Being Realistic

I hadn't expected to see the old man for at least a couple of hours; he was always late though I knew he'd come equipped with excellent excuses and perhaps even gifts, so I'd saved The Sun Also Rises from English Honors to start (and, conceivably, finish) while I waited for him to show up at the bus station. I'd read a couple of magazines on the way from Albuquerque instead and mostly watched things out the window, watched the landscape shift into Texas.

So. I was pretty surprised to see him when I got off the bus in Amarillo. I had really wanted to at least start the Hemingway and wondered if I'd get the chance to read it in time for school. I knew I could start reading on the trip back but it was a pretty thick book.

He was sitting near the ticket counter, bent over with his elbows on his knees and a Chesterfield deep in the knuckles of his right hand, and he wasn't watching so I got up right in front of him. I had my The Sun Also Rises in one hand and my weekender in the other.

"Hey," I said and his head snapped up and, for a second, I don't think he knew who I was. The he grinned and stood up.

"Well, goddamn," he said. "Looks like you've growed some." He stuck his cigarette in his mouth and held out his hand. I dropped my bag and shifted the book to my left hand and we shook, three times, firm and short like I knew he'd do it. He glanced at the book, still grinning, and reached down for the bag.

"Let's get the hell outta here," the old man said. "I been here all goddamn morning. Couldn't remember which bus you was coming on so I been here for every damn one. Eastbound and west."

That was it, I thought. If he'd remembered which bus I was on, he'd have been late. As it stood, there were people all over town wondering why he hadn't shown up to see them, why he was late, and where the hell he was anyway.

"I got the Chrysler over there." The old man pointed with his chin and I had to double-step to keep up with him. He was wearing green work clothes and there was a lingering odor of crude oil but I couldn't tell if it was him or just Amarillo in general.

We got to the Chrysler and the old man put my bag in the back seat. I remembered the car but not the way I was seeing it. It looked badly used, dirty and dented, like it was the kind of car that left blue smoke hanging in the air behind it. It didn't look like I remembered it looking.

The old man grabbed a jacket off the passenger side floor. It was green like his clothes and I could see the places where company insignia had been removed. He held it and looked at it like he had never seen a jacket before, like he was puzzling out the whole business of sleeves and arms and zippers. He saw me looking and grinned.

"Come on, sport," he said. "Let's get going."

*

He drove, of course, all around town. He pointed at this and that building and told me the history as he knew it of each. This aunt or that old buddy or some second cousin or another little gal he used to run with had lived there, died there, done something funny or stupid there, and I wasn't much listening to what he was saying. I fingered the cheap paperback I held between my knees and struggled with the urge to just go ahead and light up even though I'd never smoked in front of him. Or any adult, for that matter. I had a practically full pack of Winstons in my pocket and hadn't had a smoke since Santa Rosa.

When the old man started talking about the leases he had or would have or was about to probably have if the deal went through though it was a sure thing whether or not some son-of-a-bitch at Phil-Tex knew his ass from a hole in the ground. I wasn't listening again, so I told him I was thirsty. That, me telling him I was thirsty, meant we were going to 16th Avenue. The old man lit a Chesterfield one-handed, left-handed, with a book of matches and turned a squealing left in front of and across two lanes of oncoming traffic. It turned out he was thirsty, too.

*

I remember we went to several bars there on 16th and I don't remember in which one I lost my school book. A do remember a roughneck taking it from me and swearing that he had known Hemingway, he even referred to him as "Papa," but I think he eventually gave it back. I think that particular guy was only making a joke about the uselessness of book-learning, but there were always so many guys like that in those bars. I think the old man might have been in on that jokes, but there were always so many jokes along 16th Avenue that I can't remember which ones the old man was in on, out of, or the butt of. I think.

*

I do remember the old man reaching over to a woman. She had the thin, burnt-looking hair that the old man really seemed to go for. He just leaned over and tried to give her a kiss and I'm pretty sure his mouth was open and I'm not so sure hers wasn't. And a bunch of guys who wore the same kind of green work clothes the old man was wearing, though theirs still had the company patches, seemed to think that wasn't such a good idea. The old man went down under the quick burst of blows from fists and boots, many of them steel-toed, and I knew that was a terrible idea. It seemed like somebody should step in to even things up a little bit and, surprisingly, I didn't do too badly.

