K. Kvashay-Boyle
Not Me Shot Dead
The main thing that gave them away was the terror of bulletproof
body armor, velcroed on like superman pecs and abs, which as you can
imagine, came as a shock. And that’s an understatement. It was like
my arms fell off. The guns you couldn’t even really see at first.
Campus, at night, is a manic anthill in a concrete sea. Like if you
saw it from the sky it would be all dark, some shitty billboards,
some cars on freeways, then: bam! crashed in there between the
parking lots and the used cars and the Jenga-stacked apartment
blocks, all dark, there are floodlights. Even the outskirts of
campus are dark. But the dorms converge at the library and tucked
into the bottom corner of Birnkrant there is coffee at Trojan
Grounds. And that’s where the action is. It’s so well-lit the birds
get confused and tweet all night long. It’s white kids and rich kids
and kids studying at the tables, kids smoking on the stairs or
locking up their bikes, kids waiting to get buzzed into the dorms,
kids with books or dates or in pajamas, sneakers, bathrobes, even
fancy sweaters and Prada miniskirts or some such thing, but not
everyone’s like that, there are other people, people like me, who
would only ever wear a sweatshirt and sneakers, and there we are all
centered around the last thing open late.
Trojan Grounds. One a.m.
But the feeling in the fluorescent-lit air is not like late at
night. These fountains, they’re like summertime noon. They’re
splashing around like firecrackers. The way it looks when there are
girls sitting there at the lip of the water? I like the prettiest
ones. And there they are. With their books on Darwinian Feminism and
Intro to Film Theory, clutching their grande non-fat lattes, eating
Doritos, talking on tiny phones. And here I am, I’m running right up
the stairs with a little jump in my step like if I were on a
skateboard it would look really cool—but something stops me short.
And then it’s like I said before, the shock, it’s like my arms fell
off. It’s like how it feels to bang your nose. Because standing just
inside the door, right there, right out in the light, is a man who
is huge. And he’s too big wearing all black like in movies about
L.A. where they rob banks and shoot the witness dead.
The next thing I know I see what it is in his hands and it’s a
gun. Me: dead as fast as a finger snaps. But no, the girls keep
right on talking on their phones. The water in the fountain keeps
splashing like a bird beating its wings. And the kids inside the
coffee shop, the kids in bathrobes and miniskirts and sweatshirts,
all of them start to lie down on the floor. Scared as balloons
bursting to pop, all of them.
There on the threshold, I can see it through the window. I can
see their faces. But that’s later. Because first we talked the whole
dictionary in one flat second of looking straight at each other, me
and the guy with the gun.
The swinging glass door between us is no shield but so long as
I’m on this side, I think. So long as I stay right here on the steps
and not inside on the floor like I never won the lottery or had any
lucky thing in my life. And even though I’m holding still, willing
stillness inside myself, my anxious hands are someone else’s and
they shake like I’m supercharged on caffeine, like miming a
basketball star, like tossing dice. But it isn’t funny. It’s the
scariest moment of my life, scarier still than an appendix out or no
money for house payments or the thick sounds of my father drunk on
the other side of the unpaid-for-wall in our unpaid-for-house as he
flicks on and off the lamp to be sure the bastards haven’t cut our
unpaid power.
I think these things and warily we glare, me alone in my fear,
and that man and the big thoughts that he thinks crowded with the
company of the gun, and there is panic on my face and in his tense
eyes there is a fierceness, a defiance, and that is what unnerves
me.
I’m not tall but if I had to fight I would do it. All of a
sudden, standing here, I’m thinking of Shelly and her face. I’m
thinking I should already have kissed her by now. But thinking of
Shelly is like the Fourth of July: there she is yesterday in the
movie theater laughing and it pops and sparks in my brain, then it’s
the blank sheet of tonight and I’m right here, finding out for real
what will happen next and not just wondering about kissing glossy
crooked lips. All this goes through my mind like it’s been more than
seconds since the last thing that happened. But no, I’m trapped in
right now like now will never end, and all the while I’m tied in
this over-lit night to the fierce, stark eyes of the guy with the
gun and whether he shoots me or not I could die right now of cancer
or a car accident or an aneurysm. I think of Shelly. I want to run.
The guy with the gun tilts the gun, beckoning me inside. A car
horn honks. The night air swarms warm and breezy against the back of
my neck. I try to think of one lucky thing. I picture my roommate
getting stiffed on the rent because I’m dead. I look at the kids in
line crouched flat against linoleum like it’s an earthquake drill.
