by Sarah Bird
“Slim, I might be all those other things you claim I am, but I was not lying to you. The scenario I presented was definitely in the mix. But after the legal eagles got a look at the files y’all sent in—shit, files? whole fucking catalog of the history of Western music, more like it—it was ‘No way, José.’”
Trey chuckles gently when I screech about legal ethics and client confidentiality since he’d already covered those pesky technicalities by not having a law degree. “Sorry, Slim, just not in the cards for you today.”
Though it is pointless to scream at the dial tone after Trey hangs up, I do it anyway. When the blood rushing in my ears settles enough, I hear Millie, who obviously hasn’t seen the paper yet, yodeling up to me from the front yard.
“Yoo-hoo, Blybees! Are you awake?”
I poke my head out the open window.
Millie is in the fron t yard, straddling the recumbent bike, ready for an egg run. “I forgot the Tinactin for Heriberto’s athlete’s foot. Could you toss it down? Also, there’s a form up there that Jesse needs to fill out to get into a detox program.”
Millie keeps yelling up more items she has forgotten. In the end, I gather everything up and take it all downstairs. I help Millie load up, then watch her set off, the red flag on the back whipping with each thrust of foot against pedal.
The morning is still cool. Surprised at myself for being surprised by Trey and dreading what is to come, I plop down in an ancient rattan chair at the far end of the porch and try to take stock of the catastrophe I have unloosed. A heavy growth of star jasmine exudes a fragrance that would have been sweetly calming if I had not been quietly flipping out. Beyond the jasmine stands a row of crape myrtles. They shadow that corner of the porch and leave it cool and hidden from view.
From inside the house, Sanjeev’s phone tinkles out its signature ring, a hectic version of “Rule Britannia.” A second later, he bustles across the porch without noticing me on his hurried way to the front yard. As serious as Sanjeev always is, he is twice that serious when he answers the phone. “Hello, Baba.” His next words are delivered in rapid high-pitched Bengali. I assume he is discussing plans for his marriage to Bhavani Mukherjee in front of eight hundred friends and relatives.
Shielded by the crape myrtles and the jasmine’s lustrous forest-green foliage, I observe Sanjeev undetected. He finishes his call, snaps his cell shut with a flip of the wrist that almost makes him look cool, then paces back and forth across the few sprigs of grass that have managed to survive the scorn which decades of proudly alternative students have for anything that smacks of a lawn. He pauses, glances up and down the street, and takes a pack of cigarettes out of his pants pocket.
Once I get over the shock of seeing the subcontinent’s answer to Cotton Mather sucking down a Marlboro, I realize what has been there all along though disguised by a screen of priggishness: Sanjeev is sexy as hell. Back when Sanjeev was just the nit doing bacterial swabs on floors I’d mopped, I had not been able to see Millie’s attraction. Perhaps it speaks to my own lack of high-mindedness that it is not until Sanjeev’s good looks fully register that I truly believe in Millie’s love for this son of India.
“Why are you spying on me?”
Apparently, the jasmine doesn’t provide as much of a cloak of invisibility as I’d thought. “I’m not spying on you. I happen to be sitting here enjoying the cool morning air.”
The phone call has clearly irritated Sanjeev and he is looking for someone to take it out on. “You promised that this friend of yours, this Danny, would call off the dogs. Well?” Sanjeev demands. “Will the dogs be called off?”
Another one who has not yet heard about the fiasco with Trey. This doesn’t seem to be the perfect moment to fill him in. “I didn’t promise that Danny would call off the dogs, and no, it doesn’t appear that he will.”
“So the lawsuit is proceeding?”
“It would seem that it is, yes.”
“Do you understand what this means?”
“I think I’ve got the broad strokes.”
“Do you? Because I don’t think you have the tiniest inkling of what you’ve done. Not to the house, not to me, not to Millie.”
“I know. I’ve screwed up and I am reallyreallyreally sorry.”
“But you’re always screwing up and you’re always reallyreallyreally sorry, aren’t you?”
“Sanjeev, step off, okay? I’ve admitted to the full range of my character flaws and have been doing nothing but making amends since I set foot in this place. I’m tired of being your whipping boy.”
