Periphery

                 Seamus  Schneider,  dancing  on  the  skin  of  the   earth, pedaling furiously in the rain, the drenching north London rain, a pair of garden shears balanced on the handlebars, wondered  how he  managed not to lose his balance. He presented a spectacle  to the  passing  cars. The people in these  vehicles, if they noticed him at all, must have thought Schneider represented  the  current shabby state of the  nation's  affairs. As soon as one hit the  M-25  things  improved, less  likelihood  of  terrorists  or lunatic  fringe  members disrupting one's journey. Then  one  was home and all of this was just more spectacle on the telly,  bread and circus for the working classes.

Schneider knew that he presented this sort of spectacle.  It would  have been all right for a younger man, but he was  getting pricklier as he got older and further afield. And the rain  never stopped.  But  he  didn't mind the rain as  much  as  the  blank, passive  stare as at a goldfish, the beefy sneer,  the  wide-eyed momentary sojourn. The worst of it was that they, the  ubiquitous they, were inside in cars and he was outside on an old  bicycle. If  anyone  had enquired, Schneider would have  insisted  on  the preference  of being on the outside looking in, but if honest  he was compelled also to ask himself where in the hell he thought he was going, and on a bicycle no less, purchased from some  hoodlum at the Brick Lane market.

He  once had believed, and the vestiges of this faith  still trailed  about  him  like  flotsam,  that  the  fetish  for   the acceptable  curriculum  had  long  ago  ruined  society.  But  he possessed not even the token of his passage, if one did not count the  wife  and  the bicycle that both tied  him  to  a  seemingly ceaseless rota in this former sink of empire.

The  shears were not his. They were only an encumbrance  and getting  harder to handle with the rain bearing down. The  shears belonged  to Lawrence. He knew him only as Lawrence. Schneider wondered whether Lawrence was  a man of the cloth.  He  wore  civilian  clothes  and  affected  a   neutral, standoffish  benevolence, but Schneider would have put  money  on his  being a vicar. Not that he'd ever known any  vicars.  But  Lawrence  worked from  the  Flower  Lane  Church of England.  The  secretaries  in  the  Good Neighborhood Scheme offices, in the Flower Lane church hall - the elderly  women perpetually undergoing aerobic classes as if in  a circle  of  hell  next door on the  basketball  courts, treated Lawrence with the sort of respect due to a representative of God on Earth, but Schneider was never quite sure where he stood vis a vis Lawrence, let alone God.

The rain continued to fizzle in the air for a short time and at last stopped. Good timing. Schneider pulled up on the sidewalk to check the directory. He was not far off from his  destination. Thin-lipped  women with overgrown, sour-faced children  in  prams

congregated  suddenly  outside shop fronts, in some kind  of  mid-afternoon ritual of which he was ignorant. There was  dissolution in  the  air. He could see it in the faces of  people.  Schneider welcomed  the  prognostications of global disaster made in  the  popular press.  He longed to have been right all  along  about things.  Bring on entropy, ye men of learning, said Schneider  to himself.

He  pushed  the bicycle along the sidewalk. Rows  of  houses were  empty, just this side of complete abandon, for  sale  signs teetering  eerily on the overgrown patches of weed and  brambles. Stray  cats  made dashes for cover across the  street.  Schneider

checked the directions Lawrence had scribbled on a piece of  Good Neighborhood Scheme stationery. The house was at the end of  the street.  Thick, woody brambles overgrew the picket  fence.  Paint was falling in jagged patches from the front door. Schneider rang the buzzer. It still worked; he could hear it sounding inside. He heard  footsteps,  and then the door opened.

"Mr.  Isaacs?" enquired Schneider.

The man, an older gentleman with a yellowed moustache, lanky thin  hair  combed  across the scalp  and  black  framed  glasses, studied Schneider with a blank expression.

"Yes?" he said.

"I'm from the Good Neighbor Scheme. Here to cut your grass."

 "Oh, yes. Seamus. Yes, yes. Come around the back."

"I've got the bicycle."

"That's  all  right. You see, I've been done by  the  bloody doctors  for cancer. Haven't been keeping up with  things  around here like I used to."

 "Right."

"You are here to do the back lawn, aren't you?

"Anything you need done," said Schneider serviceably.

 "Yes. Well, my name is Ron. Ron Isaacs. You can come  around the back, Seamus."

Schenider  pushed the bicycle around by the back  gate.  Ron was holding the gate open for him.

"What line of work are you in, son?"

"Oh, I do a little bit of everything," said Schneider.

"It's absolutely dreadful the way this government is  running the country into the ground, isn't it?"

"Oh, yeah."

