Text. From Nathan.
“Come over,” it said.
“Right now?” I wrote back.
“Who is that?” Mattie asked. We were getting coffee. We were at something called Phoenix Coffee.
“Nathan.”
“You’re brother? I’ve never met him.”
“You want to?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said.
“I’ll tell him.”
“Don’t say anything about Laurie,” I punched into the phone. I hit send.
***
At Nathan’s house. I ring the doorbell. Mattie is on her toes. She lowers to the ground. She is flexing her calf muscles.
Nathan opens the door. He wears a red-checked polyester shirt. He has a screwdriver in his hand.
“What’s up bro?” Nathan hugs me.
“Nathan, this is Mattie,” I said.
“Hey...” she said carrying out “hey” longer than it should have been.
Nathan had a hammer in his hand. There was a table of wooden planks behind him. There was a table saw. There was sawdust.
“It’s good to meet you,” Nathan said. “This is what I wanted to show you.”
He walked to the table. He lifted a 5-foot tall triangular piece.
“Whoa that’s huge,” Mattie said.
“Yes, big birdhouses,” Nathan said. “For a bunch of birds.”
“A birdhouse? Like, you mean like sea gulls? You want the gulls to come?” I said.
“Got it. People can put like bread and stuff in here for them, instead of throwing it out on the beach and everyone getting ticked.”
Nathan sounded nerdy. But he was smiling. Mattie was smiling.
“I am impressed with your craftsman skills,” Mattie said. “Whoa, is this the new Bun-B?”
On the table among scattered woodchips, the scattered sawdust, the random handsaw, the handsome tablesaw, a new album from Bun-B, Nathan and I took different philosophical stances on the rap-hip-hop-bounce-whatever else genre and releases, him a fan, me not so much, the profane, the violence -- “it’s just so subdued in what you listen to” he would say and there was nothing left after that, he was honest with his music, taking in rap as well as any punk-emo-garage rock I could throw at him, as fluent in Bun-B as in Deerhunter.
“You like him?”
“I love Trill so much,” Mattie said.
“That was a good record,” Nathan said.
***
“Come over and help me Pack,” I texted.
“Why” she wrote.
“I need some help.” I wrote.
“Thats not good reason.”
“Cuz I asked you to.”
“Still no.”
“COME ON!!!!1”
“Am finishing Proj Runway. Will be 30min-2hours.”
Opened cabinets under my sink and found a box of Winn Dixie brand garbage bags. Black ones, with a draw string. I pulled out the roll. I unpeeled them. I opened my cabinet. Plates in there, Tupperware, a blender. I put all of these into a garbage bag.
I tied the garbage bag. I took it to the door. I walked back to the kitchen and opened another garbage bag. I opened the pantry. I put a spice rack, a box of oatmeal, a box of cereal, three rice bags and Hamburger Helper boxes into the bag. I put other stuff into the bag until it was full. I pulled the red drawstring and tied it. I took this bag and placed it by the door.
I did this repeatedly for various closets, spaces and rooms. I had close to 12 bags full of stuff.
They were all in black bags.
The phone buzzed. Laurie. “On my way” it read.
XIV
From Craigslist:
“Lanier Shaubach Commercial Services is a manufacturer of unique composite home systems. Our automated, state of the art production system employs several technologies and processes. Our new and green product is expanding rapidly in many markets of the world, giving our company a bright and healthy future.
We are in need of an EXPERIENCED WEB Designer. This is a FULL TIME/PERMANENT position. We are in need of a Team Player with a CAN DO attitude. We currently need our website(s) completely re-done and then maintained. This is a CAREER opportunity, not just another job. We are looking to hire immediately. I could go into detail about the job, but if you are a web designer, then you already know what is required of you.
Please forward your resume WITH salary requirements as soon as possible. We look forward to hearing from dedicated team players.”
Message on Gchat from Nathan:
-what’s up?
looking for jobs.
