The Ordinary Seaman

by Francisco Goldman

  They proceeded past the long, darkened shores of Sunset Park’s dead piers and into Gowanus Bay and down a nearly darkened channel past a tank farm and a barge port, through the mouth of an enclosed basin; the tugs danced around the hull, ruddering and propelling her almost like a weather vane against the tide, finally pinning her by stern and bow against a long finger pier overlooked by a tall, concrete, rectangular structure, surrounded by darkened terminal ruins and collapsed piers.

  “Cheapest berth in the whole damned port,” said Elias, while Mark, Haley, and Yoriko gaped at the silhouettes of the ruins.

  There were two parked vans on the paved pier, and union dockworkers spread out along the wooden stringpiece, standing by the bitts (they’d be billed for that). Elias led them down to the deck and said, “I have to toss them the hawsers. Haven’t had any practice in years.”

  He held a coil of thick mooring line over his thighs, then whirled almost like an Olympic hammer thrower and released it, the rope’s monkey fist sailing out into the air and plummeting down to the pier. Elias did it again, and again, and again, and then let Haley have a go, the four of them marching down the length of the ship.

  And then Elias showed them how to lower the accommodation ladder by walking out along it, and Mark’s first and last ocean voyage came to an end.

  Now Mark’s the Little Tug That Couldn’t, turned into a slug. Lying in bed with a hangover, ashtray on the night table overflowing with filthy butts. Little Tug better get up and move his car if he doesn’t want it towed. Walk his dog. Go grocery shopping for his “crew.” Little Tug went to Kate and Elias’s dinner party last night, and what a night he had. But at least he got to sit next to Moira Meer—who’s Elias’s, and if not Elias’s, Phil’s. Uh-huh. So here’s an amusing little riff he thinks he’ll sit down and compose over breakfast (coffee, two-day-old refrigerated fried rice from a carton), send it in to “Talk of the Fucking Toy Town”: How to comport your soul at a dinner party with wealthy young artistes, liberal do-nothings and the really wonderful, remarkable girl innocently seated next to you, when you happen to own a secret slave ship in New York Harbor. Hire the Little Tug to drag that soul and dump it with all the other garbage, right?

  First draft needs work, but he better get going, Little Tug has to bring food to his crew, check on the injured old guy. Our little brown guys, property of Capitán Elias Cortés and First Mate Mark Pizarro. When he says that, Your Honor, he’s not being racist, naw, he’s using self-mocking irony to serve honesty, bitter humor to get to the heart of what he acknowledges is a horrible situation now and his own culpable but initially well-meaning—well, at least not slave owner—meaning—position vis-à-vis. Not all of them are little anyway, they’re not all even brown. He’s sick of being reminded, of feeling angry and guilty everywhere he goes, that’s all, because everywhere he goes he sees them: bus-boys, McDonald’s, even working in pizza parlors now instead of Italians and Greeks, lined up outside that taco truck on the corner of Ninety-fourth and Broadway, in the subways, working in delis, the Koreans always sending them down into basement to bring up your bag of ice and they come up holding it, dark eyes anxiously scanning customers for someone who looks like he’s just standing around waiting for his bag of ice because they don’t even know enough English to ask, Who’s waiting for ice?—little brown guys but hardly ever any little brown females, yackety-yacking in Spanish, dark glare of their eyes, squat Napoleon builds and proud, serious Aztec (whatever) faces. By now there’s not a Korean Deli owner in New York who doesn’t know how to say, at least, Qué pasa? (Mark has noticed.) Which is about all the Spanish he knows … All those rich babes at the dinner party so entertained by Elias’s magic shamans of the rain forest stories: why no magic Central American seamen-slave stories, eh, Elias? You don’t see these guys levitating or vomiting butterflies or doing voodoo or communing with ghosts and spirits, just a bunch of fucked-over guys like fucked-over guys anywhere and they know it. (With, for a while, that Cat That Sat.)