*

I have played hockey on the frozen ponds of fancypants Eastern prep schools and, when allowed, things like rugby and lacrosse. I know how to hurt people without seeming to do it on purpose, trained early in the quick and dirty. The old man was down with orange lipstick and a greasy fist working on his mouth and some major dental bills in his future. I reached down for his collar and, on the way, I'm pretty sure I broke the ankle of the guy who had hit him first. Somebody turned around and I was suddenly in my own world of lumps. I glimpsed an adam's apple and rapped it short and hard with my left. Simultaneously, I heard something pop near my ribs. I got my knee between a pair of legs, worked it, and heard a grunt and then a thin whine. I reached again for the old man and pulled a piece of his arm until his face was near mine. He grinned, spit blood and porcelain, and shot his right past my shoulder to smack some guy in the face. It was right between the eyes on the bridge of the nose and that guy fell perfectly backward like a bowling pin, bounced right back up, and chopped across the neckline of my collegiate crewcut.

"Sorry, son," the old man said and hit the guy again over the same shoulder in the exact same spot between the guy's eyes and that time the guy went down and didn't get up.

"Time to go," I said, squinting through a bloody eye I don't remember getting. "I've got your jacket."

"Well," said the old man, but for some reason he had another beer in his hand and, I'm pretty sure, his other hand on that same woman's thigh, high up near crotch. "At least somebody do."

Public Displays of Affection

First of all, I've never liked the notion of people making out in public. Beyond the tasteful peck, I never felt comfortable doing it and I don't really feel comfortable when other people are doing it, especially when one of them is this girl I used to practically live with. It makes me wonder what else is going on in private, especially when she bends this guy who's not me's head way far back, her hand all along the side of his face, and she opens her eyes to search through the generalized movement in this bar to find my eyes upon her and she smiles while she's kissing him and it's all so very much on purpose, the way her pupils are pushed to their limits to keep me in sight and the glimpse of tooth I catch when she bites his lip and now I feel sorry for this guy which is something I really feel uncomfortable doing since he's leaning against a woman for whom I once had (okay, I admit, still have) strong feelings and I never liked him in the first place, even before he started doing things like leaning into Valerie so she could gnaw on his face and smirk at her ever-so-ex-boyfriend over his shoulder without him having any kind of clue whatsoever what she was doing or that even though I feel sorry for him, I still wouldn't mind being him.

These are complicated feelings I realize, but I also know I wouldn’t hate her so much if I didn’t still love her so terribly much. Or just so terribly. That’s why this stupid bar napkin is so full of such stupid scribblings. I guess that’s what I do best.

His hand is on her hip but thinking about drifting down to her ass. I remember when my hand used to do the same kind of thing but now all it, my hand, can do is remember and write about remembering. I can’t imagine she’s happy, that Valerie is enjoying this but I can imagine the pain she knows I feel makes the pain I know she feels seem reasonable, seem manageable, seem like it might be bearable in the long run. His hand is migrating and I wonder if it, his hand, is having a feeling. I can see the way she is slowly moving back and forth, the soft echo of movement in the past and movement in the future. It describes a kind of motion that expresses a kind of feeling that I haven’t been able to have in a long, long time.

I need another napkin.

The waitress has distracted me and Valerie has distracted her man enough to be able to scoop some of his money off the bar and even if he noticed, which I don’t think he did, I don’t think he’d care. After all, it’s only paper and, unless things have changed a lot which I don’t think they have, she’s not wearing any kind of underwear. I think I ordered another drink but I won’t be sure until it gets here. I’ve got my own money.

It is a drink but it’s not the drink I asked for. Should I care? Or should I pay? Is it really a question? Look out; here comes my money!

I can’t quite believe that Valerie sent this drink to me. Will this kind of strangeness never, ever stop? Why is she wiggling her fingers at me like that? Why am I waving back? Why am I putting this glass to my lips and wondering if it is poison? I already know it is poison. And it tastes very, very good.

Werewolves Everywhere You Look

Number One

Don's head felt like it was in a thing like a box or in a thing like maybe a real big fist and it was closing and Mark over there in the kitchen was not helping anything feel any different. Mötley Crüe was pounding out of the speakers of the boom box Don's sister had loaned them, the boom box she'd put on the windowsill and nobody had moved since. Maximum volume created maximum distortion and the music was set to both. It didn't matter that much to the boys, either of them; they'd memorized the whole album years before.

