Panorama City

by Antoine Wilson

  The first thing Aunt Liz did was show me my room, which had been the guest room, which had been previously reserved for guests, she said, though she didn’t say when the last guests had stayed there. The carpet was peach, the linens were covered in flower patterns, and the wallpaper, too, the wallpaper was patterned with flowers and columns of winding ivy. She said she hoped it wasn’t too feminine. In fact, these design features gestured admirably toward nature while also providing respite from nature’s brutalities, which has been the hallmark of human habitation since the days of cave painting, all Paul Renfro’s words, later. Aunt Liz said that she was exhausted, your grandfather’s death, her brother’s death, had come as a shock to her, it had affected her sleep, she needed to make a pot of coffee. She said she would fix me a snack, too, while waiting for the coffee to brew, but in the meanwhile I should make myself at home, I should take a few minutes to familiarize myself with my quarters, which was what she called my room.

  I could see right away that the bed was too short, it would require me to hang my feet off the end or fold myself up. I had been sleeping in the same bed my whole life, or most of my life, and I had gotten used to my bed, I didn’t think I could ever get used to this bed. I lay on it, I let my feet hang off. The wood at the end, what do you call it, the opposite of the headboard, the footboard, it jammed into my calves, I couldn’t imagine how it would feel if I rolled over, the wood against my shins, I couldn’t imagine it and I didn’t want to try it. I put pillows under my calves to ease the pain of the footboard, which worked, but not for long. Finally I saw that the only way to sleep would be on my side, in a zigzag, I decided I would sleep like that temporarily, until I could cut a notch in the footboard and then build a padded platform for my feet.

  Above the toilet in my bathroom was a photograph of the beach, the sun was setting and someone had been walking but all you could see were footprints, footprints going off into the distance and around the corner, out of sight. They looked like fresh footprints, they still had good hard edges, the water hadn’t gotten to them, there was some writing down one side of the picture. At first I though that the photographer was following somebody, I wondered whether he caught up with them before the sun went down, I pictured him stumbling over the rocks in the dark, coming around the corner to discover that there, on the next beach over, the water had washed away all the footprints, I pictured the photographer sitting down in the sand, plopping himself down, waiting for something. A seagull or two coming over for a look. The photographer’s lost the trail, he’s thinking he’s lost everything, and yet there’s this picture, he doesn’t know it yet, it’s still in his camera, but he’s going to come back with this beautiful picture, he thinks all is lost, but it’s not, he’s taken a beautiful picture, and it’s going to end up on Aunt Liz’s bathroom wall with some writing on it, and I’m going to see it, and it will remind me that all is not lost. I didn’t have all those ideas right then, I don’t usually get an idea all at once, I’m a slow absorber, I developed those ideas while looking at that picture many times, I looked at that picture every time I stood in front of the toilet, while my body was occupied and my mind was free.

