to help. “Focused?”

  “Yeah, focused. Sometimes he seems to be answering questions nobody’s asking. Other times he’s not answering what you did ask. Right? That old dude drives me nuts sometimes. But don’t let the clothes and the slouching fool you. The old dude is sharp. He’s listening. I’ve figured out he’s waiting.”

  “Waiting?”

  “Yeah, he’s waiting to hear if the person is ready to risk letting someone inside, past the show, past the dance.”

  “So the people on this deck—they’re the ones who have let him in?”

  “Yeah, sort of, but not all. I do it now too—listening. Cynthia does it. Even Hank. A bunch of us. We’re all listening.”

  “You doing that with me right now, Carlos? Are you listening to see if I’m ready?”

  He laughs so hard he leans back and hits his knee on the table. “Oh, no, man! You kidding me? Carlos can’t be listening to everyone. Carlos loves to hear himself talk. I’ll let Andy do the listening with you. Till they get back, you’re stuck with me eating and talking. Comprende?”

  “Yeah, Carlos, I’m good with that,” I say. “So what does he do when he meets with you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like, what does he talk about when you’re together?”

  “Hmmm.” Carlos stares past me. “I don’t know. I guess I don’t think about it. We eat. We always seem to eat.”

  He motions to a busboy walking by. “Jorge, when you get time, mi bebida con sucar. Gracias.”

  Carlos turns back to me. “Here’s something. Maybe it’ll help answer your question. Andy was the first dude I ever met who had more confidence in the grace of God than in the power of the crap I was dragging around.”

  I shake my head. “What?”

  Carlos laughs. “Oh, yeah. Get your head around that one, amigo. It’ll set you free. Steven, most people want to fix stuff in others so they don’t keep embarrassing them no more. You know what I mean?” he says, smiling and nudging me. “It’s true, man. It’s like if they can’t just get away from you, they’re afraid of you stinking up the place. And that won’t look so good for them.”

  I reply, almost to myself, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say that before.”

  “You need to get out more. See, man, we want others to think we’ve got it all together, like we don’t need a handout. So we stack the deck, we bluff, we cover up the stuff we don’t like about ourselves. We make ourselves a nice little mask. And then we hide behind it. It’s who we wish we could be, who we wish others thought we were. What a joke, huh?” Carlos shakes his head. “One of my masks was my position. I wouldn’t have known then to say that. But I know it now.”

  “Your position?”

  “I was the pastor of a big church in Covina.” He sits up and puffs out his chest. “El jefe. El camaron! Lots of people looking up to Carlos, wanting to make me somebody bigger than life, like some kind of pope or something. Make me out to be this magic dude of faith… all squeaky clean and together and shiny. It’s like you know better, but you start thinking to yourself, Carlos is the man! Yeeesh. I’d laugh if it wasn’t so stinking stupid.”

  “You were a pastor?” I ask.

  “Still am,” he says. “Different church. Back then I had the badge, but I probably caused more damage than good. Or, well, you know, God had a plan, and in that part of the plan, Carlos Badillo was a pastor in Covina. Right?” He shrugs his shoulders and takes a big bite from the plate of fish he’s working on.

  “I met Andy before I started pastoring this church in Hermosa Beach. Go figure, huh? Me in Hermosa Beach. George Lopez hanging out with surfer dudes. I didn’t have none of the lingo or nothing, man. Growing up, my people didn’t show up at Hermosa Beach ’less they got lost.”

  He wipes his mouth with his napkin. “Anyway, Andy was the first person able to handle Carlos with all his junk. See, the dude was convinced that God in Carlos was enough. You gotta be kidding me, right? Really, man, that one thing, that someone saw me that way—it knocked me over. You know? For maybe the first time, like, ever, it gave me something strong to hold on to. Like there might be a way to face the lies tearing my insides apart.”

  He takes a quick drink from his water glass and continues, “And they were tearing me apart. Bad. Before then I didn’t know how to just do each day without hiding or acting all big. Nobody knew me, not really. I’m smiling all the time like I’m in the know, like I’m in on the joke, you know? But the whole time Carlos is sitting on the outside wondering when people will see through him.”

