wanna meet e’ryone.”
“I’ll do that.” I say. “Thanks.”
“Tell us again what inspired you to become a preacher.” Eduardo says.
“Why are you here?” I ask him.
“I’m making a documentary on this man.”
“You don’t even have a camera.” I say.
“This is just prep work. The actual filming comes later. This is just the broad, before-hand stuff.” He seems to have forgotten about asking after the preacher’s inspiration, and if his inquiree had heard the question in the first place, he doesn’t give any indication to that effect. I lean back in the couch and Eduardo does the same.
“So this is Touches.” I say.
“What?”
“Touches. I guess they resurrected it? Or were just trying to cash in on the rep by naming it that?”
“What are you talking about?” Eduardo asks.
“Touches.” I say. “This place is called Touches.”
“No, man.” He says. “This is”
A dance track comes in kicking down the sound system, and his words are buried under thumping electronic beats and the voice of a wailing woman. It sounds like he says “Secret Love.” Or “Beats Club.” I know better than to ask him to repeat himself.
When we walk back outside the preacher comes with us.
“Flee sexual immorality,” he slurs. “Flee it.”
“I’m not sure this documentary is such a good idea,” I say, even though I’m not convinced there even is a documentary.
“And?” Eduardo asks. He looks at me with a blankly curious face.
“The works of the flesh are evident!” The preacher suddenly straightens up and looks back and forth at us, from one to the other. “Food's meant for the stomach... and the stomach for food.” He fumbles in his pocket and fishes out another business card, hands it to me. “God will destroy both one'n th' other. The body's not meant for sexual imm'rality, but for the Lord.” He looks one more time at me. “An' the Lord's f'r the body.”
When I had returned home the night before I’d found Steve sprawled on the sidewalk in front of my house.
“Hey man.”
“Hey.”
“Want some weed?”
“What are you doing out here, Steve?
“I live here.”
He had gestured at the house next to mine.
“No you don’t, Steve.” I knew the people in that house. Two crazed women with the stereotypical horde of stray cats coming and going from a million cat doors all day and all night. The women were white-haired and bone-fingered and fat in odd places and they wore clothes from the thrift store, garish blouses and layers of sweaters and scarves. “Two old women live in that house, Steve.”
“Shhhhhhhh.”
He had held a finger to his lips and smiled with something that I supposed he meant to look like mischief. I then turned and went in, and turned off the lights before going to bed.
“You can’t make a documentary about my city.” I say.
“Your city?”
“It is my city. I live here. This is mine. You’re not... you're not part of this.”
“I can make a documentary if I want to.” Eduardo says. “Don’t worry, you’ll look good in it.”
I stop and face him, forcing him to stop walking as well.
“Listen,” I say. “I once had this crush on this girl.”
“Oh?” I think when Eduardo hears this he is already thinking about whether he can make a documentary about it.
“I had this crush on this girl, and it was the purest, most beautiful thing ever. It was the most perfect love in the world.”
“And it is now a very much defunct love, judging by the fact that you’re telling me about it.”
“That’s what I’m trying to say,” I say. “Listen: I thought that to draw any artistic inspiration from this love would be to tarnish it. To take something beautiful and make it utilitarian, to use it functionally, as a way to produce some artistic output.”
“You don’t strike me as the artistic type.” Eduardo says, lighting a cigarette, immobile, since I’m still blocking his way.
“The point is, one day, still very much pining in this unrequited sort of way, I sit down to write a story about a similarly doomed lover, cribbing heavily from my own experiences.”
“If this turns out to be some sort of Pygmalion story I think I’m going to puke.”
“Shut up. I write this story, about a doomed, pining lover, but at the end I leave it open for hope. There’s a possibility of reunion. There’s room for closure.”
“At least my documentaries aren’t high-flown masturbation-therapy.”
