Cheap as Wisdom (PGM)

            The third cup of coffee was starting to take hold, the tumblers and discs in his brain lining up, intuition and insight beginning to flow.

            Now tell me, Castellano.

            Sarge?

            Tell me why this character would be waiting in front of a liquor store at 8 a.m. on a weekday morning.

            Because he’s a drunk?

            Incorrect.

            Incorrect.  Incorrect.  The place opens at 9, so he’s killing time, waiting to buy a pint or whatever so he can get his day off on the right foot.

            Look at him.

            Yeah?

            The young cop tugged lightly on the soft fringe of his beard, staring through the windshield at the pacing, gray-coated figure.

            Watch him.  Watch.

            After a few steps, the pacing man paused in front of the door, leaned against the glass with cupped hands over his eyes, hanging there for a moment as if attached by suction.

            What time is it?

            About quarter to.

            So this wino, even if he doesn’t have a watch, this wino knows what time this place opens every morning because he’s a regular wino and this is where he picks up his regular boost.

            Sure.

            So unless he’s really hurting.  I mean unless the screws are really being put to him, he knows what time this place opens better than the owner.  He’s a drunk alarm clock.  Every morning, same time.  His body walks him here on automatic pilot from wherever the hell he sleeps, church basement, SRO, whatever.

            I get it Sarge.

            So watch.  Watch.

Cheap as Wisdom (PGM)

He’s not a bad kid, Haltek thought, just has that stupid affliction everyone has today – expertise.  Everyone knows everything about everything.  Such a bunch of sharpies, how’d the fucking society get by before all these junior geniuses came along.  Right way to eat, sleep, walk, stand up, sit down.

            So much self-awareness.  They act like they invented it.  At least there was enough detachment to keep from trying to fix everybody.  Point out the problems, but that’s enough.  We’re all still too busy trying to unfuck ourselves.  Some small comfort in that.

Cheap as Wisdom (PGM)

            We’re all so goddamn gullible.  We want to find comfort in the small things, life’s little operations, and then we pick up the remote.

            Good thing you got it wired.

            Wired nothing.  I’m as guilty as the rest of us.  I just have the gift.

            What gift is that?

            I can see what a fuck up I am.

            That earned a laugh.  The first in a long time, Haltek let a single sideways tsk through his mouth.  He followed it with a sip of coffee lest the rookie get the idea he was developing a sense of humor.

            I’m outta smokes junior.  Duck in and grab me a pack, and re-up on the coffees too.

            Yeah.

            Fuck up.

            I’m gonna regret sharing so much wisdom with a vet like you.

            You’re gonna regret my bouncing your ass around the block unless you get moving.

Pacific Garden Mission (con’t)

            Asleep on the job guapo.

            The brown man, dozing into his own belly.

            Aye!  Quiet you stupid.  I been up since 4.  I hear you come up the stairs when I’m to start.  I get to sleep.

            This is my buddy Grig.

            You face don’t look so good buddy.

            Lou rapped him a good one last night.  Didn’t believe he was a friend of mine.

            Help yourself.

            Artemio waves toward the orange coffee urn, then swings his thumb back over his shoulder at the rack of donuts.

            That’s mighty kind of you friend.  Grig is trying to be polite, despite is head throbbing at the temple from last night’s swat, and from the inside from the lack of caffeine.

            Kind nothing, that fucker he don’t fix shit in this building.

            This fucker don’t raise the rent for the last three years neither.

            Yeah.  You okay sometimes.

            Get the coffee bud.  I’ll grab us an assortment.

            Grig fills a pair of waxed cups, smelling the cinnamon Mexicans always brew in.  It’s a soothing smell.

            In the front under the bakery’s front window is a card table and a pair of plastic chairs, a makeshift waiting area.  Artemio drags the works on to the sidewalk on nice summer afternoons to play dominoes and slap flour dust off his thighs.  Today it’s perfect for a pair of makeshift heroes planning to shortcut effort and make an instant fortune.

Pacific Garden Mission (con’t)

Artemio’s Panederia on the first floor. Pale enamel, decades old.  Herculean mixers whirling in polyrhythms.  Fat brown men shouldering sacks of flour.  A dusted radio blares panachanga over the din.  Then a narrow corridor of jaundiced fluorescence and buckled paneling, to where the namesake dozes on a barstool next to cooling racks of donuts and cinnamon knots.  His sons, nephews, cousins whirl around him, moving the pastries while his goggle-glassed daughter commands the cash register.  Jesus watches from the calendar over her shoulder, eyes toward the cash drawer, hands caressing his own flaming heart.

Pacific Garden Mission (con’t)

Narrow stairs, shoulder width. Brushing ancient curls of crumbling wallpaper that rustle as they stomp down. The only light through a square of smoked glass in the door at the bottom. A warning of approaching morning light insufficient when TonyO pushes out on to the street and Grig once again feels the punch of awareness. He tries to imagine what the ratio is of concussion to hangover, and picks a dime sized scab out of his ear with his pinky as TonyO turns him toward the bakery window. It’s lined with cookies, donuts, the little white loaves of bread.

