by Lou Aronica
It was this way from our first days in the City. The only difference at the beginning was that we were in the same apartment and Daz sometimes dragged himself out of bed earlier if I made enough noise or if I did something like flick water on his face after my shower.
The other difference was the nature of our living quarters. The place on Avenue B had been only moderately better than sleeping on the street. The lobby was tastefully adorned in crack vials, hypodermic needles, and spent condoms, and our “doorman” was a sixty-something guy with more jackets than teeth who squatted in front of our building. My mother came to visit exactly once, sneered at my decision to live here rather than commuting from a garden apartment in Hastings, and told me that if I wanted to see her in the future, I knew the Metro-North schedule. She didn’t even give me her little faux kiss on the cheek on her way out the door. This irked me until I thought about the possibility of her being propositioned by a male prostitute before she could get a cab out of the neighborhood. I imagined her scandalized expression and smiled.
A year later, when we were recruited as a team by The Creative Shop, we made our first “big move.” It was a walkup in Hell’s Kitchen – not exactly Fifth Avenue, though a huge improvement over what it had been only a few years earlier – but the space was a lot better and a much higher grade of junkie and hooker hung around outside. When we got our first major bonus checks – one of several to come our way in the past few years – we knew it was time to find someplace a little more respectable, someplace where we could have a party and not worry if our guests could make it in and out of the building alive.
It was my father’s accountant who first suggested we consider buying. The thought had never even crossed my mind, though admittedly we did a terrible job of managing the money we made and got brutalized on our 2011 tax returns. He also told us that if we bought, we had to buy separately to get the most bang for our tax deduction bucks. It was an odd thing to think about. We had lived together for eight years at that point and while we knew we’d eventually find romantic partners to move in with, the notion of no longer being roommates for financial reasons seemed incongruous. In the end, though, it really did make the most sense. And with Daz at 89th and Broadway and me at 91st and West End, we were nearly roommates anyway.
“Who do we have a meeting with this morning?” he said, coming out of the bathroom with a toothbrush in his mouth. He had different colored toothbrushes for the different flavors. The gray brush meant fennel.
“It’s just us.”
“Us? Like you and me?” He returned to the bathroom to spit.
“And Michelle and Carnie and Brad and Chess.”
“Sounds like the meeting we had at Terminal 5 last night.”
We’d all gone there to see Beam, an incredible British trance rock band.
“Except this time we’re going to have a serious business conversation and it won’t look as cool if your head lolls back and forth.”
“And what will we be talking about again?” He’d asked this question from his bedroom, where he was almost certainly trying to decide if it was a red flannel shirt day or a blue flannel shirt day.
“The Koreans.”
“Motorcycles, right?” he said, sticking his face out the door.
“Cars. Affordable luxury for twenty-somethings.”
“Twenty-somethings want luxury?”
“They do if it’s affordable.”
“That’s why you’re the word guy and I’m the picture guy. I wouldn’t have a clue how to pitch this.”
“Good thing I’m around then, huh?”
He disappeared back into the bathroom, meaning we were somewhere between eight and fifteen minutes of departure time, assuming I kept him away from the Power Rangers.
I finished my bagel and scrolled through my Twitter feed. Not finding anything to capture my attention, I stood up and walked around the apartment. The morning crowbar exercise notwithstanding, we spent much less time in Daz’s place than we did in mine. This was primarily because I had the better toys – the sixty-inch TV, the foosball table, the multiple gaming systems, the Bang and Olufsen stereo with full theatre sound (the potential of which I never got to exploit because of the co-op rules) – and also because I actually kept food in the place. Daz hadn’t done particularly much with his home space. The obligatory Crate and Barrel couch and coffee table, the Mondrian print squaring off against the Dave Matthews Band poster, the formal dining table that he never explained why he bought (I don’t know; maybe he wanted me to have my bagel and coffee in comfort), the airbed he propped up against the wall next to the couch rather than deflating, and not a hell of a lot else.
Other than the air hockey table. And the massage chair. The latter was Daz’s first significant purchase once he bought his place. I asked him why he wanted one – he never seemed in need of a massage – and he gestured toward the chair to suggest that I give it a try. Once I did, I understood immediately.
I sat there now and set the chair to knead. I would have loved to have one of these in my office, but one of the unspoken deals Daz and I had was that we wouldn’t spend a lot of money on something the other guy already owned. What was the point? I kicked the massage level up to medium and switched from kneading to tapping. I thought about taking my shoes off to use the foot massager and then checked the time on my phone instead.
“I mentioned that the meeting was today and not in August, right?” I said, my voice vibrating from the thumping my back was receiving.
“I’m done,” he said, walking over to stand in front of me in blue flannel. “Just a quick one-on-one with the Cap’n and we’ll be out of here.”
I turned off the chair and got up. Daz opened the box of cereal and poured it directly into his mouth. “Let’s go,” he said, taking a swig from a milk carton and grabbing his keys.
I gathered my stuff and we made our way out the door. Daz locked the two deadbolts and my eye fell on his keychain – a plastic hot dog that he’d burned with a cigarette lighter in honor of our first (and only) camping trip. He’d toted that thing around for the last ten years.
