Haiku (16 page)

I was deeply puzzled. The back door of the restaurant was not open to the public. Intruders at the front would be met with force. So those gang members must have been
invited. But for a Japanese restaurant to invite
Chinese
visitors?

Nevertheless, I knocked politely. Two palm-thuds, then a single knuckle-rap. My personal signal.

The door opened. As the staff bustled about filling my order—it would be a very large one, for I had brought twenty dollars, far more than usual—a palpable odor of fear overpowered even the aromatic cooking in progress.

Selecting a cook I knew had been there for years, I asked if I might impose upon him to request a brief audience for me with the proprietor.

The cook bowed more deeply than my apparent station in life should have warranted. He left without a word, returned almost immediately, and silently pointed toward a side door.

As I opened that door, I found myself in a lushly carpeted corridor. At the end of the corridor, I could see the proprietor through the open door of what was clearly his private office.

He stood up as I entered, and greeted me as if I were an invited guest, worthy of respect. I bowed my thanks. At his invitation, I sat on the floor beside a small, ornately carved table. He took his place across from me. How he signaled I do not know, but a young woman entered, and performed the formal tea ceremony with all the elegance of a true geisha before she departed wordlessly.

“May I be permitted to ask a question?” I said.

“Of course,” he replied, as if no other response could have entered his mind.

“Shadow Riders?”

“Ah! You must have seen them leave, the filthy little parasites.”

“They are beggars?”

“They are thugs,” the proprietor said. “They fancy themselves as Yakuza would in our country, but they are only children. They lack honor. For skill with a sword, they substitute firearms.”

“Why would such be allowed—?”

“It is a tax,” the proprietor said. “Not a government levy, but a cost of doing business all the same. If they are not paid, weekly, they will cause great damage. Other establishments which refused payment suffered in many ways, from staged disturbances that frightened customers to, in one known case, actual arson. They ‘protect’ my business from such possibilities. Insurance only compensates one for damage; they prevent damage from occurring.”

“By not committing it.”

“Hai!”
he said, shrugging his shoulders to indicate he accepted this to be an inevitability. “Were it not them, it would be others,” he said, confirming my interpretation of his gesture.

“I humbly thank you for granting me an audience,” I said.

On my way out, I picked up the huge sacks of food the kitchen had prepared. I handed one to Lamont and another to Target, and we headed crosstown to our dugout to share our bounty.

“They’re trying to tell me things,” Brewster said abruptly. “I ask them to stop, but they never do.”

“How much did you get paid?” Michael said, angrily.

“I—”

“You little pussy,” Ranger said. His voice was chilling. “You are
not
going to fuck up the mission, you understand?”

“I was trying to help—”

“No freelancers,” Ranger chopped off Brewster’s feeble words with the machete of his icy rage.

However it had occurred, he and Michael viewed Brewster’s selling his medication as something even graver than a personal affront. Neither focused on the fact that the mission was on Brewster’s behalf. Or on the danger Brewster put himself in whenever he went off his medication for too long. They saw Brewster’s act for what it was: a threat to the unifying force that protected us all.

“I don’t like the meds anyway,” Brewster said, more aggressively than he had ever spoken before. “I hate them. You know … all that spastic stuff they make me do. I don’t even think I need them, not really.”

“You don’t hear the voices when you’re taking them,” Lamont said. Nonjudgmental, merely stating a truth we all knew.

“They’re not that bad,” Brewster said, the aggression gone from his voice.

“We had a guy in our outfit,” Ranger said, his voice still without warmth. “Rocco. Man loved his weed. Toked through it like it was a pack of Lucky Strikes. Had his way, he would’ve
stayed
wherever that stuff took him, okay? He’d light up anywhere.”

“But if he was on a mission—” Michael said, sagely, as if he was about to join Ranger’s effort to educate Brewster.

“Mission? Fuck. I saw Rocco light up in the middle of a
firefight one time! Puffing away and blazing away at the same time. Thing is, that was Rocco. And you know what Rocco was? A guy who had your back. A guy who grabbed the point when it was his turn. He didn’t get high to work up his nerve; he did it for the same reason a lot of guys did. You’re out there, a million miles from home, trying to kill a bunch of people who live there. And they’re trying to kill you. After a while, everyone—everyone on the fucking
ground
, I mean—gets the point.”