Pretty to look at but they taste like shit.

What’s that?

I told you. Lard. Lard in everything. Lard. Lard. Lard. No butter.

Must be halfway okay. I mean, people buy stuff. The place is in business.

These spics have no idea what good dessert is. They torch their mouths out with chilis so much. How would they know?

Says you. To them it’s really good.

Bullshit.

Relativity, Tony.

What? Who got smart in the prison library?

I mean to them, they think it’s good.

Yeah. That’s that cultural shit. Everybody thinks their people do it the best because that’s all they know. So of course they’ll buy this flavorless crap because they never had something better.

I’m saying to them it wouldn’t be because–

Because nothing. It tastes like shit unless you dunk the hell out of it.

Okay.

I mean, like this one time I met this lady from Iran on the bus, right? The whole trip, she goes on and on about how great fucking Iran is. Algebra this and architecture that and Persian Mesopotamian what the fuck.

Yeah.

So I say to her. Fuck lady, it’s a good thing you were born there. You’d be a fucking miserable bitch if you were from Sweden or someplace.

How’s that?

I mean, the way she went on about how Iran was the greatest country. If it was so goddamn great, they we all would know it, right? So if she was from somewhere else she’d be just about suicidal because she wasn’t from Iran. You follow me?

You’re a piece of work Tony. You’re an expert’s expert.

I’m just saying, that’s proof that everybody thinks they’re from the best place. And that there way of doing things is the best way.

And so?

And so one person’s actually is. And one place actually is. Which makes ninety nine percent of the rest of us fuckers wrong all the goddamn time. That’s relativity, Grig. Relative to shit. Come on, let’s get some of those shit donuts already.

Pacific Garden Mission (con’t)

Tony O grabs Grig under the shoulders, hoists him upright on the couch. He’s sunk in the bow of the cushions, face lined from the upholstery pattern, fibrous mouth, his eyelids scraping over bone dry eyes.

Where’s your coffee? I smell coffee.

You smell downstairs. It’s the bakery.

Mexican.

Right. Those little angel-wing pastries. Fruity cream wedding cakes. The little white loaves of bread. The bolillos.

That’s a nickname.

No it ain’t. It the loaves of bread. That’s what they call them.

No, I mean, for me. Well, for any whiteboy.

What?

Inside. They called us that. The Aces and Cobras and those guys. Bolillos. Because we were white and soft.

Damn. That’s fuckin funny Grig. Bolillos.

Yeah. Funny. I never had one before.

Well, get happy kid. Today’s the day.

Great.

Pacific Garden Mission (con’t)

Bout time you piece of shit.

            Gimme those aspirins.

            Head still hurts then.

            Killing me.  Feels like a dog shit in my mouth.  Right in it.

            TonyO hands him a warm can of beer, open on the coffee table.

            Let’s get some shit donuts from downstairs.

            Nice.

            You know spics don’t use butter, aint that strange?  Lard in everything.

            Got some?

            Downstairs, downstairs.  Get your head screwed on and we’ll go.

Pacific Garden Mission (con’t)

Grig wakes up, a hateful morning light burning through the thin tapestry TonyO hangs over his front window. Yesterday’s drizzle has given way to merciless clarity, bright blue slivers of sky bleed around the sheet edges. He’s slept maybe four hours, shaking his head and shuddering against the frustrating truth that liquor puts you to sleep but won’t let you linger. Grig wants to scoop his thumbs into his eyesockets, make room for his swollen brain and the dull yellow ache behind his eyes.

Sez TonyO (PGM)

Grig fades in and out of sleep. The whisky, the gray throb lingering from taking that wrench in the head. Dream after dream. Back on the yard. Basketball under a chain-link ceiling. Curling cinderblocks. Lines of orange jumpsuits. Baloney sandwiches day after day after day. The night they wrenched the teeth out of that punk’s mouth one by one so he couldn’t bite. And through it all, TonyO keeps talking . . .

You better man up, is what I mean. If you’re no good at something, what’s the point of passing yourself off as being good? Sooner or later you get found out and then you’re twice as worse off, right? I know what I know, which is great but you know what makes me valuable? It’s that I know what I don’t know kid. I got the balls to admit that I’m no good and that I need help, I need the right people around me and that if I take care of them well then together we can all do real well. That’s why I like you Grig, you’re good at what you do and I recognize that talent. Recognize and appreciate (an empty pint falls off the coffee table, he’s putting his right foot up, sliding back into the chair, his left leg hanging over into the worn hollow on the left arm). Never understood those crap-asses who try to convince me how great they was at this or that. I’m so great. I’m so great. Mister, then why the fuck are you bending my ear inside out? Why aren’t you just getting down to business? Shit. Are you asleep kid? I might need more beer. I might shoot down to the corner for twelve. Right? Right?