The Poet Chapter 13

 

THIRTEEN

 

My life was inching toward mid-December. It was sixty-six degrees outside, and I was hustling the reference desk in a pair of camouflage shorts because I couldn’t handle the heat Sheldon insisted on pumping into the building simply because it was that time of year. Caribbean versions of Christmas tunes were playing throughout the library, courtesy of a tall black man in a straw-hat dead center in the children’s section. He was playing both secular and Christian carols on his steel drum. I couldn’t tell if the kids and their parents liked it. Personally, I didn’t. But I was tough customer where Christmas music was concerned. Spend from Black Friday until New Year’s Eve working fourteen-hour shifts in retail with Christmas music blaring and salivating masses of consumerist swine constantly at your throat, and see how much you’d like the shit.

            “Will you look at them,” Hazel said.

            “To which belabored minority group are you speaking of now,” I said.

She pointed at a group of Arab boys. They came into the building daily. Like almost every single race of teen boy in the place they yelled, they slapped each other around, they bragged of their sexual prowess, and they swore at each other with the verve of drunken sailors while playing shoot ‘em up video games. They snuck in food and generally acted the role of typical male. They teased girls in lieu of hitting on them. Their sisters took selfies and talked about boys. American as apple pie.

 “Homegrown,” she said, as one boy slapped the other and called him nigga. “This is how they turn.”

            “Gangsta or terrorist or Wall Street banker?”

            Hazel turned to me. Her sunken, beady coal-black eyes shot me daggers. “You’re not taking this seriously, Rand,” she said.

            “You said the same thing to me the time that group of Chinese engineering students came in and you thought they were an opium triad,” I said. “You’ll excuse me if I don’t take you seriously, least of all toward a pack of thirteen-year-old boys that you’re accusing of being ISIS initiates.”

            “Those Chinese all had the same markers on them.”

            “Yes, their Columbia University I.D. badges were striking fear throughout the lower part of Brooklyn.”

            “And when those Arabs come into your neighborhood?”     

“They’re already in my neighborhood,” I said. “Bay Ridge has one of the highest concentrations of Arab populations in America. I’ve been getting fat off of shawarma for years.”

            “But…” Hazel didn’t believe me. She had to look it up on the net, like maybe she’d done my poems three times that week. The orange-faced billionaire could use my stacks of shitty poetry to build his wall separating the U.S. from Mexico for how much paper waste was happening.

            “Rand,” Oleg said. I should’ve seen him coming. Should have smelt the remnants of whatever oniony, peasant lunch I’d watched him shove down in between bits of shouting and eBay bidding on his cell phone. But I was cock-blocked by casual racism and Lena grooving to the yuletide jams.

            “Enjoying the music, Grandfather Frost?” I asked, as Hazel searched away, and steel drum jingle bells ting-tingled over the din of combative children.

            Oleg looked back at the tall, black gentleman with the straw hat as if he’d like to kill him. “Rand, I get driver’s license.”

            He’d been notorious on these shores for being unable to pass his driver’s test. All security guards had to have a valid license. Dante couldn’t have written Oleg’s march toward becoming street legal. “Let me see it, comrade,” I said.

            “No, no.” Oleg pulled away as if he’d had license in hand. “I get my driver’s license.”

            “Like it’s coming in the mail?” I asked. “Or are you eating Cracker Jack again.”

            “Is no Cracker Jack.” Oleg’s face reddened. “I go to New Jersey to get license. Is easier there. If not there then I go to…”

            “You’re a liar Rand Wyndham,” Hazel said. She turned her screen to the blazing white Wikipedia page she’d found. “The highest concentration of Arabs is in Sterling Heights, Michigan.”

            “Obviously a hot bed for jihad,” I said. “Be sure to cancel your vacation plans. Also, I meant highest concentration in New York City.”

            “You said America.” Hazel went back to the hunt.

            “Or I go to Kentucky,” Oleg said.

            I looked him up and down. “Get you some overalls you’d fit in. What’s your opinion on creationism?”

            “I am the lord thy God thou shalt have no other gods before me,” Hazel interrupted.

            “I go for driver’s test,” Oleg said.

            “Why don’t you just pass the test here?” I asked, as Jingle Bells tinkled into Little Child of Bethlehem, and no one in the library gave a shit save Lena.