The water in the fountain splashes like someone dropped a hundred
pennies all at once. I look at the gun and then I do the thing that
I’m about to do. He wants me inside and close to the gun and down on
the floor.
No, I think, no way, not me, and slowly I shake my head. Not me
shot dead.
We both are still. He is sizing me up right now, I know it, and I
try to be like someone who would be his friend. I’m standing poised
on the threshold. No sudden movements. He doesn’t want to call
attention. He can’t get me if I just stay still. I’m going to make
it be cool. I am not going inside there. I hold my breath. Cool.
It’s cool. Please be fucking cool. I let the clear glass between us
give me strength.
What I don’t want, of course, is to get shot. What I don’t want
is to get close to the gun. All this is true, yes, but also true is
what I haven’t said: I think I have a pretty good idea what he,
standing still with his sweat and his gun, wants to have happen. And
the thing that happens next is not cool. He motions again, a curt,
smooth lean towards the inside with the gun and his head gesturing
as one, and outside the door I don’t move except to raise my
fingertips and show the palms of my hands and I feel my breath like
glue in my mouth and there’s the spark of a quick pause before we
understand each other.
And then—then suddenly between the two of us an amazing thing
happens. Suddenly between the two of us flows a steady, careful
current. There’s a flicker of something. There’s an invisible
handshake, it’s a draw, stalemate, an impasse, and suddenly despite
the circumstances it’s clear we won’t do anything to each other,
this man with the gun and me in my sneakers. I can feel it. I’m sure
he wants me inside with everybody else, lying on the floor with my
hands over my head and maybe he wants this in a pretty reckless way,
but he trusts me to just stand still and I just stay like I am and
hold as rigidly still as if I were cast in glass, a little
see-through statue of me with a little plaque that reads Here Stands
Damien Amato, Please Don’t Shoot.
When everyone starts to lie down on the floor that only makes the
men more conspicuous because of course the men don’t lie down. Guns
are nothing like guns on TV. Five of them. All of them big. One of
the terrifying men leaps over the counter in a smooth acrobatic
motion and he knocks into Eduardo, this guy who works there. He
grabs Eduardo’s head. He is pulling on the hair so that the neck is
exposed and I am sure that now Eduardo will die and I think oh
please Jesus Christ don’t let him die. Eduardo’s head is being
crushed underneath the powerful thick arms of the terrifying man and
Eduardo, who has never been big, now looks like a tennis ball in the
jaws of pit bull.
There are black bags and green money, should I do something, I
think—and suddenly just like that it’s over. The gaze is broken. The
door swings open and it’s over. The terrifying men rush out towards
me and I don’t even feel myself step aside but I feel the cold metal
railing at my back and suddenly everyone around stops short and the
terrifying men are hustling, they’re shouting and they have deadly
guns and they jump into a car that I didn’t notice before, and then,
suddenly like a superhero just in time, a DPS officer screeches out
in his campus cruiser and I get the shock of my life: one of the
men, my man for all I know, leans from the window of the getaway car
and with his gun—bang!—he fires—bang!—at DPS.
Now people panic. Bang! People scream. The people inside Trojan
Grounds flood out and scatter and no one pays for what’s in their
hands. In the thick crush of kids I don’t see the cars speed away
but we can all hear the campus cruiser’s siren and the two sets of
tires screeching. We also hear the cannonball-crack of guns going
bang and that sound is a shock like a white flashlight blasting
the black dark. The grande non-fat lattes have been abandoned. At
first all the scared faces look fake, like joke masks or peek-a-boo.
People have scraped knees. Some people start to cry but mostly in
the fluorescent-lit night everyone starts to talk at once and in the
swirl of stories, every voice jumping and dipping at once, all the
kids gasp and shout at each other and point wildly with me and when
the police sirens come there’re thirty witnesses to choose from.
•
The backseat of the patrol car is weird with its handle less
doors; if we crashed and caught fire there would be no escape. We’re
out in the night now, away from the floodlit flip-flops and
backpacks of campus. I like it though, the way the streets look. I
wouldn’t say desolate, it’s true there isn’t much around but I would
say it’s got character. It’s the real L.A. I stare out the window.
Hoover, Figueroa, Crenshaw.