“So, you think that your ‘amends’ make everything fine?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Because they don’t. I warned you once about exploiting a person as fine as Millie and you ignored my warning.”
“Sanjeev, was it me downloading music in front of a record company executive? Was I the one rubbing Danny’s nose in it?”
“No, but you are the one who misled Millie into believing that stealing music over the Internet was a fine community-building activity.”
“Look, I don’t need this. You aren’t telling me anything I don’t know and haven’t admitted already. There’s only so much groveling a person can do and I’ve done mine, so get over it.”
“Get over it? Are you so blinded by your heedless self-absorption that you still can’t see what you’ve done? How you have imperiled Millie’s work, her mission?”
“Me? Blind and self-absorbed? Talk about the kettle calling the pot black.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. Forget it.”
“No, tell me, I’m interested. What are you talking about?”
“Just drop it, okay?”
“Drop what?”
“Nothing.”
“Tell me, precisely what it is you are referring to.”
Sanjeev’s haughty imperiousness annoys me so much that I blurt out, “I’m sure you can probably guess.”
“Guess what?”
I try to leave, but Sanjeev blocks the door. “Sanjeev, please, just get out of my way.”
“Not until you tell me what you are talking about.”
“Don’t pretend.”
“Could you mean…” He pauses and looks around.
“Millie’s gone,” I tell him. I am tired of playing their ridiculous little game, pretending I don’t know they are obsessed with each other.
“So you’re telling me that what I am blind and self-absorbed about is—”
He has so worked my very last nerve that I can’t keep myself from snapping, “Millie! Millie Ott! Yes, God, of course, you big dolt. I mean Millie.”
He stares, blinking.
“Please, for God’s sake, don’t be the only person who doesn’t know how she feels. I am blind and self-absorbed and I know how she feels. Everyone in the house knows. Shit, the paperboy who drives by here at five in the morning knows.”
“Knows what?”
“That she loves you, you pompous, high-minded moron. And what’s more, it’s painfully obvious that you love her, too.”
Sanjeev’s face drains of color, going from blazing copper to dull pewter as he stares in shocked silence. Disastrously, though, it is not me he is staring at; it is Millie. She has returned for something she has forgotten and is standing behind me.
“Okay, Millie, before you say anything, I’m sorry I broke my promise, but it is obvious that Sanjeev knows and that you know that he knows and that he knows that you know and before anyone gets huffy why don’t you both just thank me for getting the obvious out in the open before someone goes off and marries the wrong person?”
Thanks do not appear to be in the offing. In fact, breathing doesn’t seem to be happening much. “Could one of you say something?”
They continue to stare without speaking; then, for just a fraction of a second, both their faces lighten and they stop looking as if they’re facing a firing squad. I am congratulating myself for breaking through their constipated righ
teousness when Sanjeev’s shoulders abruptly slump and he marches swiftly away.
Millie, stunned, bereft, watches him disappear down the street. Several very long moments go by before Millie speaks. “You have no idea what you’ve just done.” Without another word, without so much as a glance in my direction, Millie bolts upstairs.
Of all the elements of the scene that just played out, one of the most difficult to believe is that Millie would leave her fully loaded bike abandoned in the front yard. Knowing that I have screwed up, but not yet appreciating how badly, I set about trying to patch things up and, as best I can, make the run for Millie.
As soon as I finish deliveries to the hoboes and day laborers, I zip upstairs, certain I will be able to smooth things over. I reach the door to Millie’s room and find it locked. A blanket, a pillow, and my few belongings are piled outside. I pound on the door.
“Millie, please, let me in.” No answer. “Talk to me. Tell me what I did that was so wrong.” No answer. “Millie, I’m begging you. Don’t just cut me off like this. All I did was speak the truth. At least I deserve an explanation.”