  Never talks to them anyway, makes it a point to keep his distance, doesn’t try to bullshit them the way Elias does and laugh about it later. Well, not speaking Spanish, he couldn’t even if he wanted to. Elias thinks these guys’ll put up with anything from him cause he’s such a regular dude. Thinks he’s fucking Indiana Jones (a jungle explorer! born in the wrong century, he likes to say), Señor Regular Dude of the equatorial regions (wrong century for slaves, he means), knows how to get down with jungle thugs and shamans and smugglers and monkey hunters and whores and seamen, Elias could have ridden with the Wild Bunch, could have been Bart Oates! Know what paradise is, Mark? (was quoting someone, forget who). Paradise is a cantina in the tropics full of machosy putas … What’s a puta again? A whore, Mark, Christ! Hey, least I know macho. Likes to say that at heart he isn’t, isn’t really a … white boy. Not like you, Mark. Yeah, right, Doc, OK.

  His best friend since college, best man at his and Kate’s wedding, definitely going to be the brat’s godfather, covered up for him and lied for him in front of Kate for how many years now? All Elias’s womenz. And what’s Elias say last night when he hints at an interest in Moira Meer? Not that Elias has any say in the matter, but that he things he does! They’ve never gone after the same woman before. Had always expected if such a thing came up, though, that Elias would stand aside. Being married and all. Is he that competitive? that sick? Phil? Helpless rich-kid geek! Phil the Landfill, about as lively and full of it. Can’t have her she’s mine and if she’s not mine, she’s Phil’s, Elias said after Kate’s—really, it was Kate’s—cleverly themed dinner party where totally unpretentious people had to pretend to be totally pompous posers, only el primero Mark wasn’t really clever enough. But at least el Primero got to sit next to Moira Meer, whose occasional velvety gray sighs and smoky stares (one of the dinner guests was saying, “Yes, they’re evil, sick photographs, but then, if you can … cure them—” and another said, “In the act of looking, you mean?” “Absolutely.”) soon enough established that she found the whole subtle scene as enchanting as he did. Kate’s prize student three or four years ago, they’ve always kept in touch—despite insinuations that Moira, while most talented, hasn’t seized her opportunities, output too small, straying from conceptualist integrity into sadly bourgeois subjectivity—they let Moira loft-sit when they went to Thailand last winter. Elias always kisses and tells, because Elias needs to brag to Mark about his conquests and patiently cultivated harvests. So because Elias had told him so, he’d believed that as far as Moira was concerned, Elias had settled for a chaste, sort of paternal friendship despite feelings of deep esteem for this really adorable but vulnerable young woman. Mark had first begun hearing about her two summers ago, when Kate rented that place on Shelter Island and invited Moira out for a week (he was the next week’s guest, their love boat-ferries may even have passed each other). There, Elias and Moira’s always playful and affectionate acquaintanceship became a true friendship between mentor’s student and mentor’s hubby. Great girl, rather insecure but very sweet, needs a ton of love and devotion, needs her Tin Man, unfortunately her boyfriend’s a cunt, he remembers Elias telling. Moira adores Kate! Her brilliance and self-confidence and beauty and accomplishment. (Mark admits he’s not qualified to judge all those theoretical essays Kate writes, though he can’t help but notice an aroma of industriously recycled bullshit: only an Inca can photograph other Incas and so forth, otherwise it’s racist and imperialist and not true, which is why she photographs recipes, her own body, and whatever.) Mark had met, seen, talked a few times to Moira over the last few years, while he was still living with Sue and Miracle, and Moira had that boyfriend, that’s finally over now too.

