Austin Nights

scent is neutral, but he doesn’t seem very clean, especially the soles of his feet, which are stained black.

  He takes off his loose flip-flops, wipes his feet, and walks around the library barefoot, pacing like a man trying to figure things out in his house, pacing back and forth. It isn’t until he appears from in between the stacks dragging a massive backpack with hiking boots dangling by the laces that I begin to hold this leprechaun suspect.

  If I owned a dog, I’m sure it would’ve growled and barked uncontrollably. Innocent until proven guilty doesn’t hold in the world of dog, or at least dogs find guilt using a different kind of process, one more instinctual, one more about survival, not justice, not learned law.

  The leprechaun waits for another computer terminal to open. This one is situated closer to Bridget. He hurries the man at this terminal.

  He asks, “How much longer do you have?”

  “Five minutes,” says the man.

  It’s during this short span that the leprechaun throws propriety out the door and becomes unabashedly lecherous. His eyes penetrate Bridget without a blink. Every time I look toward him, he’s digging deeper into her with a diamond encrusted optical bit.

  Sometimes he sees me blocking his path, but this doesn’t stop him. He’s a man capable of inhumanity. I can see it in his gimlet eyes, in his complete disrespect for the ties that bond one person to another.

  9

  I can do what Michael asked me to do and write about Austin, but I think he’s already doing that, pretty much every day.

  Austin is beautiful. I love it here. We haven’t seen enough of it yet to really like it, but we’ve seen enough to know it’s physically appealing.

  Michael’s always quick to point out there’s no beach in Austin. We both miss the beach, but we prepared ourselves for this gaping absence. At least that was our plan. And for the most part, Michael doesn’t pine for the sea. Only when he’s on the phone with friends does he say, “Yeah, but Austin isn’t 0.5 miles from the ocean.”

  He always says zero-point-five, not half-a-mile, or around the block, or close. He has a strange way of saying things. He really does. Like he pronounces the silent T in buffet.

  At first I thought he was trying to be funny, but then I realized he even says the silent T to people he hardly knows.

  When I correct him, “You don’t say the T. The T is silent. You know that, right?”

  He says, “I know.”

  But he still says the T.

  Then there are times when he sounds like my grandfather. Like the first time I heard him talk about the ghetto, which is pretty much where I lived when we first met, and he said hooligans.

  C’mon, who says hooligans? I’ll tell you who – my grandfather, not my boyfriend.

  Or last night, he comes out and says with a totally straight face, “We could go to New Orleans and eat a poor boy.”

  “Po’ boy!” I tell him, “You mean po’ boy!”

  He doesn’t understand. His reasoning is, “McMurtry wrote poor boy. I think po’ boy and poor boy are alternates. Either way, I know it isn’t wrong to say poor boy.”

  And he starts saying poor boy all night. Language for him isn’t something to take lightly. He respects language so much he over says things.

  He ends up sounding either silly or like my grandfather.

  “What?” he asks. “You think I’m a stuffy white guy just because I say poor boy?”

  I look him dead in the eyes and say, “Yes. Hello?”

  2

  Every grandson should keep the memory of his grandfather alive. This isn’t meant to be sexist. Please – grandmothers should be brought to life, too.

  Long live grandmothers!

  But everything in this memory will come as it’s remembered.

  Bridget, though not a blood relative of Granddad, does more than could ever be done the day she illustrates and watercolors him nursing a green bottle of beer, his hands folded elegantly on his lap.

  I take his picture, but Bridget brings him to life in a way only Bridget can do.

  Flashback:

  Granddad visits me in college. My freshman year he solo-drives from Boca Raton all the way to Hyde Park, Chicago. Granddad is a driver, up there with the best of them. He can drive cross-country without touching the soft shoulder. I’ve never gone on some long-distance pull with him, but I know he can drive. The road for Granddad is a lapidary gem. He studies the road and sees everything he could ever want to see.

  When the day comes that he can’t drive anymore, a large part of Granddad dies.

  I know this because I see the look in his eyes, at the age of 80, after driving all by himself around 1,330 miles, from Boca to my dormitory at the University of Chicago, and stopping only once in a Tennessee rest area for a couple hours of shuteye.