Mark was cutting oranges into quarters with a big commando-type knife. When he'd gotten about one thousand chunks of orange piled up on the counter, he jammed the knife into the formica surface. He starting scooping up orange quarters and dumping them into the refrigerator. Although the music prevented Don from actually hearing anything else, he did see Mark's lips move and Don knew that Mark had just said "Awl riot" in the way that was his, Mark's, trademark. It meant the same thing as "victory" or "how unusual" or "I can't think of anything else to say." It was like Don's own bandanna, like the one he had tied around his neck in ninth grade and it just became something he kept on doing; it become the thing he always did. People said, “Don. You know, the guy who has that bandanna around his neck all the time.” Everybody did things like that, like Mark always said "awl riot" and Don wore a bandanna around his neck and this girl or that girl wore a lot of gold-toned rings on every finger or another wore red eye shadow all the time or some such thing. Everybody did something that they did all the time.

The boys' apartment was a good apartment because almost everybody who lived in the complex worked day jobs of some kind or else had a bunch of kids that would keep them all pretty busy and out of the way. Nobody was out much during the weekdays and Don and Mark could do pretty much whatever they wanted. Don might bring over one of the guys from his baking industries classes or Mark might cruise one of the high school parking lots. Just like that, just about every day there was a party.

Don's headache was getting much better. It seemed to have a little life all its own, that headache. It came and went like an old friend though lately it was making more and more of its own decisions without asking Don and it, the headache, seemed to be getting desperate as if it were running out of time, running out of choices. Don was the guy who hated pain. He had never and probably would never get used to it. He was the kid who was scared of spankings because they hurt. He was the one who wouldn't fight, who would eat shit on the playground rather than risk getting hurt. Don used to lie awake in his little bed in his Mom's apartment trying to sleep and just keep seeing himself falling off his bike into gravel, getting "swats" from his PE teacher, burning up in some horrible car wreck.

Don tried to stop thinking about his headache specifically and about pain in general. He drank some more beer and looked at their clock with its electrical cord trailing down to the outlet. Don wondered if they sold aspirin at liquor stores. While he was doing that, the tape in the machine ended or stopped or something and in the shock of sudden silence, both boys realized that someone was knocking really loudly on the door.

"Whoa," said Mark.

Don opened the door and it was this friend of one of Mark's girlfriends; her name was Julie. She was sixteen and she liked to come over to the apartment when she was supposed to be in study hall and she'd wait around hoping someone would get her high or show her some deep attention and then she'd go back to school for social studies or hygiene class or something. This girl always wore a black, TV-type detective fedora kind of hat. It was her trademark.

"Hey, Don," she said.

"Hey, Julie," Don said.

She sat down on the living room floor and lit a Marlboro Light. It was the kind of cigarette she bought from a machine rather than risk get carded by convenience store clerks. Don went back into the kitchen near Mark.

"Did you guys ever have Mrs. Lamont ever?" Julie asked them. "For English?"

Neither Mark nor Don said anything. Don was looking through some empty cassette boxes, not thinking about his headache, and wondering where all the tapes were.

"Well?" Julie asked and she whipped her head around to look right at them and her black TV hat almost fell off. "I mean, did you?"

Don moved as quickly as he could to the front door and opened it back up. Sunlight came in sheets through it.

"Hey, Julie," Don sort of said. "I mean, see you later, okay?"

Julie just sat there a second and then she stood up really fast and just left.

"That was harsh," said Mark.

"Nah," Don said back. "Not really."

Number Two

It was extremely near closing time and, okay, I will admit that I was very drunk. I had run out of cash early in the evening and had been running a tab on my credit card. I was drinking shots of vodka and glasses of draft beer. I figured out a long time ago that those are the kinds of drinks you drink when you don't want to commune with other people. If you drink something with pineapple or grenadine or other vivid colors, you're asking for someone to talk to you. Even ice can be dangerous because it makes that attractive clinking sound on the way to your mouth. A shot and a beer meant something else altogether, something kind of morose and silent.

At least, that what I always thought until this guy at my left told the bartender to “give me another round and put it on that pussy's tab" and jerked his big thumb to his right which was directly at me. The bartender looked at me and I was pretty surprised and didn't really know what to say and then the drinks came up. Everybody within earshot was looking at me. I still didn't know what to do but I knew I didn't like what was being done. I didn't know what to do so I nodded and listened to the acid laughter drip out of the Thumb and his buddies drinking on my tab and basically the rest of the entire bar was laughing, too. They all seemed to have figured out that they had it made no matter what I was drinking. My choices had become extremely limited.