"I  know it's hard for the lads to find any sort of  steady work. I'm a roofer myself. Worked in the trade for 25 years. I've always been active. When you're a roofer you're always active."

Schneider set the bicycle against a rusted oil barrel.

"But I've been done by the cancer," added Ron.

The backyard was a scrap heap, piled high with rotted planks and  assorted timbers, rusted pieces of machinery set  among  the grass. A small brown dog barked at the kitchen door.

"All  right, Lady. It's been hard for her with the grass  so high, you see," said Ron.

He opened the back door and the dog ran out on stiff  legs into  its former fields of glory, yapping and jerking  into  the thicket.

"There's a hedgehog in there, you see," said Ron.

Schneider  took the shears and snapped them open and  closed once or twice, loosening the hinge.

"You need some oil for that," said Ron.

"What I need is a decent lawnmower," said Schneider.

"You can use mine," said Ron, stepping over and removing the canvas from a push mower that looked like it hadn't been used for decades.

Ron  was fairly alert for an old man, thought Schneider,  as the two of them adjusted the blades on the mower and tried to  get it to work. But then suddenly his eyes would  lose  their focus, and he would seem faded and gray, the spark gone. He  went

back  inside the house with the dog, letting Schneider  carry  on alone.

Schneider was glad for the mower for one big  reason, and that was the dog turds he kept coming across, slicing wet and sliding  between  the blades. He would have hated to  go  through them  with  Lawrence's shears. Somehow the dog got  back  outside again  and was running around sniffing the gory remains  of  the past. The dog was on its last legs. It relished being alive and then seemed to founder, like Ron, staring into the tall grass in memory of the ancient prey, the hedgehog. The sun was out now, and steam was rising from the grass  as Schneider  worked.  He  kept coming across rusted  tools  in  the grass, pliers and wrenches. He wondered if Ron would miss them. Probably not. Ron appeared with a  cup of  tea for him. Schneider took the cup. Ron smelled strongly  of tobacco  and  some sort of medicinal odor Schneider  could  not identify.

"You're doing well," said Ron. "I would have done it myself, but you see I've been done by the cancer. This is the scar  here, see?"

Ron lifted his shirt to show Schneider the scar, yellow  and grisly  like  an  old  rope burned into the  pale  folds  of  his stomach. Schneider sat on the concrete porch by the back door and drank the cup of tea. Ron folded his shirt back in his pants.

"How long they give you?" asked Schneider.

"Two weeks or two years. Nobody knows for sure. I've already ordered  my coffin." Schneider looked away, unable to take  Ron's stare.

The radio was on in the kitchen, broadcasting  Parliamentary Questions.  The Leader of the Opposition was blasting  the  Prime Minister.  In  the  same way death rebuked life for not fulfilling its campaign pledges. It showed in Ron's stare. He was  talking  about  his career as  a  roofer.  He  had been responsible  for the introduction of neolite, an  asbestos  tile, into the Wembley area. Schneider listened with interest. The  man was  making  a  summation of himself.  Schneider  was  witnessing something  important. 

"Say,"  said Ron. "Maybe you can help me cover the  roof  of the  shed. It's been leaking all winter, and I'd like to have  it covered."

"Sure,"  said  Schneider, looking over at the  shed. It was leaning dangerously against the side of the house. He thought there  was no way Ron could be serious. But he was.

 "This  was my motorbike here. Used to get around  everywhere on her."

Ron  was peeling plastic off the motorcycle in the shed,  revealing  a fairly new Yamaha 250.

"...ride her down to Bournemouth regularly. I'll sell it  to you if you like."

"I don't know. It's certainly a nice bike."

"Does seventy on the motorway."

"How much would you want for it?"

"Three hundred quid."

Ron  went  back  inside, vital with  the  old  struggle  for survival  gurgling  once  again in his veins  despite  the  large proportion of his insides riddled with decay.   Schneider  thought  he  could use a motorcycle.  Man  the  wanderer,  homo  migratorio  was Schneider,  sailing over the grass, rolling down the  street.  He never  wanted  to  end  his  days  with  the  stink  of  his  own decrepitude  in his nostrils. Schneider believed in the  practice of  mobility.  Luckily, the wife was not yet  settled  back  into local society. Schneider would not give her the chance if he  had his say.

There  was  an  old rake of Ron's he used  to  pile  up  the cuttings. Then he snipped the brambles back from the edges of the lawn.  Lady would have the upper hand once again in the  struggle for backyard supremacy with the hedgehog.