  The busboy moves in, taking plates and refilling the water glasses. I’m noticing that Carlos is talking loud enough that people several tables away can easily overhear his confessions.

  My voice instinctively drops. “So what happened? What changed?”

  “Oh, man!” He slaps his knee and starts talking even louder than before. “I was the preacher guy. But I was a phony. I was a joke. I was standing in the pulpit week after week, all puffed up, all macho, talking all confident about God like I knew how to do life better than them. But I look back… . Yeeesh, I didn’t know nothing. I was spouting clichés I heard from other people who didn’t know nothing either.”

  Carlos mops up some of the sauce on his plate with a piece of sourdough bread. “I’d tell them all every week to be better, you know, ‘be-worthy-and-walk-the-talk’ kind of stuff. Real ‘man up’ power talk. But it was just loud words and fake authority. I didn’t know how to help anyone be anything—except some fake dude like me, some dressed-up pigeon strutting around.”

  He bites off a hunk of bread, chews, and holds out his hand as if to hold me off.

  “But then one morning, right in the middle of my ranting, I look down and see the people in my audience. For maybe the first time I really look at them. I’m just staring. It’s like God won’t let me talk. He wants me to really see the people who come week after week, hoping maybe this time something will change for them. Most are looking back at me with this sad expression. Their eyes are saying, ‘Carlos, I’m trying so hard to do what you preach. And I can’t. I don’t know how to do it. Help me. Don’t keep telling me more stuff to do. I haven’t been able to do what you told me to do last week. I’m always failing. Please, help me, Carlos.’ Right then it hit me—I didn’t have nothing to give them. Just slick words, tough talk, and some fancy gestures. That morning I started to hate stepping into that pulpit.”

  Carlos is talking faster and faster. Most of the deck can hear him.

  “Andy broke down all that madness,” he says. “He’d say things like, ‘So, Carlos, my preacher friend, what if you told them that God was crazy about them, that they didn’t have to look over their shoulders? What if you told them that they didn’t have to walk around carrying this big bag of religious ‘ought-tos’? What if you told them that they weren’t just saved sinners trying to appease a God who’s way over there—” He gets up and runs across the deck. “ ‘What if you told them that they were saints?’ ” He strides back with his chin up. “ ‘That they were saints with a built-in ability to do great things? What if you taught them that if they believed, it would actually start to keep them from the wrong that’s tearing them up? What if you told them that? Huh, big fella?’ ”

  He’s back in his chair now, peering right into my eyes. “Andy’s telling me this while I’m this big-time preacher at a church where every row is filled and everybody’s stroking my ego and telling me how great I am.”

  “I thought your people were sad and discouraged,” I say.

  “Yeah, but I could still preach, man! Religious folk love getting the crap beat out of them by the preacher. It’s like entertaining. And Carlos could flat-out work a room,” he says, almost singing. He’s up again. “My man, most of them are looking for guilt. Makes you look like you know what you’re doing. And Carlos, my friend, Carlos always looked like he knew what he was doing.”

  He sits back down again as he says, “So I though
t, I can’t preach what the old dude is saying. If I told my people those things, I’d be out of a job. They wouldn’t need the magic dude of faith anymore. That’s what I thought. Sad. It was like I was living in two worlds—what Andy was telling me and what I was preaching. You know?”

  I nod my head and look out at the buoys.

  “No!” he suddenly blurts out. “Don’t do that!”

  I’m stunned. I don’t know if this is part of his story or if he’s talking to me.

  “Don’t do what?” I ask.

  “Don’t nod your head like you know, when you don’t know. See, you don’t know.” His voice is rising. “Don’t act like you know. It’ll make you sick and fake and crazy… like I was.”

  His words hang in the air. The entire deck is suddenly quiet.

  Carlos leans back in his chair and runs his hands through his thick black hair. He sighs deeply and draws in close.

