Rafael Yglesias - Fearless

“You do?”

Max was excited. He pulled her the way a kid would, dragging her down two flights of stairs and hurrying her into a trot until they reached the side of the mall where a large Sears department store took over all the space. He moved with such enthusiasm that they attracted glances even from harried Christmas shoppers. He kept going through section after section until he reached the hardware department.

Max stopped in front of an enormous red metal tool chest, displayed with its top open, its interior drawers out in various levels, each one filled with a tool or a part of a tool that fit precisely in the space allotted. “He liked to build things,” Max said with a smile of satisfaction.

“Can I help you?” a young salesman asked. He was skinny and his head had a distorted shape, the top extraordinarily wide and flat and then narrowing to an unusually small and narrow chin.

“I want to buy that.”

The chest and tools were so expensive that even the salesman had to be told twice that Max meant to buy both. The salesman’s excitement at the effortless sale of an item he obviously thought would never be sold brought a flush to his oddly shaped cheeks. His hands shook while he wrote out the order.

“We lived in an apartment,” Max told Carla while they waited on the clerk. “So Dad couldn’t really have room to work, but he used the maid’s room, right off the kitchen, and built chairs — he even built our dining room table. “His voice, his language, the slouch of his body had become like a boy’s. He beamed at her while he talked. “And he used to fix things for the neighbors for free. Anything he could. Just on the weekends. I’d watch and he’d give me the hammer to hold or have me do the easy stuff. Anytime we had to get something at the hardware store he’d stop in front of one of these”—Max pointed to the display chest—“they weren’t as magnificent as this one — and long for it. He’d look at it silently for minutes and minutes while I pulled at the drawers and then he’d say, ‘I’d like to have that,’ and walk away.” Carla saw the tears collect in Max’s pale blue eyes. But he was still smiling.

When the salesman took Max’s credit card, Max told him that he wanted the tools and chest shipped. The salesman paled. His little chin quivered. He said in a strangled voice that to get the chest there by Christmas it would have to go by UPS and that would cost extra.

“I don’t care what it costs,” Max said, his eyes staying wet, but not letting go of their tears. “It’s for my father and I want him to have it on Christmas.”

The salesman paused for what seemed a long time and said nothing. He regarded Max with respect during the silence. When he finally spoke he said softly, “I wish I was in your family.”

At first Carla had thought Max’s idea mad, then dangerous. As she watched him feel this happiness she wanted it too.

“Where are you sending it?” she asked him as he wrote down the address for the salesman.

“Where am I sending it?” Max said loudly and he and the salesman exchanged looks as if Carla were quite foolish. “I’m sending it to my father. It won’t fit under my tree. It won’t fit under his either. He’s Jewish. He doesn’t have a tree.”

The salesman nodded politely. “Happy Hanukkah,” he said when they were finished.

Max took Carla’s arm and said, “I’d like to buy Bubble a set of Bristle Blocks. Unless that’s what you’re getting him.”

She saw Bubble reach for a Ninja Turtle figure belonging to another boy in the sandbox and screech when she said he couldn’t grab it away. The boy’s mother explained her son didn’t want to share it because it was a special toy — he had just gotten it for his birthday .

“ I want it for birthday,” Bubble said to Carla .

“ Okay, I’ll get it. I’ll get you everything you want. I just do whatever you tell me. I’m your slave ,” and she had kissed him and they had had pizza — Ninja Turtle food — and she had never had the chance to buy it. She had promised her beautiful baby a long list of toys for his birthday and she hadn’t kept her promise.

Carla could remember the toys Bubble wanted; she could hear his musical voice asking for them. Wanting to buy things for Bubble still lived in her.

“Let’s go to a toy store,” she said to Max. “You can get him the Bristle Blocks. I got plenty on my list.”

After buying the presents they ate madly at the Food Court, a square area in the mall ringed by fast-food stands. They went from one counter to another, eating without any common sense. They each had a hot dog and an egg roll and a slice of pizza and a bucket of fried chicken and two frozen yogurts. While they ate they had Bubble’s presents wrapped for a fee; the money went to children with AIDS. They put the presents in the Saab’s trunk. Max asked if she minded touring some more of beautiful Jersey. She was glad to stick with him.

He drove through miles and miles of industrial landscape. She told him about Perlman’s group therapy session, reminded of it when they passed a Sheraton. Max made no comment while she recounted all the survivors who had claimed he saved their lives. She tried to prod him by drawing a pitiful picture of Jackie, the cheerleader mother: “One woman came there just to say thanks to you. She acted like she really needed to see you. She said she and her sons would have died without you.”

But Max wasn’t provoked. He said, “It’s so weird the stuff they have to believe.” And he changed the subject, reciting another fact about the warehouses and factories they passed. He seemed to know why every brick in New York and also New Jersey was put there. He was very intelligent, Carla thought, easily the most intelligent person she had ever met, but in a useless and sad way.

“What do you build?” she asked when they were in the tunnel going back to Manhattan. Riding with Max, speeding through the glowing fluorescent coffin buried under the river wasn’t scary. She remembered the agony and terror she had felt when coming home from the group therapy session with Manny. She had shut her eyes, put her head between her knees and screamed until they were out. I was so crazy, she thought, comparing that day’s hysteria to this calm with Max. Is it Bubble’s death or is it Manny that’s making me so crazy? Or is it because he’s fucking another woman?

No, I was crazy before I knew about her.

“I don’t build anything. I design homes,” Max answered after a long pause. She had almost forgotten her question. “I was going to say houses,” Max said. “But they’re really people’s homes. Built for good closet space.”

It was only their second meeting yet she knew him well enough to know he meant he didn’t think closet space was worth fussing about. “I’ve lived in small apartments my whole life,” she said, “and I’d love to have a big closet.”

“Exactly. That’s the way my clients feel. I don’t blame them. But you see architecture has nothing to do with comfort or usefulness. Sometimes we pretend it does, but really if it was a choice between people and a beautiful building I’d lose the people. I always thought there was something to be said for the neutron bomb.”

They came out of the tunnel and Carla was surprised by the sun. The sickly white glow of neon had obliterated her memory of it and she was delighted it still existed. She pressed the button, let her window roll down and allowed the warm light and the cold air to wash her face.

“I’m sorry,” Max said. “That was just a joke. Pretty stupid.”

“You say what you want, Max. It don’t bother me. Every time I open my mouth I piss people off. I know what you mean. You love buildings. You love all buildings, even the ugly ones. You can’t love all people.”