"You've got to help me with the shed now," said Ron,  highly excited. Lady yapped loudly around his heels. Schneider felt like going home before the rain descended again. But he knew he had to help  Ron. It would give him an infusion of strength to  work  on the  shed.  He was already rolling out the sheet  of  plastic  he intended as a covering, trying hard to control the shaking in the hands that had once introduced neolite, the miracle tile, to  the Wembley area.

Ron  and  Schneider  worked at covering the  shed  with  the plastic. Ron led the way down the narrow alley between the  house and the shed. Together they threw the plastic over the shed. Then the old man insisted on climbing the ladder while Schneider  held it steady below. Schneider could see the arc of the man's life as he  climbed  the ladder, his vanity and strength just  enough  to keep away despair. Ron tried adjusting the plastic.

"Hammer, please," said Ron. Schneider handed up the hammer. Ron  began to hammer. His trembling hands made  it  hard for him to get the nails into the rotting wood. 

“Why don't you let me do it?" asked Schneider.

"That's   awright,"  said  Ron.  Schneider  could  see   the condensation  forming  on the inside of his glasses.  The  hammer slipped and crashed to the floor. Schneider picked it up, letting go  of  the  ladder.  Somehow Ron got down off the ladder without falling. Sschneider was grateful for that. There were some  nails  on  the  floor  and

Schneider  went around the shed with them, reaching up to  hammer the plastic down to the rotten siding of the shed.

Ron watched.

"Good. Well done," he said, wiping his glasses.

Schneider  was sick. The whole idea had been to give  Ron  a sense  of pride in himself, and he'd had to go and do it himself. Schneider tried to make it up by coming inside with Ron and meeting his wife. He  had  a difficult time looking at Emma. Her  lower  teeth were missing and her legs were swelled from poor circulation.  She was otherwise a cheerful, ebullient sort of woman, and  Schneider saw  how much the two loved each other. She told Schneider  about her  two  sons,  both wonderful fellows,  one  an  accountant  in Watford. Schneider wondered why they didn't help out with cutting

the lawn if they were so wonderful. 

"Seamus helped me cover the shed, dear. It should keep  dry now," said Ron.

"Oh, that's very kind of you," said Emma. "How much do we owe you?"  she asked.

"Nothing.  The scheme pays me. It comes out of  the  council budget."

"Really?"

The  two  of them were Labor party  supporters,  old  style socialists.  Ron had campaigned for the local  Labor  candidate, but  someone in the neighborhood had stolen the  billboards  from the  front lawn. Schneider thought a decent interval  had  passed and made to go.

"About  the  motorcycle. I'll get back to  you,  Ron,"  said Schneider  as the old man showed him to the back gate. They  were best of friends now.

"What price did I quote you, son?"

"Two hundred," said Schneider. Ron's eyes faded to gray.

The  rush hour traffic was growing menacing and  threatening to  whip out of control. Soon Schneider would be home, but still he  cursed and made faces at the cars,  hoping  indignation would keep away misfortune.

Anthony Caplan's latest novel, Savior, will be published April 18, 2014, on Amazon's Kindle by Harvard Square Editions. Read a sample on his website at: http://www.anthonycaplanwrites.com/savior

Over the Dam

Feeling squeezed for time. Need to develop, take chances, instead of settling where you do languish, funneling your energy into the fruitless, like twidddling while the dam roars, the ice caps melt. I wake up sometimes in the night feeling like the water is rising and I need to get out. The green monster looms closer swallowing the living and the already gone. Norman Mailer,,,Ira Levin. i can imagine them in heaven for a time, but eternity is a concept I have a hard time fathoming sometimes. Do the souls of the dead ever feel like they are drowning, or is everything still, or maybe in constant predictable motion so that it's just as if. As a collective, global consciousness do we imagine that we cheat death, that we create a kind of heaven on earth, a virtual reality where everything is forgiven, becomes banal, crystalizes into some unimagined beauty for the pleasure of God? The way sex with a loved One cleanses after becoming more than one's self, it tells of a hereafter, a subconscious, a mirror that one carries inside of the eternal like a permanent ID. This is interesting to me as an artist, the relationship between the two sides, the most impermanent and transient, sensory experience and an intimation of possible eternal Joy.

