We Are Not in Pakistan (10 page)

The lifeguard wasn't Mexican, but I could tell he was a good sorta guy, you know, like I was at his age. But he didn't understand
what I was getting at. Probably won't for another twenty years. I gave him the poem anyways, and I said, No charge, because I really mean it.

No, no, no more coffee, amigo.

Tula, I love you too, my darling.

Thanks for picking up the tab, Jimmy. See you around in another twenty or thirty years. Give sweet Arlene a kiss on her lips, say it's from me. Tell her she's got to believe in romance. Got to believe in love. Stay off the carbs, now — it's real easy, once you're aware.

Won't do you no good, though. You can bet your Irish ass, this Mexican's going to be around a whole lot longer than you. And when I'm done, I got me a spot picked out under a willow in Lake Park where the girls go jogging — not too many Mexicans got their ashes spilled around Lake Park, you know. They don't like Mexicans around there.

But just think of it, I'll be laying there, looking up skirts, laughing.

Hey there, Jimmy!

Sure, I'll sit down a minute. I'm on my break. I got a whole fifteen minutes.

I was avoiding your eye, Jimmy, cause of Enrico talking to you. He a friend of yours?

Okay, I'll tell you something I won't tell many others. I don't like him. Leaves me his dirty poems as tips, makes me mad with his guy jokes. Comes in here crying about how his Nance left him, but he's still got no respect for women. Makes a big mess and calls me over like I'm going to clean up instead of Carlos.

But you're not like him. I told my ma about that time when you
took me for a ride on your Harley last summer and we went over the Hoan Bridge clocking ninety. I said, That man's got some pep in him yet, he's not just some boring two-bit attorney.

Yeah, well, ma said, Don't get no ideas, Tula. That guy's married. I said, I ain't getting any ideas — we're friends. Aren't we? Besides, you're way too old for me. Safe as condoms, ha, ha!

And you don't laugh when I say I've got dreams. That Enrico, he don't think anyone's got dreams except himself. Keeps telling me I should cut my hair this way or that. Says he'd like to cut it for me. Offered to come to my home — said he was a personal hairdresser. He just wants to get in my pants. He's got balls, I'll give him that. A few years ago, all kinds of guys wanted to get in my pants, but a woman gets burned a few times, well, she gets ovaries.

Which reminds me, did you try the eggs Benedict today? No? I made the sauce, and it came out real smooth. It's not much, I know. But it's something.

My dreams are fantastic, Jimmy. And none of them are about you.

But I'll tell you, they ain't always going to be dreams. No way. I'm going to be a sculptor. How about that? Tula, walking in the footsteps of Myron and Polyclitus. And you know why I'm going to be like them, Jimmy? It's because I can see people from the inside and outside at the same time. That's thinking like a sculptor, right?

I borrowed this book out of the library, real thick, with glossy pictures, all about famous statues. Do you know what they thought was beauty in classical sculpture? They said it's when each part depends on the other to create harmony.

And that's how they came up with the idea of democracy.

No shit, I read it. Didn't they teach you that in law school? You want democracy, you gotta go back to greasy old Greece before galactabourikos and spanakopita. Maybe even before the Olympics.

But the Greeks got it wrong, too, they ignored the slaves and the women — everyone who had to run things and clean up after them. It wasn't beautiful, because it was out of balance, see?

But what can you expect from a bunch of old men?

Anyway, I wasn't interested in all the Caesars and Italian guys. I wanted to look at the statues of women — you know, like Liberty. Wanted to know where she came from. You heard of a place called Colmar, in France — you ever been there in your travels? Well, one of these days, I'm going there. Because that's where she was made. That's where Bertoldi had his workshop. Yep. He made her in France and shipped her all the way here. And you know what else? She's got two things, one in each hand. I bet you know one, but tell me the other.

Gotcha — you can't think what it is, right?

