I don’t know which ones they are.
Not sure what to tell you. Best bet would be—measure it and see? Or get the tech specs for the AC unit. I bet they’re on the manufacturer’s site.
Oh, yeah. Well, I need some other stuff too.
What can I do for you?
I was thinking about building a drafting desk, so I need to figure out what pieces of wood would be good, what kind, whether to use screws or nails, you know.
That’s not really what we do here—I mean, I, hold on.
Another customer came in.
They knew each other and began to exchange pleasantries. I could tell the attendant wanted me to get the fuck out of his hair, so I pretended to look real hard at some kind of doorknob kit.
One second, miss.
He went over to the other guy.
I hung out for a few minutes to make sure enough time would pass to put Jan in the clear, then I took off.
The walk along the road to the taco shack was—scenic. There were a lot of fields, another gas station, some kind of small factory with Chinese characters on it, and a bunch of Chinese guys sitting outside smoking. I bummed a cigarette and smoked it with them. Would you believe not a single one spoke English? I mean—they knew how to say hello, but when I asked what county or town we were in, they couldn’t say. I heard about this once, that sometimes people will move a whole town to the U.S. There is a town in a different country, and the whole town moves here, and takes up residence. Then, they don’t really need to speak English. I think that’s great. Fuck English. If I grew up next to a Laotian village, maybe I’d speak two languages already, instead of one and a half.
The taco shack, as far as I could tell, was out of business. Jan was waiting in the parking lot, though, and he flashed his brights at me from about a quarter mile away.
When I got in he said, I wasn’t going to mention it, but you know you look like a fucking raccoon. Who did that to you?
STICKER
In the car, I showed him a sticker Lana and I had made on her computer. We were going to have a bunch printed up so we could put them around.
You made that? he said.
Yeah, well, Lana did a lot of it. We both did it.
Right.
He didn’t say anything for a while.
Do you know whose coffin that is?
DO YOU KNOW WHOSE COFFIN IT IS?
Lana and I kind of had an argument about the meaning of the sticker. She said that it was just a basic anarchist sticker, whatever that means. I said it is more complicated because of whose coffin it is. Now, I’m the one who picked out the photograph, so I didn’t expect her to know whose coffin it was, but then it turned out she did know. Apparently she liked outlaws when she was a kid.
The guy in the coffin is Jesse James. They are showing off his body after he has been killed because his celebrity was such that you became more important just by being in a photograph with his corpse. So, for someone who is walking down the street and sees the sticker: they are selling coffins, you know—you think you are buying something that is useful to you, but it is just a weight on you. It is as useless to you as a coffin. And why is a coffin useless to you? Because when you climb in it you’re already dead.
POLICE
Next day, I get off the bus by the house and there’s a police car there waiting for me.
What is it, officer?
(No reason not to be polite.)
Lucia Stanton?
They took me back to the precinct and asked me a whole bunch of questions. They showed me a picture of Jan and asked if I knew him. I said I couldn’t tell. The picture was bad. It could be anyone. They asked if I knew some other people, a guy named Lance, a girl named Willa.
I don’t know them. Do you?
I know who they are. Why do you think I’m asking you?
How did you get my name anyway?
Someone said you knew these people. Someone you know.
A lot of people think they know me.
I bring out the worst in people, but in this case, after a while, the cops and me, we got along. I can get along with anybody. They wanted to know who hit me, and I explained about getting high as fuck and going in the bouncy castle with my two cute girlfriends. They liked that quite a lot, maybe too much. They had me tell it twice and the second time one of them asked me what we were wearing. What do you mean? What were you wearing in the bouncy castle? Some of the other officers gave that guy a look and he shut up.
I didn’t even have to take the bus home, because one of them was going that way and gave me a ride home.
I felt like I had really tricked them, but when the officer let me out, he said,
Lev told me to tell you, friendly advice, it costs nothing: stay away from those people. You don’t know what they’re like.
This is you being a sweetheart, I said.
That’s right.
EVENTS
Sometimes events speed up. You think you have a handle on them. You think you understand how one thing follows another, but then it turns out you can’t even perceive what is about to happen, and before you know it, not only that, but other things too—they all have happened, and you’re standing in the rubble trying to figure out what to do.
I started wanting to go to school less and less. I was hanging out with Lana and her cousin and Jan more and more. I started to feel any request that was made on me was too much.
When people write books about childhood, and about being a kid—they always talk about how endless it is, and about how there is no thought of time. Everything just stretches and stretches. I think the opposite is the case. When you’re young, you feel like things are constantly ending. As soon as you get used to something, it goes away. There was an old couple who used to watch me when I was four or five, and I would go into their backyard. There was a low part and a high part as the yard rose up a hill, and on the high part, kind of a trail, I guess, there were flowers—just an endless path of flowers and white stones. I know that when I was there, when I was four and I was there on that path, I felt sure that life was almost over. I felt like most of it had already come and gone. I don’t think I even knew about death yet.
HOUSE
My aunt says that I am naturally curious. That means that I don’t need to be taught how to learn. Some people have a disadvantage at the beginning, and they are not curious. These people have trouble learning. It seems like not being curious is the worst thing of all. Curious people aren’t necessarily good at learning what you want them to learn, though. They are too busy learning about other things.
My aunt said to me, while we were sitting in the garden, let’s go into the house. So, we went into the house.
Then, we were in the house, and she said, let’s go back out to the garden, I was wrong.