Millie unlocks the door and lets me in. When she finally speaks it is in a scarily controlled tone of voice and with a complete lack of eye contact. “You don’t deserve anything. Not an explanation, nothing. But I’ll give you one. Sanjeev is engaged. I knew that from the very beginning. It is the foundation upon which our friendship was based. Sanjeev and I could be friends only so long as we both pretended, even to ourselves, that there was nothing more. Because we both knew that there could never be anything more. Now you have taken that pretense away from us. In taking away the foundation for our friendship, you have taken away our friendship. Sanjeev’s sense of honor will no longer permit him to be in my presence.”
I try to protest, but Millie silences me. “You are spoiled. As spoiled and oblivious as the rich people you complain about, the ones you claim ruined your life. You ruined your own life with your greed. Like them you make such vast assumptions. You have so much that your empathy and imagination stop tragically short. You can’t even conceive of what it is to have so little. Of what it means that a simple friendship with a man is the most precious thing in your life. The one thing you cannot imagine living without. You took that away from me. You took away my one thing.”
CAST OUT
A Hunger That Has Nothing to Do with Food
AFTER A FEW HOURS of futile pleading and pounding, I gather up my things and take them to the minivan. Kat is not thrilled that I am taking Nikki’s place, but she can hardly object.
“I guess it’s still yours. Technically,” she admits. “Just move that stuff out of the way. And that. You can take that to the Dumpster if you want. Ew, is that what was stinking? Toss that out.”
For the rest of the week, Millie refuses to come out of her room. I bring up trays and leave them at the door. Sometimes they disappear. Most of the time they don’t. I stand outside the door and listen to Millie cry. I imagine breaking down the door with a metal ramrod like SWAT teams use.
Instead, I talk Kat into helping me do Millie’s egg runs. Kat refuses to sit in the front of the bike. So, once again, utter lack of moral character, motivation, and financing end with me splayed out on the front seat of the recumbent bike. Still, a few hours of pressing tortillas into hands caked with dirt, cement, axle grease, fertilizer, putty, and grout always give me a new perspective on the ultimately effete nature of my problems.
By the third day, I am an old hand at running Millie’s show. Kat and I finish with the Pease Park gang and the day laborers, then we pedal back uphill toward the university. Foot traffic is light on the Drag. Finals are in full swing, and the student population is hunkered down in carrels or coffee shops cramming most of a semester into a couple of days. The sky is overcast from agricultural fires burning out of control in Mexico that send clouds of smoke north. The street kids slouching in front of the Baptist church pass a Game Boy around. They seem tougher, more urban, in the gray light.
They glance up at the sound of the Dorkocycle’s rattling, clanking approach and turn as one toward Kat and me, their faces, for just a split second, as open as flowers tracking the sun in time-lapse photography. For that instant, they look like the kids they are, eager, expectant, waiting for something good to happen. Then they see that, once again, Millie is not with us, and the armor of coolness slams back into place, leaving them even more aimless and fumbling than before. Even the hyperkinetic Jaguar is subdued, though he is the first to break from the gang of street kids and saunter over in a modified cat spring.
“Jaguar, let me have a look at that arm,” I call out just as Millie would have, and the tattooed boy offers his arm for me to examine. My stomach heaves at the sight of the dirty piece of gauze taped over the infected tatoos, and I have to force myself to lift the pad and peek underneath. Fortunately the wound is healing well. “You’re a good cat, Jaguar. You’re keeping yourself clean. The infection is almost gone.” I pull out the first-aid kit Millie keeps strapped to the cart, cover a new square of gauze with antibiotic ointment, and tape it on.
Jaguar growls out his gratitude, then grooms himself, rubbing his head up and down against a curled-over hand held stationary in front of his face before he scampers away to the nest he’s made with his dirty orange sleeping bag. He kneads and fluffs the bag up before settling onto it.
A girl who looks about fifteen with strawberry-blond hair and a babyish voice that sounds like Kat’s comes forward and points to the tortillas. “Can I have one of those? Things are slow out here today.” A tiny bell tinkles on a ring on her pinkie finger as she takes a flabby tortilla from Kat. Flakes of pearlized blue polish cling to her nails. She wads the tortilla up, stuffs it in her mouth, and chews with the mechanized ferocity of someone trying to feed a hunger that has nothing to do with food. My pulse gallops as I think about what waits for her on the street. Her flip-flops are worn to wafer thinness. I take mine off and trade with her.