Okay, I'll tell you. It's called a tablet. Not the pill kind of tablet. A tablet like a slate or a plaque. Liberty is holding it like a book. And you know what's written on it? Think, try to see it.

No, it's not the Ten Commandments.

I'll tell you. It says July 4, 1776, in Roman numerals. Now what do you suppose the sculptor meant by that? D'you suppose he meant anything by that? Or do you think it's there cause that arm had to be there and he had to do something with it? What do you think?

I guess they didn't teach you symbolism in law school. Well, now that I read this book, I know all about symbolism. That tablet is about living under the rule of law. Awesome, that some Frenchie could think of that but nobody these days knows that, not that crowd in Washington, Bush and Cheney and that slimeball Karl Rove. They don't think laws apply to them, only to people like me. It's depressing, some days.

Yeah? A big attorney like you? What d'you have to be depressed about? So you're not as good-looking as you used to be, but you ain't worried about where your next meal is coming from.

Don't give me no sob story about how your wife don't understand you. Arlene — right? — she still at the VA hospital? Physical therapy for Gulf War Syndrome and Iraq amputees, well, someone's got to do it. I don't hear much about those vets. Every time I look up at that TV in the corner — between tables, of course — I see some guy who says he murdered that little girl JonBenét Ramsey and someone else singing on American Idol.

Hey, didn't Arlene make you buy that old twelve-apartment building on 17th Street? Yeah, you told me you renovated every apartment, just the two of you. Seems to me your Arlene has more sense in her pinky than a lot of men.

I got a friend who has business sense like that, she makes wedding cakes, says I should come help her. Says sculptors were just making cake molds, using plaster and metal in place of cake batter. And they probably learned it from watching their wives make cakes. Did they have cakes when Myron was around, Jimmy? Maybe you can look it up on the internet and tell me.

Well, what's it for then, if it doesn't have that kind of info?

To find me? I'll be damned. Who'd want to find me? Oh, when I get to be a famous sculptor.

Well, I don't have no bank account, so I wouldn't use it to check my money. I don't have no stocks or bonds, so I wouldn't need it for that. Air tickets? What's the use of me checking air ticket prices? You gotta have money to fly, buddy!

I could check it to get a different job. I could check the paper for that. Oh, in a different city. Yeah. But I have to be close to my gran's. I stop in and check on her every day, before and after work, do her laundry. If I got a job far away, who'd do that for her? She only speaks Greek, you see, so my mom and I are the ones who talk for her.

Course, if I go to school, I'll need a second job so I can pay the tuition. Maybe I'll go decorate cakes after all. It wouldn't be much, but it would be something.

I could find a student loan on the net, huh? That how you got to be a lawyer — with student loans? How many years did you spend paying them off? Oh, we don't get nothing like the GI Bill these days, and I'm shit-scared of debt, buddy. Know how much your credit cards are costing you? Student loan would damn near be like that. That's what you learn when you're the daughter of Greek immigrants. My folks didn't raise no dummy. Pythagorus didn't have no debt, did he? Euclid didn't have no debt. That's because they had slaves. Didn't have to work themselves, didn't have to pay no minimum wage — that's how they got to be philosophers. The internet can tell you that.

Ever hear of a guy called Sassafras? No, not Sassafras, I mean Sisyphus. My dad is always talking about him. Said Sisyphus got himself in trouble with his boss, and the boss put him to rolling a humungous boulder up a steep hill. And then just as he rolled that thing nearly to the top, it would roll back down. And he'd run after it all the way down to the bottom and have to start all over again. I would have quit. Maybe he couldn't.

Oh yes, I can relate to Sisyphus. Sometimes I don't want to get out of bed in the morning, cause I'm real tired and my feet ache. And then I think hey, someone's waiting for his coffee at table seven, and the guy who always sits at nine likes his eggs over easy and not runny, and who'll look after them if I don't? And that gets me moving quick. So I wonder if Sisyphus felt like that every morning. I wonder who he got up for.

