hustler to get out there and go for it. But in California, they sure are quick to point out the pitfalls, quick to poke holes and deflate entrepreneurship.”
I stare at my ten toes. I fan them and say, “Good observation.”
Abe sucks on his cancer stick, “It’s true. At least that’s how it’s gone around me.”
What I like about Abe is his profound and articulate understanding of his life. He is his own master. Although he has his share of experiences and well-formed opinions, he understands these are specific to him and not necessarily shared.
4
Come to think about it, the leprechaun is more elfish, or at least enough of an elf that it should’ve been mentioned in conjunction with his moniker from the beginning.
The leprechaun elf.
I’m sorry for the inaccuracy. I was in a hurry to commit this memory to my hard drive.
And from there, where will it travel, into whose hands, under whose eyes? Or will it simply harden into a long string of zeros and ones?
So many of my memories have hardened into binary digits.
I don’t even turn their ignition at regular intervals to keep them alive, like the Civic I leave parked on Jon’s berm in Hollywood while we take his white Silverado to Austin.
The Civic, I worry about. The rear driver tire has a slow leak I’ve neglected to do anything about for months. I’m certain it’ll be flat, or as good as flat, when we return.
The oil, though synthetic, will also have to be changed.
I know these problems will need to be remedied before even attempting to complete the third and final leg of our epic cross-country transplant.
But what I don’t know is when I use the battery I haven’t started for days to run Jon’s cigarette-lighter compressor and pump my nearly flat tire enough to make it to the tire shop, the corroded battery will be milked of its sap, rendering it incapable of holding even one more charge.
I can’t be upset. 97,000 miles off one battery, and never so much as a hiccup until Jon’s wife, Cynthia, has to give us a jump.
Is this also the fate of the memories I’ve let harden into zeros and ones? Will I have to find another Cynthia to help get them running again, at least running enough to make it to the repair shop? Or, if that day ever comes, will they be irredeemable, lost forever on a hard drive? The argument against writing on computers is there’s a chance to permanently lose your data, especially if you aren’t at least somewhat responsible about making backups, preferably onto a reliable server.
Otherwise, writing on computers is a terribly foolish business. Fashioning your ideas into words then fashioned into zeros and ones on your shaky hard drive is an effort that should be avoided from the beginning.
Better to write on paper, where your ideas are made into physical words, not binary digits. Keep your words in a safe place, however, in case a black swan goes after them in some unpredictable and unavoidable swoop.
Pardon my pseudo-intellectual epiphany, but I feel it’s worth knowing that when The End comes and everything resets except for our Conscious Mind, the only tales accessible to new generations will be the ones communicated orally, not by zeros and ones, or even the written word, but the ones remembered.
And so I’ll make this a memory.
6
I’ve already decided I’m going to work with what I have. Michael has faults, like anybody else, but I’m going to work with his faults and make the most of them.
That doesn’t mean every now and then I won’t mention his faults. I have no intention of keeping him in the dark, or reinforcing his delusions. He needs to get thinking like a man. I’m in no hurry. I’m only 22, and I have another five or six years of graduate school to get through. We have time to get married and raise a family, but I at least want him to understand his ideas about how to live are not very practical, nor will they make him the happiest.
Sometimes I can’t believe he has a degree in economics. His approach to money isn’t feasible at all. He has no idea what it really takes to run a family. For now, like I said, it’s fine. But he has to understand what people his age with a college degree earn.
The truth is, Michael needs a prod every now and then to make him see the way he lives isn’t sustainable. Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t want him to simply submit and do just anything. I want him to find something he’s interested in rather than waste his life away at some corporate job. I want him to think about what he’d like, maybe working at the local library or bookstore or becoming a teacher, and then I want him to lower his head and charge. I wouldn’t want him to change what he’s doing right now if he were secure.
He calls it gainful unemployment. Yeah, right! Hello?
I know whatever he’s doing right now isn’t gainful, not even to him.
In his weaker moments he can’t hide this from me.
