Palo Alto: Stories (16 page)

A.J. whipped around for a second. Then he knew we were all against him. He was sensitive to that kind of thing. He whipped back to the girls.

“What the fuck do you bitches want?” A.J. said to the girls.

The big-boned girl had bangs and a nice smile and I liked her face. She had a fur-lined hooded jacket that I also liked, and I guessed maybe we would have been friends if we’d been somewhere else.

“We just wanted to see if you would give us a drink from your bottle,” said the big-boned girl. The witchy girl was looking at the black sky.

“You’re not getting any of this shit,” said A.J., holding the bottle to his chest.

“Okay, fine,” said the big-boned girl. There was one light on the back corner of the school building and some of it hit
her mouth. I thought of a watermelon Jolly Rancher. Her lips were not a fat girl’s lips; they were thin, and very juicy pink-red. But she was smiling a little funny, only on one side, like she wasn’t sure if she should smile, and that was because A.J. was looking at her.

Then her lips were not in the light anymore because A.J. was moving toward the girls.

“Get the fuck out of here, bitches!” he said, waving the bottle. “We got some
fine
bitches coming, we don’t need fat-ass and skinny!”

“Fuck you, asshole,” said the big-boned one.

“Fuck you, you creepy little monkey,” said the witchy one. The girls kept yelling at A.J. as they backed away into the dark. Then it was quiet.

When A.J. came back, there was nothing to say. And nothing to do because he was holding the bottle. I was feeling okay; I’d had enough vodka.

This was the way the night had cashed in. Choices had been made and things happened, and here we were. It was sad and funny. My life was made of this. Stuff like this.

I thought about how Br’er Bear walked around with a nail sticking out of his club. When I was eleven, I hammered a nail into a baseball bat. It was very dangerous. I made other weapons. And when my camp went on a field trip to Chinatown, I bought a throwing star. I thought I needed all those weapons, and I hoarded them.

I used to throw the star at the fence in the backyard, and it would stick in. I threw it at the cat, Stoney.

When I was twelve I took karate at the YMCA. We
learned katas and punches. I learned the katas really well. If you learned the katas, you got the higher belts. The order: white, yellow, orange, blue, green, brown, black. I was happy until I started fighting in school and the katas didn’t do shit for me.

A.J. was in such a bad mood compared to me, but I couldn’t help but laugh at him.

“Better shut up, clown,” he said.

“‘We don’t
need
fat-ass and skinny!’ Ha-ha, you’re fuckin’
funny,
A.J.”

“Shut
up,
clown,” he said, and kicked some of the tanbark at me but it fell short. I was still laughing.

“Cocoa
butter
!” I yelled. “‘My shit tastes like
cocoa butter
!’” A.J. grabbed my fur collar and yanked it back and forth, like he was going to shake the laugh out of me, but I was still laughing.

“Shut the fuck up, Teddy, or I swear to God, I’m-a fuck you up.”

He yanked me up by the collar. “Get the fuck up,” he said, and I was on my feet, but my head was going everywhere. “We’re going to Ofra’s.”

“Ofra’s?” He was already walking away from me with the bottle. I followed him out the gate and back across the street toward his house. His green Karmann Ghia was parked on the street. We got in. Funny old-fashioned interior with hard plastic seats.

Then we were driving and I was laughing again. A.J. looked
so serious I couldn’t stop for a long while. When he finally spoke he was very quiet.

“All the clowns in the car better shut up,” he said. He was still looking out the windshield. I had my feet up on the dash and no seat belt, and when he said that I laughed harder.

“
This
clown is
shut
up,” I said. “What about the other ones?” And I cracked myself up some more. A.J. was driving really fast now.

Ofra Isaac was a girl in our class and she was having a party that night. She had a huge house in the nicest part of town. The funny thing about the nicest part of town was that it was the closest to East Palo Alto. There were all these mansions and then right down the road it was really bad. Kids would go over there to buy liquor and drugs, but a lot of the time they got into fights or got mugged. East Palo Alto was primarily black and Pacific Islander.

