Aunt Liz pulled off her reading glasses, she wore glasses to read, she didn’t need them to drive, she wore them for things that were up close, like reading books and magazines, and she always wore them while eating, too, it made her uncomfortable, she told me later, to eat blurry food. She removed her reading glasses and rubbed her temples and put her elbows up on the table. She said that this was a vexing issue, she asked if I was sure there was no way to get an adequate amount of rest with the bed, the problem was that she could not afford a new bed, she was just scraping by as it was, her words, when I arrived on the scene. I suggested that I could make some modifications to the bed, that I would be happy to modify the bed to suit my needs, that with the right tools I could modify it myself. I described the extension I had in mind, in enough detail that the method of construction was clear, that the supplies and tools needed were clear, which were a good saw, electric if possible, but otherwise a good handsaw, a hammer or nail gun and nails, or an electric driver with drywall screws, and some plywood and two-by-fours, there was no real point in trying to match the wood to the bed, it was going to be covered with padding, it was going to be covered furthermore with an extra bit of matching bed-sheet, I had the whole thing planned out in my head, it was the perfect practical solution for allowing my body to stretch out completely while in a state of rest and allow free and unfettered movement. But Aunt Liz would not let me modify the bed, despite the fact that I am good with wood. I suggested sleeping on the floor, I could sleep on the floor, it is supposed to be good for the back, source unknown, but Aunt Liz wouldn’t hear of it, judging by the look on her face you would have thought I was going to lie down in the street. I wondered what I was supposed to do that night, how could I ensure that I would get a good night’s rest that night, I had to be at the fast-food place in the morning again, I had to be there for the breakfast shift, I wanted to show pride in my work, I wanted to be my friendly self. Usually I could nap, if I was back in Madera I would have napped, or slept until I had slept enough, and then, only then, ridden my bike into town to look for work, but in Panorama City there was no time for napping, you went from one thing to another, there were no spaces between anything.
Finally Aunt Liz said that she had an inflatable mattress somewhere, she had bought it from a catalogue on an airplane, she had never used it, she didn’t think it was very big, it was smaller than my bed, but my legs and arms could dangle over the edges, probably, without too much discomfort, it would be better than sleeping on the floor, would I be willing to try it? I’m always willing to try something new, it is one of my qualities. And so my first full day in Panorama City, the most eventful day of my life up until then, the day with more events in it than any other day in twenty-seven years, came to a close with Aunt Liz and I taking turns on the foot pump, taking turns pumping up the air mattress on the floor of my quarters, until it was firm enough to support me, until the pump wouldn’t put any more air into it, and then Aunt Liz and I stretching a fitted sheet over it, she wouldn’t hear of me sleeping on an unmade bed, and then Aunt Liz wishing me goodnight and going off to her quarters elsewhere in the house. I brushed my teeth and washed my face, I used the toilet and stared at the picture of footsteps on the beach. I lay on the air mattress, it was a strange sensation, it was unlike any bed I had ever lay on before, wherever I put myself the air went somewhere else, so that it didn’t feel like I was sleeping on top of the mattress as much as it felt like I was sleeping surrounded by cushions of air, pressing on me from below on all sides, it felt like I was suspended. I couldn’t quite place the feeling, but it was a familiar feeling, there was something familiar about it, I had never slept on an air mattress before but I knew the feeling. I couldn’t sleep until I figured out where I had felt this before, where I had experienced this feeling of being suspended and also pressed in from all sides, it couldn’t have been from before I was born, I couldn’t remember that far back, it couldn’t have been from when I was a baby. It was strange, being able to remember a feeling but not being able to say what it was, and it kept me awake much of the night, it kept me awake into the wee hours of the morning, as they say, it was altogether a restful sort of feeling, it should have led me right to sleep, but the idea that some part of me, some memory, was locked away inside me was very disturbing, I could sense it trying to peek through, it was like having a word on the tip of my tongue, as they say. I tried to think of other things, to distract my mind, I tried to think about my day, about all of the new things and new people, I tried to figure out why Roger Macarona had found the sex video so funny, and why Ho had been disturbed by what I had said, and why the trays had frustrated Francis, and why the cities here were so close together that you couldn’t tell them apart, and why Roger had said we were at war with the customer, and why the skateboarder kid had asked me for fries and a Coke when we weren’t in the restaurant, and why Dr. Rosenkleig had become a professional speaker and listener if he wasn’t good at it, and why Aunt Liz sat so close to the steering wheel when she drove, but it was no use.