I finished my vodka, decided to leave the rest of my draft on the coaster, and slid off my stool in a humble, I'm-off-to-take-a-leak-Sir-but-I'll-be-right-back kind of way as if I was really worried about keeping on his good side, what he was going to do to me next, what he was really thinking about me. When I got near the exit door at the back of the room, I stopped and looked back toward the bar. I waited like that until the Thumb had the time to look over and wonder where I had gone off to and when I was getting back. He was still thinking about me, thinking about me paying for more drinks, and maybe even missing me. The bar was crowded enough, I figured, to keep him from just charging into me swinging his big fists and, I figured, he'd want to tell a few people what he was going to do to a drink-buying pussy like me. I figured that once he saw me, I'd have about half a minute to get ready. I kept staring at him until he looked over his shoulder, I locked my eyes onto his, I pointed my finger straight at him, I made a hooking kind of gesture, and I made my mouth make "You" real obvious. And then I crashed backward through the exit door out into the parking lot.

I was shaking and scared as hell, hyper-conscious of how bad all my calculations probably were, and how even my few seconds where fading away fast. I was just about ready to give it up and run when I found what I was looking for, a big flat piece of landscaping rock. I got to that rock, grabbed it, and the door swung open. The Thumb was alone. I took my swing and the rock split his nose cleanly down the middle, squashed it up under his right cheek. He just stood there and watched the blood ruin his nice shirt.

""Okay? Fair?" I tried to whisper. "Want to quit now?"

His eyes cleared up and he said, "Now, I'm going to kill you, now."

The rock bounced against his left ear. It sounded soft and wet when it hit but he didn't react the way I hoped. He made a noise like "woof" and then he made another noise that sounded like "fucker."

I started to really panic. I tried to think about what I should do next. I threw the rock straight at his mouth and ran. I figured that if I could get to my car and start it and drive, I could run back and forth over the Thumb until his pieces were too small to do me harm. He didn't follow me, though. I got my car door open and I twisted my key into my ignition and, as I drove out and away, I could see he was still standing there bleeding under the light of the “no entrance/exit only” sign.

Number Three

Even though he was pacing everywhere through the house, even though he acted like he was bored to distraction, Jackie really wasn't. He was just Jackie, Jackie here and there throughout the house.

Once in a while, he would stop at the door of the kids' room and call in.

"Are you kids okay? Do you need something?"

"Your mom will be home real soon. Okay? Kids?"

Stuff like that.

When he was out in the kitchen, he finished washing the dishes, scoured out the sink, scrubbed the cutlery a second and then a third time, scoured out the sink again, and started on his shirt and pants. He yelled toward the kids' room a lot.

"Cleaning up in here!"

"Getting things spic and span in the kitchen!"

Things like that to keep them posted on how things were going with him getting ready for their mother to come home.

The stains on his clothes were difficult and he couldn't even start to think about the stains on theirs or the other messes around the house he was going to have to start cleaning. His clothes took a lot of rubbing and scrubbing and some "god-shit-fuck-goddammits" before they came away clean (or cleaner than they’d been before he started trying to clean them). In between all those times he was scrubbing at his clothes, he was still pacing around the house only he was naked and looking out the windows and discovering that he was wandering away from the sink and his dirty dirty clothes again and that he was smoking a cigarette in the hallway near the bedrooms and the doors to theirs, the children's rooms.

But Jackie got everything all washed out and rinsed and hung up on the shower curtain rod in the bathroom. When he saw his reflection in the bathroom mirror, he saw that he had no shirt on which made him look down and remember that he had no pants on either.

While he was in a closet getting fresh clothes, he heard the crunching noise from the gravel in the driveway. Jackie went lurching out into the hallway tangled up in his new, fresh, clean clothes; he was all tangled up in those arms and legs in an eagerly comical kind of way.

"Kids!" he called. "Hey, kids! Your mom's home."

11 Ways of Looking at Lisa

She's stealing, stealing, stealing money at work all the time. In her hands, credit card charge slips transform themselves and ones and fours and sevens become nines, threes fill in to eights, zeroes fall into unexpected but significant places, and the cash in the coffee can on her closet's top shelf rolls tightly around itself, a cocoon in which her brooding future incubates.