When I tell my mother I know just what she’ll say. I know what
she thinks of this neighborhood. But what you have to do is look out
for the things you wouldn’t notice: razor wire, chain link fence,
miles and miles of concrete gray and patched-up asphalt where
somebody decided I live here and I own this and this is my life and
then drew the real names of the streets, in reds and purples and
blues with yellow and green, jagged lighting-bolt lines and the
fancy calligraphy of a tag thrown up so beautifully it makes me want
to be here too. I want a camera. I want it on my wall. And a thing
like that makes you stop and think. Because no one ever wanted to be
here, at this dismal intersection with broken glass and potholes
where there’s nothing happening and where the shops are boarded up,
and now, well now I notice it. Now I want to look at it. Now I want
that piece of colored beauty with me too. Downtown, Chinatown, South
Central. That’s the real heart of L.A. It’s where L.A. started,
before the sprawl, without Rodeo Drive or The Martini Lounge or
Westwood, no, here things are packed in tight, it’s urban, tall
stone buildings and fancy crumbly Victorian mansions, neon
Food-4-Less signs, bus stops and one-way streets. I try to look at
it and relax.
"What’s going to happen is this," one of the two spins around to
face me and I try to make my heart get slower, "we’re going to pass
on by those suspects nice and slow. You recognize these guys, you
say the word, simple as that, you hear me?"
"Sure," I say, "yeah, okay," and then I think of it and say,
"sir." I read the street signs that we pass. Being in the back of
the cop car makes it so I feel bad about the whole thing, like
they’re just going to take me to jail and put me there. Lock me up,
toss the key, strap me in and pull the switch. There is no door
handle. I couldn’t get out if I wanted to. I’ve been arrested
before. Once in Texas. The charges got dropped. But the backseat was
the same. I watch the streets and I try to relax. I can hear the
police radio bursting into silence, then crackling steady white
static.
In our patrol car we emerge out of the dull safe dim night of the
street, and slice suddenly through the harsh border of cop-light
where all shadows are stark and absolute. The blunt aggression of
the spotlights makes my eyes ache and I can only imagine how it
feels to have them pointed in your face. When we get to where they
were caught, we just coast past like we’re headed someplace else. In
the light it’s obviously them. Lined up on their knees. I can tell
right away. I am an eyewitness. All I have to do is say yes if it’s
them. They shot someone and stole money and it was wrong and I am an
eyewitness. I know I have to do what’s right. I don’t want them to
see me. My throat feels like I’ve been running.
"Take a good long look," says the cop-voice, "and we’re just
going to swing on by another time here. I’ll keep it nice and slow."
It’s them, for sure, but it’s different too. Without the velcro
vests, without the assuredness, they seem like younger brothers of
the men who robbed campus. It’s like they’re waterlogged or
something. Like they had to jump in a river to get away. Not really
that. But something. I see my one. I don’t think he can see me, at
least the cops say he can’t see me, but I scrunch lower in the seat
just in case. I still want no sudden movements. I still want to show
my empty hands. I look right at his eyes to see if I can tell what’s
going to happen next and I try to hypnotize him like I did before
and it’s even the same spell: Stay calm, I tell him. Be cool. It’s
okay.
But obviously, for him, it’s not.
It was really stupid to shoot a DPS officer. The thing is, DPS
are all LAPD who either got sick of it, or who want their kids to go
to a school like ours, or who were recruited straight out of the
academy. But it depends because generally it’s a cushy job just
yelling at rowdy frat boys or whatever and there’s the Tuition
Remission and the higher pay and it’s way safer than the street, so
depending on who it is, a lot of people—hardass well-trained
people—take campus up on it and opt for Department of Public Safety.
But they’re still basically LAPD. They know what’s up. And they have
cop guns and everything. Handcuffs, whatever. To make you feel safe.
If you’re rich.
We do a three-point-turn. We make another pass. It’s a hot night.
I feel sick. The smell inside the police car is like an old shoe
with too much polish. These guys in the line, they don’t look much
older than I am. Maybe a little bit older. It’s them for sure, and I
have to say so. I don’t want to, but I do.
•
It’s later that same week, from behind my book, in my bed, that I
first hear the thump as Detective Gonzales knocks his mallet knock
on my dorm-room door and I ignore it. First I press my face against
the peephole to check. How he got past the front and through the
lobby and up the elevator, I don’t know. You have to slide your ID
card.