After the rain the cat hunkers by the door, nervously pacing. Winnie still smells Alice’s body. It reminds him of the lard room in the old farm at the top of Ray Road, although Alice was frail, almost bird-like in her skeletal structure. There is so much that comes flooding back to him now that she is in the car. The culvert on West Main Road has washed out which explains the air of stillness, the lack of traffic that has provided a backdrop to his despondent huffing through the small hours of the night. Since it is light Winnie thinks it is time for a drive. For Alice’s sake he hauls himself to his swollen feet.
The inside of the house, he sees, is collapsing. The overstuffed sofa cushions, super plush in a fabric Alice once hailed as a technological breakthrough, are splitting at the seams like sausages too long in the pan, spilling out a doughy substance that has spread throughout the first floor. The cat has some stuck on her tail. The picture on the wall, brought up from Alice’s old place out in the country, only miles from where Winnie himself grew up, a blue-tinted print of a cardinal on a pine bough, seems indelibly in shadow, as if Alice’s passing has granted it permission to give up the ghost. Cutlery lies on chairs. The world is melting, it said in the news. Winnie feels light on his feet, belying the fact that they are puffy and there is no sensation coming from them. He has stopped taking the Cumadin blood thinners. Paradoxically he feels younger, although tired. Last night was a long night and today is not quite started. The digital clock on the coffee table says 6:38. But it is November and there is light out the back window across the road, behind the Bin Luc’s red dragon.
He grabs for his glasses on the card table and knocks over the snow globe.
“The dragon,” he thinks, “is to blame.”
The penguins are slowly buried while Winnie adjusts the glasses to his nose. It helps to have something to focus his anger on. The restaurant dragon makes a convenient target. Winnie is like Saddam Hussein, railing at his fate, twirling his moustache at his captors.
He didn’t think it would happen. Honestly, he’d thought she would never die. He’d almost believed the angels had accorded them a special grant of immunity from that final sting. Alice’s muscle control grew ever worse. Her tremors sometimes shook the floor, but her eyes, always blue as sky and calm as spring rain, looked upwards and beyond forever. She was the thinker, the forward planner who had sold off the rest of the Cowen farm and bought this place on the Rockwood Estates, a development of trailer homes in the spillover from the fancy malls, the strip of fast food, Indian motels and adult video stores eternally in the last decade
Winnie, contemplative, moves slowly through the debris of her final pangs: bookshelves imploded of their mementoes, pill trays, unopened window envelopes blocking the doorway as if she had intended with her ruthless departure to stop time in its tracks, a final favor for entropy and for Winnie. And then her eyes had opened, the light had died, the gurgling in her throat had finally ceased. Her last words, “water” and then “ugh,” which Winnie had interpreted as “falls”, setting him up with his final duty and beyond that an emptiness he wouldn’t even begin to contemplate. But he’d finally gotten her in the car.
The wind is blowing as is common, he has noticed, after a hard rain as if the earth intended to dry itself in good time. The car is parked in the street with leaves stuck to the windshield. Alice is slumped on the floor in the passenger seat, wrapped in the light blue quilt they had bought at Wal-Mart the day after Christmas last year, a special indulgence that had warmed their days and nights. Another car, a grey SUV is pulling up behind as Winnie gets inside. He sticks the key in the ignition and starts the motor after a couple of cranks, set to ignore her. She knocks on the window and has that beaming, goofy smile as if to say “I may seem incompetent like you, but who knows?” and he must roll down the window and submit to her presence. Her blond hair is blowing about her face like whipcord.
“Hi, Winnie. Just checking in to make sure you and Alice are okay. Does she have her prescriptions filled?”
“That’s not where we’re going.”
“Oh, where are you going?”
“For a drive.”
“Don’t keep her out too long. How are you, Alice? Why are you on the floor?”
“She can’t hear you.”
“Is she all right?”
“She’s fine.”
“Alice? She doesn’t seem fine. I’ll need to report this if she’s not okay.”
Winnie rolls up the window. He presses on the accelerator with more force than he has since he was fifty and late for work at the liquor store in Meriden where he labored for a number of years for a despotic Italian-American of roughly his same age who eventually died in a boating accident. The store was sold off by his siblings. He was unmarried, recalls Winnie. And the store became a Mexican restaurant and eventually the entire block of shops was razed and the large warehouse outlets went up sometime in the nineties. Winnie rolls down the empty street unperturbed.
“We’re on the road again, Alice. Don’t be nervous. No backseat driving.”
Winnie smiles at his own joke and remembers Alice’s distaste for his ironic comments, how she encouraged him to value silence. She hated television shows, for instance. Winnie thinks he might like to own a television, but then feels sick at the very thought of a television. It’s too soon for such disloyalty. Then he cuts up the hill on Quarry Road to avoid the washout which he heard about on the radio.
When he came back from Meriden he was sixty-two, divorced for fifteen years, a father to a daughter, Shania, who worked for the Coast Guard in some land-based capacity in Alabama. He wrote Shania for a few years and then just stopped except for a Christmas card it seemed every other year or so until recently. They were never returned. Shania’s mother moved down to Florida to be near her daughter, he dimly remembered.
He remembered Alice from Sunday school teaching together in the seventies when he spotted her at the country store in Warner, fifty pounds heavier, bluish-grey hair in a perm, walking with great difficulty by the dairy freezer.
“Alice?”
“Ye-es?”
“Do you remember me?”
“Winston. You’ve been away.” She said this as if he’d disappointed her with such an absence, but the smile on her face provided a wry counterpoint.
“I have. I’m living in town now.”
“I hadn’t heard.”
“Last time, Alice. Gee, it must have been, it was Easter. Must have been 1971.”
“Haven’t been to church in years, Winston. Not since Frank died.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Alice.”
“Oh, he’s better off where he is now. He don’t have no roofs to fix, cows to milk or Alices to nag at him.”
