A: Giggles — she of course giggled her rejoinder — rummaged the bins where they dumped the flowers after burying the stiffs.
That’s bs.
Nope. Cute, right? Or irony. Or irony?
He had to pee. And shit. Port-o-lets outside. He wrested the handle. Oh, there she was, Giggles sat on the Port-o-let toilet hole, shooting up.
Before leaving, he remembered images, sounds, sensations from his hours at Pete’s Place: Giggles shooting up on the toilet; heat, heat on his tongue; the storm raising up New Mexico dust; a woman crying, crying that she’d lost everything. Crying until he couldn’t take it anymore. Crying until her sobs blurred with the rain: a perfect musical accompaniment. Rain, after all, was the sound of disappointment.
He waited too long before he started biking back to the trailer. His mistake was uncapping the Smirnoff. That vodka burned a hole in his shoes, worse than the holes in his memory. He finally began pedaling, pedaling harder, like he believed his velocity could retrieve the hours lost. A big downpour whistled his way. It surreptitiously caught him — he couldn’t say by surprise given that he had taken a measured risk. Say: It hit. Like a feint. Like a fist. It sang its refrain of—
Disappointment. Disappointment. Disappointment.
His disappointment with himself, his bottle, or Giggles, her needle. He veered into the parking lot at Santa Fe Place mall, hung around beneath the walkway awnings, watching the storm transforming Southside Santa Fe into a vacant window. Picturing his “home” leaking. New leaks every big storm. Picturing Giggles’s habit. He preferred not having to see it. He still imagined he could “get with” her. He suffered stupid dreams like that involving the few women (scratch, last human beings) he regularly communicated with.
Hey Leo. Paupers. Addicts. Lost souls. Ain’t they your people?
Yeah. Alley cats were his people. The problem remained. The answers lay wrapped inside nuances as subtle as the rain — and hushed voices — because Leo rarely heard simple answers without hearing the contrariness wrapped inside them. The problem remained that his people stank. They couldn’t help it. They stank perennially. It was bearable by himself, or maybe with two or three tired, woozy, and drunken others. But when they were crowded together in shelter spaces like at Pete’s Place, the stink escalated beyond nausea. Rain, sludge, and rot worsened it.
They stank. They raged.
They raged because they’d been kicked out of homes; kicked out of apartments; kicked out of overpriced Motel 6s. They raged because they’d gone too long feeling threatened, solitary, going hungry, and then when they collected nickels and dimes they were still obstinately criticized; still hassled by business owners who controlled where they could and couldn’t sit or sleep, and if they stuck around they got cuffed by the cops. They raged because at the shelter — in lieu of housing assistance, or small sums — they were given clothes, lots of hand-me-down coats, shawls, slacks; hey, somebody found a silk shirt inside the Pete’s Place clothes donation closet. Then without other assistance they were told to do something — get a life — get a job — but the miscellany was invariably soiled; the personnel had forgotten how little good a new shirt had done them pursuing their own dreams.
Identify the strains: multiple, or simultaneous, voices of sympathy, cynicism and irony. Like listening to the counselors at Pete’s Place proposing plans, services, options. They spoke with voices within voices — like suspiciously multivoiced instruments — and as you listened you repeatedly heard the words forms, applications, time lines, like sticks and stones battering within the windiness of storm and possibility. Chance, really. Listen, listen to contrapuntal rain voices: lullaby and lament told you what you should expect. Personal embarrassment. Failure. Grief.
Before he hit the road, he remembered. He unzipped his backpack. He pulled out a plastic throw-over. Remember where you got that parka? From the clothes closet at Pete’s Place? That ain’t helped you none, Mr. Prick? The point remained that the counselors at Pete’s couldn’t acknowledge the futility of goddamn everything. Homeless cats already with nothin’ should expect no less than...
Disappointment. Disappointment. Disappointment.
Traffic began looking scary, so he set his teeth to the wind, and he couldn’t stop when the Santa Fe New Mexican in his pocket billowed; the pages separated hitting the ground. He briefly tendered the thought of retrieving them as they tumbled windily away. He didn’t need them to prove his point. The social workers dealt with facsimiles. Pitying the homeless. The mental illnesses. The addictions. The self-destructive behaviors. Nobody hoped to name the fuel to the fire. Rage. Homeless killer. Big deal. The real deal was homelessness, helplessness, and rage. He skidded.
He stymied the worst that could happen by flinging his foot down like an anchor. Thinking hurt. Thoughts like these exhausted him. Damn. If the homeless rage ever cut loose, could be a bloodbath. He muckily regrouped. But before he wobbled less than a mile — like a pilot in the mountains regaining his perspective above the view — he slipped again. The difficulty was partially the darkness, partially the rage that consumed him, past exhaustion. He lay watching his bike wheel spin, water filling his socks. He didn’t recognize the first street sign: the second: the area: the neighborhood. Details missed the mark. He had no idea how long he had been oblivious, or biking the wrong way.
Damn residential neighborhoods.
Never been a problem in the past. He had the knack; he could fall asleep anywhere.
He huddled inside a stark alley facing a wall mural; winged angels; horny devils; a knight hoisting a sword; he couldn’t tell for the life of him whether the mural was religious, facetious, or pornographic. So, the psycho had been homeless, huh, Leo’s last thought, before blankness. He startled awake. He reconsidered: never lie down beneath angels and demons.
Spanish music wafted in the dark. Realized he was in the barrio somewhere. What happened? Rage wouldn’t answer. He wasn’t sure how he had ended up lost in the city where he used to hustle rides. He dreamed he was a taxi man again. The car radio kept playing the same song, “Fire and Rain,” over and over. And wasn’t this an irony? He’d been trapped in a house fire — how long ago now? — and since then he lived mostly in a leaky trailer. Get it? Oh, I’ve seen fire / And I’ve seen rain. And fire. And rain.
Bugs. Creepy crawlers sidled his clothes; his skin pores had begun itching like a virus spread over him. He shuffled, slow as Sisyphus. His rock was homelessness, drunkenness, rage; they dissipated; they left behind lethargy. He walked his bike across the street to the less residential area. Fast food palaces, convenience stores, and garbage dumpsters promised safety. He stumbled on a metal post. Past nights, he might have tied a string between the drive-in sign and his bike, so that somebody approaching with bad intentions carelessly tripped up. He was too tired, so he curled up. Worming, so to speak, becoming wormier, wormier, until he reached a place colder in his bones than his wet clothes. Then Giggles appeared, her apparition. An avatar. She pulled up her sleeve. He expected to see her needle marks; but instead she kept haranguing, Something is wrong, Leo. Wake up, Leo. Something is really, really wrong; and, at first, he wasn’t sure whether he was hallucinating when a Honda pulled directly across from him; headlights illuminating the interior faces; a woman in the passenger seat screamed.