  So last night, they kind of clicked, didn’t they? So last night he said, Wow, that Moira, what a really wonderful, remarkable girl! That’s all he said. A really wonderful, remarkable girl! Not babe, et cetera. You can’t have her, she’s mine. What a dumb thing to say to your old pal, Elias. Married, with your beautiful, classy
, pregnant wife who supports you, who has to give you lunch money and, let’s face it, loves the very ground you slime on. Who hell he? So he has something going with Moira, does he? Does he? In the bar he asked, Elias, you have something going with Moira? No, said Elias. We’re in love with each other, but she knows there’s nothing I can offer her. In love with each other! he said. So tender eyed and solemnly. But there’s nothing I can offer her. Because I’m still in love with Kate, of course. And there is the baby to consider, after all. Nor is Moira rich. But why Phil? Wouldn’t it have been not just decent but merely the expected thing for Elias to have said, I’ll do what I can to help, Mark, put in a word. Or at least encourage. At least not say that. You know, just say nothing. Nope. She’s his, and if not his, Phil’s. What, he wants to use Phil as his smoke screen, knows Phil’s so vague and geeky and egotistical that he just won’t notice Father Elias poking around? Or is he really just being a responsible surrogate pop, wants to hook her up with Phil because Phil is just about the wealthiest guy he and Kate know. But Moira didn’t even talk to Phil all night, didn’t even seem to notice him. But Mark did, over predinner cocktails. Tall, blond, icky, aristocratically emaciated Phil, in his bright yellow sweater, looks like Big Bird in the end stage of that fucking disease. I’m planning a documentary on the rise of the Christian right, Phil smugly-morosely said. Well, whoop-de-do. Always planning something and never doing. When did it start, the rise of the Christian right? You starting in B.C. or A.D.? What’s the sequel, the Christian wrong? You going to pay someone to do it for you, huh, Phil? You know what Christ said to the Puerto Ricans as he ascended to heaven? Don’t do a thing until I get back! Put that in your doc, Phil, that’s a rise that’ll get a rise—

  How’s the shipping business, Mark? dryly asked Phil.

  Rather depressed at the moment, Phil, said Mark.

  Let me tell you about depression: weird urges on the subway to pull out your cigarette lighter and set the guy sitting next to you’s newspaper on fire, or to lick the floor, what’s to stop you? Man, really disgusting stuff goes through your head. At dinner, it was me Moira sat next to, me who basked in her smoky gray gaze—something about her eyes, they match her smoky, low voice, like the soft glare of stage lights behind dense clouds of cigarette smoke in some very dark basement cabaret. She loved that story about the crew hooked on pistachios. That old waiter’s a nice guy, hope he’s not hurt too badly. The rest of ’em … well, I don’t really know them. Zombies. Look, they think I’m pretty weird too, I know, ever since that night I—ouch. You could barely hear her giggle, but she put down her wineglass and leaned into me, her whole body shaking with one long giggle, over that story about the pistachios. That’s the silliest story I’ve heard in ages, I love it, she said. Leaning right into me, I could smell her shampooed hair, the faint, wet mushroom scent of her skin, her damp, wine-sweetened breath, a touch of salty garlic. Then she told me a joke about the Lunchbag of Notre Dame. She giggles through her teeth, beautiful white teeth, eyes squeezed shut, deep dimples you want to bury your nose in. Makes you feel like the only guy on earth ever shared her weird sense of humor. Silly jokes a way into her heart, and isn’t that gosh darned wonderful! Meanwhile all that lah-di-dah talk, him and Elias, shipping magnates, dining with the artistes. Capitán and turned on primero. And Elias doing his smooth-superior-negative-cool-worldly-vaguely-Brit thing like always. Elias said: In the Amazon there’s a tribe, the most paranoid tribe on earth, of which I met the remnants. You see, they have this belief that any bad thing that happens, from a stuffed nose to a broken fishing line to an old man dying in his sleep, was caused by someone else’s malevolence, a spell, or maybe just a malevolent thought. And that it has to be appropriately avenged. So that there’s no death, however natural its cause, you see, that doesn’t have to be avenged by another death. Small wonder there aren’t many of them left. Not your usual Amazonian rain forest UNICEF poster tribe, is it? Sounds just like the art world, someone said. Art world? scoffed Elias. Bollocks. Art world? How? Paranoids and people wishing ill on others, definitely. But how many have the cojones to exact even, or especially I might say, ^deserved revenge. Why, you might offend somebody important! Hey, I interrupted, Hey, Elias, how do you appropriately avenge a stuffed nose? With insects, Mark, he coolly replied.

  That really got Moira giggling too, until she seemed practically out of breath. Insects up your nose? Felt like he was watching his love boat sail away without him while she giggled over Elias’s juvenile, deadpan retort like that, eyes mirthfully brimming down the table at Elias with a generous modesty that pierced Mark’s heart. I’m phoning her anyway. She said, Sure, Mark, give me a call, and smiled …

  Lugging three bags of groceries for his crew, Mark is walking to his car, Miracle already locked and waiting inside it, when he sees that Latino boy waiting to cross Broadway with a wrapped and ribboned bouquet in his hands. A flower seller, or a delivery boy. Send Moira flowers! Maybe he should just buy this kid’s bouquet and tell him where to bring it, scribble a gallant note. But then he realizes that the kid probably isn’t a flower seller, because usually they push shopping carts full of flowers; he probably isn’t even a delivery boy. He’s holding his bouquet so carefully in both hands, and was just fidgeting with the ribboned bow, making a tiny, finicky adjustment. And he’s with a friend. He’s crossing Broadway now with his friend beside him, talking and laughing. He’s bringing those flowers to someone he loves.