“Well.”
In the first flush of their time together, Winnie had taken Alice back to the Valley Community Church, now advertising itself as Love-Centered, Purpose Driven, with the new pastor, the Rev. Jinni Stockmayer. They had once taught Sunday school to second to fifth graders when it was still the Contoocook Church of Christ. But none of the old people went anymore. They were mostly younger families from all over, New Jersey, Manchester, some Spanish speaking dark-skinned people. The pastor, from Philadelphia, had a live-in girlfriend and there was some evident embarrassment, but not so much that it was a problem. Alice disapproved. It was a shame none of the old crowd went anymore. Some of the young families, intent on service, came and helped Winnie and Alice with chores, mowing, pruning the overgrown lilacs, but the roof had been too long without mending in the southeast corner, and the years of collecting refuse in the attic added up over a hundred. When she sold it, to a couple from California, the husband worked for Raytheon and was handy with a Sawzall, they were happy to walk away, in a manner of speaking. To be honest, Alice’s legs hardly supported her any more. She enjoyed the trailer with its ramp and fringe of grass in front of Pear Street. All the streets in the development were named after familiar fruits. There were no mangos, kiwis or clementines.
Winnie himself is in bad shape and feeling the effects of last night’s exertions. His lungs are half filled with fluid and scar tissue, and the doctor has expressed fears an embolism could put an end to it all, hence the blood thinners. Winnie is more tired of waiting for this potential scenario than he has been of anything else in his previous experience, although he has had some doozies. His first wife, for instance, threatened constantly to kill him for betraying their marriage vows, and for a few years, he’d feared she might knife him in bed, while he lay there. Even when drunk, or maybe especially when drunk, he slept fitfully. He did have a girlfriend who used to come around and take him for a ride in her Impala. But his performance suffered from the alcohol, the worries about his marriage and loss of employment always hanging over his head. She drifted away.
He had three hundred dollars on him when he came back to Merrimack County, and he knew he had to give up the booze if he was to live. Alice and Frank were both teetotalers. Frank had been well-known for writing editorials on the evils of liquor and rock and roll music to the local paper, the Sharon Star-Eagle. To Winnie, it was God’s hand that she reappear in his life. He credited his survival to Alice’s certainties, her bed-rock presumption that the best was ahead, no matter what. Now with her gone he squints down the road, afraid of the inevitable beating he will take from spread-eagled destiny.
He is over the crest of the land looking westward into the Minks. He can see Mt. Sunapee beyond where the highway rises to the north in a stand of spruce. A line of utility poles look like circus strong men, maintaining vigil, the nation gone blind with their might. Two police cruisers confer head to tail in a median clearing.
Winnie takes the exit for the Blackwater River and stops at the Harvester Market. The wind has picked up again. Ice films over the rain puddles, and there is a skin of road dust on the cars. The high school girl at the checkout counter gives him a worried look behind his back as he limps off with the six pack. He drinks two in the car. Still no tears, he thinks. He takes a chance on the Salisbury Road past the dam. It’s not in bad shape, but before the trailhead for the waterfall there is nothing but water. He pulls over and parks.
It was important to Alice. The family that first homesteaded here were distant cousins and she could name some of the names in the small plot with the all but faded headstones above the road, now a flat disc of pulsing energy, curiously destructive. The roar comes from the falls. The trail is a rushing torrent washing away mud and rocks. Winnie stands by the car and surveys the scene. A spume of white foam can be seen above the trees where the head of the falls is usually hidden. Winnie’s insides feel like a dry riverbed, like the reverberating flood has stripped him; all that is left are the bare rocks of I, me, her, she, the irreducible pronouns without story or end. He calls out for Alice, but can’t remember her name.
He opens the door on the passenger side. Her upper body rolls to the outside, then wedges into place, her legs jammed between the floor and the seat. The sight of her brings him momentarily back.
“The road’s washed away, Alice.”
Her face, drained of expressiveness, is the color of oatmeal, and her open mouth reveals a swollen tongue. Winnie is amazed at how much she weighs, the odd massiveness of her arms and flesh, pulling to get her back upright in the seat. He finally gets her back in the seat with her mouth closed. Then he pees into the water running now under the wheels.
He hears a car as it pulls up behind on the road. It’s a Sutton police car, and out steps a lady officer in her high pants and stripes. Winnie puts the beer down on the floor of the passenger side and protectively bends over Alice, covering her with the quilt.
“Sir. It’s too dangerous here now. I don’t know if you can see it. But the dam’s about to go. You’ll have to turn around and leave.”
Winnie turns around and straightens as much as he can at his age. He thinks it could be Shania or one of her friends.
“She just wants to hear the waterfall.”
“It’s not a good idea.”
“I guess not.”
“You’ll have to turn the car around and leave, sir.”
Winnie closes Alice’s door and walks slowly around and gets in the driver’s side. The lady officer speaks on her two way radio. The car fails to start, giving the whining, dismal sound of engine dysfunction. The lady officer knocks on the window with her radio, somewhat desperately. Winnie doesn’t see her, just hears her knocking. He locks the door.
When he was a child, his mother knocked on the door of the bedroom he slept in. When he was twelve, the teacher knocked on the desk. When he was eighteen he knocked on the barracks door late one night but nobody answered. A lot of those people were dead now. Let them knock while they can.
“It’s just us now, Alice,” he says.
The officer is gone. Winnie finishes the beers. He pees again. The water is higher, rushing around his ankles, and he holds onto the door. He gets back in the car. There is a loud rumble. For a long time Winnie thinks of nothing. When he wakes up there is a pull at the rear of the car. A tow truck is hauling them away. Winnie slumps forward, hitting his head on the steering wheel. He bleeds while he cries. The noise of the fall recedes.