I figured, fuck it too, and logged onto my Gmail, while Oleg mentally scanned the U.S. map he had in his head, and Hazel continued in her daily pursuit of stumping me. I still held out hope that I’d hear from Carolina though it had been weeks since our little fun at the Tin Whistle. I’d almost given up hope on her getting us God-boy for Killian’s reading. And I hadn’t gone out of my way to write her either; at least not after she hadn’t responded to the first nine emails.

I had Larissa now. We were working out sort-off well; I generally enjoyed being around her. Sometimes she talked too much about poetry and the poetry scene. Whose online journal was this. Whose online journal was that. Who published problematic bro-poets and shitheads who wrote rape poems about other poets. But I didn’t mind. I was a gossip at heart. She bugged me a bit about my drinking. That annoyed me at times. Larissa was always exercising and eating vegan. She told me a good run and a hearty lentil stew beat any double vodka, but I had yet to believe her. We had kinky sex, when I could get it up. We had her wailing batshit roommate. Like I said, we sort-of got along.

“Test is rigged,” Oleg said. “Driver takes Oleg out onto streets with busy cars and kids running against lights. He says, turn! He says, break! He says, stop at red light! Then, park! Then, turn!” His face was red with anger. “How can Oleg drive in such madness?”

“I never took you for the martyr type but I can see it now.”

“Oleg tells driving instructor is speed limit! Is Limit! Is Limit! Is Limit!” And on and on and on in that Khrushchev way he had of pounding and shaking his fist. “This is why I go Kentucky!”

“Queens has the highest concentration of Arabs,” Hazel said. “Astoria.” She rolled her eyes. “They call it Little Egypt.”

“Maybe you should go back to looking up poetry,” I said.

Hazel blushed. “I…” Then one of the Arab boys called one of the other Arab boys an asshole for taking his cell phone. “Do something about them,” Hazel said to Oleg. “Before they do something to us.” In seconds he was over by the children shouting and screaming in a mixture of vulgar English and Russian that hadn’t been heard in these parts since his last visit to the DMV. The boys took it in good humor at first, but after the first few minutes they began to look scared shit-less.

“Why is it something has to be done about those boys, but the three little ofay jerks that were in here yesterday silly stringing the cookbooks were little angels?”

“That was just good old American horseplay, not lousy Jihadists talking their filth,” Hazel said. “My country love it or leave it.”

“I’d love to leave this shithole.”

“And go where, Rand?”

“Somewhere where I wouldn’t understand what people were saying to each other, and I could finally be in peace.”

Larissa’s green light came on her Gmail. While I was developing a warm fondness for the girl, Larissa was an online chatterer of the mundane sort. I was more the email and I’ll get back to you kind. In the few weeks we’d been together I couldn’t count the number of times my Gmail consistently displayed the little gray box with Larissa Says…waiting for me to chat. It had been cute the first few times but now I took it as an ominous sign. I wasn’t sure if that boded well for the relationship.

“Oleg could go to Tennessee too,” he said, marching back over after putting the fear of Allah into that group of boys. The look of satisfaction on Hazel’s face made me want to pray for a Democratic Socialist Revolution. She already had a sticker for the orange-faced billionaire on the bumper of her gas guzzling car.

“Get a license, hit the honky tonks in Nashville; show some drunken Southern belle your undressed herring.”

What are you doing? Larissa’s little chat bubble said.

Toggling between Xenophobia and someone trying to cheat the system, I typed. I’m having the all-American conversation….and there’s steel drums. Then I made sure to ask the all-important: And what are YOU doing?

Chatting you waiting to teach yoga, she typed. A natural senryu writer she was not.

            In the few weeks we’d been together I never quite got an angle on what Larissa really did for money. She taught yoga. I think she was a freelance editor. She volunteered at the co-op but that didn’t pay. I thought I heard Larissa tell Gigi that she was teaching poetry at some community center in Red Hook. She got checks in the mail at times from her old man. But I wasn’t one to judge. I would’ve made a beautiful leech had I rich parents.

            I didn’t know what to write. I did the standard, cool, and then waited her out.

            “You can just tell those kids are primed for some Islamic group,” Hazel said.

            “Islam is scourge,” Oleg said. “We have same problems in Chechnya.”

“You poor man,” Hazel said. It was a meeting of the minds.

            Well, that’s cool, Larissa typed. I’d entered a Mensa meeting. One more person and we’d be able to reinvent the wheel.