Ofra had a lot of parties at her house. Her parents didn’t care. The problem was that Ofra didn’t like me anymore, mostly because I got drunk all the time. The last time I was at her house me and my friend Ivan got in a fight. We stepped all over her white couch with our shoes and somehow we knocked the mezuzah off the front doorpost. Eventually we stopped fighting in her driveway, but Ofra wouldn’t let us back in.

“You don’t want to go to Ofra’s,” I said to A.J.

He didn’t say anything. I looked around for the bottle, but he must have hid it in the back. Nothing was funny anymore.

“What do you think, A.J.?” I said. “That April is waiting
for you at Ofra’s? That you’re going to hook up with that ass?” His jaw flexed. “April
hates
you, A.J.
Everyone
hates you.”

It was about eleven o’clock and the cool air from outside was coming in steady through the old Karmann Ghia hinges.

“Okay, A.J. A.J. dog. One question. That’s it, that’s all you got to answer, one question, and then you can be done with me. You can throw me out of this car if you want.” He said nothing, just drove very fast, which was scary around the corners. “Okay, here it is. So what do you think you’ll be doing in twenty years? No, make it easier,
ten
years. What will you be doing?”

It was like he didn’t hear me, but he did.

“Rapping?” I said. “Are you going to be a rapper?”

No answer.

“Writing graffiti? Married? Maybe have a bunch of kids? With April? You think you and April are gonna have a million kids like your parents?”

A.J. braked the car really fast. So fast that my knees hit the metal dash and the back of the car started sliding. Then we were stopped. He reached across me and opened the passenger door, and then he had his back braced against his door and he was kicking me out the door. I was laughing, except not too much because his kicks hurt and I was trying to stop because A.J. was crying.

“Get the fuck out, get out, get out!” Then my ass hit the ground and I was outside in some grass and the cold air. A.J. drove off. He stopped a few yards away, reached across the seat, and slammed the passenger door. The green hump of the Karmann Ghia got smaller and smaller and then he was gone.

A paint marker that A.J. used for graffiti had fallen out
with me. It had a purple cap and a purple body and on the side it said
SOLID MARKER
. I sat in the long grass between the sidewalk and the street, and when I took the cap off I saw that the paint stick was two colors: yellow and purple. A.J. had cut the purple paint stick in half and fused it with half a yellow paint stick so that the colors would swirl together. I put the stick in my pants pocket.

I was close to Jordan, my old middle school, where I first met April. I went over there. The lights in the roof of the outdoor halls were on. Some of the old feelings came back, some faces flashed, all things I didn’t like. I drew some large monsterlike baby faces on the walls and wrote
FUCK ALL BITCHES LIKE APRIL SPARK
in bad graffiti script. I had practiced graffiti writing a lot but I was never going to be as good as A.J., and I was really drunk. Next to one of the large baby monsters I wrote
LOVE, A.J. SIMS NIGGA.

Then I walked out of the school yard toward Ofra Isaac’s house.

Ofra’s was pretty far away.

After a while, I saw an old man walking a little white dog. He had a full head of nicely combed white hair. I caught up to him even though I was stumbling a little.

“Hey. Hey, man… ,” I said, in a friendly tone. But the guy didn’t stop. He didn’t look at me, even though I was just a little behind him.

“I’m a really nice guy,” I said, but he walked faster. “I just want some company and you seem like a nice guy too.” I talked to him like that for a few blocks without him answering or looking back. I kept following him even though it was out
of my way to get to Ofra’s. I wanted to convince this guy that I was a good person. Then he turned into a house.

“You better get the fuck out of here,” he said. “I’m calling the police, you fucking asshole.” Then he went inside. I left.

I was walking, back on track for Ofra’s. I walked with my head bowed so I could watch my feet.

I started thinking about Jack Kerouac and what a hero he was. “You’re a hero,” I said out loud. “Like Jack Kerouac.” I liked thinking about Kerouac stumbling around drunk.

Then I happened upon another guy. He was old too, with a slightly bigger, brown dog. He was taller than the first guy. He wore an Irish cap and was a little more disheveled. When I tried to pass him, he said, “Hey,” and smiled.

“What’s up?” I said.

“Nothing, just walking my dog.”

“I’m not here to mug you or anything,” I said, because of the other guy being so scared.

“I know,” he said.