“I think Michelle and I had a little thing last night,” he said as we walked out onto Broadway to begin our search for a cab.
I laughed. “I was with the two of you the entire time. You didn’t have a thing.”
“No, I think we might have. It was an eye thing.”
“An eye thing as in she saw you and said hi?”
“Don’t be a schmuck. I can tell the difference, you know. I think she kinda likes me.”
“Daz, everyone kinda likes you. See that woman who just stepped in front of us to steal our cab? I’ll bet she likes you. You’re a likable guy. I just wouldn’t get my hopes up about Michelle if I were you.”
“She came to my office just to see my drawings the other day. She’s never done that before.”
“Daz, reachable goals, remember? Reachable goals.”
“I think you might be surprised here.”
“Surprised wouldn’t begin to describe it. Stunned speechless maybe. Or shocked to the point where I needed a defibrillator.”
He regarded me sternly. “Why do you think I couldn’t get a woman like Michelle?”
“Did I say that?”
“Pretty much exactly that.”
“You’re misunderstanding me. I’m speaking specifically about Michelle. A woman like Michelle – you know, gorgeous, smart, clever, burgeoning career – you could get a woman like that. Anytime you wanted, probably.”
“But not Michelle specifically. Translation, please.”
“A translation isn’t necessary. Right now, the only thing that’s important is that we find some way to get the hell downtown.”
Eventually we took a gypsy cab, one of those out-of-town car services that roamed around the City skimming off fares from Yellow cabs during rush hours. I hated doing this – I was very loyal to my city – but at 9:05 on a weekday, it really was the best we could do.
“If
we left earlier, we wouldn’t be riding in a fifteen-year-old Impala right now, you know,” I said.
“If we left later, we wouldn’t be doing this either.”
“You know, it’s a good thing you’re an artistic genius. Otherwise you’d be working at Burger King. No, you’d lose your job at Burger King because you’d always be showing up late. Then you’d be out on the street collecting bottles to exchange for cheap liquor.”
“Never happen.”
“You don’t think so?”
“Nope. Cause you’d be around to drag my ass out of bed so I could keep my job making french fries.”
“Don’t be so sure.”
“Of course you would.”
Yeah, of course I would. If I could be relied upon for anything, it would be making sure that Daz got to work at a reasonable hour. Beyond that, as it turns out, I was lacking in an entire suite of skills best friends were supposed to have. However, he would never be homeless as long as I was around.
We rode in silence for a couple of minutes, bucking and stopping every eight seconds or so as traffic dictated. Then something caught Daz’s eye and he pulled out the sketchpad he always carried in his backpack and started drawing.
“What are you doing?”
“That jogger we passed gave me an idea.”
I hadn’t even noticed a jogger. “An idea for what?”
“For the Space Available campaign.”
Space Available was a custom-built closet company whose account we recently acquired. How a jogger related to this escaped me.
“Let me see,” I said, leaning toward him in the seat.
He pulled the sketchpad back. “Not yet.” He smiled over at me. “I want to show it to Michelle first.”
“She’ll never love you like I love you, Daz.”
“There’s another thing we can all be thankful for.”
He drew for a bit longer, and while I knew there was a very good chance this brainstorm of his wouldn’t produce anything – so many of our ideas didn’t – I was curious. I tried to angle my eyes over without appearing too obvious, but Daz was doing a great job of blocking my view. Finally, he closed the sketchbook and returned it to his backpack, glancing out at the street as though there was nothing to this.
“Traffic’s a bitch today,” he said. “We really should have left earlier. You gotta get on the beam, Flaccid.”
This evocative, moving, and gorgeously detailed novel is the story of Alex Soberano, a contemporary man in crisis. A tremendously successful New York businessman, Alex finds it difficult to embrace joy and accept love. When his life threatens to boil over, he escapes for a brief respite on the West Coast. What waits for him there is something he never could have imagined.
Intertwined with Alex’s story are the stories of three people from different times and places whose lives affect him in surprising ways:
• A woman from the South American city of Anhelo in 1928 that everyone knows as “Vidente.” For decades, Vidente, has been one of Anhelo’s most celebrated citizens because she has the ability to read colors that speak of a person’s fate. However, during one such reading, she sees her own future – a future that includes her imminent death.
• A man named Khaled who left his home in Bethlehem in 1920 to seek fortune in the South American town of Joya de la Costa. He has barely begun to gain a foothold when he learns that the wife and three children he left behind have been murdered. When a magical woman enters his life, he believes that destiny has smiled on him. However, destiny has only just begun to deal with Khaled.
• A nineteen-year-old student named Dro who flies from the South American country of Legado to Boston in 1985 and immediately walks onto the campus of MIT expecting instant admission. Dro’s skills at mastering complex, ever-changing differential equations intrigues the associate admissions director. However, the person he intrigues the most is the celebrated US ambassador from his country, and his relationship with her will define his life.
How the stories of these four people merge is the central mystery of this arresting work of imagination. Differential Equations is a story that will sweep you up in its magic, enrich you with its wisdom, and compel you with its deep humanity.