            “Why is this man only playing Christmas music?” Willy said, right on cue. He appeared to the left of Hazel and asked his question deep into her breasts. “And why are you and Rand always working the desk together?”

            “It’s a Christmas program, Willy,” she said.

            “And you never show up for your desks,” I added.

            He shook the flyer at me. “It says holiday program, hol-i-day. Holiday programs usually mean all kinds of music.”

“Why don’t you ask the man in the straw hat to strike up some polka or Kwanzaa music?” I said.

            “I’m not asking him anything,” Willy said. If anyone wanted to know what I wanted for Christmas it was to pull out all of Willy’s moustache hairs. “You’re my so-called supervisor so I’m coming to you.”

            “I’m your actual supervisor,” I said. “Much to my chagrin.”

            “Okay then.” Willy crossed his arms.

“I’d help you but minus some retail PTSD, I’m completely apathetic to your situation.”

            What are you doing now? Larissa typed. Was she serious?

            Discussing the true meaning of Christmas, I typed back.

            Gee texted me. Apparently, Godfrey Whitt is coming to Killian’s store on Friday.

            You don’t say, I wrote.

            You aren’t a little bit surprised?

            Tis the season for miracles?

            Speaking of Christmas…. But then she trailed off and I got that Larissa is entering text note. Well, there went the answer to Carolina’s silence. She was just looking for a way to subtly nudge back into my life. No phone calls. No dramatic emails. Well played. I wondered if she was coming with God-boy to the store. I’d have to email Killian. I could feel a sick day coming if she was.

            “You never help me when I need something,” Willy said.

            “I had HR send those retirement papers to you, and I held the door that one time.”

            “I didn’t ask for retirement papers!”

            “Occasionally I help myself,” I said. “But name one instance where I don’t help you.”

            “Like…” But he had nothing. It was a shame because I had a ton of shit to counter him. Like Willy scheduling doctor’s appointments at the last minute, and then not telling me until the day of said appointment. Like Willy calling off all the time, even when he had scheduled children’s programs. Like Willy never weeding his section of picture books, so Scott did it. Like Willy not cleaning up where he ate his lunch, not washing dishes, or not flushing his piss because he was too stoned to remember. Like Willy maybe printing up my shit.     

Umm, Larissa typed. She began with a lot of ummms. But I didn’t care because most of the time she was writing me she was wearing some form of spandex pants and a shirt that left her belly uncovered. The images that showed up in my email post chat were worth ummms. So I’m having a Holiday party.

            I didn’t think Satanists celebrated holidays, I wrote.

            Former Satanist.

            “Last week you needed the one o’clock lunch, and Rand gave you the noon lunch,” Hazel reminded Willy.

            “That’s right,” he said. “A noon lunch on the late shift. That has to be against union regulations.”

            “But then I gave you the two o’clock lunch, Jimmy Hoffa, and you didn’t come back until three-thirty,” I said. Then I wanted to add, because you fell asleep stoned in your car. To Larissa I typed, once a Satanist always a Satanist.

            You just think it’s sexy, she wrote. But…Christmas…I’m also going upstate to my sister’s and I’d like you to come with me. I know it’s short notice and I know we haven’t been going out long…I just hate the idea of you spending Christmas alone…and so does my sister. She invited me and you.

            Your sister is obviously a bad judge of character as well.

            “In Tennessee they no make you drive on street,” Oleg said.

            “Since you’re mostly driving on sidewalks now,” I said, “I’m sure you’ll fit in.”

            “It was not three-thirty,” Willy said.

            “It was more like three-fifteen,” Hazel said.

            “Or three-thirty-five if you want to get really specific,” I said.  I stared at the computer screen. Nothing. Then Larissa entering text. The twenty-first century was such a bore.

            I take it that means no, she wrote.

            But I’m willing to negotiate this Holiday Party thing you have cooking up.

            Wait…you weren’t going to come to that either?

“Are you going to write me up now for being late?” Willy asked. I looked up at him. One pulled piece of moustache hair at a time, I thought, as Little Child of Bethlehem morphed into Here Comes Santa Claus, and Lena Alvarez bounced with excitement. “Because I’ll go call my union rep right now.”

            “The day I write someone up is the day I commit seppuku,” I said, as I stared at what Larissa wrote, and visions of old bosses that I’d tormented danced in my head. “I don’t even care if you show up here or not…but my position as a cog in this system and my desire not to do extra work or practically live her to cover your late shifts insist that I at least inquire as to your whereabouts and/or enforce your presence.”