The rest of the tribe gradually gathers around. They want news of Nikki more than they want eggs and oranges. Kat holds them spellbound with her update. “I just talked to Nikki this morning and she was all, ‘I love cosmetology school.’ Plus, she’s like this amazing natural talent.”
“Well, duh,” Spood says.
“She’s working on manicure technique now? Proper hygiene, shit like that. You can get mad wicked infections from manicures. The school gave her this little room to stay in? That’s why I can’t stay with her yet? After she finishes her training, she’ll actually start cutting hair. That’s when she’s going to get her own place and I’ll move in with her.”
Spood straightens himself up within the army jacket. “Tell her not to forget the little people when she’s styling J.Lo’s hair.”
“She’s working on it,” Kat says. Then, as if convincing herself, she murmurs, “Nikki’s working on it.”
For the last few days, I have overheard Kat not talking to Nikki. Just leaving her messages that Nikki never returns. I need to warn Kat about Charisma Girls like Nikki, tell her not to trust them. Not to expect too much, not to expect anything, in fact. I’ll caution her that she will only be disappointed if she depends on Nikki. For anything. That she needs to start making alternate plans to take care of herself because Charisma Girls watch out for one person and one person alone: themselves.
Spood entertains the kids by chewing wads of tortilla, then tilting his head back and shaking Tabasco sauce into his mouth. They are so enthralled that it startles them when Kat breaks away and bellows in a scary Darth Vader voice, “Put that down, motherfucker!”
A clump of frat guys is dragging Jaguar’s sleeping bag away from him. Jaguar is defending his territory by hissing and pawing at the air. The frat boys find this hilarious and jerk at the bag all the harder.
Kat gets in the face of the biggest, brawniest boy. “Yo, homo, whatcha need his bag for!” She slices her hand above her head like a rapper warming up and, with as much urban spin
as she can pump up, asks, “You gonna go fuck your boyfriend!? Huh? That what you need the bag for?” With a mighty tug, she yanks the bag away, then, head bobbing from side to side, crows, “Yeah, I did it, bitch! I took it! Uh-huh! Oh, yes, I did!”
The frat boys look at one another, consider annihilating the gnat taunting them, shrug, and walk away. Kat follows for half a block, calling them bitches, then returns the bag to Jaguar and helps him fluff his nest back up.
The tribe gathers around their conquering heroine. “You so pwned their gay nooblet frat asses!” Spood exults. “Nikki couldn’ta pwned no better!”
Kat brushes off the compliments with a coolness I wouldn’t have thought she possessed. “Whatever.”
I decide not to warn Kat about Nikki.
A Free-range Buccaneer
FOR THE FIFTH straight morning, ever since Millie banished me and I have been sleeping in the little van with Kat, Sanjeev awakens me shortly after dawn with a chaotic conversation in Bengali. Each day the conversations have increased in pitch and volume. And I can’t utter a word of complaint.
Though Millie hasn’t spoken to me since she threw me out, she passed the word that I was to be allowed to use the kitchen and the bathrooms. I am not sure that sleeping crammed up next to Kat is any better than straight hobo life on Dog Crap Lane, but I don’t want to test the premise by letting Sanjeev know I am huddled in the van.
The sun and Sanjeev’s voice rise. Forcefully, he addresses someone whom I assume is his father as “Baba.” In a less forceful, more wheedling tone, he pleads with “Ma.” All the conversations, though, end with Sanjeev muttering resigned “hyas” interspersed with dispirited “okays.” Each day, his family beats him down a bit more, and today, as usual, he hangs up and stands outside sighing for a long time. By the time he finally goes in, the sun is fully up and there is no hope of my going back to sleep.
I stare at the molded gray plastic of the van’s interior and contemplate this new rung of hell I have descended to. Oddly, though, it is no longer the lost paradise of Pemberton Palace that I pine for; it is a paradise of an entirely different nature. Probably because of Millie’s freakish saintliness, I recall some distant vacation Bible school teacher talking about how the worst part of getting tossed out of the Garden of Eden was Adam and Eve’s pain at being separated from God.