I’ve been screening my calls. The first few times Detective
Gonzales called from the callbox downstairs like you’re supposed to
and it was easy. I let the machine pick up. I let him wait
downstairs in the sun. I acted not home.
Now as I listen to the insistent authority behind his thumping
knock I look over at the other side of the room, the mirrored
configuration of bed and desk and chair. If I just slip into the
other chair and sit behind the cinematic flat screen monitor that
glows with incomprehensibly powerful gigabits and firewire ram and
whatever, if I just grab my roommate’s shiny new Hilfiger jacket,
his empty i-Pod box, his Internet Ready Playstation 2, who could
know it was me and not him?
Maybe I should open the door. I walk to my desk. I yank gently at
my hair. I should definitely put on shoes first. This is what the
police want from me. It’s simple, they say on my answering machine
tape. It’s procedure, they say. My blood feels filled up with air
and instead of strong it’s making me dizzy. They want to corroborate
my statement. They want an affidavit. I’m supposed to testify and
look the guy who let me go in the eye again and even if I’m thinking
be cool, the only point of me being there is so that he can go to
jail and stay there.
I hear the key click the lock, and then Mark boisterously swings
open the door and stumbles over my hamper. I’m sort of under the
desk. He’s got official important documents clutched in his hand and
a smile like he’s an asshole. "Dude they didn’t catch all five
that’s balls of steel you got." He shakes the papers. "No you
didn’t! No, you didn’t! Oh, oh—yes you are! Holy shit,
dude. A real-life witness. Prime suspect number one." Mark
leaves the door open and the stink of microwave popcorn lurks in the
hall and coats the air around us. Summons. Taped, by Detective
Gonzales, to my door.
"What’s it say?" I ask and with a discouraging shake of the head,
Mark hands the delicate crinkly paper to me. My phone starts to
ring. We both ignore it.
"Hey: you saw those homeboys good as they saw you, Dame, and in
my book that means—boo-ya—you’re screwed." Mark’s laugh is
incredulous. He throws his backpack down on two DVDs and the
cellophane makes a weird noise as they scatter. "Whoa, hey," he
says, "my bad," and enthusiastically kicks The Sopranos under
his desk.
I get up off the floor and sit down on my bed. It squeaks.
"It was me I wouldn’t do it is all I’m saying, Dame. Fuck that.
Dude think about it: who are these guys? Hoover Crips for all you
know. Ghetto-dogs, bro, I’m serious. You think they’re not gonna
come after you? Yeah right, man. You don’t know what’s coming."
I imagine it because it’s in my brain: a television station
picture. The other kids who were witnesses that night are just
chalked outlines now and Fox News at Eleven shows Detective Gonzales
and a snapshot of the guy who did it. The guy who I know. The guy
who knows me. My phone rings.
"That’s fucked up. Your local Trojan Grounds: it’s just a hop,
skip, and a roll-and-duck-for-cover away! Ha!" It’s all Mark’s been
saying. Other people say it too. My phone rings. I’m not a coward
but I want to do the smart thing.
Over the answering machine Shelly’s voice sounds muffled. I tug
on my sneakers and walk down to meet her at the callbox. We go for
coffee.
•
Eduardo’s there, still being the manager. The breakfast muffins
still cost three dollars and eighty-five cents. But now there’s a
video camera pointed at the door.
"Um, excuse me," says Shelly when it’s her turn in line, "oh hi,
yeah hi, uh may I please have a tall non-fat hot cocoa—with foam?
Okay thank you, thank you very much." Then she twists her hair up
into a clip but I reach out and tug it loose so that the ends fall
free against her shoulders. It looks better that way. Softer. She
looks so surprised. I feel surprised too. It was like I owned the
hair on her head. It was like the clip in her hands was mine. She’s
so careful and pretty. I love it.
But standing here with her, waiting in the line, the truth is I
feel a little jittery. We’re basically in the exact spot where the
guy guarding the door, my guy with the gun, my guy who knows my face
and let me go was standing on the night of the robbery. I look out
the window from his perspective, at the steps where I would have
been.
"So I guess they didn’t even get a lot of money," Shelly says.
"Well I mean it sounds like a lot of money but to think that they
have to go to jail for it?"
"Five of them, too. They had to split it."
This guy, Hillel, walks over. "Hey, what’s up?" he says, and I
nod.