  Mark feels terrible. What if he’d stopped the kid and offered to buy the bouquet, said, How much? in the usual brusquely commanding way. How embarrassing! But that’s what he almost did. He doesn’t even step off the curb to cross Broadway, he just watches the two friends reach the other side and go ambling up Ninety-fourth Street. Elias is fucking Moira. Of course he is. And Moira’s in love with Elias. Well, he told you, didn’t he?

  2

  LATER, AFTER GONZALO HAD GONE HOME, ESTEBAN PACED THE DARKENED, shuttered, locked-up salon, sipping at his refilled glass of wine, letting the radio play very low. Gonzalo had said he could finish the bottle, that it wasn’t very expensive wine. And before leaving and locking him in, Gonzalo had told him to keep the lights off after he swept up so as not to draw attention to his sleeping there, and showed him how to go out the back way into an asphalt alley in case of, God forbid, a fire. Gonzalo is the only Cuban Esteban has ever met who doesn’t smoke.

  The barber chair had been cranked back, and the blanket lay folded on top of it. Esteban paced through a dark foliage of shadows thrown by the bit of street light penetrating through the window and barred gates. He assessed his situation: a haircut, a new sweater, and he was wearing new socks—the old, rotted ones lay knotted inside a plastic grocery bag, stuffed inside the plastic garbage bag along with his own and everyone else’s swept up hair. He had no place to live, no money, no job, and no legal right to be here (though apparently that doesn’t stop anyone). He thought about everyone else left behind on the Urus, and wondered why it felt so easy to forget them now that he was here. Pues, they’d never left the ship and he had, they could have done the same. But it made him feel guilty, this realization of how easy they all were to forget. He should have at least said good-bye to Bernardo. He told himself not to think about the ship anymore, to concentrate only on the present and future. But this new existence of sleeping in chairs in strange places, depending on luck and generosity, felt as furtive as a rodent’s, and couldn’t last anyway. And with every passing moment the confounding reality of his situation eroded his delusion of being well on his way to love and a new life a little bit more.

  But look, here he was drinking wine right from the bottle! Almost five months ago he’d reclined in a chair something like this one—as Gonzalo said, it was like sitting on an airplane—on his providential flight to Nueva York to meet the Urus, and he’d wanted to celebrate the occasion with wine but hadn’t dared to because of Bernardo’s adamant abstinence. The strange thing was that he’d felt no less on the verge of a new life the
n than he did now. And though of course he’d let himself feel more optimistic that day, he felt a little more at home in himself now. Now that he had no home at all. More frightened of the world, and less frightened of himself. And puta, who could make sense of that? Maybe it was just the wine fortifying him.

  He went into the back, took off all his clothes, and stood over the industrial sink washing himself in the dark with soap and water. And then he decided to clean his hands with the stiff-bristled brush over the sink, and to clip his nails. He stepped naked through the curtain to Joaquina’s manicure trolley and groped among her instruments in the darkness. Chocho, wouldn’t you know it? The one thing she doesn’t have is a common nail clipper. He chose a pointed little tool for cleaning under his nails, and small scissors, and then went into the bathroom, closed the door, and turned on the light. It seemed to take at least an hour of scrubbing to get all the old paint and grease out of his hands, until his fingers were raw and pink. He did the same with his feet, sitting on the toilet, and then stood in front of the little sink, awkwardly hoisting and holding his foot with both hands under the faucet. With the scissors, he cut all his nails slowly and carefully, and then cleaned underneath them. After he’d put Joaquina’s instruments back exactly as he’d found them, he pulled the clean T-shirt on, and the sweater over it, and then his big underpants, pants, and socks, though not his boots. He folded the three tattered, filthy T-shirts neatly, and set them on a chair.