She never eats it herself but she often steals meat from the kitchen to bring home to her dog. Her boyfriend will often steal if from them both. She can smell it on his breath.

His drinks will almost certainly appear on some other drunk's tab and that is a kind of victory, a kind of seduction performed with alcohol and a BIC round-stic fine point pen and it will almost certainly work and he will certainly drink more and she will glow with the gifts she's given, setting up shots of raw vodka all around.

*

She's breaking things in the kitchen and it punctuates the things she says.

She's asking, "Are you happy now? [crash] Is this what you want? [crash] Is this the way you want things to be? [crash]" and the shards of Corning Ware and Pyrex and glass arrange themselves across the linoleum like messages, like codes, like hieroglyphic gestures and they glitter as they spin toward brief rest in litter under her 100 watt bulbs. There is a clarity to this performance, its meaning quite clear, yet it will remain a kind of performance.

"Are [smash] you [smash] happy [smash] now? [smash]" she wails, forlorn in anger and gathering repent.

He is thinking.

He says, "I'm thinking. I'm thinking."

*

She's working on the StairMaster and it's been 45 minutes. The sweat spreads but does not fall from her face, her lips, her chin; it outlines its own movement across her shoulders and down the furrows of her vertebrae. It is hard for her to concentrate on the article in the Harper's magazine she holds. She savors the movement of her thighs, her calves, her ass as she climbs and she lets the magazine slowly fold itself closed and then it slip to the floor beside the machine and she lays her forehead between her hands and she keeps climbing.

*

She's drinking and she's drunk and crawling around the living room floor, a mosaic of cassette tapes and CDs spread underneath her elbows and her knees and she's looking for something particular, a special song to accompany this special moment spread underneath her elbows and her knees and she's looking for something particular, a special song to accompany this special moment and she knows it here somewhere and if she can just remember who sings it and what album it's on and where that album is, she can listen to it over and over and over all night long and she keeps looking because she knows what she wants to hear.

*

She's dragging her nails across the plaster of the bedroom wall and making noise, plenty of noise, and it all means she likes having sex. Her back is arching and her shoulders toss and her breath goes in and out like cats gasp and it comes out like a long, drawn out "oh, fuck" and that noise rises and hardens as it escapes her swollen mouth and everything she does and says is absolutely inspiring and he's working at it hard, he's trying his best and she's rocking.

"Fuck, baby. Oh, fuck."

*

She's driving fast across west Texas plains in a car that's about to break down on roads she's deliberately not chosen, roads she's deliberately just taken for no reason at all. She has chosen not to add any oil to the engine and the temperature is rising and she's singing along to a radio station that has seemed to just appear on the dial and she really doesn't know the words to the songs, so the sounds she makes are just a split second behind the sounds the radio is making.

"Heartache hmm hmm hmm and whiskey hmm hmm hmm," she sings. "Lovin' arms hmm hmm hmm and freight trains moanin' hmm hmm hmm."

At the same time, she's thinking, "This is the life, sure enough."

*

She's getting ready for another party; she has them quarterly. She is vacuuming the living room carpet and cutting up the vegetables and working on her hair and working on her face and opening bottles of wine and setting out plates and napkins and silverware and picking out some music all more or less simultaneously and when guests start arriving she is more than ready.

*

She's screaming at the boys in the car who yelled at her but they're not listening; they're already way too far down the street for her voice to reach them though she can still hear the heavy thud the music they play makes.

"Fuck you!" she screams but it is a thin sound and is quickly lost in the air, unravels and disappears until only dogs can hear it.

"Fuck you, you fuckers!"

*

She's counting boyfriends like counting prayers with a rosary; she lays out their photographs like a collection of holy cards, like a dealer starting another game of casino blackjack with all the odds behind her. She makes a circle, she makes a star, she puts them in a long, long row. She picks them up like paper dolls.

"Hey, you!" she pretends one of the photographs says. "You were mean to Lisa."

"I was not," she pretends to make another picture say. "She's a bitch and she was mean to me."

"Take that back."

"Make me." And then she pretends the pictures fight and she jiggles them both across each other and the sounds she makes sound like fists hitting flesh and grunts of pain. She pretends the good guy's picture wins the fight and then she gathers all the photos together into one neat stack and puts them back in the envelope in the box in the drawer in the dresser in the room she calls "spare."