"I mean I guess they must’ve known, right, about DPS?" Shelly
squints. "Because even back during the riots I heard no one like
even messed with campus at all, you know, people seemed like they
knew about DPS. And then plus that they came right at one?" Shelly
sticks out a strong hand, palm up. "Well the neighborhood people
don’t know that. What time Trojan Grounds closes. So that tells you
something. They probably used to work here or like it’s their sister
or girlfriend or something that works here. Don’t you think?"
I don’t want her to talk like that in front of people who might
later point me out as the kid who saw the whole thing. Is that dumb?
Just because the people behind the counter aren’t students doesn’t
mean they’re criminals or something, I know that. It’s just that I
want to do the smart thing.
"And then they shot that guy," says Hillel. "I mean apparently
they were pretty serious about this thing. All that equipment?
Kevlar vests and all that?"
"Hey," I shrug, "on the run from Johnny Law ain't no trip to
Cleveland." It’s from a movie. Bottle Rocket.
"Yeah but apparently they didn’t get all of them in custody,
right?" Hillel turns to me, "Are you—worried about that?"
I shrug. A worn-out woman slides our drinks over to us. She looks
at me like she knows something. Her eyebrows are painted in a crazy
exaggeration and her nametag— Lupeada—bunches up her shirt.
Hillel and Shelly and I all walk out into the sun together, past the
fountains and into the quad.
"So Damien. What was it like?" Shelly always says my name over
and over again like it’s going to make me love her and it sort of
does. Damien, she says, Oh Damien do you have the notes for our
paper? Damien, she says, Hey Damien do you want to get lunch?
Damien, she says to me, Damien are you ready? I do actually like it.
And she looks so good in her rich girl legs with her sharp knees and
fancy red shoes.
"So there I was," I look evenly between her and Hillel, "running
up the stairs like a madman—" and yes I actually do say madman but
the truth is I say that part on purpose because what I want is for
people to think of me later and I want them to think hey you know
I’m not sure what it is about that kid but something about him just
reminds me of a real Holden Caulfield type thing. I want to give off
that sort of vibe. Because I think it’s true about me. But not that
I’d want to say it outright. I want to just leave that feeling with
people. With girls especially. "So there I was," I say and I’m
standing there outside Trojan Grounds trying to brag and my hand
starts to tremble with just the tiniest shake. It’s the first time
that’s ever happened. But the thing is, I can’t make it stop. After
that I give it a name. I don’t tell anyone else the name. I call it
The Wobblies. Which is sort of stupid, I know. But it happens now a
lot.
•
The trial date is arranged. There’s a party set for the night
before called Pimps Up, Ho’s Down. What that means I don’t know.
You’re supposed to come dressed as either a pimp or a whore. In high
school I did my community service on an outreach program for
prostitutes, when I was still in Chicago, and I’m proud of that.
Shelly is a feminist but she doesn’t mind. "It’s just a joke,"
she says. "And I don’t want to put them down. I’m doing it in
celebration." She makes her eyes go big. "Prostitutes rule!" I do
have to admit that Shelly looks very nice dressed as a whore. She
goes for dominatrix whore. Which means leather and too much makeup
on purpose. To me it looks more like call-girl or starlet. I wear a
white undershirt that Larry Flint signed for me once when he came to
talk on campus about pornography and free speech and how it’s okay
to sell people what they want no matter what it is. Before the party
I took out a magic marker and wrote ME SUCKY-FUCKY in block letters
across the chest. Shelly says it’s cool. She crimped her hair. It
looks really different. I think she and I both know that if I were
buying I couldn’t ever afford something like what she is.
We walk. It’s just a few blocks from campus. On Jefferson, past
the bright security lights, there’s a guy named Reggie who is
homeless and I’m friends with him.
"Hey Reggie," I say as we walk up to him, "how you doing tonight,
huh?"
"Look at you, man! Looking mighty fine, my friend. Listen,
listen, think you can spare some change for me? For poor old Reggie?
Just a little bit of change? Whatcha say, my friend, whatch you
say?"
Shelly waits with her hand in her pocket while I give him a
smoke. "You’re really generous to bums," she says after, as we cross
the street. She stares down at her red shoes as we walk. "For me I
guess I just don’t feel comfortable." She looks funny. Maybe she’s
going to cough. "You know, like they say nasty stuff to me. It’s
like—aggressive. Sexually. Not all of them, obviously. But you know.
Sometimes."