Here is an excerpt:
Anhelo, Legado, South America, 1928
With her eyes closed, all she could see were waves of brown. The woman sitting across the table from her wasn’t troubled or damaged in any particular way, as that color sometimes indicated; her spirit and her future simply seemed featureless.
“Vidente, you have been quiet for a long time,” the woman said tentatively. “If you see bad things, you must tell me. I must prepare.”
People had been calling her “Vidente” for so long that she couldn’t recall the last time she heard her real name spoken aloud. Some in the community preferred to call her “Tia Vidente” as a form of endearment. Even her sons called her “Madre Vidente” now, having long ago accepted their mother’s place in the lives of the townspeople. After these many years, she had even come to think of herself by that name.
She opened her eyes slowly and her vision began to fill again with color. The violet and red of the tapestry that hung on the far wall. The ochre and bronze of the pottery on the shelf. The cobalt and white of the figurines on the cupboard. The terra cotta of the antique cazuela and the copper of the chafing dish, both presents from a grateful recipient of her services, neither of which had felt fire in Vidente’s home. The saffron of the sash that billowed over the window. The crystals and pewters and golds and greens; the room was a rainbow visible nowhere else in the world – a Vidente rainbow. A rainbow for a woman who sensed color beyond her eyes and who liked those colors expressed in the finest things available. Vidente’s home was her palace, a testament to her station as one of Anhelo’s most prominent and prosperous citizens.
Finally, Vidente focused on Ana, the woman seeking her help who, in contrast to the brown that Vidente saw with eyes closed, wore a bright orange frock with lemon embroidery. Ana had called on Vidente several times in the past year and she’d encountered her at church and in the shops. At all times, Ana wore brilliant clothing. She wants color in her life, Vidente thought. How sad that she doesn’t seem able to hold any in her soul.
“I am not seeing bad things, Ana,” Vidente said, tipping her head toward the woman.
“But you have been so quiet.”
Vidente patted the woman’s hand. “Sometimes the images come very slowly. That doesn’t mean you have anything to fear.”
Vidente truly believed that Ana had nothing to worry about regarding her future – except that it was likely to be a life without incident. The brown was everywhere. Sometimes darker, sometimes lighter, but always brown. The color of inconsequentiality and an abundance of self-doubt. For reasons Vidente couldn’t discern, Ana wouldn’t absorb the colors she wore so boldly in her clothing, though she seemed entirely capable of doing so. There were places Vidente didn’t plumb, for the sake of Ana’s privacy, but she guessed that if she looked there she might find why the woman avoided what she so wanted.
Ana’s brow furrowed and she looked down at her hands. Vidente wanted to offer her something, some suggestion that days more vibrant lay ahead. Vidente never lied to anyone during a reading, even when she believed the person wanted to hear a lie. However, she had many times kept searching and searching until she found a way to offer something promising.
“I am not finished, Ana,” she said as the woman looked up at her. “I will use another technique with you today. I need to look farther with this technique. I may not open my eyes or speak with you for several minutes.”
“I will be patient, Vidente.”
Vidente closed her eyes again. Usually, what she saw in colors was enough to give her useful messages for those who requested readings from her. The colors had always been reliable to her. Sometimes, though, she needed to extend her vision. If she sent herself deeply enough into the space outside of herself, she could see actual imag
es. Occasionally, entire scenes played out in front of her. Vidente had come to learn that these visions weren’t nearly as reliable as the colors; unlike the colors, they were mutable. Still, they sometimes offered direction when none other was available.
The waves of brown appeared again. Like molten chocolate wending its way through a sea of caramel. It was necessary for Vidente to look past the color. She focused intently on the darkest of the brown and in doing so made the message of the brown drop away. It was like stepping through the fog and coming to a clear space. Here, though, the space offered only shadow. She could see the faintest movement. Was that a man? Ana wanted a man so badly; one who would finally erase Oscar’s humiliation of her. The image Vidente saw here was so indistinct, though, that it could as easily be a deer, a sloth, or even a vegetable cart.
Vidente concentrated further, pushing her soul toward the shadow, encouraging her will to be in the same place as the shadow. Something was definitely moving around and she could now see that the shape was human. Male? Female? Young? Old? None of that was clear. Nor was it clear why there was such a veil over Ana’s future. This had nothing to do with the woman’s health. Vidente would have seen that in the colors. For some reason, the spirits did not want to offer the images they usually gave so generously.
She so didn’t want to disappoint Ana. Once a month Ana came to her, gaily dressed and bearing a tray of the delicious pastries she made, eyes gleaming with hope but shaded by desperation. Vidente always found a vision to encourage her; the visit of a favorite nephew, a celebration Ana would attend, the birth of a neighbor’s child. These visions were never what Ana truly wanted, but she always left Vidente’s house viewing the world with a little less desperation. And she always came back.
Several minutes passed, but the images remained indistinct. I must go beyond sight, Vidente thought. She rarely used the process she was considering, and she was not entirely comfortable with it, but she knew it was possible to close her eyes completely. To allow her other senses to tell her what her vision did not.
