Harry got up and found the jelly jar Joey had drunk out of. There was just the faintest bit of wine in the bottom.
This is silly, Harry told himself. I want a drink, I can have a drink. Hell, one drink, that isn’t anything. Maybe I could go to the store, get a beer. Just one.
In Rio Bravo, the drunk in the movie had quit drinking the hard stuff, just had a beer now and then. That worked for him. He could drink a beer. It was the hard liquor he couldn’t have. A beer. That would be cool. Just one. A cold one.
Shit, Harry thought. Dean Martin was an actor. He didn’t have to get over being a drunk. He was playing drunk. In my case, Harry thought, I am not playing.
He washed out the jelly jar, in case he should start trying to drink the dregs, and went to bed. After a long while of thinking about drink and thinking about the sounds that made him drink, the faces he had seen, the pain he had felt, he drifted off to sleep.
29
So Harry, he’s doing his center-of-the-universe thing with Tad, and he’s got a lot of spare hours (drinking took up more time than he realized), and he’s spending the rest of the time going to school, studying, working, not drinking, not missing Joey, trying to find that damn center, and then, surprise, he finds the center of the universe. Easy. It’s right in front of him.
And its name is Talia.
She’s looking just two beats above movie starrish. Hot mama on a cool fall day. A dream a-loose in the world of mortals. All in white, and the light loves her. Her skirt is not that short, but looks short because her perfect legs are so long, and the white top is frilly, and her breasts, dark as if touched with cool shadow, are plenty full and plenty showing, and her face is alight with a smile, teeth so white and full an orthodontist would bow to them as if to a shrine.
It was then that Harry noticed the pack of folks with her.
Four boys, dressed to the nines, bodies by health club, clothes by designer wear, hair by stylists, combed perfect and not subject to the wind.
Harry wore faded jeans—and not fashionably faded—a loose shirt, and his hair was a twist and wisp that crawled all over his head. He was whiter than typing paper seen in a bright light. It got that way when you hid from the world.
There were a couple of nice-looking girls with Talia as well—one of them may have been with one of the boys, the other solo—but that left three guys to be with Talia. If the other girl only appeared to be solo, and was in fact with one of the other guys, that still left two.
Harry thought: Unless all the unfettered guys are gay, odds are bad for our hero.
And then Talia looked at one of the boys and smiled, and then, the universe be praised, she looked directly at him.
He felt a movement in his pants that wasn’t shifting pocket change.
“I didn’t mean to separate you from your friends,” Harry said, taking a sip of his coffee, watching her over the top of his cup.
“That’s all right,” Talia said. “I’ve wondered about you.”
“Me?”
“Sure. I’ve been looking for you.”
“You have?”
“Yes, I have…. This could be called our spot, couldn’t it?”
They were sitting and having coffee in the same place as before. “Yes,” Harry said, “I suppose it could. I’ve thought about you a lot too.”
Talia looked pouty. “If you have, where have you been?”
“Busy.”
“You haven’t been coming to class. I waited. I went by where you were supposed to be. I thought you dropped out.”
“I missed a couple classes. Been helping a friend.”
Talia smiled, and Harry thought: Wow. She left her pack to be with me. That’s pretty damn cool.
Now it was just him and her.
And, of course, everyone else in the place.
Still, it meant something, way she acted. She had to really like him, leaving her friends like that. She had looked back at the guys when she came over, before he asked her to coffee, and he wondered about that, her looking back, but, shit, you could read something into everything, and that was his problem.
Take it as it is, he told himself. Take it as it is.
He said, “You know, I don’t know if you like movies much, me, I’m a movie buff.”
“I love them.”
“But I was thinking, you know, this weekend we could catch a movie. Together.”
“Of course together.” She laughed. “We could even go at the same time.”
“Well, yeah. That was silly. Sure. Together. Could be there’s nothing good on, I haven’t checked, but we can see. Maybe what we can do is I can pick you up, or meet you on campus, and we can walk over to Dineros for something to eat, then go to the movie. Oh, and there’s this new steakhouse. Khan’s. It’s good. I ate there when it first opened. But Dineros is close, and that might be best.”
Shut the fuck up, he told himself. You’re babbling.
“That sounds good. I’m in. But I’ve got to go right now. Can we do it tomorrow afternoon? You can pick me up here.”
She took out a pen and paper, wrote down her number. She had already given it to him before, but he said nothing. He wouldn’t have minded having a collection of the number, as long as it was written with her hand.
“Call me before then. Okay? We can iron out times and when and where to meet.”
“Absolutely.”
He didn’t realize it until he had walked to his car and driven home, but he hadn’t bothered with his planned route, hadn’t even thought about it.
Just walked to his car and drove home in a stupor.
The world was spinning better, had to be. The sun was brighter and the air was sweeter. Every dog, even one with acute audio-choronological hearing, had his day.
Bark. Bark.
Harry went home and began taking the cardboard and egg cartons off the walls.
30
It was late afternoon and the sun had fallen earlier than the day before and the shadows were longer and the wind was cooler and full of smells. Tad and Harry, side by side, moved across the yard in the dim light and the windy swirl of leaves, and Harry could feel it now, the thing Tad had told him about.