-any luck?
shoulda gone into webdesign
-bro chexck it into finance research; where it’s at
that’s what i’m afraid of.
-u’ll find something.
eventually.
-chexck this.
A link. From Craigslist:
“Birdhouses for Sale! Large Birdhouses! Perfect for seagulls. Use at in the garden or at the beach.
$75
Call Nathan at 727-xxx-xxxx.”
***
"Have you seen my place?” Uncle Ander said.
Walking with Uncle Ander, cracks in the sidewalk, grass finds its way through, pass the gas station and the two half-court basketball courts to keep beach kids down from ever excelling at anything. There is no sound, the waves are quiet, like a genteel dirty bath to be drained after the toddler is tucked in. The Candy Kitchen with homemade taffy, big boxes of manufactured sugar with names lacking confidence like Runts and Saf-T-Pops and U-No, the Winn-Dixie with sour meat and soft produce and cashiers missing teeth and managers with alimony payments so high they can only unload the dairy cart while high.
“I’ve been to your house. I’m moving in.”
"No, the hotel,” Uncle Ander said.
"What hotel?" I said.
“That’s the deal I mentioned. On the phone. The deal with Luis,” he said.
“God,” I said.
“Loves you,” he said. "What’s the matter? You have a problem with it? I can afford it. You have a problem with me? I can do it.”
"What about the market? It's crazy,” I said.
"Real estate on the beach is never bad,” he said.
"What about running the hotel?" I asked.
"What about it?"
"You don't know how to do it."
"I won't do it. I'll hire people. What are you doing? What's on your leg?" he asked.
A scab on my leg, a bloated mosquito bite turned scab, I scrape away the remains, a small black red pinhead emerges, I let it sit there, I like to watch it grow.
"Nothing."
"Well, if you're not doing anything, you can run the hotel."
"I don't even know..."
"That's okay I'll show you."
"...where I am."
“That’s okay, you’re moving in with me.”
***
Clipped, staccato, relying on really easy tropes to speak the language. Bad rich people, bad fancy law firms, noble and pure bootstrappers who don't know any better, but salt of the earth sense develops and finds purpose, they only need Wall Street to understand wealth, looking for SOMETHING DEEPER, to contribute to, to understand the plight of the common man, only to find that all the common man wants is money and more of it, and more of it all the time.
***
I peer through the blinds. A truck with the words “Brothers Trucks” is in the parking lot. A man gets out of the driver’s seat of the truck. He walks to a point underneath the building where I can no longer see him. I step back from the window. I sit on the couch.
The doorbell rings. It is the man from Brothers Trucks. It is the man whom I once saw in the parking lot eating ice cream with his dog and reading the “Women We Love” issue at the library.
“I’ve seen you,” I said. “I saw you eating ice cream with your dog at the grocery store.”
“Yes, that was me.”
“I think I’ve seen you at the library,” I sa
id.
“Not so sure about that,” he said. “How much stuff you got?”
I point at the garbage bags.
“Bachelor, huh?” he said. “What about this couch? The rest of the furniture?”
“I’m leaving it except for my movies, DVD player and TV,” I said. “And my computer.”
“A regular nomad, huh?” he said. “Let’s get started.” He picked up two garbage bags.
“Is your name Dick then?” I asked.
“No, absolutely not,” he said. “Took that hat from my son. He got it at the mall, I think.”
XV
There was nowhere to park. People were already parked in other people’s yards.
A sign was out front, with a few tables in the yard. Laurie and I got out of the car.
“Do you think they’ll have any purses?” she said.
“I don’t know.”
Beaded belts and bad tattoos and long mustaches and high-white socks with white gray tennis shoes and Keds and pleated shorts with polyester hats, faces with liver spots, faces with bruises, pants across wide bodies with the elastic stretched, bare feet and hair picks, shirts that said “Dixie Girls” and shirts that said “Avirex,” the people the items would become one and the same, they would return to their cars with their newly purchased used items, only to sell it in three months and buy the same thing 6 months later.