Ranger lapsed into silence.

“Which was …?” Michael asked.

“Yeah,” Ranger answered. “What
was
the fucking point?” The depth of sadness in his voice was so profound that to call it “depression” would be to call a bone marrow infection a flesh wound.

“Brewster,” I said. “I cannot speak for anyone but myself. And for myself I say this: if you do not return to your medication, I will not participate in the mission to save your library.”

“You can deal me out, too, bro,” Lamont told him.

“Bro! Know! Grow! Show!” Target clanged.

“Would you go with me, Ho?”

“Where do you want to go, Brewster?”

“To see my therapist. Levi.”

“Why would you want me to do this?” I asked, wondering if Brewster was hallucinating. Why would he be on a first-name basis with a therapist?

“Levi says I have to stay on my meds, too. So I can get my check. It’s the same place Ranger goes, but they don’t make
him
take meds. If you went with me, maybe Levi would tell me why.”

“Has he not told you?”

“Yeah. But … but you’re different, Ho. He’d talk to you different, too. I know he would.”

“When do you next see your therapist?”

“I can go anytime I want.”

This, too, sounded bizarre to me. I imagined one would require an appointment. And again wondered if Brewster had slipped forever into a world of his own creation. But I had no choice. My debt was not to Brewster; it was to our … unit.

“I will go with you tomorrow morning,” I said. “But only if you give your word that you will not go off your medications again.”

“If you believe Levi, I’ll believe you, Ho.”

“That is deliberately evasive,” I said, bluntly. “I am not going to bargain with you. I will not substitute my judgment for that of a trained professional. This cannot be decided by what I believe. Or even what you believe, Brewster. Either you must make the commitment, on your honor, or you will undertake the mission without me.” I paused, and looked around the circle. “Lamont and Target have already spoken as well.”

“Your number’s been called, kid,” Ranger told him. “You either stand up with us, or go sit someplace else.”

“I gave back my winnings,” Michael told him, conveniently overlooking how he had come by them.

“Ho?” Brewster pleaded.

“I said I would go with you tomorrow, Brewster. And I will. That is what a man of honor does. He keeps his word. We are, all of us, damaged in some way. But a man whose word is worthless is a worthless man.”

“Now! Now! Now! Now!” Target shouted. No interpretation was required.

“I swear I won’t ever go off my meds again,” Brewster said. The young man broke into sobs.

Lamont passed around paper plates from our stack as if he were dealing from a deck of cards, concentrating on his task.

“What is an ACT Team?” I asked, as Brewster and I entered a storefront with “Community Outreach Service Center” neatly lettered on its blacked-out front glass.

“That’s where Levi is,” he said, as if he had just provided a detailed explanation.

The receptionist was a shapely mixed-race woman whose appearance was clearly of great importance to her. She favored Brewster with a dazzling smile. When she picked up her telephone without asking Brewster’s name, I assumed he was a well-known client.

I made for the chairs on the far wall, expecting a long wait, but Brewster tugged at my coat sleeve, silently bidding me to stay where we were.

Almost immediately thereafter, a powerfully built black man with a shaved head came over to us. He looked like those who are placed on guard outside exclusive clubs, but instead of a menacing scowl, he presented a cheerful, welcoming countenance. “Brewster. My
man
! Come on. Levi’s wrapping up something; he’ll be with you in a few.”

As I began to follow Brewster, the large man turned and
blocked my path, his tone and posture transforming him from Brewster’s friend to his guardian. “Something you want?”

“I am with Brewster.”

“This is Ho, Earl,” Brewster said. “I asked him to come with me today.”

The black man immediately offered his hand. I took it, noting his grip was intended to convey a comforting strength, not a demonstration of power.

We passed a young Latina with large, luminous eyes. She smiled at Brewster, exchanged what was meant to be a covert look with Earl. “Welcome,” she said to me. I bowed, hiding my surprise. I always fancied myself as a man not given to assumptions, but recognizing my own surprise at being greeted formally was proof that my self-assessment had been inflated.