A sensation of being one with it all.
And he could feel it even thinking about Talia.
It was different, thinking about her this time. It wasn’t distracting. It was part of his focus. Part of a whole. He was the world. The universe. He and Talia, all part and parcel.
Fact was, he felt as if he were king of it all.
One with nature and—
When he fell it hurt.
“Watch them roots,” Tad said. “Bunch of old roots over here near this end.”
31
Saturday, day of his date with Talia, he saw something in the paper that surprised and delighted and somehow disturbed him.
It was a photograph of Kayla.
She was no longer a kid. She was full-grown. Looked good. She was wearing a police uniform. A uniform for the town’s force. She was back.
She was in a photograph with a bunch of other cops, her eyes shining out from under her cap. Her hair was tied back. She had a big gun on her hip.
She was part of a recently graduated class. She was tops in her class, in fact. Said so in the article. Said, too, she had finished most of college while in high school. Some kind of smart-kid deal. Then she finished the cop training program.
Kayla had fulfilled her dream.
She had become a cop.
He thought of how it felt when he touched her that day so long ago, and how it had felt when she had leaned over and kissed him.
Branded him with her lips.
How she had smelled. So wonderful. Two pieces of a bigger puzzle. Missing hunks of the universal pattern.
Kids, he thought.
We were kids.
By now she had most certainly found love. May even have a kid. She was piecing someone else’s puzzle.
And there is another thing.
There’s Talia.
Lovely, Talia. Goddess on earth.
I have a date with her.
Woo-hoo.
32
It couldn’t have gone any better, that date. Talia, she looked ravishing in just blue jeans, a simple shirt, and sandals. Way her body filled those clothes, it was if she were liquid that had been poured into them and solidified. She was tall, dark, lean, but not skinny like so many women these days, and she was sensual in a kind of I-would-fuck-you-to-death-then-suck-the-marrow-from-your-bones kind of way.
Harry stopped to pick her up on campus, where they agreed to meet. She looked at his car, which he had detailed. Eighty-five bucks at Downtown Auto Shine and Repair, so the Cheetos under the seat, Snickers wrappers would be gotten rid of, all the dirt on the floor mats. And when he got out, opened the door, invited her into his chariot, she asked if he kept the car because it was some kind of classic or because of sentimentality, and he said, “Oh, no, not that. It’s all I got. I’m the classic, and I’m not that sentimental.”
She laughed at that and they went to dinner. It was a good dinner at Dineros, though he ate nervously, hoping they wouldn’t surpass the money he had in his pocket, though Tad, good old Tad, had given him another twenty, just to help.
They ate and went to the movie. In the movie they held hands, and afterward, at the Java Palace, they talked and drank too much coffee.
Talia had been all over the world, shopped in some pretty fancy places, spent a lot of Daddy’s money, and yet she seemed really interested when he told her about his life, about coming from a good but poor family, about his mom, and how he was going to visit her soon, and needed to.
Not once, not even in a passing thought, did he worry about his curse.
He didn’t mention it either. Didn’t tell her. Wasn’t any reason to.
What would it matter?
He was getting it under control.
No more worries.
Things were cool.
Life was full.
33
Each day he trained with Tad, and each day was a door to something new. He felt wonderful, and he could see that Tad felt good too. As Tad rediscovered what he had known, he began to stand taller, drop pounds, and his sense of humor was sharper and he laughed a lot.
They both did.
Tad showed him not only how to move, how to concentrate—meditate, actually—but how to blend with movement, and pretty soon Tad was having him attack, and it always ended up badly for Harry, thrown hard, thrown effortlessly. Grabbing at Tad was like trying to grab the wind. And if you did luck out and grab him, it was like holding an empty sweatshirt.
When he wanted to strike you, he always found you. He didn’t do anything with his fists, just moved his hands, or his arms, maybe a leg, never in a kicking motion; just seemed to move it, and it would connect. Somewhere.
And boy, did it hurt.
And he wasn’t trying to hurt.
Finally it was Harry’s turn to try and take on Tad. Tad was going to grab him, and the thing was…thing was, he was going to move in the way Tad was teaching him, and Tad was going to fly.
Except it didn’t work that way. Tad grabbed him and Harry twisted, and Tad stood right where he was.
“Try to drop your hips; don’t think about the fact that I got you by the shirt and, if I wanted to, I could kill you. Don’t think about that. Just drop your hips and think of emptiness beneath your feet. But you…you can stand on air. It’s me that has to go into the abyss. Got it?”
“Yeah.”
Tad grabbed him. Harry sank his hips and imagined the gap beneath him. But there was a problem. He fell into the pit, pulling Tad on top of him.
They tried a dozen different scenarios, and they were all about as successful as the proverbial rubber crutch.
Harry stood up, brushed himself off.
“Not doing so good, am I?”
“No, you’re not.”
“I suck.”
“You do.”
“I’ll never get it.”
“Could be.”
“Toss me a bone, Tad. Something.”
“You fall good.”
“Thanks.”
“Welcome.”
“For goodness’ sake, Tad. Do you always have to tell it like it is?”
“You’re doing great, kid.”