Tumble

Arráncame la vida
Con el último beso, mi amor.
Y si acaso te hiere el dolor,
Debe ser por no verlo.
Porque al fin tus ojos
Me los llevo yo.

Anonymous


My time in the country is difficult to explain. Suffice it to say that I fell into the company of people who found life disillusioning and preferred to live in a foreign land with their imaginations. When we left finally it was under varying conditions but the universal, perhaps misleading impression that we were once again exercising our right to free will.
In the spring I shared a ground-level, comfortable apartment with a German, Wolfgang Mueller. He was an amiable man with many friends who worked teaching English at government offices, and he rose early and went about his day with well-bred, cheery resoluteness, with purpose in the purposeless tumble of the anarchic city. I worked at night, on a movie shot in an abandoned mine in the ancient and decrepit outskirts of Tepito, a notoriously crime-ridden suburb of Mexico City.
We gathered at the Estudios Churubusco in the afternoon, the thirty or so of us that had been hired as extras, struggling young artists and marginals, wearing boots and silver jewelry. Che was an Argentine who had studied economics. Juliana was a daughter of a Catalan university professor. Francois, a Frenchman writing a travel book. Max, a Vietnam veteran from Arizona. These were just some of the characters brought together at that time, finding ourselves working together on the Hollywood gig.
After a bus ride through dusty streets thronged with the homeward bound, shopkeepers closing for the day, we arrived at a fenced-off compound and were transformed by make-up crews into futuristic mutants of a desert planet, a warrior tribe, products in fact of a technological sensibility. There was nervous heckling and joking around while we waited in lines for our costumes and weapons. The Mexicans had a great sense of humor about the whole operation, amused at this brand of efficiency in the name of art. Nobody took it very seriously apart from the director and his assistant, Cookie, an irritable little Spaniard, who would shout at us to hurry. We took our places on the hill. The stars would appear, looking charismatic and sculptured, under the tutelage of the director, a very serious and young looking David Lynch, with a long blonde forelock that he kept sweeping away from his eyes and white, self-effacing deck sneakers. He apparently had made a name for himself with some low budget cult films. At the time I had never heard of him.
The extras clambered on the rocks, falling, scraping the expensive rubber suits, and prepared to begin the scene, which involved a shootout with some bad guy.
“You are not Apaches, please. You are dignified, noble. You draw your guns with calm. This is not a Western," said Cookie.
"It's obvious he's never spent any time in Tepito," said one of the extras, twirling the ray gun on his finger. Max laughed loudly in appreciation, causing Cookie to tremble with rage. Max had gone native in his sense of humor. He claimed in private conversations to be the victim of a CIA assassination plot. He said this to test your reaction. He'd been in the Green Berets in the Mekong Delta, spending months at a time alone in the jungle up a tree as a sniper, and the experience had marked him. Cookie hurried back to the director's side. From above, on the rocks, those of us who could understand English could follow their conversation.
"Did they understand, Cookie, what it is they have to do?" asked the director, breaking away from consultations with the camera man.
"Yes, David. They understand perfectly well."
We worked on scenes interminably while the action perfected itself in this recreated world. We looked on like reverential and half-understanding aboriginals at the deeper and intriguing excesses that passed for drama. Our faces bore the right amounts apparently of reserve and hostility.
At midnight, breaking for a meal, we pulled the rubber suits off and let them hang around our hips. This was against regulations, but the wardrobe personnel did not have the heart to enforce rules, understanding that it was hot under the lights and we were tired of the interminable repetition of some action, standing for hours. The food, served from the back of a truck and eaten under a tent, was plentiful and wholesome, stews, steamed vegetables, apple pie, Perrier water. The crew and the stuntmen cut in line on front of us as a matter of rank, but we just laughed. After eating we drank coffee spiked with tequila, and the more enterprising mixed marijuana and tobacco in hand-rolled cigarettes.