Her pretty red shoes click against the scuffed concrete but mine
don’t make a sound. I look at her fancy hair. That’s never happened
to me. I have nothing to say to that. When I don’t answer we listen
to the distant helicopters and the rushing freeway sounds in the
street. I wouldn’t say I’m proud of it like they’re prizes but you
know I am glad Shelly knows I’m friends with all the people around
here like Reggie and that I always give money, or cigarettes if I
don’t have money. I’m sorry but there is such a thing as the right
way to be. There’s such a thing as being open. And you know in a lot
of ways it’s easier to just stand on a street corner and have a
smoke and some banter with a guy. There’s no pressure. It’s so easy
for me to feel at ease. It’s so easy for me to see what we have in
common ‘cause we’re just two guys standing there. Compare it to
whatever the fuck I’m supposed to say when my roommate Mark opens
his second computer and jokes that he ought to call our room Kinkos.
What the fuck am I supposed to say to that? There’s an old crumpled
coke can I kick and then Shelly kicks it and then it clatters in the
street.
"Boy," Shelly turns and with her too-much-makeup-on eyes she
gives me this look like it’s my birthday, "I sure am cold." I know
what that means. Okay, I think, okay definitely put your arm around
her. I look at her. Okay, I think and I want it to be what I’ve
already done, I don’t want it to be what I still have to do next.
Shelly’s other dates, I’m sure, get her porterhouse steaks and
lobster dinners. I jam my hands in my pockets and then I take them
out and feel my hands get cold. I look at her feet. Watching those
milky legs slip past each other I start to think about how I should
buy her something to drink later, maybe if Chano’s is still open,
but no, tonight’s a bad idea. I don’t have any money tonight. Okay,
I think, do it now. I try to catch her eye to see what she’s
thinking but suddenly she’s acting shy and she won’t look. I’ll bet
that in Shelly’s pocket right this very second she has lots of
money. Or at least enough money. A thing I noticed is that when we
walk she keeps one strong hand in her pocket all the time and it’s
only weeks later that I find out that’s where she keeps her mace,
which surprised me, yes, but that still doesn’t mean there isn’t
money there too.
We turn down 29th street. It’s fastest this way, if we cut
through The Row, but then we have to deal with frat boys yelling fag
at us like we’re interlopers trespassing at their white-flight
country club. I make sure I can walk past and be ready for it. My
arm just hangs there next to me, but even if I didn’t do it the fact
that she wanted me to feels good. I can smell Shelly’s flower
perfume. The sorority houses all gleam. The sorority houses really
are nice. So big. Like huge piles of cake. With pretty lawns. And
fresh paint. Supposedly they have maids in there and everything.
People who cook for them.
We’re walking and then just like that—bam—I see a dollar on the
sidewalk. Just like that. A lone dollar smiling up at me. "Hey,
hey," I say, "check it out." What luck.
"Wow," Shelly smiles, "how cool."
I look at her and then I bend down but it’s too late. I pick it
up without knowing any better. A car drives past, but it’s too late.
It isn’t until immediately after that I realize someone set this
dollar bill here on purpose. Specifically for people like Reggie. Or
people like me. People who might need to pick a dollar bill up off
the ground. So that we’re sure to get what we deserve. You see, the
thing is, whoever coyly set the dollar there on the cement also shit
on it. Yes. Shit. There is wet shit carefully arranged on the dollar
bill so that whichever out-of-luck bastard sees it can decide how
badly he wants it and what he’s willing to do to keep it. And today
that’s me. I didn’t know any better. Now I have some callous frat
boy’s wet human shit on my hand. I drop the dollar. Shelly has her
own hand anchored firmly in her pocket. We look away from each other
and neither of us say anything until we both glance up, thank god
for the distraction. We can hear the whump-whump-whump of the
helicopter and from where I stand I can watch the distant stream of
spotlight jerking through distant streets I can’t see, looking for
whoever’s running.
"Well then," I try to look at her and feel what she’s thinking,
"Take me to the volcano." It’s from a movie. My hand. I sick my hand
in the lawn grass. Which doesn’t help much.
"The party?"
"Hey, you're not the car you drive," I say, but I let it hang
flat in the air, "you're not the contents of your wallet, no,
Shelly. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world."
She just looks at me. Usually she’s smart but the one thing is,
she’s too stupid to ever know when I’m joking. It’s like she never
saw a movie before in her life. She smiles hopelessly. She’s
confused. It’s from Fight Club.