“But now I don’t believe you.”
“Look. Your self-defense—it sucks. You’re not a fighter at heart. But you got to not think of this like fighting. That’s what you’re thinking. The exercises. The concentration. Stuff that’s helping you not worry so much about the sounds, or control them, whatever, that’s the same stuff. You’re trying to separate them. Look here. Reach for me, real quick. Quick as you can—”
Harry did it soon as Tad finished his sentence, thinking he’d surprise him. But Tad just raised his arm. And it didn’t seem that fast, yet he intercepted Harry’s hand, and the moment Tad touched him Harry felt his balance shift. He was on the wobble. His center was knocked off.
“It didn’t look like you moved that fast,” Harry said.
“Didn’t. Listen. It’s not necessarily who’s the quickest. It’s who’s the smartest. To deflect what you do, I only have to move your arm a little bit. You have to reach for me, the full length of your arm, but all I got to do is reach up my body, a shorter distance than where you’re standing, and bump your hand, and when I do, when I touch you, I shift me into you, and now you’re weighted off balance, and not only with your weight, but, as I shift my hips, some of my weight.
“Once you’re off balance, then, if I chose, I could push you down, throw you, or just bring my arm out, catching you in the void, and it would be like getting hit by a truck. That’s the trick, Harry. There isn’t any other. But doing it, that’s a whole ’nother sack of worms. Balance out here and balance in life are the same. Lose your balance, you get knocked over easier.
“Thing is, you’re getting the meditation part. You’re starting to walk smoothly, and with confidence. You don’t need to think so much about or worry about this other part. Don’t imagine how you could beat the shit out of somebody, just imagine what I tell you to imagine until it’s real. The rest is a piece of the whole kit and caboodle. You got to be like a monkey. Monkey is a selfish little shit. He wants something, just reaches for it, takes it. He doesn’t worry about if his other arm is held, or if it’s not a perfect line from him to the fruit; he goes for what he wants. He doesn’t even think about his opponent, just what he wants, or wants to do, where he wants to go, and he goes there, loose as a…well, as a fucking monkey. It’s hard to hold on to a monkey. And he wants what he wants. In that way, you have to be selfish, like the monkey—”
“And still be one with the universe?”
“Exactly.”
“Don’t monkeys sometimes get eaten by lions or something?”
“They do. And that’s the other lesson. It doesn’t matter what you know or who you are, there’s always the certified, gold-plated fuckup waiting in the wings. You avoid it better if you train and prepare. But it can happen to anyone at any time. Martial arts isn’t magic. It’s a piece of magic. But sometimes somebody—due to their own training, accident, your lack of awareness that day, just plain old fucking luck, that shit—it becomes your lion or tiger, Harry. Sometimes the monkey gets eaten.”
“Maybe I should be the lion?”
“You could. But he’s not perfect either. Other lions get him. Monkeys or apes gang up on him, run him off. Throw shit at him, literally, toss limbs and rocks and fruit. Disease gets him, accident, hunters. There is no free lunch, and no perfect armor, and you got to watch when you zip up, least you hang the meat. Rules to live by. Got me, kid?”
“Yeah. I got you.”
“One last thing. You listenin’, now?”
“Yeah.”
“That shit you called a friend. The turd. What was his name? You know who I’m talking about.”
“Joey.”
?
??That’s him. I’m going to be honest. Me and him had words. Well, I said all the words. But he decided he wasn’t hungry when I finished and he left.”
“I figured as much.”
“Letting him fall out of your life, that’s probably best. He’s like one of those not-so-brave monkeys that tosses his own shit. It’s his only ammunition. Get what I’m trying to tell you here?”
“I think so.”
“Let me put it so even you can understand it. Here it is, on a platter. The bastard is a loser and he wants you to be one too. That girl you’re seeing, he said you couldn’t do that. You are. And, you know what? If it should come to you not seeing her, it doesn’t change a thing. You are what you decide to be. Your worth is of your choosing. Here’s some more business. What I like to call a goddamn tidbit. Get out your net and grab this one.”
“I’m hunkered down and ready.”
“Sometimes, my erstwhile friend, you shake a bad thing, and you think it’s gone. But it never is. Not really. You got to always be ready to deal. ’Cause bad things, they come back. And sometimes they bring friends.”
34
At work Harry felt he was pretty safe from sound, and he was safe from drink, but he thought about both. He liked to get into something like book filing. It was the kind of work that allowed the mind to drift away, and sometimes he would peek inside a book and read a bit of this, a bit of that. It was akin to what Tad taught him, about how to become one with his surroundings. To find joy in the moment, in the now.
Place like this, the bookstore, was great. No shoot-outs or wrecks or robberies, or anything hidden in the clang of the registers, the hiss of the automatic doors. And he wasn’t getting so many of those flashes. Those emotion barbs that had been given to him by past audio experiences.
Sanctuary.
Drink was another matter. He really missed it. There was nothing like a good, bracing drink after work. And then a trip to the coolness of the bar, where he could sit at a table and watch little beads of condensation on the outside of a big pitcher of beer. He liked the way it looked, golden, like nectar, when it was poured from the pitcher into a tall, thick, mug.