            “If you don’t care about writing people up, why did you become a supervisor?” Hazel asked. To her being a supervisor was a punitive and divisive act by its very nature.

            “To meet interesting, open-minded people such as yourself,” I said. I looked at Willy who went from looking at Hazel’s breasts to looking at Lena bent over to shelve a book in between her bursts of holiday revelry.

            “Not one Hanukkah song,” Willy said. “He hasn’t played one Hanukkah song.”

            “Maybe he doesn’t know any.”

            “The Dreidel Song? How can you not know the Dreidel Song?”

            “Dreidel spins round and round,” Hazel sang in a raspy voice that she often claimed sounded like Janis Joplin. Knowing one line in the Dreidel Song was her version of being tolerant of others religions.

            “Yeah, that’s it!” Willy said. “I should get my guitar and do a Hanukkah program. Hazel could sing for me.”

            “Let’s not get too ambitious,” I said. But ambition was no problem for Willy. In an hour he’d be hiding in some crevice playing Candy Crushers on his phone, or angrily texting his ex-wife’s attorney.

            “I drive on no sidewalks, Rand!” Oleg finally shouted.

            Me and parties don’t mix well, I wrote to Larissa. To Oleg: “Why not canvas all of Dixieland and see what you can come up with. I think in Texas you need only pledge allegiance to the Lone Star Flag and fire bomb an abortion clinic and you’re in.”

            “Are you going to do something about this music or what?” Willy said.

            “Go talk to Scott,” I said. “He set up this program.”

            “Scott will just get offended,” Hazel said. “He gets very upset.” One of the Arab kids smacked the other with his notebook. “The real question here is what are you and Sheldon going to do about those junior members of ISIS?”

            I pushed back from my PC. I looked at all of them. Hazel. Willy. Oleg. Larissa entering text. Lena Alvarez enjoying the music. The old people snoozing at tables and slobbering all over the New York Times. The cacophony of kids running. Chinese grandmas spitting into garbage cans. The one dude nursing a can of beer in a brown paper bag, who didn’t think I knew. Scott blinking at me while sitting at the right hand of the black man in the straw hat who played no Hanukkah songs. The Arab kids. And I felt overwhelmed and sickened with all of them. The shit good old Rand had to do to make a fucking dollar. I knew people had it worse. But fuck if we didn’t live in our own hells. And Christmas could hang.

            Calmly I pushed back in. I wrote Larissa, Look, I gotta go. Talk later. Then I signed off the Gmail. One problem solved, a whole host of others boiling below the surface.

            “I’m not asking Scott anything,” Willy said. I stood. He backed away like I was going to hit him. Stoned as he always was, the man had a keen intuition.

            “Write the union,” I said. “Write the director of the library. Write the Dali Lama. Write the president. Write the orange-faced billionaire. I don’t care.”

            “You’re paid to care,” Hazel said, as I started walking away. “And where are you going? You still have ten minutes left on the desk.”

            “It’s not even my shift,” I said.

            “And wearing shorts at work goes against union regulations,” Willy added.

            But I didn’t answer. I didn’t know where I was going. The bathroom. Outside to breathe in the humid, warm air of a New York December climate apocalypse. It wasn’t even four in the afternoon and I needed a drink. Where was the serenity in this life if you couldn’t find it in a fucking library? Where was the comfort in the holiday season? The promise in steel drum Christmas Carols? Christmas. Hanukkah. Kwanzaa. The Winter Solstice. You could keep them all.

            “Don’t ever grow old,” I said to Lena in passing.

            She turned and smiled, put the hand on her cheek, tossed the raven hair; the usual Lena Alvarez thing that she did. “I won’t,” she said. “I still believe in Santa Claus.”

            “Of course you do.”

            I felt like such an ugly fuck for trying to flirt with Lena, if that’s what I was even doing. I’d become just another foul old man, like Willy, who watched high school and college girls bend over, who asked them trivial shit because it would keep a young lady in my presence for more than a split-second. Small bits of pathetic conversation said to me: I matter. Lena Alvarez saying she still believed in Santa Claus would get me through the next hour while she wouldn’t even remember if she saw me or not that day.  At my age I was as forgettable as yesterday’s news. All I could do was navigate within the strands of my pathetic DNA; roll with the punches as they say. And maybe head upstate for Christmas with Larissa, and try to live this life.