Brewster seemed to take great pride in his intimacy with those we encountered. “Hi, Joanne!” he called out to a blond, blue-eyed woman, who responded with “Good to see you, Brewster.”

A smallish woman walked over to us, her movements supple and self-assured. “Who’s this?” she asked Earl.

“Name’s Ho,” Earl replied. “He’s with Brewster, Glo.”

When that response appeared to satisfy her, Brewster took this as affirmation of his own status. I could feel his presence expand with the assurance that he was
known
, a person, not a “case.” I understood that the exchange between Gloria and Earl was a technique of some sort, but a technique beyond my experience.

I was introduced to Hiram, a pensive young man who wore his hair in two thick braids, as if to emphasize his Native
American heritage. He was far more formal in his greeting, as if to tell me that his heritage was no mere costume—I was, after all, quite obviously his elder.

Next I met Wendy, who looked like some of the women I had seen at a poetry reading Lamont had taken me to at the public library the year before.

“That was Adanna,” Brewster told me as an African woman in a tan sweater flew past, obviously too busy to exchange even a word.

“And that’s Dr. B.,” he confided, as we passed the office of a red-haired woman so deep in reviewing papers on her desk that she did not look up as we walked by.

The noise level varied from room to room, from silence to shouting.

“Open for business,” Earl said, indicating an open door. He rapped on the jamb, and called out, “Brewster’s here to see you, boss. And he brought a friend, too.”

The man who must be Levi stood up. He was moderately tall, well muscled, with close-cropped blond hair and the high cheekbones and blue eyes I associate with Slavic antecedents, wearing an unbuttoned denim shirt over a thin black jersey.

He offered his hand. I responded, wondering if there was some special grip all those of his profession had to learn—his was precisely the same as Earl’s had been.

Brewster sat down without being invited. I thought this impolite, but accepted that I was a guest of another culture, and must be respectful of its rules.

“When did you go off your meds?” Levi immediately asked, in a conversational tone which implied that Brewster
had already disclosed his lapse—that such was a fact, not a topic for discussion.

“Five days ago,” Brewster replied. “And I feel okay.”

“Uh-huh. Is that why you brought a friend with you today?”

“No, Levi. This is Ho. He … he understands things. I thought you would, like, explain to him how come I have to take the meds. Then he could, you know, explain it to me.”

“Like an interpreter, huh?”

“Yeah!” Brewster said, with genuine enthusiasm.

“Brewster,” Levi said, without inflection of any kind, “you know all about confidentiality. You know I can’t discuss your case with anyone unless you give permission.”

“But that’s why I brought him. I mean,
I
brought Ho. Isn’t that the same as giving permission?”

“Sure,” Levi agreed. As he spoke, I heard a distinct whistling sound through his nose—it had been broken at least once. This did not fit my imagined picture of “therapist.” Nor did his style of dress, and the way he spoke to Brewster more like a friend than a patient. “But
you
know Mr. Ho, Brewster. I don’t. So I have to ask him to sign a paper that says anything he hears in this room can’t be repeated. Okay?”

Not knowing to whom Levi had addressed his question, I said, “I will sign your paper.”

I stared at the page long enough to allow my other senses to explore the immediate environment, then deliberately scrawled some undecipherable “signature” at the bottom.

“How do you want to do this?” Levi asked Brewster.

“Couldn’t you just, like, tell him?”

Levi turned slightly to connect his eyes with mine. “Brewster is schizophrenic,” he said, using the word as though he were saying Brewster had brown hair—a description, not a judgment. “He hears voices. The voices aren’t his friends. They try to make Brewster do things he doesn’t want to do. Sometimes, they succeed. That’s when Brewster ends up arrested, and we have to go and get him. That’s how Brewster came to us in the first place: a referral from Rikers.”

I knew Rikers was a jail or prison of some kind. But I had also thought Brewster had never been arrested. So all I said was “Yes?”

“Schizophrenia is incurable. But it
is
manageable, with the right combination of medication and therapy. It’s our job to make sure Brewster gets both.”