Joshua Mohr - Some Things That Meant the World to Me

The hand connected to my good arm got a grinding feeling, like a mill crushing peppercorns. "When?"

"Soon."

"Now?"

"After that crap-shack taqueria shuts down for the night," he said. "We don't want the hired help harassing you again." He turned his helmet's light off. "And speaking of harassment, what's with this disgusting couch?"

I told him the whole story, old lady Rhonda, her pyromaniac husband.

"But what's it doing in your apartment?" he asked.

"I'm keeping it for her. In case she wants to visit it."

"Visit a couch?" He looked at me like Karla had, horrified, appalled at my aptitude to do the wrong thing. "Are you listening to yourself?"

I was trying; we sat there until one a.m.

The dumpster was three-quarters full. There wasn't as much food in it tonight as the last time. It had more napkins and to-go boxes, which made it easier for me to toss everything out and into the alley.

"Why don't you ever help with this part?" I said to littleRhonda.

He shrugged, leaning against the dumpster, smoking. The light on his helmet was on. "You're the brawn, I'm the brains." He laughed. "Correction: the one-armed brawn."

I felt a few raindrops. It was weird to get rain in San Francisco before Halloween. I finished pitching everything out of the dumpster and opened the door in its bottom.

"After you," I said to little-Rhonda. He hopped in the dumpster and took off down the ladder. In a matter of seconds, I couldn't see him.

I hadn't really thought about how I was going to climb down a ladder with a broken arm until now. It was easier than I thought, as long as I kept my weight leaning into it and going really slowly. I called after little-Rhonda, "I need your help," and he said, "I know that," and I said, "I don't think you know what I mean," and he said, "I know exactly what you mean."

By the time I got to the bottom, all sweaty, he was up against a wall and smoking again. "You aren't exactly in tip-top shape," he said.

"You climb down a ladder with one arm."

"Poor you," little-Rhonda said. "We'll have to sign you up for the Special Olympics."

I rested for a minute, then walked through the dark tunnel. The hand I'd used to make my way down the ladder had a couple blisters across its palm that looked like albino ants.

"You have to go in by yourself this time," he said.

"Why?"

"I'll wait right here."

I went inside. It was still empty, except for a box of my mom's wine way over in a corner. I wended to it, pushed the spout and tcha-bliss dribbled out, not running in a random pattern, but forming a Rorschach-puddle. I dove into it, and as I fell, its color got darker and darker, and soon it was pitch black like the other puddle had been. I fell for longer this time, what seemed hours. I kept my eyes open but couldn't see a foot in front of me. Then the invisible parachute slowed me down again, and I landed on the window where I could see my mom and littleRhonda on the other side. They were in the kitchen. He wasn't wearing his helmet. She played her Casio keyboard. She used to be a great pianist, before I was born, before her rheumatoid arthritis turned her hands into stupid fruit. She tried to make a run up the keys and missed some notes, took a swig of tchabliss, and said to him, "Not exactly how Mozart drew it up," and he said, "I like it," and she said, "You're always such a charmer." She kept playing, fingers fumbling across the keys. It was one of those keyboards that wasn't full-sized, only three octaves total. She said, "You won't know until you get older, baby, but it's awful to falter at something you used to be great at."

I stared down at them, at the way he stared up at her, at the way she scowled at the keyboard, at the malicious way she grabbed the tcha-bliss. "Are your hands hurting right now?" he said, and she said, "These days, they always are," and he said, "Will you play my favorite Vivaldo song?" and she smiled and said, "Vivaldi?" and he smiled, too, saying, "Yeah, Vivaldi."

I hadn't heard her play in so long. Me, Rhonda, lying down on the glass, ear smashed into it, wanting to hear her perform. Her fingers moved slowly, pressing horrible sounding combinations of keys. But the boy stared up at her in awe. She winced when she needed to stretch her fingers to reach certain notes, which she missed anyway. Then she stopped playing, let her clumsy hands crash in her lap. She turned the keyboard off, saying, "What's the point?"

"It sounds great."

There was only a sip left of her tcha-bliss. "You shouldn't lie to your mother."

I went over to the Jordanian Girl's house that Sundae Around ten a.m. Nervous. I had the same disposable camera as before, since it still had nine pictures remaining.

True to the Jordanian Girl's word, a woman sat on the front steps, tearing bread into bits and feeding the pigeons, maybe twenty of them competing for crumbs.

"Hi," I said to the woman, panicking when I realized I didn't know what the Jordanian Girl's name was and wanting to ask the neighbor if she was home. My good hand buzzed.

"Honda!" the woman yelled, over her shoulder, toward the house. "Your friend is here."

Honda? Honda and Rhonda? It was too good to be true. Or it was just good. Or just true. It was something, whatever it was, that I was unfamiliar with.

She came outside.

"Honda?" I said. "Your parents must really love cars."

"It's spelled H-A-N-D-A. My father drives an Audi." She pointed at all the pigeons. "Looks like this is your lucky day."

"Our lucky day," I said. "My name is Rhonda."

"Isn't that a girl's name?"

"Family tradition."

"Handa and Rhonda," she said and laughed. "What are the chances?"

I didn't want to answer that question. I put the camera to my eye.

"What do you do with your pictures?" Handa asked.

"Huh?"

"Your pigeon pictures. Do you sell them, hang them in galleries?"

I wound the disposable camera, took a shot of three pigeons fighting for the same piece of bread. The neighbor's feet were in the picture, too, bare, with overgrown toenails. "They're just for me. It's only a hobby."

"I wish I was like you."

"What do you mean?"

"An artiste?" she said in a terrible French accent. It sounded like her tongue had swollen up to the size of a pancake.

I wound again and snapped another shot, this one of a white pigeon, off by himself, watching the others wriggle. "I'm no artist."

"All I do is sleep and work, sleep and work. At least your life has a passion."

I thought about my mom, her Casio keyboard. The murder in her eyes every time she bit awkward combinations of keys. "I'm not any good."

"Even if you aren't, so what? You're doing something."

"Here," I said, handing her the camera. "Try it."

"I can't."

"Even if you aren't any good, so what?" I said, smiling. She took it from me.

"I don't want to take pictures of the ugly birds." She pointed the camera at me. "Make a sexy face."

"I am."

"Try harder." I heard the camera click. When was the last time someone had taken my picture? I gave her a huge, exaggerated smile. "Never mind," she said. "Try less hard."

"Can I please have that back?"

"Don't be a baby," she said, and we laughed, her laughter more sincere, mine shrouded in the memory of Karla saying pathetic little baby. Mine masked because one minute, I was a hero, and the next, she threw me out of her house, her life.

Again, I aimed the camera at the throng of pigeons. Shot two more. Wound the camera to take another, but I was out of film. "That's all for now"

'Already?" Handa said, and with the wretched French accent, her pancake-tongue, "I was enjoying watching an artiste work."