  [Long beep.] The medications are beeping again, I do not want to sleep, your mother is sleeping, she is napping now, in her chair, her hands are resting on her belly, she is making a tent for you out of her fingers. Be still, don’t press on her bladder, I want to discuss something important, something she doesn’t want me talking about. You won’t be a grapefruit forever, you’re going to want your father’s advice on women. I had your grandfather’s advice, which was limited, he based his advice on your grandmother, my mother, I was too young to remember her, I never knew her, the only woman in the house when I was growing up was your grandfather’s words about your grandmother, my mother, words that made me wonder whether I’d ever want a woman in my life, words that gave me pause and even made me fear women, I don’t need to get into that. I want you to know that without love we would be very lonely and without sex we would be the last ones here, our replacements would never show up. Your mother and I were introduced by Rowdy and Manuel, I’ve mentioned them already. I’d been stripping and prepping an office building with those guys, and at the end of a work day Rowdy said he had some friends in Madera that he wanted to visit, there was someone he thought I should meet, he thought we would hit it off. It was Carmen he was talking about and he was right, we hit it off, we became involved very quickly, or completely you might say, that night. We moved forward too quickly I think, that is the nature of animal attraction, as it’s called, but we slowed down after that first night, we took a long break. Sometimes the shortest distance from A to Z is to be at Z in the first place, Paul Renfro’s words. Your mother and I went about it backwards, in any case, the courtship came well after the consummation, which I recommend. But I don’t have much time and so I’m going to get to the point, which is that the first time we were together, which was at her house, Rowdy and Manuel had taken me there, they were visiting with her roommate, I don’t pretend to know what their arrangement was, the first time we were together it was clear that your mother had experience in sexual matters whereas I did not, I had just been telling Manuel and Rowdy about it a few days prior, somehow I had reached twenty-seven without having experience in sexual matters, or at least with someone else in the room, there’s no shame in doing it alone, just make sure you’re really alone, check for yourself, don’t take anyone else’s word for it, but that’s a different story. At first I wondered if Rowdy and Manuel were playing a prank, they had been known to do so, I wondered because your mother was in her robe, she didn’t look like she was expecting anyone, she was in her robe and heels, like she was still trying on shoes before going out. But she was beautiful in that thick pink terry robe, it went almost to the floor, your mother isn’t the tallest. She didn’t look surprised to see me at all, she didn’t ask me to wait until she got her clothes on, she said it was nice to meet me, but her mind was somewhere else. Then I figured they must have told Carmen about me, they must have prepared her for my arrival because she was already, I’m not sure how to say this, full of desire, I guess, I didn’t know what to do. She saw that, she showed me, she took over, she had a box of condoms on the nightstand like what gift ribbon comes in, I don’t need to go into detail here, but while we were getting to know each other, as they say, I caught a case of the giggles. We were involved at that moment, physically, and I could tell she was not happy with my giggles, but I couldn’t stop. What happened was that I had suddenly remembered a joke from my childhood. I had never understood it and so had remembered it all those years, I always remember what I don’t understand, it’s one of my qualities. Your grandfather had told the joke years before, to some friends who had come out to the house, I was supposed to be upstairs sleeping but I had stayed up to listen to their adult talk. The joke was: What are the three parts of an old-fashioned stove? Answer: Lifter, leg, and poker. Your grandfather and his guests, they had been drinking, all of them laughed hard and I didn’t understand why until I was in the so-called heat of the moment with the woman who would become your mother, and so that’s why I was suddenly consumed with giggles. Before I could explain myself she began to cry and speak in half-Spanish, half-English about how she had lost all of her beauty, about how she could no longer keep on like this, about how she couldn’t take one more drunk gringo laughing at her, it wasn’t worth it. I wasn’t drunk and told her so, I explained that I wasn’t laughing at her, in fact I thought she was beautiful, and then I told her the joke, which got her laughing, she laughed past her tears, and she didn’t ever again seem like her mind was in another place, or at least not while we were intimate together, as they say. I have limited experience in all of these matters, your mother is the one with all of the experience, but she will be reluctant to talk to you about it, she is ashamed of how many suitors she had before she got away from her roommate who was destroying herself and moved out to our patch of wilderness with me. She helped me
restore it, she made a proper home for us there.

  While I was down in Panorama City I was faithful to your mother, at least I was faithful in body and action, there were some problems with my thoughts because of a psychic named Maria, and if your mother entertained many suitors while I was down in Panorama City, she had every right to do so, a woman must be selective in choosing a mate, future generations depend on it, Paul Renfro’s advice, it was only because Fabio, who was her roommate’s son, didn’t pass on my complete message when I left Madera for Panorama City. He told her only that I swung by to say adios, that’s a direct quote, and that I was with a woman. In fact, what I had said and what he neglected to pass on was that I was going down to Panorama City to become a man of the world and that I hoped Carmen would wait for me, I hoped she would welcome me upon my return, I was planning on returning. Also, the woman I was with was Community Service Officer Mary of the Madera Police Department, a kind and pretty woman in her own right but not someone I had ever had any relations with. Enough with misunderstandings, your mother is right now shifting in her chair, I have something else to say, which is that you should in matters of love take advice from the natural world, specifically mosquitoes. When mosquitoes prepare to mate, they mate in midair, which is quite a sight, when they prepare to mate, the male changes the frequency of his wing beats, he beats his wings in time with the female’s wings, the word is synchronize, they synchronize their wings. Most people ignore mosquitoes unless they’re being bit by them, but there is more knowledge in that one natural world fact than you’re likely to get in twelve years of school. When I was in school I heard all kinds of advice about sex and love and all of it turned out to be wrong. Oh, she’s waking up...[Soft groaning in the background.] Hello, mi amor, how was your nap, you were sleeping for a bit there. I was just telling our little toronja about Aunt Liz, about my first day in Panorama City.