I was transfixed by the clash of egos that happened off screen, between takes. It seemed more dramatic than the actual narrative of the film. The director did his best to soothe over any difficulties with an unctuous, eager manner, but it was clear there was dissatisfaction in the air. The two stars, a young man and woman with all-American good looks, were feuding.
One night the executive producer appeared on the set. By then we were disenchanted with the supposed glamour of the business. We didn't care that he was signing all the checks. We just saw a balding old man with a potbelly and a funny silk jacket. That night there was an unusually long after dinner break as the cast confined themselves to their trailers. Some of us walked to the top of a promontory, and Juliana broke out a pack of Marlboros. We smoked, leaning back against the rocks like the languid primitives we were supposed to be playing. There was a half moon, a spray of stars and orange smog over the city.
"This stupid suit. It cramps my style," said Juliana, tugging at one of the arms.
"I suppose we are soldiers, not sex symbols," said Francois in his Parisian accented Spanish.
"Still, they could have tailored them a little better," said Juliana.
"Looks like these bastards are having problems among themselves. Some of the others are talking about a strike. I think it might be a good time," said Che.
"If we went on strike they'd just fire us and get some other people," I said.
"It would be a problem for them. Remember, they already have us on film," said Che.
One of the production assistants yelled from below that the extras were to take their places.
"What are we doing now?" I asked.
"Who knows?" said Francois ironically.
"We're still trying to get that idiot to cry," said Juliana.
Juliana considered it incomprehensible that a professional actor could not shed tears as the scene demanded. We had already spent the whole night waiting for the miracle to happen.
"I'll give him a good hook on the ear and see if that might work," said Che.
"It might," I said.
We walked down the hill, blinded by the lights, to our places at the mouth of the canyon. I stood on a precarious ledge, preferring the vantage it gave. Juliana, more practical, stood on solid ground below where she could lean and rest between takes. The dust machines started up, fouling the air with red powder meant to imitate some distant planet's atmosphere. The director checked the camera view, conferred with Cookie. The make-up crew placed some drops in the young star's eyes as he leaned his head back. A production assistant yelled for silence, punctuating the night with his single command. For his consistently irrelevant responsibility, we had settled on him as our favorite object of derision. Everyone was anxious as the producer sat in a high chair behind the camera, observing. Make-believe desert dust was blown in the air by large, noiseless machines.
The work was called off in the early morning. We traded in our weapons and rubber suits for civilian gear and changed in the tent reserved for us. Some of the women tried rubbing the caked grime off their faces with paper towels, but it seemed a painfully slow operation. We looked strange as we boarded the bus. Someone caught sight of the assistant, our nemesis, trudging across the parking lot.
"One, two, three."
We stuck our heads out the windows and gave him back his epitaph in splendid mimicry. He gave the whole bus the finger. We were rolling now.
Juliana, the last one on, slid into the seat next to me. I watched storefront colors bloom and wraiths of daybreak glide on the sidewalk.
"I don't feel tired," said Juliana.
"Neither do I."
We held hands as I stared out the window. I never looked at her until we got back to Churubusco.
"What a shame," said Juliana, letting go of my hand as the bus parked and the tribe stood and stretched.
I caught a ride with Francois up the Avenida Insurgentes. He usually gave two or three of us a lift in the old Chrysler that had traversed much of the continent. He let me out on the street into the ephemerally fresh morning air. In no time the city would be overrun.