*

She's laughing and the dog is in the water and across the brown, flat river the new condominiums with red tile roofs are laddered up the mesa, rising like dull bees from the cottonwood bosque. Even Ray-Bans cannot control the vibrating reflection of the sun in the water in her eyes in the windows of the houses half a mile away.

*

She's sleeping while the morning sunlight enters the east window and he sits in the wing back chair that sits in the corner of her bedroom and he watches it, the light, and the way the sheets are tangled around her legs and the way the arrow of soft, fine down tracks her spine and the way the growing light has made her perspire and how each tiny hair has begun to glisten, to shine golden in the curves her back has made this morning.

Artificial English on the Beach

“Junggwode heisede yingtaosede xampan shi diyi heisede yingtaosede xampan. [The Chinese black cherry champagne is the best black cherry champagne in the world],” their Chinese host proclaimed. It was a truly awful beverage but everyone seemed to catching a buzz.

“Jende ma? Wo hen dwo xiangxin. [Really? I believe you very much]. Dzai Meigo, womendo jia jiege Sh-ASS-ta. [In the United States, we all call this Sh-ASS-ta],” Robert replied. “Keyi ma? [May I please have some more?]”

“Dwei, dwei, dwei. Hebei [Of course, of course, of course. Drink your cup.],” was the answer and the bottle, wrapped in yellow crinkly cellophane was again proffered with as much flourish as a loincloth wearing Chinese fisherman could flourish which was a lot. “He, he, he. [Drink, drink, drink].”

“What is this shit?” Sara asked over her cup and stubbed her bootleg Winston cigarette into the eyeball of one of the many scattered fish heads, fish parts, fishing gear, and generalized trash of this fisherman’s shack.

“This is the best black cherry champagne in the world,” Robert told her.

“I got that part. I’m asking you what kind of shit I’m drinking.”

“It’s probably soda pop dosed with pure grain alcohol and antifreeze.”

“See? That’s all I wanted to know,” she said, kicking another fish-head out of kicking range. The champagne was only marginally better than the baijiou they had been drinking up to that point.

“Wo xihuan niede difang,” she directed to her host. “I like your place.”

Using her best Chinese manners, Sara spat out the low doorway to show the host how much she liked it there by not spitting on his floor.

The host beamed because he liked it, too. He’d built it himself out of driftwood and industrial waste. With its beach-front location and views of the harbor, it was quite a bachelor pad and who knew how many young Chinese women had been tempted into its confines. How many young Chinese fisherwomen had actually given it up in there was questionable, but certainly some had been tempted, especially if the host kept the world’s best black cherry champagne lying around all the time. Surely it was not just for foreigners because the last time foreigners had been inside this little seaside hut was never. The host kept looking at Sara’s legs, revealed as they were by her Capri pants.

“He likes you,” Robert said.

“He likes my legs,” she answered. “He likes you as a human being. He likes you as a dead foreign devil ghost barbarian frenemy .”

“As well he should. I sort of set the standard,” Robert agreed.

“You do? I mean, you do.”

“I try.”

“You do. I mean you do try,” she replied. “But when’s this other guy supposed to get here?”

“Niede pongyo lai shemma shiho? [When is your friend coming?].” Robert asked the host.

“Lai kuaide, kuaide, kuaide. [He’s coming quickly, quickly, quickly].”

“Ni shuo iyangde dou shiho keshi ta bu lai. [You say that all the time but he doesn’t come.],” Sara almost snapped the words but her lips remained wrapped around her cup. Maybe the host didn’t hear her as he kept his eyes fastened on the shack’s open door.

“Ta lai xiendzai. [He’s coming now.],” the host said. And the mystery guest was, indeed walking up the beach followed by a small entourage of children and young men. The guest seemed much older than young, though, and Robert and Sara had been promised he spoke English.

“He says that all the time, too.”

“What else have we got to do but sit in a smelly beach shack waiting for someone who speaks English?”

“We speak English.”

“But, we’re not Chinese.”

“Got that right. Give me some more of this excellent black cherry champagne.”

As Chinese men and boys began to squeeze into the low, narrow doorway, the host began slapping most of them back and shooing them out with rapid-fire dialect that sounded neither welcoming nor warm.