"Damien."
"That outfit’s wearing you, Felix." Joe Versus the Volcano.
She touches the skirt.
"Why can’t you just say what you actually think, okay." Shelly
looks at me and in that broad pretty face her mouth is a tiny fist.
"That’s so fake, Damien. It’s like you’re making fun of me or
something. God."
I look at her. We keep walking. I smell the shit on me and I
think about the other witnesses from the night of the robbery. It
isn’t the safe outskirts of the suburbs here, and still, even here
they think this place belongs only to them. White flight in reverse.
I think about all the jokes. Trying to cut the tension. I think
about how I had to be with them. Sit with them. Get clumped together
as kids like them. I think about how while they were all staring at
his shoes, I am the only one who actually looked into the eyes of
the guy with the gun. And there was a kind of respect between us
that could have happened between any two guys. He wasn’t some ugly
crackhead. He wasn’t a pimp or a cop killer. No, there was trust and
there was respect and maybe that’s what I’m like too, maybe I’m like
what he was, and maybe I’m not like what Shelly’s like.
As we cross the street Shelly tugs at the hemline of her skirt.
Shelly says nothing and I think about how it was morning by the time
we witnesses each sat in the orange plastic bucket seats at the
police station and how we each had to fill out the same forms. I
think about this one jerkoff kid who was wearing a t-shirt of a fat
woman scrubbing a floor with a mascot’s foot on her back and the
words My Maid Went to UCLA, and how he kept saying ‘Welcome to the
ghetto, dude I was so fucking scared! Boyz in the Hood, yo dude I’m
there.’ How he looked around at us like we all thought the same
thing and how he kept going: ‘Welcome to South Central, right, dude,
right? What kind of hella scared were you when you saw those machine
guns! Black guys with machine guns! Hey, welcome to prison, bro, is
all I got to say. Don’t drop the soap.’ The choppy staccato of his
laugh. ‘That’s what they get. They even try and mess with us
and that’s what they get. Mess with us and the cops bust out the
ghettobird and you know you can’t hide from that, ghettobird patrol,
yeah that’s how they caught them, yo. Fuck them. They’re drug
dealers, dude. Crackheads. They do this all the time.’
I think about that asshole and how much I hated being with him.
Shelly and I keep walking and we’re almost there. My hand smells
like shit. I want to cut off my hand. We can hear the sounds of
other parties. I look up at Shelly’s pretty face. "Hey listen," I
say, "you want to go to the beach?"
"What, now?"
"It’s only like fifteen miles. Did you know that? And there are
people here who grew up right here, only fifteen miles from the
beach, who never saw the ocean their whole lives. I read that.
That’s common here. Isn’t that crazy?"
"Weird."
"Yeah, that’s what I mean. It’s horrible."
"It is, no yeah, it totally is. It’s horrible." The music. It’s
loud. "It’s so weird to think of that. Can you imagine?" Shelly
looks at me for a minute and neither of us say anything. We stop
walking. Now is the time for us to kiss, I think, and I feel my
wobbly hands start to shake. "Damien," she says, "hey Damien—let’s
wait and go tomorrow. When it’s light out. Okay?"
•
It’s startling how even this early K-Mart’s glacial blast of
air-conditioning is full power. I walk around slowly and I wonder if
there are department store security guards eyeing my worn-out
sneakers and my baggy pants. There are no windows and even over the
tinkly music I can hear the lights hum. I make my selection
carefully. I am a connoisseur. I feel the fabric first. I touch
everything. Blood shoots through my head.
There’s a dangerous way to understand people. What it is is a
certain kind of vulnerability or openness to the moment, like in
acting when you have to feel what’s happening between you and the
other person that very second and trust it. It’s really intimate and
it’s how you know someone’s character. It’s like you have to be open
and reflect back at them like a window with a mirror at the end,
except the thing is, that’s when it’s easy to get your feelings
hurt. Because the trick is, if someone’s a nasty angry person you
have to have another skill. Where you’re able to be a rubber ball
and let it slide off your back, or deflect away from you and just
bounce away off somewhere else. Then when you’re inside yourself,
keep it positive and try to just be normal. Don’t let the other
person’s nastiness get you. They can fuck off by themselves. You’re
solid and they can’t have anything from you except what you give
out. It’s hard though, to be able to switch like that from fluid to
solid, from exchange to deflect. It is hard. I’ll admit that. But
usually it’s worth it.