Without much prodding I can see he’s worried about getting a career. He doesn’t think a career will rob him of his personal time to write and be creative, but that he won’t be able to get a career even if he tries, and this makes him insecure.
“What’re you worried about?” I ask. “Why don’t you start trying?”
But he doesn’t answer my question. Instead, he detours into a hypothetical:
“What am I going to tell our children when they ask, ‘What do you do, Dad?’”
Our children?
“You have a college degree, Michael,” I remind him. “You have work experience, a lot of it, you can find a good job.”
“That stuff doesn’t mean anything,” he lies. “I’m not qualified for anything.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know,” he says, shaking his head. “I’m already doing what I want to do! I really don’t think anything more will happen. Honestly. I don’t think I’ll be able to make a middle-class salary.”
Michael really believes he won’t be able to find a career. He’s worried about not amounting to anything. He sees time passing, and it’s leaving him behind, and it will leave him behind if he doesn’t act. That’s partly why I’m here: to make sure he doesn’t get left behind.
2
Earlier today, Sheldon, our landlord in Miami Beach, says we won’t be back. He says five years is a long time. I tell him when we return, we’d like to live in his building again.
“A lot will happen in five years,” he says. He says, “You won’t be back.”
Then he goes for lunch at Pita Hut and to run errands. I imagine him biting into a falafel laffa. We finish loading Jon’s Silverado all the way to the tailgate. Everything is in there, our entire home, down to Honeyed Cat’s litter box.
Bridget suggests a last walk to the beach. I pass the 41st St marker and walk up the stairs to the Mid-Beach boardwalk thinking, This is the last time.
We don’t swim in the tumultuous sea. Bridget gets her toes wet. I make use of her iPhone to make some nostalgic videos. The sun is setting in the west. Sheldon calls to ask where we are. He’s ready to do the final walkthrough before returning our deposit and going out to dinner.
“We’ll be there in five minutes,” says Bridget.
I look south toward Government Cut. It’s a 3.5-mile run from here, seven miles roundtrip, and I’ve run the whole way on the sand in about 50 minutes. This is a special place. I will miss it.
Goodbye.
On the way out, we throw away some refuse disrespectful and near-sighted hooligans left scattered on the white sand even though there are trashcans everywhere.
6
On our walk back from HEB, Bridget boldly claims an unusually high percentage of women have tattoos in Austin, higher than other cities. We’re carrying three bags of groceries between us, mostly carbohydrates and dairy. I’m carrying the case of Lone Star beer.
At first I don’t believe her. Tattoos, in general, are fairly common among the citizens of the world. I don’t see how Austin of all places could have an inordinate amount of female body art consumers.
“I swear it does
,” says Bridget. “I’ll prove it to you.”
Right then a burly woman manning a pickup hangs her beefy left arm out her window. No less than three garishly colored tattoos stain her skin between shoulder and wrist. She’s a living billboard of the immaculate Virgin Mary, a humming bird siphoning nectar, and a mariachi skeleton on bike.
“She’s only one,” I say. “She’s not representative of all women in Austin.”
“In most cases,” says Bridget, “I’d agree with you. But the women in Austin like their tattoos. The more conspicuous, the better.”
We get home and store our provisions. It’s about a three-minute walk to HEB. This is the closest I’ve ever lived to a grocery store, and the best part about HEB is it’s open 24/7.
Bridget changes into a frumpy University of Miami hooded sweatshirt. We decide to have homemade mac and cheese for dinner and treat ourselves to two beers apiece.
“Let’s come up with a codename,” suggests Bridget. “How about tater tots?”
“Every time you see a girl with tattoos you’ll say tater tots?”
She digs both hands into her pocket and pulls down on her sweatshirt, “Or at least until I prove my point.”
4
My first encounter with the crazy girl is on her move-in day. I’m involved with Dostoevsky on the carpet. It seems like a good place to read this anti-book. But sometimes I have to rearrange myself because carpet can be hard and abrasive on elbows.
Our 523 square feet of space gets the most sunlight in our bedroom, where there is a sliding glass