  “Oh, man, I’m sorry. Listen to me. Spouting to you all about grace, and I’m blowing up like some prison guard. Steven, I don’t know you. I don’t get to do that, man.”

  But I know he’s right. I do this all the time—smile and nod knowingly. It’s the worst form of insincerity. I insulate myself by pretending I get it.

  “It’s all right, Carlos,” I say. “You were right. I was nodding and I didn’t really know what you were talking about. It’s a thing I do, like a reflex.”

  “No, man, that’s not right. After you know me a while, maybe it’s all right if I act like a maniac. But you’re new here. You get to nod all you want. Forgive me, man?”

  “It’s all good, Carlos. Keep going. You were saying you were living in two worlds.”

  “Right. See, Andy was filling me with all this great truth. But it sounded too good to be true. It took me a while to be sure he wasn’t hyping me. I tried it on real slow. Nothing scarier for Carlos than starting to let out what was true about me. Maybe that doesn’t sound like much to a put-together suit with straight teeth. Oops. Sorry, I did the suit thing again, huh?”

  I shrug. “That’s all right. Thanks for trying.”

  “I mean, Jesus in Carlos Badillo on his worst freakin’ day? The whole time I’m thinking, You’re kidding me! I’m a pastor, a religious dude. People don’t want to know the real Carlos. People want to see a put-together Carlos. God may see me this way, but people don’t want to. They want the bigger-than-life religious guy walking through the room, giving them a firm handshake, pat their kids on the head and make them feel important. That’s what they want. Guys like me have taught them to see it that way. Right?”

  Instead of nodding, I say, “Right.”

  “I didn’t have no giant failure deal going,” he says, leaning in a little. “I wasn’t sleeping with the choir or nothing, okay? I was just messed up like everyone else. But I thought you weren’t supposed to let on. Like the moment we signed on—poof—you don’t think about women wrong. You don’t hate no one. You don’t judge that dude down the street always showing off his shiny new boat out in the driveway. You don’t resent people in your own church who can afford to hire people to mow their lawns. Poof, right? But you do, my man. You do! Everybody does. It’s just they do it over different junk!”

  Carlos sits back in his chair again. “So, when I finally believed that God really could handle Carlos without the pretend, oh, man, I couldn’t run to it fast enough. It felt so good to not have to glue on the mask before I left the house. I couldn’t go back. It was scary, and for a long time I almost wanted to go back. Just couldn’t.”

  “What did the people in your church do?” I ask. “Didn’t they judge you?”

  “Yeah, some did. Big-time.” He points and shakes his finger. “And they don’t get a Christmas card from Carlos no more. But here’s the deal: most who judged didn’t really care about Carlos in the first place. Some people are always chasing ambulances, you know. Like they want to see others screw up so they can feel better about their own lives. How sad is that, man?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Think I’ve done it myself a few times.”

  “Some did care, and they ran too. I’ve been tracking some of them down for a long time. But I caused that pain, man. I caused it by pretending, by hiding my failures from them. I regret the hurt I caused. A lot.”

  He picks up his glass of water. “But a lot of people stayed. And you know what happened? We got proven to each other. We all got to find out that God was really big—that He could handle all of us, the real us. It’s like we looked around one day and said, ‘So, you’re still here, huh?’ From that day on, I started to know what real was, what community was, what faith was, who God was.”

  He takes a big gulp of water. “Enough. You talk.”

  I blink a few times, trying to shake off his stream of words and get back to my own thoughts. “I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I guess I just thought it’d be nice for an old friend of my family to help me figure some stuff out. It—”

  “You were lookin’ for a good fixin’,” Carlos says, interrupting. “Weren’t you? A good fixin’.”

  He offers a knowing smile. “Ever notice that when someone tries to fix someone else, that person don’t stay fixed? It’s like trying to fix a Slinky by straightening it out and sitting on it. You ever own a Slinky, man? Sitting there, you think you’ve really got a handle on straightening stuff out. You’re controlling your universe. You’re all that. But no matter how long you sit, when you get up that Slinky springs right back. Only now it’s all bent up too.”