When I’m with Shelly for instance I get this feeling like I’m
just reaching, held still frozen in shock and scared a little bit
and just stuck there perpetually in the act of reaching. Like she’s
a diamond ring. Behind glass. And I’m just some kid in dirty pants.
And when she looks at me, when our eyes meet, it’s like one of us
has a weapon pointed at the other one, which to tell the truth is
not exactly an unpleasant way to feel when she’s the one with the
proverbial weapon and it’s not a real one and she’s not some big guy
and especially when the end result is us maybe kissing.
I ignore the other shoppers and they ignore me. I touch the
bright double-thick terrycloth. When you’re open and you look at
someone it’s intimidating because suddenly how they are is inside
you. But I don’t know how Shelly is. I can’t tell yet.
I reach out my hand. I pick only the nicest things. Things I know
Shelly would like. Bright colors. I reach out my hand. Soft fabrics.
I reach out my hand. Durable. Gaudy. Mine.
•
There I am that afternoon and I run right up to her porch and I
do a little jump that skips up the building’s doorstep. It’s already
hot out. A kid who’s leaving holds the rusty security gate open for
me so instead of buzzing the code for Shelly’s apartment, I just
walk in and go right up to her front door. It happens so fast and I
feel so good, so giddy, that I don’t even think of what to say.
"Damien," she laughs and I can tell she’s into me by the way she
says it. "Hey, uh, nice hat you got there."
I spread open my arms as best I can, and I want to hug her. "Get
your bathing suit, come on." I say. "Let’s go."
"Hey but isn’t that court thing today?" She laughs at my
crazy outfit. "I thought you said that?" She touches the floppy
straw hat.
"Yeah, yeah it is." I can’t stop smiling. "I don’t know if I’m
going. I mean it’s later anyway."
She cocks her head at me and her brow crinkles. "Well don’t you
have to?" Then like magic I watch her notice it about me. First she
notices the new shirt: Hawaiian Luau print. Then she stares down at
my new feet: flip flops. Neon blue. The plastic price tag is like a
big leaf caught there between my toes. And her face gets this funny
look. Both towels are pristine. They’re so soft. And huge. The size
of a bedroom blanket. One has an orange cut-out sailboat on it, and
the other one is hers with a bright daisy. On both the anti-theft
plastic scanner hangs discretely off the top left corner. Also I
have swim trunks. And sunblock. A beach ball. Brand new. The
department store will never miss them, I know it. The rich kids, the
frat boys, the step-moms, they can get theirs somewhere else. Now
these belong to me.
"Damien," says Shelly and there’s already something I don’t like
in her voice, "Damien, you know you can’t let them scare you." Her
eyes don’t know what to focus on. They just flit around and I want
to reach out and reassure her but I have all this stuff and my hands
are full. "I mean I’m sure it was awful," she says, "I mean I can’t
imagine, but, well you do know, right, that they’re just a bunch of
guys who made a dumb choice? You know that, don’t you?" She looks
straight at my face. "That they’re not like some mobsters on TV who
could find you again or something." She looks at the towel, its
bright colors chopping up the plain terrycloth space. "Mark might
say that stuff, but he’s wrong. Damien," says Shelly and her
cautious voice is suddenly a rope around my throat, "they seriously
could have killed that guy, it’s amazing they didn’t." She stands
there, imploring, and it’s like she’s already someone’s mother, like
she’s already my mother. "Hey you can’t just give up and let them
get away with it," she says. "Damien, you don’t want them to get
away with it, do you?"
And I don’t. They shouldn’t. I want everyone who’s wrong to serve
their time. I want it all to be even and fair. I want the sinners in
hell and the pure of heart to prosper in heaven. The real truth is
that when my mind is clear in the middle of the night that’s what I
want. But standing there at rich Shelly’s beautiful doorstep with
the magnetic scanner itching at my back all I can think is that
while I was at it I should have gotten a boogie board too. And when
she opens her mouth I put my hand over it like I also own that now
and I know I can because I know it belongs to me. I know it. I can
take it home under my coat and I can keep it. And use it. And have
it. "The beach," I say, "let’s go."
K. Kvashay-Boyle's work appears in Best of McSweeney's,
Best
American Non-Required Reading, Politically Inspired Fiction, and
elsewhere. |