  He carries my golf clubs into my dorm room and sits on the fake leather reading chair. He folds his hands elegantly on his lap, just like Bridget, quite a few years later, paints them, and he’s wildly enlightened, like he just got back to The City after spending time in The Forest learning about things and coming to terms with Life.

  Granddad, sitting in the faux leather chair, is dapper in a colorful wool sweater. His bright silver hair is parted. Even though I haven’t visited him in some time, I can tell he’s freshly barbered, straight razor and all, doing the best he can.

  6

  Bridget and I are drinking sixteen-ounce cans of Lone Star poolside when a man wearing a sombrero comes out to his patio for a late afternoon smoke.

  What I like about his patio is the garden design – succulents in terra cotta pots. I can’t call them by their scientific names, but I do see an agave blossom.

  “I like your succulents,” I say.

  “Thank you,” says the man in the sombrero.

  He lights a cancer stick and drags. For a second, I think I see the color of his eyes, the same aqua blue as the swimming pool. I take a hit of Lone Star. I have no intention of reading the little existential book I have with me. It’s dormant on the Chattahoochee.

  Dostoevsky’s translated words aren’t going anywhere without me, I think, but life, this moment, I can’t say the same. When outside of your house, Michael, it’s critical to live. Save reading for the times when you have nothing better to do than stare at that green wall. When will Bridget decorate it with her artwork? We need to hang some artwork on that wall.

  “I do garden design on the side,” offers the man in the sombrero when he sees I’m trying to avoid reading. “What do you guys do?”

  This is a question I always balk at. When you’re a student, people ask what’s your major. When you’re out of school, people ask what you do for a living. Formalities I’d rather do without.

  “I’m starting grad school at UT in the fall,” says Bridget, picking up the slack.

  “That’s a great school,” says the man in the sombrero, “the ivy of state schools. What in?”

  “Clinical Psychology.”

  The man in the sombrero laughs and takes a hearty drag. “That’s a good thing to be studying around here,” he says. He says, “Lots of basket cases in Austin.”

  Bridget, probably conjuring the leprechaun and the verbally abusive bastard child in our building, agrees wholeheartedly. Her dimples pucker as she swigs Lone Star.

  “I’m unemployed,” I say, not wanting to shirk the question.

  The man in the sombrero buoyantly nods three times. “Okay,” he says, “cool. I’m Abe.”

  5

  On this overcast day in Austin, Bridget decides to buy a camera she found last night on craigslist.

  I understand we need a camera if we want to capture Austin and shape it to our liking. The iPhone won’t do Austin justice.

  There’s too much green energy here, too much physical beauty willing to be digitally preserved.

  But this need to preserve shouldn’t get in the way of appreciating Austin’s beauty as it lives. We must remember to experience things with our own senses rather than once
removed through the lens of a camera.

  The guy we’re buying it from has rusty straight hair that falls to his traps. He wears the superfluous beanie. He has a barcode tater tot on the underside of his wrist. His cotton tee is burnt orange with a white and featureless longhorn centerpiece.

  “The only reason I’m selling this camera,” he says, “is because I got a digital SLR. It’s necessary for my work now.”

  “You take photos for a living?” I ask.

  “And video. I do production work. This camera was a great starter camera. The only reason it’s a step under a DSLR is because the lens is fixed. Other than that, it has all the features and capabilities of most DSLRs on the market today.”

  “Really? So a fixed lens is the only difference between this and a DSLR?”

  “Yep. That’s what makes this is a bridge camera. But believe me, it can do everything. I know you’ll love this camera. It takes great images in auto. And if you want more control, throw it in manual.”

  “Can you give us a quick overview?” asks Bridget.

  We’re sitting outside on the patio of a nearby coffee shop. The patio overlooks a garden/greenhouse that sells plants and pots and general horticulture equipment.

  “Sure,” he says. “You can download the manual online, but I know how it is reading those things.”

  Apart from a primer on our new used camera, which really is quite nifty, beanie man also discloses the location in Austin that parties like Miami:

  “Take Cesar Chavez west till you get to the end. There’s a lake there with boats to drink on. People go there to get down Miami style.”

  He nods his