“Can I walk with you?”

“Sure,” he said, and we walked.

“I’ve been fighting with my girlfriend,” the old guy said. “She won’t give me any head.”

“That sucks,” I said.

“You have a girl?”

“No. Fuck girls,” I said.

“Yeah. Fuck ’em,” he said.

“Fuck guys too.”

We walked without talking for a bit.

Then he said, “When I was young, I was really angry and
shy. I’d do stupid stuff like steal and set fires. I never got caught. Now I’m old and I feel the same way. You know what I mean? I don’t
like
anything.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Is that how
you
feel?”

“Yeah, I hate everything,” I said.

We walked past a church. I had read Ibsen’s
Ghosts
in the parking lot one day while waiting for an AA meeting because the court made me go.

“I’m really not here to mug you,” I said.

He didn’t say anything.

I said, “You want to frisk me?”

“Yeah,” he said, like it was a regular thing. So we stepped off the sidewalk and through the edge of the church parking lot to the brick side of the chapel. We were behind a large juniper bush, hidden from the road. I put my hands on the bricks like I was being arrested and he frisked me. He touched me under my arms and on my sides and on my butt a little. Then he was done.

“Okay?” I said.

“Can I feel your balls for a second?”

“What? What the fuck?”

“Come on, man, be cool and just let me feel your balls for a second.”

“Aw, man,” I said. “I was trying to be nice to make you feel safe and you pull that shit?”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

We walked out of the church and along the sidewalk, and we didn’t talk anymore.

A car full of teenagers drove by and yelled to us. I didn’t know them but I wanted to be with them. They were stopped at a light at Embarcadero. I ran up to the car and asked to be let in, but they wouldn’t open the door. When the light turned green the car started moving, but I held on to the open window and ran alongside. The girls inside were shrieking. It was like they were scared but excited too. The car went faster and then I was falling and I slid on the street on my back. The car drove off and when I stood up the old man with the dog was gone.

I walked past a bunch of houses. I was coming up on another elementary school called Duvenek and I knew that meant I was close to Ofra’s. I climbed the chain-link fence and crossed the wet grass field. I passed through the outdoor halls and drew a few purple and yellow flowers for the kids. Then I wrote
FUCK SCHOOL.

Outside the school there was one more street to go and then I was at Ofra’s. When I got to the mouth of her driveway I could hear the buzzing voices of the party. People were probably around the pool in the back, and April and her sister and Emily were probably there too. I was sure A.J. wasn’t.

I didn’t go in. I walked down the wide street with all the mansions. The mansions ended and the street started to narrow. Soon there was thick foliage on both sides and the sidewalk ended. I walked over a small arched bridge and there I was, in East Palo Alto.

It was darker over here. Fewer streetlights. The houses were slanted and there were metal bars in front of the windows.

I was mad at everyone but there was nothing I could do.

I started yelling. First it was just screaming, no words.

When cars passed, I yelled at them, “Hey! Take me! Take me! Take me out of here! Take me with you.”

I yelled at every car that passed. Nobody stopped.

Ten minutes later a cop car drove up and took me away.

You can’t fight the Tar Baby, that’s what he
wants
. You punch that Tar Baby and he sucks you in. Once you get wrapped up with the Tar Baby, he loses his shape, he becomes a sticky, black goo-monster and he gets all over you. The more you fight, and stretch him, and struggle, the more he gets all over you, and then you can’t move and you’re just a pile of tar. After a certain point, you are the Tar Baby. Instead of button eyes, you still have your real eyes, looking out from under the tar.

There are many ways to kill someone, but a gun seems as good as any. The big thing that gets you caught is motive. It’s pretty obvious that Brent Baucher hates me, but who would expect me to get a gun and kill him?

He’s on the football team. He is not handsome. He’s fit, but he’s a beast, very hairy arms and legs: strong, pale, discolored things.

I’m told that I am good-looking, but I hate my body, and my face, and my curly hair. And I’m shy.

Brent has a large bulging forehead that makes his eyes sit deep in his skull. The bottom of his face is too long, like it was squeezed in a vise. There are white-capped acne bulges,
pink and irritated. And single hairs coming out of strange areas.