WAGE SLAVE
I was early for my second day of work, I arrived before Roger, I must admit that I was excited at the idea of Roger arriving and seeing me already there, working, a smile on my face, I pictured Roger coming in and seeing me wiping counters clean before, technically, my shift even began, and thinking, There’s someone I can count on, there’s a man of the world, there’s a go-getter. Eventually, Melissa let me know that Roger was up at the lake for the day, tending to his boat, and that she was in charge, that she would be the one giving orders around here today. She was the boss now, she was running a tight ship here, the cat was away, her words, but he’d left a bulldog in his place, there wasn’t going to be any dillydallying, not on her watch. Time is money, she said, let that be your E equals M C squared. When she talked she shook her head side to side like she was saying no, like whatever it was you wanted to ask her the answer would be no. Within an hour she was back to being the old Melissa, she was back to treating us like she treated her kids. It turned out that she’d just been establishing a pecking order, a level of respect, so that she wouldn’t have to hear any back talk later on, she had learned this from raising her kids all on her own, their father had left, she’d had to be both mother and father to them, which reminded me of your grandfather, who had been both father and mother to me, which I mentioned to Melissa, which she said she could relate to. Then she informed me that in addition to my duties bussing the trays and washing the trays and returning the trays to the counter, I would have an additional duty, which was taking the trash out. This was the nature of being the floater, new duties were always being added.
Melissa showed me the special dumpster corral in the parking lot, the dumpsters were surrounded on three sides by cinder block, and by chain link in the front and on top, you had to undo a padlock to get the chain link open so you could throw trash bags in there, but people still tried to throw their trash into the dumpster and so there would always be trash piled up on top of the corral’s chain-link roof, and since I was the tallest one, Melissa’s reasoning, I was now in charge of removing trash from above the dumpsters and relocating it to inside the dumpsters, which didn’t make much sense to me, I mean it didn’t make much sense why we had a chain-link roof on the corral if all of the garbage was just going to end up in the dumpster anyway, why not leave it open, why not give everyone access to the dumpster so I wouldn’t have to move their garbage? Melissa said damned if I know, her words, ask Roger.
***
I had been thinking about the kid with the skateboard, and how it would have been great if I’d had fries and a Coke with me and just handed them over when he asked for them, maybe I could have told him how much it cost, or asked if he wanted anything else, I don’t know. I had been replaying the scene in my head, and so after my shift I brought french fries and a Coke to the bus stop, but the kid with the skateboard wasn’t there, it was just a bunch of other people. I wasn’t hungry or thirsty myself, so I asked everyo
ne at the bus stop if they wanted the fries and Coke, they were fresh, they were straight from the french fry hopper, the Coke was straight from the fountain, I had brought them for someone but he was not there, would anyone like them? No one said anything, some people pretended like I wasn’t even talking, but then again many of my fellow passengers didn’t know English, and many of those who did know English couldn’t seem to string together words in a way that made sense. I held up the bag, I held it in the air and made a gesture as if to say would anyone like this. Finally a very old woman, I had barely even noticed her sitting there, a very old woman raised her hand at me just for a moment and I gave her the bag, I said, Enjoy, compliments of, and then I said the name of the fast-food place. Now people smiled, there had been tension in the air, I hadn’t meant to cause tension, but people didn’t know what I was going to do with the bag, and now people smiled at me, and at the old woman, who opened the bag and ate the fries and drank the Coke, she seemed happy to have it. This freed me up to pull out my binoculars and let everyone know exactly how far away the bus was, which kept me occupied until it was time to board. Only once I was on the bus, only once I had taken my seat in the front row, only after I had introduced myself to the driver, whose name was Clarence, only once I was comfortably seated did I notice that the old woman on the bus bench hadn’t boarded, she remained there, sitting on the bench, she had finished her fries and Coke, she had spread the empty fast-food place bag across her lap, she was engaged in very carefully folding it up, pressing down hard on the creases, I wondered what she was going to do with it, but then the bus pulled away from the curb and she was gone, or we were, I should say.