Hey, Jimmy, did Sisyphus get minimum wage? What about he alth care? My dad said they didn't have things like that in Greece, that's why he left. So they couldn't have had it in Sisyphus's day. But they'd have to give him time off to sleep, eat and crap, right? My dad's been wrong about a lot of things, so when you get a chance, you ask the net for me. But maybe the answer will be in Greek and I couldn't read it.

You couldn't either? Well, you could have fooled me, but not my gran.

Oh, yeah, I could do a second shift right here. Yeah, old man Petropoulos, he's my dad, he'd put me to work like a shot if I let him. In the kitchen, serving coffee, busing tables like Carlos, but I say no way. I'm Greek, not Mexican. I got my pride. Carlos says I'm stuck up like my dad, that's what he says. He says it's money, that's all that matters. But how would it look if I was in college and some students stopped in here and saw me busing tables? I'd have to be in acting school for that to be cool.

So what do you think, Jimmy? What are my chances? Slim, or none? Think Tula could be a sculptor? I like molding things. Giving them a lift so they look alive. Like my customers after coffee. It's not much, but it's something. Ask the net — it's all there, isn't it?

Okay, maybe it's not the Delphic Oracle.

My dad told me they kept those priestesses behind the scenes, like waitresses. They always gave advice from Apollo, but didn't anyone ever wonder what advice a priestess would have given if she was asked what
she
thought? Or what she would have said if she wasn't always doped up and stoned? Anyway, she was always giving them riddles so they'd have to come back and ask some more questions — isn't the net like that? I guess if I ever go back to school, I'll ask it everything.

Hey, you tried the breakfast burrito special last week, right? Carlos showed me how to make it. He says we should put some Mexican dishes on our menu. I told him don't tell Dad it's Mexican till he tries it.

You know my dad? Guy with the bushy eyebrows? He's always hanging around in his wheelchair — you can't get him to go home. The summer he bought this place — he was big and strong and striding around back then — he brought me along for my
education, though I shoulda been in school, and we sat in the car every day for a week. Just sitting across the street from the door. The heat was choking, but Dad handed me a wet towel and we sat there watching. He wrote down how many people were walking by, how many walked in, how many cars and how many buses drove by in an hour.

When that man gets an idea, it's like a piece of gum stuck in your hair.

Like a few weekends ago. He got the idea he wanted to see Millennium Park, but of course he can't drive no more. I heard him asking our pastor if he could drive him to Chicago sometime, but the pastor's real busy. So I offered to go with him Monday when we're closed here. I always wanted to go on a train, and we got up real early to ride the Hiawatha, and all the way, he didn't shout or swear at me once.

Do you know you don't have to phone for a cab in Chicago? They have so many, the cabbies line up outside the station, waiting. I sure as hell didn't know that. Felt like a queen. And the cabbie, a dark foreign guy, put the wheelchair in the trunk for me and got Dad inside. And he was so gentle with Dad, I was amazed. I never realized there are folks who don't speak American who care about older people — I mean, let's face it, here's a guy who can't walk. He said his father was old too and needed a wheelchair, but wheelchairs were too expensive to buy wherever he came from — I forget where. Imagine that, a country where you can't afford a wheelchair.

Not that it's cheap here, I gotta say.

I don't know how that cabbie found his way, but he scooted up and around those streets and down Wabash Street under the el like he was born there. And then he pulled up on Michigan Avenue and there, right in front of my face, was Millennium Park, with the Pritzker Pavilion shining way in the back. We got out
and I counted out a whole day's worth of tips in singles into his hand. And he bowed with his hands together like he was praying, or like I was royalty.

Oh, you should have seen us, Dad sailing along past the lampposts in his wheelchair and me behind, and the sun shining down on us. Felt like payday. I looked up at the names of all the founders carved into the limestone pillars and wondered just how did these guys make so much fucking money? Did they screw lots and lots of people, and for how much? But then Dad started racing a park attendant on a lawn mower, and I had to run behind him.