“And then I edited the story, weeks later. Just a few minor edits, here and there. Verb tenses, word choices. But when I sat back and look at the finished product I realized I’d completely re-written the story—it no longer cribbed from my life but repeated it verbatim, and, most importantly, the ending had changed. Where once I'd left open a route to escape, a vague hope, here it was definitely ended, the characters cut off and all hope willfully abandoned. The next day I got the news that my crush had gotten married in a midnight shotgun wedding. It had happened the night before, at the same time I had been editing my story.”
Eduardo is silent for a moment, sucking on his cigarette. Too much, this looks like something out of a movie. Or a documentary about documentary filmmakers. Or a story.
“I’m not sure I care about what happened to you in highschool.” He says, finally, dropping the only-half-finished cigarette and tamping it with his toe.
“Leave the preacher alone.” I say.
“What preacher?” Eduardo asks.
“Don’t fuck with me, Eduardo.”
“You take care too now, okay?”
“This is my city!” I say. “I own it! I know it! These are my people! I found them! I talked to them first! I discovered them! I discovered the American Paranoid Restaurant! I know the preacher! I know about the pictures! I know where to find the best french fries in town! I--”
“Where?” Eduardo asks.
“What?”
“The french fries. Let’s go.”
When we reach the gas station at the edge of town there is no diner attached. In its place is a gleaming red, white, and blue building, its roof angled sharply up, the carhop girls skating from parked car to parked car beneath the concrete overhang. We sit at a table, a concession to pedestrians such as ourselves, and are joined by a woman whose denim shorts exude muscled thighs, and whose hair flows out with alacrity from beneath a paper garrison cap.
“What can I do for you today, gentlemen?”
I have heard this voice before.
“Two french fries.” Eduardo orders.
“All right, I'll be right out!”
She skates away and I see the thrust of the pavement through the wheels of her foot traveling into the displacement of first one buttock, then the other.
“This looks promising.” Eduardo says.
“This isn't the place I went to before.”
“What?”
“This isn't the place,” I say. “with the out-of-this-world french fries.”
“Don't try to kid me,” Eduardo says. “I know you're jealous, but you have to share your finds with me.”
“No,” I say. “This isn't the place at all.”
When the girl comes back she sets down two steaming plastic baskets overflowing with fries, the salt in the corners of the waxed paper mounding up and the grease creeping over her fingertips.
“Enjoy, gentlemen.”
There are two cokes here as well, which we did not order, and a large milkshake.
“They must have got our order confused.” I say.
The waitress has already left.
“Must have.” Says Eduardo.
We dig in, and I drag my basket of fries closer, lifting back the corner of the paper that lines i
t. On the rim of the basket there are raised letters, a string of numbers and punctuation.
“Do you read the Bible?” I ask.
“Every chance I get.” Eduardo takes three fries at once and drags them through a mass of ketchup, bending them nearly to the breaking point in their accumulation of the condiment before lifting the bundle to his mouth.
I can't tell if it's a serial number or a page reference. Eduardo lifts his extra-large coca-cola and sucks at the straw. On the bottom edge of the cup I see more letters and numbers. I can't remember if “Mfk” is an abbreviation for an industry term or for a forgotten gospel. Maybe 23:25 is a density rating, a guide to how a thing might be recycled. That Eduardo's beverage should be stamped with chapter-and-verse directions to the divine seems implausible.
“When I was a kid I used to listen to televangelists on the radio.” I say.
“Oh god. Not another story about when you were a kid, please.”
The waitress comes back, coasting towards us and giving a little hop over the curb, her breasts bouncing.
“How's it going?” She asks. I remember where I've heard her voice.
“Have you ever worked in radio?” I ask.
“No...” She says. Suddenly shy, she reaches for the back of her neck and puts her head down, her feet moving slightly back and forth to maintain her balance.
“Do you think I'd be any good?”
“I think you'd be very good.” I say. “My friend here has connections.”
“Do you really?” She asks, looking at Eduardo, who has finished the fries and is starting on the milkshake.
“Sure.” He says. “I've got connections all over the place.”
When we leave Eduardo has the waitress's phone number written on a piece of paper in his back pocket.
“Tell me more about these televangelists.” He says to me.
I had