The garage door was open. An actual garage sale with a garage.
“Hey, how’s it going?” some bro with nappy curled hair to his chin. A faded gray shirt was on him, the shirt said “I saw Pike’s Peak and Lived.”
Roller blades, a box of basketball and soccer balls, cleats, a drum kit, a synth and a reusable beer pong set were in the garage. A box of old postcards sat next to a shoe box of costume jewelry. Laurie flipped through the postcards.
“Um, I was looking for the Atari 2600...” I told the Pike’s Peak guy.
“Wood panel?”
“Sure, that works.”
“Okay...it’s around it’s inside. Come with me.”
We walked to his front brick stoop.
“I don’t like to put the electronics outside, you know. Rain, mucus from 5 year olds, that sort of thing.”
“Oh,” I said.
A dining room table stacked with controllers, computer cords, and videogame consoles.
“This is like a museum...” I said.
“Almost not quite, I’m just now selling them.”
An N-64 in one box, complete with GoldenEye and WCW Wrestling and MarioKart, original PlayStation with Fight Night and Gran Torino. A Sega Dreamcast. A Sega Genesis. A Super Nintendo.
“I didn’t play games as a kid,” Pike’s Peak said. “So like 7 or 8 years ago I got an Xbox and was like, this is good, so I just started going backwards. Getting a new system like every other year. working my way back...gaining history.”
“Why do you have two Ataris?”
“Not sure how that happened. Anyway you want one?”
“Sure. how much?”
“$65 is that good? with 6 games including Frogger and Galaga?”
“They’re more than that on ebay.”
“Cool, man cool. And lemme know if you have any problems, I like to stay engaged with my customers. Name’s Court.”
“I’m Wallace.” I pulled out my checkbook. Court handed me a card.
Court Jansen. Underneath his name it said, “Importer/Exporter”
“Like Art Vandelay,” I said.
“Exactly and not exactly at the same time.”
Court handed me the wood-paneled Atari 2600.
“Is the synthesizer in the garage for sale?” I asked.
“You play? I’ll show it to you,” he said.
He closed the door. We walked back to the garage. Laurie was putting on fake earrings.
“See man, it was my ex’s, we were in this band together. We kind of split the band, she got in with this hot sauce salesman after watching King of Kong, she got stoked after that movie. That’s all there is to that,” Court said.
“Sounds complicated,” I said. “Wait, she’s with Billy Mitchell?”
“Naw man, no. She went and found her own hot sauce salesman.”
“We all need one of those,” I said.
“Totally,” Court said. He went behind the drum kit and grabbed the synth off a workbench.
“Think it’s a MicroKorgXL Synth and a vocoder,” he said. “Try it out.
“No, no. He knows nothing,” Laurie said.
“I took piano lessons as a kid,” I said.
“There’s a USB hookup on the back, just plug into Garage Band and let’er go,” he said.
“Nice,” I said. “How much?”
“How bout $450, nice discount for getting the Atari, coming with this hot woman.” Not sure if Court licked his lips, he may have.
“Excuse us,” Laurie said. She grabbed my arm, like I was making a bad decision in a romantic comedy. “What are you doing?”
“Until you grabbed my arm, I was going to buy a synthesizer,” I said.
“And why exactly were you going to do that?” she asked.
“I thought it would be fun.” “What about this?” Laurie said. She pointed to the Atari. “This was supposed to be for fun too.”
“I’m sure that is fun too.”
“Wallace, you can’t be spending your money like this. I mean $500? That’s like over a month’s rent. And you don’t have a real job,” she said.
“I can do it. I know what I’m doing,” I said. I walked back to Court. Laurie walked to the Ford Explorer.
“Here’s another check,” I said.
“Thanks man,” Court said. “And give me a call if you need anything.”