  In the kitchen, Aunt Liz made canoes out of celery and filled them with peanut butter, she called it just a little something healthy to tide us over until dinner. She said us, but she did not eat any of the celery and peanut butter. She drank her coffee with lots of cream and sugar, it was the one thing she had in common with your grandfather, both of them drank enormous amounts of coffee, it was the only thing they had in common, besides being brother and sister. She drank coffee and ate an apple, cutting one piece at a time, she offered me a piece, but I politely refused, I’ve always been an orange person. Once I had put a few canoes down the hatch, for which my stomach was thankful, Aunt Liz asked whether my father, your grandfather, had established any kind of routine for me in Madera. I described how I awoke in the morning, ate breakfast with your grandfather, my father, her brother, then rode my bicycle into Madera, where I would find a friend in need of assistance, which I would then offer. Or, if no one needed my help, I’d ride around and visit friends until the end of the day, they called me Mayor, everyone in Madera called me Mayor, even the real mayor, Tony Adinolfi, called me Mayor. In the evening I rode home and ate dinner with your grandfather, my father, her brother. On the weekend, I lazed around the house and walked around our little piece of land, communing with the squirrels and pollywogs, unless my friends came by, unless Mike and Hector and Greg came by, then I would hang out with them, we did all kinds of things, they were always daring me to do things, like jump off a bridge into the Madera River, which I would not do, which I did not do, which they realized was a bad idea once I walked into the water and showed them how shallow it was, better my wet jeans than someone else’s broken neck any day of the week. Aunt Liz shook her head as I spoke, she shook her head and pushed her chair back from the kitchen table and walked five evenly measured steps to the coffee maker. She refilled her coffee, still shaking her head, she spoke to the coffee maker first, then she turned and spoke directly to me, That is an idiot’s life, you have been living a village idiot’s life. Your father, Lord rest his soul, should have been ashamed of himself, letting you comport yourself like a village idiot around Madera.

  Then she said, You won’t be a village idiot here. You’ll be a respectable citizen, with a sense of personal responsibility, you’re going to be a contributing member of society here in Panorama City. She had arranged employment for me, she explained, legitimate employment, she had certain connections and was able to immediately place me at a job, a job at which I would be expected to arrive at a certain time and depart at a certain time, and for which I would be paid in real money, not sandwiches and other flimsy expressions of backwater goodwill, all her words. I don’t think she was trying to hurt my feelings, she was angry with your grandfather, it was as if she had forgotten I was there. There would be a period of training, she told me, a short period of orientation, and then I would be a real worker, with a real job, something to be proud of. What luck, I thought, setting aside the village idiot part of her speech, our goals were aligned. I hadn’t yet discovered the chasm between being a respectable citizen and being a man of the world, as far as I knew they were one and the same.

  I should mention also that it wasn’t just Aunt Liz talking, I was talking too, it wasn’t just her ranting and raving in one long rant with me saying nothing and listening, but I can’t really remember what I said, it’s easier to remember what other people have said than to remember what you have said, your words are coming out of your head and their words are going into your head, it only makes sense that at the end of the day your head is full of someone else’s words.

  FLOATER

  For some reason Aunt Liz’s idea of a respectable job was a local fast-food place that shall remain nameless, I’d rather not say the name of it, because there are thousands of it across the country and I can only speak about the one I worked in, I can only speak about my experience in our franchise, which did not blindly follow the simpleminded standards developed by the company in charge of all the restaurants but rather blazed its own trail, as Roger Macarona the manager put it. Roger had a bushy mustache, an unruly mustache, and he wore his shirt unbuttoned one button too far, which showed off his rough throat and dry Adam’s apple, and where you would expect a hairy chest was a mysteriously hairless expanse, which my fellow employees spent much time speculating about. On the first day I was introduced to Melissa, who was round and black and a mother of two, Francis, who had thick glasses and was going to become a filmmaker, Ho, who was a refugee, and Wexler, who talked about cars and nothing else. Whenever Roger told my fellow employees to do something, they always said his name twice, after which he’d threaten to make them call him Doctor Macarona, he wasn’t actually a doctor, but he was way the hell ahead of the rest of us in the school of life, his words, and we couldn’t call him bachelor because he was married and we couldn’t call him master, because Melissa was black and what kind of message would that send, his question.

  That first day, that first hour, Roger sat me down in his office, which was a tiny room, which was barely larger than a closet, and looked over the paperwork Aunt Liz had filled out. He moved a pile of binders to reveal a television and VCR wedged into a bookshelf. I am followed by televisions everywhere I go, I have always been doomed that way, there is even one here in my hospital room, hanging from the ceiling. He told me I would have to watch a training video before proceeding any further. He hit play, and the screen showed two men and a woman, naked, except for the woman’s shoes, she had not taken off her shoes. I had not seen anything like it before on a television but I knew, it was clear to me, they were making love, or having sex, I should say, if the words making love are reserved for the most sincere expression of that act. I was surprised at the feelings the video aroused in me, it was clear these people, these men and this woman, were trying to portray pleasure, it was obvious, from the small bit I saw, that they wanted whoever was watching to know they were having a good time, but all I felt was a sharp kind of sadness at their bodies moving on the screen, not because I could imagine their lives outside the scene, that didn’t come to me until later, but because in their bodies and in their face
s, in their sounds and in their motions, I could see only effort, I could see only how hard they were working, and built into that effort was the failure of that effort, because the pleasure of pleasure is that it is effortless. These people were trapped, the harder they tried, the further they were from their goal, no wonder people called TV the box. Roger just laughed. He ejected the tape and put in the proper training video. He dimmed the lights and left the room.