  He suddenly pounds the table. “Steven, people don’t ever get fixed. They either mature, or they just keep getting more bent up the rest of their lives.”

  I think of the other night up on the bluff. “Mature?” I ask.

  “Yeah. Maturity is different. You can only mature and get real wisdom in community. Isolation produces the Unabomber.”

  I laugh out loud. And part of me realizes it’s mostly the surprise that I’m actually enjoying hearing this stuff I’d usually avoid.

  “Otherwise it’s all information and arrogance, but no one gets wise and no one grows up. See, a guy like you, he’s got skills. And skills can get honed in isolation. Then you show up like the hero with a shiny gizmo or something that makes everyone go ‘Ooooooh!’ Nobody can fire you ’cause you got skills. Folks maybe can’t stand you, but they don’t have a choice. So they just let you stay hidden. You don’t have to go in for critique or nothing. And all the while you’re walking around naked with a big old mole on your butt.”

  “What do you mean, they don’t have a choice?”

  “Well, you’re the golden goose, right?” he says. “Because of what you can do, you start to think you’re untouchable. And that’s the problem, huh? You are untouchable. But there’s a price tag: your skill becomes more valuable than you. What you bring is what’s appreciated, not your presence.”

  I squint and he cringes. “Ouch. Huh, man? Happens all the time in bad marriages. What you bring home becomes more appreciated than the fact that you are home.”

  I stare at the table.

  “I think I’m ticking off the golden goose, dude.”

  “No. You’re fine.”

  “Andy once said to me, ‘Carlos, what if there was a safe enough place where you could tell the worst about yourself and not be loved or respected less, but more?’ You know what happens, Steven? Hidden junk we’ve been carrying around for years begins to melt away. People come alive. They start to discover who they really are. They start doing good stuff with their lives. They find their future. They stop needing to be right. They stop trying to fix their symptoms, and stop pushing everyone away… . They get loved.”

  Carlos chomps on another chunk of fish while speaking at the same time. “But trusting someone else with you? Come on. You gonna let someone start nosing around when you’ve been running the show for the last few decades? Ain’t gonna happen. No way. Not until you get tired enough of shooting yourself in the foot.”


  Is he describing me?

  He stops. “Hey, man, you gonna say something, or you just gonna grind those crackers into chalk?”

  Before I can answer, Andy, Cynthia, and Hank are back at the table.

  Hank pulls Carlos up out of his seat. “Let’s go get me something to eat, Carlos.”

  “Something to eat? You’ve snatched food off every plate you’ve gotten near. Small countries would envy what you’ve had this afternoon.”

  Carlos looks at me. “Hey, well, I guess we’re out of here. I gotta get him back to his probation officer.”

  Hank shrugs, resigned to his fate.

  Carlos gives me a light whack on the back. “Great talking to you, man. Maybe you and me—we get to do this again, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I say, nodding. “I’d like that.” Though I’m not certain I would.

  Carlos and Hank slowly start to exit the deck. Carlos pats several people on the back while Hank uses the diversion to grab more table scraps. Everyone seems in on their routine.

  “Well,” Andy says, smiling. “Steven, you look as though you’ve had enough for today. Let’s get you home.”

  Cynthia is back over at the next table closing her computer and gathering folders. “Another day, another half a phrase written. At this rate, I’ll be publishing a trifold pamphlet.” She looks over at me. “Dear, will we see you again? I really did enjoy meeting you, Steven.”

  Her bracelets are making that beautiful sound again, as if they were designed to be played against lacquered wooden restaurant tables.

  “Steven, you’re doing that thing where I’m speaking and you’re not. Dear, promise me you’ll work on the elements of conversation.”

  I smile at her. “I’ll do better next time.”

  She smiles and reaches over to squeeze my hand.

  I squeeze hers back. “Thank you, Cynthia. I really enjoyed meeting you.”

  With that, Andy winds me through brief introductions on the way out. As we step back into the Electra he asks, “So, how was your time with Carlos? He’s a trip, huh? What did you two talk about?”