After Roger returned from his trip to the lake I suggested we should remove the chain-link roof from the dumpster corral, we should just let people throw their trash in there if that was where it was going to end up anyway. But Roger said it was a matter of principle, that this was a private dumpster, it was not a place for public people to throw their public trash, we couldn’t just leave it open, because then everyone would throw their trash into our private dumpster. I suggested that everyone was already throwing their trash into our private dumpster, the trash was just making a rest stop on top of the dumpster corral, it was just waiting there until I moved it into the dumpster proper, which was a dirty job, which was a disgusting job considering the pieces of public trash that ended up on the chain link, the dirty diapers and plastic bags of dog business and Pepsi Gold, Melissa’s words for soda bottles full of pee. We were having this discussion with Melissa present, she was standing just outside Roger’s office, we couldn’t all three of us fit comfortably inside, and she suggested that if there was no roof on the dumpster corral, even more people might throw their trash in our dumpster, causing it to overflow, which I thought was an excellent point, which I thought Roger should use for his side of the argument, but Roger dismissed it as a mere practical concern, not germane to our discussion, which was about the principle of the thing, his words. I tell you this because I want you to understand what people mean, Juan-George, when they say they’re doing things on principle, or according to principle. Whether the dumpster was full or empty did not matter to Roger, trash sitting on top of the dumpster corral that had to be cleaned up did not matter to him either, because in all of the time I worked at the fast-food place trash was a job I kept the whole time, even after I was later promoted to french fry cook, because Harold the new floater was too short to reach the top of the dumpster corral and when we tried to get him to use a ladder he couldn’t let go of the chain link itself long enough to retrieve the trash, he was scared of heights, even low ones. In all the time I worked there, I never saw Roger anywhere near the dumpsters or the trash, he did not have to physically handle any of the stinking garbage, public, private, or otherwise, he didn’t ever have to get his hands dirty, as they say, and as such he had principles about the dumpster, which is the main thing you need to know about principles, they come from the heads of people very far away from what they apply to.
I received my first paycheck, I received my first official monies from my so-called respectable job. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the check, I had never received a paycheck before, I was just staring at it at the end of my shift, when Francis asked me if I wanted to head over and cash it with him. We went to a storefront a block down from the fast-food place, I had seen it before, but I hadn’t been sure what kind of store it was, they didn’t seem to be selling anything, and there were pictures of happy families all over it, along with cars and an airplane in the sky, I’d thought maybe it was a travel agency. It turned out to be more like a bank than anything, except that there were no desks in the main part of the room, all of the desks were behind the tellers, and all of the tellers were behind very thick windows. Francis went first, he showed me how, he cashed his check and took the cash and put it in his wallet, he said he was that much closer to getting his hands on a decent camera, he said that would be his salvation, he said once people could see what he could do with a camera he wouldn’t be a wage slave any more. I cashed my check, too, then, and since it was for only one week, instead of two, and since money had been taken out for my uniform, and since there were taxes and fees involved, the number was very low, I didn’t receive much cash. Francis noticed this, he noticed the disappointment on my face, he pointed at the cash and said that’s why I don’t walk around with a smile on my face all day, he said that’s why I don’t work too hard, he said that’s why I just pile up as many hours as I can, who gives a rat’s ass whether the trays are getting clean or the burgers are warm, his words, I’m not the one getting rich. I hadn’t really thought about it that way, Juan-George, I had thought that the better job I did, the more I would be rewarded, I hadn’t heard Francis’s philosophy until that moment, it got me thinking, I didn’t subscribe to it, I should mention, I didn’t think I could actually go in there and do a bad job and let the hours pile up, as Francis seemed to be pushing, but I did have to wonder how I was going to become a man of the world with so little money in my pocket. Later, much later, after Aunt Liz discovered that I’d been cashing my checks at the check-cashing place, she went haywire and told me that their fees were outrageous, that there was no reason I should be giving those people part of my paycheck, that they were leeches, and so on, and then she signed me up at