***
John McCain:
“Time will only allow me to thank a few of our Florida supporters by name, but to everyone who, in good times and bad, devoted so much time, energy and hope to keeping our candidacy competitive, thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
XVI
No longer a highway when the day ends, gentle creaks and laughs on the sidewalk outside, there are people living, milling, looking for a drink, it is vacation somewhere, everywhere right now here right now, one person's daily life is another person's relaxation, the waves come day after day, they come by everyday, sometimes people look for them other times people don't, some so near the beach can only understand and want Oprah and find their way with high knee socks and safari hats and white A-shirts to the Publix, slopping through 70/30 or 80/20 meat, spoiling meat, decaying meat kept at bay by these refrigerated monsters, were these ever supposed to exist in the south anyway? And they pick and claw and chew, some get marked down, this spoiling meat watching its DUE DATE creep close, like three roaches on a front porch underneath your feet and this is the meat that the A-shirted tube-socked pale retiree will choose because ROTTEN MEAT is always THE CHEAPEST. Making it to Florida is where every bit of money had been spent, there was nothing left for meat.
***
Tripped, fell out the door really and she into my arms, I caught her, there was no one else to imagine right then, Mattie there and accessible. Across the bay, out tonight, at the Crowbar, Mattie like a knowing bird and proud lioness, confident stride her hair beautiful, her jeans knowing where to accentuate as if she planned to strike notes on all chords and she was, she was. Her friend’s band playing, a friend of a friend, Have Gun Will Travel, dirty Americana -- “thought you might like to hear them” -- she had said on the phone, protest in my mind, demeanor, didn’t believe it would ever be a good idea, but my lips said “yes” my heart then charging, reigniting, new action in another of town, a release with an okay girl, an okay girl who I never believed in, she fell in my arms and I saw the glimpse, the sign, the idea of why I made a pact like that so many years ago -- her slight wrinkles, her full dimples, she was here and I was here and the opening band was terrible.
“I think I know that guy,” I shouted to her, the bang of the ban
d’s drone punk moving the walls.
She yelled something back one ear over the other, cute really, like that one time we almost kissed in high school, never mind the words being said.
“What?”
We stayed there with the music, the motion, the waves of tank-topped hipster kids coming, going, we all need a chance to do things we would not usually do.
XVII
Thrillers, legal ones, spy ones, from $3.99 to $5.99 to $7.99, for the airport consumer, the consumer on the go, in the portable DVD player, highly educated looking for the lowest level of entertainment the airports the new beach, waiting and waiting, waves and waves of planes and water, with overcharged soft drinks, nothing settles the stomach like Top Secret! and Who’s Harry Crumb?
***
Dialed Court’s number, like a stalker or someone about to ask him on a date or someone weird from craigslist, nervous really, this is stupid, nothing to do, like we’re 8 years old in the summer, should be working on my summer reading list or should be scanning eBay, should be finding homeless men and feeding them, should be finding stray animals and guiding them to shelter, should mow the grass for old people... “Hella.”
“Court?”
“Yep.”
“Dude, hey, this is Wallace, you know I bought the Atari a few weeks back?”
“Yep, bro, what’s going on?”
“I’m starting this band. Want you to play drums in it.”
“Hell yes.”
“Um, really?”
“It’s cool. I just need something to do,” he said.
“Good, good. We can practice at my place. Bring your stuff over.”
“Wait, uh, Wallace you playing that synth?”
“Thought I might try it out and here’s the deal...”
I tell him the idea, the synth new wave feel, deep backbeats with 80s movies quotes and dialogue composed through the laptop, just samples then he said: “samples of the dialogue?”
“Yeah exactly,” I said and then he said: “And then we could generally sing about the 80s, wayfarers sunglasses and Izod shirts and ‘Miami Vice‘” -- “no let’s just keep it to the movies,” I interrupted, competently and confidently like I just waxed a Porsche, no, like I just watched someone wax my Porsche and I slipped them a $20 for a job well done, this will be a job well done, this will be an idea well done.
XVIII
“Bring Nathan too,” Uncle Ander said.