The guest looked at each of them, the host and Robert and Sara, in turn with a sickly grin on his face. Robert and Sara were used to sickly grins on Chinese people’s faces and wondered what was going to come next.

“Wode pongyou [My friend],” the host explained while gripping the guest’s forearm until it turned white. “Ta jiang ta shuo Ingyue. [He says he speaks English.]”

“Hmmm. I thought the host said he did speak English. Now it’s just a claim?” Robert said.
“What did you expect? We’re in the middle of the Neibu Zone ,” Sara answered.

“Jieshi wode pongyou, [This is my friend].” said the host. “Jia Xiaotou. [He’s called Small Head.]”

Both Sara and Robert snorted and burbled the Chinese equivalent of “pleased to meet you”—“Hau, hau, hau” or “good, good, good.”

And then there was silence.

But there was always more black cherry champagne, the best in the world.

“Ummm…weishemma jia Xiaotou? [Ummm…Why is he called Small Head?]” Sara asked.

“Bu zhidao [I don’t know.],” the host answered but he did. Robert and Sara imagined everyone knew why that guy was called Small Head.

Small Head, whose head wasn’t small at all, just grinned.

“Bu zhidao,” the host repeated.

“Keshi, ni tou bu shi xiao. Bu kan hen xiao. Bu hen xiao. [But your head isn’t small. It doesn’t look small. Not very small.]” Sara pressed.

“Keshi, dagai limian [Maybe inside],” Small Head replied.

“Ahhh,” said Sara.

“Ahhh,” said Robert.

“Ahhh,” said the host.

“Ahhh,” said Small Head.

“He doesn’t speak English, does he?” Robert asked.

“I don’t think so,” Sara replied.

“What are we going to do if he tries?”

“Play along. We are guests here.”

“Purdy pardy arda pardaciple,” Small Head said.

The host looked anxious.

“There it is,” Robert said.

“There is what?” asked Sara.

“There’s the English.”

“Ardy ard ah pard ah pardapard,” Small Head continued.

“Well, he’s got the rhythm right.”

“Yeah. It’s practically iambic pentameter.”

“Shemme jiang? [What did he say?]” the host asked.

“Ta shuo, ‘Pardy ardy ardy pard ah [He said, "Pardy ardy ardy pard ah."],” Sara snorted.

“Shemma yisi? [What is the meaning?]” the host asked. “Ta shuo shemma? [What did he say?]”

“Well,” Robert answered. “He said, ‘Hello, my new friends.’”

The host and Small Head looked blank.

“Robert,” Sara said.

“Huh?”

“Only two of us here speak English.”

“Oh, right. Ta shuo, ‘Nihau, wode xin pongyou. [He said, ‘Hello, my new friends.’]”

“Very good. Very quick,” Sara smiled.

The host and Small Head nodded and smiled together, one meaning “I never would have believed it” and the other “I told you so.”

“Jixu [Continue],” said the host.

Small Head turned his head away from the host, cleared his throat, and shot a grateful glance at Robert.

“Pard ard pardapard,” he began. “Paradarp prada prada darp darpa prad pra para darpapard.”

“Oh ho,” Sara giggled. “That’s a tough one.”

The host looked to Robert.

“A-fucking-mazing,” Robert answered while holding his cup out for more of that excellent black cherry champagne. The bottle was getting low and that was not good. Perhaps there was more stashed around somewhere. Or some baijou or even just some pijou [beer].

Robert took a deep breath.

“Ta shuo, ‘Wode pongyoude fangzi shi hen how ye iyangde fangzi dzai Meigo.’ [He said, “My friend’s house is very nice and the same as the ones in America.]”

“Damn right it is,” Sara said draining her cup, and holding it out for more. “You’re getting pretty good at this.”

“Parda parpar pardy darp,” Robert answered.

“Pardy par you, fucker,” she giggled.

“Pardy pard parp paparpard,” Small Head joined in.

“Puh puh puh puh,” the host contributed.

They all laughed like maniacs except the host whose face began to flush more than the alcohol had already flushed it which was a lot.

“Not even close, man,” Robert told him but in English. “Not even close.”

“Careful not to make him mad,” Sara warned. “I think he’s still got some more of that shitty champagne.”

“Pardpar parpy par par par,” Small Head added.

“That’s what I say,” Sara agreed.

(Click on the title or the book cover for more information)