I walked across Condesa, leaving footprints in the grass of the old horse track that runs down the center of the street. Two Indian men, Oaxacans by their dress, walked silently by, faces lowered under their hat brims. I looked away. I was in the realm of ghosts again, over the bridge and on to the empty avenue. I looked through the tinted glass at the early morning customers in the coffee shop on the corner. A woman stared vacantly past her man while he stirred his coffee. The new waiter's face spelled fear. It was an unbroken, monotonous, grey, evil-smelling landscape. The movement of shadows took on a degenerate sensuality. In my doorway, a drunk lay asleep, his shirt unbuttoned and draped on an obscene gut, spittle on his beard and his arm stretched over a bundle of newspapers. He used his shoes for a pillow. I unlocked the door and stepped over him into the hallway. Wolfgang was still asleep. I took a shower, running the lukewarm water over my head for a long time. Deltas of reds and purples formed around the drain, the sediment of planet Dune. Then I got into bed and fell asleep. The noise of the taxi stand intruded on my dreams. I woke up. The drivers liked to shout and honk their horns at each other and at women walking along the sidewalk. I rolled out of bed and opened the window a crack to stave off the heat. I wiped dust off the Venetian blinds with my finger. The telephone rang. It was the studio calling to say there would be no need for any extras that night. I made myself some eggs and reheated some beans. I called Francois. He'd been given the same story.
"Who cares? I'll come over and we'll go shopping. I found a friend's credit card in my suitcase."
"How'd that get there?"
"Don't ask too many questions, kid."
Francois knocked on my window a little while later. He came in and rolled a joint as he
talked, assuring me about the credit card business. Then we went out, driving along the Perisur, stopping at a cement, garrison-like shopping mall smelling of perfume and sugar. First we had something to eat in a gourmet food outlet, ham, brie, croissants and espresso. Francois picked up some olives and cans of pate on the way out. There was nothing in the stores that I really wanted.
While Francois wandered through the mostly empty stores in a celebration of consumerism, I sat under potted palms and read a Time magazine. Francois emerged with a pressure cooker and some Japanese steak knives. Almost as an afterthought, I suggested we purchase bottles of champagne and some rum.
It was mid-afternoon and the fire eaters were plying their trade at the intersections. I popped open a bottle of champagne and we drank it in the slow moving traffic. I asked Francois to let me off by the University stadium.
"I'll see you around," I said.
I walked over to Juliana's house. Her brother answered the door. He was wearing a Felix the Cat tee-shirt and listening to Led Zeppelin, drumming his fingers on the door. Juliana wasn't in, so I took a crowded bus up to Napoles, breaking into a sweat from the heat on the bus, watching closely for pickpockets.
Juliana's boyfriend lived on the second floor of an old, yellow building. I called from a payphone across the street. She always spoke in a monotone that sounded on the verge of cracking.
"Can I come by? I'm on the street."
"Yes. Come by. Can you bring me some milk?"
"Where's Roberto."
"He went to Guadalajara for the weekend, and I don't have anything to eat."
"Anything else?" I asked.
"Some Marlboros."
The hallway smelled of rotting garbage, and there was a hole in Roberto's door where somebody had taken a crowbar to it. I knocked and she opened. She smiled with a slight overbite and flashing teeth. Her eyes looked dark and tired. She was busy rearranging the furniture. I helped her with a sofa, pushing it to one corner. Juliana laughed in surprise.
"Your face gets so red," she said, coming closer.
"I've been drinking," I said, and explained about Francois and the credit card. Juliana sighed. She had plans of her own and needed money. She wanted to open a cafe to be frequented by poets and musicians. She was taking a bus up to Valle de Bravo the next day to see if she could find something there.
"What about the movie?" I asked.
"I don't give a shit about it. Why don't you come?"
We kissed. I had no good answer. We lay together in the night, motionless. Juliana held my hand.
In the morning we caught a bus that ran over the Desierto de los Leones and into the forested mountains. The bus was full, mostly of young people returning to their villages. Juliana fell asleep and slumped against me. The people on the bus were quiet, enjoying the mystery of the journey. We stopped at Toluca and several smaller towns along the way. Families of peasants gathered at the side of the road to greet the homecoming sons and daughters.
At Valle de Bravo we climbed down from the bus and descended the cobblestone street to the zocalo past groups of marketgoers. We had a coffee at a restaurant that smelled of ammoniac village cleanliness.
"Oh, what the hell. I don't really care," Juliana blurted out.
"About?"
"Finding anything. It's such an empty thing after all, isn't it? I mean ambition."
"I don't know. You're worried you won't find what you're looking for."
"Yes."
"You will."