her bank, where I also had to pay fees. After my next session with Dr. Rosenkleig, after a session during which we talked about, as usual, whatever I felt like talking about, which that day was weather, bicycles, and knots your grandfather had taught me, Aunt Liz asked me what we’d covered, and when I told her, she said she couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t believe Dr. Rosenkleig and I had not talked about my feelings, or my father’s death, or how I was adjusting to life in Panorama City, she wondered aloud what she was paying him for. Having become more curious about such matters recently, I asked Aunt Liz how much she paid Dr. Rosenkleig, I asked her how he got paid. She told me he was paid by the hour, same as me, and for a moment I felt, I don’t know how to put it, a twinge of camaraderie, maybe, that Dr. Rosenkleig and I were both in the same boat, that is we were both wage slaves. Just out of curiosity, I asked Aunt Liz what his hourly rate was, she was reluctant to tell me, then she said what’s the harm and came out with it. His hourly rate was substantial. In fact, I thought she had gotten the number wrong, she assured me she hadn’t. I am good with numbers, I have always been good with numbers, even if words and letters elude me sometimes, so I was able to see, instantly, or nearly instantly, in my mind, that one session, fifty minutes, that is, with Dr. Rosenkleig was equivalent, financially speaking, to my entire first week’s work at the fast-food place, once the fees and taxes and uniform had been taken out. I wondered why Aunt Liz had set me up with a job working at the fast-food place, I wondered why she hadn’t set me up with a job as a therapist. I have always been an amateur at talking and listening, but how hard could it be to turn professional, there wasn’t any equipment involved.
That night, while
sleeping on my inflatable bed, my head combined and shuffled all of the words that had gone into it that day, and while brushing my teeth the next morning I put two and two together, so to speak. No matter what we achieved or did not achieve in our therapy sessions, Dr. Rosenkleig got paid the same, he got paid by the hour, he got paid for his time no matter what he did with it, which explained his long pauses, which explained why he stopped so often to consider everything. The slower he thought, the more he got paid for each individual idea.
And then a knock at the door changed everything, or a knock at the door would have changed everything if Aunt Liz hadn’t answered. I’d been in my quarters all afternoon, considering the different ways I could modify the bed so it might conform to my body type, ways that Aunt Liz would not object to, I was trying to solve that thorny riddle when I heard the knock. I came out to Aunt Liz poking her eye at the peephole. She waved me over to stand behind her, she wanted to display to whoever was at the door that there was a strong and able man in her home, she wanted to employ my guard dog capabilities, her words from a few days earlier when she was talking about how nice it was to have a young man around her home, meaning me. There was another knock, and once I was in place she opened the door and gave the visitor an icy Can I help you? I was behind the door at first, so I couldn’t see who it was, but the voice was familiar, I had heard it before, the voice said that he hoped he wasn’t disturbing her but he was looking for a friend of his, an Oppen Porter, we’d become acquainted, he said, on the bus down through the Central Valley. By then I stood next to Aunt Liz, watching Paul Renfro teeter uncertainly on the front steps. He did not look good, I admit, he did not look respectable in any way, he did not look even as good as he had on the bus, he appeared to be wearing the exact same clothes except dirtier. I told him how nice it was to see him, I told him I’d gotten a job at the fast-food place, I told him I was settling in quite nicely, all things considered, then I asked how he was, I invited him in, I could see that he was exhausted, I could see that he needed us, that he needed our support. Which was not what happened, of course, because at the moment I invited Paul in, Aunt Liz uninvited him, she apologized insincerely, she apologized in that way that people begin with the word sorry and then spend the whole rest of their breath erasing it, ending with, in this case, a declaration that Paul, she called him Mr. Renfro in a way that was somehow less respectful than just calling him Paul, a declaration that Mr. Renfro was not welcome in her home or on the premises of her home, then she apologized again, this time on my behalf, stating that I had not understood the nature of the invitation, that essentially I hadn’t meant to invite him here, that I was not always capable of making the most reasonable choices, which in fact was the whole reason I was living with her. Surely a man of Mr. Renfro’s stature, again every word that came out sounded like its opposite, could understand the delicacy of the situation. What choice did Paul Renfro have? He made a half bow, she closed the door in his face.
Panorama City Page 6
