do my best to mimic their institutional quietude.
These boys know how to wait,
I think to myself while the audience on TV applauds us soundlessly. In one corner of the room, a small aluminum Christmas tree lists under its burden of twinkle lights and tinsel.
The old guy beside me is wearing a blue polyester suit coat, the cuffs of which hang past his knuckles. He smells like yeast and mothballs. For a while he stares openmouthed at the screen, his tongue worrying his dentures. Then he stands and faces me.
“Hit the road, punk,” he wheezes.
“Say what?”
“Time’s up.”
“Sit down, you crazy fuck,” one of the other men shouts.
“Yeah, asshole,” another chimes in.
The old man’s chin trembles; his eyes shine with tears. He returns to his spot on the couch and sits with his head in his hands. I’d trade any ten people I know for one of him. His desolation is as beautiful as a broken mirror.
My brother laughs. He’s been watching everything from an easy chair by the door. He’s handsomer than me, taller, more graceful as he strides across the lobby, muscular arms outstretched.
“Karl?” I ask, knowing full well.
He wraps himself around me. I feel his fists on my back, drawing me closer until my mouth and nose are pressed against his shoulder. I want to return the embrace, I should, but it’s awkward. I can’t figure out where to put my hands.
“My bro,” he whispers. “My big bro.”
We separate, and he wipes his eyes with the ball of his thumb. He’s wearing a denim shirt and a pair of tan chinos, and I wonder if these are the clothes the prison provided when they released him. Everyone in the lobby is smiling at us, as if our meeting has allowed hope to slice its way through the scar tissue surrounding their hearts. I don’t want to be responsible for that.
A siren screams past outside, and Karl doesn’t even flinch. I reach out and tousle his hair like an older brother would a younger brother’s. He grabs my hand and kisses it. It’s one of those moments when you wish you weren’t always watching yourself from across the room.
W E WALK TO a McDonald’s a couple of blocks off Skid Row. I suggest sushi in Little Tokyo or one of the Mexican places over the river, but Karl says no, no, McDonald’s is fine. The streets down here are something else. The sun never quite reaches them over the tops of the buildings, and those who have chosen to live in this constant twilight collide with those who have no choice and those who are simply, in one way or another, lost. On this cold, late December afternoon, it could be any miserable, man-eating place in the world. Cheap wine, crack, lies loudly told — these are the bonfires that keep the wolves at bay.
O H, MAN, YOU really want to get into that mess? It makes me look stupid. Like a real idiot. But okay. Me and this fucker Edgar I used to hang with, we were heavy into downers. I was staying away from smack, but anything else, bring it on. This was in OKC, before the bomb and whatnot, and Edgar knew this guy who knew this guy who . . . well, if you were a serious pill popper and you got to thinking, “Hey, where do they keep all the drugs in this town?” you might come up with this, too — the hospital, right? So Edgar tells me about this buddy of his who shot himself in the hand with a twenty-two, then went to the hospital and told them it happened while he was cleaning the gun, and they set him up with a nice, fat scrip for Percodan or Darvon or some such wonder. We’re thinking right on, right. Voilà! You’ve got to be in pain to get painkillers! Neither of us had the balls to take a bullet, but we worked it out where we’d toss a coin and the winner would hit the loser in the head with a piece of pipe just hard enough to cut him and lump it up so it’d look like maybe he fell off a ladder, which is what we’d tell the doctor.
A few beers later, we do the toss, and I lose. Edgar gets the pipe from under his mattress and I sit at
These boys know how to wait,
I think to myself while the audience on TV applauds us soundlessly. In one corner of the room, a small aluminum Christmas tree lists under its burden of twinkle lights and tinsel.
The old guy beside me is wearing a blue polyester suit coat, the cuffs of which hang past his knuckles. He smells like yeast and mothballs. For a while he stares openmouthed at the screen, his tongue worrying his dentures. Then he stands and faces me.
“Hit the road, punk,” he wheezes.
“Say what?”
“Time’s up.”
“Sit down, you crazy fuck,” one of the other men shouts.
“Yeah, asshole,” another chimes in.
The old man’s chin trembles; his eyes shine with tears. He returns to his spot on the couch and sits with his head in his hands. I’d trade any ten people I know for one of him. His desolation is as beautiful as a broken mirror.
My brother laughs. He’s been watching everything from an easy chair by the door. He’s handsomer than me, taller, more graceful as he strides across the lobby, muscular arms outstretched.
“Karl?” I ask, knowing full well.
He wraps himself around me. I feel his fists on my back, drawing me closer until my mouth and nose are pressed against his shoulder. I want to return the embrace, I should, but it’s awkward. I can’t figure out where to put my hands.
“My bro,” he whispers. “My big bro.”
We separate, and he wipes his eyes with the ball of his thumb. He’s wearing a denim shirt and a pair of tan chinos, and I wonder if these are the clothes the prison provided when they released him. Everyone in the lobby is smiling at us, as if our meeting has allowed hope to slice its way through the scar tissue surrounding their hearts. I don’t want to be responsible for that.
A siren screams past outside, and Karl doesn’t even flinch. I reach out and tousle his hair like an older brother would a younger brother’s. He grabs my hand and kisses it. It’s one of those moments when you wish you weren’t always watching yourself from across the room.
W E WALK TO a McDonald’s a couple of blocks off Skid Row. I suggest sushi in Little Tokyo or one of the Mexican places over the river, but Karl says no, no, McDonald’s is fine. The streets down here are something else. The sun never quite reaches them over the tops of the buildings, and those who have chosen to live in this constant twilight collide with those who have no choice and those who are simply, in one way or another, lost. On this cold, late December afternoon, it could be any miserable, man-eating place in the world. Cheap wine, crack, lies loudly told — these are the bonfires that keep the wolves at bay.
O H, MAN, YOU really want to get into that mess? It makes me look stupid. Like a real idiot. But okay. Me and this fucker Edgar I used to hang with, we were heavy into downers. I was staying away from smack, but anything else, bring it on. This was in OKC, before the bomb and whatnot, and Edgar knew this guy who knew this guy who . . . well, if you were a serious pill popper and you got to thinking, “Hey, where do they keep all the drugs in this town?” you might come up with this, too — the hospital, right? So Edgar tells me about this buddy of his who shot himself in the hand with a twenty-two, then went to the hospital and told them it happened while he was cleaning the gun, and they set him up with a nice, fat scrip for Percodan or Darvon or some such wonder. We’re thinking right on, right. Voilà! You’ve got to be in pain to get painkillers! Neither of us had the balls to take a bullet, but we worked it out where we’d toss a coin and the winner would hit the loser in the head with a piece of pipe just hard enough to cut him and lump it up so it’d look like maybe he fell off a ladder, which is what we’d tell the doctor.
A few beers later, we do the toss, and I lose. Edgar gets the pipe from under his mattress and I sit at
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